<<< Back Table of Contents Next >>> 10 Spoils of Fame Communication with Timmins had been patchy lately, causing Anton to wonder if the problem might be at Timmins' end of the line. That was why he took the trouble to write down his thoughts, so they would be focused and Timmins would have a clear signal. He could feel Timmins standing behind him as he wrote, but Timmins had nothing to say. He waited until Anton was finished and then walked away, as if Anton's problems were too much for him to deal with at the moment. Before Anton left Iowa, Timmins had been making an effort to talk to people, to help them understand what was going on inside his head. He did this because Anton had asked him to, and he played along for Anton's sake. But once Anton went away, he returned to his earlier patterns of withdrawal. He liked to stay in his room with the curtains drawn, curled up on the floor and moaning softly. Every so often he would have a burst of inspiration, and spend a couple of hours hunched over a sketchpad. More rarely he would go down to the basement to paint, amid stacks of earlier canvasses that moldered in the dark. For a while he had even stopped making art, because his visions had been taken over by Anton, and he didn't want to impose future events on his friend. He knew that his paintings didn't create the future, they only recorded it, but it was better to let Anton discover the future without any help from him. Still, he had to make art or he would die. He learned to use his talents in ways he hadn't before, seeking out visions instead of waiting for them to come to him. He began to paint things that were happening in other parts of the world at the moment he painted them. Burning Rainforest, Tokyo Subway at Rush Hour and Child Caught in Crossfire were examples of this work. These paintings meant little to him because they were just an exercise, a way of keeping his faculties from drying up. After they were done, he abandoned them wherever he could, in the cornfields for farmers to find, against the walls of buildings, in tree hollows, or on the shelves of the local supermarket. Most people saw this as a public nuisance. Coming upon his paintings in unexpected places gave them feelings of nausea and dread, like glimpsing genitalia in the shrubbery. They felt this way, too, about Timmins as a person. "Poor boy, ruined by the tragedy," they always said. He avoided school as much as possible, showing up for only one class with any regularity, that of his beloved art teacher, Mrs. Linden. Once he turned sixteen, he was expelled for nonattendance. The authorities considered him a bad example, and they were happy to wash their hands of him as soon as they could. Without the daily routine, he no longer saw any reason to leave his room, to wash or eat regularly, and his grandmother was too frail to impose her will on a teenage boy. If he didn't accept the food she prepared, she couldn't force him. If he stayed in his room with the door locked, she couldn't make him come out. This tore her apart. She complained to her friends, "He's got his whole life in front of him, but he acts like there's nothing to live for. He's turning into a ghost!" "What he needs is a job," one of them said. "That'll teach him responsibility." "He doesn't need a job," objected another. "What he needs is professional help." Timmins was aware of the fuss he was creating. He was nothing if not sensitive. Yet he saw no reason to change his behavior. If people misunderstood him, was that his fault? Only Becky was a sympathetic force for him. She was fascinated by his art, because she could tell it was sincere. She respected Anton's intensity as a musician, but his desire to show off made her suspicious. Timmins was different. From looking at him, she would never have imagined that he had so much going on beneath the surface. She wanted to unravel that mystery. What were such bizarre images doing in the mind of a shy, awkward boy? She was drawn to his strangeness, because she felt a bit strange herself. At the same time, her more traditional side sought to console him for the loss of his family, and for Anton's sudden disappearance. In the days after Anton vanished, when everyone was trying to figure out what had happened to him, Becky was the only one who thought of asking Timmins. After all, he was Anton's closest friend. Perhaps he had discussed his plans with Timmins ahead of time, or had contacted him from the road. She found Timmins to be remarkably calm about the whole thing, calmer than anyone else. He assured her that Anton was fine. "You mean you've heard from him?" Becky asked. "We keep in touch." "He called you?" Timmins shook his head. "Wrote to you?" He shook his head again. "What then? Did he send you a pigeon? With a note tied to her foot?" Timmins laughed. "No, it's more simple than that." She felt the frustration people felt when talking to Timmins, the irritation at being outdone and not knowing why. She contained it and asked, "Do you know where he went?" He pointed in the direction of Portland, his finger veering to the left and right until it found its target. "That way." He did a calculation in his head. "Three days." "Is that how long it took? The trip?" He nodded and assured her, "You'll hear from him if you wait long enough. But you'll hear about him first." She couldn't help scoffing. "You mean he'll get famous? He's always saying that." Anton liked to say he would either get famous or die young. She didn't know what to think about such bravado. Maybe he was trying to impress her, or maybe he was so self-centered that he didn't even hear it as bragging. In either case, she was sick to death of it. She remembered once when he'd talked that way. It was the height of summer. As they'd often done, they walked to the duck pond behind her house. The light reflecting off the water was oppressive, blinding. Anton mentioned "famous artists" or "being famous," and she'd jumped on it immediately. She brushed back her hair with a peevish gesture. "Why famous? I can understand you wanting to accomplish something. Record your music, put your ideas in a form other people can relate to. Maybe that will make you famous, maybe it won't. But what do you want, really? Some kind of revenge? To say 'I told you so' to everyone here? Because you're convinced they don't understand you?" He glared at her for a moment before responding. Sweat formed on his neck from the heat. Before long a storm would gather to drop its fury, cooling things down a bit. "Look, it's the only way. Coming from a place that hardly exists, it's the only way I can get people to take me seriously, or even notice I'm alive." His arm swept the horizon. "You see that? Monotonous as it looks from where we sit, there's a world out there filled with excitement and possibility, just like it says in the magazines. There's adventures waiting to happen that you'll never hear about, back here in the crickets and the corn. I'm gonna have it all, without stopping. If we can learn from every experience like you're always saying, why hold back? Shouldn't we experience as much as we can, with as much intensity as we can? If I can do that, I'll learn more than anyone else, and faster. I'll be ahead of it all." There was a lot in his speech she didn't agree with, but she limited herself to asking, "What does this have to do with being famous?" He looked at her with something like pity. "People who aren't famous are just people. People who are famous are ideas. Andy Warhol is an idea. John Lennon is an idea. Che Guevara is an idea." "You want to be an idea?" "You bet." "What's your idea, Anton?" That stumped him. Then he expressed it. "Tear it all down, start over." "What good will that do anyone?" "Just look at the world. It's heavy, it's dense. It's so tiresome. It's all lies!" "Is that the best you can do, tear it down?" "Look, it's only a first step. You're the constructive one. Maybe you can go from there." That was as close as they came that day to understanding each other. Now, several months later, Anton was gone and Timmins was saying, "What I mean is, you won't hear from him for a long time. And yes, he'll get famous." "He doesn't have to wait until he's famous to send a letter," Becky said. They exchanged a look of understanding. It was a side of Anton they both knew. He gave them his attention when it suited him, not necessarily when they wanted it. He saw no reason to care, to give and feel support. He was too busy for that. He wanted to act in a way that was dangerous, that had the potential to change things. She began to see more of Timmins at the fringes of the school day, before class in the morning, in the cafeteria at lunch, as the buses sat idling in the afternoon. When Timmins was kicked out of school, she tried to get both sides to recant. But Timmins didn't want to return, and the school didn't want him back. As one official put it, "We're not going to bend the rules for someone who thinks they were written for everyone else but him." She started visiting him at home. In the summer before she went to college, she appeared on his porch almost daily, coaxing her way past his grandmother into his darkened room. There, she would try to get him to eat a sandwich or an apple she'd brought. She would brush the hair from his brow, combing the tangles while they quietly talked. "She treats me like an invalid," he thought bitterly, but he was grateful for the attention. She was the only person in his life who had any connection to Anton. Anton's presence hung over their encounters and was the real reason for them, but Becky soon learned never to mention him directly. Timmins hated to be reminded that Anton was away. He would listen attentively while she spoke on any subject, from Chinese medicine to the origins of the theatre, even putting in a word or two himself. But the simplest mention of Anton would cause a change. She said innocently once, "I hear Anton's doing well out West. They say he's working on an album." Timmins hugged his head between his knees and became a rigid ball, remaining that way until she left. Becky knew about their telepathic bond, but she didn't believe in it. Timmins spoke about it as if it were obvious, an everyday thing like hearing or sight. She assumed that he didn't like being reminded of Anton because an imaginary bond was such a poor substitute for face-to-face contact. In fact, the opposite was true. It was painful for him to hear that Anton had "vanished" or "gone away" because for him, Anton was always there, close at hand. If he wanted to know what Anton was thinking, he would know right away. He could touch things with Anton's hands or see through his eyes. They'd done it since childhood. It took more effort at such distances, but it was still possible. What upset Becky was what she saw as Anton's cowardice. He'd run out on a friend who needed him, to suit his own convenience. Most of the affection she'd given to Anton in the past, on account of his intelligence and his desire to show the world something new, she shifted now to Timmins. She yearned to expose Timmins' paintings to the world. They were morbid and bizarre, yet highly skilled, the product of solitude and renunciation. "They are religious work," it occurred to her. She told him that he tormented himself too much, that he glamorized suffering. Yet she believed that his struggle, however misguided, was a heroic one. He was a genius and she would say so to anyone. Timmins did what he could to avoid contact with others, but there were times when he had to deal the world. So he devised an experiment, the sort of thing he imagined Anton would do. Rather than depending on his grandmother for support, he would make his own way, trading his paintings for the necessities of life. After all, he was "simple," so he couldn't be expected to understand that he was trading off the pity of his neighbors. One day, he walked into a corner grocery near his home with a painting he'd made especially for the event. It was a small, square painting, colorful and harmless. It showed the smeary features of a frog prince or distressed clown. "I brought you a painting," he told the owner. "Hey, Timmins, that's nice!" The owner took the painting without really looking at it. Timmins searched for fruit and bread in the aisles, choosing a few items. Over his shoulder he said, "It's sort of allegorical. It is an allegory." He brought an armful of food to the counter. "Can I have these?" "Sure, I'll ring it up." "For the painting. You keep the painting." "Oh!" The idea challenged the owner. He examined the painting more carefully. Finally he said, "Sure, Timmins, we can do that. You can't work if you don't eat, right?" "That's right." "Then it's a fair trade. I like the colors in this one." He had an afterthought. "Do you like oranges? Take some oranges if you want. I have another crate in back." Timmins selected a few oranges and returned to the counter. "Should I put the painting over here?" The owner indicated a spot above and behind the register. Timmins shrugged. "It's your painting." He was already out the door. A few weeks later, near the end of summer, he lay on his back in the afternoon heat surrounded by ears of corn. The corn was ripe, bobbing back and forth in a light breeze. The silk of one ear, caught by the wind, drifted out and to the side. It reminded him of a woman combing her hair. Another ear bobbed alongside it, and they brushed against each other. This was the girlfriend of the first. Their names were Ruth and Claire and they were teenagers, gossiping in whispers as they brushed their hair. He could hear their voices in the breeze. "What do you think of that boy Timmins?" Ruth asked. "I don't think he's interested in girls," Claire said. Ruth was shocked. "Why not?" "He's a painter. All he thinks about is painting." Ruth tittered. "He may not like girls, but he acts like a girl sometimes." "He has long hair like a girl," Claire agreed, teasing out a troublesome knot. "But he's not pretty like a girl." "No, he's not pretty. He's creepy. He paints pictures of the dead." "He paints pictures of his sister, and she's dead. They say he's in love with her." "That's right. He's in love with his sister, but she's dead." She started laughing, like hiccups. "Hie, hie, hie!" The wind began to pick up, and Timmins could no longer be sure who was saying what. "Jennifer would be our age." "She'd be our friend, wouldn't she?" "She'd sit and gossip with us all day long." He lurched to his feet. If they kept going like this, he'd have to light the whole field on fire. He imagined a classroom full of teenage girls, all screaming because their hair was on fire. He stumbled away toward a rocky place, fell down, then righted himself on a tree root. What was that buzzing noise, suddenly louder? He was staring at a squirming mass of flesh. An eye, cloudy and blue-gray, stared back at him. The fur around it was thick, bloody, frayed. Ants and flies swarmed in and out of holes in the flayed meat. The buzzing was intense, infecting the air with angry life. The stench made his head spin. "Why do the living have such a hatred for the dead? Why can't they leave us alone?" asked the patient blue eye of the dog, filmed over. The buzzing throbbed in Timmins' head and he found himself leaning closer, staring into the eye in an attempt to probe its secrets. What did it feel like to lie there and be eaten by bugs? Was life nothing but a prolonged rotting? Were birth and death the same thing? He wanted to tear off his skin. Apparently he was screaming. He realized this as Becky's face filled his field of vision. "Timmins! Timmins! Stop screaming, it's me, Becky." She was shaking him, calling his name. She'd come to take him away from this place. At the end of the summer, Becky went off to college in a nearby town. Her goal was to become a pharmacologist. Anton would have started college the same year, but he was already gone. In the whole time Anton had been away, only Timmins had been in touch with him. Occasionally he would pass on what he knew to Becky, but she had trouble believing his stories because they were so matter-of-fact. "He's having trouble with a lyric." "He burned a hole in his favorite shirt." "There's a girl who thinks he's cute, but he told her to go away." How did he know such details? No one else had any news from Anton, except for obscure rumors. While Becky was studying for her first college midterm, she learned that Timmins had been put in a mental hospital. Her mother told her this during their weekly phone conversation. "They decided it was in his best interest. His grandmother and the pastor, Jim Gracie I think, were involved. Mrs. Norris is getting old, you know. She was concerned that she couldn't care for him properly, a boy with special needs." "I see," Becky said. It wasn't her mother's fault. "My, it's just too much. First she lost her daughter and granddaughter in that terrible tragedy. Poor Timmins is all she has left." "Will they let him paint, at least?" Becky said, chewing her lip. "I suppose they'll have to, don't you? If he's a painter. It's a reputable institution, from what I'm told." "Is it nearby?" "What's that, darling?" "Is it near where I am? I'd like to visit." "What a wonderful idea! I'm sure it will be good for him. You really took an interest in that poor boy, didn't you, over the summer?" "Mother..." she began in exasperation. "What is it, honey?" "Nothing." She was tired of "poor Timmins," "poor boy." But what good would it do to explain? She didn't understand it very well, herself. • • • Anton stood on his rooftop, surveying the landscape. Before him was the city, a contradiction: green hills and bountiful waters, gas stations and supermarkets, everyday squalor in an amazing setting. A land once populated by hunter-gatherers was littered now with corporate waste. He would have liked to see lakes in midair with castles in them, enormous domes with stairways that vibrated and danced. Instead, people built bridges to get across the river. They built offices to contain their balance sheets and reports. It was a numb response, a failure of imagination. Was this the best humanity could come up with? With all the traveling he'd done, he'd become a connoisseur of cities. He'd visited their shrines and holy places. He'd seen their monuments to good fortune. He'd made a religion out of the urban, which he practiced in his recklessness, his style and grace. Still, the failure of the city to provide for its own people depressed him. There were people sleeping in doorways, or in improvised camps under the highways. At least they used their imagination to survive. He wished the rest of the inhabitants would do the same. Instead they walked around with stunned expressions all the time, unaware of their own failures. The privileged class was so well insulated, they weren't aware that anything existed outside their safe zone. They moved from high-rise offices to fashionable shopping malls to gated communities without getting out of their cars. Perhaps they'd heard of Zombieland, and had gone there once or twice as tourists. Yet they had no notion of the intricate web of relationships that held the place together, its barmaids and tattoo artists, jewelry designers and record store clerks, club kids and runaways. They never wondered what it was like to improvise from day to day. He wanted to shatter that complacency forever. He spat in the gravel and rubbed it with the toe of his boot. Hugging himself violently, he beat his arms against his chest to get warm. He wished he had a celestial skateboard that could fly off the end of the roof and do maneuvers in the sky. He would execute a series of spins and leaps, skating among the low-lying clouds before touching down again, spraying an arc of gravel as he spun to right himself. Ever since moving to his new studio, he'd noticed that outsiders rarely ventured into his part of town. There was evidently something creepy about it, because even people he invited often failed to show up. If he called them later to find out what had happened, they would tell him they'd tried to find the street but couldn't, or had waited for an hour outside the wrong building, or had simply felt strange and turned back. He was unwilling to admit it, but there were times when he shared this feeling of dread. The worst of it had come on a rainy afternoon when he was stuck in his studio with nothing to do. Kliff had come up from the basement to help him pass the time. He'd been back from the East Coast for almost a month, but the space still felt empty and provisional. Improvements were underway, with power tools, extension cords and cans of paint scattered everywhere. Heavy rain slapped against the windows with a sound like a snare drum. From where he sat, he could see nothing but a strip of milky sky. Suddenly he had a sense that the world out there had vanished. It was more than a feeling, it was a certainty. He got up and paced anxiously, slicing the air with angry gestures. "There don't seem to be a whole lot of people in Portland today, do there? There should be smokestacks and freight cars and giant cranes. Instead there's only this room, the hall outside, and a couple of blocks around this building." He spun on Kliff accusingly. "Where's the rest of Portland?" Kliff looked puzzled. "I never noticed it was missing." He went to the window and looked out. He could see right away that Anton was right. After a block or two, all detail vanished. It was blank at the edges like an unfinished painting. That didn't bother him, however. He'd learned from a life of difficulties not to take anything for granted, not even reality itself. As long as the details got filled in when they were needed, that was fine with him. Anton felt differently. Holes in the fabric of space and time alarmed him. He'd always assumed the world was a fake, but he was shocked to discover such direct evidence. Nothing like this had ever happened back in Iowa. That evening he wrote "Spoils of Fame." More than just a drug-induced spectacle, A kind of mock nirvana, Transitions here are violent and sudden, Architecture is threatening for no reason. He blamed his success for the weirdness around him. To him there was something sinister about success. He was troubled by the intensity of the changes he had gone through, which had cut him off from the majority of his Trashtown friends. They simply hadn't kept pace. As a result he felt vulnerable, exposed. People sought him out for no other reason than because he was popular. He didn't need to have talent, or be a nice person, or have something interesting to say. They came to him because they hoped some of his fame would rub off on them. They wanted his life. They wanted to be him. They would move in and take over if they could. He wasn't complaining. He was aware of the advantages of his position. He was nineteen and talented, with the resources to do whatever he wanted. People came to him with ideas, rather than the other way around. Money ensured that, but he had money because he'd persuaded others to give it up. Transactions of this sort always involved a degree of seduction. So what sort of seduction was he good at? In the gray and tiresome world he lived in, what turned people on most was a haughty and remote beauty, the sort they aspired to but that soared above them, out of reach. Apparently that was his real message. "I'm a virgin, an angel, the most beautiful thing you'll ever see, and you can't touch me." People would throw money at a boy like that, or kill him. At Trashtown he'd believed that he was part of a collective effort, but his success had turned out to be all about him. The turning point had come on the night of the fabulous party, when he'd seen Reinhold in his full glory. "He's one of the Untouchables," someone had whispered then. Clearly the Colonel was a man of resources and influence, a man above the fray. The liking he'd taken to Anton had set him apart. On top of this, the loss of Trashtown had put a rift between him and his former friends. They resented him for having the luxury of turning down projects he didn't like, while they were still squatters and drifters as he had been. He was doing what he could to include them, by inviting them to jam with him in the spirit of the Trashtown drum circle, or by offering to record their work so they could promote their talent. But he had to be realistic. Any sentimental desire would hold him back. Isolation was his new reality. He had no choice but to push ahead with his success, and hope the others would understand. • • • He sat in a cafe working on a lyric, but he kept getting distracted by a woman at a nearby table who was engaged in rapid-fire conversation with her girlfriend. She seemed to know who he was, because she pointed him out with her eyes and whispered to her friend. When she saw him looking at her repeatedly, she began to prepare for his approach. Evidently she found him attractive, because she made an effort to show off what she believed to be her best features. He continued to look at her without saying anything, which led her to assume he must be shy. With a twinge of irritation, she turned to him boldly and asked, "Are you trying to work up the nerve to ask me out?" He winced. "Not at all. I was just thinking about how much your voice bothered me. It's the voice of a shallow, self-absorbed person." "But I was talking about poverty in the Third World!" "That's what made it worth noticing. You're fashionably dressed, so I figured you'd be talking about designers, the fall season. Instead you're talking about Third World hunger. Is that the sort of crap the media is feeding people nowadays?" "I saw you over there trying not to look at me," she said in an effort to regain the upper hand. "I was minding my own business, but I couldn't help noticing you. Possibly because you were trying to get my attention." She switched to a tone of injured pride. "I'm sure that's all I am to you, a nuisance. I must be part of the unwashed masses to you." "You misunderstand me. I'm the barbarian, the boy with no manners. I'm surrounded by a thousand things I don't know what to do with, phrases and gestures that don't fit, gaps in the picture. There's too much happening for me to understand it all. Why would I notice you amid all that chaos?" "Because I'm glamorous! Of course you would notice me." "Get over yourself." He made a dismissive gesture and returned to his work. Now they were gossiping about him in spiteful tones. He told himself that if this sort of thing became normal, he would have to stop going out in public. No doubt he'd been cruel, but he felt he had no choice in the matter. For him, it was noble to be hard. • • • Within weeks of returning from their East Coast tour, the Psychic Rangers began recording their second album. There was no reason to wait. They had new material. The new album flowed from the last with a seamless momentum, but there was a different spirit now, a new way of working. The spontaneous jams of the Trashtown days were over. Cynthia and Travis were both gone. Anton was alone now with Vince and Blake, which suited his new mood. Cynthia had sung with them in a few shows on the East Coast, where she was visiting her family, but it was clearly a farewell gesture. Anton had barely seen her since then. At first he'd heard she was giving up music to concentrate on her sculptures, then that she was forming an all-girl band. It didn't matter. Their earlier sound owed a lot to her presence, but now they were in a return to essentials, such as follows every period of baroque excess in art. For Travis, the Psychic Rangers had been something to add to his resume of hipster credentials, but it was never the center of his life. He was ready now for more serious goals, like community banking and a political career. He'd never really shared the band's musical instincts, though he brought a style and sophistication they wouldn't have had otherwise. He was a reservoir of theory, but didn't push it very far. Anton, by contrast, never held back in his art. In fact he was shameless. From the moment he'd gotten his hands on professional studio equipment, he'd started experimenting. He'd soon absorbed what Travis had to offer and moved on. Anton still had his best musicians, the ones with the drive and the discipline. He pushed them to work hard, and they were willing. He saw it as the opportunity to create a leaner, more stripped-down sound. Since it was impossible to say everything, there were times when only silence would do. He knew from experience that in rooms all over the world—bedrooms, parked cars, or any dark place—young men sat alone, transmitting on a private channel. He resolved to tap into this channel and write songs for it. Together they created a cruel, hard machine. They discussed adding new players, but decided they liked things as they were. They were used to each other, and communication was tight. One day, they were working through a song when Anton noticed Vince using a drum flourish he hadn't heard before. The small change made all the difference. "Keep it," he said tersely, not missing his stride. Vince nodded and emphasized the flourish the next couple of times it came up. Anton turned to the wall and exploded in a fat, juicy roar of violet and lemon. Around the same time he began work on a solo effort, the "extreme collection" Child of Violence. Its centerpiece, "I Want Attention," was an assault on those who sought the spotlight and who, once they had it, proved to have no agenda beyond their own self-promotion. His chief target was My Favorite Lisa, a band that had risen to fame because they were clever musicians, only to realize they had nothing to say. Interviewed about their childhood experiences, their present and past beliefs, they provided only trivia that the media gobbled up as solemn truths. "When we first started, we assumed the audience wanted to be shocked. So we kept coming up with things that were shocking in a new way. But then people started saying, 'No, we don't want to be shocked, we want to be comforted.' So after working that end of things for a while, we can go either way." Child of Violence was the first of his "hidden albums," experimental albums that were never released to the public. Over the next few years he would produce several such albums, which connoisseurs came to feel contained much of his best work. Some of them were commissioned by wealthy investors, but most were the result of his efforts to experiment beyond what the market would bear. When he was working on new material, he never held back out of fear that it might scare or confuse people. In fact he tried to do just the opposite, create music that was unlistenable. This very act of defiance often gave him the material for a popular song. But sometimes the reverse happened, and after spending days in the studio trying to craft a song with broad appeal, he would realize that the results were too angry or obsessive to force on an unwilling public. In those cases, he would make a hidden album to distribute among connoisseurs. Meanwhile, his career continued to gain momentum. He was getting offers from all over, and they weren't what he would have thought. Rather than being asked to endorse a certain brand of cream cheese, or sing and dance on behalf of a fizzy drink, he suddenly had access to filmmakers, writers and artists he knew and admired. They brought him ideas they hoped he might use, or projects they wanted him to be a part of. They approached him backstage after a show, took him aside at parties, waited in clubs or cafes on the chance that he might drop in. The rush of opportunities was overwhelming, and he was still learning how to deal with it. He told Kliff, "I figure I'll need about five different personalities to handle this. One of them will play bass and one of them will make movies, one will start a magazine and one will open a nightclub, and no one but me will know that it's the same person doing all these things." As proof that his music was reaching its intended audience, he began to receive demo tapes and artwork from kids in faraway towns. The trailer brats of the Heartland, the runts of the American litter wrote to him as if clutching a lifeline. "I've got to get out of here. If I'm still in this swamp a year from now, please come and shoot me. I'd rather be dead than stuck in this stinking mudpit." They hoped he would help them, but there was little he could do. Even if he liked their guitar songs, or their photos of grain silos, it didn't answer the question that mattered most. Did they have staying power? If they were knocked down, would they get up and fight? It all depended on the resources of the individual. Nothing he could say or do would change that. If those kids wanted to get out badly enough, they would. He knew that most of them would never leave, but he didn't want to be cruel and destroy their hopes. The last thing he wanted was to discourage the one in a thousand who would go all the way. He recalled how once he had sent a few dollars to Boyd Franklin, the cult icon of the day, in exchange for a spoken word tape that had never come. He didn't want his fans to remember him that way. His policy was that anyone who sent him personal work would get something in return, something he'd made, an unreleased dance mix or early live set. These trophy pieces were much in demand in certain circles, and the only way to get one was to send him original work. This prompted his fans to develop their ideas, which was what they should have been doing all along. Because of his popularity, he felt that he could count on a built-in audience for whatever he did next. No one expected him to repeat himself, since he was known for reinventing himself with each song he wrote. Even the same song had been known change dramatically over time, from a speed-metal anthem to a Latin-influenced folk ballad. The seeds for future evolution were there no matter what he did. "You're a marketing person's nightmare," Kliff complained. "You're all over the place. You don't have a style." "I don't need a style. My music connects with people no matter what I do." "That might work for a while, but there's no guarantee." "There is a guarantee. It gets into their blood like a virus. It evolves with the situation. It's recombinant, self-mutating. Each time an obstacle gets in the way, it multiplies and comes back stronger." He measured his success not by whether people liked his music, but by the intensity of their reaction. His music wasn't meant to be pleasant. It was the sword he used to slash away at the glamorized, self-satisfied image the world had of itself. People needed to hear the truth, that their own greed and gluttony had gotten them into this sorry state. He thought of his music as a vaccine against everything that was phony and obvious in the world. Vaccines worked by irritating the immune system, forcing it to build up its defenses. Even his supporters called his music a "slap in the face." One of the band's logos showed a young man's face being slapped, with a startled expression and the caption "WAKE UP!" The Psychic Rangers were popular enough to be seen in the alternative media as a "barometer of youth culture." There was a sense that they had sparked a movement of some sort. No one could say exactly what, but they had stirred things up. He saw the potential in this. He could turn his public persona into a form of expression as important as his songs. His interviews gave him a chance to call attention to themes that lay hidden in his lyrics. In particular he enjoyed attacking the notion of celebrity itself, putting himself on the side of his fans who were on the outside looking in. I'm not in competition for one of the slots being held open for promising young artists by publishers, gallery owners, filmmakers and the like. Music is the biggest youth ghetto of all, but I'm not into being a ripoff act for the young market. I'm a serious musician who happens to be nineteen years old, barely legal as they say. I didn't grow up famous, so there was no one I could approach when I was ready for my first big project. Instead, I met people who were in the same position I was, and we worked together to make things happen. Those who want to be the poster child of rebellion and rage will hear no objection from me. Those who like to sing mournful plaints may do so. I won't take part in such controversies. I'm not waiting around to be picked as a representative of my species by a special committee. I'm not trying to win an award. What I'm trying to do is get the word out in any way I can. And here's the word. The kingdom belongs to all of us, and it's here for the taking. Even if we can't see it, it's here. It's around us all the time. He expected wonder and amazement daily. If that didn't happen, he would create his own drama by provoking spontaneous or extreme reactions in others. "I go around tossing explosive devices over fences, disrupting lawn parties." It wasn't enough for him to thrust himself upon the world and make a splash, he wanted to have a deep and permanent effect on people. If he could change how people saw things, it would open up new possibilities for human action. His goal was to be "the Pill of my generation, the prophet of a new dawn." The Pill had caused a social revolution in an earlier era, and he wanted to have the same effect. In an interview, he described what he was after. In each town, a few kids' lives will change forever. They'll fall in love with each other and be carried away. They'll travel to new cities. Everywhere they go, they'll carry a message of joy. "Wake up, we are the flowers in the spring!" They'll begin to paint, to play music. Finally I'll meet others like myself, my friends and enemy brothers. His goal was to find his natural companions. They existed, but where? Long ago, he and Timmins had dreamed of a network of others like themselves, "an invisible web stretched out in the sky, a tissue of thoughts saturating the atmosphere." He was broadcasting now on that network in the hope of getting a response. It was a cry of desire and pain. He kept hoping that someone would approach him who could match his intensity, his hunger. <<< Back Table of Contents Next >>>