The last time I saw Garth (1972)

The last time I saw Garth (1972) Originally uploaded by musicmuse_ca

This was taken at the wedding of my oldest brother, Jon, to his first wife. I was a bridesmaid and my brother Garth was dressed in his usual hippie-neo-edwardian style. I remember my brother, he is still with me. I keep coming back to his memory. Ray Davies and The Kinks, his favorite group. Jimi Hendrix, Bob Dylan, lots of psychedelic 60's posters, artwork, clothes, long hair, mysterious and hallucinogenic attitudes. 

What is left are scars burned into my flesh that heal but will not fade with time. He is with me, but no one knows how much. I speak little of him because he brings an awkward silence, embarrassment, disbelief and amazement. But to me, he was just my brother and it was reality, it was the way it was and it was normal to me. 

Look past the forced and faked smile, and something more sinister is just beneath the surface. It was my family, a nightmare I grew up in and finally left behind but not forgotten. What was it like to have a psychotic brother? I remember scary laughter as he paced the hall at night, lying awake and wondering if I would live to see the morning. Or if I would wake to find my mother dead at his hand in her sleep. 

Pacing, pacing the long hall of our NY apartment that was the length of 1/2 a city block. Long, dark and scary even when he wasn't home. My mother asleep, passed out drunk, oblivious to the madness waiting outside her door. Had she forgotten how he tried to murder her before? Scenes like this burned into my young brain, too young to even understand fully what was going on. I remember he knocked her down and held the knife to her throat. She called to me to come help her. I did not respond. I waited in my room, behind my closed door, for him to kill her. Praying that he would just get it over with. Listening to her call to me to help her, but I wanted them both dead, dead, dead, so I could live in peace finally and not be caught between them ever again. He didn't do it and I didn't go help. I was afraid and disappointed that he wouldn't follow through and put us all out of our misery. 

How many times had he tried to choke the life out me when I was little? I remember 3 times, but there may have been more. I told my mother, but she never helped or believed me. She told me to ignore him, while he was beating me in the head, choking me. "Ignore him", she said, "He just wants attention and if you ignore him he will stop" It only set him off more, and I learned to never fight back and be passive. So why should I help her now that he is big enough to attack her ? "Ignore him", I say under my breath, "He only wants attention, sure he knocked you down on the floor, the kitchen knife to your throat, but if you ignore him, he will go away Mom, just like you said" 

I remember when he wouldn't sleep in his bed. I found him asleep on the floor next to his bed. He asked me, "Did you ever read "Metamorphosis"?". Existential, intellectual delusions. He wouldn't touch the teapot, because aliens were trying to control his brain that way. 

I remember not opening the front door to him. I heard him knock and I listened to him pleading, begging me to let him in but mom told me not to and I was all alone. I stood behind the big front door in the hallway with the lights on, looking through the peephole into the dark hallway, listening to him crying in tears, afraid to be out in the cold NYC winter one more moment. But mom told me to leave him outside the door, and not let him in, and then left me alone in this big house by myself to deal with it. 

I left him there, but felt torn apart inside. How can I do this to my brother? I was actually more scared of her than of him by this point. He hurt me, but he was crazy and they drove him to it. She hurt me because she did not care about me and she wanted me to die. I reminded her of the choices she had made that she regretted. And she never forgave me for that. Garth the frog prince, pretend poet, the one who wanted me dead. Mom, the life of the party, the one everyone wanted to be close to, the monster, the tyrant, the raging drunk, who hid her darkness so well from everyone except those closest to her, she also wanted me to die. But I lived. And I survived them all for the sake of my daughter whom I brought into this world and who didn't ask to be part of the darkness that surrounded me....

You're Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go (Bob Dylan)

I posted this Dylan classic from "Blood on the Tracks" to my you tube site. Enjoy and happy holidays all!

There Ain't No Cure for Love (Leonard Cohen)

I have loved Leonard Cohen since I bought his first LP in 1968. This song is one of his rare, more upbeat tunes.

Enjoy!

Misguided Angel (Cowboy Junkies)

Here is my version of the classic by the Cowboy Junkies. Dedicated to all the Misguided Angels and the women who love them.

First Love (1969)

Louisville (1969)
Originally uploaded by musicmuse_ca

The first guy I fell in love with, when I was 15 years old. It lasted a brief moment, but is forever in my mind.....

Our relationship was very sensual. We began that way. He led me on a "trust walk", which meant I was blindfolded and had to trust him completely to lead me and take care of me. He found all kinds of sensations to show me...touch, smell, taste. It awakened a passion in me, although it was not an overtly sexual approach in any way. But he moved me and brought me an innocent pleasure that awakened a desire in me. After the walk, we talked for the first time and kissed.

He loved me and wanted me to be his first. We tried all summer to find a place where we could have sex but we were stopped at every turn. That last night, when we tried and tried to find a place to do it. He snuck me into his room but the counselor found me and chased me out. We went from place to place but we got caught everywhere we went. We never got to finish what we started.

I left him by the bus the next day. He collapsed into a puddle of tears after I was gone. We wrote long passionate letters to each other that Fall, and we called each other when we could. He came to visit me in December of 1969 in NYC, but by then he had slept with someone else..

We broke up over the Christmas holidays when he came to visit. He barely remembers me now.

The Dimming of the Day (Richard Thompson)

Here I am doing another sad song. This one is written by the talented Richard Thompson. It was originally sung by his then-wife, Linda Thompson. I know it gets covered a lot, and for good reason. It is a wonderful song.

This is my take on it. I have the guitar tuned to dropped D tuning, for those who are into this kind of thing.

Garth 1967

Garth-1967 Originally uploaded by musicmuse_ca

He was 15 years old, and in his first mental institution in upstate NY. That summer of 1967, he had run away from home to San Francisco for the "Summer of Love" in Haight Ashbury. When he returned to NYC in the Fall, he was so psychotic that my parents had him committed to an all-boys institution just outside of NYC. This place, like all the other places he was put into from this point on did nothing to help him, and a lot to hurt him and make things worse.

When he was admitted, they got into a power struggle with him over his hair, and made him cut it. It was all downhill from there. They completely ignored his budding drug addiction, and had all of us do mandatory family therapy. 

 

It was awful. My parents were separated, and fighting over money and everything else. Blaming each other for the condition Garth was in. We all rode up to the facility for the family sessions together (mom, dad, me and my other brother). The worst was coming home, when Mom would go into a rage for anything we said during the session. And Dad would just sit there seething and fighting with mom. Needless to say, we didn't last long in family therapy, because we children soon learned it wasn't worth it to say anything. 

 

My brother Garth was a terror, dangerous and violent. The only respite I got from him was when he would run away, or was locked up someplace. He terrorized me all my life until he disappeared forever on a pass from his last stay at Bellevue in 1981. But he was mentally ill, and deserved better from those who were supposed to care for him

 

As did I.

 

I wrote this poem a few years later, when Garth was first institutionalized at Bellevue Hospital in NYC

 

 "Brother at Bellevue" by Beth K 

 

Pale, thin and grey, frightened hands tremble at voices who speak of betrayal. 

With slipper, bare foot, pajamas and bathrobe he wanders and stares stares and wanders stares and eats stares and sleeps 

Eyes water, chapped face, hair disheveled, body shakes looking bleakly, blankly 

Drugged days make him tired tired of life tired of boredom tired of green walls surrounding him 

Reading comics, watching T.V cot to lie on, cigarettes to smoke, he smokes and dreams dreams and smokes dreams and schemes dreams and screams. 

Afternoon visits bring money and m&m's 

Trembling fingers touch his eyebrow 

A mother fights her tears trying to talk of days not years...

Tomorrow is a Long Time (Bob Dylan)

I learned the fingerpicking arrangement, in dropped D, when I was a teenager. If it ain't broke, then don't fix it I say. When I learned it, Dylan had not put this out on record (remember those?), but it was available on bootleg and cover versions.

I still love the simplicity of this piece.