... I lived in a 4th street 2nd story apartment in Santa Monica and if I stood on my balcony, tilted my chin up just a little, I could look past the gay boys giving each other anonymous sexual pleasure in Hotchkiss Park and focus my eyes on a tiny slice of ocean view. At that time I earned my living as The Worst Waitress In The World (not by intention, by default...) and spent every other moment writing songs, rehearsing with my band and listening to music- which was an accomplishment in and of itself because in those days, your favorite music was something you really had to make an effort to carry with you. We bought cassettes and LP's from the record companies, traded them among each other and then made mix-tapes (songs carefully stitched together from hours bent over bronze-age technology) of our favorite tracks so we could play them on a little battery powered brick called a Walkman. Punk had torn a refreshing hole into the fabric of popular music, 'Boy Bands' hadn't yet been distilled into a poisonous formula and the latest rounds of Congressional investigations into the 'Payola' scandals were a few years down the road. The vacuous hum of 'disco' was finally dying out and had everyone hopeful there would be 'real' music playing on the radio again. John Lennon and Yoko Ono had just released "Double-Fantasy" and it. was. great.
In those days we still had heroes and John Lennon was one of mine.
On the night of December 8th, I'd rushed out the door to a rehearsal with my Walkman pressed against my radio to record an interview that John was giving to promote "Double-Fantasy". I knew my batteries would run on and die long after the interview, but I wanted to listen to what John Lennon had to say and at that time it was the only way I could. I stumbled back home in the early hours and fell into bed. On the morning of December 9th, I woke to my telephone ringing off the hook and in my sleepy fog heard one of my band-mates tell me that John Lennon had been murdered the night before while we were at rehearsal. I turned on my radio and every station on the dial said it was true.
I pulled on my clothes and walked out my door. I needed to look at something beautiful. I needed to stand in front of the ocean because I thought it might be bigger than my broken heart. As I walked down Strand Street, Bob Dylan stepped out of a doorway with the same pain-filled, dazed expression I wore on my own face. He pulled the door closed, slipped his hands into his pockets, stood on the top step and watched me as I walked toward him. We held eye contact until I passed, but neither of us said a word.
Soon I sat myself on an alter of beach sand, listened to the choir of crashing waves, looked out into the endless cathedral of blue sea and sky and cried.
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