Grey, Grey Winter

It was the coldest, rawest winter I could remember. A desolate, damp, tattle-tale grey winter whose soundtrack was Dylan's Blood On the Tracks and Desire and Paul Simon's Greatest Hits. They were released at different times, yes, but in the winter of '77, that's what I was listening to--it was almost like I needed Paul Simon to take the edge off of Dylan. I'd listen to "Idiot Wind" and then temper it with "Slip Slidin' Away." Dylan's music was so raw and naked and forceful, I was almost embarrassed to listen to at that young age--I'd never heard anything like it before. I didn't know you could say things like "You're an idiot, babe, it's a wonder that you still know how to breathe," and set it to music.

Everything that winter was happy for me--on the outside. It was before Gregory died, and his life seemed relatively carefree. I was a good kid, sheltered. I didn't smoke or drink, didn't have a curfew because I didn't need one. My life was about school and friends and records and shows like "Happy Days" and "Laverne and Shirley." On the inside, though, I was a jumble of existential questions, quiet rebellion, and young teen angst.

The winter of '77 was a winter whose landscape was dotted with car exhaust-blackened snow and ice, dirty abandoned, graffitied rowhouses all 'round, and trees that would have been just nondescript, except that they were ugly and putrid. Didn't know there were putrid trees, but there were, and the only ugly trees I knew where here, in this ravaged part of the city, lining the tiny smudges of patchy littered crabgrass and weeds that passed for parks in this bedraggled urban hellhole I called home.

I imagined the aroma of fragrant pines and spruce and cedar in some forest primeval as I walked the broken concrete path that cut through the "park," adorned only with industrial orange barrels and garbage cans burning last month's rotting leaves and last year's smelly trash.

I imagined long-haired English boys in Carnaby Street and King's Road. I imagined flower children in the Haight and scruffy young men in the mountains and hippies in the Canyon. I imagined mini-skirted Mary Quant models and mods on mini bikes and lovers in convertibles and what I got were greaseball hoods dressed like Rocky and singing flat, dated a capella on 10th and Porter.

Somewhere was that scene, that timeless, placeless scene that had been with me, that had rested deep inside me, in my core, in my soul, that had resonated with me and made my pulse race, that felt like home though it was so foreign. Somewhere it existed in reality. But it wasn't in this fucking shithole, that was for sure.