The Portable Henry Rollins

by Henry Rollins

  Action is its cure

  Death has been walking with me all year

  Talking to me in the night

  I answer with my insomnia

  Paranoia has put a hard shine in my eyes

  I mix humor with my fury

  Efficiency with my alienation

  Beauty with my rage

  The rising sun is my silent battle cry

  Exhaustion is my victory

  Death is that which I measure myself by

  I acknowledge no peer or ally

  I understand Death as master

  And the definition of absolute power

  My path is clear and laid out before me

  The wind rushes past me

  I dream of empty desert landscapes

  And proceed forward

  January 17, 1992. Sydney, Australia: Five in the morning LA time when I walk onstage. Eyes hurt and I want to puke. There’s a dead friend in my thoughts. He’ll be waiting for me in my room if I ever get through this gig. They yell and I can smell the beer coming up through the rug. Earlier today it was interviews and heat. Small hotel room and loneliness. It’s what I know. It’s all there is.

  January 19. Melbourne, Australia: I Stood up there and told them what I knew to be true. If I think about it too much, I want to scream and run away. I throw myself out like the trash in cities all over the world. The cities don’t care. They don’t even notice if you live there, leave there, or die there. They really don’t care, they really don’t. Don’t let the world break your heart too many times.

  January 21. Adelaide, Australia: I skipped this town with the band last time we were here because of the bullshit that went down. We were playing James Brown and Parliament, and people in the crowd were telling us not to play “that nigger music.” Really great. I wonder what the show will be like tonight. I’m in the bug-spray-smelling hotel room looking at footage of a man digging up his parents in Hungary. They were executed. This room is cold and it’s raining outside. The last few days have been hard. I wonder if the rest of my life will be like this. The last month has been unreal. Like walking through a dream. Later: I’m back in the box. The show was really cool actually. More people showed up than when the band played here. They were a good bunch as well. I told them why the band didn’t come to Adelaide the last time we toured Australia. I told them a story about when I met Dion and he told me about touring the South with Sam Cooke. So now I’m back in the box and will be going to Sydney in the morning. I’m glad no one is here right now. I have a feeling that I will be spending a lot more time alone now.

  January 26. Sydney, Australia: Last talking show in Australia. Soon I leave and the entire year starts kind of. I don’t know. Everything feels new in a strange way. Joe has been all I think about. I talk at these people. I do interviews. I stare at the ceiling in my box at night, and it’s all the same. Inside I’m screaming. No one will hear me or see the difference. Perhaps something strange or unsettling in the eyes will give me away; other than that, it’s all in my head. I see them from ten miles back in my skull.

  February 1. Trenton, IMJ: Tonight was good and one of the only times I’ve ever felt a bit nervous about going on a stage. There were more people there tonight than when the band plays. About seven hundred. I told them everything I knew. I really like the Trenton crowd. I have been doing talking shows on that stage since 1987. After the show Death overcame me again. People were around me all talking to me at once. I did my best to hear them all and talk to all of them. It’s hard after spilling your guts out for over two hours. After that, useless sex in a roadside motel somewhere on Highway 1. These nights hammer me. I wonder why I don’t wake up with blood on my pillow. I figure my brain will break someday. I guess I am hanging in here because I am into self-torture. I will not allow myself to burn out. The ones who burn out are the lucky ones. Then there are the others who hang in for the long haul and get really chewed up. I know something about this.

  February 13. Hamburg, Germany: Second night in this place. Played better than last night. Got taken out to dinner by people from the record company. Ate with a bunch of drunk Germans who were really cool, and that was it. The only thing on my mind is playing well. I love opening. I can’t wait to hit the Chili Peppers fans again, they’re so nice. Fuck this shit. Let’s be honest. The Peppers are cool people and they kick the hard jams, but all I want to do is blow their asses offstage every night and that’s the only reason I’m on this fucking tour. Wish I could see more of Hamburg, but there’s no time of course. Doesn’t matter. All I’m good for is playing, doing interviews, and sleeping in my black box.

  February 21. Hannover, Germany: A guy got up onstage tonight with a sun tattoo on his back that was bigger than the one I have. It had all kinds of fucked-up colors in it. Green, put on all crooked. Sometimes this shit trips me out to the point where I can’t get myself out the door. A lot of people at the gig, and they were onstage all night. I wonder how much sweat comes out of me a year. When they talk shit about me in magazines that’s what I think about. I think about all the sweat coming out of my skin and landing on the floor. They’ll never know anything. Moving across borders totally unknown. I feel like I am on tour with Joe’s dead body. I keep expecting to see the corpse on my bunk in the bus. I drag it with me from town to town. It’s been hard doing all the press and getting asked about him all the time. I think the whole year will be like this. I don’t know how I will get through it.

  February 28. Innsbruck, Austria: I did a talking show here in this place before. In the bus today Chris played a tape that Joe made him of himself talking. It was strange hearing Joe’s voice. It was hard to take. He was being funny as hell, and that made it worse. I sat there kind of laughing and kind of bleeding out the side. I listen to dead people on records all the time. It’s not hard to take when I listen to Coltrane or someone like that, but it’s different with Joe. Eventually he took the tape off. I sat in the backstage area and stretched and waited to play and wondered if the crowd was going to be the same bored-looking bunch that always seems to go to our shows in Austria. We played hard and they watched and that was about it. Went back on the bus and waited to leave. The mountains were beautiful today. I cannot imagine living in a place like this, having a view like that every day. I wonder what that does to your mind if you were born and raised in clean air and streets that were not violent. I wonder what they think of people like me who come in from a different world.

  March 1. Milan, Italy: I’m glad this is a Peppers show and not one of ours. I don’t have to worry about the bullshit of “Fuck we’re in Italy nothing works and the crew are the laziest pieces of shit known to rock and roll.” I can just go out and play and not think about the fact that every other time I’ve ever played here it’s always been such a load of bullshit just to get onstage. I had to do a press conference. I counted the tape recorders, there were fifteen of them in all. Some others were just writing shit down on paper. Whatever. What the hell are they going to use it for anyway? I would be surprised if they can get the printing presses to work. I watch the Peppers crew agonize with the local crew people who are dropping delicate equipment and thank my good luck that I’m only in the opening band. A security guard tries to stop me on the way into the back of the hall. I laugh in his face and walk past him. It reminds me of the scene in Saturday Night Live when the crew comes on the set of Star Trek and takes down all the props and Chevy Chase tries to put the Vulcan death grip on a guy and the guy just laughs at him and says, “Back off joker.” How can you take them seriously when they barely have any shit together? They make this huge arena right next to a church. The nuns won’t allow much noise, so you have to run the sound at way below normal level. How typically Italian. I heard that and laughed. Perfect. Hours later we play and it’s a great time. I sit on the bus, wait to go, and eventually have to leave and wait in the parking lot because there’s so much pot smoke that I fear getting contact weakness by being around people who are so weak they have to smoke it in th
e first place. At least it’s a nice night to look up at the stars.

  March 5. Liverpool, England: The Peppers production guy tapes up a sheet every day in the dressing room telling stage times, after-show travel plans, etc. Today’s said that the “punters are mental” here in Liverpool. The hall is freezing. I am told that even in summer the place is cold. It’s got to be at least two thousand years old. Looking forward to playing. Later. The crowd was really cool. Easily one of the best crowds I’ve been in front of since I’ve been coming to the UK. Being in the opening spot is a good way to start a long tour. It’s good to get out in front of an audience that is not there to see you. Tonight was one of those shows that you do and then walk away from. Sometimes the opening slot leaves me a bit unsatisfied. You never get to really expend yourself. I finish and sit in the dressing room wishing there was another gig across town. The shower room was in the front office for some reason. This shit doesn’t matter. I see how tunneled-out I can be. I wonder what I would be like in the real world.

  March 10. Glasgow, Scotland: I was figuring that we were going to get pelted, spat on, and all the rest. It was a great gig instead. The place is a famous venue called the Barrowlands. Real good-sounding hall. The load-in is a drag because there are several long flights of stairs and no elevator. The loaders are famous for getting gear up and down the stairs in no time flat. Since most of them are psychotic biker motherfuckers, you stay out of their way. I watched the Peppers play tonight. I have never seen anything like that. The place was packed to capacity of course, and everyone there was jumping up and down at the same time like the whole thing had been choreographed. I thought the floor was going to break. Now I’m in the dressing room, which is cold and smells, and the shower only gives out cold water. I’m not lonely because I’m not human. I am this thing that plays shows and gets it going on every night. No matter what happens to me, the music and the road don’t care. The road is always waiting for me to throw up my hands and walk off. It’s always trying to tell me that I never really had it, never really meant it. You have to keep rising to the occasion, that’s what it’s all about, you have to be ready to go without to get to it. That’s why I don’t hang around for the talk and adulation fests. I know better. The road watches and laughs thinking that it’s going to take me out. You stick around and get congratulated and patted on the back, then you lose your edge. That’s what these bands don’t understand. In order to give it up you have to be pure. The impurities are what wear these rock stars down. Most of these people with guitars are so lightweight. So fake. They don’t rise to the occasion. The road chews them up and spits them out. They complain about the road being hard. It is hard so you have to be hard. It’s so simple. Either you go for it all the way or you pose out.

  March 14. Brixton, England: Last night with the Peppers. All the Beastie Boys showed up. Now that was something. One of the only bands that matters. The Peppers guitar player walked into our dressing room and mumbled something about it being a beautiful experience playing with us. I guess he was stoned. Seems like a nice enough guy. I never said a word to him the whole tour except for hello in passing. Andrew is all bent out of shape about all kinds of stuff and asked to meet with me and Gail, and when I said okay let’s talk he has nothing to say. It’s always the same bullshit with him, he never confronts. Fuck it, I played hard as hell and gave it up. This has been a good tour I think. It was hard to look at all the Beasties in the room hanging out and not think of Joe and how much he would be getting off on all of this. I have to go to New York and do press for the next few days. Night after night and I’m still here. You have to keep coming back and hitting year after year. You need to be unbelievable. That’s the part that a slob like Andrew will never be able to get to. You have to have a great deal of straight-up pride in what you do and realize that it matters more than sleep, more than anything. I have samurai in my blood. The hall here in Brixton is cold and the rooms smell. Some guy who we remotely know from London came in here and started to fuck the place up, and I had to throw him out. Drunks are so pathetic. I can’t take them. If I know someone and they get drunk and get in my face, I no longer respect them. Somehow I can tolerate when someone in the band gets drunk because they never do it onstage, but I can never respect someone who drinks and gets drunk as much as I could someone who is straight. If you really want to destroy, then you are straight all the time and you get it done. Otherwise you’re just talking shit.

  April 1. Fullerton, CA: We played outside today at Cal State Fuller-ton. It was good. A few songs in it started to rain. We kept on playing. It really started coming down. But we kept playing. I fully expected to get shocked and killed. There was a girl up front grabbing me and she had on all this lipstick so I wiped it all over her face and wiped it onto mine and went for the scene with Frank Booth in Blue Velvet where he’s kissing Jeffrey. I was telling her that I was going to send her straight to hell fucker. We finished the gig and like rock stars left the equipment behind for the road crew and went to the Dennis Miller show where there was more gear waiting for us and we sound-checked and then played “Tearing” on the program. I hung out with Dennis on the talk-show scene for a few minutes, and it was better this time than the last time. I feel okay, nothing really on my mind. We go to San Diego in the morning for two shows. Strange day. One set outside with people watching from all sides, no walls, the music just flying into the trees and into the air, and then a television show, all in one day. Now I’m in my box waiting for the road to begin.

  April 14. Cincinnati, OH: I think tonight was the first show where we broke a thousand paid in America as a headliner. I don’t know if that’s important, but it put some shit into perspective one way or the other. I thought we played good tonight. It was a trip leaving the place. I walked out into the cold only thinking about getting on the bus and getting some sleep, and there were all these people out there waiting to get their stuff signed and all. There were a lot of them too. I did the best I could. I’m standing there shivering with my wet shorts and the rest of my shit on the ground between my feet, and I’m telling them that I’m really cold and I have to get on the bus, and they just stand there unmoving. I don’t know if they hear me or not. They just stand there with their stuff in their hands and they’re not going anywhere. I did the best I could, and then I finally got on the bus and I felt like throwing up. I am not the rock-star type. I don’t want to bum any of these people out. How can you not like them? They like you, they came to your gig. It’s hard for me to not like young people, and it’s hard not to like someone who likes you, even a little, even if they’re strangers. That’s my problem. I can’t help but like these people, even though I don’t know them. I think that’s the part that’s the hardest. I don’t like myself as much as they like me. They have no idea how fucked up I am these days. How hung up I am with Joe and everything else. Some nights when I’m standing there like a cardboard cutout, I have to wonder who they’re talking to.

  April 21. Washington, DC: The line at the in-store never ends. Girls there since the place opened so they could be the first in line, and they didn’t make it. I sign stuff and shake their hands and look into their cameras. It’s all I am these days. I know nothing else. The heat at the show cannot be translated. At some point I stop being hot and become heat, and then I can play. It’s getting to that point that hurts so much. I made up a song during a jam. I wished you loved me, why don’t you love me? It worked itself out right there. It’s raining outside, and I am thinking about how I made my escape tonight in a friend’s car. At some point I have to just walk away from all the voices and questions and hope they understand. Out here is endless. They don’t know me and I don’t know them, and that’s all the space I need. Tonight my mother hovered in the dressing room. I left and sat shivering on the stairs. I don’t want to know anyone, the very idea that I know anyone at all is a lie that I will not take.

  April 28. Atlanta, GA: My legs won’t get loose. I do the best I can at the in-store. They give me things
and I promise to do the best I can to read, listen, and use it all. If they only knew the language that I use in my brain. The language that screams with clearly formed words yet will not come out of my mouth. I stand there like some guy waiting to get smacked. I wonder if I’ll ever get shot at one of these things. I hear these girls say ohmigod it’s him. I realize that they’re talking about me, and I want to hand them my lungs and make a getaway out the back of the store. Tonight I’ll play harder than I did last night. I remember the other times we played in this town. They just stood there and watched. This time they know all the words and they move and they even sent one of their women onstage to touch the wounded animal.

  May 4. Menomonie, WI: The sky is huge and filled with dark clouds. The hotel is in the middle of nowhere. I like it. They find me still. Call me in the room and ask to come over. I dodge them as best I can. I feel watched. I sit in the diner across the road and listen to the low rumbling of the truckers over in the smoking section. Better than the fire-filled streets I left behind in LA. The only break is that I get to keep moving. Have to move like I have to breathe. To those who don’t feel this, no amount of explanation will make them understand. I love the big-sky country. The night air is fresh. Tonight’s theater was packed. I told them the truth. I pulled out my guts, and we watched them steam in the lights. I throw out my entrails and pull them back in at the end of the night. I go back to the room and wait to move to the next city. This is fine with me. Nowhere I’d rather be than on the way to the next city. How many of their fathers blew their brains out? How many sons came back to this town from some steaming jungle with an American flag over their remains? How many rapes, how many heartbreaks? What happens in a town this size when someone is murdered? I am in a lit box with a parking lot outside the window. Across the road are fast-food places and small-time desperation.