Swindle Shack Singalong, Chapter 3: Encouragement

 

c. 2025 Rod Ice

All rights reserved

(8-25)

 

The Old Drunken Buzzards had struck a nerve with their Facebook contest. For the first time in many years, I had music playing in my head, throughout the day. Random riffs and tunes that were floating in the ether. Yet I had no outlet for these ideas. I spent mornings at my desk in rural Ohio, tapping out lines of verse in a quest for self-awareness, and purpose. As during yonder times, while spinning vinyl relics on our Sears & Roebuck, Silvertone hi-fi, I petitioned the music gods for benevolence.

 

Members of our family had long insisted that I wasted all of my talent. But I knew better. The pilot light burning inside of me was not a flickering glow of futility. It represented a meaningful connection, sired at birth. One with heroes of old, who labored in the fields and then spoke about their joys and sorrows over strums of acoustic guitar, or vocalized harmonies. In their stead, I had crawled from the womb with foot stomps, plucked plectrum strings, and mountain magic tickling my ears. That made the difference. Otherwise, I might have followed my father’s path into preaching the gospel of Christ. Or charted a course into gainful employment at some faceless, commercial firm.

 

My failure was also a foundation for success.

 

While financial rewards were fleeting and few, I filled my notebooks with a bounty of scribbled, gold nuggets. Page after page of creative notes that I hoped might someday serve to bolster the artistic continuum.

 

Now, I had that vibe echoing in my skull, once again, thanks to the rowdy bunch in Seattle. With their video offerings in mind, I returned to my cause with gusto. What followed was a personal renaissance that I needed, badly. As before, my heart and mind lay open before the world. I was once again able to speak freely, in verse. An achievement long lost amid the cares and pitfalls of everyday living.

 

Alone

 

“Fifteen years alone

A feat most certainly unintended

Life choices gone astray

For an aging fool, rarely befriended

Stiff and slow on the move

Stooped and stumbling throughout the day

My pace matches the need

Surrounded by what has gone away

Gone away

 

A single, solitary man

Once tunefully celebrated in song

A keeper of random hours

A schedule shot from dusk to dawn

If I take my chair

And compose a sonnet, sans the sunshine

It is for the good I work

Neil Diamond’s yield is fully mine

Fully mine

 

Some view this path I take

And pity what they see in the light

But I have no sorrow over fate

I am glad to labor in the night

Cares and causes take effect

I move in silence to the next

Pages flipped with deliberate force

To keep all my woes in check

Woes in check

 

How odd it is to recall

That once I did my best to schlub

A face that shined with hope

I wanted membership in the club

Yet now the truth is seen

I do not care for that affection

I’ll gladly steal the shadows

And use those shades for my protection

My protection

 

I went a week or more

Without any contact being made

No other human soul

Pierced the bubble to invade

That brief span of liberation

Thrilled me with an empty pause

I felt as if a gift had landed

Falling from the sleigh of Santa Claus

Santa Claus

 

Sympathy would turn me weak

So with deaf ears, I beheld the protest

Of well-meaning minds

That sought to ease the loneliness

But in the hour of midnight

When a moonburned sky peeks through my glass

I give thanks for emptiness

Give thanks for getting a pass

Getting a pass

 

Ginsberg and Kerouac

Speak to me when the clock ticks down

I hear their verses echo

From closet crypts to my shantytown

If I would be so bold

To swing my quill in a deliberate act

I hope to be forgiven

For the talent that I lack

Talent that I lack

 

The embrace of self is proper

When no other heart exists

To contemplate the orbit

Of a purposed, planetary riff

A time to ponder circumstances

A time to ease myself into the naught

A time to feast upon

The guilt that a sinner wrought

Guilt that a sinner wrought

 

Maybe this task, undertaken

Means less that I might have desired

Yet the bottom line goes reeling

It Is a reason to conspire

If I might turn some heads

By going too long without quoting Voltaire

Neglect will shield those mistakes

And keep me gladly unaware

Gladly unaware

 

Kick the metaphor into shape

Lingering too long on the tongue

If effort must drive the seeker

Then I will be the prodigal son

Off schedule, and far behind

Was my tardy dance a surprise?

I’ll bow my head as a penance

And deferentially close my eyes

Close my eyes

 

Fifteen years spent alone

A feat never before celebrated

Life choices gone in smoke

For an aging fool, gangly gaited

Stiff and slow with breaths that come

Noisily, throughout the day

My pace matches the bent

Of a creator’s direction in chalk, erased

Chalk erased...”

 

Instead of sending romantic messages to Kookshow Baby, at her trailer in the DuFoe compound, I copied these impulsive bursts of imagination, and pasted them into rambling reports, shared in a spirit of kinship. I guessed that she would understand this need for self-expression. Her own journey had been one so unique and gritty, that I felt we were bonded in spirit. Many weeks passed without a reply, however. I engaged in overthinking about this absence, to the point of anguish from pondering her silence. It made me edgy and emotionally brittle. Yet this steady stream of new material continued to flow.

 

I was grateful to be metaphorically ‘back in the saddle.’ Indeed, I had never really wanted to be anywhere else. Except perhaps, at the abandoned drive-in, with my radio queen. Star-struck, in southern California.