AIN'T GONE NOWHERE

When I was a little boy, about eight to nine years old, I had this yellow Bush walkman that my parents bought me. As you should be able to deduce, it played cassette tapes. If you couldn’t deduce that, no biggie; we’re all in Zion tonight.

So I had this Walkman. Beautiful yellow thing. I cherished this walkman more than anything else in the world. I used to go to sleep with the shit. I used to do random checks in my room like every five minutes, if I wasn’t with it, to make sure it wasn’t lost or worse, crushed. In fact, later that year when we were robbed by a vicious gang of armed robbers, I summoned a rare spell of bravery just to hide that walkman in a box of old dusters. Surely they would notice this bright yellow gem of a thing and leave everything else they came for because of it. So I hid it.

We were holidaying in England when I was bought this precious gem. Because my father was (Ok, is.) an intellectual, he felt like he should introduce me to the roots of music and not the very derelict offspring of music that they played in the nineties (I wonder what he’d think of them now; the crack-taking, throwing-babies-in-the-garbage, whore offspring. I think that’s what he’d think. Anyway.). So he bought me a double-cassette Motown Collection. These tapes christened my yellow walkman.

I listened to all the songs as you might do when you buy an album. But later, you create a playlist full of the songs you like on the album, and skips. I didn’t really need the skips for my own playlist. I settled on one song: You Gotta Be by Des’ Ree. That was the only song that I played on that album. In fact, because of this, it followed later that the first thing that got destroyed on that walkman was the rewind button. It caused quite a problem.

That song that I listened to, everyday for well over a year, I found today (I know, I know. It’s tainted. It’s digital. MP3 format, 3.18 MB.). As I write this, I’m listening to the song for the first time in over 12 years, and I feel like the little boy I was back then.

When I was a little boy, there was hope and promise and all those bright-light abstractions. There was a long way to go in this life but I was a little boy so I had no choice but to take a chill pill and just enjoy the world. I was naive. Everything was beautiful. Everything was nice.

The song just ended (For the third time. Ha. I guess old habits do die hard. (Like Bruce Willis. Ha.)). And I still feel like I did back then.

It might be a good thing to you, but it’s a motherfucking depression catalyst for me. When I was a kid, I was supposed to feel hope and motherfucking promise. There was supposed to be bright lights and streets paved with gold and shit. That was then. The real challenges of life were a long time coming then. If I still feel like that now, then I’m still that little boy.

And I’m not supposed to be that little boy no more. I’m supposed to have achieved those things I hoped for and showed promise in. It’s a bad thing.

I paraphrase from the movie Donnie Brasco; can’t remember it word for word.

Lefty: Look at that boy in there Donnie.

Donnie: Yeah?

Lefty: He was born here, in this hospital, 28 years ago. He’s done all sorts of things; one thing is the coke that always in his fucking head. Look at him now; lying down, a vegetable, in the same hospital he was born in. 28 years and he ain’t gone nowhere.

Ain’t gone nowhere. Thank you Lefty, for that revealing speech.

Ain’t gone nowhere.