This is where I should have died of exposure, December, 1975, at 25 years old.
My first brush with art was at Kalamazoo Valley Community College with a great artist instructior named Herb Gralnick. That was about 1969-1970. I could relate to an internal pain, the kind that never goes away, a soul pain—I was accepted into the art department with a scholorship. However, after a beatdown after a “War” concert, on the campus of Western Michigan University, a week in the hospital—everything was shattered—-everything. My world— gone, the innocence— gone, exchanged for a slowly darkening world. My art went into hiding and I started drinking—more.
The East Des Moines Railyard. After a night of drinking I left a bar with a man and headed to the railyard to hop a freight to Flordia to pick oranges—as I remember the plan. I remember a brief stretch of sidewalk. The next morning I was awakend by a sudden kick to my side. I remember looking up and seeing a huge man with a beard, “When I come back I don’t want to see you here.” I’m sure his kicking me was to see if I was dead or not. I never jumped the train. I was left alone, next to an unlit wood stove, on a frozen floor, and somehow survived the night. I recall walking back to downtown Des Moines, I remember only the very crisp air, so cold, a late December morning, 1975, with a bright blue sky. It was in Des Moines that I took my last drink.
The process of art sometime leaves me exhausted yet relieved. Desolate yet strangely refreshed. The madman: a crowd was told that there was a madman amongst them. They began to point to whom they thought the fool might be. “Over there, it’s the one with the typewriter.” “No”, said another, “it’s the one with the guitar.” “No!” said the child, holding mothers hand. “That’s him, over there.” Her little finger pointing to a solitary figure sitting on the curb, weeping.
