(You Caught Me) Smilin'

Seven years ago I got married.. Murried. or something like it.

I, of course, put the business out of my mind as soon as I did it and couldn't have told you my anniversary if pressed hard, but someone found some pictures yesterday and let me know i'd hit the seven-year mark. The intent was to reflect on the past seven years and how much I've done and how far I've come. I had good intentions when I got married as well. And we all know what the road to hell is paved with.

I have two pictures from that day now, both were emailed yesterday. One is okay, the other makes me cringe. Ah, the folly and fun of our youth!

Tangentially related is an article on Sly Stone that is out in this month's Vanity Fair. I put a bet up with the Visigoth about how coherent Sly would be during this article and whether it was an article about NOT finding Sly, seeing as he can be all manner of super-elusive for 20+ years.

Surprisingly, Sly was coherent. Sly is pretty clean. Sly is still psychedelic, but he lives in Napa (in a house I recognize), drives choppers. Sly is not reflective at all on his years of reclusiveness. He doesn't care to think much about the lyrics of his old songs or how they were put together - at least not to our intrepid reporter. But he has started performing. His little sister Vet put her energy into snatching him up outta L.A.

For the record, that wacked out performance at the Grammy's was the result of Sly falling down a cliff off the back of his L.A. home the day before. No one thought he would show, especially, but he did, in a neck brace etc. And the entire original band - with the exception of Larry Graham - was there performing (larry had a cold) but they were behind the "session band" in front and two layers behind all the 'today's talent' who covered Sly's songs for the show.

Anyway, Sly has been snatched up and is performing. And lately he did a gig at the Flamingo Showroom on the Vegas strip. Here is the part I loved about the article and the last seven years of my life, simulataneously:

"But there was one mesmerizing moment that seemed lost on the liquored-up, good-timey Vegas crowd. "Stand!" began not with the rousing drumroll you hear on the record, but with Stone singing a cappella in a soft, deliberately fragile voice. ("I just felt like doing it like that - so everybody could really hear it properly," he later told me.) Some of the crowd chattered through it, but to hear him almost whisper these words -

Stand
In the end you'll still be you
One that's done all the things you set out to do

Stand
There's a cross for you to bear
Things to go through if you're going anywhere

-and to know the things he went through, the things he set out to do, the things he achieved, and the things he threw away; and then, to see him there, hunched and older but still standing, onstage, surrounded by family..."

And There is the summation of my past seven, twenty-seven years - rolled up neatly in two stanzas of one song and the interpretation of one moment by an observer at a concert.

There are things to go through if you're going anywhere in this lifetime. There is a cross to bear, there will be struggle and you'll carry your wounds with you. And in the end, if you halfway work at it, you'll still be yourself through it all and you will do whatever it is you set out to do, no matter how lofty the goal.

The greatest gift is to experience all of that (and much, much more) and still find yourself loved and cherished by those you love and cherish - to see yourself up there, hunched and older, surrounded by family.


Happy Monday to all ya'll