Friday, January 11, 2013

Chapter 20 - Drop Off The Key, Lee






IT WAS A matter of days after the incident on Blue Jay Way when our resident guru materialized outside the front door of Blair’s Mediterranean Village apartment. Blair was seated at the piano while Stephen and I flanked him on either side intensely working on a new song. I'm not sure if there was a knock at the door or if it was merely noises from behind it. Blair got up from the piano bench and looked outside and saw this slight, baby-faced Peruvian looking man standing motionless and silent at the threshold. He spoke. “I have been hearing yous music, it is special. Please may I come in? I must tell yous about what yous saw.” Blair's eyes widened as he invited him in. I have never seen anybody that had eyes like his. Although I'm colorblind, they appeared to be a reddish-brown color and were the widest set apart pair I'd ever seen. He was the closest thing to what I imagined an alien would look like if he took human form; not someone from another country mind you, but one from outer space.

I felt uncomfortable when he sat down at a barstool in the kitchenette and guzzled down three or four glasses of water. He then refilled his glass and repeated the action. “I know what yous saw the other night.” We were dumbfounded, shocked as if he was setting us up with this yarn, this elaborate scheme, trying to yoke us as three of his yokefellows. How could he know what we saw or thought we saw the other night? He didn't know anybody we knew, and we had never seen him before in our lives. He had our undivided attention now. Blair interjected, “What exactly do you mean, saw?” Without any hesitation he said, “Yous know what yous saw.” How did he know? What exactly did he know? Who was this strange little fellow that had practically materialized in the living room? His English was broken, and we later found out that he couldn't read or write well at all, but he mentioned in passing that he came from a small town in Colorado. 

          He got down off the barstool and proclaimed that "Yous are." What in the world was that supposed to mean? Yous are? We are what? He went on to explain how the three of us were a link to some kind of ancient code and had the key to unlock some kind of universal message and basically change the world. I think Blair burst out laughing at this point and Stephen was trying to quiet his outburst, he didn't want to be rude to this guy especially if it meant we were so important. I was holding on to the arm of the piano hoping to regain my balance. 

          Lee never talked about the past or future only the present. He had no idea about any world events going on such as Watergate or President Richard Nixon. He had never even heard of the Beatles for God sake. I don't know about Stephen or Blair, but I thought this guy was either the real deal or he was completely out of his mind and could be dangerous. I wondered if he was carrying a weapon and I walked behind him to see if there might have been a gun or a knife in his back pocket. There wasn't, of course, but I still felt nervous. He talked in riddles which seemed like it was meant for us to figure out. He didn't go into detail about the sightings on Blue Jay Way, but we felt this guy knew something about the mysteries of life that we didn't, and I felt, as we all did, that certain things could be found out from him. 

          He stayed for a few hours, at least it seemed like it, then wandered back up to his apartment on the second floor. Over the next few weeks, he came by on a regular basis and we realized he meant no harm, even if he was from another galaxy far, far away. He was trying to steer our music in a more spiritual direction. At times it seemed absurd. There we were writing and playing songs with this effeminate ageless mystery man sitting on a stool waving his slight hands in the air, his vapid alien eyes staring out and then slowly closing like he was trying to reel in messages from places I've never been before.

          It was right around then when we met a girl who lived in an apartment down the hall named Lisa. There was something very sisterly about her, maybe because she was another member of the tribe that Blair and I came from, or it could have been her deep love of music. We didn't have a record player in the apartment, but Lisa did, and she was gracious enough to invite us over. We would play the ELO album, Eldorado, the one with the picture of Dorothy from the Wizard Of Oz touching the ruby slippers. We listened to that record repeatedly, especially the cut entitled Can't Get It Out Of My Head. Ironically that the album was released on Jet Records, owned, and operated by British mogul, Don Arden who a couple of years later would be in negotiations with Silverspoon for a record contract.  

          Another artist we listened to and were greatly influenced by was Cat Stevens. His Buddha and The Chocolate Box album release earlier that year was a musical bible to the band, at least it was to me. The song Home In The Sky crystalized the emotions and direction we would follow in the next short while with the lyrics, Come the morning I'll be far from here. Slowly rising in another sphere. Old world goodbye, cause I'll be Home In The Sky in the morning, bye bye. Blair and I had visions of Lee vanishing into thin air and returning to his home in the sky. Maybe he was on one of those ships of light we had seen a few days earlier. We were so gullible and impressionable in those days. Things don't happen like that anymore; they happen differently now.

          We were trying hard to find a balance between the mundane and spiritual but were fighting a losing battle. Things were getting very intense now, but we couldn't tell anyone except those we trusted or were part of the experience. This was around the time when Stephen and Blair came up with their stream of consciousness masterpiece lovingly known as The Space Tape. It was Blair playing a classically influenced piano part with Stephen making up this crazy stuff on the spot. My mind went blank on an interstellar trip, etc. I wish we still had that tape but alas it is locked away somewhere in the Akashic records. As Neil Young once said, "If you guarantee the postage, I'll mail you back the key." 

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