A Love You Can't Survive

A Love You Can’t Survive

Promises Promises. I promised here on this site a few days ago that I would bring you a steely remembrance of the Tower Tragedy. Times have changed. Inspiration has left me. New inspiration is consuming me. That story didn’t want to be told as much as I wanted to tell it. Now a new story is prying its way into my keyboard. It’s flowing out and there seems to be no stopping it. Back in my days in the teaching profession, we referred to this as a teachable moment. Those times are harder to come by these days in that honored profession; perhaps that’s why I abandoned the classroom. These days, inspiration only flows through the pen and the word.

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In the summer of 2003, with my family’s van fully loaded with gear, my wife, son, daughter, and I struck out across our country to find out how today’s America looks. Our first stop on that expedition was the town of Lexington, Kentucky. It was there that my passion for the music of Richard Thompson, the bard from 60’s/70’s music group, Fairport Convention, was kindled. There my sister and her husband took me on a Richard Thompson journey, playing CD after CD of his over the course of a wine-framed candlelight evening. Richard’s words worked into my soul that night and have inspired me ever since.

Prior to the trip, a friend had given me what has become my most cherished personal possession, a cassette tape. I didn’t properly value the tape at that time. Now I plot a devise ways to transfer the sound images from that prehistoric recording medium to a more modern and durable form. The tape was an illegal bootleg soundboard recording of a small concert Richard Thompson played at the Iroquois Club in Roanoke, Virginia back in 1988. Richard came to Roanoke that year with only an electric guitar. He said to the smoke-filled room that he really hadn’t tried any of the songs without his band before playing just his electric guitar. Well, that was some guitar he played that night. Thompson is regarded as the 19^th best rock guitarist in the world on the Rolling Stone top 100 rock guitarists list. I suspect he couldn’t care less about that.

That evening, he and his electric guitar mesmerized the audience. Thompson connected with them in a unique and personal way, and as he left the stage, they wouldn’t leave. Shouts came for encore after encore. Richard obliged them all. I’ve heard screams for encores before, but nothing like this. Soon, it became obvious that the crowd wouldn’t leave after the first few encores, Richard came back out on stage and shouted one of my favorite lines of all time: (delivered in his must guttural London/inherited Scot brogue) “…all right ye bastards…” Then he proceeded to play yet one more song for them.

I go through phases of taste when it comes to listening to musical artists. Yet, since 2003, the needle of my musical taste always lands on Richard Thompson. I enjoy his clever arrangements and spot on artistic guitar work; however, I enjoy even more the stories he weaves through the lyrics of his songs. Each one of his songs is something uniquely personal that he has allowed the listener to experience with him, a shared experience if you will. For a musician, poet, or writer, having the audience experience personal feeling is always the goal and the base inspiration for creating anything. It’s what drives the creative mind, a desire to toss a life-line of emotion to anyone in the hopes that someone will latch on and hold on to you. I suspect that’s why so many artists are tortured souls. They cast about the emotional net through image, technical skill, or word yet they can’t see where they’ve thrown the line through the fog. Richard Thompson throws darts in the light with his pen.

On his 2003 masterwork, Old Kit Bag, Richard performed some words that haunt me this morning. So I’ve been digging around to find out the details of the story.

A Love You Can’t Survive

Now I remember the promise I gave you
The night I shipped out as a peace volunteer
As we sat holding hands in the Lamb and Flag tavern
I swore I’d be back for you same time next year

But I killed a man in a Brazzaville street fight
I tried to hold back, but he taunted me so
5 years till they freed me from that Brazzaville prison
Out of boredom or pity, I never will know

Now I bear the stain
The scar on my name
I never can go back again

There’s a love you can’t survive
And it burns (tears) you up inside

I sailed my boat into New Orleans harbour
Tied up at the jetty, as bold as you please
With a half-ton of charlie built in to the bulkhead
Right under the noses of all them police

Now here I sit in my house on the mountain
King of the clouds and all I survey
There’s women who are willing, and the law can’t touch me
Yours is the one face that won’t go awa

Richard Thompson

In the story, the man, full of ideals and love for his girl and the world leaves home from the 57^th nicest thing in London, the Lamb & Flag Pub. He makes his way to the mess that was called Congo then, specifically a messed up river city named Brazzaville. According to Wikipedia,

The city was founded in 1880 on the site of a village named Nkuna by an Italian explorer, Pierre Savorgnan de Brazza, after whom the city was named.

In 1944, Brazzaville hosted a meeting of the Free French forces and representatives of France's African colonies. The resulting Brazzaville Declaration was intended to redefine the relationship between France and its African colonies after World War II.

Until the 1960s, the city was divided into European (the center of the city) and African sections (Poto-Poto, Bacongo, and Makélékélé). In 1980 it became a "commune" separated from the Pool Region and divided into seven "arrondissements": Makélékélé (1), Bacongo (2), Poto-Poto (3), Moungali (4), Ouenzé (5), Talangaï (6) and Mfilou (7).

The city has frequently been a staging ground for regional conflicts, including conflicts between rebel and government forces and between forces of the Republic of Congo, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Angola.

Then as the story goes, he kills a man and gets imprisoned. I can only imagine what five years in that city’s prison might do to a person’s soul. Thompson doesn’t share the sordid details of the time locked away, I’m left to imagine how horrid it must have been. His peaceful ideals are perverted and conned by a lust that kept his mind occupied. Cocaine (Charlie), his new lover, waits for his release and sends him across the ocean where he becomes a dark lord of his domain. Yet despite his wealth and his safety, he’s being eaten alive by the one thing his tainted money can’t buy. Like what the drug that he peddles on the poor streets does to its minions, it’s a love that you can’t survive. It tears and burns you up inside.

Richard Thompson is coming to Roanoke again on October 29. He will be playing on a much less smoke-filled stage this time, Shaftman Hall at the Jefferson Center I’ll be there in row E screaming for an encore or two after an evening spent being wrapped into his webbed painting.