DAY 15
Destination: New Orleans, LA to Meridian, MS
Date: 7.22.97 (Tuesday)
Mileage: 21,900 to 22,103 (203 miles)
Bar(s): Greenbriar Lounge
Imbibed: 2 Screwdrivers
TODAY'S ENTRY IS FROM YET ANOTHER JOURNAL. I started this one almost 2 years after I took off on this strange journey, in yet another attempt to recapture the clarity.
On Day 15 I wandered across the street from my smelly room at the Holiday Inn [which had been recommended to me by Professor Tiger back in Tyler on Day 9], into a palce called Greenbriar Lounge. Which appeared to be the disowned sibling to the Howard Johnson's it shared a common wall with. Close enough to Interstate 20 to hear the rumble of the big rigs on parade. Next door to Applebees's. The kinda place you pass a thousand times driving across America, but never stop at.
Well, I stopped.
When the Tuesday night house band broke into — "duh-duh-duh-DUH, duh-duh-duh-DUH, duh-duh-duh-DUH Macarena..." it was almost too much to stomach.
I hate that fucking song.
Let's just say I wasn't counting on transcendence.
But then something amazing happened. A slight shift in perspective, attributable to what I'm not sure. Maybe it was the music? Or maybe it was th sight o big-boned color coordinating local girls from the secretarial pool over at the local Coca-Cola plant gamely keeping up to the goofy dance they saw on MTV. It could've even been the sight of the small group of guys they're with — with their Nascar T-shirts, Levi knockoffs and Lynard Skynard hair — standing off on the sidelines watchign with goofy smiles.
Something about the whole scene suddenly struck me as...graceful. And remember, I hate this song. But I caught myself feeling like I was watching bad off-Broadway. In a musical about "the blue collar experience in the Deep South."
I was mesmerized.
The room was dark and it reminded me of a small truck stop comedy club that had failed. Fairly crowded for a Tuesday night.
Those damn Tuesday nights.
.
..
...
Several years ago I came up with this concept I call the Soundtrack Moment.
I'm convinced that one day — if it hasn't already happened — everyone with an Internet connection will become convinced that they're living a life worth exploring in a movie. Sometimes you can even experience memorable moments in your life and one day look back at them as if they were pivotal scenes from the movie of your life.
And the Soundtrack Moment is the song that's playing during that scene. A real life moment that you're forever transported back to every time you hear that song for the next 50 years.
One of my earliest, if not first, soundtrack moments occurred when I was 4 or 5. Tom Jones was on the radio and I was in the backseat of a car rolling through Alhambra, CA. As I sang along innocently — "Pussycat, pussycat, I love you, yessss...I...dooo..." — my Aunt Carol suddenly turned around and started laughing at me. I'm sure she thought it was cute, but I remember crawling up on the floor of backseat completely embarrassed.
The wound was finally healed about 30 years later when I got a magazine assignment to join Tom Jones on the road in Springfield, Massachusetts — the town where my maternal grandfather showed up 60+ years earlier from California on his motorcycle (with sidecar) and swept my grandmother off her feet. (Mr. Jones belted out "What's New Pussycat" to the locals at the Three County Fair and introduced me to cognac at our post-concert meal that last until 4 in the morning.)
What are some of YOUR most vivid Soundtrack Moments?
.
..
...
But the soundtrack moment — the snapshot I'll remember — occurred during the next song. And it completely took me by surprise.
I was sitting just off the dance floor. Jotting down notes in my journal, when the band broke into a song I didn't recognize at first. There were four of them in Union Jack. The 2 guitar players didn't look much younger than Bob Dylan. The keyboard player and the drummer, they were more Jakob Dylan. The tall thin dude tickling the faux ivories had the kind of voice and hair that screamed Styx or Journey. The drummer wore the sort of colorful short-sleeve shirt you'd see on a slacker in Silverlake. And the way the light was hitting him back there on the drums reminded me of Brad Pitt in Thelma and Louise.
He was taking lead on the old Van Morrison tune. It wasn't long before I recognized it as 'Tupelo Honey.' And this guy was pouring his fucking heart out and soul into it. Eyes closed. Howling at the moon. In a smoky room next to the interstate. At a bar next to the Howard Johnson's, where everyone but me seemed to be talking. Oblivious to the musical bloodletting occurring under the dim lights.
"Sheeeeeeee's sweeeeeeeeeet like Tupelo honey...she's an angel..."
Are you people deaf and blind?! The man's guts are spilling onto the stage and nobody seemed to give a damn.
THIS is the essence of music. Not the impersonal stadium concerts. Not the groupies. Not the MTV videos. THIS was it. Singing at a little bar in Mississippi on a Tuesday night. Because it's something you just HAVE to do.
.
..
...
I wasn't exactly conscious of it at the time. But I suppose maybe the reason I was so moved by this random guy singing in a bar was because I saw a little of me in there. The dreamer, toiling on the fringes of success. With a break here, a little more hard work there, he might actually be onto something. But for now he's convinced himself that it really IS about the work, as corny and cliche as it sounds. If you're doing what you're passionate about, does it matter if you toil in obscurity? Broke...but unbroken.
Hell yes! That's what P. would say, anyway. Unbroken doesn't feed the kids.
If there's one area that I could see breaking us up it's the money philosophy. More than the fidelity question. More than the "lifestyle differences," as she puts it.
The money thing could definitely be the deal breaker.
We come from 2 completely opposite perspectives on this. P's family always had money, or at least the appearance of money. Her dad built a very successful sign business. He satisfied his fascination with cars by getting a new Mercedes or Corvette or Porsche just about every year. My dad put nearly 300,000 miles on his orange-and-white Pinto. P's family had vacation homes at the Jersey Shore and Florida. We had a camper.
P's dad has made sure his little girl's been taken care of. I've been pretty much on my own since I was 18. Sink or swim. Run up the credit card and pray for a little Hollywood redemption. I don't want you to get the wrong impression. P's not spoiled by any means. She never had a nice car and she's a loyal, tireless worker. It's just that her dad's made sure she doesn't have to worry about money.
But she worries anyway.
Maybe because she dates a guy whose family was on food stamps for a time growing up. My dad's always had a decent job, thanks to his degree from Cal State L.A. in accounting. And he was always good about paying child support on time. But my mom's 2nd husband, [Sgt. Stepdad], he worked in construction. It wasn't always steady work. Plus, he left my mom 4 or 5 times in 10 years, so I grew up with yo-yo family economics. We always had a roof over our head and food on the table. But I know my mom went through hell sometimes to keep it all together.
So how's that effect my relationship 25 years later?
Well, now I see money as being an unnecessary component on the road to happiness. Sure, it helps. It helps you go places, see things, buy cool stuff. Whatever.
But it's not NECESSARY in making me happy, content. I've been on the brink of poverty and felt happy. At peace with the fact that I was rich in friendship and wealthy with love. Drunk with wisdom. Blissful in the warm glow of my memories of seeing the world. All that bullshit that sounds corny if you've never actually experienced it. I have. So I know I can be happy with little or no money.
And I think that worries P. No, I KNOW it does.
.
..
...
After the band stopped playing I introduced myself to the drummer and told him how much I enjoyed his Van Morrison cover. His name was Nickie and he had a wife and two kids back home in Louisiana. He told me it was rough being out on the road away from his family. His wife had been in a band with him before they had kids, so it was doubly tough.
"She's been cool about it so far," Nickie told me with a slight Cajun drawl. "Because this band we got now, Union Jack, I feel good about it. I wanna see where we can take this. Then again, I don't know how long I can keep playing places like this when I've got a family back home."
Behind Nickie, the Macarena Girls were at it again. This time they were 2-stepping to a Garth Brooks song on the jukebox.
"The problem is," Nickie said swigging from his Budweiser, "I ain't cut out for the 9-to-5 life."
Amen, brother.
Share
