Nothing Matters And What If It Did

     That was the name of a record we had once.  We really liked it.  It was John Cougar.  Some music executive must have told him that John Mellencamp wouldn’t sell so he had to cave.  Later, he changed it to John Cougar Mellencamp.  I don’t think he ever got over it.  

     I saw him on TV once with his wife.  She was really pretty with long blond hair.  She acted so calm and I don’t know how she pulled it off.  I remember actually feeling like I wanted to kill him.  He was stomping around smoking two packs of cigarettes a day on his second heart attack.  

I kept thinking ‘How is the woman standing this?’  

     
     He wasn't snapping at her very much.  He was just furious.  Then I figured that she had signed up for it but she loved him very much.  It was obvious that she did but I wondered why she was bothering.  I thought she could do a lot better for herself.  I know it was just TV and maybe she was just acting so she could look saintly.  I had my suspicions but I couldn't be positive.  
    
     Here she was with the man who she professed to love watching him kill himself.  She calmly watched his horrific anger and pain and she just hung in there and supported him in anything he wanted to do.  She kept saying that he was working on the smoking and I thought, 'Yeah, right.' I guess she understood him.  

Of course, I only saw into their lives on TV and it was just for a few minutes.  

     
     I liked records.  There was something about records that I could relate to.  It was a tiny sliver of diamond rolling around the grooves on a plane with ridges and somehow by some kind of magic the sound came out.  I tried to hold onto that technology for a while until I gave up.  Digital is much more convenient.  I guess sometimes a person is willing to relinquish magic for convenience but I'll always miss the little sliver of diamond and the aggravation of the scratches.  It's not so bad.  I have have a bunch of songs that I carry around with me in a little device.  

     
     John was killing himself in front of his wife and she seemed okay with it because I guess she knew that’s what he had to do.  I wonder if they stayed together.  I never found out and I have no intention of looking it up.  I’ll just leave that to my imagination.

     
     The song that made that record famous was Jack and Diane.  “A little diddy about Jack and Diane…Two American kids doing the best that they can.”  I thought then that it would be really nice to be one of those kids but as hard as I tried I couldn’t picture it.  It just seemed a little too easy. I knew better than that.  

     
     Instead, and as it turned out, I always ended up being like the real life wife of the man who made that song famous.  I hung in there with them as long as I could but I wasn’t as good at it as Mrs. Mellencamp.  I had a penchant for these assholes.

     
     It seemed I was a magnet for them.  Step right up, step right up, there’s a sucker born everyday.  I like them though.  Tormented and tortured men who are tragic characters because I really believed that I could love them enough to make them stop.  Just fucking stop it!  I mean I knew that they had their reasons.  I knew they had their demons and I guess I liked trying to be the exorcist because I had quite a few myself.  I figured hell, maybe if I’m successful mine will go with theirs.  

     
     I still can’t picture myself in Diane’s shoes.  After all that’s pretty fucking boring.  Men have their ways.  These days, it seems to me that a lot of them are tormented by something.  Maybe it’s not a record company.  In the end, what I know is that water seeks it’s own level.  I’m okay with that because I’ve been tormented myself and I know how it feels.  

     
     Sometimes people say that you can’t transmit something you don’t have.  Maybe, it’s not a matter of transmitting it or trying to save someone from themselves.  It’s just a desire to share in that torment and transcend it with someone who understands it and is willing to grab the next rung on the ladder and pull ourselves up together.  

     
     Then it would be fun to look down that ladder and say. Whew, that was pretty crazy wasn’t it?  

That’s the fun part.  

     I like photographs of empty roads going no place in particular.  I like all of them.  Some have snow, some have fog, some are on bridges, and some have bright sky with puffy clouds but they all matter because it’s just about going someplace.  

     I like the feeling of traveling those roads alone but I have visions of picking up a wayward hitchhiker and hearing the story of how rough it was until I came along so I can say.  I know what you mean buddy.  I know exactly what you mean.