THE SONG I DIDN’T WANT TO SING
It was a song of love I sang when I was twenty-four. It was a beautiful song of balance and notes so high I almost could not hear them. I was enchanted and I could shine like the sun sparkling off the waves of the Pacific Ocean.
In California I sang the songs of the City and the Coast; the counter songs, the songs of revolution. My hair was long and on my face. I forged a new path, sang of a new world. I liked this new freedom song. This was far from the songs I sang as a child.
Mendocino, the town, the county, the asylum were all a dream-song. The songs I sang there were songs of a halcyon world. I wanted to sing these songs of vivid living. I learned new ways of singing.
I welcomed experimentation given to me in exploration. I wanted to sing songs of who I was. I wanted to sing of Sartre; screeching for meaning in a protective bubble,
An innocent boy in a bubble singing an innocent song.
I traveled through Europe searching curious red. I found there songs of beauty, but also songs black with pain and suffering and exploitation. There was the song of hate in the boy’s sputum splashed on the side of the car; we had encroached on his little village.
