So I have been gone a while but I guess that is what happens when life occurs around you, when the digressive diatribes I write about actually happen, when you're down and alone or up high and reelin' with the blonde on you arm. I have some new music including a choice Mumford & Sons album which was sent to me from Korea by a very dear friend, some ooooold school Fleetwood Mac (bet you never knew they were a blues band before they started banging each other...) and even some obscure Elton that I never even knew existed.
But for now I want to dig into this beautiful, deep Kief song and in particular the one day when it struck me and made my heart standstill. I have gone into great lengths about how much I adore Kief's phrasing, licks and songwriting and this song is certainly no different. However this song hit me in the face one sunny Florida day and though I hate the word it was the most surreal experience in my life.
I had just gone through a big change in my life, I was lonely and a full fledged alcoholic. Every night I'd slam a dozen martinis followed by a twelve of Rolling Rock and a shaky drive home. I'd fall asleep restlessly and wake up to the depression of alcohol and the situation I was in. A few months into it I purchased the car I have always dreamed of in hopes it would snap me out of my funk when all it did was throw another drain on my bank account. It seems as though there was really no way out of it and I was consumed with simply staying in this situation until my liver failed or I killed myself with a car accident.
But there were a few times when I felt different and I would drive in that newly purchased car out to the beach, jog six miles and lay around looking at the college girls playing catch (badly) and flirting with the boys much younger than myself. One day I rolled down there on a terribly clear, dry eighty degree day, the kids were back in school and there was little activity on the beach itself except for some retirees strolling with their dogs and the random kite surfer a quarter mile out gliding along. The remainder of the day I have very little recollection of until I hopped back in the car and cruised along the strip.
Well there really isn't much of a strip in Jacksonville Beach by the pier but there are two surf shops and a few bars. As I turned onto the main road there was not a soul on the street. No one. There was nobody at the bar that overlooked the road and the beach beyond in the distance. It was the eeriest thing I have ever seen, zero activity with zero people anywhere to be seen. I had the windows down and started to hear the beginning of this song. It was so loud I check to see if it was coming on through the speakers in my car. The thing was that I don't even have a working stereo (to this day) in that car.
I pulled over to the side of the road and shut the engine off, opened the door and closed it very slowly as if I didn't want to wake the street and the town up. I gingerly walked across the street as one would across a bedroom trying not to wake a child. I couldn't pinpoint where the music was coming from and walked into the surf shop and didn't see anyone. Headed back out again I looked into the bar and saw a huge speaker facing out of a window and walked towards it. About midway through the street I stopped and just listened, unconsciously and without self awareness I stood there and heard:
I ain't going to keep it long, baby
But just long, long enough
I've got to pick up my passports
And I've got to get my stuff
I don't know why it happened. I don't know how it happened that day for a few minutes on a bright September afternoon there was no one within a few hundred yards, no cars driving and not even a stray cat running across the street. If I could have figured it out I wouldn't have had those goosebumps running all over my body and that sinking feeling, tightness between the cheeks...or any other reaction to being terribly scared and curious at the same time. It seemed demonic. It seemed surreal and it seemed perfect. It was a hand coming down and smacking me across the chin.
It didn't smack me out of my problem. That same night I drank another twelve martinis followed by another dozen Rolling Rocks. But it did make me feel better and more aligned to the world because I not only realized that there are times when even Kief loses his touch, and at that time I certainly had lost mine, sometimes that is okay. Sometimes it is a good feeling to be hopeless, to know that things couldn't possibly be any worse. Then other times that experience makes me think about the randomness in the world and how when you do lose your touch it could be just your time to do so, the odds are staggering. Staggering just like that day, like how I changed my life and how staggering music can be when it becomes the soundtrack of your life.
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