Porcupine · Burrito

So, I stopped at the library to see if I could use a computer for free - FAT CHANCE - all occupied, mostly by guys with waist-length hair who look like they haven't ever left their seats. Stopped at Quizno's for a submarine sandwich, then Kinko's to find out how much they charge to use a computer. $12.00 an hour! No way.

Stopped at the post office, & got the new Tom Paxton CD in the mail. Also got a flyer from Starfest - the guest list this year looks pretty cool, but it's SO commercial - you have to buy tickets to get stuff autographed - still, Syler, Jayne and Ms. Visitor from Star Trek.

Last stop - grocery store - spent $12 on 15 gallons of distilled water, so in an emergency I can use the can.

Sunday evening I was sort of hanging around the hotel lobby looking for people to go to dinner with, and ended being invited to Kelsey's with Norma McPhee & her friend (I am SO bad with names) - I enjoyed the company, but the food was not the greatest - the steak I ordered medium was more in the charred-beyond-recognition range. I'm one who doesn't send food back in restaurants, but I enjoy complaining about it later.

Arrived back early for the Dead Penguin and the door was still locked. Entertained some in the hallway with my strumstick - I did ask if anyone else in the hallway wanted a turn, but all seemed to want to wait for proper seating.

The D.P. was outstanding. I played, so far as I can recollect, 3 songs, and probably listened to about 30 or more. For the most part, I enjoyed the listening as much as the performing, which, in my book, makes it worthwhile to spend the extra night in the hotel. The three songs I played were "The Boy Who Once Knew Puff," "You Get a Catapult, I'll Get a Cat" (backed by my "G" strumstick capo'd to "C") and, finally, "I Am the Carpenter," which I wanted Vixy to hear because she has also set "The Walrus and the Carpenter" to music. The response from Vixy was one of my better moments of the con. I'll just be modest and say I think she liked it.

But the high point of the evening was just before I had to go off to sleep - Marilyn Miller performed my other Puff song (the title escapes me, but in my mind I call it Puff the Magic Vampire) not having any idea that I wrote it or that I was in the room. And a splendid job she did with it, too. When I sing it, I usually see people nodding off - so, good to know song OK, my performance not so much. I also noticed the audience reacting to some predictable lines and jokes in it that I hadn't realized were so predictable - but the trick ending (Puff the Vampire bites Jackie, they're both immortal, and the last line is "Dragons live forever, and so do little boys."

A few years back I went to hear Peter Yarrow in Boulder. He mostly babbled about spirituality for about 4 hours, and sang perhaps 2 songs. He talked quite a bit about the deep spiritual nature of "Puff the Magic Dragon," which he co-wrote with Leonard Lipton in 1963. Yes, a children's song about aging and death could be seen that way I suppose, but why bother being so defensive when 90% of the listeners back then KNEW it was a drug songs. And who can say for certain that drugs can't be spiritual - I mean, for gosh sakes, look at the work of Carlos Castaneda. To me, vampirism is one of the more interesting concepts that has grown out of primitive spirituality and folklore (which are, I often argue, one and the same) - the entire idea that if one obtains immortality through "improper" channels there must be such dire consequences - how QUAINT!

Anyhow, I had a very strong negative reaction to Peter Yarrow's lecture, and perhaps got a smidgen of how I was feeling into that song, but to be very honest, that song has always disappointed me somehow. It could have been so much better, but I could never put a finger on it. The second Puff song (The Boy Who Once Knew Puff) is essentially an attempt to do what I was trying to do with the first one, and if it sets anyone off by perpetuating the alternate theory that Puff really IS a drug song, well, yeah, that's what I was going for.

Perhaps I'll get back to this later and write about the rest of the con, but I am just SO tired right now.

"No, that's not it."

"The gold in Fort Knox?"

"No."

"I was stumped, and sat there in silence.

"The most valuable thing in the world," said Charlie, "is a friend."

Now that I am 52, I have many friends, some of them still here, others gone. It is important to me to keep my connections, both to the present and to the past, and while I am still materialistic to a degree, the way I look at the objects I keep around me has changed. I have a collection of autographed books and records, and, for me, those autographs help me to hang on to my connection to that person and their work, however small that link might be. Just the memory, for example, of standing in line with hundreds of avid fans to get blues superstar Taj Mahal's autograph on a CD, and his taking a moment to shake my hand, means a great deal to me.

There is one connection, however, that stands out in my mind. In 1968, when we returned to Denver, my mother arranged for me to take guitar lessons at the Denver Folklore Center, and, as it turns out, that is the most wonderful thing that anyone has done for me, ever, and I can't even imagine my life without the music I found there. In later years I often shared music with my mother, bringing her to concerts at Swallow Hill, or playing CDs in the car. She especially enjoyed Hawaiian music, probably because of all the trips she took to Hawaii with my father, and how the music helped her remember those good times.

My guitar teacher took a 13-year-old wannabe rock 'n' roller Beatles fan, and introduced me to the music of black Americans whose music rock 'n' roll was based on. I learned guitar pieces by Elizabeth Cotten, Reverend Gary Davis, and most important of all, Mississippi John Hurt. John's records taught an entire generation of guitar players how to play, and I am one of them. I spent hour after hour listing to my one John Hurt record and trying to figure out how he made that guitar sound so great.

John's career in music was brief. He recorded a few tracks in 1928, and disappeared. One song he wrote, "Avalon, My Home Town," helped some young blues fans who were looking for him to find him in the small rural town of Avalon, Mississippi in 1963, and he suddenly became a recording artist, a star on the New York club scene, and a favorite of the Newport Folk Festival. He died 3 years later, but his music will never be forgotten.

Harry Tuft, who still owns and operates the Denver Folklore Center, once let me play a guitar that belonged to Mississippi John Hurt, and the connection I felt to John while playing it was, for me, perhaps the most deeply spiritual moment I have ever experienced.

Dick Waterman, a noted music photographer, and John Hurt's manager, wrote this in the liner notes of the John Hurt tribute CD:

"One of the last times I had with John was at the Cafe Lena in Saratoga Springs, New York. As we were packing up the guitar after the show, a young man came into the dressing room. 'John,' he said, 'When will I see you again?' John laid a towel over the guitar and then closed the lid of the case. He turned and spoke slowly, 'Well now, you can see me any time you want.'

The young man was puzzled by the response. 'I mean, when are you coming back here?'

John smiled and shook his head. 'You'll have to talk to Dick about that. But, you know, I don't have to come back here for you to be seeing me again.'

The room was quiet while the young man and I waited for John to explain. He touched his chest with the fingers of his right hand. 'Now that I met you, I took you to be my friend and I brought you down here into my heart. And if you take me to be your friend, then I'll be right down there in your heart. So any time you want me to be with you, all you have to do is think about me, and I'll just come right up out of your heart and I'll be there with you. That's the way it is with friends. They live forever in your heart. Any time you want me to be with you, you just think about Mississippi John Hurt, and I'll come right up out of your heart and I'll be with you forever.' "