44. MUSIC
'One hundred missteps make
the King's ransom.' Well,
something of that sort. I used
to stay up late thinking things
up like that. Then I found
myself, about January, 1972,
holed away in that Pennsylvania
secret mousehole I've been writing
about, awakening once again into
a form of expanded and literary
life (before that, I'd been in what
essentially could be called a large
black-hole of a certain negativity
which, as black holes are wont
to do, sucking in everything else
with it). The thing was 'reset', as a
verb: I did so, resetting everything.
Raise a few pigs, handle 40 cows
daily, become a country-boy hick
for a while, get unknown, let it
all drip down out of me, forget the
wicked and crazy past. Of course
it helped that no one knew where
I was, what I'd done, and how my
present arrangements were set up.
I was about as far away from 509
east 11th Street as it was possbile
to be. I didn't want to hear a thing.
Whatever that resounding knell was,
and if it was still tolling, it was not
going to be for me - apologies to
John Donne on that one. The war
in Vietnam was still raging. I no
longer cared. My safe-house
apartment deal was over, the
injured and the two dead from
it, wherever they were, found or
not found, solved or not solved,
held nothing for me. If someone
had my name, I swore I'd change
it. Nothing happened, some years
passed. I began to breath better
again. I'd here or there run into
some college types, Elmira or
wherever, still active and
forthright in their opposing
the Nixon Cambodia incursions,
the Christmas Bombing, the
entire Henry Kissinger war
machine killfest, the Nixon
smirk, and all the rest. I'd say,
'Give it up. You have no
sense or idea what you're
getting involved with.
It's not worth a thing.'
-
I dedicated myself, secretly, and
out of earshot and view of any of
these moronic mountain locals
- to whom I'd actually taken
a fancy and enjoyed being with
- to revivify my own intellectual
life. There were a few bookstores
around, two colleges and a
university. In those days, unlike
today, security was non-existent.
I came and went at will. I
registered for Elmira College,
did my things as needed, and
then took vast advantage of
Cornell and even Ithaca
College - a mile or so up
the street - at that time
something of a joke, the
small, sequestered school
a real Baby Huey in the
looming shadow of Cornell.
That I could do, in my own
energies and format. I'd
become totally independent.
-
I found the trick was to lose
all definitions, everything. I'd
found that, behind all things, all,
there is a lie. That realization
brought me to the point of a
complete disgust, a disdain, for
everything of man. I detested
humanity. They falsely assumed
Reality, and took up every lie
that went with it. Their tales and
stories were lies, their manipulative
assumptions, their business and
credos and banking and religion
and medical industry and their
politics, certainly, were infested
with death and lies. I was never
able to get past that, and it
inhibited most all of what I
did. I built my life around those
realizations, and live it that
way still. It's difficult, but
it's given me another, a new
life to work. The people around
me, like people anywhere else,
were unified in their puffed-up
belief that they were alive now,
definitely alive, and partaking
in good stead, of their 'God's'
best graces, producing 'Life'
in the best manner prescribed
by their dogmas and religions.
It was funny, none of the farmer
guys - the rash, the gruff, the
strong - none of them had much
any to do with this. 'Too busy',
they'd say. It was all wives and
ladies there. In Columbia
Crossroads and area, anyway,
all this religion was certainly
a gender thing too. Odd. None
of that St. Andrew's Catholic
stuff about the entire, upstanding,
family worshipping together,
Dads in suits and Moms in
Sunday dresses. I always found
that the people I'm talking about,
anywhere, held tight to the
irrefutable belief that they were
alive now, and not dead. Yet,
frankly, I could never see that.
It was all a mix-up. In greater
terms, as I'd seen it, a person
was alive and dead at the same
time. It was all jumbled together -
all these broad, excitedly creative
'Realities' going on together at
once, 'Life' being only the portion
of existence of which they were
presently aware. Nature, it seemed
to me, wastes nothing, and would
certainly not squander a universal
energy in sequential 'on-off' patterns
of alive/dead stuff. It's only the one
small pattern of what we 'think' we
experience that makes up what we
'think' in turn, is life. We are all
here, and always, experiencing
multifarious levels of a progressively
cosmic experience - the alive of it,
and the dead of it too. Which 'Dead'
you are just as much experiencing
now as the 'Alive' that you think you
are and that you have convinced
yourself is all that there is.
-
Yeah, so try to explain that to Warren,
while squeezing cow-teats on a milking
pail. Or try to broach the subject to that
Jennings guy, while he's cleaning his
rifle. It's a difficult life, with such a
broad screen in front of it; but I had
to make it work. In the house I'd
bought, off to the side, there was
an attached room, one that had been
transformed years back, into a tax-
collection office, one of those Justice
of the Peace type things I wrote of.
It has its own entrance, a few steps
and a little landing and a light. It had
not been used for that for years. Two
really nice glass doors separated it
inside, from the living quarters. To
conserve both fuel and money, since
we had neither, I'd turned off any
heat in there - so it was nasty cold
in the Winter months, and, because
of having lots of windows and looking
out over our ponds and stream, in the
Summer it got really hot. Even if you
opened windows and doors. The only
thing in there was two pianos, oddly
enough - they were there when I
arrived, one in much finer shape
than the other, which other was,
essentially unplayable with broken
keys and a broken pedal - a real
mess, though it made sound. The
other one, neglected and out of tune,
was playable and not really so bad,
especially since it was all I had.
My job at the school got me the
nice piano they kept on the
stage/auditorium. There was a
2nd-grade teacher there, Sheri
Hafer, and she ran the music stuff.
I used to stand back there sometimes
and just watch her playing the
accompaniments for the the kids'
sing-alongs: Stephen Foster, Santa
Lucia, and all that stuff. That was
when one of those things hit me
that answer so many questions.
Playing a piano all those years,
people always ask for 'Can you
play...whatever.' They always
want to hear a song. Any song;
but they never realize it's not
that easy. The piano, in that
'song' sense, is not a lead
instrument. The piano plays
backer chords and progressions
to the singer's voice, which
carries the melody line and
to which they respond. To
make them happy, the right
hand has to pick out and
struggle through the 'lead' line
music of the vocals. A different
deal entirely. Watching her play,
'behind' the kids' voices, I realized
she never played the lead line, just
the accompanying chords to the
kids' lead-line voices. Without the
voices, you wouldn't necessarily
know what song she was playing.
Isn't that, really, a lot like life itself?
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