“An interview with Sun Ra,” Terry said, carefully holding one of the early papers open. The images and typeface bloomed large in his specs. He sounded like he might be about to faint from ecstacy. “Oh my God.”
Nomad was regarding a cover picture of Elvis Presley decked out in black leather. Ariel had just turned a few pages in the Stone she was holding and abruptly stopped. On the page before her was the wild, ink-spattered drawing of a distorted, one-eyed, American-flag-draped figure whose mouth was stretched impossibly wide, and from that cavernous drooling hole spurted forth a vomit of spiky missiles and speeding jet airplanes. The artist had signed a name in crazed and crooked letters at the bottom of the art, and that name was Steadman.
She closed the paper. It was a little too disturbing.
“Three hundred and forty five issues, give or take,” Terry said when he’d recovered himself. Most of them had been replaced in their plastic and returned to the boxes, though not in order this time. A few of the older papers were still lying about. “You’re gonna need another U-Haul.”
“Yeah.” Berke nodded. “I guess I am.” Her mind was reeling from the faces and names these boxes had yielded up to her: Van Morrison, Jeff Beck, Frank Zappa, Marvin Gaye, the Jefferson Airplane, Joe Cocker, The Grateful Dead, David Bowie, Cat Stevens, Joan Baez, MC5, the Doors, Steely Dan, Brian Wilson, James Taylor, Steve Winwood, Elton John, Pete Townsend and Roger Daltry and Keith Moon and John Paul Jones and…it just went on and on.
Ariel picked up another issue, because on the cover she recognized the face of a very young Joni Mitchell, whom she’d liked to listen to as a teenager in the solace of her room and who actually had influenced her own playing and writing. The date was May 17, 1969. Joni Mitchell looked out at the viewer with a hint of anger in her eyes, as if adamant that her private space not be invaded. In purple hippie-type letters was the headline The Swan Song of Folk Music.
“The letter.” Chappie had returned with her Eagles cup. “Aren’t you going to read the letter?”
“Oh. Yeah, I am.” Berke picked up the envelope from atop a set of encyclopedias where she’d put it aside. As she tore it open—carefully, so as not to damage the letter—she realized her fingerprints were being left upon it in forty-year-old ink. Chappie stepped back to give her privacy, and the others quietly continued their inspection of the long-dead counterculture, and from the two-page letter that was probably printed out on the computer in the den, Berke heard the voice of her stepfather.
Dear Berke, I hope you enjoy these. I found them years ago in a warehouse in San Francisco, and I’ve been saving them for you. I guess I’m dead now. Ha ha.
I didn’t really have a premonition of when it would happen. I just had a feeling that my time was running out. Through the hourglass, like on that soap opera your Mom watches. My hourglass was getting empty.
I’m no musician or expert on music, and I can’t say that I care much for the modern stuff. (When I say ‘stuff’, I don’t mean to be disrespectful :) I was a pretty conservative young man, everything Rah Rah and Apple Pie. I voted for Nixon. You can imagine.
But I did know what the Rolling Stone is. I read some of these from cover to cover, and they made me realize how proud I am of you. I know you didn’t want me around very much, or to come to your shows, and I understand that, but I hope that now you’ll give me a chance to speak.
You can look at these and see what you’re a part of. This world you have chosen to live in. I guess you chose it, but maybe it chose you???? I think you should know, if you don’t already, that you’re a citizen of a blessed and magic world, though I’m sure sometimes blessings can seem like curses, and there’s not much magic to be found in a dingy old motel room. (Your mom has clued in me on The Road. At least as much as a stodge like me can handle :)
I remember when we went to the Battle of The Bands in August of 1996. It was at the auditorium.
Oh yeah, Berke thought. She remembered it was something she’d decided to forget. Her mom and Floyd Fisk had just met and he was trying to get to know her.
I remember you were watching one of those bands and the drummer was going strong, and I saw you start playing along with him on your knees, just using your thumbs, and your foot was tapping the bass. He really tore it up (at least I thought he did) and when I asked you what you thought of him you looked me right in the eyes and you said, “He was good, but I can do better.”
You said it so positively, from that moment on I believed you.
I’ve seen you on those YouTube videos. You were right. But I never doubted you.
I wish you could have been my real daughter. Then again, I couldn’t have given you the talent that your Dad gave you, but I’d like to think that I gave you something.
So…these papers in the boxes.
If you ever doubt what your place is in your profession, or if you ever doubt what changes for the better music can make in this world, open these and start reading. Oh yeah, there’s the sex and drugs and rock and roll part of it, but I mean the soul of it.
I believe that at its best music exists to give a voice to people who sometimes can’t speak on their own. I believe it helps weak people find their strength, and frightened people find their courage. I believe it helps people understand with their hearts what their minds can’t comprehend. I think it may be the truest link to a higher power, if you believe in that. (And I know you don’t, but I had to get that last one in ;)
Never, ever doubt that you have an important place in this world. Look at these papers and see who came before you, and then think about who came before them, and on back to the hornpipe players and the troubadours and the poor man who played a Jew’s harp in a cold house for the pleasure of his family.
This may be hard to think about, but someday someone is going to watch you playing, either at one of your shows or on your videos, and they’ll say ‘She was good, but I can do better’. And that’s how your blessed and magic world works.
Please take care of yourself and your Mom. She’s the most fun woman in the world.
Love, Floyd.
Berke read again the final five paragraphs. Then she returned the pages to the envelope, and she sat down on a box full of dead men’s ideas and turned her face toward the wall, and she sat there so long without moving that her mother asked her if she was okay.
“Yeah,” Berke answered, her voice very soft and very distant. “Okay.”
It had occurred to her, sitting in this garage she’d not visited for many years, that pain had a way of pushing everything else out of a person. It had a way of owning you, and you didn’t even know you were being owned. She felt she had a long road ahead of her, to escape from that particular master, and maybe she never would—not completely—but it seemed to her that to recognize how it had enslaved you day-in and day-out for so many years was a first step in breaking the chain.
“Ariel,” Berke said, because sitting here holding the letter in her hand and surrounded by all these old decaying books and magazines that were once so new she’d had a sudden clear and pressing thought.