Late Light in Hillsboro

20x24 Acrylic Gallery Wrap

I don’t know what it is that triggers it or why I let it happen, but once again I allowed someone else to step into my life and take charge. This was not that long ago. You may remember this guy, because I wrote about him. He’s the twerp who told me I could not make good art, that I was really bad at painting, and that I should cash my brushes in for a pickleball racket. He isn’t a big guy, and he’s kind of a coward, so I don’t know why I felt compelled to listen to him … and worse, obey him.

Remember him now? He sat on my shoulder and whispered into my ear. “You can’t paint for beans. Sorry. You stink. Don’t quit your day job.”

Mercifully, I eventually found the courage to stuff him into a box. Before I closed the top, I whispered, “Please stay in there and don’t come out again, because if you do I will not so respectfully have to put you back in there, and this time I will most likely nail your feet to the floor.”

Caving in to someone else’s agenda is no way to live. I mean, it’s just not.

The smarter ones among us get that message early in life. “Amscray, estpay,” they say to that tedious little voice, then get on with their own exciting, self-defined life. But as I may have said before, I’m often not one of the smarter ones.

When I was in my early twenties and working my way into the music business — this was down in wild and crazy Hollywood, to be specific — I had, for a while, a great car. It was a 1966 deep burgundy two-door Ford Mustang with sleek black vinyl seats and a new car smell that was slow to fade, one of those cars that was destined to become a classic. I loved that car. I traded-in my MG convertible for it. My mom helped me pay for the difference because I was poor, very poor, as in one day I had a bowl of Corn Flakes with water instead of milk because I didn’t have any milk. That poor.

Anyway, I’d been in LA for less than a year, and had just hooked up with Curt Boettcher, producer of The Association’s mega hits, “Along Comes Mary” and “Cherish.” Curt had just formed a record company with a jovial character named Steve Clark, and together they formed a record company called Our Productions. Steve and Curt were my mentors and producers. Together we recorded and released two of my songs, “All I Really Have is a Memory” and “The Best Thing.” For me, a hollow-head from the islands, that was the most rewarding experience ever!

Part of my contract with Our Productions had Steve paying me a (very) modest monthly stipend, plus absorbing a few of my living expenses, such as my car payment, utility bills and the like. “Just write songs,” he said. “Don’t worry about money. I’ll take care of it.”

It was a good deal. I was happy. Rock ’n roll stardom twinkled in my eyes!

One morning, the day of an important recording session, I put my huge Gibson acoustic guitar into its even huger hard shell case and hauled it out to my car, that racy-hot burgundy Mustang. It was a warm day, soon to be a very hot day. When I went to open the car door … there was no car door. Actually, there was no car.

What the heck?

I looked around. Did I park it on the street? But why would I? I had a driveway, and I always parked there. But it wasn’t in the driveway, and it wasn’t on the street. “Oh, no,” I whispered, slowly realizing that something was very wrong.

Somebody jacked my car!

I called the police. An officer showed up 15 minutes later. “My car’s been stolen,” I said, with the creeped out feeling of having been robbed snaking through my veins.

He nodded and reached out. “Driver’s license.”

I pulled it out of my wallet and handed it to him. As he scribbled notes on a small pad, he asked me to describe the car. “It’s burgundy,” I said, “a 1966 Ford Mustang with black seats.” I told him everything I could about the theft, but it wasn’t much. I hadn’t heard a thing.

He handed back my license. “I’ll call it in and see if we’ve picked up any stolen cars. Hang on.”

A few of my neighbors, by then, had sidled out into their yards to rubber-neck and see what was going on. I tried to look calm and relaxed, like, everything’s cool, I’m not being arrested, heh-heh.

But I was anything but calm and cool. I felt invaded, violated. I’d never been robbed before. I didn’t like it. I wondered if I’d ever get my car back.

The officer returned, stuffing his notepad into his shirt pocket. “Well,” he said. “Good news and bad news. Your car wasn’t stolen … it was repossessed.”

“What?”

“It’s what happens when you don’t make your car payments.” He shook his head and went back to his car. “Have a good day, kid.”

“But ….”

That dang Steve Clark. Did he make even one of my car payments? And how the heck was I going to get to my recording session? It would take me half a day to walk there.

Finding no action in my driveway, my neighbors headed back into their homes. I went inside, too, and called Steve Clark. No answer. I tried again a few minutes later. Still no answer.

Jeez.

I started walking, lugging my heavy guitar case. When I hit Lankershim Boulevard, I tried to hitch a ride. No one even glanced at me. I didn’t blame them. I wouldn’t either. Long-haired dude with a guitar. Probably some kind of a hippie.

When I finally got to Steve’s Hollywood office building, totally drained by the heat, I did one of the most halfwitted things I’ve ever done in my life, bar none.

It was just after lunch. No one was in the lobby and both of the two elevator doors stood open. I got into the first cab with my clumsy guitar case and sagged against the wall. I closed my eyes and for a moment consumed the exquisite air conditioning. But I was more than a little anxious to get up to Steve’s office. I pressed the button for the third floor and waited for the door to close.

But it didn’t. It just stayed open.

Come on, I thought. Move!

Nothing.

Maybe I could fool the elevator into thinking the cab was full so the door would close. So I pressed the button for the fourth floor. Nothing happened. I pressed five, then six, then seven, then went all the way to the top, every single floor above the third. The panel was lit up like a Christmas tree.

Finally, the door started to close. But just as it did, a hand appeared and stopped it, and a rush of businessmen heading back from lunch crowded into the cab with me.

One guy went to press the button for his floor and froze. His jaw dropped when he saw my light show. He groaned, then they all groaned. One guy said,“I guess we know who did that!” They all filed out.

Could I even have been more halfwitted than that? I mean, good grief, Sherlock.

But I was twenty-two and still searching for my brain.

Anyway, three hours after leaving my house in North Hollywood, I walked into Steve Clark’s office. He peeked up over the heaps of papers on his desk. “Well, well,” he said. “About time you showed up. Where were you? We lost our studio time.”

“My car was repossessed.”

He chuckled, thinking it was a Joke. And why not? He was a master of lame jokes. But I wasn’t laughing. Then he got this quizzical look on his face, the wheels of realization starting to spin in his head. He gave me his best sheepish grin and said, “Ooops.”

I did get my car back and it cost me more than I could afford. Steve paid for most of it, thankfully. I never got angry about it. I liked Steve, and anyway getting upset has never been my nature. But I did say, “That wasn’t very good on your part, Steve,” to which he said, “I resemble that.”

You’d have thought I would have learned my lesson about turning my life over to other people. But no, it happened again, this time as a songwriter. In my time in music, I wrote over a hundred songs and published most of them with Four Star Music Company, hoping that they’d show my songs around and get various artists to record them. But only a handful ever did. It deflated me. I thought I was a crummy songwriter, and the little twerp in my head agreed. But the truth of it was that Curt Boettcher didn’t want Four Star to show my songs to anyone. He was saving them for us, the Millennium, for when we made it big.

In the following years, I gave others control over my life several more times. It must have been a screwy part of my personality, or something. I trusted people. Still do. I believe what they say. Most of the time that trust is not misplaced. But sometimes it is, once even to my extreme life-numbing detriment.

Even so, I don’t regret any of it. It has all been part of my life education.

To me, there is no denying that each of us is born brilliant. We have within us the ability to imagine, invent, create, heal, and soar to heights greater than we can even imagine. An eternal genius lives within all of us. If only we can access it. That’s the big deal. Access.

A handful of us have come pretty darn close — da Vinci, Einstein, Curie, Gates, King, Newton, Hawking, Savant. And many more are on the path. But many, many, many others are like I am, those who struggle just to make sense of who they are. Isn’t it just easier to let others call the shots for us?

Well sure it is, but letting other people take charge over us also makes it easier to miss the point of being here. Access to our inherent brilliance takes hard work, our own hard work. If we don’t plot our own path forward, someone else will … and we may not like where it takes us.

I’m smarter now. Most of the time. I work hard to mark my own way, to do good, to be compassionate and kind and generous and live an ethical and meaningful life. And I’m getting better and better at it, thankfully. Drawing out whatever brilliance I may have is important to me, because I want to have spent my life on purpose. And anyway, being a halfwit is annoying. And I really don’t want my one precious life to get repossessed.