I warn you folks... It's a long one.
Henry Rollins was the force of the hardcore punk band Black Flag. That’s irrelevant background fodder to set up a quote that is important to the story. Rollins once said:
“Go without a coat when it's cold; find out what cold is. Go hungry; keep your existence lean. Wear away the fat, get down to the lean tissue and see what it`s all about. The only time you define your character is when you go without. In times of hardship, you find out what you're made of and what you're capable of. If you're never tested, You'll never define your character.”
The quote is something I have held on to when I am trying to write. The best work I do is when I am some sort of inspired and deprived of food, sleep or other necessity. I was nothing but inspired on a cold Sunday night in November so I took a walk.
The inspiration was a girl of course, isn’t that what most great writing is about? Maybe not. However, she made a slight hint at winning her favor by writing her song. Rounding the corner of 5th Avenue and 10th Street, I had made no progress beyond the first two lines.
“I am just a writer, who aspired for cartography instead,
Drawing maps of your body from the things my fingers read.”
It seemed beautiful, perfect and spot on, but nothing else was coming to my head. As I began to turn after walking nearly five blocks, a second set of lyrics came to me.
“And I’m stuck between two feelings, whether I should push or pull,
Do I draw you closer, or should I play it cool?”
They probably won’t stay in the song, I haven’t decided if I liked them. It usually takes time with a anything from people to piece of art to decide that. There was only one exception, she knows what I am talking about.
Trying to piece it all together, I ran into a man yelling at what appeared to be nothing. He approached me with a box of food and a silver can of beer, both precariously wrapped in a plastic bag.
He asked me how I was doing. I told him I wasn’t sure. Then he told me he could identify with that. He smelled like he had been drinking, but he steadied himself and placed his hand on my shoulder. Would you like to hear the song I was writing while I was walking down the street?
My eyes lit up. I couldn’t believe we had both been doing basically the same thing. This man however looked like he had suffered for his art far more than I could understand. He began singing a song. It was a beautiful, scratchy a cappella about the lies people tell.
I told him it sounded great, and I shared the first line of what I was thinking about. I held the second line back, it wasn’t ready for the public—not with my name attached to it. He said he thought it was great and wished he knew someone that made him think of things like that.
Then he asked if I had any money. I told him I only had a dollar in change, a dollar I was hoping to use to buy a soda. I handed it over—he told me he was homeless and sleeping behind a church on 5th Avenue.
We chatted about the joys of music and how an accident that crippled this man’s hand left him with trouble playing the guitar.
“It’s the reason I’m on the streets, man,” he said. “I cry about it every night.”
Then he told me where he was going. He was walking to a home a few blocks from the corner to beat up a man who had stolen his wallet.
“I don’t want the money I had back,” he said. “I just want the pictures of my daughter. She means the world to me and every night I look at them and pray.”
I told him not to do anything he would regret. I tried to let him know that he could possibly have the pictures returned without risking getting hurt. Then he yelled at another homeless man walking down the street.
They started talking about the Steve Miller Band show they sat outside to watch earlier in the week. The new guy introduced himself as Bobby, the man I had been talking to said his was Randall.
The three of us sang the lyrics to “Keep on Rockin’ Me Baby” by Steve Miller, and we all tripped over the parts. Of course that only lasted about 20 seconds or so. Randall was smiling more. He handed his food over to Bobby, who never asked for it.
Then he said he was going to have to walk on now. Randall and Bobby walked down the alley and added one more chorus of “keep on a rockin me, rockin me, yeah.” Then Randall told Bobby “that man there is one of our brothers.”
Randall only wanted to play music. He wanted someone to hear his song. He told me he was convinced that if he could only get one hour in a studio, he would never be on the streets again.
The lines that were starting to form to my own song took a break. This man had passion and he knew where he was coming from. He offered help to those in need and suffered a horrible loss at the idea of missing his baby’s pictures.
Music kept him warm, it will keep him alive. He gladly offered his meager meal of potato skins to a fellow struggler at the simple trade of a cold nighttime sing-a-long.
Music floods the streets of Huntington. The citizens are thirsty for it. It’s too bad no one seems the storm of music outside. Randall may never get a recording contract, he may never have a home. However, musicians spend their lives trying to touch the hearts of someone, and many never succeed.
Randall did.
