MURDY'S BIG DREAM
This is a short story I wrote for a fiction class. Not much has changed for my friend Murdy. But, you never know just what he'll do next. Enjoy the story and the mp3's of Murdy's music:
http://www.billsadler.org/without_your_love.mp3
Murdy has deep love for the women in his past... sometimes more than is warranted.
http://www.billsadler.org/keep_away_from_me.mp3
A classic old time piece of music. I helped out on my grandma's mandolin.
http://www.billsadler.org/be_yourself.mp3
Murdy's main message, aside from just getting along with those we might not like.
Copyright December 26, 2004
William Sadler.
It’s spring and today we had to push the clocks ahead one hour This is one of the two days in the year when I wish I lived in Arizona, the other being in the fall when we “gain an hour.” In Arizona they leave the clocks alone. I know it sounds picky, but we all have our gripes and that’s one of mine. Murdy has gripes, too, but they mostly have to do with people trying to go too fast and not being able to go back to Arkansas to see his sons. Murdy’s not on the same time table as most of the rest of us, and that’s why I try to escape into his world now and then when I can’t deal with mine.
Today looks like one of those days, except I’m sort of attached to my computer, doing important things the world can't live without, but I’m sure I’ll take a break and visit for a while.
Aw hell, I can't do this right now, so I’ll just pop by for a bit. The walk will clear my head from these damned Petaluma dust bowl allergies that fog up my brain for up to three months each spring. Murdy’s place is just about half a block away on my street. I’ve lived here almost fourteen years, and used to walk past his mom’s house to work several times a day, but I only met Murdy about a year and a half ago.The walk takes only about two minutes and then I’m crunching my sneakers on his gravel driveway, and tap, tap, tapping on his door. I can hear him inside listening to the old time acoustic music show on people supported radio, KPFA 94.1 FM. I was listening to the same show at home. It’s become a weekly ritual that helps me keep my perspective on life a little above hopeless cynicism. Murdy’s kind of like that for me, too, a never-say-die-born-again-hippie who still believes in love and enlightenment and all that 60’s stuff. These days maybe that stuff isn’t so wimpy, what with... well, I don’t want to go into that.
I can see Murdy through the broken screen of his dilapidated door in the converted red barn like garage he helped his dad build about thirty years ago. I’ve asked him about the broken screen a few times, like why doesn’t he take fifteen minutes and just fix the damned thing and he starts telling me about how his son busted it when he was visiting, like almost five years ago. Murdy’s two sons live back in Fayetteville, Arkansas, and he hasn’t seen either of them in years. Part of his dream is to go back there and build a house so he can live with his kids. We talk about his dream a lot, and today isn’t any different.
“Hey Murdy!”
“Hey mahn.” Murdy served in Germany during the Viet Nam War, and still talks like he’s in the mid 70’s South, with a lot of “groovy”, “cool”, “far out”,and “y’all’s”, punctuated by the occasional phrase in German, but almost never a “duuude.” I open the door to find him sitting in his easy chair, wearing an old green tee shirt and faded blue jeans, a cold cup of coffee resting on one of the arms. I can smell that he hasn’t taken a shower yet, but then neither have I.
I walk in and take my usual seat in the rocking lawn chair Murdy has for his guests. We just sit there for a minute or so while Hank Williams sings about cheatin’ hearts and weepin’.
The song ends and Murdy looks over at the radio. “Thanks, Hank.” He gets up, wincing a bit with an old pain in his replaced hip that causes him to favor his left leg. He goes through the door that connects his “living room” to his bedroom and studio, picks up his red acoustic guitar and comes back to his easy chair, wrapping the strap over his shoulder. He strums, looks quizzically at me to see if I notice any out of tune strings (I don’t) and begins to play a song. His low, gravely voice croons softly about walkin’ on a dusty road somewhere I recognize but have never been to. He sings a few verses and then stops, dropping his bald head forward over the guitar until his face is real close to the sound hole and slowly picks each string until he finds the one that sounds out, retunes it and starts playing again. It’s a cool song about time and aging. It sticks in my head after he stops.
“Is that a new one?”
“Yeah, but I’m kind of stuck on the chorus. But, I did this one yesterday.” He plays another song that sounds similar to the one he just did, like most of his songs do. I just sit and absorb.
“That was cool, Murdy. I like the way it resolves at the end and the guy just leaves the bar without saying anything. Did that really happen?”
“Well, sort of. It’s from when I was playing on the street in Austin after my wife kicked me out. I was playing for tips in front of this biker bar and one night this guy shows up just wasted and trying to pick a fight with anyone who’d look at him. Anyway, some stuff went down with the bouncer and the drunk guy pulled a gun, then the bartender reaches under the bar and pulls out a sawed off shotgun and the drunk guy looks at it, looks at the bouncer and his buddies, and just backed away real slow out the door. I was on the street playing when I saw him. I just kept on playing the same verse over and over until he walked away.”
“Were your hands shaking?”
“No, but my legs were shaking so hard I almost fell over. It was all I could do not to fall off the curb.”
Murdy takes the guitar off and I reach out to play it. While I’m finger picking a simple chord sequence Murdy sits down and rolls another joint. The guy smokes more pot than anyone I’ve ever known and it is the rare day when I leave his place without my stomach growling. While he’s waiting for the joint to dry he starts reminiscing about his days in Arkansas in the mid 70’s tripping around with his wife picking fruit, living day to day. I’ve heard this story or parts of it hundreds of times now, but I listen over the tune I’m mindlessly picking.
“That tune you’re playing reminds me of a song I wrote when we were building our house. We had just finished the main house, it’s all up on these great big tree trunks we used for a foundation. One really windy night we’d all gone to bed and my wife heard this popping sound over the wind. She’s like, ‘Murdy, get up and see what that sound is.’ I was all tucked in bed and wasn’t even getting up, man, so I told her not to worry just snuggle up to me baby, and we were just getting, well, all of a sudden there was this huge screech and the house just leaned over and slid like 10 feet down the hill. My son, Dusty, jumped out of his bed and ran to the door, opened it and fell off where the porch used to be. We all got up to see what was happening, and I drug Dusty back up into the house. I figured the house wasn’t going anywhere since it was pushed up against this one tree, so we all went back to bed. Next morning we got up and my other son, Jango, asked where our dog, Ringo, had got to. We all went around the house calling and calling. Finally we heard a whine, only it was from under the house. I freaked and ran to my truck and got out a jack while my wife ran to the nearest neighbor’s to get help. She came back with Rainbow another California hippie guy and his jack and we jacked up the house to see if Ringo was all right. That dog was wedged so tight he couldn’t have licked his butt if he tried just between the only two beams under where the front door was. Not a scratch or bruise on him. Man, was he a happy dog to get out. Talk about a lucky dog.”
Murdy continues with his rambling stories while I finger pick his guitar, still avoiding the story I have to turn in tomorrow. I have a couple of ideas, but nothing yet. Murdy is usually my first sounding board for story ideas, like I am for his songs and dreams. Murdy has a big dream, and he’s told it to me so many times it’s almost like it’s mine. I’ll let him tell it:
“You know, Bill, it would be so nice just to have about ten acres back in Arkansas near Fayetteville with a log cabin that I built myself from the trees on the land. I’d have a nice big garden with organic vegetables and weed I didn’t have to pay for, and I could walk around naked and no one would give me crap about it. I could have my friends over for a barbecue or pig roast on weekends, we could set up my P.A. and have like an open mic and jam sessions. People could come by whenever and just drink a few beers and get high, maybe some mushrooms once and a while. I bet I’d even have a girlfriend, y’know, someone nice, not too tall, kind of short and chubby with big boobs and dark hair but a heart of gold. And I could have my sons, Dusty and Jango, over and we could go fishing down in the creek and I could teach them how to play guitar and we could have like a small family band and get gigs in bars and cafes around the university. I could just collect my pension and just hang out at home and make CD’s with my 4-track and sell ‘em at gigs. I don’t want to be all rich and famous, but I have this funny feeling that someday my music will like really get somewhere, y’know what I mean, Bill, I just feel it in my bones, my music could change the world and make people stop hating each other and killing and being such assholes to the environment. That’s not such a stupid dream is it, Bill, just to want your own piece of land and no hassles with anybody? That’s not such an impossible dream is it, Bill?”
To which I usually respond, “No, Murdy, you’ll get there someday,” but today I’m feeling literately pissed, so I say, “Lennie, gimme the mouse. C’mon Lennie, I know you have a dead mouse in your pocket an’ I’ve tol’ you a hunert times if I’ve tol’ you a thousand thatchya can’t go around pickin’ up dead mice for pets and I don’t care how soft it is or how it’s real quiet, ya jus’can’t go around pickin’ up dead critters an’ strokin’ ‘em.”
“Sorry George”, Murdy says and picks up the strain about living on the fatta the land and having that little farm and all that Steinbeck stuff, then I segue into Crooks’ lament to Lennie about how everybody has a little piece of land in their heads and that’s damned where it stays, a dream that can’t be made real.
“You know the difference between a dream and a plan, don’tchya Murdy? Every damned fool got a dream, but only the ones with a plan, the A to B stuff, they’re the ones that make it happen while there rest of ‘em just sit around bitching and dreaming.
“I used to have a dream about being a famous rock star, and you know I almost made it with my band back in the early 90’s. We had built up a good bunch of songs, the music mostly by me and my bass player, JC. We had a lunatic lead singer who had a major Jim Morrison fixation, dark and drunk but he could really attract the ladies. Unfortunately he didn’t have a poetic bone in his body, and our drummer wrote most of the lyrics and did the arrangements.
“We were the Seedy Burners, a super fast gut bucket punk blues band that sounded like a cross between the Black Crowes and the Sex Pistols. We didn’t have much of a fan base, but each of us in the band had friends in other bands that had made it, so we ended up opening for those bands. So we opened for Soundgarden, the Spin Doctors, Blues Traveler, Phish and other hot bands, even a short tour with U2 in Europe. Well, we had just signed a record deal with a major label for $250 thousand, advanced each of the four of us fifty grand and used the last fifty to record all the basic tracks of our debut album.
“Well, we were back in New York to play a big showcase at Madison Square Garden, the middle act between Edie Brickell and the New Bohemians and her soon to be husband, Paul Simon’s band. It was the perfect gig, but I’ve told you about the pitfalls of the fame game before and, well after sound check our brilliant lead singer, Gale Force, takes off to the studio to cut his final vocal tracks. Only he decides it would be artistic to get dopefaced drunk and lock himself in the control room all alone with a bottle and a microphone.
“So it turns out he gets so loaded he sets up the tape machine to record his spontaneous poetry and ends up, well, when he didn’t show just before we were scheduled to go on we had one of our sound guys go looking for him. The guy manages to get into the studio and finds Gale flat on his ass covered with puke in an alcohol induced coma. The kicker is the tape machine is still on, all 24 tracks with the record light flashing, and the tape spindle spinning with the end of the tape flapping, flapping, flapping. The foolish idiot had erased all of our backing tracks with his unintelligible crappy ‘poetry.’ We were screwed, all our money spent on other stuff and only rough mixes on cassettes. Gale was taken to a hospital where the doctors took a picture of his brain and found that the only part of that still worked was the ancient lizard brain. The son of a bitch always wanted to be the lizard king, but now he’s just a lizard head wasting away in a private asylum in upstate New York. Oh, and the money the record company advanced us, well, now that’s like a fifty grand credit card debt I have to pay off before I get another chance. Is that the kind of fame you want, Murdy?”
Murdy’s heard this rant before so he just keeps quiet. I notice that his face has a blank, tight expression on it and his eyes are darting back and forth without focusing on anything. I know from experience that this means Murdy’s pretty much shut down, retreating into his fantasies and dreams. I know better than to try to push any point when he gets like this, so I change the subject.
“Hey Murdy, you remember that story I was writing about when I hitch hiked across the South when I was eighteen?”
“Yeah, kind of... sorry I just got a little disorientated thinking about my sons. I really miss them a lot.”
“Why don’t you just call them?”
“I don’t know, I just might...” Murdy often drifts off into his thoughts and memories. Sometimes he’ll get all excited about a project and have a bunch of ideas he wants to act on, like getting gigs as a singer song writer, but I’ve found that there is a 72 hour flip flop with him. Anything he really gets set to do, give him three days and he’s switched to the opposite plan of attack. For example, if he gets all set to go out and get gigs next Monday and it’s Friday, by Sunday he’s planning to go back to live in Arkansas, by Wednesday he’s getting ready to record another album, by Saturday he’s wondering about getting thirty pressings of the CD he just made, and on and on... I’ve been working with him for almost two years and it’s just like this with him. I’ve given up more times than I care, but like I said, his dream kind of grows on you the more you hang out with him.
“So, Bill, what are you going to do with that story. What eventually happens with that guy, Lex?”
“Oh, I don’t know. The first story was kind of a set up for a longer piece about this guy Lex Coddington, sort of a distant relative of mine. I tried to write the first one without giving away too much about Lex, mostly just having the lead character traveling through the South and then dying at the end with his identity sort of in question. Then in the second story I introduce Lex and we find that the guy that died wasn’t him, but this dude who had stolen his wallet and I.D. Lex is stuck in New Orleans, somewhat incapacitated with hangover induced amnesia. He hooks up with a friendly hooker who helps him get on his feet. Then in the next phase I had her old pimp get out of jail and start to harass her to come back to his stable. She confides in Lex and the two of them manage to get some fake ID and head off to Jamaica to cool out. It’s really more about her, Louise, and how strong and cool she is, and about how Lex, a kind of spineless character begins to find his identity after he discovers that the guy who stole his stuff is dead and everyone in Lex’s family thinks it was Lex. It was s’posed to be a dark comedy about coming of age and discovering who you really are, but now I’m not so sure I want to finish it.”
“Why’s that, Bill?”
“Well, I didn’t get the feeling that the class liked the story so far, and I just hadn’t gotten to the voice I wanted.”
“What do you mean, voice?”
“That’s a hard one to answer, Murdy. The language I used and the style of writing I was working with were too academic. It was as if I was trying to prove something, especially on the second story. The first one was just a release after six years of writer’s block, just ecstasy in letters. The second one was more like pulling teeth, and so I just sort of gave up. The one I have to write today is what’s really bothering me.”
“What’s that one about?”
“I don’t know yet. I was thinking about writing about you actually, about your dream of a place where you can be free and happy and out of debt, but I’m not sure how to go about telling it.”
“Why don’t you just tell about coming by my place like you do and just about how we sit and talk about life and music and stuff?”
“”I dunno Murdy. That probably won’t go over so hot with the class. Not structurally sound or something. And besides there would be no plot. It would just be two guys talking, like in that movie "My Dinner with Andre." I don’t think that would hold their interest. There wouldn’t be any here to there in it.”
“What if you put in some of the stories we tell each other, like the one about Ringo getting caught under the house when it fell over in the wind, or about your band and messed up lead singer? Those are cool stories.”
“Yeah Murdy, that could work. And every word would be true, except for the lies. But, Murdy, it wouldn’t have a proper ending. I mean you haven’t gotten your dream yet, and me neither. You just live out back of your mom’s and collect your pension and live for free and make music and have no pressure to produce anything like if you were really rich and famous. Murdy, most people would kill to have your life. What do you make yourself miserable for with this dream thing. You already have it!”
“Yeah, I guess. It just aggravates me that I can’t be with my sons. I really miss them.”
“I know you do Murdy. I know you do. Hey dude, I’ve been here all afternoon and I have to turn something in tomorrow.”
“Bill, just write about what’s true too you and it’ll be ok.”
“Thanks, Murdy. Maybe when I get to the end of the story I’ll just stop writing. But until then, just keep dreaming, Murdy, just keep dreaming.”
http://www.billsadler.org/without_your_love.mp3
Murdy has deep love for the women in his past... sometimes more than is warranted.
http://www.billsadler.org/keep_away_from_me.mp3
A classic old time piece of music. I helped out on my grandma's mandolin.
http://www.billsadler.org/be_yourself.mp3
Murdy's main message, aside from just getting along with those we might not like.
Copyright December 26, 2004
William Sadler.
It’s spring and today we had to push the clocks ahead one hour This is one of the two days in the year when I wish I lived in Arizona, the other being in the fall when we “gain an hour.” In Arizona they leave the clocks alone. I know it sounds picky, but we all have our gripes and that’s one of mine. Murdy has gripes, too, but they mostly have to do with people trying to go too fast and not being able to go back to Arkansas to see his sons. Murdy’s not on the same time table as most of the rest of us, and that’s why I try to escape into his world now and then when I can’t deal with mine.
Today looks like one of those days, except I’m sort of attached to my computer, doing important things the world can't live without, but I’m sure I’ll take a break and visit for a while.
Aw hell, I can't do this right now, so I’ll just pop by for a bit. The walk will clear my head from these damned Petaluma dust bowl allergies that fog up my brain for up to three months each spring. Murdy’s place is just about half a block away on my street. I’ve lived here almost fourteen years, and used to walk past his mom’s house to work several times a day, but I only met Murdy about a year and a half ago.The walk takes only about two minutes and then I’m crunching my sneakers on his gravel driveway, and tap, tap, tapping on his door. I can hear him inside listening to the old time acoustic music show on people supported radio, KPFA 94.1 FM. I was listening to the same show at home. It’s become a weekly ritual that helps me keep my perspective on life a little above hopeless cynicism. Murdy’s kind of like that for me, too, a never-say-die-born-again-hippie who still believes in love and enlightenment and all that 60’s stuff. These days maybe that stuff isn’t so wimpy, what with... well, I don’t want to go into that.
I can see Murdy through the broken screen of his dilapidated door in the converted red barn like garage he helped his dad build about thirty years ago. I’ve asked him about the broken screen a few times, like why doesn’t he take fifteen minutes and just fix the damned thing and he starts telling me about how his son busted it when he was visiting, like almost five years ago. Murdy’s two sons live back in Fayetteville, Arkansas, and he hasn’t seen either of them in years. Part of his dream is to go back there and build a house so he can live with his kids. We talk about his dream a lot, and today isn’t any different.
“Hey Murdy!”
“Hey mahn.” Murdy served in Germany during the Viet Nam War, and still talks like he’s in the mid 70’s South, with a lot of “groovy”, “cool”, “far out”,and “y’all’s”, punctuated by the occasional phrase in German, but almost never a “duuude.” I open the door to find him sitting in his easy chair, wearing an old green tee shirt and faded blue jeans, a cold cup of coffee resting on one of the arms. I can smell that he hasn’t taken a shower yet, but then neither have I.
I walk in and take my usual seat in the rocking lawn chair Murdy has for his guests. We just sit there for a minute or so while Hank Williams sings about cheatin’ hearts and weepin’.
The song ends and Murdy looks over at the radio. “Thanks, Hank.” He gets up, wincing a bit with an old pain in his replaced hip that causes him to favor his left leg. He goes through the door that connects his “living room” to his bedroom and studio, picks up his red acoustic guitar and comes back to his easy chair, wrapping the strap over his shoulder. He strums, looks quizzically at me to see if I notice any out of tune strings (I don’t) and begins to play a song. His low, gravely voice croons softly about walkin’ on a dusty road somewhere I recognize but have never been to. He sings a few verses and then stops, dropping his bald head forward over the guitar until his face is real close to the sound hole and slowly picks each string until he finds the one that sounds out, retunes it and starts playing again. It’s a cool song about time and aging. It sticks in my head after he stops.
“Is that a new one?”
“Yeah, but I’m kind of stuck on the chorus. But, I did this one yesterday.” He plays another song that sounds similar to the one he just did, like most of his songs do. I just sit and absorb.
“That was cool, Murdy. I like the way it resolves at the end and the guy just leaves the bar without saying anything. Did that really happen?”
“Well, sort of. It’s from when I was playing on the street in Austin after my wife kicked me out. I was playing for tips in front of this biker bar and one night this guy shows up just wasted and trying to pick a fight with anyone who’d look at him. Anyway, some stuff went down with the bouncer and the drunk guy pulled a gun, then the bartender reaches under the bar and pulls out a sawed off shotgun and the drunk guy looks at it, looks at the bouncer and his buddies, and just backed away real slow out the door. I was on the street playing when I saw him. I just kept on playing the same verse over and over until he walked away.”
“Were your hands shaking?”
“No, but my legs were shaking so hard I almost fell over. It was all I could do not to fall off the curb.”
Murdy takes the guitar off and I reach out to play it. While I’m finger picking a simple chord sequence Murdy sits down and rolls another joint. The guy smokes more pot than anyone I’ve ever known and it is the rare day when I leave his place without my stomach growling. While he’s waiting for the joint to dry he starts reminiscing about his days in Arkansas in the mid 70’s tripping around with his wife picking fruit, living day to day. I’ve heard this story or parts of it hundreds of times now, but I listen over the tune I’m mindlessly picking.
“That tune you’re playing reminds me of a song I wrote when we were building our house. We had just finished the main house, it’s all up on these great big tree trunks we used for a foundation. One really windy night we’d all gone to bed and my wife heard this popping sound over the wind. She’s like, ‘Murdy, get up and see what that sound is.’ I was all tucked in bed and wasn’t even getting up, man, so I told her not to worry just snuggle up to me baby, and we were just getting, well, all of a sudden there was this huge screech and the house just leaned over and slid like 10 feet down the hill. My son, Dusty, jumped out of his bed and ran to the door, opened it and fell off where the porch used to be. We all got up to see what was happening, and I drug Dusty back up into the house. I figured the house wasn’t going anywhere since it was pushed up against this one tree, so we all went back to bed. Next morning we got up and my other son, Jango, asked where our dog, Ringo, had got to. We all went around the house calling and calling. Finally we heard a whine, only it was from under the house. I freaked and ran to my truck and got out a jack while my wife ran to the nearest neighbor’s to get help. She came back with Rainbow another California hippie guy and his jack and we jacked up the house to see if Ringo was all right. That dog was wedged so tight he couldn’t have licked his butt if he tried just between the only two beams under where the front door was. Not a scratch or bruise on him. Man, was he a happy dog to get out. Talk about a lucky dog.”
Murdy continues with his rambling stories while I finger pick his guitar, still avoiding the story I have to turn in tomorrow. I have a couple of ideas, but nothing yet. Murdy is usually my first sounding board for story ideas, like I am for his songs and dreams. Murdy has a big dream, and he’s told it to me so many times it’s almost like it’s mine. I’ll let him tell it:
“You know, Bill, it would be so nice just to have about ten acres back in Arkansas near Fayetteville with a log cabin that I built myself from the trees on the land. I’d have a nice big garden with organic vegetables and weed I didn’t have to pay for, and I could walk around naked and no one would give me crap about it. I could have my friends over for a barbecue or pig roast on weekends, we could set up my P.A. and have like an open mic and jam sessions. People could come by whenever and just drink a few beers and get high, maybe some mushrooms once and a while. I bet I’d even have a girlfriend, y’know, someone nice, not too tall, kind of short and chubby with big boobs and dark hair but a heart of gold. And I could have my sons, Dusty and Jango, over and we could go fishing down in the creek and I could teach them how to play guitar and we could have like a small family band and get gigs in bars and cafes around the university. I could just collect my pension and just hang out at home and make CD’s with my 4-track and sell ‘em at gigs. I don’t want to be all rich and famous, but I have this funny feeling that someday my music will like really get somewhere, y’know what I mean, Bill, I just feel it in my bones, my music could change the world and make people stop hating each other and killing and being such assholes to the environment. That’s not such a stupid dream is it, Bill, just to want your own piece of land and no hassles with anybody? That’s not such an impossible dream is it, Bill?”
To which I usually respond, “No, Murdy, you’ll get there someday,” but today I’m feeling literately pissed, so I say, “Lennie, gimme the mouse. C’mon Lennie, I know you have a dead mouse in your pocket an’ I’ve tol’ you a hunert times if I’ve tol’ you a thousand thatchya can’t go around pickin’ up dead mice for pets and I don’t care how soft it is or how it’s real quiet, ya jus’can’t go around pickin’ up dead critters an’ strokin’ ‘em.”
“Sorry George”, Murdy says and picks up the strain about living on the fatta the land and having that little farm and all that Steinbeck stuff, then I segue into Crooks’ lament to Lennie about how everybody has a little piece of land in their heads and that’s damned where it stays, a dream that can’t be made real.
“You know the difference between a dream and a plan, don’tchya Murdy? Every damned fool got a dream, but only the ones with a plan, the A to B stuff, they’re the ones that make it happen while there rest of ‘em just sit around bitching and dreaming.
“I used to have a dream about being a famous rock star, and you know I almost made it with my band back in the early 90’s. We had built up a good bunch of songs, the music mostly by me and my bass player, JC. We had a lunatic lead singer who had a major Jim Morrison fixation, dark and drunk but he could really attract the ladies. Unfortunately he didn’t have a poetic bone in his body, and our drummer wrote most of the lyrics and did the arrangements.
“We were the Seedy Burners, a super fast gut bucket punk blues band that sounded like a cross between the Black Crowes and the Sex Pistols. We didn’t have much of a fan base, but each of us in the band had friends in other bands that had made it, so we ended up opening for those bands. So we opened for Soundgarden, the Spin Doctors, Blues Traveler, Phish and other hot bands, even a short tour with U2 in Europe. Well, we had just signed a record deal with a major label for $250 thousand, advanced each of the four of us fifty grand and used the last fifty to record all the basic tracks of our debut album.
“Well, we were back in New York to play a big showcase at Madison Square Garden, the middle act between Edie Brickell and the New Bohemians and her soon to be husband, Paul Simon’s band. It was the perfect gig, but I’ve told you about the pitfalls of the fame game before and, well after sound check our brilliant lead singer, Gale Force, takes off to the studio to cut his final vocal tracks. Only he decides it would be artistic to get dopefaced drunk and lock himself in the control room all alone with a bottle and a microphone.
“So it turns out he gets so loaded he sets up the tape machine to record his spontaneous poetry and ends up, well, when he didn’t show just before we were scheduled to go on we had one of our sound guys go looking for him. The guy manages to get into the studio and finds Gale flat on his ass covered with puke in an alcohol induced coma. The kicker is the tape machine is still on, all 24 tracks with the record light flashing, and the tape spindle spinning with the end of the tape flapping, flapping, flapping. The foolish idiot had erased all of our backing tracks with his unintelligible crappy ‘poetry.’ We were screwed, all our money spent on other stuff and only rough mixes on cassettes. Gale was taken to a hospital where the doctors took a picture of his brain and found that the only part of that still worked was the ancient lizard brain. The son of a bitch always wanted to be the lizard king, but now he’s just a lizard head wasting away in a private asylum in upstate New York. Oh, and the money the record company advanced us, well, now that’s like a fifty grand credit card debt I have to pay off before I get another chance. Is that the kind of fame you want, Murdy?”
Murdy’s heard this rant before so he just keeps quiet. I notice that his face has a blank, tight expression on it and his eyes are darting back and forth without focusing on anything. I know from experience that this means Murdy’s pretty much shut down, retreating into his fantasies and dreams. I know better than to try to push any point when he gets like this, so I change the subject.
“Hey Murdy, you remember that story I was writing about when I hitch hiked across the South when I was eighteen?”
“Yeah, kind of... sorry I just got a little disorientated thinking about my sons. I really miss them a lot.”
“Why don’t you just call them?”
“I don’t know, I just might...” Murdy often drifts off into his thoughts and memories. Sometimes he’ll get all excited about a project and have a bunch of ideas he wants to act on, like getting gigs as a singer song writer, but I’ve found that there is a 72 hour flip flop with him. Anything he really gets set to do, give him three days and he’s switched to the opposite plan of attack. For example, if he gets all set to go out and get gigs next Monday and it’s Friday, by Sunday he’s planning to go back to live in Arkansas, by Wednesday he’s getting ready to record another album, by Saturday he’s wondering about getting thirty pressings of the CD he just made, and on and on... I’ve been working with him for almost two years and it’s just like this with him. I’ve given up more times than I care, but like I said, his dream kind of grows on you the more you hang out with him.
“So, Bill, what are you going to do with that story. What eventually happens with that guy, Lex?”
“Oh, I don’t know. The first story was kind of a set up for a longer piece about this guy Lex Coddington, sort of a distant relative of mine. I tried to write the first one without giving away too much about Lex, mostly just having the lead character traveling through the South and then dying at the end with his identity sort of in question. Then in the second story I introduce Lex and we find that the guy that died wasn’t him, but this dude who had stolen his wallet and I.D. Lex is stuck in New Orleans, somewhat incapacitated with hangover induced amnesia. He hooks up with a friendly hooker who helps him get on his feet. Then in the next phase I had her old pimp get out of jail and start to harass her to come back to his stable. She confides in Lex and the two of them manage to get some fake ID and head off to Jamaica to cool out. It’s really more about her, Louise, and how strong and cool she is, and about how Lex, a kind of spineless character begins to find his identity after he discovers that the guy who stole his stuff is dead and everyone in Lex’s family thinks it was Lex. It was s’posed to be a dark comedy about coming of age and discovering who you really are, but now I’m not so sure I want to finish it.”
“Why’s that, Bill?”
“Well, I didn’t get the feeling that the class liked the story so far, and I just hadn’t gotten to the voice I wanted.”
“What do you mean, voice?”
“That’s a hard one to answer, Murdy. The language I used and the style of writing I was working with were too academic. It was as if I was trying to prove something, especially on the second story. The first one was just a release after six years of writer’s block, just ecstasy in letters. The second one was more like pulling teeth, and so I just sort of gave up. The one I have to write today is what’s really bothering me.”
“What’s that one about?”
“I don’t know yet. I was thinking about writing about you actually, about your dream of a place where you can be free and happy and out of debt, but I’m not sure how to go about telling it.”
“Why don’t you just tell about coming by my place like you do and just about how we sit and talk about life and music and stuff?”
“”I dunno Murdy. That probably won’t go over so hot with the class. Not structurally sound or something. And besides there would be no plot. It would just be two guys talking, like in that movie "My Dinner with Andre." I don’t think that would hold their interest. There wouldn’t be any here to there in it.”
“What if you put in some of the stories we tell each other, like the one about Ringo getting caught under the house when it fell over in the wind, or about your band and messed up lead singer? Those are cool stories.”
“Yeah Murdy, that could work. And every word would be true, except for the lies. But, Murdy, it wouldn’t have a proper ending. I mean you haven’t gotten your dream yet, and me neither. You just live out back of your mom’s and collect your pension and live for free and make music and have no pressure to produce anything like if you were really rich and famous. Murdy, most people would kill to have your life. What do you make yourself miserable for with this dream thing. You already have it!”
“Yeah, I guess. It just aggravates me that I can’t be with my sons. I really miss them.”
“I know you do Murdy. I know you do. Hey dude, I’ve been here all afternoon and I have to turn something in tomorrow.”
“Bill, just write about what’s true too you and it’ll be ok.”
“Thanks, Murdy. Maybe when I get to the end of the story I’ll just stop writing. But until then, just keep dreaming, Murdy, just keep dreaming.”
posted by billsadler3 at
10:30 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home