The Golden Bard Travel Fund

The great American poet, musician and inventor Edward Sanders once advanced the concept of the Golden Bard Retirement Home as a literal place where poets, musicians and artists of every sort would be taken care of once they reached the golden age when it becomes more difficult to care for oneself--as if it were ever easy! At the GBRH an aged bard would be housed, clothed, fed, turned on and provided with plenty of recreational and creative opportunities right there on the grounds.

Beyonce

This was a beautiful idea to me, although of course I never anticipated qualifying as a candidate for acceptance at the Golden Bard retirement Home. I can't tell you how many years it's been since I first gave up hope of waking the next morning and continuing with my life another day, but it was a long time ago and the effect has been to make sure that I got the most I could out of every day, no matter how few nor how many of them there may have been or may be. I thought for those who got old, they could really use a Golden Bard Retirement Home, and I would smile at the thought of the old geezers and geezerettes rocking on the spacious sun-streaked veranda of the Home, strumming their lutes and guitars and intoning their verses for one another in the luminous afternoon.

Heading Home

But now I've reached my full maturity, as they say, without even having ever really "grown up," and now I know what they're talking about. I'll be 65 in October if I live that long, and if I had a job I could retire from I would surely give it up and enjoy my pension. But I've never really had a job and for quite a few years I've been completely off the charts as a money-earning individual without a bank account or a permanent address or any property except what I can carry around in a couple of big bags like the aluminum Hallibuton suitcase George gave me in Boston for my 60th birthday and the large black ones from Adam Brook's now-defunct luggage store in Detroit.

The Dolphins

This is the way I've chosen to live my life in my old age, and for the most part I'm enjoying the hell out of it. I got so tired of trying to make the rent every month and keep the gas and electricity and telephone service on, always hustling my ass off trying to get up to zeroness, and I was forced to conclude that it would never get any easier for me in America as long as I persisted in trying to make a life for myself as a poet, performer, arts broadcaster and community arts activist, freelance writer about obscure musical and cultural figures and confirmed recreational drug user.

To make a long story somewhat shorter, I started to think that I'd have a better chance of making a living in Europe, where there's a market for what I do even if most of the people here don't know me from Adam's off ox, as they used to say. And if I were to settle in Amsterdam, there was the chance that I could get the marijuana industry to recognize me for my pioneering role in the early days of the marijuana movement and treat me to the pension I've earned in more than 40 years in its service--of which 3 hard years were spent in prison.

I also know that I'm treasured by my many friends as I treasure them, and they'll do anything they can to help me out in my ceaseless travels. My friends are the only riches I've amassed in a long life of art and penury, and you continue to sustain me in more ways than I can name. My needs are modest indeed: a place to sleep and store my bags, a table and chair where I can do my work, meals and food to eat and a gram or two of weed every day, the occasional ticket to get from place to place, and the sundry little needs of everyday life. Sometimes I get paid for what I do, ofttimes I don't, but I'ma do my work anyway and hope for the best as I've always done.

Why am I telling you all this shit? Because this is like a fund drive, and I'm giving the pitch like I've done so many times for radio stations in Detroit and New Orleans and all over America, trying to help them raise the funds they need to stay on the air. And, after all these years, I'm having my own fund drive and appealing to my listeners for support. I got my own radio station now, why can't I have a fund drive?

A word to the wise is worth a bunch of more words saved, to coin a phrase, and I'll leave it at that. The first contributor to the new Golden Bard Travel Fund is my great pal the Judge in Mendocino County, whom I intend to visit on August 26th, and he proved it's as easy to send money to my credit card account via PayPal as the TravelPod instructions make it sound when they ask if you'd like to make a donation. From there I can convert the donations into meals and euros by means of the miracle of ATM.

Hey, I know a lot of my readers aren't any better situated in economic life than I am, and I just wish I could send YOU something. Others don't know me yet and can't think of a reason why they should send me some money, and I sure ain't Reverend Ike. But those who would like to help and didn't know how, I've finally found the way, and I'd like to offer special thanks to Neti Vann of the New Orleans Jazz Vipers--who saved my ass with a few dollars by Western Union a couple of times--for urging me to get with PayPal.

Reading a New York Times feature on my old friend Andrew Hill, the great pianist, one day recently I was reminded of when he suggested in a downbeat interview years ago that every listener who enjoyed his music mail him a dollar. That may sound funny, but man, when there's a little cash in the mail it's always a beautiful day for the lonesome traveler.

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Two years ago, while I was spending my first cold winter in Holland at Mark Ritsema's apartment in Rotterdam, I composed a poem to Monk's version of "Everything Happens to Me" that pretty much sums up my current status. I think I'll print it here:

from thelonious: a book of monk

#97

"everything happens to me"

for mark ritsema

all my life I've paid

& paid, until my dues card

is punched up

on all 4 sides,

a child

of relative privilege who chose

to 'take the way

of the lowest'-

beatnik,

dope fiend,

poet provocateur,

race traitor & renegade,

living from hand to mouth

& euro to euro,

sleeping on the couches

& extra beds of my friends,

a man without a country

& a post office box in new orleans

for a permanent address,

a pre-pay vodafone

& a laptop computer,

one suitcase stuffed with clothing

& a bag full of manuscripts

& hand-burnt cds-

to keep my head straight

& my heart right

to keep up my travels

& carry on the struggle

into another new year,

taking my little verses

& great big world outlook

everywhere people will have me

-amsterdam

january 7, 2004/

rotterdam

january 15, 2004