My Dead Muse
August 5th, 2005 | Posted by Shannon
There have been many people and events that have shaped me and made me into the person I am. My parents, obviously, and my brothers; my 10th grade English teacher, Mrs. Elder shaped me in a good way by encouraging me to write, and my newspaper teacher Mrs. Radcliffe in a bad way by chopping my very first newspaper article cleanly in half, making it look totally weird and stupid. That was in 1981 and the article was about Punk Rock. My school just wasn’t ready yet I guess, even though Punk Rock was practically over at that moment in time, for a while, anyway.
The question is, what made me write about Punk Rock? What got me to that point where I have remained ever since? People never really advance past the age of fifteen. Of this I am convinced. Fifteen or even younger.
I had an uncle, his name was Mark, he was nine years older than me, and he was a lot like me. He wore purple pants and wrote crazy stories. He was wild, reckless, bisexual, and creative. He liked to party. And more than anything, he loved music. He had a tattoo that said “Janis Joplin Lives in Me.” She was his dead muse.
Well, I wasn’t TOTALLY like Mark, but there are many similarities there. At a younger age I listened to my mom’s Beatles and Elton John records. But the defining moment of my teenage years – maybe even the defining moment of my life up till now – was sitting in a room at my Grandma’s house with Mark. I was thirteen years old and he put a record on the turntable. It was David Bowie’s Space Oddity. I will never forget how that first line, Ground Control to Major Tom, sounded to my pop radio listening ears. After a steady diet of the Bee Gees and the Grease soundtrack, it was like a whole new world to me. All the while Mark is telling me about David Bowie, about the New York Dolls, about Iggy Pop. He played me Cheap Trick and Blondie and we looked at the album covers together. We always had a bond, but we were bonded that night in a way beyond uncle and niece. It was musical, it was spiritual, and it was religious. That was my entry into the church of rock ‘n’ roll. He was my brother, my mentor, and my friend.
Then, exactly 25 years ago today, we lost him. And I just happened to be visiting at the time.
Every summer I would visit my grandparents at their townhouse in San Juan Capistrano for a couple of weeks. Mark was living in Laguna Beach that summer, renting a room from a famous rock star in a three story house on the cliffs. We had plans to go to the Sawdust Festival together, but Mark had an accident and couldn’t go. Someone was lowering a phone from the top balcony of the house to the bottom, and he dropped it on my uncle’s head. Mark was OK but had to get stitches, so he postponed us hanging out for a couple of days.
The next hours and days were a painful experience that even today is hard for me to think about. The following day, after going to the Del Mar racetrack with my grandparents, I called Mark to make our new plan. There was no new plan, because he was dead.
The rock star was on the phone, asking to talk to my grandparents. I knew something was wrong when my grandma started wailing. I ran to my room, then back down, where my grandparents were walking out the door. They had, understandably, forgotten about me. They looked at me, and at each other, and then my grandfather said, “Mark is dead.”
I went with them to Laguna Beach. It was the hardest drive I have ever taken. My grandma was rocking back and forth in the front seat, moaning and crying. My grandfather was silent. When we got to the house, they told me to wait in the car. I sat in the back seat wondering why I could not cry. I tried to cry, but nothing came out. Two guys pulled up at the cliff in a Blazer, listening to Van Halen. All I wanted was to be in that Blazer and not in the back of my grandparents car trying to cry.
The next few days revolved around the funeral, my grandma’s tears, and alot of casseroles. I remember telling my mom “please don’t cry” and her saying “I have to cry.” Finally, at the funeral, I cried, in the arms of the guy who dropped the phone on Mark’s head. Even though in the end it wasn’t his fault, he felt responsible. For some bizarre reason, I reached out for him in the end.
So what killed Mark in the end? The pain medication. It wasn’t much, but after years of abuse combined with a soul not-of-this-earth, it was enough.
Mark dreamed of his death. He wrote it down several times, and I know because I have read it. In the dream he is laying in his bed listening to his stereo. A dark figure enters the room, and Mark is scared of it. While the figure walks toward him Mark looks at a red light on the turntable. If the light stays on, he will live. If the music keeps playing, he will live. But if figure touches him, he will die.
The turntable was still playing when they found him the next day.
It took a long time for me to cry. But Mark is with me, and will always be with me, because our connection was so strong. Every time I buy a new record, get a crush on a musician, or fall in love with a song, Mark is there. Twenty-five years later, he is totally there. He is my dead muse.
