FAR® Columnist
Drown in My Own Tears
by Cork Marcheschi - 12/30/2006
David and I left San Francisco about 7 a.m. and headed east with Minnesota as our destination. We were driving my 1970 Volkswagen van, a veteran vehicle of many cross-country trips.
We crossed the bay, crossed the Carquines Straits and we were gone: Sacramento, Reno and then the expanse of Nevada. David and I are full of the same quality hot air: we enjoyed laughing and talking about things we knew nothing about. We were romantics awaiting the birth of a new world at the drop of a hat. Frequently we would see a little house/shack all alone, nestled in the spare shade of a desert hill. Who lives there? We would go on creating a life for the residents of each of these solitary little mysteries. I loved one of the final chapters of Travels with Charley. In the book, John Steinbeck has driven a long day and is exhausted. He needs to sleep and let gravity do its work on his horizontal body. But before he allows himself to go off to sleep he starts to notice little remnants of the room's previous tenant. He starts to put this guy's life together and creates a complete persona for him and this activity replaces sleep. What a great book!
The last hill in Nevada unwinds for 20 minutes and flattens out in Wendover, Utah. The Volkswagen is so happy; its 50-horsepower is being given a cooling blast of evening air.
We stop for dinner just before entering the salt flats. It is an old restaurant that lives off of Interstate 80. Once a year during speed week when the land speed record attempts happen on the Bonneville Flats the café will be crowded: a small group of aficionados from about the world will fill the café with stories, laughter and momentary cash flow.
The place is well worn with faded pictures of the famous racecars that attempt to go the FASTEST. I find this challenge a noble human undertaking and one of the few that has not been gentrified.
David and I are the only patrons, we are happy to be out of the car. A beer is going to be welcomed. The empty restaurant feels good. The waitress comes to our table, she hands us each a menu and wants to know if we would like anything to drink. There is silence. For a number of seconds we are both stunned at how beautiful this young woman is. We weren't prepared to see this. If we were on the streets of Milano, Paris, New York or San Francisco we would have been prepared but we were on the border of Nevada , (gambling, sex, liquor) and Utah-(Joseph Smith, Mormons, and multiple wives). Schizo central!
We finally ordered two beers. She asked what kind and we said, yes.
She was a real blonde, 19 years old and perfect. That will be the only time in my life I will use that term in relationship to a person. This young woman wasn't Diane Lane or Audrey Hepburn beautiful, she was essentially beautiful. This was the kind of beauty that went directly to your limbic system and WAS RECOGNIZED by your being. She brought us 2 Buds and we didn't mind. The special that night was road kill possum with vacuum cleaner dust crust. We ordered it. David and I commented on what a unique presence this woman had. It wasn't unmade bed sexy or obvious cleavage come on. No. It was freshly melted snow flowing into a stream or winter sun on your skin. She was unaware of her gift.
She came over to the table and asked where we were coming from. I guess we didn't look like locals.
Me: San Francisco.
Her: Wow! I would love to see San Francisco-pause-
Me: Why don't you drive? It's just 8 hours (in a normal car).
Her: Where are you going?
Me: We are going to Minneapolis-pause-
Her: What do you do there?
David: We are artists ------
Her: (Sigh. An unaffected escaping of air from the lungs. The sound of which your body understands as the sound of undefined desperation.) I went to Salt Lake City once, it was nice.
She looked out the window at a pick-up truck with loud boys driving by. She went to get our dinner. After our enchiladas, she came back and pulled up a chair and told us she was born in Wendover, and didn't know how to leave it. "The boys are stupid here."
We wanted to rescue her. We wanted to take her to North Beach on a Sunday morning for espresso and opera. She was going to die in Wendover. Ralph at the Mobil station would get her knocked up and the fine salty dust of Wendover was going to suck the hope out of her.
We had some good laughs; we didn't want to leave her. We could have put her in the van and taken her somewhere. It would have been voluntary kidnapping.
By the time we left the heartbreak diner the sun was long gone. The van crept out onto a lonely interstate 80 and headed into the surreal illumination of moon on the salt flats.
We were silent. The VW engine hummed a German B flat. The moon was near full and struck a brilliant silver streak though the miles of salt. Mondrian started out doing landscapes. In winter, when the leaves had long departed the trees, he became aware of the vertical nature of the trunk and the horizontal of the branches. With time the painting of the branches became elongated and the balance of the horizontal against the vertical began to show itself. An experience of viewing moonlight reflected in a stark vertical line in a dark sea was the final inspiration for Mondrian to depart on what was to be his life exploration.
So Mondrian joins David and me in the van. None of us know what to say about leaving the young woman in Wendover. I felt like a bystander watching a crime and not helping. We know we will never see her again. The salt flats roll on and our silence is developing the potential for hypothermia. I put a tape in the deck.
Ray Charles, 1956, "Drown in My Own Tears."
This song is a drummer's nightmare. Slower than a dirge, deliberate in a halting time and deeply felt in its statement. There is a lot of space in this song.
"It brings a tear into my eyes"
The notes are individually identified by the space that surrounds them.
"When I begin to realize"
Minor chords from the RnB world gently tumble into church chords.
"I've cried so much since you've been gone."
"I guess I'll just drown-in my-own tears."
Mondrian, David and Cork - cruisin' on the lunar landscape wondering what they have just experienced, and Ray Charles, like an open wound, puts voice to the moment.
At the end of the stanza the horns lift you just a bit, then pause and you drop off the edge of a step and into the next verse.
"I've been cryin'-just like a child-(that child is pulled and bent and held onto till all meaning has been wrung from it.
We drive on, Mondrian, Ray, Cork and David.
After the first verse of the final stanza ---- The Raylettes seep in with enough reverb to create the space of a dirigible hanger.
DROWN-IN MY-OWN TEARS--
And they continue till the resolve of the song.
I turned the music off. David looks at me and says, "That was IT," and it was.
Before there was science there was magic and after science there will be magic.
Rip up your itinerary and let life happen, because if you don't - it won't.
PS. With the exception of the reincarnation of Piet Mondrian everything else was true.
And if Ralph from the Mobil station did end up with Venus of the dust, I hope he treated her like the gift that she is.
Buy "Drown in My Own Tears" and your life will be better.
— Cork Marcheschi | December 30, 2006
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