OK, Kids here is part two of my aside that I'm writing for a friend who very kindly asked how I got to be so screwed up.
So we left off in junior high where I was learning to play guitar and trying to write lyrics that didn't suck. What really got me going was copying lyrics down and studying them without the music to see how they stood on there own. The next thing that helped was doing the whole "Weird Al" thing, doing parodies, usually nasty, dirty, quadruple X parodies (Hey, I was fourteen, after all) (of course, now I'm forty and still do it from time to time)
The thing that put me over the edge as far as my literary search was a biography of Jim Morrison-"No One Here Gets Out Alive" a good friend of mine told me I 'had' to read it. To this day, I'm glad I did.
What I found inside this book changed the course of my life. I discovered the music of The Doors which totally blew me away. 60's music to me at that point was my Mom's music, The Beach Boys, Motown, The Mamas and The Papas, Neil fricken Diamond...I could give a shit less. But, the first time I heard "End of the Night" by the Doors, I freaked, this was the soundtrack to the darkness that dwell inside. This was the sound that pervaded my dreams. I was totally hooked.
But much more than discovering The Doors, I learned about Jim Morrison, the way he lived life, his philosophy, his poetry and his madness. I got turned on to the realities of the 60's counterculture. The Beat writers, Timothy Leary, Norman Mailer, Aldous Huxley, Arthur Rimbaud, William Blake, all of Jim's literary influences.
Then, I grabbed my library card and went completely ape shit!
It took me years to go through all of the material indicated in that one book.
It was time well spent.
But, during this time I also, slowly, painfully got better at playing the guitar. I took lessons, learned from friends, bought books, magazines, tapes, played two to three hours at night while babysitting my little sister while waiting for my mom to get home from work. (Yep, a latchkey kid, ahh, the 80's).
So little by little both of these endeavors progressed in my angry little brain.
The only down side to this time was the beginning of my drug use. Taking the long view, now, I wouldn't change much. (I probably wouldn't do as much acid as I did in high school but that's about it) but as William Blake said "The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom."
Again I was influenced by Morrison. Looking inside my skull for the answers to the mysteries of the universe. And (much to Nancy Reagan's chagrin) I did learn a few things, about myself, my limits, my own philosophy, what I wanted out of life and what I was willing to do to get it.
But, it all wasn't as completely organized as I make it sound. There was a lot of craziness and mistakes along the way.
And that, kids, is exactly the kind of stuff you write about!!!
Well, it looks this might need to go on to a part three!!
Next time around, we'll get into the nooks and crannies of how I write.
Drop me a note and let me know what you think!!
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