On inabilities...

You know what’s really frustrating?

Have you ever…man, this is gonna be tougher than I thought.

Have you ever felt some way about something…some piece of music, a movie you saw, a painting, a friend, a pet, an object, where you just knew that this thing—this person, this whatever-it-was—was made just for you, and you were so happy you’d found this—so blessed—that you wanted to climb onto your roof and shout about it…but everyone you tried to tell about it just…didn’t get it?

I had a dream, once. My dreams are weird in that they are full of details that words are insufficient to describe, but I’ll try, if you’re interested.

In this dream, I was an older man. Mid 50’s, maybe. And I lived in New York, and I was in the Mafia. And I turned informer, and they relocated me and my wife. We had no children.

I remember the apartment we lived in—a nice two-flat brownstone in Buffalo. I remember my wife. Her name was Darla. And I remember the photographs on the little table sitting in the corner, in little ornate oval or rectangular frames, arranged neatly on the doily that draped elegantly over the table’s edges. And I remember each of the people in those photographs, because each of those people were people I knew. I can’t tell you their names now, but I probably could’ve after I woke up.

There were songs on the radio that no one walking on this earth has heard. That’s because they were songs my brain made up, in the dream, but I knew each one, and I sang along just like you do when you hear “Sweet Home Alabama.”

I had a car… a big old black thing, something 70’s. Probably a Chevrolet Impala or a Plymouth Gran Fury, something nondescript. That part’s cloudy, I guess because in the dream I took the bus a lot.

And I remember the way I looked. I was shorter, with a bit of a paunch, and I had iron-gray hair that was peppered with the black my hair had once been. I didn’t wear glasses or facial hair.

There’s more, but I’m probably losing you, so I’ll just continue. In the three months that this dream seemed to take, we moved, set up our new house, and were just getting used to the way things were going to be when the Mafia found us.

I remember getting thrown into the trunk of a car and taken to some warehouse after dark. They dragged me out and took me, my arms and legs still bound in duct tape, into what appeared to be some smaller room, all the furniture, the file cabinets, covered with months of dust. They knocked a couple of wooden slat-back chairs out of the way and threw me on the table. In the direction I happened to be facing, I could see my wife, whom they’d tied to a chair. Her face, liberally streaked with tears, her lovely auburn hair, dyed but beautiful nonetheless, a wreck. Her blouse was torn. One shoe was missing. A large-ish thug kept a .45 trained on her temple.

They hadn’t taped my mouth shut, and so I began bellowing. I don’t remember what I said, but I stopped when another large fellow jumped up on the table and straddled me. He had a trenching spade in his hand. If you’ve never seen one of these, allow me to describe it briefly—the blade’s about eighteen inches long (all the better leverage, my dears) and about five inches wide at the top, tapering to about three at the business end. They can be curved but aren’t necessarily.

I remember saying, “What, you’re gonna stand over me like that and make me watch while you kill my wife in front of me?”

The big guy straddling me on the table said, “Nope. We’re gonna make her watch while we kill you.”

With that he held the spade in front of him, lifted it over his head and brought the blade down deep into the soft part of my rib cage. It hurt like a sonofabitch, but it went to new levels when he put his foot on the blade just as you’d do with any shovel. He pushed down with all his considerable weight and then pried backward. The pain turned bright white in my vision, and then all went black, and then I woke up.

I have tried many times to describe this dream to others. But no amout of explaining could ever express the years that took place; the love I felt for the people in the photographs, those people that were my family, whom I had known for decades and decades; the love I felt for my wife; the helpless hatred I felt for those Mafioso bastards who were taking it all away. (Hey, I’m just trying to describe it from the dream’s perspective; I don’t have any animosity toward the Mafia, if you’re reading this.)

How could I explain that to you in a way that would make you understand? Apparently I can’t, as the looks on the faces of the legions of people I’ve told seems to suggest.

I feel that way all the time.

I wrote a song once. I write songs all the time—and in my head they’re fully finished, fully produced, all the lyrics written, all the parts charted—but I can never get them out in time before they’re…well, let me put it this way. Yes, I wrote one song. Got it recorded, too, and I was really happy with it. You’ve never heard it, though (well, maybe a few of you have, if you know me) and the reason has nothing to do with publishing rights or band breakups or any of that stuff. A copy of that song is sitting on my desk. I could put it in and play it if I wanted to, right now. I could make thousands of copies and throw them out the windows at people as I drove down the street. I wouldn’t, though.

You know why? I think that song—that one song—was the closest I ever got to being able to put things into words they way I wanted them to sound—for the first time, I beat myself. But would others get it? You can’t win if you don’t bet, they say, but I’d rather not bet and take the loss. It’s easier. I know what I meant when I wrote that song. And for once, just once, everything clicked. For me, that is. The lyrics were what I meant. The music was what I meant. The stops were what I meant. The way the guitar sounded was what I meant. I’ve never been able to do that again, and to expose this one time, this one successful snapshot, and risk it being misconstrued…well, I think I’ll just hold this one close to me and keep it that way. If you’ve heard it, I thank you for the very least for your time. But even if it were worth selling, don’t expect to see it in any music stores.

(You’re a good and talented person, kt, and if this is what you go through everytime you give us something new to work with, I stand up and applaud you with revered awe.)

I’m writing this whole thing because of a movie I just watched. I won’t tell you the name. But I want to stand on the street corner and yell, as loud as I can, You all need to see this movie! This is the best movie I’ve ever seen! Sure, it’s only 22 minutes long, but you have to see it! You have to! It really could make the world a better place!

I won’t do that. You know why? Because you’d go watch this movie and thing, God, this thing sucks! What’s he yelling about? He must be some kind of freak!

I did tell someone about this movie, and this evening this person was at my house, and he saw the DVD jacket on my shelf, and he said something like, “Is this the movie you were talking about?” He slid the DVD off the shelf and looked at the cover, and every molecule in me was screaming. He said, “It’s animé.” I said, “No, it isn’t.” He read the title out loud, and in his tone of voice I could hear him dismissing it. I struggled to keep my voice neutral and said, “Hey, don’t knock it.” All jovial-like. He said, “Okay,” dismissively and harmlessly, and slid the DVD back into its spot on the shelf. I was tempted to say “Hey, you already got it down off the shelf; let’s throw that sucker in. You got 22 minutes?” I couldn’t bring myself to say the words, though, because I knew the guy would never see in it what I saw, and I would have to try to explain.

And having that happen would kill me, because I wouldn’t have been able to explain why this movie touched me the way that it did. Even if you didn’t like it, I would want at the least to be able at least to explain to you why I liked it, and more and more I find that I…can’t explain why.

I can’t explain why my favorite song in the world is “The Voice of Eujena” by Brother Cane.

I can’t explain why I think the coolest bike ever built is the Honda Magna v65.

I can’t explain why I think raised-white-letter tires make any car look bad-ass.

I can’t explain how much I love my dog. This one’s the worst.

I can’t explain why I dig The Blues Brothers,
or music from Stax, or Donald “Duck” Dunn’s bass playing so much.
I can’t explain what it is about Disney movies, or why they get me so bad, or why I can only watch ‘em in the summertime.

I can’t explain why I think four-string basses look stupid but five-string basses look awesome.

I can’t explain why I deeply dig groups like Foreigner, Journey, Kansas, Survivor, Boston, or Styx, but Yes, King Crimson, Cream, Rush, and Emerson, Lake, and Powell make no sense. (Jethro Tull’s the shit, though.)

I can’t explain why I love blues. I know I’m white and I’m not supposed to enjoy blues, but I love it. I also can’t explain why I hate most (not all) jazz.

I can’t explain why I love Bob Dylan’s voice while Neil Young’s voice drives me batshit.

I can’t explain these things. I wish to God that I could, because for some reason, these things that I can’t explain seem to invite scorn or derision. I’m baffled, because I know all of us have different tastes, and you like “Mapletown Friends” or “C.S.I” or “The Maury Povich Show” or KMFDM or Motley Crüe or The Atlanic Star Vocal Band or Cabbage Patch Kids or Almond Joys or extra mustard on your hot dog or pai gow poker or your pet iguana. I don’t share these likes, but I swear to God you’ll never have to explain them to me.