I used to drink with a depressed friend and early
influence, the late protest singer Phil Ochs. He seemed to have everything with
his notoriety and famous topical songs and ballads like “Changes” and “Pleasures
of the Harbor”. He ended up disillusioned, hanging himself in despair three
years after we met, so his fame didn’t bring him any peace of mind. He was a man
who cared too much; he seemed to be carrying the weight of the movement, the
guilt of the war, and the burden of injustice for everyone in the nation and it
wore him out. I once asked him over some Bloody Marys how he wrote those great
songs, hoping he’d reveal the secret. “They just come to me,” he replied. Those
four words didn’t give me much to work with but the thought of paying attention
to your mind encouraged me to keep trying. Back then it seemed like all the
great songs had been written, making my generation of Folk Rockers do our best
to imitate Bob Dylan, Jim Morrison, or Led Zeppelin. Dreams of glory could be
realized by becoming a recording artist, playing anti-war songs for college
students…with the side-effect of riches and adventure. Well, I found the
adventure at least. Playing urban Folk Blues gets a classy audience and I
enjoyed the traveling life, but I still hadn’t expressed myself.
When in doubt there’s only one course of action: think of Elvis Presley. He was
the catalyst, the man who was pivotal to the evolution of shake, rattle, and
roll. In my childhood, teenagers danced to the silly lyrics of “Hound Dog”, a
song devoid of any meaning – and probably the most important song of the last
century…for its sheer vacuum effect on the boy-meets-girl themes in every piece
of popular music. The world could start with a clean slate and accept the shock
of topics and messages. That song appeared when the content was stored on a 78
rpm disc that revolved unevenly as a little nail scratched out the music on one
speaker. The records wore out, skipped, and broke easily. Music devices advanced
to 45 rpm and LPs, then to the portable 8-track that could bring your library on
the road. Before you know it cassettes came along and made us buy our entire
libraries for the third time.
Now we can store several quadrillion
songs on a shiny thing no larger than a pack of gum. I suspect there’s room for
me now…a niche in the digital medium where my personal jukebox can exist
everywhere, not just in selected restaurants where someone bought a
thousand-pound machine full of records to collect quarters. Due to a wild string
of coincidences I got it all together; I struggled through day jobs, recovered
some lost tapes, and learned more about the medium where we are now
communicating. One answer to the problem of having a mass audience was a website
with a download capability to shop for music and writings. A pile of forgotten
notes in a box resulted in a novel, The Golden Blues. My premiere novel is set
largely in the sub-culture of the ‘Seventies, and is taken into the immediate
future. It’s available in eBook format on the site. The adventure of a quest for
love causes the hero to advance his knowledge through altered states of
consciousness, mind expansion, and the disciplined philosophy of the martial
arts. The challenge of describing the nature of existence, if I’ve succeeded in
the meticulously detailed prose, will keep the reader in suspense wondering
what’s going to happen next as a plan is devised to correct the mistake that
cost him the ideal woman. He would use the way of the universe, the Tao (Dao),
to reincarnate back into the same life, basing this possibility on the premise
that we create our own reality and that the power of intention contains our
essence. The traveler moves through vicious fights in Vancouver, bank robbers in
the Montreal underworld, psychedelic journeys, and ghosts in New York, to the
sublime awareness of Zen meditation and the resolve of love.
The
final result looked like Kerouac got together with Vonnegut and Burroughs to
teach Edgar Allen Poe how to type. It’s hard to be objective, but I consider it
my masterpiece – even though the idea to write the book started thirty years
earlier while I sat in a bar interviewing a group of lesbians about their
secret. Apparently, it just comes to them...naturally.
Pat Boardman
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