(part 245) The Van Gogh Syndrome

"Vincent" by William Jameson

I felt dead alright, dead, like a walking zombie, set in motion as some cosmic joke. Given a gift, and never allowed to experience anything but misery as a result of it.

I even had a name for it. The van Gogh syndrome, because Vincent had painted with his heart, his emotions. He'd thrown himself completely and utterly into his work, but had been rejected in spite of his commitment, shooting himself at thirty-seven. His last words were, "There shall never be an end to human misery."

I too felt rejected by the world, and felt my work had been rejected as well. So now I was rejecting myself, the creator of the work.

I had tried killing myself numerous times in the past, only to have failed, so I was not willing to test that path again. But inside I was as good as dead.

The excited kid with the big smile was nowhere to be found. The tough "live through it all to fight another day" individual had all but disappeared. What was left was a shell. A desperate remnant of what might have been.

The sadness, and sense of complete and total loss, was extravagantly heaped upon my psyche in those moments. All that I had ever known, or wanted, was abandoned on the hardwood floors of Carol's apartment as I headed out the door.

I was too exhausted to be angry, too broken to mount a counter attack against the tides of change. They swept over me a if I were not there.

That dismal day in 1985 seared its way into my soul, branding itself, and its destructiveness, on me forever. Like a life-threatening wound, turned to a scar, it remains with me to this day.

I don't remember whether I talked to Carol on the day I left, or not, but I know I didn't speak to anyone else, except my brother Bill.

Maybe it was because I was afraid that more misery would be inflicted on me if I asked for help and got none. That fear of further rejection caused me to close off the world and retreat into a self-protective cocoon.

The only other human beings I would deal with, at that point, would be my brother Bill and mother, and even that was something I found incalculable, as the next possible threat.

I drove through the streets of Hollywood, and onto the Sunset Strip, on my way out of town. I passed by each place where I had attempted suicide, each place where my body and mind had been maimed in the past.

It was around ten o-clock in the morning as I drove past each memory-soaked location. The bright sunlight beat into my sleepless eyes, causing added distress to my exhausted mind and body.

With each landmark I passed, came the flood of emotion-filled highlights of the event. The day, the reason, the weather, the street, the building, the drug, the tower, the year, all of it. It just kept playing in my head.

The history of Bobby Jameson was written on the streets and buildings of the town I was leaving. I had given myself to it in a way that is indescribable in words. I had been a part of it and it a part of me, for what seemed like forever.

I had gone to grade school in Laurel Canyon, and then left as a child, but vowed to return, which I did. Wherever I was, I was in L.A. in my head. I could always see it, feel it, want it. If I left I was coming back, if I was there I was home.

Bobby Jameson and Hollywood were not two things. Not a person and a place, not a mere town with a resident, they were one thing, a single unit.

They existed as a reflection of each other, like a mirror reflecting the image of the observer...the observer seeing himself not only in, but as the thing reflecting.

(part 244) ANOTHER CALL...ANOTHER TEAR...

My brother Bill

I was torn in a way I had never known before. I felt like a fool who had finally awakened to the realization of my own twenty-year folly.

Where once I had been convinced I would succeed, I now felt awkward in the presence of my own past, uncomfortable in the gaze of my own eyes.

How could I have been this wrong for so long? How did I manage to deceive myself so many times? These questions battered me as I collected the last of my belongings.

I didn't want my tapes. I left them where they were, relics of the past that I would leave behind. They were no longer my work, no longer my hopes, they were no more than evidence of my failure.

I had nine years of sobriety, and my life was as fucked up as it had ever been. In the beginning, I had had great and wonderful expectations of a new life, but now, nine years later, I stood in the midst of the cold hard facts.

I was sober alright, but as miserable as I had ever been. Strangely, there was no desire to drink or use. For whatever reason, I was committed to sobriety, even now.

I marveled momentarily at this realization, marveled at my capacity to eat so much pain and disappointment and not get loaded.

What I was learning now was the hardest thing. It had taken nine years of sobriety to finally convince me to alter my path, but I had no path, other than that which I'd pursued my whole life, so the future appeared black before me.

I didn't know where I was going to go. There was no one anywhere I could ask. I had no money, just over a $100, and a used car.

As a last resort, and because I did not know what else to do, I decided the only person I could call was my mother. The bitterness of that in itself was enough to cause me to think of blowing my brains out.

For me, it implied complete and utter failure, the last chance saloon as it were. I hated that call more than any I had made or received in a very long time, but there was no one else.

I hadn't slept at all when I made the call. I remember well the sound of my brother Bill's voice answering.

"Hello!"

"Hi, Bill, it's me, Bob."

"Hey, bro," he answered, "how are you?"

"Not so hot," I said, "having a tough time out here."

"What's wrong?" he asked.

"Same old shit," I said, "Hey do you think it would be OK if I came up there for a few days?"

"Hey, mom," I heard him yell, "it's Bob on the phone. Is it OK if he comes up here?" He quickly returned to the phone, "Yeah, man, it's OK, you can come."

"OK," I said, "that's good. It'll just be for two or three days. Thanks, Bill."

"Yeah, sure," he replied, "When are you coming?"

"Today," I said, "Later today, if that's OK."

"Yeah," he said, "It's OK. I'll tell mom."

"OK," I said again, "I'll see you guys later today."

"Alright, man, I'll see you later," he said.

"OK! And thanks again, Bill. Goodbye."

"Goodbye, Bob."

I hung up the phone. I felt like I was dead.

(part 243) AND IT HAD TO BE TODAY

It was no joke. I was pissed off and fed up. I hadn't gotten anything from Martin Cohen except more of the same old shit. It was, for whatever reason, the straw that finally broke the camel's back

I had learned in AA to look at my part in things, to see what I had done, or was doing, that caused my troubles. I had been practicing that for nine years, taking responsibility for my own actions. I was not perfect, but I was diligent. What I was running into, time and time again, was the lack of responsibility taken by others.

In AA people told me to let it go. That's all they ever said to me. Even when I had been wronged they'd say, "Let it go." Because I'd let it go repeatedly, I was now sitting in the results of that philosophy.

Others, it seemed, were allowed to commit their wrongs, and I was subject to accepting it, or at least that had been the lesson.

It had become a one sided arrangement from where I was standing. The bar I had to reach appeared a great deal higher than the one others set for themselves.

By 1985, I had painted myself into a corner where I could no longer live. I'd spent twenty-two years, drunk, loaded, and now clean and sober, letting others off the hook. If they owed me money I didn't force them to pay me. If there was a contract, I let them break it.

People made promises, but didn't keep them. They did things that caused me harm and then excused themselves through self-serving forms of exoneration. But when I fucked up, they gathered like a flock of vultures to condemn me for my shortcomings, of which there were many.

"OK!" I said out loud, "I'm an asshole! You win! I'll move my ass outta your apartment forever Carol, and you can make your fucking sponsor proud. I'll leave this Goddamn town, too, and the fucking music business forever."

I finally got it through my head. I was nobody! There wasn't any reason left to stay. There wasn't anyone who was gonna help me get this shit straightened out.

I made up my mind. I made my decision. I was done. It was finally over, I was finally through. In a split second, I knew for the first time in my life that giving up my dream was the only way I was ever going to have any peace in my life.

I had done my best for as long as I could, and had blown it. I had failed to achieve what I had set out to accomplish long ago.

"You can have it," I said, "You can have it all. You don't owe me a thing, and I don't owe you anymore either, none of you, I quit."

It was a declaration, and with it the umbilical cord that had held me for so long was cut. The feeding tube to my dreams was now gone.

I looked around what had been my studio and bedroom for months, and figured out what I would take with me, throwing it into plastic garbage bags destined for the trunk of my car. "I hope you'll be happy, Carol," I said to the walls, "but I don't think you're gonna like this."

I wondered who I would say goodbye to, but there wasn't a single person in the whole town I wanted to tell I was leaving. Not one person I would miss. Frankly, I didn't think anyone would care whether I left or not.

In AA, people had already blown me off and told me over and over to go get a job, as if I were nothing more than a fool living in a pipe dream. No one had ever bothered to find out anything about my past or what I had actually done for the last two decades.

So now I, too, was ready to capitulate, convinced as well, that my life was nothing more than a childish dream, which I would finally put away.

To accomplish this, though, I would have to leave L.A. and Hollywood. I would have to get away from the streets, the lights, the people, places, and things that had owned me for so long.

I had to cut it off clean and for good, like alcohol and drugs. I had to quit cold turkey and break the addiction. I had to do it today...

It was now or never, I reasoned. It had to be for real, and at that moment, it was the most real it had ever been in my life.

(part 242) THE CALL TO MARTIN COHEN

I had run on empty before, but in 1985 I was completely out of gas. The wear and tear of twenty-two years of "keep on keeping on" had finally taken their ultimate toll.

Suicide attempts, record deals that never went anywhere, endless songs, no money, failure after failure, addiction and hopelessness, had finally won out over any resilience I may once have had.

I was sitting in the compound ruins of my life when I called Martin Cohen's office on the day I will never forget. Dialing his number was the direct result of having run into John Rhys.

It was that chance meeting that brought Martin Cohen's name up at all. It was John's success with Martin that gave me the idea to call.

The fact that Martin and Herbie Cohen still owed me $3700 dollars was a vague thought in my mind at the time. It was desperation at it's finest that led me to the slaughter.

"Martin! How are you?" I said uncomfortably.

"I'm fine," said Martin, "what can I do for you?"

"Well,"I said, "I ran into John Rhys the other day, and he told me that you were his lawyer in The Rose thing."

"Yes that's true," he replied.

"Well I told John I ought to call you, because I have been trying to get paid for stuff I did for years, and thought maybe you could help me get my money," I said.

"Money from who?" he asked.

"From everybody I ever made a record or wrote a song for," I said.

"What are you talking about?" he asked.

"ASCAP, BMI, record companies, publishers, everybody," I said.

"That's impossible," said Martin, "that can't happen."

"Well it happened to me Martin," I said, "It's still happening. I've never been paid in my life."

"I'm sorry Bobby, but that just doesn't happen," he said again.

"It does happen Martin," I replied, becoming more urgent, "I have never gotten a penny from anybody for any song I ever wrote or record I made."

"Listen, Bobby! That's just not the way it works in this business. What you're telling me just doesn't happen these days, there are too many ways to prevent it," he said.

"Martin!" I yelled, "Why do you keep saying that? I don't care how many things there are to prevent it. I have never been paid in my life."

"Look, Bobby," he said, "I don't want to sit here and argue with you about it. What you're telling me is an impossibility, so if there's nothing else you want to say, I don't think I can help you with your problem."

I stared at the receiver in my hand in disbelief, and then put it back to my ear. "Yeah Ok, Martin," I said, "I understand, sorry I bothered you."

"No bother at all, Bobby," said Martin, "Sorry I couldn't be more help."

"OK thanks. Thanks for taking my call," I said.

"You're welcome," he said, "have a good day."

I sat with the phone in my hand, listening to the dial tone. It sounded like an electric drill digging into my brain. My anger, and feelings of worthlessness, collided inside me like freight trains slamming into each other head on.

I wanted to drive to Martin's office and kick the shit out of him. "That fucking asshole!" I thought, "That can't happen! Yeah sure, Martin," I said out loud, "It can't happen except it did. It happened to me. Over and over and over. Fuck!" I screamed, "That fucking asshole and his brother are two of the pricks who did this kind of shit to me. Why the fuck did I ever call him? Why the fuck do I do this kind of shit to myself?"

My emotions spiraled out of control. I could not contain my reaction to Martin Cohen's arrogance on the telephone. "It can't happen! It can't happen! Fuck!" I screamed again.

My mind raced back to the day I'd tried to kill myself on St.Ives Dr. in the 70's at Gavin's house, because Martin and Herbie had cut me off, and now he had the balls to tell me it couldn't happen, when he had been one of the assholes that had done it to me.

Where the fuck was I supposed to go? What the fuck was I supposed to do? It seemed that everybody had an answer about me. No matter what part they played in it, I was always the problem.

No one ever looked at their part, just mine. Carol and that fucking telephone. Martin fucking Cohen and his asshole brother Herbie, my ex-girlfriend and her father, Dennis and George, Steve fucking Clark, Ken Handler, Randy Wood, Andrew Oldham, and Tony Alamo...

All of them had had a part in it. All of them had fucked me over one way or another. I couldn't take it anymore. I was losing my fucking mind.

I had to get out of this town before I killed someone, before I killed myself...

(part 241) KILL ME ONCE AND KILL ME TWICE...

The check was a vivid reminder of how deeply never getting paid for a single song had cut into my life. It was a bleeding gash in my psyche.

I was glad John Rhys got paid. I was miserable because Bobby Jameson never had. I was not part of that club in any way, and never had been.

No matter how many songs I wrote, or records I made, I'd never received a single dime in royalties from any record company, publisher, manager, or collection agency, such as BMI, ASCAP, SESAC, or Harry Fox Agency.

I was brutally aware of my lack of power in that capacity, and try as I may, and I tried a hundred times, I had not, and could not, get any of it straightened out.

My answer had always been to write another song, make another record, and hope that someday I would make it work. I had asked every person, in every new deal I'd been involved with for twenty years, to help me.

The truth was, nobody cared. They always said, "Let's hear what your new stuff sounds like, and if it's good, and you get a hit, then we can go back and straighten out your past, because then we'll have the leverage. So you gotta get a hit, Bobby."

I'd lived and died on that nonsense. I had watched my life and career disintegrate over two decades following that bullshit philosophy. The philosophy of future success, down the road happiness.

But now, the real facts were beating the crap out of me for the thousandth time. There had been no future happiness or cleaning up the past. The past was now present, and scrawled in blood on the walls of my future.

It was a circular hell I lived in. Whatever I had seen and done and managed to survive, was destined to reappear, at some point, to be relived again and again.

I could not convince anyone of any of this. No one gave a shit, they never had. No one knew what I was talking about, because no one but me had all of the facts and history.

People who knew me had no idea that I had ever done as many things in as many places as I had. They didn't know I went to England and recorded with Mick Jagger. They didn't know who Chris Lucey was, or that I was him, and they didn't care.

I was a multiple personality with multiple pasts, trying to pawn myself off as an individual, when in reality, I was a group of individuals splintered out of the life of someone called Bobby Jameson.

I was the only person in the world who knew all the parts in any cohesive way. I had not, and could not, make clear to anyone what this meant.

There were songs and records all over the place. There were starts and stops, and starts again, galore. It covered two continents, multiple countries, companies, and publishers, and had gone on for over two decades. But be that as it may, I had failed utterly to convey to anyone, at any time, the depth and complexity of the problem.

I had lived, and continued to live, in my own inability to stop the madness and get it straightened out. I stood at the crossroads of my life and knew it, as I sat alone in the dimming light at Carol's

All that I had done since 1963 was behind me, and what I would do now lay before me. I had no idea of what that would be or what it would mean.

I resolved in my mind to get Martin Cohen on the phone and see if I could get him to assist me in getting my money from ASCAP. I hadn't talked to him in years, and didn't have any idea if he would even speak to me, let alone agree to help me.

It had been Martin and his brother Herbie Cohen, in the 70's, who had been administering a publishing company of mine, and paying me a weekly salary.

I'd gotten into a beef with Herbie one night at the Troubador, which ended in a near fist fight, the end result being, I was cut off financially by the Cohen Brothers. Shortly thereafter, I attempted to kill myself by taking a masssive overdose of a hundred and twenty pills.

So this was the person, over a decade later, who I was now committed to asking for help.

(240) ME AND THE BOXES OF MY LIFE...

My mind was going a million miles an hour. The check John Rhys had shown me was another deadly reminder of how completely broke I was and how dependent on others I had become.

He had gotten more money for publishing one song than I had received in my whole life for writing hundreds of songs.

I headed back to Carol's apartment to try and organize my thoughts and emotions into some sort of cohesive plan of action.

She'd said that I didn't have to leave immediately, that I had time to make other arrangements, so I was determined to use the time to figure out my next move.

As I drove, I stared out at the city around me, feeling the emotions of twenty years slamming me against the seat of my car.

I stared into the past, recalling the young boy who had come here with his guitar and dreams so many years ago. I felt his excitement and power, the sheer magic of his expectations.

But there was no magic now. Just a forty year old nobody with a used car and empty pockets, driving back to a place where he had been told he was no longer welcome. "The story of my life," I thought, "always leaving, never staying anywhere for very long."

I had repeated this so many times it had become my life style. Coming and going, from this place to that, with next to nothing to show for it in the end.

The only thing I had a lot of was songs that nobody wanted, records that nobody cared about or remembered, endless home recordings done in rooms where I labored unnoticed for too many years.

This was my legacy. Cardboard boxes of Bobby Jameson's life. Boxes with no home. Boxes of emotions, my emotions, trapped on paper and magnetic recording tape, sitting in silence and not welcome...anywhere.

I had become a derelict over time. A wandering hobo with my dreams in a box and no place to put us. I'd worn out my welcome in every single place, with every single person in twenty two years. Twenty two years had passed since I first walked into United Recorders on Sunset Blvd. and recorded Let's Surf in 1963.

I laughed at myself for remembering it, amused by the naive kid who sang his heart out back then. Back when it was all in front of me instead of behind me, chasing me...

This was my life. A bunch of spiral note books filled with words that nobody saw, melodies that no one ever heard or cared about. This was my life that day in 1985...This was it, as I drove back to Carol's alone.

I unlocked the door and called out. No answer, she was not there. I went in and stared at the tape recorder, still waiting to go to work, but there were no songs to record, no ideas burning to be noticed and captured on tape.

The amp, equalizer, and speakers sat like mutes, staring at me, waiting to be commanded into action, waiting to light and hum their way into activity, but no such command would come.

I dropped like a heap on the edge of the bed and stared at the floor. I lit a cigarette and watched the smoke curl upward into the dim light of the room where I'd worked so hard for months.

I glanced out to the hall and saw the telephone sitting there in a mass of twisted cord. I replayed the pictures of me throwing it against the wall out of frustration.

I broke down in tears, and watched while tiny puddles began to form on the floor next to my boots. I was alone and tired. Alone with my thoughts, feelings, and the nagging picture of that Goddamn fucking check of John's. Just me alone, with the boxes of my life.