September 18, 2020
Jimi:
I hope this brief message reaches you and finds you well. If you have a moment, please respond and let me know. And I hope the years have been good for you, well for you. On this momentous occasion, 50 years since you left us too soon, I wish I had some special offering to pass on in commemoration. I do not. If it is of any comfort, know that I would have been there with you in that awful moment, if only to have held your hand, or touched your forehead, or to have held your head up to ease your suffering. I’m sorry you had to go that way. As you know, life is not always fair..
The one good thing, you gave everything you had in 27 years, everything inside and more, experienced, an old soul. If you had to go, then so be it, although I will never fully accept that notion. No way. All I can do is take the perspective that few of us are fortunate enough to be blessed with so much and in such little time.
I should leave that there and get to the point, stop running my mouth like an Old Betsey engine after all the repairs and tune ups and tire changes, now coughing and sputtering and shaking but refusing to give up the ghost and quit, continuing to make a way out of no way mile after mile. See, there I go again. Let me get to the point of why I’m writing. I’m sure you have better things to do today than to listen to me mumble on. Truth to tell, it’s hard to be direct, to just say what I have to, because I’m hurting, wish you were here with us. Chalk it up to life, which is often shitty and cruel. I’m sorry it was that way for you but who are any of us? What power do we have?…
I’m sorry. I promised that I would not break down but just couldn’t hold back, broken, you know like the room full of mirrors you sang about. Still, let me do all I can to honor my promise. For one thing, you weren’t one for tears, all the sappy shit. In fact, you kept it simple, no fancy philosophizing, theorizing, propositions, signifying. Just one message: love. The most direct and profound message there is.
Know that I carry you everywhere, that you more than anyone on this planet have shaped me as a writer.But I have gotten off track. Where was I?…Yes: on this special day, your day, I am reaching out simply to thank you. Forty-six years ago, when I was a shy and lonely sixteen-year-old, I discovered your music for the first time and I was blown away. I decided to take up the guitar and become the “next” Jimi, a bone-headed idea if there ever was one, but an idea that nevertheless consumed me for quite some time.
In due course, I wised up, realized that I could never be a singer, a guitarist, songwriter, a musician, a performer, that I lack what it takes, that fire for song and word you had. So I put my guitar aside and focused my energies on writing. By the time that epiphany sparked me, rattled me, turned my world upside down, you were inside me, your “music all up inside my body,” the way your cut buddy Miles Davis said he felt when he saw and heard Bird and Dizzy the first time. (Man, why did you fuck Miles’s old lady? You too game to do so. Miles not into no “free love” shit, no way, then or now.)
Know that I carry you everywhere, that you more than anyone on this planet—where are you? just where the fuck are you? an apparition felt, sensed, in crosstown traffic? hiding behind the rings of Jupiter? buried beneath sulfur mines?—you more than anyone else have shaped me as a writer, an artist, a thinker, as a social, political, and spiritual being. A human being: living in the present, the moment, the now, surrounded by the sea of time, what Miles called “fat time.”
In the fall of 1978 when I was sixteen years old, I read his biography about you, the first one to do you justice and still the best. His book reads like fiction—David once called it a “novel,” only to deny, before my writing students, that he had done so. David can be a funny nigger like that some time. Anyway, I read David’s book, his prose, and thought this is what language can do, every word a poem, before I knew such fancy words as “metaphor.”
Do you remember David? He first saw you and Sly Stone on a double bill at the Fillmore East. (Man, you should see Sly these days. He’s in bad shape. Another story…) David said about you, “He could sing, play guitar, and dance all at the same time.” Then he met you at a Buddy Guy concert and introduced himself to you. Do you remember? You said you’d read the piece he’d written about you and Sly, and in response, he told you he was going to write a book about you.
Jimi, you’ll be happy to know that you’ve come a long way in the Black community. When I was growing up, you were “white boy shit” to Black people. No longer.Did you know that David was part of a group of Black Bohemian writers based in the East Village? They called themselves Umbra. Man, those Umbra cats were out there, out of sight. The shining star is this dude named Ishmael Reed, now age 83, older than you. Like you a voodoo child. (Once, he put a hex on the good liberal white folks at U of Berkley who denied him tenure.) He writes laugh-out-loud fiction. (He and Richard Pryor were friends.) One of his novels has the funniest line I’ve ever read in a book. In one scene, Jesus unpins himself from the cross, steps down to earth, then says “Free at last.”
Jimi, you’ll be happy to know that you’ve come a long way in the Black community. When I was growing up, you were “white boy shit” to Black people. No longer. (Awareness takes time.) Now our folk embrace you, celebrate you. There’s even a rapper/producer who calls his alter ego Future Hendrix. In an interview, he says this about you: “It was rare to hear a Black dude then that was a rock & roll star at the peak of his game. It was special. I wanna be one of those special guys. Jimi Hendrix wasn’t afraid of who he was. That’s the part I emulate.”
By the way, David now believes that your death was no accident, believes that someone’s husband killed you. A blues man’s death by poison like Robert Johnson. Well, that’s one possibility. Full of conspiracy theories, David has yet to decide who murdered you—The CIA, Mike Jeffries, the British secret police, even the Soviet Union. Ten or twelve possibilities, motives, reasons. All he knows for sure is that your death was not accidental but foul play that involved several conspirators in your circle. The sad thing, he revised his biography giving free reign to these theories and fucked up the book.
David notwithstanding, I think I understand what happened that final night. Even wrote about it. There was the small tea carefully poured. And the last photographs taken. You and Monica passed your time together, drinking tea, talking, calm and delightful. Then a bottle of wine. When it was time to sleep, you couldn’t, so you took four sleeping pills unaware of their strength, potency… Semi-consciousness, you heard the doubt far back in your mouth, deep in your throat. You felt a splash around you. Your chest didn’t intend to give, it gave anyway from the weight of the liquid. You felt your eyes close. Your breath ends. You were dead, all seeing gone, warm beneath a quilt of your own vomit.
The door opened and Monica shot out into the dark and into the night. But I was wrong in thinking that was the end of you. The circle remains unbroken, the sea of African time where past present and future exists all at once. I see you riding a dinosaur. I see you crossing the Atlantic via steamer. I see you at the control board of a spaceship. The fluid remains inside you like still waters that refuse to drain away, always close to where it wants to be, has to be.
You thought you were immortal as we all do when we are young and reckless and know everything there is to know. And guess what? You were right. Isn’t that trippy?
You are my patron saint. At your feet, I kneel as you did when you squirted the lighter fluid onto your guitar at Monterrey. At every meal I keep a place for you, spill a taste of every new bottle of wine uncorked. (For those who are not here.) Still, I wake in the night, afraid, all the time. Can’t bring myself to gaze into the dark.
You held the pick so trustingly. Held the neck of your guitar like a torch lit to guide you. Your guitar pick moves like a beetle. Do I see these images so as not to see you dead in bed and covered in vomit, smelling of wine and evacuation.
To fill the auditorium with the soaring sound of your guitar and lift the seats above the floor, leaving the audience suspended in mid-air.Perhaps I am trying to avoid thinking about my own mortality—58 years of age now—my dogged flesh, the bags under my eyes, receding hair line (like a wave that has refused to return to shore), and the way my ribs lift up and fall with a huge labored breath. (Asthma.) The watching and waiting: at some point, black will go into black. As Richard Pryor said, Death is the ultimate test. As far as we know no one has passed it.
Half my life has passed. More. So much I still need to learn—consciousness comes so slowly—do. All the ways of knowing have never added up to a single whole. Perhaps why I often burn the midnight oil, even if it puts me at risk, in danger of becoming manic, psychotic.
Monterrey was a Dionysian celebration of youth and becoming. The hunger and happiness in your voice. Your loose limbs. The fluidity of your playing amplified through banks of Marshall speakers. Then you squirted lighter fluid over your Strat and tossed a match, completing the ritual. So many believe that it was that act which made you, but I now know that guitar was carved from the oldest tree in the world, indestructible wood that ignites an eternal flame.
In contrast, your muted performance at the Fillmore East two years later. No shimmy no shine. Just music. Every note played with intention. To fill the auditorium with the soaring sound of your guitar and lift the seats above the floor, leaving the audience suspended in mid-air.
By then you were a weary man at 27 years of age. Had traveled distances, geographical and spiritual, physical and mental, that none could imagine sustaining. You were at the edge of something new.
But I have gone on long enough.
Thanks for making time for me today, your special day. Truth to tell, I don’t feel better. You are still dead, still gone. No assurances in death. No more new music to give to the world, to me.
Voodoo Chile, magic boy, rolling stone, railroad man, astral man, Gypsy… Stay the course. See you in fifty.
Until we meet again,
Jeff
September 18, 2020
Jeffersonville, Virginia
__________________________
Time never goes backwards, but the imagination does. The thought occurred to me: Maybe I could finish Jimi’s album, New Rays of a Rising Sun. After all, I have been carrying on his work through my writing since I took him into wonder when I was sixteen years old. Pay fidelity to his music in terms of fancy, feeling, and style, which means trying to shape a thing according to the colors in my head and reach both the mundane and the otherworldly. Jimi.
*
The podcast was set to start via Zoom at 5:00 that evening. (Every minute is a moment for want. The interest in the pull of desire.) By the afternoon, my vision was blurry again. How was this possible? Perhaps my blood pressure was elevated, borderline stroke.
Mobile to danger, I took an Uber to the hospital. The emergency room rising and falling. The diagnosis, low potassium. The remedy, two units of fluid. The IV vibrating in my arm hour after hour.
Then a realization that slowed down the spin of the earth: Jimi had read my letter and responded, saved me from erasure, granted me life.
I found music in the sky. A chant to bring me home.
Pulled back into my apartment, movement and muscle for sure, but the time for the podcast had come and gone. (In the world of the living, time is fixed and ever-present.) All the thrill of planning failing to spill into actuality. I was too sick to be aggrieved.
I was in wet pain, a tide rising in my stomach. Rushed to the toilet, leaned forward a long moment, shuddered, and heard fluid spill from my bowels. Gutted. I sprang to sight, a grassy liquid like pine needles, earth, and sprigs immersed in rain. What the hell?
Like you, Monk was already touched. Good for him. Good for you. As my friend John Wideman has said about Monk’s music, the silences are as much important as the sound. True for you also.A few minutes later, another wave rose. I stumbled to the bathroom. Afterwards, I sat down on the bed, cautious, contemplative, intent. Once my stomach settled, I called Martha, honoring a promise. Before I had gone to the hospital, I promised to update her after I had been examined.
I’m okay, I said. Explained about the low potassium. But something weird just happened, I said. But how could I explain it to her?
She put a spell on you, Jimi said. That’s the stuff coming out of you.
I looked at him, at the ease of his shoulders. Where was his axe?
When? I said.
A long time ago, he said.
So all this time—how long?—I had been under the pull of someone else’s will. I had thought I had a brain and a body I could control when there was a hidden world housed inside my body. I heard Jimi’s words and the idea was ignited in me that there are ways to enter someone else. Witchcraft was real! Jimi outlining a life, mine. Jimi would keep me here, alive on planet earth, third stone from the sun.
But you’ll be okay.
Martha, do you hear this?
I was grateful for the life he had given back to me. On top of that, to be able to spend time with Jimi. I had waited forty-two years to have a conversation with him so I needed to grab each little grain of belongingness.
I asked, Where do you live?
On another planet.
I said, Tell me about it.
And Jimi said, If you could see what I see!
Well what is it called?
…
Will I get to visit there someday?
…
Where is Miles? Do you and Miles ever get together?
It’s been a while, Jimi said. He’s on another planet.
Good to know you two still play sometimes.
Where is Trane?
I don’t know?
You don’t know? What about Muddy? Bird? Dizz? Billie? Mahalia? Miriam? Fela? Bra Hugh? Jimi, what the fuck do you know? Look, man, you can go get high later. Just tell me, Jimi.
Me hoping that stories of bounty would spill out about Trane, Bird, Mahalia, Lady Day, Miles, Bessie. But who would be stupid enough to let go such secrets?
Martha?
I’ll call you back, she said.
You hang out with Monk? Guess that makes sense. Monk was touched. Did you know that Monk called everyone nigger? Even the Jewish cat who owned the deli near his apartment. Crazy Tim Leary tried to get Monk to drop acid, Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds or, as you called it, The Stars that Play with Laughing Sam’s Dice.
You know what’s funny? Everybody gets Woodstock wrong. Took you a few minutes to warm up at Woodstock, but once you had, it became the greatest ever recorded performance hands down.But, like you, Monk was already touched. Good for him. Good for you. As my friend John Wideman—incredible mind, out the box like you, only a few months older than you, his best prose as good as it gets, equal to anything—has said about Monk’s music, the silences are as much important as the sound. True for you also. You brought the noise. The noise is as important as the melody.
…
Who is your drinking buddy? No way. I guess she’s still suffering. No way to treat a lady. No way to treat anyone. We’ll make this world pay for what it did to her. (And did to you?) I see the bottle move between the two of you, the mirrors of hands.
Kind is kind.
Right. Kind is kind. I write the way you play, Jimi. Each word slanted. Each word should be slanted.
Jimi said, Mistakes are necessary, welcome.
Jimi, I’m going to write the novel you never finished, manuscript stolen upon your death. And I’m going to finish your fourth album, although in a way that’s already been done in Prince, Erykah Badu, J.I.D., H.E.R., Future, and other people.
Are they what’s happening?
Yeah. Well, Prince is dead. Have you met him?
Don’t think so.
Have you seen Atlanta or South Park (especially the episode where the crippled kids join the Cripps and off some Bloods) or The Wire (“Hamsterdam”) or Breaking Bad? Or the movie Get Out or that other flick Sorry to Bother You? Boots Riley is a funny motherfucker. And that Jordan Peele…All of this shit is you, Jimi. Distortion.
They keep me busy.
Damn, so now you write scripts, too?
…
That explains a lot.
My thoughts sinking close to nowhere.
You know what’s funny? Everybody gets Woodstock wrong. Took you a few minutes to warm up at Woodstock, but once you had, it became the greatest ever recorded performance hands down. Despite that lame guitarist Larry Lee you’d brought on board for the gig along with those two percussionists. Dude, what the fuck was that about? Oh, I see. Fair enough. He helped you fulfill an existential need. Good supply. His skill for detection worthy of respect, deserving respect. If you say so, Jimi. You do understand that dude can’t play for shit.
…
Can I ask you something? Was Miles touched?…I know, Jimi. I figured that out on my own and accept that. A loving father looking on, suffering with us. (I’ve heard that sound no human can make.) Like a doctor who just stands by the patient’s bed.
…
You sure are a skinny motherfucker…Wait. Why the rush? Where are you going? That’s your fucking problem: you love drugs too much. Yeah, I said it. Alright then. Just go on, nigger, and get high.
Jimi looked at me. Show me some respect, he said. Remember, I’m the greatest of all time.
The greatest of all time my ass. I don’t care, nigger? I don’t care about the bibles you left behind or that all your verses are Waste Lands’s. Just run get high. And go fuck that pancake-ass plain-Jane. That’s the way you like them, right? Your so-called Band Aids.
Jimi turned away from me.
Tell Miles I said fuck him too.
…
Wait. I’m sorry. Don’t leave. Don’t walk away. Tell me what you came to tell me.
He stopped walking and turned to face me.
Okay. Alright. Let us stay on track. Lay in the cut like the stylus. You sure are one pre-digital nigger. Sorry, Jimi. Just a word these days. By the way, you know what David says about that word? He says it’s an acronym. N.I.G.G.E.R. Not Intelligent Gun Gripping Egregious Retard.
Jimi laughed. Then, Gotta go, he said.
I asked, Will I see you again?
In fifty years, Jimi said.
But what if I need your help again?
We all want to be heard.
*
That night, I called David and apologized for screwing up the podcast. But all was not lost. I could interview him about Jimi. Then I told him about the conversation I’d had earlier that evening with Jimi. To my surprise, David became jealous.
Well, shit! he said. Why do you want to interview me? You have actual conversations with Jimi.
Years later, expectant, hopeful, here on my spaceship, I look for Jimi at dawn and at dusk.
