For Gene

I met Gene Clark a long time ago in a bar and we shared some conversation about railroads and in his case, The Kansas City Southern.. I bought the next round. Some folks you meet instill a sense and feeling as though you had always known them. Gene was one of them. 


We both came of age in the prairies...a land of grasslands, lone tree hills and creeks.
Gene by that time was playing small venues, living out of a suitcase.
Lest you get the impression that I thought or did think Gene was a lost soul. I don't.......unless I consider that we all are.
A sincere, troubled and gifted songwriter, plain spoken with that Midwesterner’s sense of being restless and grounded at the same time. Largely forgotten, underrated but in the final analysis, none of that matters to yours truly.  Whether we travel to other worlds, live in our imaginations, walk down a busy sidewalk or sit while in our own company lost in our own thoughts, we are always in transit between contingencies, moving between places we give this name or that name to.

I wrote that last post with Gene in mind as well as having left home as a teenager to see where that road ended and of course, it never did nor do I assume it will although I must be honest in saying, I just don’t know. Gene never ventured off it in search of something he nor I could probably ever define.
I settled while Gene did not live long enough to tie himself to what we could call a compromise either with himself or with this world.

Guesses, suspicions, landmarks, tipping points, stalling out or in high velocity while the same two legs and feet remain glued like yours to wherever I happen to find myself either by choice or by happenstance. So this temporary post is for Gene, wherever he may be now or if he’s nowhere at all. Again, in the end, that's not what matters. I too remember places and there is more than one kind…..