I wrote "Farewell Song Sweet From My Trees" under the giant Redwood trees in Northern California, only a few weeks after sobering up.  My last drunk night was a party in Clarkdale, Arizona, with a handful of people, including a girl I was seeing at the time.  The people were cool, and we were all having a good time.  Kids were there and, except for the booze and beer and demons, it was all good clean fun.  The kids liked me, and a little girl asked me if she could paint me blue.  Being drunk and happy, I told her, "sure, go ahead."  So she proceeded to smear blueberry-scented candlewax all over my face and arms.  I didn't know it was candlewax until I woke up the next morning at a rest stop on I-17.  I was caked in blue candlewax like a blueberry-scented Braveheart.  I drove a little further north the next day, spending the night in the parking lot of a strip mall in Page, Arizona.  I wasn't able to wash off the My Little Braveheart makeover until I got to Austin, Nevada, where I was able to wash it off at an RV park.

The party was good, but the girl I was with had a demon problem, and her demons started talking to me.  Low and guttural, like some weird kind of slow-motion Linda Blair, she started berating me in private, while everybody else was otherwise occupied.  I had no idea why anybody in their right mind would ever put up with that, so I stood up without saying anything, walked the mile back to her house in Clarkdale, got in my van, and drove to I-17, where I passed out.

My drummer friend invited me to come up to his mother's farm in Merlin, Oregon, so I started the trek north, avoiding freeways as usual.  Because 2-lane highways are more beautiful, and fun.

By the time I got to Oregon I was clean and sober again.  I'd only had a few days clean, and my friend invited me to crash in the old worker's house, where the workers would can and dry and wrap and package and smoke or whatever it was they did with the herbs they'd grown on the farm, back when it was a working operation.  I unpacked my recording computer, and over the course of the next month or so we put the finishing touches on Your Arms Inside Me, and started and completed Is It For Real?, both of which he plays drums on.

In between sessions we'd walk around the grounds, chainsmoking American Spirits and talking about whatever.  Here I am walking around alone, still wearing my beer insulation suit, which I hadn't yet outgrown.

He was sick, which is why he was there, and died only a few months after I left town.  I wrote the article Requiem For A Drummer about him, when I heard the news, way after the fact.  Here he is tracking drums for the song "Is It For Real?"

Rest in peace, amigo.  You are truly missed.

After the albums were finished, I left the farm and wandered up the Oregon Coast, looking for a purpose.  The Pacific Northwest has never been my vibe, and I've never spent any real time there.  It's beautiful, but the rain is relentless like a strafing run, and living there is like being a refugee from the sun.  Beautiful place, but not my vibe.

I wandered back down the coast, after making it all the way to Tillamook.  Nothing felt right.  It was good to be clean, though, and I enjoyed the tourist coast for what it was worth.  Having no idea what tourism is, and not being local, I had no business there, so I made my way south, back into California, once trekking a mile across an expanse of hot, impossible sand in Mendocino County to bathe in the ludicrously-violent waves pounding on the untamed shore.  It wasn't an official beach, and there was no path, so you had to trek across the sun with your towel and cracked sandals like Lawrence of Arabia, over the rubber plants and burning, beautiful waste.  After throwing myself into the sea until I was satisfied that I was clean, and turning myself over in the waves until I'd been polished like a piece of seaglass, I made the trek back to my parking space in a wide spot on Highway 1.  By the time I got back to the van I was dusty and sweaty again, but the "maintenance clean" had served its purpose, and I drove south until I found a reasonable place to spend the night.

Which was a cemetery in Point Arena, actually.  It wasn't the kind of place you were supposed to spend the night, but places where you're not supposed to spend the night are always the best, because they're peaceful.  Just be quiet and get out of there early and chances are you'll be fine.  I took this picture the next day, which turned into the album cover for Love is Wasted.

But before I made it to Mendocino County, I'd spent a night or 2 in the Redwood forests in far northern California.  It was beautiful, but in all honesty I didn't like it.  The trees were so dense that it never really felt like daytime; the canopy was high and lofty, like a wavy green cathedral, but the forest floor was dim and gothic.  I felt like Braveheart again, cold and wet, but without the blueberry topping.

While I was there, I started writing "Farewell Song Sweet From My Trees."  It is one of the first songs I wrote in sobriety, maybe the first.  It was written as a kind of farewell letter to Jerome, Arizona, which had become my newest temporary home.  My drummer friend told me that if I went back, I'd only be there for several months.  He said it would dry up, and the purpose would evaporate, or float away like a dead leaf on the breeze.

He was partially right.  I went back, but for a couple years rather than several months.  As usual, there was a season of extended absence, in which I was in Colorado and New Mexico, but mostly I was back in Jerome from the time I got back from Oregon in the fall of 2014 to the end of 2016.  Here's me playing at the wedding of our Satanic friend's kid in the park, a few months after I got back.  I played "Here Comes The Bride," even though I've never played it before or tried to learn it, and in fact I think my friend Moondog, who I will be mentioning later, might have even performed the ceremony.  He is or was an ordained minister of some infernal kind or another.  I don't remember.  He took this picture of me performing at the wedding in the park, in the silent, scary dark:

It was a festive, stoned, and joyous, if understated, occasion.

I always loved Jerome, but have never thought I would see the place again.  But since I've been gone, Moondog got saved and led a mutual photographer friend of ours to Christ, and after hearing about my mother's passing, suggested I come back so we can start a street preaching music thing.  The idea immediately struck me as a God move.  God is calling.  Is He? 

My family left me stranded down here in Mexico, telling me pointblank that me not being able to get back to the U.S. for my mother's memorial service "wasn't their problem," and so my friend in Texas set up a GoFundMe, so I wouldn't have to be homeless in Mexico with my cat.  If you can, donations are seriously appreciated.  The link is at the bottom, or click on this picture, taken in Jerome by me and Moondog's now-saved photographer friend Michael Thompson:

This is Michael, dressed up like the Mad Hatter with his wife and son.  I love these people.

Am I going back to Arizona?  Jerome?  Gringolandia?  Palookaville?  The Moon?

I have started packing cuz why not.  Moondog sent me an email today saying, get your spiritual warfare chops up, cuz it's witching season.  Jerome is full of witches and new-age ridiculousness.  I told him, I'm not worried about it.  I'm going to be driving straight up through cartel country, not as an act of recklessness, but definitely indifferent.  Some masked hoodlum pulls me over and tries to blow my brains out I'm'a say, "Do me a favor, cabrón.  I'm tired of this noisome rejection trip anyway.  You did know Jesus loves you, right?  Arrepiéntete, o pagarás por tus pecados en el infierno.  Pull the trigger, give your life to Christ, or take me to your jefe.  I don't really care."

I'm not looking for trouble.  Zacatecas has been in the news lately for "narcobloqueos," or drug blockades, which means burning trucks and school buses in the highway.  Zacatecas is on the way, but because of this news I'm going to go around it.  I'm not afraid of anything, but I'm not going headlong into a warzone with a death wish, either.

I was thinking it would be funny to turn the Sinaloa Cartel into a gospel singing group, and watch them as they beat their golden AKs into plowshares, praising Jesus in Spanish, weeping ecstatically, and making up for all their dirty deeds.  They would sit there in the town square, taking a beating, letting people curse and spit on them, and in the middle of the night some kid whose family they killed would come in without meeting any resistance from any bodyguards and blow their brains out in the middle of the night.  Their newly-redeemed, coke-damaged brains would splatter all over their cheap Spanish Bibles and pictures of Jesus, and no one would bother solving the crime.  If I ran out of money, I would have seriously considered it.  But maybe it's time to go home instead.

This is Moondog on the right, photographed with local Verde drummer Dave Rentz by our Mad Christian Hatter friend.  Dave Rentz is a killer musician.  You can hear him playing Djembe on the bonus tracks for the Rural Mortis album, which were recorded live at the Spirit Room.  Cool pic:

The reason any of this occurs to me at all is the line at the very end of "Farewell Song Sweet From My Trees," which gives me a lot of comfort in this time of mourning and family rejection.  We're supposed to think it's "natural" to say goodbye to another creature designed for infinity, but I don't.  I don't believe in goodbyes, y'understand.  I don't think we were intended for it.  Death, goodbyes, and clearing snow from driveways in Northern Illinois in January are all things that are against human nature.  We choke on them.  We balk at the concept.  Death, who me?  Goodbye, you mean... forever?  Shovel a foot of snow off a slippery incline while dressed like someone who's going to war against the Red Army? 

Are you kidding me?

I don't believe in goodbyes.  And if you think about it, neither do you.  Even if you've been sold on the compromise, in your heart of hearts, you know you hate death, goodbyes, and snow. 

Fortunately, a place of endless and infinite hello exists.  I wrote about it in "Farewell Song."

The line goes, "when we get to the other side of goodbye, don'tcha know? 

We'll say hello."

The title is from Kerouac, but the music and lyrics are mine.  The first video is the song set to a walking video I made in Guanajuato.  The 2nd video is from my YouTube topic channel.  Thanks for listening.  Please do feel free to share and subscribe, and if you can help me on the GoFundMe, I appreciate it.  I'm probably going to need a lawyer, so if you know any pre-worn lawyers, preferably one from the thrift store, let me know.  I may be in the market.

My mother had remarkable foresight, and specifically requested NOT to have a funeral.  Apparently she saw this heavy nonsense coming.  Smart lady.  She also requested to be cremated, so there wouldn't be a place I wouldn't be able not to visit.

Thanks, mom.  See you on the other side of goodbye.

Farewell Song Sweet From My Trees

I haven't felt this clean for a thousand years
The desert dried my eyes
and the sea washed away my fears
The forest blinded me so I could see the lie I had become
The highway bit me on the ankle
and took me back from where I'd come

Home.
To my amazement,
home.

Home to my silver steel mouse on the side of the hill
Home to the little city sitting on the windowsill
Home

It's at least a thousand miles as the scarecrow cries
Over seas of shining snakes
and clear blue skies
Over cities and towns reduced to towers of smoke
It don't matter if I luvya,
cuz baby I'm broke

And so, for now,
I say goodbye

Don't curse my name, don't make it worse,
I'll tellya why—
My friends,
we live in a chandelier dropped from the sky
And when we get to the other side of goodbye,
don'tcha know?

We'll say hello.

©2014 Nathan Payne