Last week my wife bought me “The Complete Annotated Grateful Dead Lyrics” annotated by David Dodd, with a forward by Robert Hunter. It was on the bottom shelf of a rolling Rubbermaid cart at the local Goodwill. Since it was senior citizen day, she only paid 85¢. It is a little worn, a little stained, but it is beautiful, and it tells a story. In lyrics and explanations.
A few nights later, I was by myself, just me and the “The Complete Annotated Grateful Dead Lyrics”. I had taken the day off, so I was feeling a little mellow, a little practice retirement in the form of a three-day weekend. I had half a gummy and read the introduction, the frantic genius of Robert Hunter.
I loaded “Hard to Handle”, a collection of songs performed in Australia by Bob Dylan, touring with Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. I listened to the songs and let raw power of the music wash over me. It seems so long ago, almost forgotten in the age of music billionaires, and corporate greed. It was a natural progression, I guess. Money is the goal, and there is never enough.
Deeper and deeper I slipped into the adjusted state of relative ease. The music wrapped around me, the years slipped into the past, the minutes stretched into days. Each second ticked into the next with a reassuring little click. Click, click, click, a metronome for living.
When you are stoned you see time differently, you can see time pass. You can watch the units used to measure the pieces of your life. Time, and life, still pass, hand in hand, your life marches to the beat laid down by the clock, but it doesn’t seem so important. Nobody ever looks at their to-do list when Dylan is singing “When the Night Comes Falling from the Sky,” –whatever is scheduled can wait.
After several hours that only lasted 58 minutes, I decided to watch “The Grateful Dead Movie.”
It took me back to a night a long time ago. Two of us had loaded some clothes, all the pot we had, a box full of cassette tapes, and, a few snacks, enough to last until the next time we needed gas. We could grab a few more snacks when we filled up.
This was before the gas station/convenience store/fast food chain restaurant. In those days there were no pizzas, or “fresh donuts”, all you could buy were cans of soda, bags of chips, boxes of cookies, cigarettes, beef jerky, and the all-pervasive pork rinds. Everywhere you looked you could find pork rinds. In my whole life I don’t think I’ve ever seen anybody buy a bag of pork rinds. I don’t know how they make pork rinds, but during the eighties they were like music videos, epidemic.
We drove without any destination or plan, just the need to be somewhere else. We ended up in Kansas City. God knows how, and even He probably doesn’t know why. We were both stoned and looking for something to do. We looked up and saw a mighty sign. An advertisement for an amusement park.
We spent the afternoon in a raucous, noisy, brassy, crowded tract of land. Lights flashed; tinny music blared from speakers hidden in the trees. Hawkers yelled, “get your popcorn,” “fresh lemonade,” “guess your weight,” “hot dogs, sausages, chips, fish sandwiches,” “ice cold soft drinks.” There was noise everywhere, it washed over the area in pained, conflicting waves of sound. It was a gas.
I still remember the creaking and groaning of the roller coaster as the chain pulled it to the top of the wooden hill. It sounded as if every piece of the ancient carriage and the rickety structure had carried too many riders up and down for too many years and had become exhausted from the effort. I braced myself for a spectacular failure of moving parts. As it crested the hill it dropped straight over the edge into a mandala of light and shadow. It whipped around several terrifying turns, and through a black tunnel, where I felt the presence, heard the cries, of thousands of previous riders who had perished flying through the blackness, restless ghosts. Their lives cut short in a communal suicide on a groaning, complaining, creaking mechanical abattoir in the heartland of America. I ducked as low as possible. I had no plans on joining the chorus.
We were exhausted when we drove out of the park. We found a diner that promised breakfast all day, and the best coffee in Kansas City. We ate, like condemned men.
We found a motel, a dented, roadside series of rooms, with a view of the highway, and the truck repair business, surrounded by a tall chain link fence, topped with coiled strands of barbed wire. Lights exposed every inch of the white/grey building and the expansive lot. It could have been a government facility in a science fiction movie.
We settled into our room, #107, I think, but who knows, smoked our last joint for the day, and started flipping through the channels. By some stroke of lucky coincidence, we stumbled on the opening of “The Grateful Dead Movie.”
Neither of us were Deadheads. But I’ve always enjoyed the music. The movie starts with an odd sequence of album covers, and a strange, animated outer-space pinball sequence. After about three minutes it launches into “U.S. Blues” with more of the unusual, appealing, transfixing, animation. It segues into Dead concert footage. We watched the whole 2-hour movie, without saying a word.
It seems like yesterday.
The next morning, we were on our way back to our bland, little lives. Laborers carrying and toting, shoveling, and sweeping. I’ve been doing the same thing with different burdens, and dimensions all my life.
Strange trips give life meaning, little escapes that make work seem worth the effort. We’re getting ready to retire, and I worry. What will I do to make the excursions important? Will everything become one long weekend? Will I have to balance the leisure with brief bouts of effort and discomfort. I hope not.
—
image