Did you ever? Or, as Peter Frampton once asked, back in 1976, “Do you feel like I do?” If only I could have played guitar back then — or now. Oh, the fun I would have had! I do play the piano, but as I’d sometimes mention to the young women I tried to woo, it’s not very portable. Polite responses typically ensued. No tomatoes — yet. I’d risk them, certainly, by adding, “I play by ear, but it hurts after a while.” Fewer polite snickers followed the previous ensuing. Tomatoes at the ready.
There was, of course, party-talk and much swagger. The best kind in those college years. Disquisitions, between drinks, on James Joyce and the Molly of his heart. Perhaps Jim Morrison, the reincarnation of Rimbaud, sans Verlaine. Lawrence and Women in Love, on occasion. From England to France to New Mexico. Is it right to move a body once it (the phoenix) is at rest forever, especially across the sea? He’s dead! He won’t mind! Turn up the music! Let it soar through us until we feel no more, feel everything, find the center everywhere and nowhere again and again. ?!?
The after-party walk, stumble, fall, get up. In the mind, images of Dublin stack up like brick walls we can’t break through without far too much effort. Not necessarily to the other side, but a useful approximation there of. But somehow we keep going, because sleeping in the middle of the highway can sometimes cause traffic delays. We can’t. We can. No, we really, really can’t. We must. We go on.
Wobbly little #$@&%*!