A Few Closing Words
I see this life as a portrait that is mine to manifest in my own way, a universe of pictures we trade with each other as kids trade baseball cards. And on the other hand, if information comes through that renders that concept ineffective, I'm going to have to swallow either my pride or a bowl of battery acid and get over myself.
Do I contradict myself? Of course. When the evidence comes in that I've constructed yet another house of cards that's about to fall (unless I start over and construct a different foundation), what am I going to do—stand under all that crumbling plastic-covered paper and try to hold it up?
So what are you doing with your empty canvas? Here's what I've done with mine, and I'll continue to change it as the opportunity arises.
Looking backward or forward is easier than looking in the mirror right now to determine who I am. The image is crowded with past perceptions and tantalized by future possibilities. All I can say for sure is that at the moment, I'm living in a house in Malibu, painting life and wondering about death, being enchanted by the beauty of this land by the ocean, watching time carve lines in my face and hands, running up long-distance phone bills to my friends spread across the country, turning up the heat in the pool for my thin-skinned friends here in L.A., getting to know and love my cowriter, wishing my mom and dad could come and stay in my peaceful house, hoping my daughter enjoys the “trip,” and waiting for the next curveball to come sliding out of the Master Pitcher's mysterious south paw.
Will I get back into the music business? Not unless Mark Isham calls up and says he has a title track that requires a singer with the vocal range of a four-ton frog.
Will I get married again? No, I still feel married to Skip Johnson, and besides, Timothy Leary's dead.
I love that the changes keep surprising me, that we're given the palette of colors at birth and the majority of images are ours to create.
Life, the constantly mutating funeral party.
Do I have anything I'd like to say in closing?
YES.