Sunday Afternoon…The Fig Girl

Muley Graves and I arrive around 11:00 am. En route from Nashville down I-24, I get several text messages passing on Father's Day salutations. Half the text'd I had no clue of their origin nor did it matter 'cause the intent was love. You don't fuck with love, even if you love to fuck. One has no bearing on the other, yet they are both inexorably connected. I'm standing up in front of an iMac in the Artist Hospitality tent. Aimee Mann just passed by. Didn't say a word just channeled her space with how much I dig the Magnolia soundtrack. Some real fine composition and honest heart in those ballads. Plus the best 10 minutes Tom Cruise ever left on the screen and that includes (sorry Cam) Jerry Maguire. Close, but not quite dripping with narcissism. Phil Lesh tootles about the enclave, jeans so dirty they look like they haven't been washed since Jerry was alive. I got a Bonnaroo hat, some Crogs for Meg, bottle opener, torch from Jeff. Muley has propped the fold out chair we bought a couple hours ago at Wal Mart --where a lady outside offered me a puppy -- next to the “Which” stage under a tree. He's happy. Rogue Wave played, I drifted out for "Lake Michigan" because my hometown radio station, Indie 103.1 broke that track but more so because it’s a great song, makes you feel good, the chorus, like Sarah's cold red herbal tea in a plastic tub iced to the rim. She's from Nashville. Says she'll take out for BBQ tomorrow. I have no expectations.

Getting hungry. We had a breakfast sandwich back in music town but that's history. My ability to stroll pass the meal ticket girl at the front of the grub tent without suspicion evaporated today. "Uh, I left it in the bus." I will find a way in, but in the meantime, hunger is panging. Out I wander amongst the insiders mulling about in the getting hotter by the hour sun. She approaches, a two foot tower of artificial fruit protruding from her brunette crown. Her smile as wide as the Tennessee River, I catch her gaze. "Wish that was real," quips the pilgrim. She stops and magically pulls an authentic banana from the Bonnaroo air. Then she smiles again, leaving me in awe of her synchronous arrival, her gesture of Biblical goodness. When Moses had nothing left after Pharaoh banished him to the desert with his 'staff to rule over scorpions and snakes, he came upon a desert bloom, laden with fruit. Life from the fig kept him going until the shepherd girls found him. Food, water, bath, love. Spirit. In the tent, later, I see her again. "Give me your name. You've inspired me to blog." Kicky La Rue, she says. How can a guy who reviewed porn films in the 80s under his OWN name possibly make up a moniker like that? "All of us (pointing to a half dozen other colorfully clad sirens) work for Music City Burlesque. In Nashville. I want your email address! You can Google me."

Bryan the veteran rock radio PD with whom I did some loud and lovely stuff during the RIP reign, stares right at me and freezes. Waiting for my name. "Lonn.", recognition, reunion and the inevitable story, "My wife left me 14 months ago for another woman and I lost my gig, and I was fucking suicidal, but then everything changed. I got a gig in New York, awesome station, and there's this gal I'd known for years and she just arrives again out of nowhere." I don't 'go there' into the “S-word” stuff. Not this time. Instead just acknowledge the moment and move on. "Do you have a card?" he asks. A lot of people have asked. "I don't." The Indian shrink into the Secret who sees me for free once a month said (in female Quickie Mark Apu speak), "Lonn, you cannot go to this festival without business cards. This is a good opportunity for you to network. Stay in prosperity." I am wearing the green underwear Dr. K told me to buy.

Before tapping this out, I was talking to a stranger about Tiger Woods and The Lakers and miracles. Sports is fertile miracle ground. More than many other disciplines. I will find a bus to watch at least a piece of the U.S. Open. And a slice of the NBA finals. And I will hear great music and be fed by god and goddess. In the gmail box 20 minutes ago, a note from Jenny arrives (like Kicky, not a real name). "I like what you're writing, Forrest. Unstructured..." And she said some other stuff but I cut and pasted this part of the note. You'll know why when you read it. Talk about LOVE! Getting hungry again...

"If we now consider the fact that, as a result of psychic compensation, great humility stands very close to pride, and that "pride goeth before a fall," we can easily discover behind the haughtiness certain traits of an anxious sense of inferiority. In fact we shall see clearly how this uncertainty forces the enthusiast to puff up his truths, of which he feels none too sure, and to win proselytes to his side in order that his followers may prove to himself the value and trustworthiness of his own convictions. Nor is he altogether so happy in his fund of knowledge as to be able to hold out alone; at bottom he feels isolated by it, and the secret fear of being alone with it induces him to trot out his opinions and interpretations in and out of season, because only when convincing someone else does he feel safe from gnawing doubts."

Stumbled upon that passage last night by your boy, Carl Jung. “S-word” reigns supreme.