“We shoot to the sky like desperate angels, flying so far above the dirt and the grass and the death that we loose sight of our selves. But who can sincerely fault us for indulging? It’s a one horse town and the horse has been beaten to unquestionable death long before we ever breathe in the moist night air that it provides. We are not the first, nor the last. Why not do our best to rise above the walls, or at least attempt? In the kingdom of fear and the providence of entitlement we are nothing more than ghouls, straggling on the roads seeking comfort we will undoubtedly destroy. Let us fly farther.”
See the old man, burnt and frail, sitting in his fathers chair watching the heat lightning tear streaks of red into the damned night, like cut veins of god himself bleeding onto the land. The corresponding thunder echoes through the mountain, right over the spot where his daddy fell and never got up and down across the field that old Ambrose was said to have planted his pumpkins. The old man exhales old air and for a while his silhouette gets captured by the door frame of the building making the moment seem properly blocked out by an unseen director, one that he has maybe never himself known but been in fear of his whole life. He stops this thought though and sips his corn whiskey trying to let it wonder back into the night air. He savors the taste and finds much in it from his youth, that of wild fires and red dirt and car oil and summer heat. He lets it burn in his mouth for a bit before shallowing it and letting it warm his chest confidently.
That night he dreams of his Grandmother and finds her in a field sitting on a wooden chair surrounded by suited men with no true faces. He opens his mouth to speak but his voice is gone, and she just smiles and nods at him while the faceless men talk in low tones. She tells him that the men are his family and names them out and while none of which she speaks are recognizable to him the men act offended by growling and slapping their knees. He can do nothing but watch her and the bizarre specters and realizes his helplessness only after several attempts at yelling but right before he wakes to damp sheets and deafening rain.
He forgets the experience by the morning.
“…rolls his head around, his eyes upwards in their sockets to stare at the blinding light of the moon which has now completely filled the pitch-black Delta night, piercing his right eye like a bolt of lightning as the midnight hour hits. He looks the big man squarely in the eyes and says, ‘Step back, Devil-Man, I’m going to Rosedale. I am the Blues.’” - A “vision”, as told by Henry Goodman
“Sleezy ghost fucking music, only to be played in standing room only pits of lust and despair soaked in things with black labels that ruin lives”- h.s., on music aspirations.
“Give me anything but another year in exile” - P.S., Theme from Cheers
i’m drunk enough to get depressed while listening to Songs: Ohia,
But also drunk enough to put on Black Flag afterwords.
"Carelessness. I lost my one true love. I started drinking. The first thing I know, I’m in a card game. Then I’m in a crap game. I wake up in a pool hall. Then this big Mexican lady drags me off the table, takes me to Philadelphia. She leaves me alone in her house, and it burns down. I wind up in Phoenix. I get a job as a Chinaman. I start working in a dime store, and move in with a 13-year-old girl. Then this big Mexican lady from Philadelphia comes in and burns the house down. I go down to Dallas. I get a job as a “before” in a Charles Atlas “before and after” ad. I move in with a delivery boy who can cook fantastic chili and hot dogs. Then this 13-year-old girl from Phoenix comes and burns the house down. The delivery boy - he ain’t so mild: He gives her the knife, and the next thing I know I’m in Omaha. It’s so cold there, by this time I’m robbing my own bicycles and frying my own fish. I stumble onto some luck and get a job as a carburetor out at the hot-rod races every Thursday night. I move in with a high school teacher who also does a little plumbing on the side, who ain’t much to look at, but who’s built a special kind of refrigerator that can turn newspaper into lettuce. Everything’s going good until that delivery boy shows up and tries to knife me. Needless to say, he burned the house down, and I hit the road. The first guy that picked me up asked me if I wanted to be a star. What could I say?"
— Bob Dylan, on what made him decide to go electric.
