Some Things Make Ya Wanna Just Get Drunk And Cry...

You ever just stop for a second and collect all of your body parts into one pile- say, on a butcher block table- and take your brain and make it meditate on that pile and force your mind to ask itself about the significance of all of those bones and all of those muscles and all of that skin and hair and those glands and all of that blood?

Imagine yourself road kill, shoveled up on that butcher block table and imagine that the only person that is allowed to look at the heap is yourself. Just your mind, your very own brain (perhaps still attached to a pair of naked eyes). Just you being asked to identify the heap of sausage in front of you because you are the only entity, at this point, who can recognize yourself…

Would you consider yourself lucky?

Your brain is alive, connected to a pair of naked eyes that still see… and you are looking at a nasty-ass pile of blood and flesh and offal and bone…

Would you just nod and say - “Yeah. That was me.” and dissipate into the great unknown? Pffffffftttt……………………..Gone? Happily?

I would.

And I really wouldn’t care if the great unknown turned out to be a car lot in Arizona. Or a Mc Donald’s playground set in Wichita. Or a Corn field. Or an ivory tower.

The great unknown could be no place, and I wouldn’t care.

You know why?

Because I’ve been here. I showed up. I gave it all a good go. I put myself on the turn table and I played the fucking record.

I know I was given a gift and I unwrapped it in a fit and I played with myself like I was an unbreakable toy, and I didn’t care if others thought I was silly for playing with myself like that, and I threw myself into situations and events and life and though I am far from finished…

I could be.

I really could be.

I could be done and I would be happy with my go around.

Truly.

I'm satisfied. I'm at ease. I've made the show and hit the grand slam and that was plenty.

Perhaps, thinking through this to as far as I can see… there would be one honest regret that I would have. And it is one of those “illusions of grandeur” type of thoughts that I don’t entertain very often, but when I do, you can be sure beer and music had something to do with it.

I have never reached out and grabbed the hearts of thousand in a single moment, and I know that I never shall.

It was not my lot in life.

I wasn’t given that particular gift.

This go around wasn't meant for me to be on a stage.



I knew Tom Waits a little bit, years back. His daughter was a friend of a friend of mine’s daughter.

That man, at times, could make thousands of people all want to get drunk and cry. He could touch people in places that I never could.

So my one regret this time around?

I’m not Tom Waits.