Carolina
Blues
by Jim Booth
December 21, 1991
Chapal Hill
Dearnesst Angel,
Why, why, why, why, why, hwy, why, hwy,
why, why, hwy, hwy, hwy, why, why, why, why, hwy,
hwy, why, why, why, whhy. why, hwy, why, why, why,
why?
Baby, oh, baby, ohbaby, obaaby, aobaaaby-----------
I.m sorry. Shouldn’t wrte.. I’mtodrukn,
I think its 2anm......... How diod i get all thos
dost?
Got hedphones on, listeing to Robet
Plant. Led Zep bigger than us. Biger than everyboy.
Biig Sadnees. Too drun..... What’s with
goddam dots?
Love you forever.. Ghey wow.... always
dots.
* * * * * * * * * * *
December
22, 1991
2:18
P.M.
Dear Angel,
I tried to write after I got home last
night. You see the result. Drank a pint of brandy.
Didn’t seem enough, so I went to work on another.
Wrote the stuff above somewhere around the end of
the first bottle. Fell off my swivel chair shortly
after that (I think). Spilled most of the second bottle
on the carpet. Woke up breathing alcohol fumes. Broke
another pair of headphones. When I fell, I ripped
the male jack out of the female jack.
Male jack. Female jack. God, I’m pathetic.
You know, the sound of these computer
keys is like hammers on my skull. Hangover from hell.
Going to town and get new headphones. Back in a bit.
* * * * * * * * * * *
9:30
P.M.
Took me a while, I guess. I went by
to see Charlie Beagle. We ended up going out for dinner.
Autographs? Sure. Signed four. Had a couple of drinks,
too. Boy, howdy, I feel better.
Bought three new sets of headphones.
At least I won’t have to go to the store for new ones
for a couple of months, maybe.
I know I’m avoiding the issue of this
letter, but I just don’t want to talk about it right
now. Shit, Angel, it doesn’t seem like you’re gone
yet.
Marlene had called from Munich. Jakob
was ecstatic about his computer. Good suggestion.
He turned 12 on the 12th, the day after
you turned 24. Somebody told me (or I read somewhere)
that Brian Jones left maybe 20 illegitimate children.
Who’s Brian Jones? Dammit, Angel, you’re such a baby.
Brian was an original member of the Rolling Stones.
Died in July of 1969, a month after he’d been kicked
out of the band.
If I die tomorrow, I leave only one
(I think). Guess that makes me 19 illegitimate children
more responsible than Brian Jones.
I’m so proud of myself.
Marlene was the first one to tell me
I’ve got weltschmerz. World Sorrow. Melancholy. The
Big Sadness.
Am I Blue? (That’s the title of an Old
Billie Holiday song, isn’t it?)
I should be used to people being unable
to accept things about me by now, but I guess I’m
not. You have to understand, Angel. Money and fame
and all that have opened a lot of doors for me. People
never tell me no (well, almost never).
I can’t help but think, in spite of
all you say, that my going on tour again with The
Lost Generation is why you’ve left me.
You’ve left me.
I’m going to go buy some more brandy.
* * * * * * * * * * *
December
23, 1991
1:25 A.M.
Dear, Dear Angel,
I’m having a blue Christmas. Have
to leave in the afternoon and go to my parents’ house.
They still live in Reidsville. You know that. Sometimes
they go to the condo I bought for them on Jekyll Island,
but this year they’re staying home. So Marshall and
I can “come home” for Christmas.
Home. Almost my entire adult life
has been lived in hotel rooms, resort condos, and
rented mansions. It’s been luxurious, but it hasn’t
been home.
This house I’m sitting in writing
to you is the first “home” I’ve ever owned (that I
actually lived in). I’d had it and lived in it a year
before I met you.
You made it a home.
Angel, what will I do without you?
* * * * * * * * * * *
Drunl; I kow what yu say. For
am in th e mornig.
GODADMITT IT, Angle you legt me.
Crikstmas. I love you.
Love you, love uyo loveyou,,,
are these dots agin? Can’t see.../,’l I’’,m
goimg to bde.
Love, Jay
* * * * * * * * * * *
December
23, 1991
3:14 P.M.
My Angel,
The house is absolutely still. I
have the headphones down around my neck.
I’ve been listening to playbacks
of the material for a new album. I know. You think
going back into the music will kill me.
So what?
You won’t be there to see it, then,
will you?
The house is absolutely still. It’s
two days before Christmas.
We’re thinking of two possible titles
for the new album: “Once more into the breech, dear
friends” from Henry V by Shakespeare, or “Lovely,
dark, and deep” from “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy
Evening” by Robert Frost.
I don’t know why I’m telling you
this. You don’t want to know. You don’t care. You’re
like everyone else. It’s always “Oh, wow, there he
is. Jay Breeze. The Rock Star. Will he give me his
autograph? Will he talk with me? Will he play and
sing for me? Will he give me some of his money? Will
he sleep with me?”
Never, Angel. You would never ask
for anything. You’d rather die.
Don’t think I don’t understand.
That’s what scares me.
You understand.
Perfectly.
I don’t know how.
The truth is you’re not like anyone
else. Why? Why do you get me when no one else in the
world does? Why do I get you when I don’t get anyone
else in the world?
No walls. Ever.
Got to get going. Talk to you tonight.
Love,
Jay
* * * * * * * * * * *
December
24, 1991
2:25
A.M.
Oh, Angel,
Came in about an hour ago. My brother
Marshall and I were out at a round of Christmas parties.
I’ve had a few drinks but none of the unholy stuff
I’ve been doing the last couple of days.
Marsh has been great. You know how
funny he is. Grandmother (Mom’s mom) always said he
got the personality and I got the looks. Yeah. Right.
Anyway, we made the rounds. The
people who grew up with me made a BIG issue out of
knowing me. People who never knew me but had (of course?)
heard of me treated me as if I were—what? The two-headed
calf at the circus? No, that’s not it. What’s it like,
Angel?
This is where you would have exactly
the right description for how things are. You would
have sized everything up and given me some very sensible
observation about the behavior of all these people.
Then I would write it down here as I’ve written down
so many of the things you’ve said to me.
But you’ve left me.
The house is absolutely still.
What did you promise your mother,
Angel?
Did you promise to kill me?
You’re going to, you know.
I’m going to see if Marsh has a
bottle.
If he doesn’t, I’ll get one from
the car.
I’m weak and I’m bad, Angel. You’re
right not to love me. Nobody should.
* * * * * * * * * * *
It id 5’37 A>M. Gon agan.
Noyu no god.. NO GOOD.
SHIt. Tuned on caaspitol letters. Sorry.
Always so soory.
Go bed now. Mars helping me.
By Angel. Love always.
* * * * * * * * * * *
December
24, 1991
12:18
P.M.
Well, Angel,
I’m sitting here with the hangover
from hell at my Aunt Barbara’s house. She has been
quietly and reprovingly giving me tomato juice with
shots of Worcestershire sauce. I keep asking for vodka,
too, but she won’t give.
Merry Christmas, Angel.
Tell you a story. When I was eleven or twelve,
I used to mow my Aunt Barbara’s lawn every week. While
I mowed I listened to a transistor radio. It was red
and had a white cord with an ear plug for one ear.
The cord was just long enough to reach from the radio
in the pocket of my shorts to my right ear.
I would mow and sing at the top
of my lungs along with the British Invasion groups:
The Beatles, of course; The Rolling Stones; The Animals;
The Kinks. I had the best time, you know?
This drove my Aunt Barbara crazy.
She would call me up to her screened back porch and
give me a glass of lemonade or iced tea or milk and
maybe a sandwich or a piece of fruit pie. Then she
would fetch a volume of The Harvard Classics and
have me read to her from that to prove that rock and
roll wasn’t rotting my intellect. That summer I got
through Machiavelli’s The Prince and Thomas
More’s Utopia. And I learned the words to “Satisfaction”
by The Stones and The Beatles’ “Help.”
And it all made sense to me. I began
to think of The Rolling Stones as Machiavellian and
of The Beatles as Utopian (probably because I thought
Utopia was supposed to be a nice place and The Beatles
seemed nicer than The Stones). Maybe that’s what’s
meant by a liberal arts education.
You know, Angel, I told Ringo this
story at a party in L.A. We sat on one of those huge
sectional sofas that was about a half mile long and
went all along the walls of this room that had floor
to ceiling windows looking out over Malibu Canyon.
He just sat quietly and listened. When I got finished
he said, “Imagine. A kid in a little town in North
Carolina listening to us on a transistor. And now
you’re here. Imagine.” Then he got up and went to
pee or something.
I have no idea what the hell it
means, Angel.
So what’s new, right?
Aunt Barbara wants to know what
I’m writing. I’ve told her a letter. I guess that’s
what this is. I’m writing you a letter, Angel. I’ll
probably write you a million letters. You’re the person
I tell everything to, Angel.
What will I do with you gone?
If I wrote a million letters, would
you read them?
You would.
I love you so much.
You gotta come back.
* * * * * * * * * * *
December
24, 1991
11:48
P.M.
Goddammit, Angel,
We just got off the phone. The thing
you do that costs me the most is your ability to push
me away from you. Your coldness on the phone (whether
it was conscious or unconscious I can’t say) hurt
me worse than anything you could ever do to me. I
feel a knife in my heart—it has your name on it. (I
know—sounds like one of our song lyrics.)
I realize now I will never send
you this letter. I will never send you any of the
million letters I will probably write. Because I can’t
keep anything from you, I won’t be able not to. You
know what is in my heart and soul anyway.
What I will try to tell you is what
I think is happening.
What is happening, Angel?
Am I being punished by God because
I play evil rock and roll? Is the person I have loved
most in my life to be taken from me because of this?
I don’t believe it.
I’m too caught up in my own myth.
There’s a song by Argent called
“God Gave Rock and Roll to You.” I think that’s true.
Rock’s like religion, Angel. I mean,
concerts are like church, aren’t they? Like religious
rituals, anyway. All that holding lights to the sky
and stuff. On stage is where I feel closest to God,
Angel. I feel sanctified. Holy. The music, the crowd,
the lights—it all reaches my soul.
I think you may come back to me.
It feels right now as if you will.
Just checked my watch. It’s Christmas.
There are so few things that bring
joy, Angel. So few things that touch the soul. The
music does that for me.
Christmas does it.
You do it.
To be able to say that someone gives
me joy scares me, Angel. To say that you touch my
soul seems too small. You have my soul. I have yours.
We have completeness of the soul.
Yeah, I’m too devoted. To you, to the
music, to—Christmas?
I don’t really know what else.
I feel I can do anything if you’re there,
Angel.
What a gift to give me.
It’s Christmas.
The house is absolutely still.
You never leave me—you know?
That’s the gift, isn’t it? Someone who
is always there. For each person, someone who is always
there.
You are always there for me, Angel.
Thank you.
Merry Christmas.
Oh! There’s the phone....
God bless us every one.
Love,
Jay
