Zen and Blind Fury

Sam said I could push his buttons more than any person he had ever encountered in his life.
I pointed out that he pushed mine on purpose whereas I only stumbled upon his buttons.
That should make a difference.
He was a goat. I was a bull.
No wonder we can't get along he'd say in our pissing match eras.

I accused Sam on a few occasions of being a 'mean drunk.' He could slice and dice if the conditions were right, but he never laid a hand on me in anger.
I can't say the same for me.

I'm the one who insists on peace and harmony in the band room.

I paint in my bamboo forest and the birds come closer and closer to me.

I raised my children without violence and broke a family cycle doing it.

I scold Sam for being mean and bossy to our bandmates.

I want to flow like a fountain.

I want to be like Buddha and Jesus.

I want to be kind and nice and....

Then... I'm the one who literally flies at Sam in a rage, tackling him in his living room. making him wrestle for his life until we give out and lay panting on the floor.

I'm the one who storms out of the band room, knocking Sam over with my guitar in the Telecaster Spanking Incident.

I am the one who can snap, capable of blind fury.

"You are a lot stronger than you look," says Sam with admiration.

I have not learned to tame my emotions while Sam is master of his.
He doesn't mind my tirades.
He says he has a very low threshold for boredom and he sure doesn't have to worry about that with me.
He likes a good row and wants me to learn how to shake it off. He wants me to yell and let it out! He knows I am built on rage, despite my good intentions.
"These amps go to ELEVEN!" says Sam. "Now HIT SOME LICKS! YOU'LL FEEL BETTER!"

As for me, I try to avoid setting her, me, KD, off.
It is exhausting, sometimes taking several days to recover from.
Also there is a little part of me that is afraid of what I might do.
As dreadful as it sounds, I quit my last waitressing job because I kept imagining stabbing my shrill, red-haired, Irish boss through the heart right there in the wait station.
The big serrated knife.
Always out, always there on the cutting board.
My gritted teeth, my clenching fists.
What if for just one moment fiction became fact?
I write. I make up stories.
My characters, my paintings talk to me.
I could swear I lived through exact conversations in my stories where customers and co-workers are killed like flies, but I know for a fact it can't be true.
There were no actual murders at Leons, or at the Colonel Ludlow Inn, or at Pauls Fine Dining or other places I worked. Just my stories.
But if I didn't know that, I would swear every word was true.

Basically, my anger makes me ashamed.
Where's the Zen, KD?
Where's your peace and love and harmony and all your beautiful benevolence now, KD?

Fallen like a house of cards.

Sam, however, is fascinated.
He grew up in what he called a "Beaver Cleaver" family.

He was a PK (Preacher's Kid).

His parents were intelligent, kind, and supportive.
He figured his birth family just didn't have that much stuff to work out in this lifetime.
He thought maybe my birth family had a pretty full plate and our work is far from done.

In fact, Sam insists we travel to see my parents at the Eastern Shore.
Sam's parents are dead. He misses them.
He knows I feel estranged and haven't seen my folks in several years.
All the more reason to go, says Sam.
We had an idyllic time especially when it was just the two of us and even though my parents had no idea that I had felt estranged, it felt good to see them.

Families are tribes, after all, for better or for worse.

But the best part was being with Sam.

Our love was intoxicating.

Our band was our pride and joy, and we played countless hours as a duet, but the music that we loved so much was hard on our romance.
This was my dilemna, not Sams.
To me, it felt like much too much.
Loving Sam brought out my girly side, which I both enjoyed and detested.
I had grown accustomed to Sam's style of barking in the band room, but if I'm feeling all girly, it hurts my feelings.

I want to play music.

I want to be treated like one of the boys.

I've been divorced twice and had explosive endings to all my relationships.

My youngest child is leaving for college and for the first time I have an empty nest and no torch.

I don't want to be a couple with anyone, not even Sam.

But on the other hand, I can't stay away for long.

Sam In a Box

Sam is dead and he pulled the trigger.
What's done is done.
It doesn't matter where his ashes are.
It doesn't even matter if his ashes are forever mingled with his long gone wife which they might well be.
It doesn't matter.
It really doesn't matter.
Sam's friend Timmy makes me laugh, roaring at me just like Sam would.
"I know you'd like to think it's all about you," he says. "But it's not."
When I whine about Sam's ashes, it does sound funny, even to me, especially when I say I'd carry Sam with me in a little box everywhere I go.
"Carry him in your heart!" Timmy says, gruff and bossy just like Sam would. I know he's right and its so much easier than my little box.
Timmy teaches me a new mantra and makes me repeat it over and over: I will live and stop reliving.
I will live and stop reliving.
I will live and stop reliving.
"Mean love," Timmy calls it, but it cheers me up.
Sam is gone.
I had my time with Sam.
I can almost, almost, let go of this grief.

Surfer Sam

Sam showed talent for playing guitar since he first picked one up, although his first stringed instrument was a ukelele. He said he would have been a surfer if not a guitar player. Surfing was his road not taken, surprisingly enough.

"They are a lot the same, you know," he said, while he danced a hoola with his guitar.

My E-Mail to Winston-Salem Music Critic

Dear Ed,
I finally read your article about Sam.
It was beautifully written and your kudos are well deserved.
I know people thrive on the Dido/Sam love story so I don't blame you for perpetuating it, but it is amazing how you and so many others have completely ignored the fact that Dido died 9 years ago and Sam had quite a full life since then. Yes, it was traumatic that she died but Sam kept on living.
Are we nothing, those of us who had filled Sam's life for the past 9 years?
KD

His reply:
Hey kd. I've wondered how you were doing, worried, actually. but didn't want to be intrusive. Grief is a weird and personal thing, and people's attempts to help actually do harm in some cases. I wanted to respect your place.

Sam, was you know, was many things to many people. You knew a Sam from a particular period, and you knew that Sam probably better than anyone. I was privvy to when he first announced that you were totally amazing and that he was in love - the band that fizzled and enabled The Sams to do their considerable thing. I know he had a deep love for you, and you should cherish that always.
His love with dido was different. he all but stopped playing during much of his time with her - the only time he had ever done that. he had pretty much had it with the biz, and was content to be domestic -Sam style.
He had a full life, no question, one of the fullest I've ever seen. That's one reason why I do not begrudge him his exit. He lived life his way, so it was up to him to write the final chapter the way he wanted. But he was a vastly different Sam, neither better, nor worse, just different in many.
I will miss him, greatly. There was only one Sam. And he thought the world of you.
peace. e.

Ed's Article: Beautiful/Worth Reading/Maddening to KD

http://www.journalnow.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=WSJ/MGArticle/WSJ_ColumnistArticle&c=MGArticle&cid=1173351121546

This Little Piggy

As much as it pains me to admit it, I was angry with myself and the world, including Sam, in the few months preceding his death.

I was angry at the rut I found myself sitting in, angry at my relentless lows and highs and my inability to control them, angry that I couldn't make ends meet, angry that I'd believed in myself as an artist to the point of impracticality, angry that our band felt like it was going nowhere.
It's been one of my life-long dilemnas. When do I swerve? When do I swerve from my desire to be free to write, play music, and paint, and retreat to the safety of a proper and fufilling day job? When?
Waitressing is one of the vagabond professions that flow easily with a musicians life, but more meaningful work swallows up your time and energy to the point that music is shoved aside and you become a 'weekend warrior, if that.
But how much coffee can you serve and not go mad?
In 2007, I began thinking If I live to be old, my life is more than half over.
All the other piggies have built their brick houses, and this little piggie has none.
No house, no car, no insurance, no savings, no income, no IRA's or investments, no significant other to watch my back.
This little piggie has been singing and playing, and writing little ditties and figured the brick house would eventually appear if I needed it, but maybe that's not how the story goes.
Maybe I'll come home to my house of pipe dreams and be gobbled up by the wolf.
They miss me at Waffle House.
I was quiet, diligent, had almost all my teeth, and made a mean cup of coffee. A little 'tetched in the head,' but not in a bad way.

I could hardly think straight with Sam about. I would say almost positively sure that he was bipolar, although he thought anti-depressants were for the rest of us.

It hurts me that while the lover, KD, ran from Sam, his friend, KD, deserted him.

What if it had been as simple as insisting he go to the doctor for his wide mood swings?
That is where I feel like I failed him the most.
Depression is an insidious creature and you don't always know you have it.
Everything gets more gray, and more gray and you can't remember when it wasn't grey. Everything is sad and you are slipping down a long dark tunnel, and it seems a natural place to be.
You can't remember sunshine even if you're looking at it. There is buzzing like a pack of bumblebees are sitting like a wig on your head.
You have to be careful what you let in because it will race around and around in your head like tigers that turn to butter.
If you get too many roundy rounds going round all at once, it makes crazy 8's.
I know my 'what if's' are more crazy 8's.
I give them to these pages, and out of my head.

Dear Sam
I'll forgive you for shooting yourself if you will forgive me for all the things I woulda coulda shoulda done.
Love,

KD

Sam Liked To Take My Picture

We had so much fun playing Gypsy Nurse.

I'd model guitars in Sam's hallway, another favorite place we played music. "Have Mercy!" he'd say.

No matter how many times I ran away, Sam would find a way to win back my heart. I was horrified when he broke a guitar on my back steps. "Guitar Killer!" I cried, but I have to admit it impressed me and we were on again.

Sam made me feel beautiful. It didn't matter if I brushed my hair or if my angry skin was erupting. He told me I was beautiful and I believed him.

Guitars and Pound Dogs

Sam loved guitars.

Guitars filled his living room, lounging in the comfy chairs, happy by the hearth, his 'chil-ren' he would say.

His chil-ren needed to be out and appreciated and played.

It's true, although you might doubt it if you don't play a guitar.

Guitars are mysterious creatures and if you ever fall in love with one you will know first hand how they are far more than wood and wire.

They have distinct personalities and voices, a place of birth, a creator, and a history they carry with them.

They beam at you. They speak to you. They are cross if you don't let them breathe.

You can tell if a guitar has been loved or is capable of love.

I know this thoroughly after my time with Sam. He was always handing me different guitars to play. "It's important," he would say. "These are your brush strokes."

One time he was very excited to show me a new acquisition, a 1948 Gibson with a real rattlesnake tail inside.

"Can you feel the Mojo coming off this one, KD?" he asks, with a chuckle.

My hair is blowing back with the Mojo coming off this guitar. I just keep saying Wow. Wow.

Sam is pleased that I understand that there are guitars, and there are guitars.

While Sam appreciated expensive guitars, I think he enjoyed finding the diamonds in the rough best of all and many of his chil-ren were like pound dogs that he rescued and revitalized because they had that certain something, that sound, that potential to accept Mojo. Sam had a knack for seeing this in guitars and people, too.

When I look back and see Sam's many friends from his last years: We all have something in common. We were characters and many of us were pound dogs too.

Thank you Sam.

The Sams

Sam Moss, KD Rouse, Doug Williams & Dave Toaster Seward at Ziggy's, Winston-Salem, NC

Sam did not want to live any more and it has nothing to do with me.

Sam did not want to live any more and it has nothing to do with me.

Sam did not want to live any more and it has nothing to do with me, but I can't help but go back and back and back and regret what I did and what I did not do.

I know it is illogical. Sam is dead. Nothing will bring him back.

There is not a thing I can say or do to change that.

I'm not a saint. I am not the Messiah.

But I am in anguish because I think Sam would be alive if I had said yes when he asked me to marry him.

But I laughed instead, and said, "God, Sam! We'd probably kill each other."

And his house was so chock full of mementos, frogs, and Winnie the Poohs, model airplanes, photos, band flyers, guns, and guitars. Where was there room for me?

He couldn't even part with the dead flower arrangements in his hallway, and I hate dead flowers with a passion.

Sam was a stubborn pack rat, buzzing with a boistrous love of life.

I am equally as stubborn and need empty space and silence.

I made myself remember as much as I loved him, how crucial it was for me to be able to run home to my sparse quiet.

Sam said we could make it work, but I was too afraid.

I love you, Sam.

I'm sorry how it turned out.

I wish, oh I wish you were here.

Ash Snatching

I felt closer to Sam than any other person on this earth, but I never knew he had Crohn's Disease and I didn't know his house was foreclosed upon. I don't know where his ashes are.
On the morning he was discovered dead I was hustled into the house, with an escort, Sam's late wife's sister and strangers glaring at me while I gather up my paintings and my party dress and my Gypsy Nurse tile box where Sam kept scandalous photos of me.
Sam's body had just been hauled away and his house is full of box-filling angry strangers who neither look nor act Blues Approved.
Hello! Do they know who they are talking to?
I hear them talk about no telling who Sam gave his key to and how they'd have to round them up so they wouldn't come in and pillage, and they talk about how Sam can rest in peace now that he is reunited with his dear Dido after nine long years without her. I hate them all.
I learn later that some of the daggers are directed at me because I am driving Sam's car. He made me take it so he wouldn't be tempted to drive! But apparently the car used to belong to Sam's late wife and the late wife's sister wants it for Sam's late wife's neice so even though Sam has only been dead an hour, she is so angry with me that I am hustled away before the fireworks start.
Sam's yard is full of zombies, all very shocked, but I hate them too. Why couldn't they show up at a gig like this? Bunch of vultures.
Yeah, and the local music critic waxes poetic about Sam after he's dead but we couldn't get him to write about Sam or our band when Sam was alive. He never even came to one gig that we knew about.
I return the key and the car to Ruth Ann, Sam's sister. She is angry, cold. I don't even recognise Sam's house. It is full of ugly. Sam is gone. Later Ruth Ann's lawyer questions me about who bought the tapes our music is recorded on? Who purchased the tape recorder? Ruth Ann has found an IOU I wrote to Sam for $300. and wants to be paid! I put the phone aside and start screaming to the heavens "Do you hear that Sam??!! Can you believe it??! You better tell them I paid that off a long time ago!" I think I told the lawyer to tell Ruth Ann what she could do with herself, etc. before I slammed down the phone.
I was glad to be asked to speak at Sam's memorial and I would have probably crashed the party if they hadn't. The first few rows were filled with Sam's dead wife's family sitting with Ruth Ann. I am so sure that they are glaring at me I never look their way. I just think about Sam and what I want to say at his send off.
I was closer to Sam than any of them but I don't even know what they've done with his ashes.
Maybe I'll become an ash-snatcher.
Sam would get a big kick out of that.

Sam's Key

I lied when I said Sam was my only friend, but he's my only friend that ever given me his house key over and over. I'd get mad at him and take his key and give it back like an engagement ring, but he kept giving it back. He said even if I was too mad to be romantically inclined, he still wanted me to feel welcome anytime, day or night.
"You know what, Sam," I said, standing in front of his refrigerator with the door open, "You are the only person in the world whose refrigerator I feel comfortable opening." By now, Sam has learned that being 'comfortable' is a huge feat in the world of KD, so he is pleased.
Sam is a consummate host, who loves to cook, especially grilling out. He has an array of hot sauces each hotter than the next. He dips toothpicks in Bad Bills and Wallopin Willies and various other hot concoctions and passes them out at band practice to pep us up.
Sam is the one I could call to kill rats in my basement or pick me up when I got another flat tire. He'd switch cars with me if I had to drive long distances, and leave flowers in my mailbox. I could ask him to check a boil on my rear end without embarrassment and twice he made me go to the Susan B. Korman festival to get free mammograms.
Best of all, Sam and I played music. We'd play in the band room and in the hallway and the kitchen and the living room. We'd play electric guitars and acoustic guitars. Sometimes Sam would play drums or bass while I played guitar. Sometimes Sam would play guitar while I just sang. We loved to tape everything and then listen back to what we played. It was really, really fun.
I am so sorry I was on a Sam-break when he died, and that I acted like he'd go on forever and I could keep coming back, and back, like his key.

1260 West Fourth Street

Sam's house, 1260 West Fourth Street, is the white house in the background. We practiced in the basement. Sam's house was very important to him. It made him proud that he paid for it with music.
I didn't know until after he died, that his house had been foreclosed upon. He was supposed to be out of his house the day he was found dead. Apparently no one knew about the impending foreclosure until Sam's neighbors noticed official looking snoopers checking out the property and sent out an alert.
At first I felt terrible thinking of Sam being so broke that he couldn't pay his morgage, but apparently he still had some money, $14,000 is what I heard.
It was such a typical Sam thing not to bring in his mail that we never worried when his letters were spilling out onto his porch.
And I remember when Sam told me he was tired of 'The Man' and he wasn't going to pay 'Him' one more dime.
On his last night, Sam told Peter May he was going to ditch his house and move to Holland to play music with one of his buddies. Peter thought it sounded odd but not un-Sam-like.
Damn, damn, damn. I wish I had known. I would have known Sam would not leave his house.
His wife was raped there and it was not enough to make him leave his house.
The next morning Peter was rushing to 1260 West Fourth Street with good news. Sam's late wife's family was going to rally and help him save his house if he'd rather not move to Holland, but Sam was already dead.

The Sams Playing Downtown Winston-Salem

KD and Sam at Rubber Soul

Little Kid

"He's like a little kid," whispered the lady next to me as she watched Sam leap and whirl about the room in his royal blue kimono.

"Except for the Jack Daniels," I say. Sam is waving a bottle in one hand and a guitar in the other as he enthusiastically meets and greets his public.

The boys have gathered for a jam session at a suburban mansion and Sam is the star guest. The "boys" are all grown up and work respectible day jobs for Reynolds Tobacco Company, and despite their passion for music, they look decidedly respectible and middle aged.

Not Sam.

Not Sam.

He was scarred but never old.

God, I loved his lust for life.