One Flew East…
Randy Ray
2007-09-23
Peaches En Randalia #19 The coming of fall means many things to many people based upon tradition or existential empirical experiences. One would be hard-pressed to find a veteran jamband fan that doesn’t look to the season as a sad nostalgic reminder of what was when the Dead (Grateful, dig) would hit Madison Square Garden or Phish would mount another legendary fall tour on their way to another gloriously ingenious Halloween costume before the legendary New Year’s Eve run. Well…those days are part of the fabric of fall and new traditions, new empirical experiences are being created as I write and one should check out as much as possible because Thursday’s child may, indeed, either be Sunday’s clown or even the champion of the week. [Author’s Note: 50 points and an atavistic chess move to the reader that gets the VU-sans-Loaded reference attached to Phish.] And so…as all good things in our household come in threes, here are three fall tall tales to read on the road en route to that next show in that next town. (a-althea) experience has ripened for the harvest, the time of falling leaves, the time of acceptance—even of indifference—when grief is subdued to the resignation of the season.
- The Journal of John Cardan, J.V. Cunningham One fall day, in the glorious cathedral of every dream coming true, every plan visualized, every carnival neverending and true, another being gives Wilfred an unplanned visit—a random rendezvous with fate.
“Report?”
“Report?”
“Report. Don’t slow me down. I’m a very busy Maker. What is your RAR?”
“What is your RAR?! I don’t get it. Is that a song? What is your name?”
“My name? Why is that relevant? A song? Don’t waste your time with such talk. You’re not here for that. Music in the beginning and the end of the lifespan of our sweet spirit sings for those who need such medicine. Music is not for you and I. Ours is to create, to nurture, to caress an environment so that the Mother Muse can play. She will sing without beginning or end in the middle of time. She will be the center of the body floating notes overhead like a thin, white wedding scarf carefully placed over female shoulders borrowed from yesterday’s closet: something borrowed, something blue, something true. She will sing for these beings of carefully-crafted perfection so the Holy Human can run free, swim echoey channels of cool, blue and green waters, fly unfettered. Land-Sea-Air. They, our intermingled blessed man-apes, will sing songs of uninhibited grace. Your job is not to interrupt that process. Your job is to observe. Your job is to randomly access and report back to beings such as I. Your job is to deliver a RAR.” The Maker turns his back for a single moment in quiet, tight-faced frustration.
Wilfred does not hesitate.
Wilfred dives in headfirst. Alone, he swims through the center of the body.
In a Human Second Chance, Chance Herself takes pity on Wilfred. He takes a dip in water and speaks to some fishy fish that he had painted earlier after dipping the landy air-flyin’ tweety tweet birds in white, orange, blue, black and cardinal red. “What is a RAR? Please help me. I don’t want to get into trouble.” “You’re not supposed to be here, are you?” “No. I come from another space, a land far from this universe, through a black hole, the Other Side. This is all one big…trying to help…trying to add a little creativity, having some fun, staying out of trouble, keeping contact with Life. Giant mistake.”
“Wilfred, there are no mistakes. Slow down. Don’t talk so fast. Listen. Stay silent. Observe. Ponder. Reflect. Remain calm. Consider everything you see, and slowly the madness in your soul—the abrasive effusive shouting deep within your gut—will vanish. We travel along numerous parallel insights. The choice is up to you—what to report, what to leave out while riding your celestial bike along the Hemingway road of your scribe doodlings. Remember: conviction, perception, order out of chaos.”
He swims a little bit more, away from his fishy friend. Why? Just ‘cause, that’s why. Need He a cause? Need He a point of view? Need He a hook to every story? Need He a reason to swim? Slow, medium fast, underwater backflip, change in direction, breast stroke, lying in the arms of the Water Maker who strokes his hair while he strokes the water searching for life, searching for an answer, searching for his RAR, his precious RAR, his Random Access Report. The Makers love their children. “Yes, they do. That’s what the song said. That’s what my RAR told me.” (b-bliss>billy breathes) Loneliness was not merely folklore. It was a fact of Waking life. He could see it clearly now. Waking people never did anything important together. Oh, they talked and ate and drank, made laws, and made love. But they rarely joined their lives, shaped their realities, discovered their possibilities—together.
- The Jamais Vu Papers, Wim Coleman and Pat Perrin Alexander hands me a pipe in the Moscow bar. From 1970 to 2030.
“Thanks, I don’t smoke tobacco out of a pipe much.”
“No? Surprising. You seem the ‘pipe’ type.”
“Right. That’s why I don’t. All of my books make me out to seem much more of an intellectual than I really am, a professor know-it-all—”
“A New Yorker?”
“Right.”
“What was your hometown like?”
“Ohhh…hard to explain. I mean, you’d go there now and about 300,000 people live there. When I was there, the population was about 60,000. Small city but it seemed like a town, dig? One central shopping area. All the major organized religions had churches. One movie theatre—“ “What religion were you raised—” “Catholic. I was raised Catholic. That didn’t last. Anyway, one movie theatre used to play movies that were about six months old and—” “Was it a Catholic town?” “No, we had a whole melting pot: Baptists, Jews, Hindus, Catholics—” “Like Moscow.” “Sure. Like here, but different. I mean…I think everyone had their little rituals, but my hometown let people do their own thing: bike rides, drag racing on an auto track on the edge of town, the—the…train system…you know, the rail system started and ended there—in our town. We were pretty proud of that. We had the best public transportation in the Bay Area back in the Seventies. We were…you know—” “Ahead of the times?” “Right. That sort of thing—public transportation and pollution and automobile congestion became a huge issue later. I kind of got spoiled in those days. After that, I always seemed to be in a car going somewhere.” “Interesting. Now that I’ve moved back to Russia from Manhattan, I never leave Moscow. I have everything I want right here. We are proud of that. Very proud.” “I’ve had that twice. Once as a kid where I lived, and where we are now.” “You like it there?” “Sure. Kids enjoyed it. Julie loved, loves it. I found that peace I was missing, but you know, I never had a better orange juice drink with fish and chips like I had when I was a kid…man, I’m in my sixties now and I still get nostalgic about—” “Nostalgic?” “Should be a four-letter word. Nostalgic means to long for the past—right or wrong. In my case, I liked the pure freedom that my gut swallowed whole in the town.” (c-communication breakdown) He had that professional open-minded expression on his face, not believing or disbelieving, just taking it all in. I had to tell him, and I suddenly realized that I didn’t have enough words. I knew the things, but not the names for them.
- More Than Human, Theodore Sturgeon As an adult, one would find it hard to get ‘social activity’ time. Time found? Liquor and drugs would fuel the conversation. Inhibitions are corrupt and… Next day: nothing remembered, nothing gained. No memories. Small talk. Time to dwell upon free time. Time lost? Dwell on something, somewhere, somehow. Oh…much harder later on, but this is 1974 when time is elastic, patient and fresh. Step right up! Swallow every experience whole! Serves infinite amount!
Ron, the nineteen-year-old hipster from next door, has been turning all the neighborhood kids onto various forms of music, rock-n-roll literature and hilariously- exaggerated folklore. We are all a little too young for drugs, but I don’t think Ron’s scene needs disorientation. He isn’t into blowing his noodle. He explodes other minds. Open wide. Stay up past the dawn. Love enemies. Dig Dylan. Read. Listen. An extremely weird song is pulling my eleven-year-old sneakers. They follow. “Hey, Ron.” “Hey, Bob. This is Houses of the Holy.” He called me Bob, not Bobby. He called me…WOW! No one ever called me Bobby after Ron called me Bob. I know: big woopie woo woo, but every purgatory must have a gatekeeper. As I listen to “Dancin’ Days” fade into some Jamaican number into “No Quarter” into “The Ocean”…the Ocean likes to sway—righteous—as I listen, I can’t possibly understand. Sprinkle this on the casserole when complete: the difference between hell and heaven is the difference between criticism and inscrutable acceptance. “Hey, Bob,” instructs Ron, “you have to listen to Led Zeppelin.” “I don’t understand—what’s that sound?” “Jimmy Page.” “Oh.” The human mind will interpret many things amongst the vast internal highway. However, one of the crucial weaknesses in our external response mechanism within our carefully designed behavior structure is our innate inability to comprehend something unimaginable or different from a previous group of symbols. Confused? You should be. None of this is supposed to make sense. The Fall? Well, that’s a difficult whisper planted in an effervescent field. Eons of millions of circle turns were spent in the callused hands of a corn grower. “Hey, Ron.” “Hey, Bob.” Eyes blink and the politicians get ready for another end to another purgatory. Our president, Richard Nixon, the most popular man in America a short two years ago, is being forced out of office in disgrace—a human under the rubble of wasted opportunities. If the Sixties brought the questioning of youthful power and where it was headed, the Seventies delivered finality to any belief that the grownups had it all figured out. 1974 is the purgatory of the American Dream. Decaying candles glow, their last echoey shadows fade, and adults everywhere wonder how this happened and where one should travel—what to bring, remember, swallow whole. Wailing Wall forgives. And so I too make my list of ingredients, trying to make sense of our summer’s demise. Led Zeppelin shocks my skull with mysterious, incomprehensible timelessness—sonic vomitorium. Thompson parallels the electric madness with lit wit. Nothing profound is easily deciphered: Mystery of the Quotient. Read between the grooves: Upon us all, a little rain must fall. Hear between the lines: Flee from me, keepers of the gloom. My favorite song is Commander Cody’s “Hot Rod Lincoln.” Hootenanny music. Evil, almost Cajun, almost from some New Orleans swamp. Everybody must get… The swirl led to sway…the Ocean likes to sway. Ron tosses the Rolling Stone magazine onto his father’s toolbox as the stereo bursts forth with Cody’s cocktail of racing glory. Moment lingers as I grab the magazine. “…without feeling a compulsion to do something like drive down to the White House and throw a bag of live rats over the fence.” “Ron, who is Hunter S. Thompson? This stuff is wild, man. What is that?” “Oh, that? That can wait for later. One skull fuck at a time.” - Randy Ray stores his work at www.rmrcompany.blogspot.com. His initials are not RAR.
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