It was Paul McCartney & Wings, “Maybe I’m Amazed,” the live recording fromWings over America, 1976. And Jesus Christ, thissong…
This was one of those songs that, when I first heard it as a kid—this exact version of this song in particular—playing on some radio station, just like this, I’d been bitten by this sense of hope. A kind of faith that there was something out there so much bigger than myself to believe in, something that could save me if I could just tap intoit.
Was this what some people felt when they discoveredGod?
For me, the only god I’d ever known wasmusic.
I got so lost in the song, I had no idea which direction Seth wasdriving.
He pulled off the narrow, winding road into an empty stretch of desert and drove some more. Then he parked, turned off the car and got out without aword.
Ifollowed.
Seth walked about a dozen paces into the desert andstopped.
“Where the fuck are we?” I patted my vest, looking for mylighter.
“Wherever,” hesaid.
And that’s when it hit me. That Seth had just brought me out into the middle of no-fucking-where—and I didn’t have anything on me. I didn’t have anyweed.
Seth turned slowly, looking around, but there wasn’t much to see. Just flat and dark and empty desert in every direction. I searched every pocket in my vest, twice, and fuckingsighed.
Fuckme.
“What are we doing here?Peyote?”
He threw me a glance. “No, Morrison. We’re here to do whatever the fuck you need to do without getting drunk to do it. Sit. Walk. Sing and dance. Fucking commune with the aliens.Whatever.”
“It’s fuckingcold.”
“So jog. Jump up-and-down.”
He sat down on the cold, hard Earth and stretched out on his back, like it was the fucking beach and he was gonna grab some rays. He was wearing one of those trucker hats he sometimes wore when he didn’t want to be recognized. The one that saidBig J’s Drinkin’ Hole. He tugged it down over his eyes, and fucker pretty much looked like he was going tosleep.
He wasn’t even wearing a jacket. Just a zip-up sweaterthing.
I was already starting to shiver in my vest and thin shirt. Long sleeves or not, it was January. “How are you notcold?”
“Mind over matter,” hesaid.
“The fuck does that mean? Your body temperature is gonna drop. You gonna imagine thataway?”
“Eventually, I’ll get too cold and I’ll have to get up, get back in the car. But for now, you need to be here, I need to be here for you, so I can put off feelingcold.”
“Yeah? You gonna mind-over-matter the scorpions away,too?”
“Yup.”
I shook my head. This dude and all his Zen shit. Ever since he came back to us clean and sober, he’d been spouting thisshit.
“That how you got off heroin, too? Fucking mind overmatter?”
“Prettymuch.”
“Fuck off.” I was starting to pace a bit, agitated and cold. “That’s a bunch of bullshit. You needed methadone and detox and a medical team, and don’t tell me you imagined all that shit in yourhead.”
“Clinic got me off the junk,” he said evenly, “but they definitely didn’t keep me from using again. That was allme.”
