Rothko's Rolodex

A couple years ago, I hopped between Joshua Tree and Borrego. Different deserts, one cooler and I do not mean temperature. Joshua Tree had the history. Have you ever heard of Gram Parsons? If you’re a certain age, you know and recall the tragedy and subsequent intrigue. He died in ’73 at the Joshua Tree Inn, Room eight. OD. Of course I’ve stopped there. He wasn’t my thing but there is respect. What he did, it’s called alt-country now. I don’t care for most of it. I would happily record alt-country anything, if given the chance, in my studio, which was fully decked out to make the biggest gearhead happy. I tried to network. Where Jane and I come from, you don’t hesitate to knock on doors, name drop, schmooze it up. She excelled at it. Me, I’m too shy for most of that. I stammer and feel less than. Jane, though, she could stare anyone in the eye, flash a lip-lined smile, and shake a hand like a champ. I could have used her help. Over the years, I mean. She’d hate the desert. I knew that like I knew she used the toilet mostly for vomit.

Why did I drive through the graham-cracker-colored landscape with regularity? It wasn’t for any love of Gram Parsons, as I made clear. I’d go to meetings there. Parsons died of morphine and tequila. I was not unaccustomed to opioids and tequila. Plenty of musicians lived in and near Joshua Tree, some known and some not. I was a nobody with a recording studio. All of us needed meetings. I tried to ingratiate. I was there for something pretty awful: self promotion. There were civilians there too, regular types with no need for my services. I ignored them. I didn’t pass out business cards, I would never be that tacky, but my purpose was the same. It was a long way to drive for rejection.

A part of the drive was following the perimeter of the Salton Sea. I remember seeing a United States map in World Book when I was a kid – I loved reading World Book – and there was a blue blob in the American Southwest, the Salton Sea. I thought a sea in the middle of land was mysterious. I loved the look of it. It was romantic somehow, far out and amazing, the earth’s equivalent of the lunar Sea of Tranquility. The Sea of Salton. It was one of the pages I always went to, when spending time with the encylopedia. The Salton Sea, the iron lung and the Salk vaccine, and let’s not forget civil defense. “Radiation sickness is not always fatal.” How could I ever forget.

The Salton Sea turned out to stink to high heaven. Heaps of dead fish. Motel blight on the shore. Really falling-down disgusting. The sea was manmade, which I knew already from World Book.

I miss my set of World Book. It was Nan and Pop’s first. He brought it over to our house, filling the back seat of his Caddy Coupe Deville. This was right around the time they split up. Whoever knew grandparents could divorce. My parents stayed together, miserable. I liked and loved Nan and Pop. He died before Nan. Oh do I miss Nan. I think about her sixty times a day at least.