The Fargo Kantrowitz'z Literary Campsite

I don’t say much anymore. What’s to say? This world is a merry-go-round and you better not fall off. I met Jed back, oh, back a long time. I admit I’ve been something of a mother hen to him for the last ten years. He couldn’t get off the shit. The rock and roll wasn’t what it was. Hell no. It was the drug. If I knew that Jed had been taking heroin when I met him I would have slipped away. I would have so Moxy Priestessed him he wouldn’t have known what it was that happened to him. But he had a car and I’d taken a clunker down to Nashville, thinking there was something big in music going on there, but was really looking for Hollywood. I was always a showgirl, not a city girl and I wanted to prove that there was nothing wrong with that. I could kick up my heels better than most of those girls on the ballet stage, but I didn’t want to. I’d listened to Elvis when I was girl because that’s who my father liked and he was a composer for the Broadway stage. It’s funny how things happen.

Now I’ve got my husband back from the drug, but I picked up a family along the way. Sometimes I don’t know what to make of the fact that I live on a mountain near Millsville in Tennessee. Realistically it’s ideal for a person. I’ve got a nice home in the country, my husband is near his family. I’ve got a beautiful little girl. But I’m bored. Simply put, I’m bored and I don’t want to drag Jed back to the city. He’s not ready. He may never be ready and I love Jed. I’ve loved him from that first day we met in McDonalds, I think. It’s just been a strange transition, that’s all.

To think that I’m trading in my city girl status by staying here is hard, it’s like losing perspective on who I am and sometimes I take it to mean that I want to go to temple again. I deny this to Jed, but I do miss it sometimes, that firm grounding in the Jewish faith that I grew up with. I take Minnie to a Methodist church, but I’m thinking of telling Jed that we’re going to start going the little synagogue over on Maple Street. I think that If my Minnie has a little bit of that then maybe I could keep a little bit of home near me and then I’ll want to stay and me and Jed won’t get in a stupid fight and break up. I can feel it in the air sometimes. Oddly enough, it seems that this request I’m going to make to Jed today isn’t all that’s out there working in our favor. Albert’s little play about Princess Diana is making Jed pick up his guitar again. He even had me come up with the feel for a song Albert called Coconut Jerk Chicken. It was fun, we had Minnie dancing around the house and when we were done me and Jed had written the first song by Moxy Priestess that was ever written without a trace of heroin in Jed’s veins. That little victory felt good.

Overall I’m happy here on Annabelle Mountain. The mountain is beautiful. We’re near the top. We can afford to do this since neither one of us has to go into town and work. We still get some royalties. Jed spent most of his big money, but I invested wisely and we are well to do now. They say there is an angel who lives on this mountain, the spirit of a young girl who died here. I don’t like to think about that story. I don’t much like the subjects of angels because that means that God does have need. I sometimes wish that God would just dismiss all of the angels because the angels are always made up of the spirits of those who didn’t deserve to die. I guess Albert would say that Diana is an angel. On our mountain, the little girl from the civil war era, Annnabelle, is an angel. The trouble with angels is that we want more and more of them, but nobody wants to volunteer to be one.

That is, I think, the predicament that Jed’s brother finds himself in. He thinks that if he can pay tribute to Princess Diana then he is saving her soul. But I wish his tribute could have been written while she had been living. That way she too would be able to believe in angels. It’s not easy to see the realities of coping with this life. Albert is coping, that’s plain to see. Jed said that he would cry when the music stopped playing sometimes when they were alone in his room. Jed loves his brother. That’s another reason why I can’t insist on moving. We’ve been here over a year and each day is feeling a little bit longer, but Jed’s not ready. He needs as much time here at home as he had away from home. My parents always loved me and made it clear to me that they did, so I must be the stronger one. I will take Minnie to the synagogue and turn her into a little Jewish princess like I was and it appears that Jed will spearhead the return of Moxy Priestess, something I thought would never happen in a million years.

I always thought that if I could write I would write a novel about the tears that my mule couldn’t shed simply because mules don’t shed tears. Albert wrote a story once with a line in it and he showed it to me and he described something as being “sadness beyond sadness beyond sadness, the subtleties of sadness squared.” I thought that line was mature beyond Albert’s years because it seems I’ve known it, lived it rather.

I’ve finished Coconut Jerk Chicken, Moxy helped. Actually, Moxy did most of it. She did the words and then gave me the beat. I just came up with the melody. I don’t know where Albert came up with that one, probably stole it off of a drunken friend. He’s like that. He’ll sit around at the coffee house in Millsville where all the other fated artists meet to be around fated artists and he’ll listen to people. Albert’s the coolest hippie in town, but he doesn’t think of himself like that. When he was seven years old he would come into my room and listen to me play guitar. I never once told him to get out. I wasn’t thinking I was giving him a musical education during the most impressionable years of his life. I was thinking it was good to have my little brother there beside me when the whole world has gone to shit. Those drugs I took back then, they messed up my head. I was one of those guys who got mean when he took drugs, not mellow, although sometimes I got mellow too. I shouldn’t say mean. I never wanted to hurt anybody, not really, in my life. It’s just I got to a place where I didn’t take shit from anybody, nobody and nobody gave my family shit either. That’s why I beat that kid up at the roller rink. Nobody did violence to my family, not after what happened to my father. Nobody. That’s all.

Anyway, Albert. Little Albert. He’s over six feet tall now. I look up to the kid, but he’s not a kid anymore. The kind of kid whose got to have his day, his fifteen minutes of fame, but the kind of kid who you think sort of shouldn’t get it if you know what I mean. Over in North Carolina was a writer Albert told me about named Thomas Wolfe. He called Wolfe a pantheist, that’s somebody, Albert says, who believes God is in everything. I’d call that a schizophrenic myself, but Albert calls it a pantheist belief. He tried to explain to me the levels of Petals and I just couldn’t get it. That doesn’t mean that I don’t think it should go on, it will. What it means to me, though, more is that, somehow, if somebody says there are different levels that you can’t see in a work and the work espouses nothing but love, logic has it that love has many levels and therefore it takes time to get to those levels and if I don’t do his rock opera on a level of musicianship even higher than what I achieved with the Priestess, then I’m selling short love itself.

So since being back there’s no real rhyme or reason behind my life. I don’t do anything and that’s okay. Or I haven’t anyway. But now I will. I’ll write the music, or rather, I’ve been writing the music to Petals.

Petals, A Rock Scenario. Fifty-one pages of pure Diana Tribute. Enough Diana tribute to have Albert hung up on the stake by all those people out there who think just the mere mention of her name is Di-ploitation. Jed Jones of Moxy Priestess, disappeared for ten years off the music scene and here he is. Who would have thought, washed up, beat, a nobody now, trying to exploit the Princess for all he can before he completely becomes an old man and everybody forgets his name. So where do I begin:

Exit Music (For a Film) by Radiohead. Albert wants me to replace this so I will. He gave me the CD, OK Computer and I’ll listen to it. I tuned my guitar this morning. I have a different manner in which I write songs. It’s not the same thing as other people do. I hear the song in my head for a while before I know it’s complete. I put it down on my strings only, everything else is in my head. I’m writing the song in my head right now.

There’s no way to relay what it is that music does. I’m lost to trying. It’s better to give in and acknowledge there’s no way to explain anything to anybody, especially the idea that we all die, including Princess Diana, especially Princess Diana who you’ve got to admit seems like a person you didn’t expect to die or ever want to. This piece, well, I’ve heard it before. I’m going to listen to it again now and then try to explain to you what it says to me so maybe when you hear it you’ll understand, taking into consideration that Albert chose it and Albert’s gone through a lot of pain, being the man of the house for so long and yet being the baby, no dad, no brother, being the baby and then being all alone except for a woman who is really sad inside for being alone. One moment and then I’ll explain to you how my song will go since we can’t use Radiohead’s song in the Scenario although it’s worthy, truly worthy, and that’s why Albert picked it. Albert’s gave me the lyrics to help me to put together the music. His working title is Go.

Go: Wait. Don’t go home. Sleep. Time will let you know if you’re going to go. Don’t sleep without your pillow fluffed. Dreams are too important. Give away all that you know. Seek your own soul. Hey, you, don’t cry. Don’t sink down. Live into the night’s embrace, lean there and sigh. Go. Go. Don’t cry! Don’t sing a song and then say goodbye. Spy her there, Dodi, live for her breath that so slowly seeps away. Go. Go. Dream away. Go. Go. I hope you go.

The following song, Let Down is also by Radiohead sung by Camilla Parker Bowles: Albert’s is called I Love You which is really the second part of Go.

I Love You: Go home to sew the love in your coat and your torn up sleeve, bring it back to me with you inside and I will inspect your wounded pride and give to you all the love that you need and nobody will make you cry and I will sing a song for you then, my love, because the night it deems itself, deems itself better than goodbye, sounds off like sudden hits on tubular bells. I love you. Go. Go. Go. Don’t cry Charles. But Go, oh King, oh Go. I Love You. So Go. And let the lovers win. And come home to me.

There’s definitely some spirituality involved in this work. I don’t know if Albert is a good writer, but I’m starting to think he’s not pulling all of our chains. If you listen to the idea that Radiohead sparked in him then it seems that you’ve found somebody who can hear a work of genius. It makes sense. Albert, and I’m not saying this to be conceited, but Albert listened to my most accomplished works when he was a kid. I mean I formed songs such as Labyrinth and Tuesday Schooling under this kid’s nose. The opening of Pianissimo came out of me one day because I was staring at the calm in Albert’s eye while he listened to me, and it seemed so quiet. How can there not be a correlation between what Albert is doing and what I’m doing?

I find it impossible to think, now that I’m working on this play, that my musical shelf life has expired. Despite all of the shit and horror that I’ve seen, despite all the pain I’ve caused my family, I have to admit that with the reunion of my brother and I there has been a heightening of my own creative powers. Where I understand the physicality of the music only as I play, Albert understands the meaning and the physicality’s effects so he can hardly function, so he has to put the music in his head to words. Albert tells me he sings too now. He wants to play Trevor in the Scenario. He’s the man on the mountain, my brother, and finally, finally, I have somebody who I can call my friend, a peer, a musical peer finally, one who understands the music that I was reaching for in a way that even I couldn’t.

Over the years after hearing that little tale about the little girl being cooked by the cackling witches of Brierson Brook, I thought about it a lot. I never believed it because I always thought that if witches were cackling it was because they had gained a victory over somebody, one worth having. No witch would gain a victory over a little girl by eating her. You’d have to do a lot more to a little girl then eat her. You’d have to be a sicko and do unmentionable things to her, but not eat her. That’s a story for fairyland.
In the town of Millsville there was a lady who ran naked in the woods now and then. She didn’t live anywhere near Brierson Brook. She didn’t need to. You could hear her laughing and screaming as she ran through the woods, well, a certain part of the woods every day, and only me and a buddy knew about her secret spot.

One day I went out there alone and there she was. I thought she was the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen. I had no idea who she was, who she belonged to, but I wanted to get closer so I did. I carried a fishing pole with me and pushed from behind the brush making believe I was going to go fishing in the creek. She saw me and looked at me for a moment and then slowly began to put on her clothes.

“Excuse me, ma’am,” I said and I walked by her.

Her eyes were black and her lips red and full. She hadn’t put on her pants as I walked by and yet she didn’t act shy.

“You’ve seen me before,” she said.

I stopped a ways away from her and looked back at her. I shook my head.

“No.”

“Oh, yes, you’ve seen me many times. I know because I’ve seen you.”

And she walked towards me then and I ran. I turned so fast and ran that it wasn’t funny and after I ran a little ways I turned back around to see if she was still there, but she wasn’t. I figure she went home to her husband or whatever and I hated myself the rest of the day for chickening out on the most exciting experience of my young life or what would have been. But I’ll always remember the way that she laughed. It reminded me of the way a woman would laugh If she were worshiping something other than God. After my encounter it reminded me of the way she would have laughed had she had me on the ground and we had started rolling around and she being the older and the smarter doing to me what I had no way up to then any way of conceiving other than through pornography. And because those moments were sharp in my mind as pure fear I ran.

But after spending an hour or so fishing I knew it was time to go back. I went back the same way I came and I looked for her through the trees and brush on my way, but I didn’t see her, not until I came to the creek and she turned around, her breasts pert and pointing up at me, her shoulders squared and her eyes making half-horizontal moons, the black of the iris low and the lids drooping as she stared at me.

I walked up to her and kissed her neck. She kissed back and I pulled her up out of the water and laid her on the grass beside the little pond and hustled to pull down my pants and do unto her what it seemed God had ordained. When I was through I got off her real quick and put on my pants again.

“Where you going?” she said.

But I wasn’t listening. It had been too much for me and I was ashamed and scared. I ran off quick, but catching up to me almost as though laughter can have fingers pulling you back, I listened to her cackle, it was every bit a cackle as those of the witches of Brierson Brook, I’m sure, but that story didn’t mean nothing to me anymore as I ran through the brush, jumping over dead branches, dodging trees, knowing that I’d had my first time and that first time had been with a witch no less.