Bruce Bauman - Broken Sleep

“I tolt ya, I’m noncommittin’.”

“Nathaniel, he’s not even old enough to vote.”

“Am so. Am eighteen now.”

“Hang on, guys.” Alchemy decides to change the course of the conversation and disappears from the kitchen. He reappears with a book and starts reading:

“Let’s get the stones a throwing and the bombs a bursting and punch some holes in the souls of the monsters running the Military Industrial Oedipus Complex. It’s no time to lay back, because if you do, you’re going to GET FUCKED instead of getting laid. It’s time to turn off the tube, turn on your heart, and change the world. Let them eat fire and burn!”

“Alchemy, stop.”

He closed the book and laid it on the kitchen counter. “I’m still waiting for the return of Bohemian Scofflaw. Or, at least, your memoir.”

“You’ll have to keep waiting. The powers that bemoan the death of literacy do not care one whit what a dinosaur like me has to say.” Brockton hangs his head and reminds me of Larry Bird when he was washed up and couldn’t play no more. “I sent out the memoir to some agents at Distinguished Writers International who once represented me. The top agent of DWI called me all excited. They wanted salacious gossip. Not my thing. The self-indulgence trip leads to degradation and gracelessness.” (In that regard nothing’s changed in the thirty years since ’92, ’cause they ask for plenty of gossip in this particular masterpiece. Only I got less scruples than Brockton.)

“Nathaniel, you think that’s true of Rousseau, Nabokov, or even Fitzgerald in The Crack-Up ? They wrote great memoirs.”

“It was a different time and I am not them. I can’t read The Crack-Up —it’s both pathetic and bathetic.” He runs his hands through his hair and ties it up into a ratty ponytail with a rubber band. “I’m a guy who, almost by mistake, wrote a book that caught the zeitgeist. Guys like James Simon Kunen or George Jackson, we’re not true writers. I’ll keep working the front lines. I’m going back to Sarajevo during the Christmas break, but as a writer, I’m done.”

Alchemy gulps his drink and sits down next to him. “I can’t believe I’m hearing this defeatist line from you. You always insisted that the personal is political.”

“I said that all politics is personal. But all that is personal is not political. Your personal life can make you political, but that doesn’t mean it has any meaning to anyone. It has meaning in our life choices: How we spend our money, who we vote for, or who we work for. It does not mean squawking about your mother’s drinking problems, the finicky sexual diversions of your father, or your mate’s emotional crises. My personal life is not for public consumption.”

“I agree on that principle. What about a follow-up to Tag ? Everyone loves Scofflaw.”

“I can’t get the voice right. Besides, I was full of hope back then. Now I’m a fifty-three-year-old earnest secular preacher who believes the bad guys are winning.”

That self-analysis sounded perfecto to me. Alchemy cups his right hand into a loose fist and then rubs his nose with his knuckles, a sign I come to recognize meaning he is displeased. He takes another hit of scotch. Brockton ain’t finished yet.

“Alchemy, you have it all: musical genius, business sense, beauty, and integrity, a true American mutt heritage. Use it wisely.”

“I hope you’re right. And I will. My word.”

They stare at each other. I see that Brockton idolizes Alchemy, and Alchemy, well, he worships Brockton and becomes all smush-brained when he’s within five miles of this good-for-good’s-sake bullshit, like Brockton’s his damn dad or the dad he wished he had.

“For now, keep in mind what Shelley wrote about poets being the unacknowledged legislators of the world. Your way will be the hardest challenge, but you can do it, the third-party way. Too many American artists have surrendered their ideals in favor of fame or esteem. All art is political, whether they want it to be or not, and by accepting these rules of the game, their art will suffer.” He stood up, pretty whomped. “Anyone who says there is no relationship between art and politics is selfish. Or cowardly.”

All of that bull, that’s what led to Alchy getting involved with the Nightingale Foundation, which led to the Nightingale Party and him dressing up in his save-the-freakin’-world costume. It all goes back to Sir Brockton. Nah, that’s not fair. It was Mose. And Salome. And Laluna. And me, too. And the masses. Truth is, he loved talking politics to anyone. Used to drive me up the fuckin’ wall when we was on the road. Still, that don’t matter either, ’cause in the end, it came down to all of us, what we wanted and what we put on him.

Alchemy glides into the living room, which is cluttered with magazines and books and record covers, and sits at this Steinway. He swings into Porter and Gershwin, which my grandparents loved, before he slides into this strange riff I don’t know.

He catches my eye. “What’s that ?” I ask.

“It’s ‘Blue Monk.’ Man, we’re gonna have to teach you about music.”

Brockton growls, meaning “good fucking luck.” I was blown away by Alchy’s playing and how he was like some music encyclopedia. I learnt a whole fuck of a lot from him and later Absurda and Lux — no bull, they was the bestest teachers anyone could’ve had.

Alchemy then slides into a smoother but complex set of chords. I see Brockton don’t know it either and asks, “What’s that?”

“Just something I’m working on.” Years later, we record it as “No Master, No Messiah” for the Multiple Coming sessions.

Brockton tilts his head back, and I swear he looks like he’s ready to bawl his fuckin’ eyes out. When he recovers, he says to me, “Hey, kid, I’m sorry I went at you. Bad form. No class.”

“No sweat. That was nuthin’. My dad would’ve popped me one for mouthing off to him.” He shook his head at me like some holy-guru-y guy, but I still wasn’t buying his Papa Bear act.

“Ambitious, you ready?” I nod. “Nathaniel, we’re going to the Magnolia Patch.”

Brockton, shaking his head, just blows air from his cheeks, “Alchemy, please make sure they’re legal …”

All three babes showed at the Patch, and them girls, they wouldn’t go all out, but they sure liked to gobble the rod. Alchy wakes me at like 6 A.M. and we light out for L.A. without bidding Brockton goodbye.

Last night I drifted back in time through my DNA; the power comes with being a sensate morphologist. I am descended from Greta, but we possess the mitochondrial genomes of our personal mystagogue, Salome. Not the Salome who served Herod and danced with the head of John the Baptist. The Salome who witnessed the Crucifixion, the beloved disciple who, according to Mark, sought out Jesus at the tomb to anoint him with spices. I engaged first with Big Mama Salome just after I gave birth to Alchemy, during an evening walk on the beach at Gardiners Bay under the half-moon. I stepped on a cracked shell. My heel began to bleed. From my blood flowed the stigma of my ancestor Salome. Not in bodily form but in the infinitesimal sparks of energy that forever live inside and outside of us. She communicated with me in words that were not spoken but heard. She introduced herself, before asking if I knew the Bible.

“Dad and Hilda read it to me as a child.”

“Good. Young disciple Mark purposely misinformed the masses. Those male disciples are the most unreliable narrators in all history.” She laughed. “Jesus was alive then, as he had been when they helped him off the cross. The Romans did crucify him. We announced his death at the time not because we wanted to start a religion but to fool the Romans so we could slip him out of Jerusalem to a safe haven. I helped him escape to Galilee. He hadn’t arisen anywhere.”