Unknown artist: "Pistol-Packing Pirate" still bank
(20th century)

"We're moving targets with static language."

A Friend Of Mine

"Talk about your side streets,
go on and talk about your country roads.
Talk about your alleyways, Daddy,
where you're not supposed to go alone.
Sing me a song of the city at dawn
where the neon fades in shame,
and tell me all about your doorways, Daddy,
when you're sleepin' in the rain."

And so began the story of the end of AFriendOfMine.

The early days of my songwriting years were genuine adventure. This world, more recently shopworn and fading, seemed brightly colored. Young and in love, I could do no wrong. Each chapter opened and closed with such promise that every damned thing seemed especially blessed. I was penniless and often unable to find even casual labor work, but I was never homeless. My to-be first wife and I inhabited a shared apartment, our room being the unheated sleeping porch overlooking the street. I'd show up early at the office off Pioneer Square, dressed for heavy work, sit for a few hours, then realize that I would not be chosen again. I'd slink back to the University District without despair, for I was never alone. Billboards read, "Will the last person to leave Seattle, please turn off the lights?" My songs wrote themselves. I was still there.

"Jimmy got out of prison in the springtime of the year.
Jennifer was laughing as he opened that first beer.
And all through the drive to the opposite side,
he kept sayin' over and over again.
'No matter what comes before me now,
I ain't goin' back again.'"

My to-be first wife worked one summer at the state penitentiary in my home town. There, she met and befriended several convicts, among them a murderer serving a life sentence without parole, a bunco artist due for training release, and an ex-junkie/petty thief named Jimmy, who was almost up for parole. When Jimmy was released the following spring, we volunteered to drive him back to the civilization he'd once known, his sister's place South of Seattle. Over the following few months, he'd stop by to visit over what passed for dinner. He seemed hopeful that he would successfully integrate back into a society he'd never really belonged to before. He swore that he'd never go back to living the way he knew too well.

"We used to sit up evenings drinkin' beer and feelin' free.
You know, Jimmy was always best at tellin' just how it was goin' to be.
He had an innocent smile and an easy guile that never showed the pain,
and a pistol no one heard above the busses and the rain."

He went back. Old friends will do that on ya. They might swear they've changed, only to rearrange deck chairs without really changing course. They might show up late one night with a fearful glint in one eye, smelling of strong drink, hopeful that won't chase you off. You cannot be chased off. You don't do superficial relationships. You're capable of infinite forgiveness, just as if that might make a significant difference. You refuse to judge. You offer the couch if that will help. Hell, you'd offer it even if it hurt, he's AFriendOfMine! He never came.

"He was A Friend Of Mine,
just a couple of lines on the fifteenth page of The Times the next morning.
He was A Friend Of Mine,
worth a couple of lines on the fifteenth page of The Times in mourning.
Oh, the life that we lead's more intense than it seems
though we'd swear it's all the same,
Still, all the kings men and horses can't put Jimmy together again."

The story came out later. In those days in downtown Seattle, the street knew everything. It knew the backstory of every parolee shuffling along Pike and Pine. Hell, half of them still wore boots you can't buy anywhere, ones they'd been given the last time they were in prison. One bar was filled with wannabe Jesse Jameses. Another, with junkies and their stories. It was a close-knit community, as forgiving and understanding as any I've ever seen. They said that Jimmy had fallen. They reported without irony or judgement. Almost nobody really believed that he'd ever escape. He didn't.

"Jimmy had been a junkie, his last time on parole,
busted for petty burglary, he had his scars to show.
Still, his wandering soul left him no place to go
but to follow the pain inside,
'till the naked light of evening
left him no place left to hide."

We drove down South of Seattle to attend the funeral. Jimmy's sister was there. She'd asked me to sing at the graveside, so I sang. Another old friend now, that song revisits whenever I sing for a funeral. I sang it for my mother after she'd gone. I feel confident that I will sing it again. It reanimates each old friend I've sang it for. One day, I suspect that it will reanimate me.

"He was A Friend Of Mine,
just a couple of lines on the fifteenth page of The Times the next morning.
He was A Friend Of Mine,
worth a couple of lines on the fifteenth page of The Times in mourning.
Oh, the life that we lead's more intense than it seems
though we'd swear it's all the same.
Still, all the kings men and horses can't put Jimmy together again."

These songs visit me like indigent friends needing a couch for the weekend. They've fallen into disrepair. Some, I barely recognize. Others, we just pick up precisely wherever we just left off, years and years and years before. A song becomes immediate the moment its performed. Songs do not even exist in any past tense and not in any future, either. They can only be here, in any odd moment, and never anywhere else. They remind me of what I misplaced on my passage. I could not hold my accumulated present any longer than the least of any of my songs ever could. Let us sit together on the couch and see what we can conjure together, knowing that we could never be entirely true to any original purpose. We're moving targets with static language. We'd best be friends to ourselves.

"Talk about your side streets,
go on and talk about your country roads.
Talk about your alleyways, Daddy,
where you're not supposed to go alone.
Sing me a song of the city at dawn
where the neon fades in shame,
and tell me all about your doorways, Daddy,
when you're sleepin' in the rain."
©1974 by David A. Schmaltz, all rights reserved

©2022 by David A. Schmaltz - all rights reserved

Tags: #SetTheory, #PureSchmaltz