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DIG IT:

“Yeah, I know, but what would you do if you could be anything with a snap of your fingers?”

I thought for a second. I surmised that I did have goals beyond playing bass in the most popular and important underground band in the world. “You got about an hour? I’ll tell ya”.

Pretty smiled and stroked my long, pretty blond hair. “We have many hours. . .unlimited hours. I’m all ears. . .and other things. . .”.

I began, “I have this feeling that rock ‘n’ roll is not all I am going to do with my life. I feel that it’s just a stepping stone to something bigger, something more along the importance of the invention of the electric light bulb. I want to be the next Thomas Edison. No, fuck that. . .I wanna be the next Nikola Tesla. That’s who Edison stole a lot of his ideas from.

“I don’t know what this next thing is, but I do know a few things about it: One is that I might not invent it, maybe I’ll just pioneer it, the same way that Ford didn’t invent the car, but he put one in every carriage house and barn. I also know that it will involve bringing people together. That is my strongest suit. . .far more important than rock ‘n’ roll. I have match-made a lot of folks. . .lovers, musicians and friends. I have an intuition about it; I don’t just randomly try one person with another, and try them with someone else if the first attempt fails. Naw, I just get these feelings that person X must meet person Y, and I will try very hard to get them together in the same room. If I do and the magic don’t take, I have done my part and usually don’t try with them again. But it often works. There are couples that have been together for years because of me, bands that wouldn’t have happened without my help and lifelong friends I’ve introduced. You could say I want to be a professional catalyst.

“I’m not talking matchmaking in the conventional sense of the word. I’m talking about some brave new art-science spiritual-service that hasn’t been invented yet. I know I have to keep my eye out for it, but that I can’t look too hard, or it will evade me. I almost know that I could start doing this thing today and that when I finally find it, I’ll hit myself in the head for not thinking of it sooner.

“I want to find something to do that only I can do, and then do it really well”.

After pausing to hit the hash pipe and pass it back to Pretty, I coughed; “I know that this process will involve computers, which is odd, because I’ve always said that I would never learn to use a computer. But I guess that being open-minded means being teachable.

“I also know that the knowledge of how to do this elusive thing is available in any mid-sized public library. . .sort of the same way I figured out the process for the synthesis of LSD by age thirteen, cross-referencing about a dozen books from the local book depository, starting with a dictionary.

“And I know that it will involve working with one other person, probably my spouse. It’s odd to say ‘my spouse’ because currently I go through about a dozen girlfriends in as many months.

“But I foresee a day when I will find enough satisfaction in myself to be able to share it with just one other person. I could see settling down with one wonderful woman somewhere remote. Albuquerque comes to mind. My friend, Hester Hanson, has never traveled much, and whenever someone asks her where some place is that she’s not familiar with, or where so-and-so has disappeared to, she always quips. . .‘Oh, near Albuquerque.’ ”

I lit a smoke and continued, “I envision carrying out this grand mission with the future Mrs. Cash Newmann. I like the idea of doing an art with one other person. Art-by-committee in a rock band is very frustrating. Most musicians are just big babies with huge egos and no self-esteem. They profess devotion to each other while constantly battling for the stage-center spotlight. More often than not, they are fucking each other’s girlfriends and stealing each other’s drugs behind each other’s backs. Most musicians would sell their Soul and soulfulness to become slaves to any corporate entity. ‘Getting signed’ is seen as the goal—the faerie godmother waving her funded-debt wand to make everything O.K. for the insecure little lads. Most rockers would fire any of their vanmates in a hummingbird’s heartbeat if the producer told them to. While I envy solitary artists like painters or writers, that life seems a little lonely to me. Besides, I need a bullshit detector. I often can’t tell my great ideas from my stoopid ones.

“Who knows, maybe my calling is to start some zany religion. It will be a courageous synthesis of science, Buddhism, Jesus-was-a-hippie California cool, pop psychobabble, computer networking, 12-step ideology and good ole fashioned Dale Carnegie strong-arm tactics. I will lead a choir of 50 blonde virgins and I will go out in a blaze of dignity as the ATF (tipped off by new merged FBI and IRS mutual agency, The F.B.I.R.S.) earns yet another place in hell. We will be heavily armed and the compound will be impenetrable. There will be dozens of strong, brave and Beautiful women willing to lay down their lives to defend me. . .aaahhhh, maybe not. Maybe I will just get married, retire and putz around the ranch and learn to weld, and have a blast making big, crappy, creepy art out of creaky old rusting cars.

“I don’t know what this grand new thing for my life will be, but I look for and forward to it. I feel like someone in the 1800s who wants to be a movie star or a nuclear physicist”.

I finished my soliloquy with a dramatic drag on my Marlboro, exhaled and waited for a response.

“That’s amazing, Cash. I am blown away by that. Really. You are a person of rare vision, and I think you could quite easily come to meet and exceed all of those goals”.

Her words sounded like a horoscope, almost rehearsed. But coming from Pretty, they somehow buzzed true. Maybe I was blinded by her Beauty and the intoxicating effect of her violin playing. (Or by the hash we’d smoked when I first walked into her room?) Or maybe I just wanted, more than anything in the world, to reach out and touch the long, brown ringlets that crashed all around her soft, angelic face and I was willing to believe anything.

“What do you want to do with your life, Pretty?”

“Well, to answer that, I’d have to tell you what I’ve done with my life so far. You wanna hear a story, little boy?”

She placed her hand on my knee for emphasis.

“Of course I do. . .be my guest. Or my host”. (And I’ll be your symbiotic little love parasite. . . .)…….