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from the tree of life he sprang, a wild thing light-footed, kinetic, a twist of sweet breath
before I left the tour for a few days to go act in the Back to the Future movies.
Growing up dirt poor and Cockney in the East End of London at the turn of the century, her mother died when she was eight, leaving Muriel with her Methodist minister father. My minister great-grandfather remarried a wicked witch who thought my nana was sinful because of her curly red hair. My nana’s beautiful shock of rocking red hair! Being forced to brush it with lye, to rid the sinful curls from their doubly sinful redness was painful, humiliating, and abusive.
She married him, and had three kids: my mother Patricia; my uncles Dennis, a sweet and hopeless romantic who maxed out his credit cards then mysteriously disappeared into the Philippines in the late nineties; and Roger, who I have never met, probably because he is very religious and disapproves of me due to my satanic rock-and-roll ways.
In Australia, a black Labrador named Bambi was a member of our family. Only Bambi understood all my thoughts. I was ecstatic when we chased each other around the house relentlessly, the peals of laughter flowing. Both of us breathing hard, we fell asleep on the floor together, my arms and legs wrapped around her furry blackness.
He grew up in a tough no-nonsense world of lots of beer drinking and fists meeting faces. A world where a man minds his own business and holds true to his word, or he better take a fucking hike. For him, success is measured by how strong and diligent you are. He’s suspicious of people whose ambitions ring false. No patience for people feeling sorry for themselves……go out and get a fucking job. My dad is hard.
“That man is richest whose pleasures are the cheapest,” said Thoreau, and my father taught me early on to realize this most important truth.
A father should be a sanctuary for a child. When Dad was nurturing and supportive, I felt whole, but when his eyes turned icy cold, and his face beet red, when the rage came out……I lost touch with my own beauty. I walked through my days slowed by a tension in my heart that only he could soothe.
Consciously or not, she thought that “children should be seen and not heard,” and there is not one instance in my life where I can ever remember her holding or cuddling me. She was just kind of.…there.
That night under a supremely starry Australian sky, with a soulful truth that went right through me, she said, “Don’t you realize how much your father loves you? Forget all this hippie inner-child bullshit. Your father would swim through a river of shit for you. That’s what love is.” I wept with gratitude.
Turn and face the strange. —David Bowie
She came shuffling into our room at night after lights out, muttering in her hard German accent, to give us candy. She seemed psycho and he seemed plastered, even though I didn’t understand either of those conditions.
Some memories are so transformative, so laden with guidance, so blissful and/or violent, it feels like God speaking directly.
If Moses had parted the seas right in front of me, or my dog started speaking the Queen’s English, it would not have been this miraculous. This wasn’t no fuckin’ kids in an alleyway with brooms, this was real, and to this day, the feeling in that room has given me something to reach for.
God bless my beautiful mama, who engaged her whimsy and longed for a freedom she didn’t understand. I don’t know if her choice made her happy or not, but it was a bold and wild move.
Heart-following is a part of my DNA. Though the changes were weird and difficult, like all the challenges in my life, they served me in the long run.
The world’s just a sphere, No bigger than the balls that you suck. —John Frusciante
The anger and loneliness, the pain from feeling hurt and neglected could be fuel for the greatest gifts. Pain was something to be grateful for, not to be pursued, but inordinately valuable.
My relationship with my mom improved with time, we had some great breakthroughs when I was an adult, but our disconnection was deeply entrenched early.
When I made a “best friend,” he was my family.
Another time, after some verbal altercation between us, his mother admonished him, saying, “Peter, you have to be nicer to Michael. He is sensitive!”
I fell in love with a book by Evan Rhodes, The Prince of Central Park, about a little boy who lives in an unhappy home in New York City. He runs away and sets himself up in a tree house in Central Park.
holding up a sign that said NO MORE NIXON. I didn’t know anything about politics, just a smattering of Watergate information that filtered down, but it felt good to protest the motherfucker.
“What do you believe in?” I meekly stammered out some kind of I-don’t-know reply, but he kept putting on the creepy hippie pressure, becoming more aggressive, “Do you believe in peace and love, or war???” he demanded. I managed to whisper, “Peace and love,” but his putting me on the spot made me feel like shit. Like, just leave me the fuck alone and let me enjoy sitting in the woods.
I read Helter Skelter by Vincent Bugliosi when I was eleven, which freaked me the fuck out, and as I got into my early teens in the mid-seventies, hippies were in Coca-Cola commercials teaching the world to sing.
The intimidatingly large mustachioed cop looks back at us like we’re the most pathetic creatures he’s ever seen, his deep voice bludgeoning me. “No, ya little bastard, but none of you are ever gonna get a decent job as long as you live.” That hit home hard. Karma. For the first time it dawned on me, Lesson # 1: What you do now can fuck you up later for real.
Peace and love, dude. The world is cruel enough as it is. Everything that is not love is cowardice.
“Man, when I was in my mama’s stomach, there were two choices, chocolate milk and white milk. I chose the chocolate milk that was the good stuff! What happened to you, fool!?” That would be a great animated short film, little George in there, thoughtfully choosing between the different milks.
I went to church with J.D. and his family. I found the service tedious, but the food party at the end was bangin’. Fried chicken, potato salad, and scrumptious pies. We stacked our paper plates high.
“This is the best book ever written!” I was wide open to all manner of story and myth, and ready to rock the best one ever. The stories were interesting, but every time she got rolling, she stopped to explain everything like we were a bunch of idiots, sucking the magic out by trying to prove that it was all so real and important. Boring.
On one of those Jesus Sundays I got to talking to one of the parishioners, and when I told him I didn’t believe in the Bible, that I was just there for the music, he was totally cool and welcomed me back the following week, even though I was shabbily dressed and the only white person in the place. That’s the first time I considered that church could possibly be a good thing.
After I’d been a pothead for a year or so, Mom got all authoritarian and shit, barking, “If I ever catch you smoking marijuana I will beat the hell out of you, you will lose every privilege!” I was probably stoned when she said it and thought she was being ignorant.
From out of nowhere an elderly hunched-over man approached, hobbling along with a walker. He came to a pause in his slow stroll and stood right next to me. His face deeply crevassed, eyes yellowed and covered in a murky film, he looked straight into my preteen baby blues and unprompted, said dead seriously, “Listen to me. Now is the time to be healthy. Treat your body and soul well. You can’t see the damage you do to yourself now, but when you get old you will suffer. Give yourself a chance to be in perfect health. Be an honest and kind person. It is the only thing.” I told him okay and he
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I had two life goals—to look cool, and perfect a wicked jump shot.
I understand how good-hearted kids end up in gangs. We all wanna be loved.
Men have died for this music. —Dizzy Gillespie Mom took me to Royce Hall to see my greatest living trumpet hero—Dizzy Gillespie. I was thrilled.
If Jane Sager had been a man she’d be acclaimed as a great trumpeter, but sexism is a bitch,
People living outside society need a sound to believe in. A sound that cannot be owned or emulated by squares. It inspires the marginalized and the rebels. It gives a soundtrack to their walk that only they understand. It speaks for people who might not otherwise have a voice.
I was always the shortest kid in my grade and that was fine with me, I took pride in it. Little and wild. But at thirteen when teenage sex entered the picture and it was time to start making out with girls, something changed. I turned terribly shy and insecure—
Walter gently returned it to the mantel and then went back to kicking and cursing and breaking shit, throwing his amplifier into the yard. That kind of absurd, almost comic pathos highlighted the ridiculosity of these drunken tantrums, but it was absolutely fucking terrifying.
Becoming conscious of me he slowly raised his head and croaked out, “Go find your mother.” I turned and ran, filled with shame that it was my dad who was the gun-shooting lunatic. I shoulda known. As I ran down the block, I heard sirens and saw cop cars screeching up in front of our house. I ran into the night.
embarrassed that I had my ass beat by Irving Pretzel, it wasn’t cowardice that dissuaded me from feelings of vengeance. I knew Irving was a hundred percent right. I should’ve known better than to be a bullying asshole. He knew that I knew that he knew that I knew better.
The racist talk bummed me out and I couldn’t pretend it was okay. It’s so hard when you know someone is sweet and beautiful inside, but they can’t outrun the demons and ignorance of their family culture.
Raoul introduced me to my lowest high. We smoked angel dust (PCP) bong hits and I’ve never been more out of it.
Raoul was a bad egg. The kid showed no pretty colors. Angel dust is like smoking death. As you inhale the shit, you feel your brain cells dying in real time, important cellular stuff popping and fizzling. Your heart light is dimming, never to be quite as bright again.
Transformation always comes when you least expect it.
The world moves on a woman’s hips. The world moves and it swivels and bops. —The Talking Heads
And so it is with me and Anthony Kiedis. On this ride together, the energy that keeps us here is bigger than we understand. No matter the discomfort, there’s no use fighting it. This is our magic carpet ride and burden to bear. Yin and yang, light and dark, beginning and end. In perfection.
The universe gives us the ones we need. And the ones we deserve.
We sat there talking about stuff, and with the most earnest truth from his core he said, “Ya know when you read about an airplane crash, and everyone gets burnt to smithereens, but there’s one survivor? I’m the one that survives. It’s a simple truth. I know it.” That’s Anthony. It’s true too.
