Back at the campo sancto, the family land. Noon light again. Trailer is as it was when I was in my teens, except empty of my parents entirely. The record collection stands intact, the perfect square of shelving glinting black as Kubrick's monolith. Mom's best friend from high school, Rob James, is here, lennon shades glinting. His resemblance to John is uncanny. He's quite kind & attentive. The last time we spoke was on the phone, my last stopover to talk with mom, before I left Alabama forever; I had thought him dead then, having dreamt of him scarred from surgery. Seems I've invited him to talk.
Rob's listening to platters on the old system with the suspended turntable; Scott Walker is changed out for some early mid-70s bootlegs where Bowie's credited as 'Mike Davis'. I flip through the sleeves, a little high. I've relapsed into smoking pot. Hacking my lungs out, honestly. I'm in & out of my room and puttering around the porch, tinkering with art projects and comix pages. (Are my tarot pieces here? Is that the Hierophant I see?) James is snacking on some pizza, pleasantly lost in Eno & Fripp's backing sound. I'm fighting the impulse to chatter a mile-a-minute. Rob listens patiently.
"...realized I could spend the rest of my life re-discovering his music," I yammer, taking a double album down, the cardboard folds at the corners yellowed and separating; Rob studying me with an admixture of fondness & parental concern as I suppress another hacking cough. "Tunes I've been listening to since before I was a baby. Things I've been hearing everywhere. In Sonic Youth, in Pulp. Songs with the words swapped out." I exchange 'Mike Davis' bootlegs out & lower the needle. The slowed-down tempo of 'Friday On My Mind' with unfamiliar vocals, alternate lyrics. Rob can tell I'm buzzed.
Hadn't known how much I'd missed him. Perhaps even had a bit of a crush? Sick, I suppose. Still, he's not judgmental or suspicious in the slightest. Seems perfectly sober, hale & healthy, no shakes, no evidence of the struggle with M.S. Idly I'm aware that neither of us should be here, and underneath it all lurks a lucid memory of the last time I'd been in this room, the last time accessing these records:
The floor rotted out and the shelves tipped over into the mould-blackened pit; gatefold sleeves sprawled all over, vinyl spilling everywhere. Dad had given in to entropy after she ran, let our shitty little makeshift world disintegrate and moved into his own workshop. Hacking fit to die from the uncured concrete floor dust mixed with powderized red clay from the greenhouse floor...
None of that here, in the golden years trapped in my mind. Aware I am standing in the Living Record of that time, the light of those teenage afternoons stored in memory, available to us now. The profound ache I feel for the music of my parents youth, when they were still kind to one another, and felt no resentment for the failures they dragged us into. Rob was the only friend of either, of both, to transcend that disintegration. Too conscious of the moment, of my proximity to truth, my mind swims to consciousness. I wake ready to write it all up. Remembering the love. Ears ringing.
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