David Baerwald,
I want to share this catharditty (1-4-5 variance, slightly different on the chorus, played in just about any bluegrass standard key & melody) that I wrote down two years before the suicide death of my good friend & compatriot who, like me, was spending a whole heck of a lot of time in self-imposed introspective exile for a while even though we were often very surrounded by meaningful human company. What began as a shout-out to get outa my own head, became (with revisions) a requiem. Of the two of us he was all-round the better man (but we complimented each other well, considering skill for skill & sight for sight). He was the dynamo, though. But I had immediate-astounding love pulling at my heartstrings & he was stuck in the litigative means & ends of two bad marriages that the real love of a hip daughter didn’t quite save him from ...though he was wholehearted….but….well, Digs was a glutton for punishment with the girls. They were beauties and sweet to the core 1/3 of the time. But that errant 2/3 was Train Wreck, Inc.. Anyway, he … took a degree of good light away from this Earth when he left us. …….And it is a sorrow I cannot [still] seem to deny. I still want to not have been two empty states away on that fateful night. I want to have said something kinder the day I drove my own family a few hundred miles east on a whim and a construction job offer. I wish I had not been so angry at him for discovering our tequila in the depths of our closet and drinking it all (to pseudo-quell his addiction-on-hell-bent that took up a third of an otherwise gifted life) when his vodka ran out. • I wish I had tried just a little harder to convince him he could leave the state of his divorces just for a couple months without losing his visitation rights or the genuine gem shining love of his daughter. Just to distract him into an alternate geographical frame of reference for a while. Let him recognize himself again. Damn, why didn’t I kidnap him all those years ago? For a while. And I cannot [still] let it rest ~ no, I don’t hang onto it every moment, there’s more to life than the woe of stupid lost possibilities, but when I pick up my guitar or at some point in the twilight around a good fire tonight or whenever we reminisce about the drum n the features of “some excellent ol’days” gone by, …my friend Digs comes to mind…& I tear-up a bit, and take some blame, and try to believe there was nothing I could have done ~~ …but there was something I could have done. I could have not given up trying to convince him that the courts were not who he was, that the divorces were not who he was, that the music and the heart & the creative mechanics of living and the vision and the fearlessness in the face of all things except his oop Xs was who he was. & I failed Digs. & I’ve never had a friend like him since. & don’t deserve one. &…if there’s a life after this one, I’ll go to it primarily to find ol’ Dig’s and try to make amends [namaste] for not having been the friend to him that he surely would have been to me had the extenuating circumstances been reversed: I so miss ye’ Digs. I love the memory of you, brother. If you know a way, come live inside my spirit today ~~~ if you have no place healthier, you can employ half of me. Just leave OM the portion that knows my sons and bride, …I’ll need that just to keep on breathing life. The boys do not remember you but Maya-Blue does & you were her good friend too, Digger. Never a better human. Never a more inventive writer of dialogue in a homespun ditty.
•
I’m sharing this with u, db, so you know you’re not alone in that air of regret u shoulder. I may just PM it, probably should just PM it. But then maybe Gene-geno, or anybody for that matter, might take a little bit away from it as well. Or maybe not, maybe it’s not a shared emotion at all, maybe it really is all just acts of singular woe to be carried eternally in the mostly-aloneness o this earthly dwelling we like to call get up n go ahead get some.
•
Smile; a Nonsense Rhyme
(Ode to the Lost Guitar Song)
Let Digger sing his guitar song
& spotted Shelby tag along
While Jolly Roger max a tune
And jump a cow beyond a moon
A smile’s not a dark or a doom
Smile everyone real soon
Let Eddy’s son go fly a kite
With Jack & Jill before the night
While Sibilant slip on a swoon light
& mother Mary’s blossoms bloom tight
Before the darkness comes too soon
Smile everyone real soon
& all that harken in your room
said, “Smile everyone real soon”
a smile’s not a dark or a doom
…….smile everyone real soon
Said Walkie-talkie, too aware, …
“Does Muthuh-fuckie have no care?
Will bigmouth money go kaboom!
& send ripe Ronnie to his tomb?”
No, not a darkness, not a doom
Smile everyone real soon
Sing a song of sixteen pens
& hold a meeting for the gents
While Stanley Steamer leave at noon
To go n sharpen Silly Slinky plume
Smile everyone in tune
Smile everyone real soon
Grimly Reaper spins a loom
& all that harken in your room
said, “Smile everyone real soon”
a smile’s not a dark or a doom
…….smile everyone real soon
If Fortress Freddy’s life’s intact, Jack,
When Sadhouse Sally’s tuned to facts (yeah)
Then hold a hold-up for the ruins
& strip the fortress of all clues
And smile as you leave the room
We aughta smile everyone real soon
Smile everyone real soon
Let Digger sing his guitar song
With Shelby ‘till the pain is gone
While solemn Roger play the room
With ode to Dark Side of the Moon
A smile’s not a dark or a doom
So smile everyone real soon
Grimly Reaper spins a loom
& all that harken in your room
said, “Smile everyone real soon”
a smile’s not a dark or a doom
…….smile everyone real soon
Smile everyone real soon
Dedicated to Digs 1962-1994
a good, strong, handsome learned man who had a couple bad years & one irrevocably wrong idea in th end
©Copyright 1992-94 by J. Brook
