The Fargo Kantrowitz'z Literary Campsite

When Albert finished the rock opera back before he’d found me, the world was a better place somehow. Without the world’s teardrop there is no demand for investigation. Albert, falling into the placid stream, like a cork bouncing down the rocks and into the river, down and down further, found that to float is the most necessary of detractions. So he kept a steady supply of marijuana by his side as he wrote Petals, but he got further and further away from it. He began to study books about the nature of creativity so that he could know for sure whether or not Petals truly belonged to him or whether it belonged to Bob Hope, that is, marijuana intoxication.

Me and Albert became friends again. I never held it against him for hitting me. I’m glad he did it. It would have taken a long time to get the anger out and a lot of bullshit discussion would have had to have taken place. I’d just as soon be socked once for a lifetime of bullshit I gave him than have to deal with the natural variation of moods one would expect in somebody so abandoned and abused by his, well, I was going to say father and me, but, really, it’s more like God himself if you think about how Albert took it into his soul.

Albert was always a dreamer type. When he was a child he would lie on his bed and shake his head back and forth and sing songs to himself. Those were his first rock operas, I guess. He was always a big kid, but really gentle. Taller than the others, but the last one to be picked because he just looked like he didn’t care, I guess. I was always the first picked. I did the picking. So I was pretty protective of him, but back in the late 70s you had a lot of drugs going around. I mean everybody was doing something. And I was wrapped up in it. I had a connection with a guy from the Mexican Mafia. He connected me with a guy from the Chinese Mafia and I didn’t give a shit about any of them because I considered myself the Tennessee mafia of one. And I was a bad ass to prove it. I did some harm to more than one person and that was still as a teenager.

But then I got out. I realized the music was the most important thing and I got out through sheer will and also through a sort of desperation of needing smack by that time, but not being able to face the fact and especially with my mama on my case all the time. I couldn’t think straight at all. So I walked downstairs, already having put half a shot in my arm and said “Look, ma” and shot the rest in. I’d thought about it for a few minutes after I took the first little bit and it then hooked up to the last little bit that still remained in the needle and I thought to myself that I couldn’t let the show be seen by only myself and then I thought I was floating when I was walking down the stairs and that that was a sign by God that I was to do what I was to do, which was nothing more than exert my freedom by getting myself kicked out of my house. My guitar was already in the car and a moment later I was too. Driving off I looked back and I saw Albert come outside and look at me as I tore off and then he sat down by the gate and petted the dog. That was the last time I talked to him or saw for almost fifteen years.

It’s almost criminal what it seems God will allow to happen in order to teach you a lesson. That’s all I can figure short of God reaching into my head and straightening everything around Himself. But he wasn’t about to do that. They made the Bible to make sure everybody knows that things don’t come easy. Well, I sure found that out the hard way, maybe a little too hard, but anyway, what I’m trying to say is that we’ve all had our moment of doubt when we thought God had abandoned us. I wonder if Teardrop ever had that moment of doubt as he climbed up the wrong side of the mountain to get home to me. And the next question in logical sequence is whether, if Teardrop did have that doubt, why did he still make it? That’s one I’ll leave to the theologians.