BLUEBOARD is rejecting this, perhaps due to length...merry Christmas.
LUNCH WITH BRIAN WILSON: CHRISTMAS 2008 (Happy Ending Guaranteed)
It’s magical living a dream, but there is always danger of cross winds. Here’s a story of waking up in Southern California:
I’m 28 years old now and a fan of Brian’s music and character since the fifth grade, although I remember dancing to “Surfin’ USA” in kindergarten and the girls on the bus singing along to “Surfer Girl” in the third grade. After I saw Brian’s tale retold on television, I felt the love in his music and his resilience. There were many times Brian’s inspiration gave me calm and courage when I most needed it, so my interest and appreciation in his work and life naturally grew. For a high school project, I wrote to David Leaf about Pet Sounds as an example of a classic work of art.
The “California Myth” was powerfully attractive, especially for a poor boy from Chicago (my dad was born near St. Charles). After surviving life-threatening illness and seeking to distance myself from a troubled family, I moved to L.A. in 1998 and worked as a video rental store clerk. I was robbed at gunpoint, but that didn’t scare me: Brian Wilson was recording a live album at the Roxy on the Sunset Strip. Imagine that. I was there. Shouting praise with the crowd. The guy next to me was the fan described in the liner notes as climbing up the side of the building through a window into Brian’s dressing room where he asked for a CD and his ticket stub signed. The young boy next to us, perhaps 12 years old and shouting requests for “Dream Angel”, was wide-eyed: the man showed him the ticket stub and told him never stop chasing his dreams—then gave him the autographed ticket.
Then Brian showed up on his website. Yeah right, I thought. How do we know it’s Brian Wilson? Probably a trickster. This was before the color-coding. So Brian told me to email my phone number to the webmaster. I did. He called me. Twice. On his birthday. But I was shy. I didn’t answer. Too scared. I mean, it’s Brian Wilson! How embarrassing. Even more so when it was mentioned in the press as an example of Brian leading the Internet music pioneers. My big moment with my hero, and I botched it.
I was a closet songwriter. Learning my craft while I sold houses. The greed in real estate was sickening, but I put my pay toward school. When I saw Brian perform Pet Sounds live at the Hollywood Bowl, I talked with some of the band near the backstage door and proudly reported I was studying to be an English teacher. Mostly, though, I stood quietly and observed. Because I knew the outcome of the path Brian was walking. I’d seen it before. In a daydream, walking home from the library, when I was a 12 year-old boy. I began to feel dizzy and sat in the churchyard. I imagined a fuzzy haired guy with glasses, and a surfer boy. Working with Brian. Finishing Smile!
In my adolescent solipsism, I assumed I was the blond surfer boy, but who was that other guy? Obviously, we know now it is Darian. And the surfer boy is Scott. I hadn’t thought of my foresight in years, when I heard news of Brian’s master plan for Smile, and my soul was aflutter. If Brian Wilson finished Smile, that’s not only proof that God does answer prayers, but that anything is possible. I met his wife Melinda in the audience at another Hollywood Bowl show and told her how proud we are of Brian and how thankful we are for her too. Then, since Brian won a Grammy for the album’s most experimental music, and since it debuted at number 13 after almost forty years of intrigue, and since the day the record was released Brian’s hero Phil Spector was charged with murder—surely God has a wicked humor but all’s well that ends well.
Yes. It is said that living in L.A. is standing closer to the sun, but this means too that the shadows are more severe. A friend warned me, “Los Angeles is a southern town.” The gothic irony only became more obvious later, when my neighbor Paul invited me to his beleaguered club, Kulak’s Woodshed, a music room in North Hollywood supported by gift donations and operated by volunteers for a high-definition live Internet TV show. Among the many events at the ’Shed, I favored the jam night, where I rounded up 12 musicians and in the summer of 2006, played “Good Vibrations” and showed off our community’s songwriting and performing talent.
The Internet response to our band’s original music was encouraging, so I planned a record with my true friend Bruce Grossman, a college friend of Nelson Bragg, who released his long-anticipated record that year. Bruce knew my love for the Brian Wilson band, so he invited me to the party. Nelson sang “God Only Knows” like an angel that night. I couldn’t resist thanking Darian for his effort in finishing Smile—and when Scott overheard my dizzy childhood daydream, he took me aside and talked to me about the work that would become That Lucky Old Sun. I passed along word of my work.
I enjoyed the excellent synchronicity in our themes of solar worship and the California experience. Brian debuted his new work the night of my CD release (coinciding with a total solar eclipse). Imagine my glee to hear the parallels—and Brian in peak form! I posted my live cover of “Heaven” on the Pacific Coast Band website, and Brian posted his version three weeks later. Repeated plays of Brian’s new CD reveals genius craftsmanship. I chose to believe a benevolent supernatural power was at play.
Most important, once again in my life, Brian’s love shared through music was most necessary and healing. Back home in Chicago, my mother Mary was hospitalized for violent sickness then evicted with only three hours notice from the hospital when she couldn’t pay her medical bills. She lived on the streets for nine months starting last Christmas, three days before her fiftieth birthday, and she is supposedly now in assisted living, though her exact whereabouts are unknown. My dad broke four vertebrae in a work injury and suffered a morphine overdose. My brother was sentenced to state prison for two years after his bad choices of friends led him astray.
I pressed onward, finishing college programs in history, philosophy and religion while working as an after-school reading teacher. I devoted great effort to my English honors program at CSUN and chose to interpret the Gospel of Mark as literature (mythopoeia) for my required thesis. I felt the beautiful tickle of first love with my dear miss eLiza Marie, who celebrated the triumph of my indie CD offering with a good kind of love. Then, at 11:11pm on February 28, 2008, we set out on an ice cream date. At 12:12am on February 29, as the newspaper reported, “A man traveling westbound in a red car drifted into eastbound lanes, where he collided into a blue car.”
That man, Mark, died in the head-on crash. My lady broke her collarbone and ankle. I suffered injuries to my knees, hips, ribs, chest, shoulder, neck and spine. Later, I learned I was also mildly brain-damaged in the collision. Worse, the police assumed that my efforts to help my girlfriend who was trapped in the car was a sign that I was numb to my injuries, thus likely drunk, rather than in shock, and falsely suspected me of being the cause of the crash. They detained me with humiliating questioning and inappropriate physical harassment that compromised my healing. Two shark lawyers and a scam doctor further delayed adequate medical treatment, and meanwhile, my drummer bandmate, once friendly, physically attacked me when he was drunk four weeks after the crash. Then, he called the police and reported me as the attacker—which resulted in a weekend in the city jail and nine months of criminal litigation that is now finally dismissed. A neglectful landlord took three weeks to restore hot water to our building, which also almost caught fire from faulty wiring in Paul’s apartment.
I carried on as gracefully as I could muster and found rewards where I might—I wrote and performed a folk rock opera on 08.08.08 and retreated into my research library for my writing project. I listened to That Lucky Old Sun on repeat. I walked in the forest. I sang in a mountain meadow. I meditated in the Temple and sang with the choir. I nearly fainted when I saw TheDukeSpirit posters at the corner of Main Street and Pacific Ave in Santa Monica—I was given the title The Duke by a singer in my band, and I celebrated my music’s growing popularity, especially in Europe, winning awards, good and bad reviews, a song licensed to TV, modest but steady sales, and five songs on indie and college radio.
Then I found an odd set of keys in the cross at the crash site, where a coyote ran in the late night mist many months following the crash. I was also surprised by the “Christian” written in the sky above the nearby Saint Charles Catholic Church, named for the man who founded the first literary academy. A gypsy who wears flowing robes and scarves, gloves, and a crown of jewels lived in the doorway of the Lady’s chapel to the delight of many on Bloomfield street. Many nights we talked of the Holy Spirit together, and she danced a wild jig on the street corner the first day of Wall Street’s ruinous collapse.
When thugs moved into a neighboring vacant apartment, I moved away to a room near Eagle Rock, between Wilson Ave and Wilson Terrace near Mount Wilson, with a bay window overlooking a school crossing and bus stop traveling west to Hollywood and Vine or east to the Crown City of Roses. As I finished writing my daring interpretation of the Gospel of Mark, the curtain on the window looking out to the school crossing fell when I read the first draft aloud. My fourteen year-old cat—long ill from poisoning by another psychotic neighbor—breathed his last hours after I finished. I entombed him in a Sequoia tree in the Angeles National Forest under a constellation last seen in 4 BC. Then, word of the sudden loss of my dear and true friend Bruce, who freely recorded my production in his great home studio and shared a love of Shakespeare and authentic spirituality. I called together our friends at the Woodshed to sing his rockin’ blues song, “Night Train to Memphis.”
The dawn of a New Year. I carry on in total trust and find joy in my work as a musician and scholar, my true friends and my lady, especially her idea to greet Brian at his favorite deli and invite him to do a charity show at the Woodshed, perhaps a songwriting showcase for my true friend Joe Goodman’s children’s charity. Yes, yes—I’ve got nothing left to lose. Sounds like good medicine and an altruistic need to meet Brian.
Since my girl lives near the ocean, we got into the habit of meeting at Brian’s deli, which is in-between our rooms. Meeting him proved elusive but the waffle fries were excellent. We talked to the owner first to be sure it was okay to say hello, but then Brian went on tour, and I was busy sleeplessly writing the chapters of my vigorously argued thesis. But after the PhD advisory committee approved my work, I was free and the first person in my family in generations to finish University and go on to a Masters degree. Now on school hiatus, I went to work with my friend Damian James on his record. His family includes Roger Daltrey and Denny Laine, among other legends, so we took off for West L.A. music to buy new gear to help us produce a great album.
Stuck in last-minute Christmas shopping traffic on the way back, I suggested we stop at the deli—maybe we’d see Brian. Sure enough, he was sitting at the front booth talking to the staff about his new car. I did not hesitate. I walked in, smiled at Brian and said, “Can we sit nearby for a late lunch.” Brian agreed. His eyes were bright, and he looked well. He was casually dressed. Alone at the table. “How are you?” he asked. “I’d like to tell you a story,” I eagerly said, totally failing to give him my name or introduce my friend in the excitement. Brian invited me to his table and we shook hands just as his salad arrived. “Do you want to eat your meal first or shall I tell you now?” I asked, awkward, but sincere. Brian too: “Now, now, now,” he said as he chomped a mouthful of salad. So, I told him about the great joy his music gives to me and all his friends in music, the love we feel from him and for him, and since I recently lost my true friend and brother Bruce, who quietly stood smiling in witness of a dream exceedingly satisfied, I told him about my Smile daydream.
Brian listened attentively. Then he said “Thank you for sharing your story,” grabbed my hand and shook it. I knew enough to leave him to his meal. I’d already overstayed my welcome but forgot to mention the children’s charity event I’m producing, and how much I loved his brothers’ music too. Maybe it showed in my smile, which caught Brian’s eye. My friend Damian and I ordered sandwiches. Brian ate half the salad then waved goodbye. “Thanks again for the story,” he said as he boogied to the door. I called out after him, “There are guardian angels, Brian, and you’re one too. We love you—keep rockin’!” I pray I didn’t frighten him—I know he is a rare, tender but fragile soul. After he left, Damian and I ate our sandwiches and talked to the staff about great Beach Boys music from the seventies, the genius of That Lucky Old Sun and our mutual admiration for a true living hero, Brian Wilson.
Thank you, thank you, big brother Brian.
Your loyal friend in music,
Patrick William Horn
aka The Duke
www.pacificcoastband.comwww.patrickhorn.com
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