I don’t remember saying that.
You did.
Where did you get the quote?
I reached into my bag and brought out the red notebook. It only took me a moment to locate the reference.
It was right after the release of 9 Songs, a little piece in a teeny-bop magazine. You were oddly candid, and you briefly mentioned looking to Donald for moral advice.
Well I stopped that him a long time ago. Around the time I stopped being in teeny-bop magazines.
What did you need advice on? Do you remember?
We had some issues within our family I was trying to negotiate, I wasn’t sure what to do and thought he might have an idea. Is this really relevant?
Maybe not, but I’m curious myself. You come across as very confident, I’m interested in when you weren’t. It makes you more human.
Maybe I don’t want to come across as human. Hurts the mystique.
Your mystique will stay intact, trust me. Continue. Please.
Fine. I’ll veto this later. I went to Donald because he was always sure of himself, even though he was the youngest. Maybe his confidence came from being the third child, because Doris had her accomplishments in theater and I had my music and Donald felt he had too much to live up to that he didn’t care how well he did. Even if he fell on his face, my parents had two children that, to him, satisfied all their greatest expectations. In a way I think it gave him a pass, a chance to do whatever he wanted, knowing that risk brings reward. While everyone else was trying to fit in and be cool, Donald just was. He moved through the school halls like there was some big secret to life he’d unraveled and everyone else was in the dark, so if they liked him, fine, but if they didn’t it just meant they didn’t understand what he knew. It was their loss and it didn’t disturb him.
I find that interesting, usually the youngest sibling fights for attention. They feel they’re living in the shadow of the older ones.
Don was, but he didn’t see it as a negative. He found it freeing, there was less focus on him.
When you went to him for advice, did he help?
No. In hindsight the advice he gave was shit, though he’s not to blame. He may have presented himself as mature and confident, but in the end he was only fifteen.
When’s the last time you spoke with him?
Three weeks ago, probably. We talk about once a month.
What did you talk about?
The usual things, what he’s doing, how his wife is, how his kids are, how the rest of the family is doing.
Do you not talk to the rest of your family?
Not so much.
What about your sister?
We already talked about her. I don’t want to rehash it again.
True, we did, but we talked about your relationship back then, before you became an international star. I’m interested in the present.
There isn’t much of a present. Doris and I don’t talk. We had a falling out.
He sucked down most of his Bloody Mary and took a bite of toast.
Are you willing to talk about what happened?
He stared me down, trying to gauge how serious I was about discussing the topic. It was a game of chicken, and I had no intention of backing down or making it easy for him to avoid giving details. He’d invited me, asked me to travel internationally, and I believed I was right in expecting him to speak about everything. He recognized my resolve.
She didn’t like the way I lived my life.
Can you be specific?
I could but I don’t want to. Just leave it at that, we don’t need to get into the details. All you need to know is that we don’t speak because I brought her attention to the truth of life. She took the rumors of my drug use and my philandering to be as real as the press presented it. Never asked me for what was reality, just took their word for it and treated me according to that image. Some people live and let live, others feel the need to lecture or talk down to you. That never sat well with me. Her asshole husband’s to blame.
For what?
Disapproving of my life.
He had that much control over her? That he could alienate you from her? I have a hard time–
Love is a many splendid thing, and quite fucked up. After Doris graduated from college we started to build back a relationship, and enough time had gone by that I’d gotten over my guilt. We were on the path to becoming part of each other’s lives. When my tour took me through wherever she was living we’d go out, get drinks, stay up until the bars closed. We talked a lot, we caught up. For a while she was hooking up with my bass player, and they were good together. We all were. My success brought me up to her level, it made me two years older. Then she met an asshole from Sacramento who was jealous of me, he hated that Doris and I spent time together. Never wanted her staying out late with me, insinuated I’d get her into drugs. He took it upon himself to put a rift where there was none. The shameful thing is she fell for it.
Is that why you didn’t attend her wedding?
I was not there on her wedding day, but only because she asked me not to be. I would’ve been there.
Why’d she ask you not to be there?
You’d have to ask her.
But I’m asking you. You have to know the reason.
I have my suspicion. If you guess it I’ll tell you.
You didn’t get along with her husband.
That’s true. But not all of it.
And she didn’t want you making the day uncomfortable for her and her fiancé.
Not the whole story.
So what is the whole story? That’s why I’m here, I want to know what happened between you and your sister.
I thought you were here to find out if I killed Charly.
Did you?
How did you show her that?
I didn’t kill Charly.
What happened to her?
Whatever the official case report of the London police says. That’s the reality that’s close enough to the truth. Go with that.
But I want to know what actually happened.
You don’t get it, Chris. Reality is whatever version you want to believe. We all live in our own bubble where the world works according to our rules and how we see it. Don’t believe the hype. Don’t believe the truth. It’s different for everyone, and it changes with time.
So what’s the point of having me here if reality comes from the storyteller? Why don’t I just write whatever I want the story to be and you can proof it?
That’s probably what you’ll do anyway. You’re a journalist. You take a handful of facts and build a story that links them. You all do, I’m not naïve. Quite the opposite, you’ll see. What I wanted, though, was to have you record the truth as it stands at this moment. At this time. Sitting here in this place. I want you to create a document of things as they are now. You’ll put a spin on it, but try to get it objective.
When you record a song aren’t you setting in stone a moment of time? Why not just make an album and call it Autobiography? More people would hear that than will read what I write.
There’s too much to tell. I couldn’t make an autobiographical concept record if I wanted to. I asked you here to discuss things that I can’t talk about in songs.
So what do you want to discuss? You don’t seem willing to answer my questions.
He stood up, bent over at the waist and touched the ground, holding the stretch for so long I thought he was telling me we were done for the day. When he stood upright again he looked thoughtfully at me and sat back down.
Feels good to stretch. He took a sip of coffee. I was thinking this morning, while I was sitting out here waiting for you to arrive, about the living man�
��s dilemma. It’s peaceful out here, easy to do some thinking. It’s my favorite part of the house. I often wish the weather in England weren’t so terrible, I would use this space much more often. Do you ever think about the living man’s dilemma?
I don’t have a clue what you’re talking about.
The dilemma is that every man is annoyed by how others live, but no man can live alone. You hate the person at the grocery store standing in front of the produce, keeping you from picking out your things and moving on. You don’t like the annoying people on the sidewalk that walk too slowly, side by side, so you can’t get around. You’d rather never deal with the asshole in the movie theater that’s talking the whole time. People are fucking terrible. People have taken away my privacy. People have made it impossibly uncomfortable for me to live in my own country. But people have made me rich. The living man’s dilemma is that we all want to do things our own way, we want to be the man who’s an island, doing whatever we want however we want. Drive from point A to point B without traffic. But we can’t. I like to think back a couple hundred years and imagine how things were then. Society is changing rapidly now, we don’t have time to ponder the ramifications of these changes but I try to, I try to find a baseline. So I go back to the 19th century. Arbitrarily. What was London like in 1890? I imagine that people were more willing to compromise because they absolutely needed everyone else. Look at history and you’ll find that societies that worked together advanced the quickest. We need each other. Humans – hell, all living things – need each other. There’s a symbiosis to life. Do you understand?
I follow so far.
We rely heavily on each other but we can’t fucking stand living according to each other’s ridiculous tics and habits, it’s uncomfortable putting up with someone else’s customs. We have to cooperate and live by everyone’s common rules or else we have chaos. Think of a small village a hundred years ago. If that week’s harvest yields enough potatoes for one hundred people to each take six, then everyone has to agree to take six. If someone wants ten, someone else loses four and no one likes a greedy bully. So to live in that time you had to play by the rules of the group, and this made us willing to compromise, and it made us willing to put up with each other’s shit because we had to. There are two options for a person in that time: you live with other people, you put up with their insane behavior and their fucked up ways of doing things and their weird tics, or you move out into the woods, build yourself a hut and live away from everyone else but exactly how you want, according to no one’s rules but your own. Those are your options. Play along, take six potatoes, or play alone. It’s the living man’s dilemma. He doesn’t want to deal with other people, but the other option is dangerous, fatal, and generally, overall, shitty. Now here’s what I was thinking about this morning, in addition to all that.
Please, I’d love to know where this is going. I smiled at Darin, but he read condescension in my reaction and was not amused.
We are living in a day and age where the living man’s dilemma no longer applies to everyone. There is now a third option, and I’m just now discovering it and it frightens me. I have transcended the dilemma. When I became richer than rich, where money was no longer a concern, I stopped needing people. In a way I still do, but I’m global now. My songs are purchased and played in every country in the western world, so I don’t rely on the people in my neighborhood or my town for my livelihood. I can take ten potatoes and the people in my community may hate me for it, but their ire doesn’t hurt me. It’s not like I’m afraid the local banker won’t give me a loan because I was an asshole after the harvest. I don’t need him. In fact, if I wanted to tell everyone to go fuck themselves I could still sell a hundred thousand records in Brazil and be fine. There’s nothing tying me to virtue anymore. Whereas most people can’t say what’s really on their mind for fear of causing insult and negative repercussions, a bad reputation ‘round these parts can’t hurt me.
And the other thing is, I can live in society but not deal with the parts I don’t like. I can send someone out to do my shopping. If I don’t like the congestion of a grocery store I can pay someone to do that for me. Driving can be a hassle because I want to drive faster than everyone else, so I either have to drive the speed limit or not drive, but I like to drive. So my Sunday driving is renting out a racetrack for an afternoon and whipping around at 140 miles per hour. The living man’s dilemma ensures that everyone knows the feeling of compromise, and if he doesn’t then he goes off into the woods and lives alone and that’s fine. But my wealth allows me to live in society only in the ways I want, and I’ve come to realize it makes me extremely irritated when I don’t get my way. We are raising a society of infants, crying when they don’t get the thing they’re fixated on, and it is dangerous. I know this because I’m one of them, and I try awfully hard not to be, but that’s because of how I was raised. God protect those who weren’t given the principles I was. It will not end well.
How long have you been thinking about the living man’s dilemma?
Awhile. Often I think about the world, about how to describe my view of it to other people. They say you fall in love with someone when you like the way they see the world, when you see it through their eyes and it’s beautiful. I want everyone to see the world through my eyes and I want them to like what they see. But I worry about who I’m becoming and whether my vision is clear. I’m realizing I’m less willing to compromise with other people because it turns out I don’t ever need to. If I don’t like the way something is done, I can just say fuck it, and go do my thing. If the record label is pissing me off I can decline to put out another song and instead just play shows, where they can’t touch the profits. If I don’t like the way my lead guitarist is playing on tour I can replace him. Seven years ago I’d have to just live with a guy playing off tempo because I wouldn’t have the reputation and clout to fire his ass and immediately have a dozen others begging to replace him. My success, in ways, opens the door for me to be an asshole, and it’s up to me to close the door. So I try to give the guitarist a few shows to settle his nerves instead of canning him after the first night. And the more often we have people with immense wealth, the more often they will live according to their whims and fuck over the rest of us if we get in the way. Or you. I’m not in that group anymore.
Do you like who you are these days?
Darin finished his Bloody Mary and carefully set the glass on the table.
Take a walk with me?
Track 6
Have you gotten into football over here?
We walked the edge of the yard, following its line along the Elm trees. I noticed off in the far corner of the property an official-looking soccer goal, the net white and clean and holding perfect shape. It looked nothing like the nets we had kicked into, dirty and tattered and sagging in the middle, as little kids in leagues our fathers coached.
You like that? I had the grounds crew for Liverpool out here to set it up, it’s to the exact specifications for the Premiere League.
You aren’t a fan of Manchester United?
ManU can go fuck themselves, they’re a bunch of spoiled brats. Any team with that much money is bound to be good. My affinity lies with Liverpool.
The Beatles?
Of course. I can, with good conscience, root for the team representing the place that produced those men.
How often do you use it?
Darin laughed, and the genuineness of it stood in contrast to his otherwise restrained emotions. Outside of him playing me his song, it was the first time he’s seemed guileless.
Not often. Oscar convinced me to get it, he kept telling me how much fun it was to kick a ball around. He even said he’d let me take shots at him on goal, though he assured me I’d never find the back of the net. To be honest this was never for me, it was for Oscar; he wanted a place where he could spend free time. I don’t need him much. I tell him to shove off and go into London, find a woman there to occupy his empty hou
rs or just get drunk with friends, but he won’t.
How old is he? I can’t seem to place his age.
He’s deceptive that way. Forty-seven. Most people put him in his late thirties.
How’d he come to work here?
The way so many do, I suppose. Family business. His Grandfather worked in the kitchen at Buckingham Palace. His mother met his father there as well, she did the laundry and was housekeeper, he a chef like his father. The way Oscar tells it they tried not to fall in love because it was frowned upon, two of the employees dating, but there was no helping it. Ask him about his parents if you get a chance, just to see his face brighten. For whatever reason he had no desire to work at Buckingham, but he also didn’t know any life aside from an estate employee. He worked here at Mainshead for the previous owner, and when I bought it he asked to stay on. I liked him from the start, he’s incredibly well read, his mind is a collection of facts. I can point to any plant out here and he’ll know everything about it. What suits me best is nothing rattles him. Very easygoing. He doesn’t judge the things I do or who I do them with, and he’s fiercely loyal. As I said, I encourage him to go live his life because I don’t honestly have much need for him, but he has this keen sense of duty and avoids being away in the rare instance I might want something. One of the only things he ever asked me for was that goal, so he could get some exercise during the day. The man loves his fresh air.
But you don’t use it?
Not after the first week. Oscar got me out there three times and then I lost interest. I don’t do things casually, it’s hard for me to go out and kick a ball around because I’m no good at it. I stick to things I excel at, which inflates my ego and leads me to think I’m generally quite amazing at everything.
I can see the appeal. Do you like living in England? Does the ex-pat lifestyle suit you?
I think of myself more as an exile than an ex-pat.
What was the point at which you knew you had to leave the States? I imagine it wasn’t easy, giving up the customs you’d always known, moving away from family and friends and readjusting to something else.