On Emerson, Elvis, Michael and Other Artists
For Random Acts of Journaling; November, 2002

“The torpid artist seeks inspiration at any cost, by virtue or by vice, by friend or by fiend, by prayer or by wine.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson


I once read an interview with Elvis Costello wherein he stated matter-of-factly that he had fucked up past relationships in the name of art. He purposefully, although perhaps subconsciously at the time, sabotaged relationships that were otherwise perfectly normal so that he would have topics about which to write.

The fact that Elvis’ strategy resulted in some mighty-fine songwriting aside, I have often wondered over this curious penchant.

I first fell “in love” when I was nineteen years old. I say “in love” within quotes because now that I’m closer to forty than to thirty, I seriously doubt that I was capable of loving anyone at that time in my life, let alone the loser toward whom I directed my affections. That said, I thought at the time that I was in love. The object of my affections was called Michael*.

Michael and I met while both working at a local record store. We even sold actual records which will give you some indication as to how long ago this was. Michael was several years older than I (I seem to recall that he was twenty-seven at the time), but we were both still going to community college. He walked in to work one day with a Replacements tee-shirt on and I of course fell immediately in love.

You have to understand that the town I grew up in may have only been 25 miles out of Los Angeles, but it was millions of miles away when it came to anything cultural; rock and roll music included. For Pete’s sake, nobody in my high school knew who Bruce Springsteen was and although this was before “Born in the U.S.A.” was released, it was after “The River” so come on already, people! I used to write Bruce’s name on my notebooks and people thought he was my boyfriend. Granted, it was fine and dandy with me if they wanted to think I was dating Bruce Springsteen at the age of 16.

I wasn’t only obsessed with The Boss at the time, though. Music to me then was a major priority; it was something that spoke to me at a time when nobody else could or bothered trying. The bands that I loved then were so vital – bands like the Replacements, the Meat Puppets, X, Husker Du, The Minutemen, even REM and U2 (but this was also before anyone knew who they were). Of course, there were many more; the list was awe-inspiring and all the longer because I had decades of rock artists which came before me to discover as if they were brand new. I find myself now amazed at the antiseptic state of rock ‘n roll these days and feel like a member of my parent’s generation who I am somewhat certain felt the same about my music. Go figger.

My growing up out in the cultural boondocks meant that I was alone in my love for this music. My peers were too busy discovering Duran Duran and Missing Persons to notice that real music was being made and not played on KROQ. Therefore, seeing Michael walk in to the record store that day with that tee-shirt on was like watching a literal God-send waltz by. My first question to him: “Hey, do you like REM, too?”

He did.

Michael was (and still is) an artist. I shortly found out that he was a darn good one. He worked a lot in ink at the time and his drawings were often just shy of being comics (or Illustrated Novels as they are called now). They fascinated me, as did he.

Being an artist, Michael’s hands and clothes were usually covered in ink and paint. He drank to excess; he smoked both cigarettes and pot as often as humanly possible; he wrote and drew on his clothes all the time. Frankly, I wonder now if he showered on a regular basis. One time, I “kidnapped” his denim jacket and wore it for several weeks before he liberated it from me. It was just so him – not only its smell of cigarettes and beer, but all of the drawings all over it. I felt wrapped up in Michael when I wore it. Plus, I looked so damn cool.

At nineteen, although I would have denied it at the time, I was younger than my chronological years and in many ways quite naïve. I was sweet to everyone; most especially to people I wanted to impress and most of all to Michael. We quickly became friends because on top of our musical tastes, we had many things in common. He was charming, funny and smart and I found him sexy. I was also rather intrigued by the “romanticism” of dating an artist. I had visions of inspiring great works of art that would one day grace the walls of museums the world over. They would write about our inspirational and torrid love affair in textbooks into the next millennium!

However, Michael was perpetually in love with other women. I sensed this may be an impediment to our heated affair.

Of course, he was always in love with women who didn’t love him back. I think in the several years that we spent time together he had only one actual relationship with a woman that lasted longer than a few weeks. She of course broke his heart and he moped about it for over a year. So here I was, in the midst of that cliché to top all clichés: in love with a man who was in love with some other woman who didn’t love him.

I actively sought him out, wanting to spend time with him. I bought him gifts. I took him to the theater more than once. We went to numerous gigs together. I listened, ad nauseam, to his tales of woeful longing after other nameless women. I was a great, if silly in my show of affection, person and he wanted nothing to do with me in any real sense.

My point in relating this tale is that I often thought, while wasting too much time on this man who obviously was never going to love me, that Michael looked for love only in all the wrong places and only because that’s how he wanted it. He was attempting to live a life fit for a Tom Waits song or a Bukowski short story, complete with broken hearts, smelly clothes and alcoholism. A happy love affair just did not fit the mold. It was so obvious to me. Every single woman he fell for wanted little to do with him; when they did want some kind of relationship with him he either smothered them until they ran screaming in to the night and changed their phone numbers or he made some other stupid move that resulted in the same measures and in his same broken-hearted moping, smoking and drinking.

And then there was me. The one who fell for him, knowing this all along. Can I use art as my excuse, too?







*Name not changed so as to protect nobody, but hell – there are several million Michaels in this world. If you can figure out which one I fell in love with, you have my kudos.