I Met Jackson Browne Today

There he stands.
Looking strikingly like the man,
the musician, I’ve always known.

Strange meeting him here,
in a toy shop,
if, in fact, this is
Jackson Browne,
the folk troubadour wandering through my living room record collection back home.

He’s disarming,
with calm eyes and posture.
It can’t be him.

It doesn’t matter now.
It’s so special to meet this man, whoever he is.

He says nothing.
He looks at me like he knows me.
Like he cares.
People – customers – don’t do that. How strange.

But I do know him,
from lyrics sung about heartbreak,
truth, and celebration.
Maybe,
if it is Jackson Browne,
he knows how gratefully I embraced each of those.

Impossible.
The real Jackson Browne
has too many fans to know such things.

This man –
short in height
with beard rubble protruding from a compassionate face –
wears cool, casual clothes,
conveying warmth
(freezing images of his stormy life on the rock and roll road, the megastar I expected to see).

There’s no less appropriate moment
to meet a soulful artist
than on a market showplace sales floor.
I almost want to apologize, but then,
because we understand each other,
I know he is with me.

But so quickly,
he is gone,
whoever he was,
lost in a customer crowd,
and out the door.

Yes, I did meet Jackson Browne today.
I know this man.
He looked at me like he knew me.
Like he cared.
Just like he cares about his songs
and his connection to the domain of people.

From spoken lyric
to microphone
to vinyl
to radio station
to wavelengths through space
across to me – on Earth, in my town, my world, this shop – and my little transistor of senses.

So light a journey, so weighty his peaceful, universal words.

That’s a super star.

 

 

Insomnia, Sweaty Mattresses and The Ray Conniff Singers

Earlier in the evening, Mom and Dad had kicked off a party in the basement. So preoccupied, neither seemed to care if I helped myself to the fancy food and beverages spread out on the card table. When was the last time I was allowed unlimited access to expensive snacks reserved only for neighbors and relatives? Pork rinds. Chex Mix. Colas!

Three hours later, grasping the bed sheets, I whispered to God, “Please, don’t let me be sick. Please, I’ll do whatever you ask. Please don’t give me diarrhea. I was wrong to eat all those things. I might be in the bathroom all night. Please, God, please.”

As I squirmed, I could still hear Mom and Dad’s party going on two stories below in the basement; even Don and Doug stirred around in the living room. Already ten o’clock, I grew desperate for any solution for sleep.

I tried counting sheep. I tried counting backwards. I even tried reviewing last week’s Combat episode in my mind, a dumb idea since so much of it was filled with explosions. However, the stupid girly subplot the last half hour was so boring, replaying the episode brought on drowsiness.

Finally, halfway into blissful sleep, a real explosion hit:

 Oh no, it’s getting louder … and louder … and louder. No-o-o, God, no – not the Ray Conniff Singers.

Doug was at it again. Only eighteen, my older brother was already embalmed, an able-bodied teen sadly buried beneath a lethal interest in listening to a bunch of middle-aged squares trying to save tripe like “Love Is a Many Splendored Thing” and “Three Coins in the Fountain” from musical extinction.  Tonight, he crawled from his grave to play songs on the living room stereo from his gutless record collection and keep me awake.

I dreamed of going downstairs and breaking his Ray Conniff box set in half across my knees, but did nothing. Instead, I chose to lay there and seethe. If I wasn’t going to use words to fight back, I had to find an alternative method in which to take family members on. It was Ray Conniff today; what if the battle was over something far worse tomorrow?

The recent hot weather here in Santa Fe reminded me of this unsettling event (excerpt from Maybe Boomer, Chapter 3, “Revenge“), lying across a sweaty mattress on a hot early summer night, being “serenaded” to sleep. Not so bad an experience, you say? Remember, as you read this post, you could have turned “Love Is a Many Splendored Thing” off.