For many years I kept my silence. My pen stopped scratching on the page. I tried to write a few times. Every time I turned on the ugly lights in my head, thoughts scattered like strippers, with their make up looking sad and vulgar and ten-years older in the harsh light of reality. If I’ve learned anything in the long, weird journey since last we spoke, it’s that every thing looks better when you’re drunk and in the black light. For a long time I stared at impossible airbrushed dreams. I dreamt in Television commercials and I believed. I really would like to be a Pepper too.
My pen held still. The 90’s happened. Life was like a box of chocolates, John Travolta, the disco dancing guy from Grease, shot Marvin in the face.
And, it wasn’t nothing but a G thing baby. Murder was the case they gave OJ, and he walked.
Michael Jackson turned white, cut his nose off and smashed up a car,
“We must drive faster 'said the Fly as he was attacked by Dinosaur Jr.
Weezer sang “this way is a water-slide away form me that takes me further every day: so be cool” And we were, until Kurt, and Bradly, and that dude from Blind Melon went away with Eazy E to that great tour bus in the sky.
The Fresh Prince of Belair punched a Martian in the face.
Some asshole let the dogs out, and we never found out who because we were all too busy dancing the macarana.
We all knew that Leo Dicaprio really could have gotten on that piece of wood with that chick as the Titanic went down like Monica Lewinsky.
Google came into our lives and we all looked up John Wayne Bobbet to see his...errr, two part series.
Scientists successfully cloned a sheep and the Scottish realized they had been going about it all wrong.
People froze their pets in carbonite, or cryogenics, or whatever that stuff was from Terminator 2
Jar Jar Binks and Y2k and that Prince song got stuck in my head for a year
“Cuz they say 2,000 zero zero party over, oops, out of time, meesa gonna party like it’s 1999.”
Frodo did it for the Shire, and Sam did it for Frodo, if you know what I mean.
We found out that Ikea is Swedish for’ build your own crappy furniture suckers!”
George Bush said, "Never again in the halls of Washington, D.C., do I want to have to make explanations that I can't explain.” (real quote)
And we misunderestimated him.
Mad cow disease, Ecoli in the Box, Harry Potter, Brittany Spears.
Pam Andersen showed us Tommy Lee’s third drumstick. And it was gargantuan! WTF, there is no God. Or if there is a God, He really, really likes Motley Crew.
Paris Hilton showed us you don’t need class, talent or panties to be a famous.
Dave Chappel vanished and suddenly we got a black president...Coincidence? I think not. Soon Obama is going to pull off a mask and yell “I’m Rick James, bitch!”
(Guys named Rick got a lot of milage off that “I’m Rick James bitch!” thing.)
Still I said nothing. But the writing hand got itchy. And then one fine day...
I’ve come back home. To this lonely room and these empty pages and I realize. No one is an artist just because we have got something to say. We become artists because we can say what everybody wants to say.
Why now?
I had flown from the nest of high school like dandelion fluff and flittered on the prairie breeze. I landed in a heavy metal band ( that’s right heavy metal, you wanna fight about it). I screamed and yelled and beat the living shit out of my bass. I thought I was an artistic genius because I had figured out the the Government lies, and all that the corporations want is our sweat and money. I was soul searching and shedding skins as I walked through that long dark valley of my latter 20’s. I Loved certain humans but hated mankind. And then I found Amway, it’s really a great way to save. Let me show you my catalogue.
Not really. I’m pulling your leg, I hate Amway, it’s like crack, for Mormons. (sorry my Mormon buddies. I love Utah, or wherever the hell ya’ll are from. Oh yes and you’ve done great things in Hawaii. Thanks for making the hula girls cover their bellies. Good one. And thanks for charging me 100 bucks for a Luau with no booze and decaf coffee. Joking, joking, I kid because I love. So don’t ya’ll put on your little white shirts and black pants and ride over here on your bikes and kick my ass...) If you followed me all the way through that way too long Mormon rant, give yourself a pat on the back. You are every bit as screwed up as I am.
I’ve found a kind of peace. I have a wife whom I love. We like to wander the wilderness. Sometimes when we’re far enough out in the backcountry. I can feel the world as a huge, wild, organic creature that surrounds our civilization. Instead of feeling like a termite in a giant hive that rips the world apart.
By the time we reach thirty, we know how beautiful and terrible life can be, it is a raging hailstorm beating the crap out of your broken down car on a strange highway, and life is a two year old baby girl, cute as a button, slapping a table and yelling “awwwwwwwwwh shit.”
Just like her Daddy.
And everybody laughs.
And I want to write about it.
Like I used to.
Rick Cheehy
Ps I’m a whore! If you like this send it around, link it to your iWhateverthaf-cks, Twitter it till it Googles and then show it to your friends on Youtube. But yes spread it around. I need lots of attention.
