Where are we going, Jim Morrison?
The Doors close in an hour.
Which way does your beer point tonight?
About a month before I moved back down to Southern California after living in Santa Cruz for five ridiculous years, I experienced an unexpected life-affirming moment while shopping in a local hippy-dippy grocery store. To my great displeasure, my favorite brand of Kombucha (go ahead, laugh at me) was still contraband at the time, and as I was scouring the tea aisle for a worthy substitute, “Riders on the Storm” came on over the speakers. I smiled, thankful that someone had the good sense to spin a Jim Jam on a hot summer’s day. I danced by myself in the aisle for a few minutes, and, quite suddenly, the hippy-dippy grocery store looked a lot different. Everything was special: the Kombucha drought, the rows of Guayaki Yerba Mate promising health and vitality, the sound of a seven-minute-long Doors song about “a killer on the road” oozing through the store while happy families shopped for baby bok-choy and slabs of seasoned tempeh; the realization that this was a good moment, which is all a person can really hope for.
Harmonious coincidences like these make me wonder how difficult it must be to be a music supervisor. The Graduate is an undeniably great bit of movie-making, but can you imagine it without “The Sound of Silence”? Or Harold and Maude without Cat Stevens’ silky baritone? And would Uma Thurman's overdose in Pulp Fiction be as jarring if it weren't preceded by a dance to Urge Overkill's cover of "Girl, You'll Be A Woman Soon"? When a music supervisor’s work is done, he has helped transform a few measly minutes of film into something deeply moving. When moments like this happen in real life completely by accident, it is important to stop and celebrate. Hearing “Riders on the Storm” in the hippy-dippy grocery store reminded me that my time in Santa Cruz was limited, and that I should get to work enjoying myself. I also felt reassured that the previous five ridiculous years hadn’t been a waste; that there had been plenty of moments of epic triumph, personal growth, and dancing in the aisles. There was no reason to feel that I was returning to Southern California because it was time to start over; it was time to continue. As Maude would say, it was time to, “Go and love some more.”
I listen to the wind
To the wind of my soul
Where I’ll end up, well, I mean,
Who the Hell really knows?
It has now been about a year since my one-woman dance party, and while I still miss my beachside shack (and the enchiladas at Taqueria Las Palmas and the Hemp Ale at The Poet & The Patriot and the psychic cats on Pacific Avenue...) my suburban situation isn't so bad. There have been some great times, and some not so-great times, and, in the grand scheme of things, I can’t complain. Sadly, the last few months have been of the not-so-great variety.
Fuck that, they’ve been shitty.
The shitty time started in March when I had a terrible panic attack while getting a haircut. I had experienced panic prior to this attack, so I wasn’t too distraught by what happened. What shook me up was that unlike with previous episodes, I couldn’t figure out where the Hell this one came from. Sure, I would rather not have had to trim my wild mane, but it was nothing to panic about.
Days later I had another attack while lounging -- yes, lounging -- with some of my best friends, drinking beer and watching On The Waterfront. It was a Sunday afternoon. We were all wearing bathrobes and had just finished feasting on some seriously sexy food. Even in this downright Dionysian situation, my body still found a way to go into adrenal overdrive. Things became scary when I started panicking in cars pretty regularly. No matter where I was going or whether I was the driver or the passenger, I inevitably felt like jumping out of my skin. Again, I am no stranger to panicking while driving -- most people who have driven on the 405-S in rush hour traffic have probably had similar experiences -- but panicking while riding shotgun on the way to the damn mall that’s a whole ten minutes away from my house was something new.
There’s a Callas on the road,
Her brain is squirmin’ like a toad...
I'll spare you the details about the drug peddling doctors and brief, yet powerful feelings of total despair. In short, I got help from someone who doesn’t deserve to be reported to the Board of Behavioral Sciences, and the panic eventually waned. Despite my noticeable improvement, the threat of "When will the next attack hit?" was always present in my mind. I arrived at a point where I could comfortably enjoy a movie in my bathrobe without having a fit, but panic-free car rides still eluded me.
Worse than all of that, I couldn’t write. No matter how hard I tried to sit down and scribble something halfway intelligent, my writing was mostly limited to what Allen Ginsberg referred to as “unpublishable private literature.” Of course, his “unpublishable” scrawl was about drunken nights in Chinatown and wild sex with Neal Cassady, IE: The Good Life. My Top-Secret portfolio of recent scribblings is so boring it doesn’t even deserve to be sacrificially burned.
And they brought me their comfort,
And later they brought me this song
O I hope you run into them
You, who’ve been scribbling so long...
One evening not too long ago, I was feeling exceptionally down in the dumps. Work sucked, my writing sucked -- I was tired and lonely and just wanted to go to sleep. Before hitting the sack I took a quick look at my facebook (Duh), and I saw that my friend Zach was going to be hosting his last radio show on KZSC Santa Cruz that night. Out of respect for Zach, KZSC, and Santa Cruz as a whole, I decided to tune in for at least a little while. At first, hearing Zach read the corny Underwriting Announcements and play the corny Public Service Announcements just made me miss my radio show, and I briefly considered giving up on the whole thing. In the five seconds I contemplated turning out the light, Zach, that beautiful, bloody bastard, put on a tune called “Last Song” by an artist named Jason Webley.
Imagine if, while floating in the pool the day after sleeping with Mrs. Robinson, Benjamin Braddock actually heard "The Sound of Silence" playing somewhere in the distance. It would have blown his mind, right? Well, I hadn't slept with Mrs. Robinson and I wasn't in the pool, but dammit, when I heard "Last Song," I literally felt something inside me shift. Or stretch. Or break. Regardless, I felt profoundly healed. Did I think Jason Webley was singing directly to me? No. I'm not deranged. All the same, the song's message of hope told through images of imminent apocalypse and waking up in alleys was exactly what I needed to hear that night.
And he shows you where to look
Among the smell of urine, alcohol, trash and gasoline
And the flowers...
In search of Jason Webley's discography, I visited his website. The first thing I discovered was that he's been around for over a decade, which made me feel like a total dork. Where the fuck had I been? I clicked "Concerts" to see if he was going to be touring at all in the near future. He was on tour, all right; almost smack dab in the middle of his farewell tour. There were no L.A. dates on his website (there is one now...I'm so there...), but there was a San Jose show on the schedule. My first thought was, "San Jose? Right by Santa Cruz? I have to go!" Sure enough, my second thought was, "How the fuck am I going to get there if I can't drive more than a few minutes without panicking?" I thought that maybe I could fly, but then I wondered how panicking in an airplane would be better than panicking in a car...
I eventually decided that there was no way I was going to miss the show. I would spend a few nights in Santa Cruz with some of my favorite people in the world, and then I would see Jason Webley perform. Who was I to forbid myself from doing all that?
If I go there will be trouble,
And if I stay...
What happened? I spent two amazing nights in Santa Cruz with some of my favorite people in the world, and then I saw Jason Webley perform. T'was unlike anything I've ever seen. I know I should probably say a few things about the show, but true to the nature of the writing beast, I am suddenly at a loss for words. I'm hesitant to dissect the evening as if I'm trying to convince people that he's worth checking out. I also don't want to make any grand assumptions about his artistic intentions -- who am I to say what his songs are about, or to draw parallels between him and other performers? I will say there was an interesting moment where he took a break from playing music and just talked. He thanked us for our support, he thanked the gallery owners for letting him play, and then, for some reason, he talked about how some people in the audience may have recently had their "lives turned inside out," and how neat it was that we were all together baring witness to that. Of all things to say, right? And then, Jason Webley, the ever-brilliant music supervisor, played "Last Song."
(I'm aware that I keep writing his full name. I wouldn't write, "Cohen," I'd write, "Leonard Cohen." I wouldn't write "Reed," I'd write, "Lou Reed." I wouldn't write "Smith," I'd write "Patti Smith." And so on. And so on.)
Yes, I got to meet him. Yes, I got a picture. Yes, I was terrified I would say something that would make me sound stupid, and yes, I'm sure my terror was obvious. He asked me if I had ever been to one of his shows before, and when I told him I hadn't, I somehow managed to mention that I had driven up from L.A. He paused a moment, and said, "You drove all the way from L.A. to come to the show?" I managed to nod and utter a nervous, "Yeah."
I'm not the kind of person who chalks everything up to fate or destiny or God's Great Plan. I don't think that I was "meant" to find out about Jason Webley in order to take a roadie to Santa Cruz and prove to myself that I had the strength and the ability to fight this whole panic thing. Regardless of my own beliefs, that is what happened. In my opinion, the idea that it happened completely by accident is awesome. If I hadn't decided to look at my facebook on one bummer night before going to bed, I wouldn't have heard "Last Song," and I wouldn't have gone to his website, and I wouldn't have read that this was his farewell tour. More importantly, I wouldn't have found an excuse to get in the car and see what happened. Low and behold, what happened? Nothing. Nothing, except I had a great fucking weekend and I got to see Jason Webley.
(By the way, in case you were wondering, he has more than one great song. For sure.)
Bravo, Jason Webley. Bravo, Zach. Bravo, hippy-dippy grocery store employee who wanted to hear "Riders on the Storm." Keep doing what you're doing and continue to accidentally provide killer driving music and poignant road signs to weary travelers everywhere.
And Allen, "unpublishable private literature"? Maybe not.
Just maybe.
