Lock.
In the few hours sleep that decided to grace me with its elusive presence round six am this morning I dreamt. My heart feels like it is rattling like Pedro Perez’s maracas, but more on that later.Dreaming….
So,Henry Rollins was repeatedly jamming my fingers in the middle draw of an old grey filing cabinet backstage at the Sydney entertainment center.I was showing him photos and scraps of paper,ardently trying to convince him of something.What? I don’t know but it felt urgent.Pearl Jam were dithering about with a heinous sound-check.Hair farmers.
“Its NOT important Michele!” he bellowed as my lacerated fingers bled everywhere.
Courtney Love,resplendent in some chiffon disaster complete with a jeweled headband was trying to give me a red book and vehemently telling Hank to fuck off. It was scandalous.I kept trying to tell her how much I loved the song on her solo album that she did with Bernie Taupin.She butted out her cigarette on my neck.
I lost my shit operatically at Sir Rollins as Milo from The Descendants tried to give me a pair of Frye boots.”Did you write that notebook song about me?” I asked,eyes narrowed.He poked his tongue out at me and stormed off. Fine behaviour that is from a college graduate! I turned back to Henry pulling the Marlboro butt from my neck wincing.
“It fucking well IS IMPORTANT!!” I roared back into his shocked face waving a strip of black and white pictures of my felonious amour and myself taken in a photo boot in Berlin.
I don’t think many people yell at Hank.
Not even Chuck Norris.
I then proceed to hit him with a large piece of frozen meat.
I woke up thinking that I must have been asleep for hours.Days. I was feeling blasphemous and guilty over the Henry thing. I turn to look at my Hello Kitty alarm clock balanced crookedly on top of a tall pink mug emblazoned with a cupcake.I rub my eyes in disbelief and feel like crying.
Three hours? Three fucking hours.
May as well rise and fucking shine.
Get up with protesting left knee that I tell to shut the hell up.Remove earplugs,stretch,fall over pile of books,cringe at repetitive lyrics written under the burden of sleeplessness and heartache. I shudder to see that I have rhymed “Kiss” with “Miss” . Kill me now.To appease the gods and bribe them into sending me better songs I light a fist-full of incense and jam it into my shrine beneath the gaze of my black velvet Elvis picture.
Its getting cold here.Panels of my roof are falling in.
(I wonder what its like where you are…..)
Therapy was a shaky shit-fest and as I stumbled home my piece of crap phone lit up with a text from an unknown number. No sleep.Rollins related guilt ,so sick of myself….Now fucking what? ( A fucking filing cabinet?? Frozen meat???) I open the message with mounting dread.
“Pick up the phone! Bawlk!”
Professor Chicken. My vertically challenge producer and rabble rouser from the frozen tundras. Canada’s primo homicidal sound shifter.Try and imagine Charles Manson getting a perfect drum sound.That’s the Professor.Frightening and brilliant. And one of my last remaining champions.
I answer on the 1st ring.Or should I say flash of the screen as I still will not turn up the volume on my phone.
“What the fuck is wrong with you?”
Now you tell me,how can I not smile shuffling home from Padstow weeping at an opening gambit like that?
Long story short I got my ass handed to me by a hobbit.
When Michelle Meldrum passed away The professor worked tirelessly on the album .I had a month to write it and sing.To say that I was petrified is a staggering understatement.I was a mess and we yelled at each other alot.I got fat.He drank hand sanitiser and we made a record.And I made a friend for life.
The Professor has never really understood my need to purge and write. He once sagely told me that “The only thing I want people to know about me is nothing”.
I don’t think I write so people “Know” about me per say. Its just what I have always done. Its the longest running thing in my life. Right now,short of a few shows where I manage to upset myself and the entire audience in under twenty minutes,I think it is all I have bloody buggery got.
I still have my first diary aged 8. Seems I was happy to be going to The Shack for the summer with a grand total of 3 dollars.We had a puppy…yawn,yawn….I write.Always have.Some shit never changes. What was my point? I guess that The Professor is an enigma and I am a flabby Rollins disciple with a broken heart and a chip on both shoulders.
Whatever.Get a helmet right?
“Fuck Rollins Michele!” He bellows (What is with The Black Flag leader and me today?)
” He’s Gay!”
“HE IS FUCKING NOT!!!!”
The professor laughs.
“Dude” I sign ” You have just told me to pull my head in.I can deal with that but not your “Henry and the young boys” fable.Not today”
He snickers.Tells me he has a hot date,tells me to get it together,squalks and hangs up.
“Weirdo” I smile at my dead phone shaking my head.Go play my guitar.
Really made my day.
So my rattling heart. I think that its panic.I’m not sure what it is.Was reading about the physical symptoms of grief. Compelling stuff.You can actually die of a broken heart. Look it up sports fans.I get so angry,turn it on myself and then exhausted….I write. So, The professor berates me for writing too much. Giving it away I guess. Opening the plague vein over and over. I think about the pages of death and vipers that the world never sees. I should be locked up or killed. So fuck it? What do I care? Take it or leave it,I am done with giving a fuck.Ashes in my hands kids. I rise from Zero.
Your ink on my wrists. Four crosses.Turn your palms up and remember me.Locked.
This is not optional.This is marrow and sinew.This is scent and cum and sweat.A map given to you and I alone .A secret place.I reside there still……
( She was dark and tired against the white sheets.Huge blue eyes. “You are not what happened to you” she said into the camera. Hollywood hisses like a feral cat outside their locked door.They take clean towels from the maids trolley and forget to eat.She doesn’t care.She loves,loves,loves him,…..)
I remember.
Locked.
