Robert Hunter Journal Update, 12/2/96 [*long*]
Michael Z.
Here are the latest entries from Robert Hunter's online journal project,
available as always to Web folk at:
<http://dead.net> ==> Robert Hunter Archive ==> Journal
Enjoy,
MZ
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JOURNAL 12.02.96
(dates in red, with the month spelled out, indicate the current date in
different years.)
11/19/96 12 am
Have spent my newly freed time away from the computer screen, as I hoped
I would, at least today. DNC looms large on the horizon to reclaim it -
but for now, a breather. Played guitar for awhile, long enough to make
my fingertips tender but not sore. I hate typing with sore fingertips.
Generally lazed around. Wasting time, reading a book - what a luxury!
Worked on my new book this evening, the one chapter I've got, starting
at the beginning again and fleshing it out. I let a book tell me what to
write, within reason. I know where I want it to go, but I have to dwell
with my characters a bit to find out how, or if, they intend to let me
proceed.
11/20 12 am
Two good songwriting sessions today - one in the morning where I carved
out most of a tune - and another session, just concluded due to
sleepiness, yielding a handful of verses for another. I usually work in
groups of three. Haven't been playing guitar for a long while, and it
feels good to get that old composition knack crackin' again, opening
myself to it and letting a song suggest itself, shaping it into
syllables, anticipating rhyme, inviting characters.
Pause in the steady rain today. A fine creative energy, but not much
physical. The song of the morning wore me out for the rest of the day.
Napped twice and hit it again around ten thirty this evening. Kind of
let songwriting drop this year - no time to get in the right state of
mind - only a few finished pieces. Probably not a bad idea, lying
fallow, though I can't honestly say I've tried it before.
November 20, 1984 Washington DC - on the road doing openers for JG &
John Kahn acoustic show.
Oddest mood. Left Constitution Hall after my set, walked back to the
hotel - Georgetown Inn on Wisconsin. I feel as I so often feel after
gigs... So what? Keep thinking - even saying - that I'm not essentially
a performer; it's just something I can do. Therefore. its rewards (great
response as at Avery Fischer the other night) cannot mean very much to
me. Other side of the coin: failures nearly kill me. A lot to lose,
little to win.
11/21/96 midnight
Re: that '84 entry - found big stages curiously alienating - like
playing in a room alone with an illusion of an audience. Real contact
missing. At Avery Fischer Hall, the acoustics being superb, I went to
the lip of the stage and sang "Days of '49" without a microphone to
begin my set. Actually this was a mistake, since the "sweet spot" of
that stage is eight feet further back, where the acoustic dome allows
easy projection to the last seat.
Got at it early and wrote a song this morning: Adam & Eve. Came with
relative ease, all of a piece, not a word wanting changing. Oughta start
working up the mandolin in case there's a Christmas party this year.
Sandy, Nelson. Brian Godchaux and I like to get "The Once a Year Boys"
together & play bluegrass at it. Got an exquisite letter from Sandy the
other day, where he speaks of Bill Monroe's funeral.
After writing the tune, I lazed away the rest of the day, not feeling so
hot. Sinus bug.
November 22, 1984 9pm Thanksgiving-Philadelphia- JG/JK acoustic tour.
Sitting at the Warwick listening to radio jazz on WRTI and writing vague
poetry in a spiral book. Have been going through a crisis w/o turmoil.
Values stuff. Reading about Nazi tactics, in Thomas Mann's & in
Goebbell's diaries, I suddenly wonder about TV network writing.The
Guild. The very stringent content and treatment rules of the Ministery
of informaton involved in the airwave monopoly. I guess I must
infiltrate, problem is: what do I become? Entertainment... damn, damn,
damn.
I've seen a lot of people sitting on subway steam vents for heat lately.
Paid for an old black man's coffee and gave him a fiver. "I love you" he
called down the street over the lights of two squad cars.
I'm desperate to regain my spiritual bearings. Otherwise nothin don't
mean nothin.
"So What?" from Miles Davis' "Kind of Blue" album begins to play. Minor
7th feel on the piano. Bass enters, then Miles in 2 note section part
with piano. Then foggy solo. Miles speaks clearly of individuality,
arrogance. Do the two always go hand in hand? To do something of great
individuality would have to make you proud, and an accumulation of such
pride is arrogance. Arrogance seems blind to virtues in others, or at
least unmindful. The saxophone enters.
Last night the hotel fire alarm went off at 3:30 a.m. Woman in bare feet
in lobby asked me for a cigarette. Sleepy people in bathrobes in the
cosmopolitan foyer. False alarm. Slept until 3:30 p.m. thinking we'd
ride the bus to Norfolk today, but no. Hotel there full. Nice Utrillo
prints on the wall.
Watched "Raiders of the Lost Ark" on TV and found myself hating the Nazi
characters with surprising intensity. Discharge from my current reading.
It's not enough to know they were bad ... in what WAYS were they evil?
How did it function and what did it presuppose?
TV evening, switching around catching interesting bits of "Alfred
Hitchcock Presents" & "Not the 9 O'clock News" - something with Sophia
Loren & John Wayne ... out for a burger and coffee at the all-night
across the street. Coffee to go cold now. Room cold too. Heater too
dusty to use. Set off the room's smoke alarm last night when I put a
damp towel over it, just as I connected with the hotel's long distance
operator who wanted to know what the noise was, whether she should
report it etc. - while I both tried to explain & remove the battery from
the device on the ceiling.
11/22/96
<Re '84 entry: the Grateful Dead was on the financial skids in '84 and
things were not looking like they were going to get better. No new album
for many years, JG wasn't interested in writing. This tour looked like a
money maker with no appreciable overhead, just Jerry, John & me
traveling by bus with a skeleton crew. "Touch of Grey" hadn't been
recorded yet- and I was working on scripts for "The New Twilight Zone"
figuring I'd have to make my living that way.>
Have been experiencing an unfamiliar emotion - maybe it's boredom: them
old in-between-projects searching-for-a-new-one blues. Prefer to think
of it as creative ferment. Looking at things realistically, a good idea
once or twice a year, lest you build the Watts Towers -which
incidentally I saw when I was down there during the '67 riots. A
monument to dogged perseverance, ugly as a shaved cat. They tried to
pull it down with a crane once, but it wouldn't budge. Cathedral of
Obsession, protected by the angels, in whose city it rises.
emailed Alan my opinion of a movie that wants to use full GD soundtrack.
Read the whole script before getting out of bed this morning. There were
things I liked about it, some good slapstick, but it relied on
superficial deadhead stereotyping for its story. A groaner. Boy do I
hate reading scripts. First cut is my job, ceded me by the band. A good
one called "Full Moon Rising," using half a dozen of our tunes, should
be out in awhile. I think filming is complete.
11/23
No song today. Inspiration wanes. With motivation it rages - but the
motivation must be real. I can't fool myself on that one. My muse never
did respond to fiscal need, only to the promise of adventure.
11/24 9am
Woke up this morning with a long, low feeling - thinking about how
completely I've occupied myself with the Archive over the course of the
year - how necessary doing so was to fend off the great sucking vacuum
at the physical heart of what once was and is no more, reaching out to
others who feel the winds of formless space rushing in as keenly as I,
and in so doing quelling my own anxieties by continual exertion. We made
a campfire in the desert of our mutual dilemma and discussed the wolves
lurking in the darkness, held at bay by the flames. Fuel in short supply
- mostly the remains of a huge old tree - we understood, each according
to his or her willingness to face facts, that when the trunk and
branches are consumed, we have to strike out with no clear destination.
Only now do I begin to accept the passing of our grand illusion. I've
begun the process of wandering away from the comfort of mutual
consolation, knowing a new motivating force must be found; must be
sought in the same way that led to the discovery of the former source -
wandering among the wolves, far from the usual encampments.
I've been here before often enough, though never so irrevocably. This
desolation. Accept it for what it is. Deep songs, if mournful, come out
of this place. Acknowedgement of darknes is a kind of light of its own.
11pm
Understanding more and more of what I grasped intuitively but not in any
detail. Why I have to stop the consuming round of activity. I've been
running circles in a hall of mirrors thinking I was following a straight
line and getting somewhere. But in the end, I see I've got to stop and
face off one of those mirrors. Any one will do, they all give a similar
report: a 55 year old guy who has seen better days. What I am and what I
am not. Guess I can work with that. Guess I damn well better.
11/26
Exhaustion finally hit. I was at the gigantic local hardware warehouse,
acres of tools, roof high as the moon, shovels receeding toward
vanishing points on the horizon, dumptruck loads of light bulbs awaiting
their master sockets. After a quick barrage of buying, I left Maureen
and Kate at the checkout counter and escaped, sat down on the ledge
outside the store, facing the immense parking lot over which loomed a
luminous furnace of a sky, sun glaring down. It seemed strangely like a
sky and seascape, except the waves were cars. Reality appeared
altogether stark and I felt drained of strength, not even sure I knew
how to go on living. Then Kate came out and sat on my knee and remarked
on how blue the sky was.
Warehouses, like indoor stadiums, give me acrophobia. There is something
in my psyche that cannot easily process out-of-doors dimensions in
indoor circumstances. It's not life threatening or anything, but I avoid
the new gigantic commerce centers whenever I can. If I need something in
one of them, I get it and get out. I don't shop around for the excessive
bargains. I used to get similar attacks at Club Front, a huge old
warehouse where the band rehearsed and made records. If not intensely
involved in work, which is always senior to phobia, an hour's visit was
pretty much it - then I was out the door like a shot. Usually didn't say
goodbye. Someone would remark "Well, there goes Hunter again" as I
streaked out to the street where I could breathe. I sometimes wonder if
my "spirit" doesn't feel a compulsion to extend and encompass the space
I find myself in, necessarily including all the objects in that space?
When the space is filled with merchandise it becomes doubly difficult. I
also get acrophobia in certain outdoor situations, such as large flea
markets, where I quickly lose all desire to buy, become irritible and
decidedly anxious to leave. Same with carnivals and fairs, to the
disgust of my daughter. I found the rock festivals of the 70's difficult
to assimilate and stopped going to them after the first few. On the
other hand, I dig wide open spaces with only nature to assimilate. And
internal vistas may be as wide as vast they please.
November 27, 1984 5:15 pm (Rochester NY, end of JG segment of my 3 week
tour)
In a funk. Tomorrow I pick up a rental car and begin driving myself.
Maybe that's the reason for my depression. 2 weeks w/o a real
communication with JG - so the humanitarian side of this venture is a
total failure. He goes in his compartment at one end of the bus journey
and stays there till the destination. At least I've seen with my own
eyes what has been told me.
There is no cry for help here - just a powerful individual doing what he
damn well pleases.The loyalties he commands are staggering. He is, of
course, more than a person - he's an industry. Played Bushnell
auditorium in Hartford last night.
11/27/96 6 pm
Re '84 entry: My view is that such information is no longer in the realm
of secrets. Addiction is a disease. That disease has affected us all,
robbing us of a great soul and a superb musician, whether his death was
directly attributable to the drug or not. I lost a collaborator and a
once close friend. I went on the tour with misgivings, persuaded by many
who thought I might be the only one able to get through to Jerry. I
wasn't so optimistic. Phil called the morning I left and wished me
"Godspeed" in the mission. Another reason I print it is because there's
a perception we didn't do what we were able to do to help. We did what
we could.
Just gathered my email - haven't read it yet - and noticed one labeled
"DNC emergency!" Wonder what that could be? Exactly how do you have an
"emergency" on the internet? Thought I'd open my journal here instead -
ponder on the concept for a moment and then have dinner (I hear plates
rattling in the kitchen) before subjecting my psyche to whatever in the
world this could be. Are life and limb in danger? Has someone hacked
into the site and replaced it with Yahoo or kitty porn? Is it some kind
of ultimate setup I can't refuse to engage? Oops - just got called for
dinner.
OK, I've eaten. Now let's see what this is about.
Ah! Seems I'd inadvertantly given everybody permission to go into the
access list via the Webmaster's Log, which would have allowed, were
anyone so inclined, such fun actions as deleting all the current
registered participants! I think I could trust everybody far enough not
to do such a thing -fact is, it's been open since this morning when I
was trying to figure out how to render my log "read only" without losing
my own ability to edit my missives. OK, I've fixed it, but for a moment
I thought: why the hell not leave it open? Now that would be a truly
democratic page! Like giving all citizens access to the "red button"
supposedly in the White House. Is that an urban legend?
11/28
Spent the evening typing up bits of old diaries. Odd going back and
seeing how little one changes in essentials. There are lifetime
problems. A lot of mine are connected with being primarily a writer in a
musician oriented context. Oil and vinegar. Put them in a cruet and
shake, they mix somewhat, but let it rest and they separate back out.
Strange, and not so strange, how deciding to go online has affected my
life. In doing this journal, I've made myself excessively vulnerable,
something I only feel when my energy dwindles. There are moments when I
get a claustrophobic feeling about it all - or is it more akin to the
acrophobia I was speaking of yesterday? I have to keep telling myself
that a writer's guts are all he has to give, and if all he shows is a
little skin he isn't doing much of a job. I hope it's not just a flair
for exhibitionism that sets me to speaking beyond the limits of
conservative caution at times. To my own mind I'm trying to say
something that matters. In the end, I have only myself to answer to,
and, although the opinions of others can give pleasure and pain (as with
my songs) the job specifications are primarily concerned with being
trying to speak true and accepting the consequences. Is what I say the
truth? I can't say much on that score beyond "it's my opinion." The
territory isn't really charted. There's a feeling of adventure to it, of
an opportunity recognized, grasped, and pursued, which gives form to the
chaos of contradictions I've lived through - and continue to involve
myself in. Will I continue to report in this fashion? Probably, so long
as I feel I'm growing in understanding. I have a hunch that delusion is
not the direction of growth. I'm not proposing stark existentialism as
an alternative, by any means. I think we enter the field from various
points of illusion, hoping to find something more palpable. Hopefully
we're more concerned with "what's real" than the search for comfortable
diversion. The way I see it, we're on a fozen lake and we hear the sound
of ice cracking. Which way to the shore?
November 29, 1984 4:10 pm (Northampton Mass) post JG, solo segment of my
tour.
Safely tucked away in room 262 of the Northampton Hotel after a somewhat
gloomy 7 hr drive yesterday. Stayed up late writing.
Now that I need no longer accomodate it psychologically, the full
outrage of the last week begins to settle in. The ostracism of the
"straight guy in our midst." Anxiety about the rest of the tour - not
rational, just my state of mind. Didn't realize I had a gig tonight
until I happened to walk by the Iron Horse & saw my name up. Fortunate!
How crazy I feel. Realize if the TV writing doesn't work I may end up
doing this touring ad nauseum. It demands more physical strength than I
can easily raise. Must get some exercise tomorrow. Cold & rainy today.
11/29/96
Awoke smiling today, sense of purpose renewed, realizing I have the
strength to follow through on my robust plans despite the uncertainties
of the last week. Some sort of cloud has lifted. Spent the week peering
into the abyss doubting everything. Nothing quite so bracing as a good
solid bout of Angst, after the fact! The particulars that troubled me
are resolved in my own head, leaving space for further troubles - as may
be. It's repetitive trouble that nails the lid down. New trouble is an
acceptible tariff of change, whether of health or circumstance.
I notice I alternately die and rejuvenate, get older and younger over
the course of a day, a week, a month. Sometimes years younger, sometimes
a decade older. The forties are when that phenomenon first starts
happening with regularity. In the thirties one mostly just gets older,
because there's no pressing need to get younger yet. By the time the
fifties arrive, the chops of advance and regress are, hopefully,
mastered. You look back in horror at time wasted ego tripping through
abortive relationships and nursing preposterous hatred toward
predictible barriers that stand between desire and accomplishment.
Accomplishment does sustain, despite the popular conception that it
doesn't. It is worth pursuing, if only from fear of looking back on life
and finding it empty - and realizing it's your own fault because you
actually knew better and didn't act with sufficient faith in whatever
force you acknowledge, be it reason, magic or God. Just the facts,
ma'am. Think I'll go crawl in the hot tub out in the nice bright
moonlight. Pool too cold for swimming. Gone are the days of idiot
strength and the pure joy of it. Once a lifetime is enough.
November 30, 1984 9:45 pm (Northampton layover)
Slept till after 3 again. Depression somewhat better. Intimate gig last
night at the "Iron Horse" raised my spirits. What a perfect audience! -
Quiet, mature, responsive.
Saw "Swann in Love" tonight at the Academy of Music. A beautiful
theater. "Swann" is not successful, but I enjoyed the costumes, sets and
feel of the time. I'd pictured it differently. They tried to cram too
much of the essence of Proust into an hour & 45 minutes. Not their
fault, Proust just doesn't abbreviate. Everything is contingent on
everything else. A lot of the Albertine - Marcel situation was
juxtaposed onto the Swann - Odette story. The Vinteuil Sonata was not
convincing music for the role it needs to play in the climax. Charlus
and Orianna were disappointing portrayals. Jeremy Irons would have made
a far better Marcel than a Swann.
later: Just took a long relaxing bath. Had to run the water for 15
minutes to heat the pipes.
Saw people from the show all over town. A car honked and a voice called
out "Good show last night!" as I crossed the street. A girl came up to
me before the movie started, said she'd enjoyed my show and chatted
about Northampton - people love the town. Smith College is a sheer
fantasy of ideal college existence, the dorms and buildings rich and
pleasant.
I guess this evening is the first true relaxation of the past two weeks.
Don't need to drive to NY until December 2. Walked for an hour and a
half earlier this evening - my body showed its usual signs of protest at
any exercise at all. Have been sleeping 12 hours a day. Generally to bed
at 3:30 or 4 a.m. and up around 3 to 4 p.m.
l2/1/96
Apologies to those who emailed me right before K9Luna shut down and
haven't received replies. I've still got the letters on file; also to
those who might have written since the closing of the address only to
find their letters tossed back by the mailer daemon. In "karmic"
retribution I sat down yesterday and wrote a 5 page handwritten letter
to Sandy Rothman; first time in a coon's age. Sandy and I were avid
correspondents before I decided to take on all comers & forgot how to
lick a stamp. Being a bluegrass musician, why, he just naturally doesn't
have an email address. Have been searching my pigsty of a room for his
latest letter so I can pass on a bit of it- ah, here it is - under a
pile of new song lyrics:
November 6. 1996
Dear Bob.
Now that you've become a well-known public letter-writer of sorts. or a
person of letters whose word formations now shine in darkened rooms
around the globe like tiny black highways of Sherman-Williams paint, or
the owner of a mailbox so seedy it might work better as a bird feeder,
I'd better keep this on the lighter side so that after the quaint stamp
is applied its weight won't risk crumbling the once-sturdy standard upon
which that rusting old sentry is yet balanced. How the hell have you
been?
The last message of yours I saw that mentioned me, sent here in snail
format by someone, presaged the death of Bill Monroe. A part of me knew,
at that time, that Bill was transiting out of this transitory "space"
and would probably never make it back to the farm alive, and I wanted to
go and see him, but I was discouraged by people who told me he wasn't
recognizing anybody, was registered under a false name and, who knows,
might not even know who he was. True, he never made it back to the farm.
He, his form, was taken straight to a Nashville funeral home and then to
his birthplace at Rosine, Kentucky. But at the Kentucky church funeral,
hanging with his home folks and people who were close until the end, it
was made clear that he picked and chose when to tune in and tune out,
just as he did in health - and I was regretful at not having made the
trip a month or three earlier to say goodbye.
The musical father looked at peace - finally resting now after so many
years of anguish and stony lonesomeness. As with Jerry, equally if not
more so, I had that flash of "The Old Trooper" resting at last,
struggling no more. Just before the elaborate coffin lid was closed for
the last time, a sudden inspiration came and I checked my pocket to see
if there was a flatpick in it. (For the past two years there haven't
been any, but that day there happened to be, because Steve Pottier had
given me two a few days earlier.) Literally as the funeral home people
were closing the lid, I reached in and tucked a pick between Bill's
right thumb and index finger. All around him mixed with flowers were
rows and rows of shiny new quarters, put there in memory of the quarters
he unfailingly kept and handed out to kids everywhere, in recent years.
The last remaining Monroe sibling, tiny older sister Bertha, at 88, was
frail and inconsolable the entire time. I was sitting just opposite her
at the front of the small church and could hardly bear to see her pain.
Wearing a too-hot-for-September suit from a secondhand store in
Berkeley, I got called as a last-minute pallbearer. In that "little
lonesome graveyard," the one Bill sang about, the family genius has now
joined all of his brothers (Harry, Speed, Charlie, and Birch) and other
family members (including mother Malissa, father James "Buck" Buchanan,
and uncle Pendleton) in those nonbiodegradable metal caskets beneath the
wilting heat and piercing cold of the Western Kentucky seasons.
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--------...@zoka.com----
Michael Zelner
----Oakland CA USA------------
Chris Forshay
mich...@zoka.com (Michael Z.) posted this passage from hunter's journal:
|Re: that '84 entry - found big stages curiously alienating - like
|playing in a room alone with an illusion of an audience. Real contact
|missing. At Avery Fischer Hall, the acoustics being superb, I went to
|the lip of the stage and sang "Days of '49" without a microphone to
|begin my set. Actually this was a mistake, since the "sweet spot" of
|that stage is eight feet further back, where the acoustic dome allows
|easy projection to the last seat.
hunter, if you're reading this--that was *not* a mistake. i remember it
like it was yesterday--beautiful! oh, yeah--you did it midway through your
set, not at the beginning.