Mystical Sam Pan Boat turns the other way
Out from the blackened void toward the light of day
Eyes open, born again, cycle starts anew
Magical Sam Pan Boat flows through me to you
It was music that started me on this long, strange journey to find Craig Smith. That search plunged me into an ocean of darkness and mystery that at times seemed impenetrable. The music was my compass as I swam deeper into the past. It helped me keep my bearings. It gave Craig a voice. It gave him shape and substance. It made him real to me. It gave my search meaning.
In the end, the music and a box of ashes was all that remained of Craig Smith.
It took several decades, but Craig’s music was eventually rediscovered in the late 1980s. By the early 2000s the Apache/Inca LPs had gathered an almost mythical reputation among collectors and psychedelic aficionados. The bizarre album jackets with their cryptic schizophrenic notations give the records a sense of mystery and intrigue, and, along with the spoken-word/field recording snippets, an intimate, almost journal-like quality. But it’s the music and the songwriting that give the albums such a uniquely appealing and timeless quality.
Three months before Craig’s death, an original mint condition copy of the Apache/Inca double LP sold on eBay for over $10,000. Copies of the pirated reissue on Shadoks/Ten Little Indians continue to routinely sell for over $400. When Sundazed released a vinyl edition of the Penny Arkade’s Not the Freeze album for Record Store Day in 2015 it sold out within hours. The music endures.
English singer-songwriter Mary Epworth recorded a stark, haunting version of Craig’s “Ice and Snow,” which was released on her Snow Queen EP in 2012 and on a single in 2014. “I first came across Craig’s music when I heard ‘Isha’ on ’60s Jangle radio, a great online station that played sunshine pop and psych,” she says. “I totally fell in love with the song, it seemed so mysterious and otherwordly, and wanted to find out more about the writers. I can’t remember if I heard the Penny Arkade or Maitreya Kali next, but either way I really loved the space and beauty of the Apache/Inca recordings. They manage to sound so casual, and yet carry a huge weight of sadness and resignation. The lyrics and songwriting are hauntingly magical, and I love the way it’s all buried inside that deep wash of reverb.
“A few years ago I decided to make an EP of Christmas/Winter songs, and we chose ‘Ice and Snow,’ partly as it’s such a beautiful, tender, crystalline thing, and partly because I wanted an excuse to promote Craig’s songs as much as possible. I tried to do a pretty faithful version.
“I’ve spent a bit of time in Los Angeles over the last few months,” she adds, “and have of course seen many homeless people all over the city. At sunset on Venice Beach it was impossible to not think ‘Any one of these guys could be a Craig Smith.’ It hurts to think how much talent and brilliance and kindness and all the rest is lost inside a system that has no way of really helping.”
Lost and unwanted. Craig Smith’s remains sat on a shelf at the Los Angeles County Crematory. If unclaimed by the end of November 2015 they would be buried, along with many others, in an unmarked common grave. The coroner’s office had told me that without a court order, the remains could only be released to a family member so their disposal in a mass grave now seemed a foregone conclusion.
I called the coroner’s office one last time in early August. I wanted to know the exact date of the burial; it was a detail I needed for the story. This time they transferred me to the morgue. A lady there provided me with the date I needed. “So I would need a court order if I wanted to claim these remains?” I queried, already knowing the answer. “Actually…” she paused, apparently checking something. “No. Since it’s been over two years that he’s unclaimed, technically the remains can be released to anyone.”
For a moment I was speechless. The entire storyline had shifted yet again. Craig Smith could win a last-minute reprieve. “How do I make this happen?” I asked her. I would need to obtain a permit for the removal and transportation of human remains, she explained, and to pay a mortuary service fee of $352.00. And I would need to take care of that before the end of November. It was that simple.
I immediately began making phone calls and shooting off emails to people who might want to help out covering the expense of this operation. It wasn’t that much money, but it was more than I had to spend at that particular time. Also I felt this might be an opportunity for some of Craig’s old friends to get some closure. All of them had unresolved feelings about him. Some of them had been hurt deeply by him; others felt that even though he’d all but forced them to turn their backs to him, they’d somehow let him down. I felt that if I could get ten or twelve people to contribute 20 or 30 dollars each, I could make up the balance and get this done. And even if no one gave me a cent, I was going to get it done anyway, one way or another. After 15 years, I was as emotionally invested in this as anyone.
People stepped up immediately. Michael Storm and Dave Jackson of the Good Time Singers each threw down 50 bucks. Sidonie (Suzannah) Jordan of The Happeners sent 30 dollars, as did Jason Laskay and Chip Douglas. Patsy, Debra and Melody Clinger each donated that amount. Bruce Barbour mailed me a crisp new $100 bill. Susan Hannon, the apartment building manager who’d only met Craig once, sent some money. My research assistants Mike Medina and Richard Deuel contributed, as did several others who, like me, never knew Craig but loved his music: Alex Carretero of Guerssen Records, and Nemo from Time-Lag Records. Even Cheryl Starsong, Craig’s one-time girlfriend, whom he had parted with under such emotionally charged circumstances, helped out, as did her friend Dyane Quinn. They all wanted to do the right thing, and it all came together extremely quickly.
On August 25th, 2015, I awake before sunrise, get into a rental car and head for Los Angeles. I want to be at the Department of Health in downtown L.A. as soon as it opens at 8 a.m. I leave home a little after 5 a.m., and park my car in their lot at 8:05. (Right on. Schedule) The Application and Permit for Disposition of Human Remains is simple to fill out. Until I reach the box marked “Relationship to Deceased.” I pause, then write “friend.” I hand the form in to the clerk, a black guy about my age with a shaved head and a white bebop goatee. He takes it away to process, and returns five minutes later with the completed paperwork. I pay the fee of $13.75, sign the forms in quadruplicate, and he paper-clips them together and slides them into a manila envelope. He looks me in the eye: “You’re doing a good thing for your friend,” he tells me. “Sorry for your loss.” I thank him, take the envelope, and head back to my car.
My next stop is the Los Angeles County Morgue, which is located in the basement of L.A. General Hospital. The hospital covers a couple of city blocks so it takes me a while to find the right building and then the right elevator to take me down. Down in the basement it’s deserted except for a few employees, mostly janitors rolling mops and buckets or steel cabinets containing who knows what. I wander the corridors lined with oppressive steel doors, looking for the right one: CIG-130. I expect a sign to read “Morgue,” but instead it’s marked “Decedent Services.” Behind the anonymous white-painted steel door is a small, windowless office with four desks and one clerk. She’s on the phone with another customer. After a short wait she puts her call on hold and I hand her the completed paperwork. She tip-taps at her keyboard then asks, “Do you have a letter from the brother?” A moment of concern. “No. I was told I didn’t need…” “Oh yeah, right.” I write out a check. She taps again at her keyboard, inserts some blank letterhead in her printer and prints out and signs the letter of permission. The remains aren’t here; they’re at a crematorium a few miles away. “Is that where they’ve been for the past three years?” I ask her. “Yes.” She hands over the paperwork and some printed directions, and I thank her. No words of encouragement here. For her it’s just another day.
I drive next to the Los Angeles County Crematory in Boyle Heights. It’s situated in a parcel of land adjoining Evergreen Cemetery, a huge, rather grim graveyard surrounded by a tall chain link fence topped with barbed wire. Its name couldn’t be more ironic: due to a severe drought Evergreen’s expansive lawns haven’t seen water in a long time; every blade of grass is brown, dead.
The County Crematory, though, is an entirely separate entity, a small oasis fenced off in its southeast corner. Here the grass is green and well-tended, there are large shade trees, and squirrels scamper around the lawns. It’s almost idyllic. I park and a tall, black caretaker hails me from outside of one of the buildings. He’s expecting me. I walk over then follow him into a small chapel. There’s an inexpensive, bronze-colored plastic coffin, and behind that a wooden lectern with a large book open upon it. The caretaker shows me the imposing book with its columns of names and figures, all neatly handwritten in black ink—a list of the dead from just a few months of early 2012. I spot the name Craig Vincent Smith right away, near the top of the page. Next to it are columns indicating the dates of his birth, his death, and his cremation, as well as his race and gender. And on the far right a space for a signature, indicating someone has taken possession of the remains. The caretaker marks an x there, and I sign my name. There are only two other signatures on the page.
Next the caretaker shows me a box, wrapped in brown paper. He opens the flap at one end to reveal a sticker with Craig’s name and date of cremation. “Is that your friend?” he asks. I confirm it is and he hands the box over. It’s heavier than I expect.
He asks me if I have any questions, and we talk for a while. The box with Craig’s ashes, he explains, had been stored in the room adjoining this one, along with hundreds of others. In a few months all the remains from 2012 would be buried together in a plot a few hundred yards away. In their containers; like this one? I ask. No, just all poured in together. It was at that moment that the real import of what I was doing hit me, and I started to choke up. How many people? I manage to ask. About 1,500 each year. Who are they? Men, women, children, babies—but most of them, about two-thirds, are men. Some were just unclaimed, they had no living relatives, or their relatives lived out of state and couldn’t travel; some, like Craig, were homeless; a few were John Does—though not many anymore due to modern technology. Others were just too poor to afford any other kind of burial.
By now the supervisor has wandered in and joined the conversation, a genial older black gentleman called Albert. He’s been working here since the late ’70s. They ask who my friend was and I tell them a little bit about Craig, that he was a gifted musician and a songwriter whose songs had been recorded by Andy Williams, Glen Campbell and the Monkees. The Monkees they’ve heard of—Andy Williams and Glen Campbell they’re not so sure about. But they’re interested. The tall caretaker tells me he’s going to Google Craig’s name when he gets off work. I get the impression that my visit was a bright spot in their day. It’s a rarity for someone’s remains to be claimed at such a late date. Albert leads me outside and we walk across the grass together to the spot where the decedents from 2012 will be buried. A simple rectangular plaque marked “2011” sits atop the plot next to it. They’d recently had to shovel on a fresh layer of earth, he explains, because the ashes had settled causing the plot to sink down a few inches. The plots stretch all the way back to the fence line, back to at least the 1950s. Some have additional markers with names, dates and other inscriptions; others have flowers, even plastic toys. Not all of those buried here are forgotten. The burial ceremony in December of each year is solemn and respectful, he tells me. It’s attended by local dignitaries and media people; occasionally a couple of grieving relatives are in attendance.
I thank him, and carry the box out to my car and place it carefully in the trunk. It’s hard to relate this anonymous brown paper-wrapped package to the man I’ve been searching for all these years. This is Craig Smith. In a plastic box in the trunk of my rental car. I’d found him much too late.
Next to the crematorium with its ominous brick chimney is a small rose garden with a broken-down drinking fountain in the center. I sit down on a bench and reflect. In this slightly elevated section of the crematory, the searing summer heat is tempered by a light breeze. To my right and behind me, the city of Los Angeles, Craig’s city, stretches for miles into the distance like some vast circuit board humming with energy and life. To my left and in front of me, the green lawns and rustling trees of the crematory grounds: serene, filled with untold secrets.
The past is a vast ocean that moves beneath all of our lives. In my long journey to find Craig Smith and discover the secrets of Maitreya Kali, I had swum deep beneath its surface, retrieving fragments of his life piece by piece then attempting to place them into their true pattern. Completing the entire puzzle was impossible. Many of his secrets lay deeper than I could ever reach, darker than I dared to swim. But now, in rescuing that box of ashes, in many ways my journey had reached its end—or more like a kind of new beginning. Sitting in the stillness of that crematory garden I experienced the very real sensation of breaking that vast ocean’s surface and breathing in fresh air again. My search for Craig Smith, my swim through the darkness, had in some ways been a wasted journey. By the time I found him, it was too late for there to be any kind of happy resolution. But in telling his story, surely there was still some kind of redemption to be found for this poor, lost, tragic, lonely soul.
I like to think Craig Smith felt the first stirrings of that redemption while he was still alive. My mind returns to the photo my friend had taken of Craig in 2010, holding the Penny Arkade CD and the magazine. Maybe as Craig studied these items later, they helped him realize that there were people out there who cared about him. That the music and the message he’d so desperately floated out to sea in a bottle on the Apache and Inca LPs more than 40 years ago had at last reached sympathetic ears. That his songs had lasting value and would continue to be heard.
Maybe that realization helped Craig Smith, if only for a few moments, to find some kind of peace. Maybe then the long years of pain and struggle and loneliness could be forgotten, and the voices in his head silenced again by the songs in his heart.