Wednesday, March 9, 2011

GRAND CANYON: ALBUQUERQUE

Albuquerque was once a chosen stop in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the College of Your Choice. It was a sacred reference and one that pulled us here now, this odd mixture of a Zen master, gifted musician and an Alabama working man, paired up with a jazz poet, playwright of the underside, and devotee of golf and baseball. In all our differences and incongruities, we held to a core of beliefs that was essentially the same. We were seekers of secret knowledge and divine wisdom. This was where our search led us.

It was a place where Volkswagen busses broke down on their way to the people’s revolution in Los Angeles, Monterey, Berkeley and San Francisco. Fearful of the desert crossing, they staged their own cultural revolution here. It was a stop that somehow eluded both of us on our previous journeys.

Driving into town I was struck with an uneasy feeling. Was it a mistake? What kind of town was this? The outskirts have all the markings of temporary resolve: Tin can shelters on desert mountain sides, trailer camps, junkyards and tacky little shops hung up for business. Were these the dwellings of city Indians or aging hippies on the fringe still waiting for a few parts and a little more mechanical tinkering before braving the road westward?

From the eastside, the closer you get to the University of New Mexico a metamorphosis becomes more and more apparent. Tie-dye and head shops are chic. Congas and bongos are heard on the streets. Coolness is hanging in the local cafes, listening to folk music and poetry readings. Peace symbols and rainbows are everywhere.

They’re not sure what to make of Nashville jazz poets. They are comfortable in their coolness and have no desire for change. We stand our ground and play.

Jazzman on the corner of the Frontier Restaurant
Blowing cool breeze in the dry heat of a desert night
Faces blank, eyes wide, like an alien retreat
They’d never seen our like before

Jazz poetry in a hip-hop café
Dropped like a stone in black water
They long for a familiar refrain

“Oh very young what will you leave us this time?”

Poetry is dead long live poetry.

Wild man on the street brings terror to the peace monkeys

“Fuck peace!”

Afraid to look into the eyes
Peace to you! he cries

Beat cops on fat tire bikes
Khaki shorts and amber shades
Talk with undertones of brother be not proud

Send him on his way and bow
Applause at the sidewalk café

Walking alone into the shadows of the night
He is Bukowski, jazzman of dreams
Banned on the streets of Albuquerque

Poetry is dead long live poetry


Over the next few days we play rounds of nine on three golf courses. Our companions on the links are cool and easy to talk with. They speak of places and layouts and offer advise. The rounds are comfortable and strike a contrast. The University North layout is lined with trees featuring doglegs left and right. The greens are small and moderately slow to match the pace of play.

A nine-hole course next to the airport is windswept and hilly. A sign on the first tee warns against hitting over flying aircraft.

At the University South course we’re forced to play a three-hole beginner course. It is the most enlightening. We circle it three times and watch the progress of a Zen golf lesson on the driving range each time we make a pass. The teacher is a middle-aged woman with an air of grace. On the first pass she speaks of finding your center. On the second pass she speaks of balance. On the third pass the teacher is gone and the student is hitting balls from a one-legged stance. As she slowly takes back the club, she raises her left foot, methodically shifts her knee to center and replants her foot as she strikes the ball. It is a thing of infinite beauty. Golf from the solar plexus. Balance is the first lesson without which all other lessons are unnecessary.

As with golf so it is with life.

Evenings are for performance on the streets, the Wiz exploring new ground with free flowing riffs on his golden flute and me accompanying with the spoken word. We gather a small following of youthful tie-dyes, children of the late sixties who gaze at us with mystery and awe as if we were the beats of a lost generation, creators of a new mythology. The want to board the Magic Bus but that bus has left the yard. They are uncertain of our intentions. The sounds and words of our jazz have a bite. We carry more that a pleasant breeze and dharmic overtones. The message is infused with irony, spiked with a cynical brew, warm with the flames of rebellion.

They give us the respect of a generation removed and cautiously back away. We press on to the poetry café, place our names on the reading list, order cappuccinos and wait. Through the ears of an outsider the poetry reminds me of television soap and Oprah Winfrey confessionals. There are political commentaries tailored to community standards and thoughts while walking through the desert at night.

The emcee makes a joke about playing war as a child. Precision bombing and automatic weapons punctuate his formative years. His reading is an Indian chant accompanied by guitar. I hear drums in the canyons, drowning the messenger with discord. This is sacred land. The white man may settle here for a thousand years more but the Indian will rule like an unseen hand and the coyote will dance on his grave. The poet holds community grace but his satisfied smile undercuts his theme. He speaks of wild days, Jack Daniels, Harley Davidson leathers, tattoos and blowing in the wind as if they were his resume. He has comfort and security as emcee of the local poetry café.

The other poets have made their way to the exit by the time we take the stage. I announce the death of poetry and wonder why the real poets are so hurried to depart before their own words have settled with the lattes and pastry. I summon Bukowski and gain their attention. The exodus is frozen. The Wiz rails on the resident piano…

Play the piano like a percussion instrument until the fingers bleed a bit.

He finds a groove and I begin.

We are the scum that crawls out the cracks in America’s nightmare…

Mid performance I realize that we have become my words in the eyes of our audience. They have met my derision with their own. Karmic dissonance. They make their antagonism clear as water but they listen intently and applaud with vigor at the conclusion of our set. The evening is called to a close.

Our young followers have abandoned us for more promising patronage. Now we are the wild men of the Albuquerque scene. We are the terrorists on the streets. The citizens will not look us in the eyes. I wonder if it is inevitable that we must sacrifice our place in the community of poets in order to sound the discordant notes that spring from our distorted psyches. Are we not men? At what price art? At what price change? Of all people on earth the poets should understand and cheer the death of poetry for only with death can poetry gain rebirth. Must we be content with poets reading to poets, waiting their turns while the family of man remains outside, untouched and unmoved?

After a spell a poet approaches us, tosses a compliment on our multi-media style and advises us to arrive earlier next time. We know there will not be a next time for us. He seems discomforted and withdraws, as if afraid to be identified with the outcasts. He will be here tomorrow. We will not.

Peace to you!

Are we too cynical? Am I? I have played the hitchhiker on previous journeys. The hitchhiker abides by the code of harmony but we have chosen to be messengers of discord on this incarnation. We are instigators and inciters of rebellious thought and we have little choice but to play it out. We reserve our softer side for the golf course where harmony and balance are paramount.

We are not ready to call it a night. The evening at the café has left us with a sense of unease. We need fulfillment. A waitress at the café points us to a downtown nightclub. We cross the railroad tracks and enter the old district. It is the wild side of Albuquerque where leathers, bums, winos, whores and drag queens reign.

There is a burrito stand advertising health food. The attractive blonde working the cart explains that her burritos are lard free. We’re impressed and order a couple. We find them to our liking but we are not allowed to take inside the club for a beer chaser. We hang and listen to the healthy burrito merchant, who strikes me like she belongs on Venice Beach instead of here on the wild side of Albuquerque. She has genuine warmth, a free spirit feeling to compliment an outward appearance that would draw eyes at Cannes. We learn that she’s a college graduate with a degree in accounting. She came to Albuquerque to help her father with his business but it turned out they couldn’t get along. She was now in transition.

Wiz asks her what’s happening around town and she offers a rundown on the bar scene. She says they used to have a hip-hop club but it attracted too many guns. The law in New Mexico apparently allows people to carry guns in bars as long as they’re visible. I wonder why hip-hop as opposed to hard rock or jazz would attract guns. She explains that it’s part of the culture. Our burritos finished we prepare to enter the club and thank her for the conversation. She smiles and wishes us well. She means it. We do not misinterpret her smile and pleasant demeanor as an invitation. They belong to the world and are delivered freely to everyone she encounters.

We pay a three-dollar cover and move inside. The club is divided into three sections in attempt to cover multiple bases. One section has a three-man punk band on an elevated platform with a large-screen video accompaniment. The young and hip crowd is standing room only. In the back an elevated disk jockey plays electronic punk and controls lighting effects on a small, crowded dance floor. Upstairs there is a small bar with sofas and padded chairs. It’s relatively sparse, comfortable and quiet enough for conversation.

We sit back and drink our beers while looking out over the dance floor below. We discuss the generational divide, the passage of time, the distance between us and our lives in Nashville. Wiz takes note of an attractive young woman in our midst. Unlike myself, he is theoretically free of obligation. He is coupled but not married. What kind of understanding or arrangement he and his partner have I don’t know but as of now his sense of loyalty remains. We are willing to enjoy a sense of attraction, to feel the pull of temptation, but we are not willing to cross the line. At least, not yet.

We wander down the street hoping for a jazz club, offer up a dollar to a couple of drunken Indians with a shopping cart full of junk, and encounter a large gathering outside a happening club. Wiz spots what appears to be a Latina fox in a tight black dress and whispers: She’s a man. The club is a drag bar with a scattering of very attractive ladies hanging with queens outside. One of them gives me a look that sends a charge through my libido. We go inside where it looks like a bad production of Pink Flamingos. We walk on. This is not our place.

The evening comes to a grateful end. It is time to leave this town without regrets. The lessons it has delivered will take time to gather and comprehend. Our performance at the poetry café was not we expected or hoped for though we could never be sure what to expect. We had fought to gain acceptance in the Nashville scene and were welcomed into the inner circle where Beatlick Joe Speer of Albuquerque was King. We hadn’t used his name but it was clear that winning acceptance here would take time we didn’t have. It weighs on our minds like a shadow crossing our path.

Like the wild man on the streets, likely the most misunderstood poet in Albuquerque, there must be a better way. Like golf, poetry is not important in itself. But like so many things in life that traditionally offer comfort or some sense of meaning in a chaotic world, poetry is in danger of dying from inbreeding and the deadly diseases of self centrism and boredom. Then let her die gently, in comfort or in rage, for with death comes the promise of transformation.

It is the great hope and we are its messengers. The role of the poet is to shape the living poetry of the future. Maybe it’s already happening. Maybe it’s inevitable. Maybe, as Bob Dylan once projected, it is incorporated in the music.

We should not be too quick to judge rap or hip-hop or any other form of creative expression. All forms are valid. All messages are signs. All messengers are children of gods and creatures of creative light. We should listen most intently to those whom we find most offensive for they bring a message that expands our horizon.

We will choose to remember Albuquerque mostly for the golf. Balance is the first lesson. We will not stray from the path that chooses us. We will find our center and hold to it as an infant holds to his mother’s breast.

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