The Pirate Song

So, every so often you come across a larger-than-life individual.  Someone you admire for their unflagging enthusiasm and spirit. Someone who's had their share of scrapes and obstacles in their time, but who always summons the courage for one more joke, one more smile.

And that's Christopher Kueberth.  My friend.

I wrote this song when we were roommates.  I had begged and begged him to audition for a production of Twelfth Night.  Because he's a fabulous fucking actor who never does any theatre anymore.  Finally, he relented, and went on to do some pretty amazing work.  

I discovered they were looking for musicians who could sing, and wanted them to come in playing something, Chris already had a song I had written about him, but it's a very gloomy one, dealing with his love life and such drama.   "Damn it, Jones", he said, "write me another song".

And the idea came from there.  In two days before auditions, I wrote what you hear below, and played it.  Got the part of Feste, and had a ball.

You'll notice some actual quality in the video. Somebody discovered Windows Movie Maker.....

Letter to Simon

Dear Simon,

This is going to sound creepy.  I used to write letters to you in my journal.  With no intention to send them.

Like this one.

But I also used to write letters to e.e. cummings the same way , too. To Leo Buscaglia and Leonardo Da Vinci.    A way to get stuff off my chest and lock it away.  Write someone whom you admire and ask them for help.

I've been sitting on this letter for about a month now.  Because I wish to hell my first thought when I heard the news wasn't this:

Not again.  Damn it.  Damn it to fucking hell.

I'm 32.  And I've known too many suicides, buried too many suicides or called the paramedics at the last fucking second too many times in order to save people from taking their life. Watched them helpless and fragile in the emergency room, hour after hour.  Watched them hold it together in the observation ward during a 72 hour stay.  Packed their bags.  Walked home and saw those goddamn plastic sensors left by the EMT all over the ground.  Cleaned the house.  Try to do normal people things, like eat at a restaurant.  But everything takes too long.  Four hours in a restaurant, sobbing and eating barbeque.

And I'm nowhere as strong as I thought those people were. As I thought you were.

And each time someone I know kills themselves, I ask myself:  When is it gonna be me.  When is the reality of my incompetence and weakness, my pursuit of a ideal nowhere in sight, my complete and utter isolation going to sink inside my heart.

Someday I feel the only I'm still alive because my debts.  I owe too much to kill myself.

 - credit cards
- student loans

There's no way I'm going to let anyone deal with those messes before I go.

And even beyond money, I owe my parents.  I owe them the hair on my head and the blood in my veins and the teeth in my mouth. I owe the music in my throat and the poetry in my bones.   My life isn't enough to make up how much I owe them for how much they've lost to have me.  And then, to have a defective, sickly child who gave them hell for years, who made them scared and frightened and convinced I was an autistic, unstable beast.

Look, I don't blame you for doing what you did, Simon.  I just miss you.  I never really knew you - you went  out of your way to create the ineffable persona that was Simon.  Your real name isn't even Simon.   You were a fantastic actor, and I loved working with you in Scotland.   I remember the flight home, the horrible timing of the break up between you and and the other actress in Edinburgh Airport.  We'd been up all night reveling at the Three Sisters bar, and between me patching up someone's glass-ridden leg, and just having worked our asses off two months for theatre , we were all pretty frayed.  But, even as your ex was screaming at you at the check-in counter, you put on your sunglasses, and you smiled.  This odd, distant smile that put you a million ways away.

I hope you're happier there, brother.  I hope you're at peace.