Matthew Ryan's "Concussion" has a special place in my heart -

I had just started my first job in 6 months - I was driving down for an uncertain job as a Contractor - I had bought big ass old bottles of Jack Daniels (which is what I was drinking) and slamming down a 1/5th every day on a bad week, and maybe one a week on a good one ( though I'd be lying if I said I kept that 1/5th down if I drank it in one night - weak stomach)

and I'd get up and I'd have Matthew on my CD player as I drove down shit avenue (Central Ave. Minneapolis) going past dogshit buildings and dogshit neighborhoods to a dogshit job that had no vacation, no benefits, and no future, cause it was a 4-6 week job - and I'd work 12 hrs and I'd drive home to a dogshit borrowed room borrowed from a friend in a dogshit house where it was best to have bullets in your pistol just in case.

and it was winter, so you could feel old man ice creeping on your windshield past the empty spaces past the Rainbow Parking Lot (can you believe I use to walk three blocks thru that shit winter?) - and he'd catch the slush and try to make the winshield wipers smear -

and it was always dark cause I had to be there by 7am, and I'd go to work hungover at 7am, work till 7pm, never see sunlight, and go home and want another 8 shots ofof my angel whiskey - living in my friend's spare bedroom, hiding from the world and my ex-gf, who's best friend was fucking my friend and broke up his marriage thanks to them meeting thru my band....

and on my worst days, I'd print out quotes by Robert Browning

"I give the fight up: let there be an end,
A privacy, an obscure nook for me.
I want to be forgotten even by God."

and I'd dream of even a more obscure nook then the one I inhabited - I dreamed of buying a grave and falling asleep on top of it and seeing if I could give up the fight...

and it made me want to drink even more, and I'd hear "Happy Hour" and "Chickering Angel" and I'd dream of dive bars and things that could make me forget that I existed....

I don't go back to that road nearly as much as I used to - and it nearly killed me, but on a lonely night, where all hell freezes over, and car engines seize up, she reminds me that we could always get back together and try again...and the older and more lonely I get, the more seductive she sounds...

RB