SHOPKEEP Excerpt: Masterpiece Day

A Day-and-Date Drop of A Key Memoir Chapter

Two years after the vehicular tragedy which derailed my life psychically if not quite physically, I had “gotten on with it,” as they say. By the time of October 23, 1989, I had recovered enough to again hold enormous dreams in my heart and mind, and although they didn’t include any of what life what turn into—well, except seeing my byline in print and on book covers more than a few times—a prophetic and mysterious message came courtesy of Bob Dylan by way of the Grateful Dead.

When I paint my masterpiece. 

It settled in my mind, this idea. It had to do with one of my many foibles in need of mitigation, that of my pernicious impatience to get ‘there’—wherever that is. Anywhere but where I have been in life, which isn’t good enough. When I get there, all will be fine and dandy; I must become the artist of my dreams. 

At the time those dreams still including becoming a respected filmmaker, or better, the literary novelist I spent so much time imagining myself becoming. Days and nights in my mid-team years went by with me dreaming of doing it all. I would make films first, then turn to the novels. That was the plan.

Bob Dylan in 1989.

In retrospect, I’m reminded of a passage from Daniel Quinn’s fine novel of philosophy Ishmael, which suggests that leading Adam to the Tree of Life before he has sought the knowledge for himself would deprive our protagonist of a great undertaking by which he may gain an important wisdom and prove his mettle to himself. 

But… I can’t stomach any more adversity or to ‘prove’ myself. I just want to get ‘there.’ How much more must I suffer?

As I have now come to understand, this way of thinking is foolish. We will take exactly as much suffering as is necessary to teach us what we need to know. If we’re wise, anyway. 

So in the fall of 1989 I’m in transition from my adolescent going-to-Hollywood ambition in the form of scriptwriting and filmmaking, my collegiate field of study, to matters literary, as I describe my dream of becoming an author; specifically, one who writes a massive GAN (Great American Novel) and makes all his dreams come true, and even the dreams of others who may find themselves inspired by my work. 

At the age of 24, I’ve been trying to write novels and screenplays and make movies for some time. I even met with a financial advisor from the arts commission about getting funding to make a film when I was only 13! Sometimes I don’t give myself enough credit for having striven to manifest my dreams from a very young age, almost as though I came out of the womb with some remembrance of prior attempts at bending reality which almost got there… or else a residue of past magic, with a concomitant, urgent, burning desire to get back to working it to shape the world in which I would live out my current life.

Jerry as he appeared about three weeks before Masterpiece Day, on September 30, 1989.

On this night, like the night before, my family and I indeed have a sacred, magical ritual ahead of us—the Grateful Dead are in town. The night before we had initiated my mom into the scene (no, not literally with a dose of LSD), so that she could see about all the fuss, all the money we were spending on this pursuit of seeing a rock band over and over. 

Having sent my mom Andria back home to recover and process her experience, which included seeing her favorite song Black Muddy River as the encore of her first show, I’m now standing on the third row in front of Jerry as he’s ripping through his solo in “Mississippi Half-Step Uptown Toodeloo.” At my side are the two people most responsible for my Deadhead ways, Daniel Sobel, a spiritually literal, all-but blood brother, and Doug Dawson, a fellow media arts student, writer, and pursuer of entheogenic relief from the prosaic ways of our daily lives. Also in attendance, my love Jenn, who is as responsible for my still being around to recount these memories as any person alive—my love, my life, my partner in all things. 

By now all of us have seen Dead shows but we’ve never been this close to Garcia before; not eye contact range. The experience has an indelible effect on us all. Our bodies dance and twitch to the music; as Doug perceived at a prior show, as though the drummers were puppeteers rather than musicians. They are masters of energy, frequency and vibration, of symbol, art and ritual. Who have painted masterpieces, as Bob Weir begins to sing, a Bob Dylan cover. 

I smile—I’ve seen Dylan more than a few times as well. I am a fortunate son of this aging but relevant pop cultural milieu we’ve only just begun to call classic rock. I have no idea how relevant these musicians will remain, nor do I understand how my thousand-petal lotus flower will unfold, but I do know I must paint my own masterpiece of some kind. Like so many before, I must make my artistic mark. 

Now, I will never be the Grateful Dead, but I must have my say nonetheless, even if no one cares but me. Only then will I feel free. Only then will I begin to live, I suddenly understand, on the day I paint my masterpiece. What I mean by ‘live’ I don’t fully know yet, nor what it truly means to get ‘there,’ nor what it is I’m burning to convey through art, but I know the art-urge inside me to leave behind a few books or movies or SOMETHING of lasting value must be quelled and satisfied.

As we appeared on Masterpiece Day before heading into the show.

LSD, which I had done before the Grateful Dead experience but not to significant useful effect, opens the door to big thoughts, grand declarations, expansions of awareness. Or that’s what acid did for me, anyway, in such moments as this at these grand, ritualistic spectacles we call concerts. 

Sorry—let’s stop for a disclaimer: Shopkeep isn’t one of those stories about drugs being someone’s downfall, at least except for alcohol and nicotine. It also isn’t advocacy about anyone putting any particular substance in their body to achieve a particular hedonistic or spiritual end. My experiences weren’t without risk. I did them. Nobody held my hand; nobody forced my hand. It wasn’t for babies and sissies, I know that much. And all I put myself through was worth it. But everyone has to make their own decisions for themselves about what goes into their bodies. No one else can tell you what you should and should do in that regard. My body, my choice.

For example: At least one of the guys from this group dancing in front of Jerry, Doug, will go down a drug rabbit hole and never came out. That he lived as long as he did, until 2020, was itself a miracle. That I lived through it all (and more, as we’ll see) is another miracle, but Doug pushed himself time and again to the edge of life. To what end for himself I cannot say, other than homelessness and addiction, pain and trouble. 

Being in the presence of the Dead in October 1989, and over a hundred over times, offered experiences in both heaven and hell, all of it crucial in getting to the moment of accomplishment and satisfaction I enjoy in my present life, even the worst of my crises and tragedies. The path includes masterpieces and joy but also death, addiction, betrayal, suffering and a surfeit of mystical experiences, some of which only revealed themselves as such much later. 

Selling my slate of novels at a festival (2019)

In this story of my life I will try to depict more than tell, as this first part has felt in style. I will try to write this latest masterpiece with as much objectivity as I can. Unlike my published books and various unpublished manuscripts of fiction short and otherwise, this time I will have to tell it straight as I can, instead of ‘on the slant’—writing in my own voice, without the fictional filter, has at times felt more than strange. I wrote the other books to get away from my ‘real’ life, not wallow in it.

But all fiction is autobiographical, or didn’t you know this? A true literary writer’s not-so secret; a subject for a different sort of manual than a memoir. And however this book turns out, other than becoming complete one day like all my others, the day it’s finished will be another ‘masterpiece day.’ October 23 may be the yearly reminder, but the truth is that every day I live and breath is another day filled with miracles, wonders, and masterpieces.

Perhaps in the course of telling this tale I’ll drop some of the secrets of how I pulled it off, often in spite of my dreams rather than inspired by them. The principle aspect of all this dreaming I don’t yet realize at all is how the joys and successes of my life will arise from a magical and unlikely synthesis of my dreams and the Grateful Dead experience. At the time, it seems like another concert. Little do I realize how much this one moment will lead to all of it coming true. “But it did happen…”