This
is a continuation of a six-part series presenting the songs - and a lost
manuscript - of a musician friend of mine, Zak Jourek.
Part one gives
a more in-depth introduction to Zak and can be found
The songs
already posted can be found
here.
I leave you with section three of his
manuscript. And two more of his songs from an old demo tape: The Sky’s on
Fire and Michelangelo.
3.
If you’re ever in Panama City, definitely check out the blind fate
We made Panama City by
sunset, checked into a motel downtown. Outside the window we looked down on the
same scene as the one at the motel in Missouri: a man in blue shorts, white
socks and loafers reading the paper while someone else’s kids frolicked in the
tiny, kidney shaped pool. We went down to the pool, dangled our feet in the
water that stank of chlorine, and drank warm beer from plastic cups.
It’s
amazing how twilight changes things, turns them inside out – purple and lush –
making brilliant flowers where there was once crushed glass. The same scene
that looked so bleak that morning in Jackson was transformed to beauty in
Panama City. Liv looked happy. In that moment, I can honestly say that I felt
something lift off me, something that I’d been carrying since EMI had stolen my
music. I no longer cared. Revenge or acceptance – and every response in between
– suddenly seemed irrelevant.
A middle aged couple in
their underwear hurried towards the pool, jumped in. That immediately scared
off the kids and the guy reading the paper. “We forgot our suits,” the man
explained to us after a few minutes of splashing around. His speech was
slurred. A freight rumbled somewhere beyond the palms lining the motel parking
lot. The lights in the lot flicked on. Moths chased the light. We pretended not
to watch the drunk couple splashing each other. The motel song came back again,
and I found another verse: The train
engine talk whispers secrets/into the widow’s ear/Telling her of the sea of
forgetting/…it’s here…
“But who’s the woman?”
I whispered back.
“Her name’s Azalea,”
Liv whispered back. “She stuck with him because she can’t quite shake that
night in Atlantic City when he couldn’t lose. She’s waiting for it to happen
again.”
“And every time he
looks at her,” I whispered back, “he thinks of her back in Atlantic City, too,
and knows he’s just an illusion to her, has been worried for the entire trip
that she’ll see through the veil any minute.”
Liv smiled, nodded,
then said: “One night, when he’s pretending to sleep he’ll hear her slip out of
bed, gather up her things, humming to herself like there’s no one else in the
room. The door opens, closes, then silence.”
I laughed, shook my
head. “That’s cold.”
The couple pulled
themselves up out of the pool, underwear sticking to them like skin, making
them more naked than if they’d had nothing on. They shook their hair out and
quickly hurried offstage. When they were gone, Liv stood up, unbuttoned her
shorts, slipped them off, then pulled her t-shirt off and dove in. I finished
the rest of the beer in my cup, stripped, and followed her into the pool.
The manager of the
motel – a woman in her sixties, wearing a pink terrycloth bathrobe and black
rubber thongs – came out and told us we were not being respectful of the other
guests, of her, or of ourselves. My peaceful carefree illumination instantly
dissolved and the old rage came back.
“Yes, yes, respect,” I
hissed at her. “Are you aware that an actual human being wrote your favorite
song, that it didn’t appear out of the mist all on its own one morning?”
The woman frowned,
confused. “What are you talking about?”
It was later, lying in
bed on the verge of sleep, that I wondered why the owner hadn’t come out to reprimand
the other couple. I put it down to another case of blind fate. Why were my songs stolen and not the music of Chris
Cornell or that blowhard Morissey? Blind fate. That’s when I found the final
verse to the song: What I really want to
know/is why some rise and why some fall/Why some thrash in the waterfall/and
why some do nothing at all.
(End of part 3)
(click on title to hear song)
The sky's on fire from the heart
of the blue city burning
Ashes fall from the stars that
are never seen
Cars stalk the streetlights, who
watch the windows
Shadows rigid, beneath the
lamp-glow
A lone figure walks toward the
edge of the city's dream
Broken stairwells, shadow pockets
Eyes of houses, torn out of
sockets
The figure walks toward the dark
of the blue city's dream
The sky's on fire from the heart
of the blue city burning
Ashes fall from the stars that
are never seen
The thirst of sidewalks, jaws of
dumpsters
Invisible hands fall from
bleeding gutters
The figure disappears into the
last line of trees
Frightened boys lean into
doorways
The god of nails dreams in his
box-frame
The figure moves into a field
dark as the sea
The sky's on fire from the heart
of the blue city burning
Ashes fall from the stars that
are never seen
Bare branches, they scrape
together
The figure stoops, picks up a
feather
He cannot speak but he knows what
his gesture means
Notes:
If I remember correctly, Zak was
reading a lot of classic apocalyptic sci-fi around the time he wrote this song:
A Canticle for Leibowitz, Alas Babylon, Childhood’s End...
(click on title to hear song)
They come from stone
Stone is where they're going
Eye to eye, I saw the stone
reviving
Half-uncarved, half forming
questions
"Are we free or is this pose
endless?"
Out of stone flies curving bodies
Bodies waiting for the bus alone
Bodies sculpted from the hands of
Michelangelo
She was standing 'neath a Rubens painting
Reaching out for a Rubens lady
From the ice of her still-life
growing
She held out her hands to the
picture knowing
Out of stone flies curving bodies
Bodies waiting for the bus alone
Bodies sculpted from the hands of
Michelangelo
Cocked hands of a fisherman
aching
Twined arms of a couple walking
Bent back of a pilgrim praying
Sprawled legs of a vagrant
begging
Cocked hands of a couple walking
Bent back of a vagrant begging
Sprawled legs of a pilgrim
praying
Notes:
This is about seeing the
sculpture “The Slaves” by Michelangelo in the Louvre. What’s interesting about
the song is that Zak had never been to Paris. The song was lifted from a story I
told him about a time when I’d visited the Louvre and was continually drawn
back to The Slaves, those bodies trying to escape stone (since then they have been moved to Florence). At the end of the day,
wandering around Paris, I saw all bodies I encountered in the same
way– desperately trying to escape something. Or trying to find their true shape from the stone they came from? He took the story and made
this song. What’s interesting about the song is that at the end he changes the
original postures of the vagrant, the couple, the pilgrim, the fisherman,
and interweaves them, as if they are interchangeable. Maybe saying that all suffering, or perceived loneliness, is shared?
Next Time:
Part 4 of Zak's Manuscript
& two more songs
