“Too old to die young, too young to go, How I ever got this far, the good Lord only knows, I’ve been around the horn and back so many times that now I’ve found, I’m too old to die young now.”
John Lincoln Wright 1947–2011
He saw it coming. In his 20′s John had a notion of what would take him out and that inevitably it would have something to do with booze. One of his best lyrics turns on the line:
“I’m one drink closer to heaven. Lord, get me out of this hell.”
He also lived with a stoic foreknowledge that, no matter what he achieved, his life was bound to end in personal failure: “In 1965 I said I’d never get out alive, that I’d burn myself out before my time… Then the years went by so fast … I’m too old to die young now.” (also quoted by Steve Morse in his excellent Boston Globe obituary).
John Lincoln Wright began as a rocker
Not that he went through life waiting to die. Far from it: doom was only one of his facets. John the romantic, John the populist, John the news junky, John the Red Sox fan, John the rock impressionist were only a few of the roles that emerged as you got to know him.
But surrounding it all was that vague knowingness about how things would turn out––not exactly prophesy, more like a higher than usual degree of self-appraisal. You might have labeled him “a cynic” were it not for the restless, always searching heart that lay just beneath the crusty exterior. [click to continue…]
by Bill Henderson
Hola, baby, it’s been a long time.
Read about you the other day, baby, going to Washington with your husband and all. Very cool. It’s nice to know you’re still alive after all these years, and that you weren’t ruined by me, by us, by our big awesome summer and all that weird shit we did up there in the hills. Thumbs up, baby.
Bizarre, isn’t it, remembering the way we lived. Like how we were squatters and all — and in a friggin ruined Hollywood mansion! Think what mindless balls it took to crash in that dark, moldy old wreck with the rats and memories, condemned, no plumbing, no electric, yellow police tape and all.
We lived it, didn’t we, baby. We were all that and more.
You know, baby, I’ve been thinking and thinking, replaying those days in my mind, but it’s like an old movie that keeps breaking and getting put back together again, each time a little bit different anymore. And then one day you can’t find the story. That’s partly the reason for this email, is that I can’t find our story.
All these years I’ve been trying to remember things in a way that makes sense. I spend whole days going back over things you explained to me. Like how I was The Fool and my rune was Blank and my palm was fucked-up but awesome. And some days you were the Empress and others you were the chick that holds the lion’s jaws shut. And one particular day I’ll never forget, when the sun stayed up all night and we slept in the grass and you kissed my palm and said I was bound to do something big, be somebody really really great someday. Remember that?
I guess I’d better hurry, baby, know what I mean?
Some things I’ll never begin to understand, but it’s okay. Do you remember teaching me to fly? And how to defeat attackers with only the power of my thoughts? Remember how we made the earth quake at night? Holy shit, we jacked the world by its axis! Did we actually do those things, baby?
Remember “the others?” How some days they hid and wouldn’t speak to us? I still don’t agree with you that they were ghosts. I’ve thought about it a lot and I’d say more like antimatter people. Remember how we thought we’d created them? We just weren’t sure why. Guess that’s a nut we’ll never crack, but what the hell baby, we were young, right?
Say, did you ever hear the story of the day you left? Yeah, that day, baby. That god awful screamer of a day. The day I said those things to you, things no woman should ever have to hear, and you gave it back to me just as hard, cutting me over and over in your little accent, in French, in English, cut, slash, this way, that way till all I could see was my life in blood red darkness? No, I didn’t like what was going on inside my head that day, not one bit. I’m sure you remember how I turned away in the middle of it all and took off up the stairs. That’s where the story ends for you, right? But there was more, baby, a lot more and here it is: [click to continue…]
