Category Archives: essay

Devil’s Quicksand

Devil's Quicksand

Like anyone else who grew up in the 50’s and 60’s, I saw my share of absurd and usually absurdly funny anti-drug movies and slide shows — as well as one jaw dropping “seniors only drug rap” at my high school hosted by a narcotics squad officer in his late 20s.

The officer was “really popular with the kids” according to the school official who introduced him.

Maybe it should have raised an eyebrow when Office Kool (we’ll call him) told the assembled seniors that when he tried marijuana “under a doctor’s supervision” it “scared him to death” because it was like “a thirty minute orgasm.” (I later read that this was a regular feature of his anti-drug speils as he toured area schools.)

Officer Kool was, a year or two later, himself arrested for taking indecent liberties with underage Explorer Scouts in his charge (aged 15 and 17, if I recall). He copped a plea and fell off my radar.

A number of years later, 6 of the 7 school board members running the district during that period were also indicted for a number of crimes ranging from embezzling and kickbacks to theft of district property and supplies.

But the good people of Orange, California, seemingly never learn. Only a few years ago the then-current school board was in the national news again, this time for canceling all afterschool activities and clubs in order to avoid allowing a student club called the “Gay-Straight Student Alliance,” which had been immediately banned but had prevailed in local courts. Rather than follow the court order and allow the club, the school board, dominated by, ahem, social conservatives, simply ceased all afterschool clubs and activities.

After they were turned out, local, er, social conservatives banded together to back a single candidate, hoping that by focusing all their promotional and organizational efforts all on one man, they could elect him.

And elect him, they did.

Unfortunately, they apparently didn’t do much homework on their man, who gives every indication of being very seriously mentally disturbed. He has accused local government and business leaders of trying to silence him; his allegations have included court papers accusing the management of a regional supermarket chain of trying to kill him.

Anyway, I go on at length to show you the cultural milieu (to stretch a phrase) I grew up in — and how easy it was to assume that every warning coming out of the mouths of the buffoons in charge was either the product of ignorance or delusion — or an outright lie.

When they were promoting marijuana by attempting to warn young people away from it, the harm was limited (if even measurable).

But when they got to the the part of their woefully laughable act that focused on heroin and cocaine… that’s where the damage really took hold. Because they’d already wasted all the good scare tactics on marijuana — there was nowhere left to go but “… and heroin’s even worse.”

I was lucky, in that in addition to being a voracious reader as a kid and reading first hand accounts of addiction from believable sources (Bill Burroughs comes to mind), my quest for the wink-and-nod contraban of alcohol* brought me into contact with decidedly unglamorous young junkies. I remember cleaning up drool in the back of my car after several liquor store runs with my buddy’s sister’s brother-in-law’s junkie cousin and his little brother, a 14 year old junkie. It stuck in my mind and always resurfaced when I found myself in a nihilistic and willful mood…

(* In those days, adults were usually glad to find out a kid drank, because a lot of hippies eschewed alcohol, and the adults apparently assumed drinking meant the kid didn’t smoke pot or use other drugs. Adults really were not street-smart back then. My generation brought that gritty knowledge to your popular culture, America. Think about that when you’re coming to visit us in the rest home.)

All that brings me to this disclaimer about today’s song: This is the kind of goofy, over-the top preachment that your hip uncle warned you about. It’s ripe with lurid exaggeration — or what would seem like it.

But — the thing is, kids — some of this shit is real. Worse than killing you, it can make you wish you’d never been born.

I’ve lost family and friends to drugs — the most recent was just a few months ago, a friend who had been sober for the better part a decade. 11 years ago, his example beating crack addiction had given me the courage to quit drinking.

But he started using again, on and off. It looked like ‘drug shame’ kept him away from some of his oldest friends at a time when maybe he really did need a friend. He was a very smart, savvy, and strong person. But he wasn’t strong enough to take that last load of junk.

So, laugh with me through this song — I was laughing out loud at some of the stupid stuff I pull in this song (I stepped out of my de facto format a little, here, and instead of adding a second guitar, added two back up vocal tracks that included a fair bit of ad libbed nonsense) — but while you follow our hapless hero on his hellbound descent, remember, it really could happen to you.

The Devil’s Quicksand

It’s your second chance for the very last time
with your head in your hands and your future behind
grab your life pull as hard as you can
cause your up to your neck in the devil’s quicksand

if she told you once it was good advice
but a thousand times now that’s just a slice
of some other reality you’d prefer to ignore
it’s just that easy you shut the door

on the love she gave it was just too good
and you always hated how she understood
and you walked away and you felt so free
in the park that day spinning under the trees

but now its cold and the darkness comes
and the drugs wear off and your chums are scum
and the cyst on your arm is turning green
and the one-eyeds guys sez it’s the worst he’s seen

so you drag your ass to the ER room
and you wait 12 hours while the TV booms
and the little kids and the sobbing man
and the angel of death is right at hand

you just cant wait and you run outside
in the streetlight night you stop and cry
“is this their pain–or is it mine?”
you ask yourself but you knew all the time

it’s your second chance for the very last time
with your head in your hands and your future behind
grab your life pull as hard as you can
cause your up to your neck in the devil’s quicksand

twenty cents is all it takes
but ya drop the dimes cause ya got the shakes
ya try again an ya get ’em in
but the the phone just rings and your gut caves in

your knees give out ya hit the ground
people walking by just step around
ya see the sky you see the rain
ya see your ashes in a bag in a paupers grave

but the phones in your hand and your hanging on
and just before the dark her voice comes on
and ya tell her “baby just one last time”
she doesn’t say nothing you hear her crying

her sobbing lasts for such a long time
you almost forget why you’re on the line
then it comes back like a drano slam
you got one last chance slip this jam

“come on baby i’m on the bricks”
you can almost hear her kitchen clock tick
“I ain’t done nothin’ in 36 hours
and I need a place to take a shower”

and then it comes and you know you’re dead
her hollow laugh fills up your head
she drops the phone and it hits the floor
you hear her walk away and laugh some more

it’s your second chance for the very last time
with your head in your hands and your future behind
grab your life pull as hard as you can
cause your up to your neck in the devil’s quicksand

[A special note on the length of today’s post: Please… next holiday season… no coffee shop gift cards.]

They Own the Judges

Leave a reply

They Own the Judges

Like several other early works from my ‘suitcase of songs’ this song bears sign of neither my discerning and subtle sociopolitical analysis — nor my often arch sense of humor. Making it, more or less, a screed. A rant. Not even a proper diatribe.

Back in ’75 or ’76 when I wrote this, I knew it wasn’t exactly a sophisticated, subtle rendering. It was not long after Gerald Ford took over the presidency from the disgraced Richard Nixon, immediately granting Nixon a pardon for any crimes he might have committed, no matter how grievous, even though Nixon hadn’t even been formally charged with any of the numerous violations of law that forced his resignation. Clearly, the fix was in, and the “loyal opposition” was busy toadying up to the powers that so evidently still were.

Now, I really was a political (and economic) naif back then — and was held that way, in part, by my own cynicism.

Today, as a businessman and longtime politics junky (other folks watch football), I have a considerably deeper understanding of how things really work. It has made me — in some ways — a bit more hopeful, and considerably more practical.

And the way I see it, I should end up more or less in the political center, on average.

I’m a firm believer in small government, fiscal responsibility, environmental responsibility, free, fair markets, clean government, and a strong and effective defense. Defense, mind you… I’ve always thought the US should be working to defend itself rather than embarking on foreign military misadventures in what are usually vainglorious attempts to “extend American power.”

Me, I think “empire” is geopoliticalese for “jumping the shark.”

I would think that those seemingly quite (small-c) conservative values should put me more or less in the center of the political spectrum — yet I find myself, along with a sizable, sometimes near-majority, number of my fellow US Americans, increasingly marginalized by both of the two major parties, whose policies increasingly flaunt the core values of a lot of responsible, thinking US citizens.

Yes, there are alternatives — but they are not moderate alternatives. They are, in some fundamental ways, more extreme. It’s not that I don’t have deep sympathies with, say, the Greens or agreement with a number of Libertarian principles.

But, if the US political system were truly responsive to the will of the governed, a mainstream, middle-of-the-road guy like me ought to find some sort of agreement with one or both of the “mainstream” parties. Instead of finding them to be closet brownshirts and neo-Know Nothings on the one hand and spineless, hypocritical toadies on the other.

You know, not to put too fine a point on my political malaise.

Oh… WTF… let’s dedicate this one to the one person majority on the Supreme Court that aborted the 2000 presidential election.

They Own the Judges

they own the judges
they own the congress
they own the papers
and the magazines

they own the cops
they own the armies and
they think that they own
you and me

they own the doctors
they get rich from our suffering
they own the churches
and the sinners inside

they own the colleges
the print-outs of knowledge
they own and use history
to their own ends

they own the farms
they own the farmers
they own the factories
and the workers lives

they own the gangsters
and they run the wores
they own Vegas
and the gamblers trapped inside

they move in the shadows
of presidents and corporations
the means of production
in a handful of hands

you can’t live without money
they enslave us with wages
they pull the strings
that make you and me dance

All I Need Is the Sun

Leave a reply

All I Need Is the Sun

A thanksgiving song.

I’m at that point in my life when I’m mostly beyond being afraid for myself, but like anyone, I have my moments of darkness and doubt.

When things are darkest… I count my blessings.

It’s a tactic that not only dovetails nicely with my innate perversity, but which has served me well over the years. As I mentioned in a previous post, 25 years ago (last month) I was hit by an inattentive driver while riding my motorcycle and ended up in the hospital for 2 months (most of that in traction) with an “exploded” hip, a smashed femur, and a shattered ankle.

They pieced me back together (my ex-rays look like I was attacked by the contents of a hardware store), but there were some tough times along the way, I was on crutches for 6 months and a cane for 5 years. (Turned out I was walking on a leg that was still broken. Long story that reinforces the importance of second opinions, which I discovered late.)

Anyhow, the thing is, when things got tough, as they occasionally did, I counted my blessings. (I used to feel bitter that I didn’t have any shoes until I saw a man who didn’t have any feet. You know?)

I also drank… I’d say ‘but that’s another story’ — but it’s actually this story, or more properly the story of this song.

At any rate, here’s a guy who, I’m thinking, is living in that tiny postage-stamp sized bit of grace afforded those with little left to lose…

These lyrics were originally written as a sort of rap to go with music from Brit techno whizkid Deakin Scott but, while Deakin and I collaborated more or less successfully on an earlier track (the lyrics for which are my “Mountains Come, Mountains Go”) the track these were written for never came together and I finally sat down with my acoustic guitar a few months later and came up, more or less, with these chords.

I say ‘more or less’ because I actually had all but forgotten this song and before yesterday and had quite likely not played it twice since 1999. A shame, since I really like it. It’s not the first song I’ve written or track I’ve recorded in a ‘creative phase’ that’s gone forgotten for a long period after the arc of sometimes fevered productivity has passed.

All I Need Is the Sun

looking for my place in the sun
ah but everything is already gone
a bottle in a bag and a bun
now all I need is the sun

caviar and champagne are fun
limos and callgirls the run
but those cocaine days are done
now all I need is the sun

kingdoms and palaces galore
yachts and planes for sure
diamonds and oilfields and mines
yet I traded them all for this wine

caviar and champagne are fun…

I’ve spent a thousand times what you’ll ever own
I had twenty people answerin’ my phone
You– you’d never get through… yet now
here I am drinkin’ with you

caviar and champagne are fun
limos and callgirls the run
but those cocaine days are done
now all I need is the sun

1999-11-01
(C)1999, TK Major

2 Dazed 2 Care

Leave a reply

When I was writing this and when I originally recorded it, it was called “Poland” because I was so impressed with the crushing situation faced by Polish democrats in the face of the Russian-backed Polish Communist government’s repressive tactics and inability to provide food and basic necessities to the Polish people.

But that was more a distancing metaphor for my own darker feelings. The giddy euphoria I had felt getting out of the hospital after 2 months after my motorcycle wreck quickly evaporated when I hit the bricks in my walker. While I soon exchanged the walker for a pair of crutches, and six months later a single cane — I was, without my knowledge, walking on a broken leg. And from that point on, for several years, my leg didn’t improve, but rather got worse.

(Second opinion, people. Get a real one — not from the other docs in the group, no matter how “top flight” they supposedly are. I didn’t sue but, for the sake of the community, I probably should have. Several years later, my doctor, a very nice man who I suspect had serious problems reintegrating into civilian life after training as a battlefield orthopedist in Vietnam, paralyzed a young man in a “routine” vertebrae fusion. The story was that he’d wanted to make sure the young man would be able to go back to his warehouse job. Very similar to my own story with the good doc — he asked me if I wanted him to fuse my broken hip rather than reconstruct it as a functioning hip — since the fused hip would be better for carrying heavy loads — I, too, was a warehouseman at the time — of course, with a fused hip, one would never be able to walk with anything even approaching a normal gait. Psycho. But a nice guy. He let me drink in the hospital — even when I was on injections of morphine and demerol. Talk about yer warm and fuzzies. Then again, it wasn’t any fun at all when I went straight from warm and fuzzy pain meds in the hospital to beer and whatever I could find around my girlfriend’s place when I first got sprung. I kept reaching for that nurse call button…)

Anyhow, where was I… ah yeah, my leg was broken and aching all the time, almost a year and a half after the wreck. Throw that together with a stretch of destructive storms that seemed to go on all winter, compounding my physical misery, a disintegrating relationship with the girl I’d been seeing, and world political malaise — and ya get this cheery little ditty…

original 1982 dark new wave recording [soundclick page]

2 DAZED 2 CARE

Turn down this street
back down that alley
there is no escape and there is no stalling

The future is here
and it’s more of the past
All I remember
is falling and falling

Leave me alone
just let me be
with wounds this deep
they just have to bleed

Desperation is short supply
I used up my panic in the crises last year
It’s hard to worry, it’s hard to care
when you’re so tired of anger
and you’re so tired of fear

No point in crying, laughing or dreaming
no point in love, no % in fear
desperation is in short supply
so tired of anger
2 dazed 2 care