Rain

It’s dark and grey and rainy and melancholy. I can feel my life passing by in small episodes of memory. What is it about rainy days that makes you think about the passage of time, about other rainy days? About where those people are now, what happened to those places? Why on earth was I doing that, why did I spend so much time in jobs I hated? Why was it so important to do what everyone expected of me all the time? Why didn’t I just pick up and move somewhere where things were happening, where I could have been a part of something? You do the best you can at the time, but days like this make you question everything, make you recognize the fleetingness and the loss and the ethereal nature of life itself. I hear the voices of people who are gone; I feel the presence of ghosts.

The wind blows and the rain falls and I am 8 years old staring through the screen door and listening to the thunder. I am inside I will be all right it is only thunder. But there is that knawing melancholy fear and sadness. As though every time it rains something dies.

The smell of the rain on cement reminds me of all the people I’ve worked with, all the boring ass jobs and wasted time in drafty, sterile office buildings and people I’ll never see again whose names I’ve forgotten who I once saw every day, who once were so important to my daily life. How easy it is to just walk out the door one day and never come back, to forget everyone and everything so completely.

The smell of the rain on grass reminds me of blissful hours spent on horseback, in barns caring for those beautiful, graceful animals who love you back without question, who were often my only friends. The sound of utter contentment at feeding time, of large jaws and teeth munching oats and hay, the snorting and stamping and slurping. The sound of birds chirping, wet hay and wet animals and solitude and peace. Animals don’t care who you are or what you look like or who your friends are or what you do for a living; they trust you totally, they are grateful for the simple things in life like when you show up to feed them, brush and groom them, keep them warm and happy and fed.

The cold rain falls and it is New York and I am 12 years old and my dad is flat on his back in a hospital bed and he has been there for a year and he may be there for another year. No one at school, none of my so-called friends understands this; I have given up trying to explain it to them. About the therapy, the rehab; about the endless illnesses and recoveries; about the depression and the rage and the dirty, corrupt scary New York City of the early ‘70s. About the terror of knowing and not knowing what will happen next; how your whole life changes in an instant. It takes me a long time to get over this memory/vision of Manhattan. For many years, it is a place of darkness and filth and fear.

The rain falls and it washes everything away, and the smell of the salt air wafts toward me and cleanses my lungs. All the weight and the sins of the past are meaningless; the smell of the sea reminds me that we are mere specks in the vast universe, that it is all transient, that the big important monumental things in life that we think will destroy us, that are irreparable and destructive and dangerous are just the blinks of an eye. The sea has been here before us; it will be here when we are gone. What are the cares of today beside the wind and the sea and the waves?

The rain and the grey and the melancholy linger. It drips from the rafters, it blows against the window as if to remind me that there is not much separating me from the dampness and the penetrating cold. It is easy to be jolly when the sun shines. Is there true happiness when it rains, or only the absence of sadness?

Don't Get Sentimental On Me

I know you’re tired, I’m tired too
Loosen up, sing me a song and I’ll dance
Cause I don’t move, or get moved too easily
Take me home, just don’t get sentimental on me
Cause the wind, the wind, the wind
is carrying us down the darkness of Broadway
And it’s fine, it’s okay: here tomorrow, gone today
Take me home, just don’t get sentimental on me

I know you’re fine,
I followed all the lines on the dress
You know, yours the lover bought you
And these drinks turn into maps of places we will never go but once
So don’t get sentimental on me
Cause the wind, the wind, the wind
is carrying us down the darkness of Broadway
And it's fine, it’s okay: here tomorrow, gone today.
Take me home just don’t get sentimental on me
Take me home, take me home
Just don’t get sentimental on me

(c)2006 by Mr. David Ryan Adams

(In)security

It's amazing what security (or the lack thereof) can do to some people. Apparently there are people who are so incredibly threatened by me that they will go out of their way to shut me out; to be mean and hurtful and spiteful, to verbally harass and threaten me with no discernable provocation (and believe me, I am great at provoking people, and well aware of when I am doing it). I find that interesting because I am not really in a position to do anything to anybody; I have a shit job, no money and most times am just barely able to keep it together. I have very little power in this world to do anything to anybody. And yet around some people, I command great armies. Good Queen Bess I am not, but there are those who will have me beheaded just the same...

How Can A Poor Man Have Such Fans and Live?

Thanks, no really--thanks!

To all of my so-called friends who couldn't be bothered to pick up the phone yesterday and tell me what was going on at Convention Hall with the GA line. And who rubbed it in my face that they were in "The Pit and I wasn't. Thanks, guys. You're real pals. Remind me to call you when I find out some info or have a tip that might help you. NOT.

It never fails to amaze me how self-centered and shallow Springsteen fans are. He is one of the coolest, most intelligent and talented individuals making music today. With some of the biggest assholes on the planet for fans. Narrow-minded, greedy, self-important, arrogant, sexist, racist...you get the picture. How do they just totally not get it? Not get what he's about, what his music's about, what it can teach you about tolerance and fairness and justice? How can you go to a show and listen to "We Shall Overcome" and all the while push and shove each other like animals? How can you not get how incredibly priveleged you are to be able to afford hundred dollar tickets to anything, and instead whine, complain and make other people feel small about something so insignificant in the grand scheme of things as where you stand at a Springsteen show?

Wow. Unbelievable, right? But then again, we all live in a country where people are arrogant enough to believe that they somehow deserve the natural beauty and wide open spaces, the vast wealth and economic privilege that they have been handed. Who are just now waking up to the Bush Administration's unbelievable corruption and complete incompetence. DUH. So why would I expect them to understand anything with any degree of sophistication? Read a book? Can't even be bothered to read the crap that passes for newspapers. I don't need to know anything. I'm American, everything will be taken care of for me. I can do no wrong, the world loves me. So....

I'm moving. Somewhere. Anywhere but here in the US. Because when the bill comes due for the Bush II years, it will not be pretty. Springsteen will retire to warmer climes. Maybe we'll sit on the beach together in Baja sipping Tequila and laughing about America's Glory Days...