So yes, our visions, beliefs, dreams, nightmares and realities are all mixed up together, like in a damn Waring Blender. We must parse and ponder, and draw conclusions at our own peril. What to believe? How to believe? What do we base our lives upon?
These are fundamental questions. Always with us. And the answers are ever-shifting, morphing, darting out of reach like wriggling little tadpoles. So if I tell you Jerry Garcia, Captain Trips, long dead leader of the The Grateful Dead has been speaking to me lately, do you think I'm freaking Loco?
What is Jerry telling me? He made his presence felt loud and clear, a few weeks ago, when we passed thru the cemetery gates to visit a long-gone fellow traveler. The tombstone at the grave we visited has a quote from a Dead song written in script: "Fare you well, fare you well, I love you more than words can tell..."
Just before we reached the grave, the song playing on the radio was "Fire on the Mountain," Jerry was singing: "Long distance runner, what you standin' there for? Get up, get out, get out of the door, Your playin' cold music on the barroom floor, Drowned in your laughter and dead to the core, There's a dragon with matches that's loose on the town. Takes a whole pail of water just to cool him down, Fire! Fire on the mountain..."
I know, a coincidence. Right? The Universe works in mysterious ways. You say random luck, I say synchronicity. Like I said, signs and wonders. So lately I have been spinning some of my old Dead records. "Live Dead," "Live in Europe, 1972." Hearing old tunes with new ears. I hear a sparkling clarity. A light, graceful, fluid touch. Improvisation. An open-headed, open-minded-ness. A buoyancy, an urgency. An aliveness. Sort of magical.
Anyway, no time to waste. Right? Fire on the Mountain.
