Deepest Blues: Immortally Bereft

An even score of years fighting in the front line trenches of the music wars had left surprisingly few scars, even though life-ending peril was all around him - and in some instances was virtually staring him in the face. He was quick, clever, and always ahead of the brunt; the worst impacts fell to one side, or to the rear - and he would actually ride the ensuing shockwaves ever deeper into the heart of the ongoing conflict. To his way of thinking, this is what drummers did if they wanted to survive, and the notion served him well enough for many years. Then, during one of his infrequent respites from the perennial fracas, he chanced to stumble upon the very thing that had been driving him along the whole time; the very thing he hadn't known he had actually been searching for, until it popped up suddenly right in front of him.


He had found his One Love - but he didn't realize this until she told him so; such was his battle-hardened demeanor, so narrowly sharp was his focus, so single-minded the pursuit of his passion and true calling.


After that, his entire welkin had brightened. He resumed his duties on the front line with a greatly enhanced sense of purpose - suddenly, someone else knew why he was fighting, understood what he was fighting for, and best of all, they professed to Love him and the fruits of his musical labors!! The carnage, chaotic living conditions, constant worry about what the next skirmish might bring, and just a general lack of any kind of personal sense of security all warriors have to deal with suddenly seemed much less important than they had before. Love had made even the worst sacrifice or brutal hardship seem almost tolerable. Love really was what he was fighting for, and having it returned was his wildest dream come true - almost. He wafted along, buoyed by the Love they shared; the next two years passed in a state of bliss neither of them had experienced before - and in his case, would never experience again.


The first blast that finally found him was devastating enough; it came suddenly, without warning, and threatened his very existence, so powerfully damaging was the impact. It literally rocked his entire world. 


And worse still, it threatened to take away his One Love. 


Without his One Love, he was as good as dead. Although emotionally he was severely maimed by the detonation, he heroically struggled to rejoin the fight; if the wars had led him to his One Love, then he would damn well resume active duty again, and reclaim what had been taken from him. It took time and a painfully difficult effort, but he somehow finally managed to tag a small piece of another shockwave, and began to ride again with a vengence, in earnest search of what he'd lost. At odd times he thought he could hear the dim, faint echoes of his One Love, encouraging him along with the promise of Reunion; and once together, time to heal from all of the wounds - the first ones he'd ever been totally aware of, or truly felt.


Time passed, but he scarcely noticed. He was still laboring to recover from the first devastating blast nearly a year before, which had shattered his world, lacerated his mind, and nearly claimed his life before he regained a semblance of balance. Oh, there had been many other shocks and wounds since then, but such was the impact of that original concussion that its' force over-rode the constant barrage that followed. Barely registering the barrage at all, it was as if he had been killed, but somehow had refused to lay down and accept his fate. He was on a Quest for Love, and dogged determination drove him ever onward through the maelstrom - keening heart grudgingly acknowleged, shocks ignored, wounds be damned.


He understood why, of course - much as any victim of sudden catastrophic trauma understands that their body or mind is being shredded and pulped, whilst detached from actually feeling the pain. As the blows kept coming, and he kept barely feeling them, a sort of crazed acceptance began to dawn in the back of his overtaxed brain - they couldn't kill him,because he was already dead!!! He could still function almost like he had before, he could once again easily throw off the worst of the ancillary attacks, he could still feel something - and maybe, just maybe, he could find a way to recover the one thing that he had lost to that horribly vicious original impact. The one thing that he had been fighting his whole life in search of, the one thing that was Precious to him above all else - his One Love.


His ragged journey kept its' stumbling, fitful pace until the final blow caught him unawares three days into the eleventh month of that long, Hell-spawned, wretchedly nightmarish year following the original impact. As with the first detonation, he had no indication that this one was coming, and he was also unaware of the diabolically simple and unassuming form it would take. Worst of all, while the first impact shook his world in general, this blast was targeted and aimed directly at him, and him alone.


A mere ninety words, one and all of them transmitted electronically - each and every one packing a trillion times the percussive force of one of his wildest drum rhythms. In an instant, everything in his mind went suddenly blank, hollow, numb, completely quiet; the gargantuan amplifier stacks totally, shockingly silent under the incredible weight of this out-of-the-blue psychic assault. A moment of this and then he began to ponder about the message, to make sure that there was no mistake or cryptic hidden clues, to be absolutely certain that it meant exactly what it said. 






And with a gut-twistingly sick, piercingly horrible realization thudding suddenly in the very pit of his stomach, he knew that it did.






Because this message was from his One Love ~ to him, for him, because of him.






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Can the dead be killed again?


Yes..


Oh God - YES!!!


He could almost see, smell, and taste, as well as feel the screeching banshee-wail of pain that geysered explosively up and out in all directions from his savagely punctured heart. A needle-sharp, gnawingly personal pain; a terrible iciness that spread and seeped and dripped insidiously into blood and guts and marrow alike; a numbingly soul-chilling pain, the kind of pain that comes only when someone to whom you have never done any harm, to whom you have given your heart and soul, turns on you suddenly and says "Goodbye now, goodbye forever" without any rhyme or reason for doing it. No warning. No hint. No "Thanks for your blood, sweat, and tears." No remorse or regret. No "I'm so sorry." 


No rhyme or reason at all.


What had he done to warrant this? He wasn't to blame for any of the trouble that was happening, yet the final curtain was closing around him, forcing him back inside the womb; the coffin lid welded shut. He desperately wanted to fight or deny the meaning and terrible understanding that was now ferociously exploding and rupturing all over his mind, ripping and slashing and laying waste to all the fragile, tentative healing that he had strained so long and hard to initiate and encourage - but he knew he couldn't. The very core of his essence writhed and thrashed in mortal agony while the shock slowly gave way to understanding - and resignation, as those ninety simple, yet innocuously lethal words penetrated deep into his soul and destroyed him far more effectively and far more efficiently than any accident, booze, drug, blade, bullet, rope, fumes, or high-explosive ever could. All the while, in his churning and reeling mind he could hear her lovely musical voice saying to him:


 "Farewell, don't bother us, don't come back to life, the dead should remain dead and we are quite finished with you."


But why?


He had hurt no one. He had taken great pains to give their Love as much care and consideration as he possibly could. He was an emotional handful at times, Lord knows this was true, but he hadn't intentionally become so. He wasn't a thief or a liar or a letch or a murderer. He was a man, a guy with wants and needs and hopes and dreams like everybody else. He was just a drummer who had gone off to the music wars; who'd found Love, been badly hurt, and now was trying to escape from his lonely prison to feel fresh cool air on his skin, to see the fall colors and perhaps listen to the rain's promise of winter storms to come, and most of all, to breathe in the fragrance of his One Love; hear her giggle, lose himself in the liquid beauty of her eyes, and hold her in his weary, longing arms in person. That was all he truly desired. He only wanted to try to come fully back to life again. 


In one hideous moment his situation came sharply crystal-clear. His One Love wanted only to forget him. He was a heavy, guilty weight upon the conscience, so abandoning him was the only way. He was instantly and completely forsaken. His One Love was the only entity in the world who could help him, could heal him. His One Love was THE final court of appeal for him. He might rant and rave and howl against the verdict but it would do him no good whatsoever. His fate had been decided, and his doom sealed. Nothing could change this. He was completely at the mercy of his One Love - and his One Love had no mercy. For him there was no hope. He might just as well accept the fact that this really was where it all would end; his unwaveringly devout faith in their Love finally rewarded - with denial, rejection, and abject condemnation.


Every second of his life since he had awakened into that terrifyingly empty, silent, and ceaselessly excruciating abyss that was the Loss of his One Love; every moment of it he had kept his focus well centered upon the time - some day, some year, when he would break through the emptiness of that awful void. Now that void had been breached - by his One Love. She had finally broken through - and promptly denied him. Betrayed him. Renounced him. Before, even in his absolutely bleakest moments, there had been a vague hope that kept him from going completely stark raving nuts. It had prevented him from simply letting go and dying altogether; it had shined like a lighthouse beacon in the distance toward which he never stopped moving. Now that beckoning beacon was gone, blithely extinguished by his One Love - and there was nothing left. There was no reason for him to kid himself about it any longer. His One Love did not want him. Did not need him. Did not Love him. Wanted to be rid of him. Wanted to forget him. Wanted to pretend he had never even existed at all.


Darkness, desertion, loneliness, silence, horror - unending unremitting unmerciful horror - this was the promise of his life's future from now on, without one solitary ray of hope to lighten or soothe or ease the suffering and inconceivably absolute desolation of his wracked-and-ruined heart, mind, and soul. 


Pain always, and despair forever - condemned eternally. 


This was his ultimate destiny.


THIS was his wildest dream come cruelly, horribly true - all at the whim of his One Love. His most supremely primal Cry of Love - pennanced out, through his perpetual suffering, to an immune, aloof, and totally oblivious audience. Now he truly was dead while still alive, his condition terminally chronic.


Small comfort that his fighting days were finally over - because now there was nothing left to fight for. War is Hell after all, and he had been a fairly competent practitioner of the sport - but he was never to reap any reward from what he had sown for so long - either before, or after. For him who had fought the good fight so long, so well, and so honorably - while hurting nobody, the unspeakably ghastly truth delivered by those words and reiterated by the musical, lilting memory-voice of his One and only Love pronounced final sentence over and over and over in his anguished mind, and would remain the sole soundtrack to accompany the rest of his spirit-crushing, inescapably barren and love-starved existence for all Eternity: 


"Goodnight, farewell, please stay where you are, don't give us any trouble. You are beyond life, you are beyond death, you are beyond notice, you are even beyond hope. You are lost, you are beyond the beyond forever. 


You are a dead tree-branch, Luv.


D - e - a - d. 


Dead.


Goodnight ~ and Goodbye, Dear Boy. ~x~"








© 9/17/2006, renewed 9/17/2011, BC Enterprises. All Rights Reserved.

Bell Bottom Blues: The Thrill Is Gone {A Tribute to BB King}

Here's my ultimate e-card, made for one of the all-time greats. Y'all can share in the fun too, simply by viewing and sharing this video as many times as possible.

More shortly.....................

Ten Years After..........

An instant in history that literally shook the world.

Just like 12/7/41, or 11/22/63, practically everybody over the age of fifteen remembers exactly where they were, and what they were doing on 9/11/2001, when the USA suffered three horrible terrorist attacks within the space of four hours.  The attacks on the World Trade Center were the most successful; the Pentagon only partially, and the third - presumably intended to target the White House - was ultimately thwarted and failed {fatally} over southwestern Pennsylvania.  Nearly three thousand people were killed in the attacks, with tens of thousands of other lives affected by the "collateral damage."

Like most of us in this country, and around the world, I was absolutely gobsmacked by the naked horror that unfolded right before my eyes on live TV.  I had just got home from work, when my then-wife called me into the bedroom.  I walked in one minute before United Flight 175 struck the south Tower.  Immediately afterwards, we both looked at each other and said in unison "Is this some kind of bad movie plot?"  We were in stunned disbelief for the next hour - until the tragic collapse of first the south, then the north Tower shocked us back into grim reality.  We spent the rest of the day glued to the news, gradually learning of the other attacks, the scrambling of our government and military, and the security clampdowns nation {and later world} - wide.

That long, nightmarishly awful day was culminated near dusk.  I was out in the back yard with our three dogs, letting them do their nightly business before we settled in for the evening.  It was dead quiet; no air traffic to speak of, not even the usual sounds from the highway a couple miles down the road from us.  All of a sudden, a complete wing of Stealth bombers and fighters {there were at least a dozen planes, all told} literally materialized right over our heads, on their way north to patrol the East Coast before embarking on their first run over Afghanistan.  They flew tight and low - roughly 600-750 feet altitude - and freaked the living daylights out of both the dogs, and myself.

Thus began our War on Terror, less than twelve hours after the Twin Towers had fallen.

In the decade since the 9/11 Attacks, the whole world has changed, and not necessarily for the better.  The WOT has become bitterly ensnared by politics of the very worst sort.  Save for the first eighteen months, it has not been properly conducted at all.  Hussein and Bin Laden might both be dead, yes, but both could have - and more importantly, should have - been taken out within the first year of our involvement.  Politics, and politics alone are what kept both alive longer than necessary; and politics are what's prolonging the WOT, and blurring the objectives for success and conclusion.  

Hell, politics brought about the attacks in the first place.  It doesn't matter who you believe was "really" behind the Attacks - whether Al Qaeda, our own Government, the "black helicopter cult," the Osmonds, or whoever - the victims are still just as dead, and the damage is still just as deep and widespread as it always was.  At this late date, who gives a monkey's about who "really" did it?  Isn't our world troubled enough by the general fallout from that hideous Monday, without having a scapegoat to blame?  Those who still shout "Conspiracy!" and "I'm a 9/11 Truther!" at every opportunity only earn mild scorn and derision from me, these days; I guess every generation needs would-be Don Quixotes, if only for comic relief.  Our 9/11 Dead will still be dead, and the damage will still be done, no matter what may or may not be proven in the future.

Ten years is however, more than ample time for some healing to happen, which it has.  The Ground Zero site of the worst of the Attacks in New York is about 65% reconstituted, at the time of this writing.  The Freedom Tower, when finished, will be a fitting crown jewel in the completed site, and also a rather fitting finger in the eye of those who wish us ill {or worse}.  Likewise, the amphibious transport USS New York - constructed with steel salvaged from the Twin Towers - serves as an active reminder to the world that We Will Never Forget, nor will we be Broken by Cowards.

Yes, an awful lot has changed since that bright, clear, cool early-fall day a decade ago, when Death rained from the skies without warning.  I shall never be the same - nor will I ever, ever Forget.  May God Bless and Keep all those who perished on that day, or because of that day.  And may He also have Mercy on the rest of us, as well.

9/11.  Let's roll.............

The Winds of Change

There most definitely is an extra little snap in the air these days; and not all of it is weather-related, either.

Since I'm about 550 miles north of my old stomping grounds, I'm adapting to the more immediate presence of cooler {Canadian} air masses - we could very well have SNOW on the ground within 3 weeks, here.  A bit jarring, considering a lot of other parts of the country are still baking in triple-digit heat {as we were this past week}, but all the indicators are in place, nonetheless.  I'm ready for it - cold weather always triggers some good creativity, and this time I'm actually a bit ahead in the game, as I'll explain.

As has been hinted here already, I've got a few creative projects in the can, ready to go.  This will be my first concentrated burst since 2008, and things will kick off this Sunday with a special 9/11 blog.  The latter part of next week will see the bulk of the material come out in quick succession; there will be a little something for everyone to enjoy {hopefully} before all is said and done.  Being able to do something like this once again is a sort of personal triumph; the Rise after the Fall, if you will.

2011 so far has been a real learning experience, and hopefully my "education" will bear fruit in the very near future.  Looking back to the days immediately pre-Malaise, I've often wondered if I'd ever get back to that level of activity, or general frame-of-mind.  The level of activity is indeed possible; the frame of mind simply isn't.  I'm not the same man I was back then, by any stretch of the imagination.  Older and wiser, yes - but also a great deal more cynical, and wary {or world-weary, take your pick}.  I still have the same likes, loves, and passions, but I'm beginning to see the wisdom in looking after ones' own personal well-being  first, last, and foremost.

The next several weeks and months here will reflect all this, and likely a lot more, so be ready for just about anything at any time, Boys and Girls.  There may well be Great Joy and Happiness down the road apace - but I'll have to get there when I get there.  I'm too tired and scarred to plunge ahead in my old "foxhound on two scents at once" manner.  Oh, I'll keep moving forwards, don't worry.  I'm just not going to kill myself on the journey, for once.  I owe myself a little respect, and now's the time to take advantage of it.

In the interim, just lay back and groove, Fellow Babies.  If nothing else, the seasonal Winds of Change will be blowing for you all too, soon.  The Holidays are looming as well,  proving that Time indeed Waits for No Man - not even a Slowly Reviving Drummer.  


Lots more to follow, Shortly.