“Is that a good idea?” I asked him as I handed the glass to him. “I mean, on top of the pain pills?”
He laughed but there was no humor in it. “Sam, I think I’m way past worrying about the effects this’ll have on my health.” He lifted the glass in a toast. “To your health, then.” He downed it in one gulp. “Oh, that’s nice.” He held out the glass. “One more? I promise that’ll be it.”
I poured him another, this one a little higher than the last. This time he sipped at it.
“I wish you’d stop looking at me like that.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “It’s just that…I was a big fan.”
“That’s nice.” He sounded as if he really meant it. “It’s nice to know that someone remembers.”
“You guys were good.”
“No, we could have been good. Fuck—we could’ve been great, but it just got too easy to hear everyone else tell us how great we were. ‘Better the illusion exalts us than ten thousand truths.’ Alexander Pushkin said that. Don’ ask me who he was, I couldn’t tell you. I read that line in a book of quotes somewhere. Always stayed with me.” He dug around in his pocket and produced a hand-rolled cigarette. “Yes, Sam, this is grass, and I’m gonna light up. I can do it in here or we can step outside, it’s up to you.”
I nodded at the joint. “That for the pain, too?”
“Everything’s for the pain these days, Sam.”
“There’s a sheriff out in the shelter.”
“So? Here or a jail cell, at least I’ll be inside when I buy the farm.” He fired up a match and inhaled on the joint. The room was instantly filled with the too-sweet aroma.
“Want a hit?” he said, offering the joint.
“No. Go ahead and bogart it, my friend.”
He laughed. “I’ll bet the first time you heard that song, it was in Easy Rider. Am I right? Tell me I’m right.”
“You’re right.”
“Thought so.” He took a couple of more hits, then licked his fingers and doused the business end. “No need to use it all at once.”
The smoke lingered. A lot.
No, wait—lingered isn’t quite the right word. What this smoke did was remain. It didn’t drift off, didn’t start to break apart and dissipate, it just hung in the air, a semi-solid cloud that didn’t appear to be in a hurry to go anywhere.
“That must be some strong stuff,” I said.
“It does the trick, if used in combination with the right ingredients.”
“Like brandy and pain pills?”
“Give that man a cigar.”
“Can I get you anything else?”
He pointed to something beside the door. “You can bring me my ax, if you don’t mind.”
Turning, I saw the beat-up guitar case leaning against the wall. I picked up the case, noted that the handle was about to come off (the duct tape used to re-attach was just about shot), and carried it over to Knight. He opened the case and removed the guitar, a gorgeous, new-looking Takamine 12-string with a dreadnought-sized cutaway white-bound body, solid spruce top and rosewood back and sides, a mahogany neck with white-bound rosewood fretboard, a rosewood bridge, and a black pick-guard.
It was one of the most beautiful instruments I’d ever seen.
“Yeah,” said Knight, seeing the expression on my face, “she’s a beauty. I’ve had this baby for most of my life. Half the time—shit, most of the time—I took better care of her than I did of myself.” He gave it a light strum, and the room filled with that rich, clear sound that only a perfectly-tuned guitar can produce.
“So, Sam…any requests?”
“You should play what you want.”
“Hmm.” He began playing a series of warm-up riffs, nothing spectacular, then slowly eased into a standard blues riff, then the same with variations, something he described as the Blues Minor Pentatonic Scale, consisting of the root, the minor third, the fourth, the fifth and the minor seventh.
“Something to hear, if you know how to listen,” he said. “You know, it never occurred to me before how frighteningly easy it is to re-shape a single note or scale into its own ghost. For example, E-major, C, G, to D will all fit in one scale— the Aeolian minor, or natural minor of a G-major scale. Now, if you add an A-major chord, all you have to do is change the C natural of your scale to a C-sharp for the time you're on the A-major. Music is phrases and feeling, so learning the scales doesn't get you ‘Limehouse Blues’ any more than buying tubes of oil paints gets you a ‘Starry Night,’ but you have to respect the craft enough to realize, no matter how good you are, you’ll never master it. Music will always have the final word.”
And he continued to play.
“Mr. Knight?”
“You can stray here and keep me company, Sam, unless you’re gonna call me ‘Mr. Knight.’ The name is Byron.”
“What happened after your solo album? I mean, I don’t want to pry, but you just disappeared. Everyone thought you were dead.”
He stopped playing, flexed his fingers, and adjusted the tuning on the ‘E’ string. “Seen any other dead rock stars tonight, Sam?”
My mouth went dry. “Yes sir.”
“I’m guessing there’s more than a few legends milling around out there in the shelter, am I right?”
“Yes.”
“Anyone in that crowd seem…I dunno…a little out of place?”
“Billie Holiday.”
He looked up at me. “No shit? Wow. She actually showed up this time.”
“Why her?”
“because I loved that voice, Sam. Never has there been a sadder voice in music, never.”
I finally pulled a chair away from the Reverend’s desk and sat across from Knight. “They told us that they weren’t ghosts, that they were—”
“—let me guess. They called themselves ‘ulcerations’?”
“How did you know?”
“Because I’m the source.”
I stared at him.
“I’m guessing that doesn’t really tell you anything, does it?”
“Not really.”
He downed the rest of the brandy, looked at the empty glass, and said, “I’ll tell you one hell of a story, Sam. You’ll be the only person I’ve ever told it to, but it’s gonna cost you one more glass of the good Reverend’s hooch.”
I poured him one more glass. He sipped at it, then played a little as he spoke.
True to his word, he told me one hell of a story.
7
“It was right after our second album, Redundant Refugee came out. We were doing well enough, opening for bigger bands, being called back for a few encores every night. Things were moving along. We’d recorded maybe half the songs for the Mudman album but I still had no idea what we were going to do for the concept piece. We wanted something long, a whole side of record, and we were beating our heads against a wall. We decided to take two weeks off from the project and each other.
“I was involved with a model at the time—you might remember her, Veronique? Very hot at the time. She talked me into going to India with her. She was making her first stab at acting, a cameo in a big-budget art film.
“I hated almost every minute I was there. The humidity was oppressive as hell and it seemed that, regardless of how far away from the cities you were, the sewer stink always found you. There were areas near the hotel where we were staying where the garbage and shit—and I’m talking real, honest-to-God human waste—reached to my knees. But, man, there were places in that country that were so beautiful—the old Hindu temples and shrine, for instance—but I never could decide whether that odd, damaged beauty was a result of my being stoned most of the time or not. But the thing is, there was this one afternoon when I was stone-cold sober that I remember clearer than anything.
“I wandered away from the movie set and walked to a nearby village. I passed a Hindi temple and saw peacocks flying, men squatting in fields as the sun was setting behind them, a woman making dung patties as she watched an oxen pulling a plow
toward the squatting men, all of them turning into shadows against the setting sun; unreal, y’know… holy things. Young boys with sweat- and ash-streaked faces rode past on bicycles with cans of milk rattling in their baskets. I could hear the echo of a lone, powerful, ghostly voice singing the Moslem call to prayer. I closed my eyes and simply followed the echo, breathing in the dust from the road as a pony cart filled with people came by, feeling the warmth of the evening breeze caress my face, and when the singing stopped I opened my eyes and found myself before the iron gates of the cemetery of Bodhgaya.
“I remember how still everything was. It was as if that ragged, lilting voice had guided me into another, secret world.” He fired up the joint once more, took a hit, slowly releasing the smoke. It drifted into the cloud and remained.
“I started walking around the graves until I came this big-ass statue of Kshetrapala, the Guardian of the Dead.”
For a few moments I thought maybe I was getting a contact high from the smoke, because the room began yawing in front of me, expanding to make room for the smoke from Knight’s joint that hung churning in the air.
“You should have seen him,” whispered Knight. “A demon with blue skin, a yellow face, bristling orange hair, three bulging red eyes, and a four-fanged grin. He was draped in corpse skin and a tiger-skin loincloth and was riding a huge black bear. He carried an axe in one hand and a skullcap of blood in the other.”
I blinked, rubbed my eyes, then blinked again.
I wasn’t imagining things.
While Knight had been describing his encounter with Kshetrapala, the smoke from his joint had churned itself into the shape of the demon.
Another hit, another dragon’s-breath of smoke, and more figures took form around the Guardian of the Dead, acting out Knight’s story as he continued.
“There was a group of people standing around the Guardian’s base, all of them looking down at something. None of them were making a sound. I made my way up to them and worked toward the front for a better look.”
I watched as the Knight smoke-player moved through the other shapes to stand at the base of the statue.
“An old beggar woman in shit-stained rags, was kneeling in front of Kshetrapala holding a baby above her head like she was making some kinda offering. Flowers had been carefully placed around the base of the statue, as well as bowls of burning incense, small cakes wrapped in colorful paper, framed photographs, dolls made from dried reeds and string, pieces of candy, a violin with a broken neck...it was fucking unbelievable. I don’t remember what kind of sound I made, only that I did make a noise and it drew the old woman’s attention. Without lowering her arms, she turned her head and looked directly into my eyes.” He shook his head and—it seemed to me—shuddered.
“Man, I’m telling you, Sam, I have never before or since seen such pure madness in a someone’s eyes. For a moment, as she stared at me, I could feel her despair and insanity seeping into my pores. She was emaciated from starvation and had been severely burned at some time—the left half of her face was fused to her shoulder by greasy wattles of pinkish-gray scar tissue. She was trying to form words but all that emerged were these…guttural animal sounds.
“The baby she was holding, it was dead. Not only that, but it had been dead for quite some time because it was partially decomposed. It looked like a small mummy.”
I could clearly see the baby take shape from a few stray strands of smoke.
“The old beggar woman lowered her arms, laid the baby’s corpse on the ground, and began keening—that’s the only word for it. She sang her grief. I looked at the others and saw these placid expressions on their faces…they seemed almost distracted.” He looked at me for a moment, then directed his gaze to the shadowy smoke-play unfolding in the air between us.
The figure of the beggar woman thrust one of its hands under its shawl and pulled out something that could only have been a knife; a very, very long knife.
“She began hacking away at her own chest, ripping out sections of muscle and bone until this bloody cavity was there,” said Knight, his eyes glazing over. “I backed away but I couldn’t stop looking. I mean, I’d read all the stories of Yukio Mishima’s committing public hara-kiri as a way of merging life with art but I never tried to picture something like that in my mind—and now, right here in front of me, this poor, crazy woman was disemboweling herself in an apparent act of worship, and the ‘congregation’ looked like a bunch of disinterested Broadway producers forced to watch a cattle-call audition.”
The woman collapsed, took the dead infant, and shoved it into the cavity, then lay there sputtering smoke-blood from her mouth.
“I was transfixed...but unmoved, y’know? The image of that dead child floating in the gore of the beggar woman’s chest fascinated me on an artistic level, so I stood there and watched her dying, searing the image into my brain. And then I heard the music.”
Instruments appeared in the hands of the smoke-crowd; drums, a flute, something that could only have beer a sitar.
“I have no idea where the instruments came from. To this day I swear that the others were empty-handed when I got there but now, suddenly, all of them had instruments and were playing them with astonishing skill—ghatams, tablas, mridangams, a recorder and sitar—and the sound was so rich, so spiraling and glad! I could feel it wrap itself around me and bid ‘Sing!’ I couldn’t find my voice—believe me, if I could have, I would’ve sung my heart out—so one of the women in the group began to sing for me: ‘I am struck by a greater and greater wonder, and I rejoice again and again!’ She was singing in Hindu—Hindu, a language I don’t know, yet I understood every word in her song. ‘Oh, see him in the burdened, In hearts o’erturned with grief, The lips that mutter mercy, The tears that never cease,’ and the others responded in voices a hundred times fuller than any human’s voice should be: ‘I AM, I AM, I AM the light; I live, I live, I live in light,’ and now I’m shaking not only from the damned weirdness of it all but because the music, this pulsing, swirling, pure crystal rain sound is inside me—I know how that must seem to you, but I swear I felt it assume physical dimensions deep in my gut. It shook me.
“I went down on one knee because I thought I was going to be sick but the sound kept growing without and within me, and I was aware not only of the music and the people playing it and the dying woman in front of me, but of every living thing surrounding us; every weed, every insect, every animal in distant fields, the birds flying overhead...it was...I’m not quite sure how to—oh, hang on.
“I once met a schizophrenic who described what it felt like when he wasn’t on his medication. He said it was as if all of his nerves had been plugged into every electrical appliance in the house and someone had set those appliances to run full-blast. That’s what it was like for me that day in the graveyard. For one moment all life everywhere was functioning at its peak and I was ‘plugged into’ everything—but only as long as this music deemed me worthy of possession.”
I began shaking my head; slowly, at first, then with more determination, in order to rid my ears—both my ears—of a buzzing pressure that was growing inside my skull.
Knight continued: “I managed to pull my head up and look at the beggar woman. She had reached over and taken the violin with the broken neck and was holding it against the baby—both the dead infant and the instrument were slick with her blood—and she made the smallest movement with her head, a quick, sharp, sideways jerk that I knew meant ‘Come closer.’ I leaned over until my ear was nearly touching her lips and I heard her whisper three words: ‘Shakti. Kichar admi.’ It wasn’t until later, when I’d gotten back to the set and asked one of the Indian crew members about it, that I found out what ‘Shakti’ meant: Creative intelligence, beauty & power. The cosmic energies as perceived in Hindu mysticism, given to mankind by Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva so it might know some small part of what it feels like to be a god.
“Then she pushed me away with surprising strength. I fell backwards onto my ass and fel
t the music wrenched from my chest. I was suddenly separate from all of them, from the earth, my own flesh, the glow of the setting sun; the surrounding life had withdrawn from me, unplugged itself. I was being asked to leave, so I did. With their glorious music still spinning in the air behind me, I moved toward the road and did not look back until I was well past the gates.”
The smoke-players began to reverently shift their positions. I rubbed my temples and turned my head to the side; not only was I hearing the song Knight had described, but underneath it was the cumulative babble of a million whispering voices speaking in as many different languages.
“As soon as I stepped from the cemetery I heard a new sound join the music, a lone, sustained note that floated above everything, a mournful cry that sang of ill-founded dreams and sorrowful partings and dusty myths from ages long gone by, then progressively rose in pitch to soften this extraordinary melancholy with promises of joy and wonder—‘I AM light’s fullest dimension, I AM light’s richest intention, I AM, I AM, I AM the light!’—and I turned for one more look, one last drinking in of this gloriously odd, golden moment, and I saw the child standing in the midst of the musicians, such a beautiful child, the violin tucked firmly under his chin. He looked at me and smiled a smile unlike any that had been smiled before, full of riddles and mischief and answers and glee, and in that smile I knew his name: Shakti. He was giving me a final chord, a last bit of the music to remember for the rest of my life, and in that last moment he opened me up to the majestic cacophony to such a degree that I heard…Jesus Christ, I heard everything.
“I ran. It was the only thing I could think to do to break this hold on me. I turned and ran back toward the film set. And even though it seemed that every person I passed on the road wore the beggar woman’s face or was clutching a dead infant to their chest or was in some way sick or damaged, I felt…elated. I know that must sound crazier than a soup sandwich, but I knew all of these people, with their lips that muttered mercy and their tears that never ceased, were walking toward the cemetery where the pain and sadness would be lifted from their eyes, and that I was being watched over by a child of wonder who would always be waiting at the entrance to my secret world.
Cages & Those Who Hold the Keys Page 31