Shrieks of Paradise, Correspondence&Rails#46, Dear Tau

The Office of Jim Trainer
709 Rio Grande St
Bro Country, TX

Nick Fruean
Hostile City, USA
9/1/17, 6:21PM

Greetings from the Pearl of the South-

That’s what Billy Milano calls it.  He’s the doorman at my corner bar. Up the street from this mansion and loony bin I’m flying from in a couple weeks.  Billy’s second band, S.O.D., recorded the theme for Headbanger’s Ball.  His bandmates went on to play as Anthrax and Billy formed M.O.D.  He’s a good guy, a Trump supporter but the only bit of east coast I can rely on down here in the Velvet Rut.  As much as Philly’s got attitude these people are bitchy and noncommittal, which is infuriating because, as you know, if you are consistently noncommittal then you are actually quite committal, if only to your flip-flop wearing jerkoff self. I’ve just downed a fucking flagon of strawberry lemonade water ice, from Jim-Jim’s.  It’s late and I stink. I need to shower and head out to the Vortex Theatre. Ebony Stewart is putting on another one woman show and she’s not to be missed.

I must admit, being 42 and after the same dream is not really so strange.  I mean, it feels like I’ve been asleep for the last 5 years, shows and books notwithstanding.  To be after the same dream makes the most sense, if in a seemingly immature and slipshod way. Point is if I were after a 9 to 5 now, after all these years, that would be the strangest thing, and sad.  But if I can get up there, under the hot lights, at least 15 times a month then I will survive and best be biding my time behind a desk before showtime, grinding it out on an iPad or punching the keys of a fire engine red IBM Selectric II.  Our work will save us. Maybe it wasn’t meant to, but you either hang yourself or you hang it on the wall. Friday is Letter Day. I write 2 letters every Friday and it should keep me from playing with myself on my designer couch in the high rooms, or listening to the Broad Street Breakdown on YouTube until dark.  My depression probably still rules this roost and I’d do wise to keep on top of my bad blues.  It’s an exaggeration to say that no one checks on me, but I can go days and will do so gladly, in sloth and solitude.  I have friends. Good ones. But hardly any homeboys and romance is a joke. You learn about yourself. Ideally you master yourself and you cross the seas of loneliness.  What would be the point of ever going back? High and heady, I know. Nietzsche faire. I’m sure I’m due. I could love someone and maybe even start a band, but–not here.  I’ve got some things to attend to and they say the 3rd year of sobriety is a real doozy—if not fireworks then a white knuckled look at all the fucked up reasons you drank to begin with.  Like swimming in a can of worms ain’t it though. Shit.

The sun is setting in Austin.  It’s really quite beautiful I guess.  I’m after the same things I’ve always been after and afraid to ask why.  I’m hoping that won’t matter much in these paling years and the spell I cast during the Eclipse will come home to roost—I’ll be on the road or getting there, putting the hours in and getting it down.  Like Richard Hell. The work becomes the road and the inner life rolls out. We clip our own wings but can always find a high place to fall from. That’s what Art is, speaking of Papa Friedrich, Bound heart, free soul.  That man knew some things.  He watched Rome fall in his mind and the Third Reich rise in his town.  If that doesn’t make you a poet then you deserve whatever you get.

We will live to see stranger things than our own mortality.  Be well. Don’t forget the struggle, don’t forget the streets…and always create.

Yr Brother,
James