Jeff Graydon and Chris Merchant
The Only Café, Toronto
Saturday, August 9, 2008
Jerry Garcia died on this day
Back in 1995
And my old deadhead friend Mac
Stopped by the house
To join me for a pot of coffee
And to watch the rockumentary film All My Loving
Although this 1968 dvd doesn't include any coverage of
Jerry Garcia and the Grateful Dead
It does feature some obscure footage of other classic rockers such as
The Beatles, Cream, Frank Zappa, and The Animals
Just the kind of film I enjoy sharing
With another old music head over rainy morning coffee
Seeing and hearing Eric Burdon and the Animals
Reminds me of another time in my past
When I was hanging out with a different group of musical friends
In the east end of town
Two friends in particular
Jeff Graydon and Chris Merchant
Back in the late eighties
I discovered these boys one afternoon on Woodbine Beach
Busking beside the Summerville Olympic pool
While I lay sunbathing on a bright pink towel on the sand
Soaking up all the tan lines I could get
I suddenly heard the sounds of Factory Girl
"who the fuck is that?", I thought
As I got up on my knees and shaded my eyes
To peer over toward that park bench and the tall guy
Standing there in grey sweat pants and t-shirt
Hands on his hips, belting out…
"Waiting for a girl and she gets me into fights
Waiting for a girl we get drunk on Friday night"
The voice is obviously influenced by Mick Jagger
And there's a fella accompanying him on acoustic guitar
It wasn't hard to notice Jeff Graydon back then
A rocker with dreadlocks and lips like Mick
I guess I was around twenty six years old and very much a rock and roll chick
So it came as no surprise
That I was taken with the sound and the look of these two
I became friends with them
But not that day on the beach
No
Later on when I found them for the second time
At another musical hangout in the east end
The local coffeehouse at Main and Gerrard called The Jailhouse
It was only this week I re-connected with Chris Merchant after joining Facebook
So after All My Loving ended and Mac left to finish his errands
I called the number Chris sent to my Facebook mailbox
"holy shit!", he says
It's been like five years!"
But it seems way longer to me
Perhaps because when I saw him at the Bradstock festival five years ago
There was almost the exact same exclamation, "holy shit! It's been like ten years!"
I get emotional these days when I bump into friends from lives past
And over the phone right now
Chris is telling me he's with Jeff at this very moment
Playing a gig at the Only Café
As part of the Taste of the Danforth festival
They've played one set already but they'll be there for hours yet to come
"why don't you come down here?" Chris asks me
"you know what? I think I will!", I tell him
"it'll be great to see you"
"it'll be great to see you both"
With my black umbrella covering my head and the Beatles between my ears
The time passes quickly between boarding the subway at Dupont station
And arriving at the corner of Danforth and Donlands
The rain is keeping the hugh crowds off the Danny
Bad for business perhaps but it suits me just fine
I like the rain
But I don't care much for crowds these days
I barely set foot in the Only Cafe
When I'm greeted by a bald-headed Jeff Graydon
Carrying two draft beers with no free hands for hugging
Gone are the dreadlocks
But one dangling ring in his left ear keeps him funky
I get a little kiss with those familiar lips
And it's great to see his smiling face
Jeff knows my age and so with all his charm
He flatters by telling me several times how great I look
I lap it up
He's not looking too bad himself
I ask where Chris is
"oh, he's back there
smoking pot on the patio", he tells me
Nope, some things never change
Walking through the cafe on my way to the smoking area
I remember this place from long ago
It has a similar décor to that of The Gem in my own neighbourhood
Lots of rock music memorabilia and posters grace the walls
A small intimate bar with soft lighting
Candles burning atop a mountain of wax in front of the bartender
But it's certainly not quiet
The rain hasn't prevented the partiers from cramming into this spot
It's just the kind of bar I dreamt of owning myself one day
To hold all my own rock memorabilia
And a place for my friends to gather
But that was when I was a teen and such fantasies occupied my mind
I don't even collect rock memorabilia like I did back then
I see a small group huddled under the umbrella on the back patio
With Chris right in the middle of them laughing
He doesn't look one bit different than the last time I saw him
The rain has been torrential today
Giving only short periods of drizzle before coming down even harder
But I don't care
It feels good hugging my old friend under the red canopy
We spend as much time looking each other up and down
As we do recalling certain moments in time
There are now two children under Chris' belt
And one under Jeff's
Well
I may not have the children
But we certainly have more than a few failed relationships in common
It feels good standing beside Chris
He has a calming presence about him and it's comforting
The others huddled around are trying to keep us
Engaged in their rowdy conversation
But I find it hard to focus or remember anyone's name
I pass on the burning joint when it comes my way
And when duty calls the ones who play the music
We make our way back into the café and the thick of it
I walk straight into Lucie DuFault
"oh my god!", we both say at the same time
We just connected on Facebook as well
"What the hell are you doing here?!", I ask
I had no idea Lucie is loosely connected to Jeff and Chris
Wow, what a surprise
"Let's drink, shall we?!"
I order St Peter's Organic English Ale in a fabulous bottle
As Jeff and Chris make their way to play in the open window
The microphones face the front sidewalk
Giving the street life the best view of the show
Jeff has always been strictly a vocalist to me
But it appears he's now playing guitar
And playing it outside of the living room
Chris and his friend Rob are also playing acoustic
And there's a lot of intense chatter up here in the window
This will be set three for the performers
And they open it with Sittin' on a Fence
Ha! I remember them doing this
It's one of my favourite Rolling Stones songs
But they fuck it up
They stop and start again
But with No Expectations instead
This all feels like yesterday
Chris was just saying to me under the wet umbrella moments earlier
They haven't changed much in their behaviour
Like That 70's Show
Chris is Eric and Jeff is Hyde
But it appears Jeff has a new girl
Nicole
And she sings
Taking the mic for Under the Boardwalk
She's a strong vocalist singing deep from under her large breasts
I pull up a bar stool trying to absorb my step back in time
Sipping my organic St Pete's
I smile when Nicole's next song is Tom Petty's Breakdown
"It's all right if you love me
It's all right if you don't
I'm not afraid of you running away honey
I've got the feeling you won't", she sings
Man, that's a great song
And then I really have to smile watching the rain pour down
Only steps away
As Rob takes the lead for…
"The sailor said " Brandy, you're a fine girl" (you're a fine girl)
"What a good wife you would be" (such a fine girl)
"But my life, my lover, my lady … is the sea" "
It's like someone switched on Chum AM
Lucie's dancing with the sidewalk
Drunken, sloppy rock and roll audience
But it's all good fun and it feels great to be here
I leave my bar stool and move to a spot on the drizzly sidewalk
But there's a girl with an incredibly distinctive laugh
You can't miss the disruption it causes during Crocodile Rock
So I move back to my stool and organic ale
And listen from there instead
To the lyrics in the next song…
"I wanna get lost in your rock and roll, and drift away…"
Everybody sings
There's a few drunken fools stumbling into the performance area
But they're drunken fools who can still carry some rhythm with an egg
Someone throws me a shaker
But I don't feel like I have any rhythm at all
At least not at the moment
Perhaps I need to drink more
The spinning and dancing around the singers is almost reminiscent
Of hippies at a Grateful Dead show
But without the tie dye
I'm on the look out for beer to spill my way
Just before Jeff and Nicole duet on Lime In the Coconut
This song is cool
And a crowd pleaser
Stopping some of the navy blue and black umbrellas from bopping right on by
Set four includes a Rolling Stones sandwich of
Just My Imagination, When The Whip Comes Down and Some Girls
But it's when I hear The Animals' White Houses…
"get straight
you better, yes you, you better
You better get straight babe"
My request
That really brings me back in time
I always think of Jeff Graydon when I hear this song
In fact I know the song better by him than by Eric Burdon
There was a time I was so excited to be sitting at Graydon's feet
At various gigs around town
And many a jam session basement
Watching him sing all these songs
Including Heart Full of Soul, Mannish Boy and Little Red Rooster
I took so many photographs of him
And I still have them tucked away in albums buried in my bedroom closet
But it's the songs
These are the songs we grew up listening to
That our older brothers and sisters listened to
And songs we all love
It seems a lifetime has passed since
And I'm not really the girl I was then
Thank god
The band's rendition of Not Fade Away creates a sing-a-long on the Danny
Before the sound man brings all the craziness to a halt
Informing us there will be only one more song
The encore is Steppin' Stone by The Monkees
It's great to watch everyone's heads bop to it
That was a lot of fun
And I think it's great these boys still make time to play
Having kids, exes, day jobs and bills to pay
I assume this only leaves time to play music on the odd weekend or two
But even so
They're still capable of giving a bar room a rocking good time
I see Jeff still has his cranky side
When he abruptly walks away from our conversation
Seems he didn't like the memory I evoked in his mind
Whatever it was
But that's okay
I get cranky too
Probably crankier than him
The bartender made me a great veggie burrito with salsa and chips
To share over a dimly lit table with my friend Chris
As the night grew darker
We had another chance to share the gory details
Of all our dysfunctional relationships since the eighties
As my eye drifted over to Jeff and Nicole
Snuggling up together on a bar stool
http://www.theonlycafe.com/
http://www.amazon.ca/All-My-Loving-Tony-Palmer/dp/B000SM7R1K
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"The job of the artist is always to deepen the mystery. The artist's job is not to be clear, to be heard fully or understood, or to even be liked. The job of an artist is to deepen the mystery within each person that crosses their path so much that they have no choice but to give up shallowness." ~ Francis Bacon“
"Happiness is a fleeting moment of a day. It's not a state of being. If you're happy all the time, something's wrong with you. We are put on this earth to toil and to make things. Making the world a better place is not a happy job." - John Mellencamp
“There was a young lady named Sally,
who enjoyed the occasional dally.
She sat on the lap of a well-endowed chap,
and griped, ‘Sir, you’re right up my alley.’” ~ unknown
LMH is a Toronto-based writer/blogger, freelance music journalist/photo journalist, with a flair for publishing in-depth interviews at entertainment websites. Contact directly at livemusichead@yahoo.com
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"Well, this whole notion that we have to be happy is a ridiculous notion. I mean, let's be honest. Paul Quarrington, as you know, died only two weeks ago and I'm really sad about that. I'm devastated. But while I was crying in his office, my therapist said, 'you have issues with abandonment'. I replied, 'this isn't fucking abandonment. Paul's my best friend and he's going to die. Why are you going on about abandonment?' All this is to say, there's a lot in life to be sad about. And the notion that if you're sad there must be something wrong with you, is extremely absurd. Having said that, I've been on Prozac since '97." ~ Dan Hill
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"Happiness is not on my list of priorities. I just deal with day-to-day things. If I’m happy, I’m happy – and if I’m not, I don’t know the difference. Knowing that you are the person you were put on this earth to be – that’s much more important than just being happy." ~ Bob Dylan
"People are afraid of themselves, of their own reality; their feelings most of all. People talk about how great love is, but that’s bullshit. Love hurts. Feelings are disturbing. People are taught that pain is evil and dangerous. How can they deal with love if they’re afraid to feel? Pain is meant to wake us up. People try to hide their pain. But they’re wrong. Pain is something to carry, like a radio. You feel your strength in the experience of pain. It’s all in how you carry it. That’s what matters. Pain is a feeling. Your feelings are a part of you. Your own reality. If you feel ashamed of them, and hide them, you’re letting society destroy your reality. You should stand up for your right to feel your pain.” ~ Jim Morrison
“She secretly refused to believe that anyone loved anyone. Families lived in a wasteful atmosphere of custom and kissed one another with secret indifference. She thought the people of this world moved about in an armor of egotism, drunk with self-gazing, athirst for compliments, hearing little of what was said to them, unmoved by the accidents that befell their closest friends, in dread of all appeals that might interrupt their long communion with their own desires.”~ Thornton Wilder
"For me, a song is the main kind of method of encapsulating an emotion. My songs have a definite strong emotional core... ya know, (laughs) there's a school. Personally, if it's not written in blood, and brought about by some sort of emotional sacrifice, whether it be happiness or sadness or experience, it doesn't say anything to me."
~ Rufus Wainwright.
"Music is supposed to be entertaining and if it touches you emotionally, so much the better. Sometimes you do it to save your own life, not anybody else's. That's why I write. I'm not trying to change anybody else's life or the world, I'm trying to keep from blowing my own brains out. That's the real point."
~ Guy Clark
“Being an intellectual creates a lot of questions and no answers. You can fill your life up with ideas and still go home lonely. All you really have that really matters are feelings. That's what music is to me.” ~ Janis Joplin
"The deepest people are the ones who've been hurt the most."
~ unknown
“I like beautiful melodies telling me terrible things.”
~ Tom Waits
"The truth hurts for a little while, but lies hurt forever."~ unknown
“I picture Cupid, alone in a bar, drunk, chain-smoking, frustrated, bitter, desperate, ready to trade in his bow for a bazooka.”~ Scotty Campbell
"Isn't it strange that two strangers, suddenly don't feel so strange?It's something familiar, though this time it's different... what they're in for feels like sea change. Isn't it weird that two weirdos can wind up not feeling that weird? It's all so momentous, yet perfectly normal. Scary, but not to be feared. And it starts with a sentence that might last a lifetime, or it all might just go down in flames. If I let you know me, then why would you want me? But each day I don't is a shame. Each day I don't is a great shame. Isn't it great that two people together, can tear down one wall? The handwriting is on it, it's not hieroglyphic. That barrier just has to fall. Isn't it sad that most people stay so lonely, it's almost a crime? We might be strange weirdos, but it can't be normal to be frightened so much of our time." ~ Loudon Wainwright III
"I always think of it as my most personal record [Nebraska] that dealt with what happens when all these things that I believed in when I was 25... what happens when all these things don't work? What happens when all those things just break down? What happens when your friends fail you, or you fail your friends... and you're all alone? What happens when you can't find a job and you can't find some place to work? What are you left with? Can you live? Can you go on? At the time I didn't know the answer. I didn't know if you could or not. I know that isolation to me feels about the most dangerous thing on earth."~ Bruce Springsteen
"In my next life I want to live my life backwards. I'll start out dead and get that out of the way. Then I'll wake up in an old people’s home feeling better every day. I'll get kicked out for being too healthy, go collect my pension, and then when I start work, I'll get a gold watch and a party on my first day. I'll work for 40 years ...until I'm young enough to enjoy my retirement. I'll party, drink alcohol, and be generally promiscuous, then I'll be ready for high school. Then I'll go to primary school, become a kid, and play. I'll have no responsibilities, I'll become a baby until I'm born. And then I'll spend the last 9 months floating in luxurious spa-like conditions with central heating and room service, larger quarters every day and then voila! I'll finish off as an orgasm.”~ Woody Allen
“I don't know about other people, but when I wake up in the morning and put my shoes on, I think, Jesus Christ, now what?”~ Charles Bukowski
“Son, I just want you to know:
life is a black, sucking vortex of anguish and despair, filled with brief moments of false hope and empty joy, all the while dragging you inevitably closer to final, absolute, and eternal death. Enjoy your day. Love always, Dad."
~ note on a dresser
"Your heroes turn out to be assholes, and the light in the tunnel that you're chasin' is a train".
~ unknown
"I don't mean to sound bitter, cold, jaded, cynical or angry, but I am, so that's how it comes out."
~ Bill Hicks
“Let us love for a while, for a year or so, you and me. That's a form of divine drunkenness that we can all try. There are only diamonds in the whole world, diamonds and perhaps the shabby gift of disillusion.” ~ F. Scott Fitzgerald
"You're the one who broke my heart. You're the reason my world fell apart. It's guys like you that make me cry, yet I still love you, don't ask why." ~ Unknown
"It's not death that separates people; it's the absence of love."
~ Jim Morrison
"Since you're gone, deep inside it hurts. I'm just another sad guest on this dark earth. I want to believe in the mercy of the world again... make it rain, make it rain!" ~ Tom Waits
"The truth is... everybody is going to hurt you. You just have to find the ones worth suffering for."~ Bob Marley
"Never apologize for showing feeling. When you do, you apologize for the truth." ~ Benjamin Disraeli
“If you're looking for sympathy you'll find it between shit and syphilis in the dictionary.”~ David Sedaris
"Before you diagnose yourself with depression or low self-esteem, first make sure that you are not, in fact, just surrounded by assholes." ~ William Gibson
"It has been said, 'time heals all wounds.' I do not agree. The wounds remain. In time, the mind, protecting its sanity, covers them with scar tissue and the pain lessens, but it is never gone." ~ Rose Kennedy
"I'm amazed that men like you can be so shallow, thick and slow. There is not a man among you who knows or cares if I come or go!"
~ Ted Neeley (Jesus), Jesus Christ Superstar
"In the quick of the night they reach for their moment and try to make an honest stand. But they wind up wounded, not even dead." ~ Bruce Springsteen
"The worst sin toward our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them: that's the essence of inhumanity."~ George Bernard Shaw
"The opposite of love isn't hate, it's indifference."
~ unknown
"The longer we listen to one another with real attention the more commonality we will find in all our lives. That is, if we are careful to exchange with one another life stories, and not simply opinions." ~ Barbara Deming
“We met a lot of really good people, but I never met one person who really impressed me. The first person to ever impress me in my life was Ravi Shankar. And he was the only person who didn’t try to impress me. It was by his being. He taught me so much without actually saying a word. It was by example.” ~ George Harrison
“Great spirits have always encountered opposition from mediocre minds. The mediocre mind is incapable of understanding the man who refuses to bow blindly to conventional prejudices and chooses instead to express his opinions courageously and honestly.” ~ Albert Einstein
"I'd rather die of thirst than drink from the cup of mediocrity."
~ Stella Artois
"I have a low tolerance for mediocrity in music and life. I'm into pain and joy and the in-between doesn't interest me."
~ Steve Earle
“How can you admire a human who consciously embraces the bland, the mediocre, and the safe rather than risk the suffering that disappointment can bring?” ~ Tom Robbins
"I will not be a common man because it is my right to be an uncommon man. I will stir the smooth sands of monotony."
~ Peter O'Toole
"It's not the time in your life, it's the life in your time."
~ Bruce Springsteen
"Time, as far as my father was concerned, was a gift you gave to other people." ~ Michelle Obama
"Dear Optimist, Pessimist and Realist... while you guys were arguing about the glass being half full or half empty, I drank it." ~ The Opportunist
“There is nothing more dreadful than the habit of doubt. Doubt separates people. It is a poison that disintegrates friendships and breaks up pleasant relations. It is a thorn that irritates and hurts; it is a sword that kills.” ~ Buddha
"Love don't make things nice. It ruins everything. It breaks your heart. It makes things a mess. We're not here to make things perfect.... we're here to ruin ourselves, break our hearts, love the wrong people, and die. The storybooks are bullshit."~ Nicolas Cage, Moonstruck
"You're a victim too Flagg. But you're such an unbelievable example of walking fertilizer, it's hard for me to care."
~ Dr. Sidney Freedman, M*A*S*H
“I might be the only person on the face of the earth that knows you are the greatest woman on earth. I might be the only one who appreciates how amazing you are in every single thing that you do... and in every single thought that you have. And how you say what you mean, and how you almost always mean something that’s all about being straight and good. I think most people miss that about you. And I watch them wondering how they can watch you bring their food and clear their tables and never get that they just met the greatest woman alive. And the fact that I get it, makes me feel good... about me.”
~ Melvin (Jack Nicholson), As Good As It Gets
“You make me want to be a better man.”
~ Melvin (Jack Nicholson), As Good As It Gets
"Why go out for hamburger when you have steak at home?"
~ Paul Newman (on fidelity to his wife, Joanne Woodward)
"She's faced the hardest times you could imagine. And many times her eyes fought back the tears. And when her youthful world was about to fall in, each time her slender shoulders bore the weight of all her fears, and her sorrow no one hears, still rings in midnight silence, in her ears... let her cry, for she's a lady. Let her dream, for she's a child. Let the rain fall down upon her. She's a free and gentle flower, growing wild."
~ Wildflower by Skylark
"Success is the ability to go from failure to failure without losing your enthusiasm." ~ Winston Churchill
"I did my best, it wasn't much
I couldn't feel, so I tried to touch
I've told the truth,
I didn't come to fool you.
And even though
it all went wrong
I'll stand before the Lord of Song
with nothing on my tongue but Hallelujah"
~ Leonard Cohen
"Parrotheads are just like Deadheads, but with money."
~ unknown
"You have to be a bastard to make it, and that's a fact. And the Beatles are the biggest bastards on earth." ~ John Lennon
"The music business is a cruel and shallow money trench,
a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free,
and good men die like dogs. There's also a negative side."
~ Hunter S Thompson
"I could name on less than five fingers the individuals who've become tremendously successful, who have changed positively."~ Bill Graham
"Strive not to be a success, but rather to be of value."
~ Albert Einstein
"If you're going to do what you want to do, and be as challenging as you want to be in this day and age, and not completely suck everybody's penis, you have to treat the music industry as a type of war." ~ Rufus Wainwright
“The make or break of a show is how well the artists perform. But we have to make certain that the sound is good, the lights are good, the dressing rooms are clean, there’s paper in the toilet room, the hot dogs are hot, and whatever else goes into it. And what that takes is mania.” ~ Bill Graham
"The two most misused words in the entire English vocabulary are love and friendship. A true friend would die for you, so when you start counting them on one hand, you don't need any fingers."~ Larry Flynt
"We build too many walls and not enough bridges."
~ Isaac Newton
"It's no good pretending that any relationship has a future if your record collections disagree violently, or if your favorite films wouldn't speak to each other if they met at a party."
~ Nick Hornby
"Your blessing in life is when you find the torture you're comfortable with." ~ Jerry Seinfeld
“I won’t be wronged, I won’t be insulted, and I won’t be laid a hand on. I don’t do these things to other people, and I require the same from them.” ~ JB Brooks, (John Wayne), The Shootist
“I will fight for your right to be weird, just as I know you will fight for mine.” ~ Hunter S Thompson
"When you get to the very bottom of the human soul, where the nit is slamming into the grit and you're sinking, but you reach down to help someone who's sinking worse than you are... everybody gets high." ~ Wavy Gravy
"One day I was pretty upset, and we walked in the garden. We didn't say much for a long time. We sat down on a bench. He really went inside me. He wanted to find out what made me so sad. And he did this in such a fantastic way. I can't repeat the words or tell you exactly what it was, but he did it in such a fantastic way that made me feel good. He found out what the problem was in no time. Nobody had ever done that before and will never do it again." ~ Klaus Voormann on George Harrison
"The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched - they must be felt with the heart."
~ Helen Keller
"Hearts will never be practical until they can be made unbreakable."~ The Wizard of Oz
"I should, of course, have been warned. Our differences were plain to see; that I chose not to see them said much about my fantasies, my desire to please and my denial of reality. I was not just a product of the 60s; I was, by nature, volatile, oversensitive, quick to take offence, prey to burst of exuberance and energy soon followed by deep troughs of melancholy." ~ Margaret Trudeau
"Why do some people say 'grow some balls'? Balls are weak and sensitive. If you really want to get tough, grow a vagina... those things take a pounding!" ~ Betty White
"If you think all men are created equal, you haven't seen Bo Diddley in the shower." ~ Ronnie Hawkins
"The only thing better than roses on my piano is...
tulips on my organ!" ~ Tom Waits
"If I see something sagging, dragging and bagging, I have it nipped, tucked and sucked." ~ Dolly Parton
"The important thing is to write music that people will sing generations from now; for the unborn. Human emotions and melodies are always what we’ve stuck to, because that’s perennial as the grass. People will always be able to relate to it, young and old.” ~ Robin Gibb
"There's nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed." ~ Ernest Hemingway
"If you do not breathe through writing; if you do not cry out in writing, or sing in writing, then do not write, our culture has no use for it." ~ Anais Nin
“Most rock journalism is people who can't write, interviewing people who can't talk, for people who can't read.”
~ Frank Zappa
"More often than not, even the people and even the moments and even the circumstances that you feel you can go to for stability, for that piece of happiness, can all of a sudden shift, and can all of a sudden become tainted. And everything that you believe, or even that small moment of connection that you can feel can sometimes be destroyed. And I’m not a negative person, I’m shockingly, somewhat of a realist. And I’m a very passionate person, so I don’t like to expect that shift, I don’t like to expect for things that I love to become malignant or to become a great disappointment. But it happens. And it’s devastating. Every time." ~ Davey Havok
"You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, or who had ever been alive." ~ James Baldwin
“And once you live a few good stories, after you’ve fucked up a little, you get a taste for a kind of meaning in life, and you can't go back to being normal; you can't go back to meaningless scenes stitched together by the forgettable thread of wasted time.” ~ unknown
"Millions of books have been written on every conceivable subject by all these great minds, and in the end, none of 'em knows anything more about the big questions of life than I do. Jeez, I read Socrates, ya know. He used to knock off little Greek boys, so what the hell's he got to teach me? And Nietzsche with his theory of eternal recurrence who said we're going to live the life we live, over and over again, the exact same way, for eternity. Great. That means I'll have to sit through the Ice Capades again. It's not worth it."
~ Woody Allen
"To live is to suffer. To survive is to find some meaning in the suffering." ~ Friedrich Nietzsche
"The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds. The pessimist fears this to be true."
~ James Branch Cabell
“The forecast today is overwhelming depression with scattered betrayal , and a high probability of melancholy coupled with intermittent bouts of black rage.” ~ Scotty Campbell
"If we're gonna fight a disease, let's fight one of the most terrible diseases of all: indifference."
~ Robin Williams as Hunter "Patch" Adams
"Some people feel the rain. Others just get wet."~ Bob Marley
"Rufus (Wainwright) put a lot of effort into his press and publicity duties. He was an engaging interviewee, no matter how obscure the publication or how few readers it might expect to reach. When the tape recorder or camera was clicked on, he could usually be relied upon to deliver. 'I've had a lot of practice in front of the mirror', he explained to the Phoenix New Times. 'I stayed up long enough doing mock interviews with Letterman and Barbara Walters in bed, before masturbating."~ Kirk Lake, There Will Be Rainbows
"Loudon [Wainwright] writes bitterly funny and heartbreaking folk music, which has inspired me to be honest in my own work. He is truly fearless. Commercial considerations don't seem to matter much to him. His music is gorgeous and hilarious and painful. It is everything I hope to achieve in my career." ~ Judd Apatow
"The constant assertion of belief is an indication of fear."
~ J Krishnamurti
"Fear not your enemies, for they can only kill you. Fear not your friends, for they can only betray you. Fear only the indifferent, who permit the killers and betrayers to walk safely on the earth."~ E Yashinsky
"We are each on our own path, doing exactly what we are supposed to do, and I have to learn to let go. I've been of two minds lately: the-standing-up-for-myself-proud woman versus the-cosmic-acceptance-of-everything-in-its-proper-place. I know I can no longer present myself on a silver platter to anybody, but I refuse to play the fucking game, and I'm interested in drawing someone to me who has no interest in playing it either." ~ Pamela des Barres
"I was being interviewed by an intelligent man who obviously took my novel very seriously, and he asked, simply enough, 'How has returning to Christ actually influenced your life?' I found myself thinking about this and then answering, 'It demands of me that I love people'. This was a turning point, this simple acknowledgement. Because I began to realize what the message of Christ was for me: to love my friends and to love my enemies. And the mystery was that loving my friends was sometimes harder than loving my enemies. And that if one loved both, completely and sincerely, and if one could convince others to do this as well, one could, theoretically, bring the Kingdom of Heaven to earth... I am a baby Christian when it comes to loving. I am just learning. So far were my daily thoughts from loving people that I have a lifelong vocation now in learning how to find Christ in every single person for whom I meet. Again and again, I fail because of temper and pride. I fail because it is so easy to judge someone else rather than love that person. And I fail because I cannot execute the simplest operations - answering an angry email for instance, in pure love." ~ Anne Rice
"Age doesn't protect you from love. But love, to some extent, protects you from age." ~ Anais Nin
"I had this song (on Boys In The Trees) called Haunting. Basically you don't have to see someone for a long, long time for them to still be inside you. There's no way of killing it off; it's kind of an obsession. And some people do have that affect on me. I have a good memory, especially for emotions. I never get over strong feelings." ~ Carly Simon
"Love makes your soul crawl out from its hiding place."
~ Zora Neale Hurston
“Each of us is born with a box of matches inside us, but we can't strike them all by ourselves.” ~ Laura Esquivel
"Some people come into our lives and quickly go. Some stay for a while, leave footprints on our hearts, and we are never, ever the same." ~ Adlai E Stevenson
"After we made love I knew it was over. Did I ever really love Big, or was I addicted to the pain? The exquisite pain of wanting someone so unattainable?
~ Carrie Bradshaw, Sex and the City
"The hottest love has the coldest end." ~ Socrates
"Joy lives concealed in grief." ~ Rumi
"Imperfection is beauty; madness is genius. And it's better to be absolutely ridiculous than absolutely boring."
~ Marilyn Monroe
"Art and love are the same thing: it's the process of seeing yourself in things that are not you."~ Chuck Klosterman
"I'm obsessed with death I think. It's a big subject with me. I have a very pessimistic view of life. You should know this about me if we're gonna go out. I feel that life is divided up into the horrible and the miserable. Those are the two categories. The horrible would be like terminal cases, blind people, cripples. I don't know how they get through life. It's amazing to me. And the miserable is everyone else. So when you go through life you should be thankful if you're miserable."
~ Wood Allen, Annie Hall
"It isn't the mountains ahead to climb that wear you out; it's the pebble in your shoe."~ Muhammad Ali
“Too often in her life, love had been defined as... humiliation with occasional roses." ~ unknown
"The truth is... we hide because we want to be found, we walk away to see who will follow, we cry to see who will wipe away the tears, and we let our hearts get broken to see who will come and fix them." ~ unknown
"I cry a lot because I miss people. They die and I can't stop them. They leave me and I love them more."
~ Maurice Sendak
"I remember awakening one morning and finding everything smeared with the color of forgotten love." ~ Charles Bukowski
“They say time heals. It’s bullshit. Time’s a thief.”
~ Bobby Cannavale as Dr. Miguel Cruz on Nurse Jackie
"Love never dies a natural death. It dies because we don't know how to replenish it's source. It dies of blindness and errors and betrayals. It dies of illness and wounds; it dies of weariness, of witherings, of tarnishings." ~ Anais Nin
“The wreckage and the ruin and the heartbreak is all worth it. Life is tragedy, broken by moments of unworldly bliss, making the tragedy bearable.”~ Bruce Springsteen
"I may not lead the most dramatic life, but in my brain it's War and Peace everyday." ~ Rufus Wainwright
“For every moment of triumph, for every instance of beauty, many souls must be trampled.”~ Hunter S Thompson
"The only absolute knowledge attainable by man is that life is meaningless." ~ Tolstoy
"We go through life. We shed our skins. We become ourselves." ~ Patti Smith
"This thing we call existence, who knows what it all means? Time and Life and People are just glossy magazines." ~ Loudon Wainwright III
"Too often in her life, love had been defined as 'humiliation with occasional roses.'" ~ unknown
"For her fifth wedding, the bride wore black and carried a scotch and soda." Phyllis Battelle
"If two people love each other, there can be no happy end to it." ~ Ernest Hemingway
"Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards." ~ Soren Kierkegaard