Journal of Fear and Hope

Previous Journal Entries

Gently Dominate
January 14, 2022

“The Low Spark of High Heeled Boys” is one of my favorite songs, but I had kinda forgotten about it till recently. I’m not quite sure what brought it flowering up to the surface--it’s hard to trace the origins of a particular thought--but there it was, that beautiful, unbeatable title and an unshakable urge to pull the song back into my life.

It’s a long song, but I used to hear it on the radio when I was kid, all eleven minutes. Am I remembering that right? Surely they must have cut it down for airplay, but there’s no radio edit to be found on Spotify. Maybe they really let the whole thing spin back then. Hey, DJs need a pee break once in a while. The length is one of the song’s strengths. It has time to build, to morph, to climax. It opens with a slow increase to full volume then announces its complete arrival with the rattle of a vibraslap. Then it’s off to the carnival.

The lyrics are trippy and mysterious. What causes the low spark? Who are these boys, and what’s up with the high heels? Are they drag queens? Are they cowboys? I found an explanation online that says “boys” was slang for heroin, and “girls” was slang for cocaine. Therefore the “high heeled boys” was a speedball, and that “low spark” was that special high you get when shooting up, a syringe being the “gun that didn’t make any noise.” This sounds plausible at first. But this was the seventies. I’m pretty sure back then the code name for drugs was “drugs.”

YOU
Hey, you coming to the party tonight? There’re some really nice boys and girls coming over, if you know what I mean.
DAVID BOWIE
That’s great. Are they the ones bringing the drugs?

It’s okay for lyrics to be enigmatic. The third verse, however, leaves nothing to the imagination. I had forgotten it completely till now, and boy, does it hit hard. It speaks of betrayal and degradation. “But spirit is something that no one destroys.” On hearing that for the first time in decades, a shiver passed through me. It was a light in the darkness, a sip in the desert. But it came very close to never existing.

After the long series of solos, Steve Windwood was supposed to repeat one of the first two verses, then the band would ride out the rest of the jam. But Jim Capaldi, lyricist and one of several drummers on the track, thought the song really needed a for-real, stand-on-its-own third verse. ( I agree. I hate it when a song repeats a verse. If you’ve read any of my lyrics you’ll know I hate for choruses to repeat, too.) So Jim writes this third verse, this perfect mini-anthem of resilience, and hands it to Steve just before he was supposed to record the cop-out version. What you hear on the record is Steve Winwood reading and singing the new verse for the very first time. He nailed it in one, and they pressed it to vinyl.

Writing doesn’t always work like that, a sudden flood of inspiration from muse to paper. Often, it takes hours of work to get just a few words in the correct order. Then you come back to it again and again, wondering if you could make it even better. But sometimes it is instinctual. You act in the moment, trusting your brain and soul to fire on all seven cylinders, and you snatch something pure and perfect out of the ether.

“The Low Spark of High Heeled Boys” started when Jim’s friend wrote just the title in a notebook. Jim carried it around and crafted the lyrics over time. The song was finished in a flash. It’s a lyrical reverse speedball that gets you high slowly then takes you down fast. It kills me every time and makes a hell of a noise.

Their Smiles and Their Diamonds
January 7, 2022

Last month I introduced to you the podcast Retro Warriors. I told you how jealous I was of the host whose mom played Dragon Warrior and other Nintendo games with him when he was a kid. Well, this week I was reminded of something a fellow comedian once told me, back when all of us open-micers would gloss over green-eyed whenever anyone got a break that we didn’t. My friend said, If you want something that someone has, you have to take the whole thing.

On the Retro Warriors holiday special, released after the holidays, that same host with the cool mom revealed that both of his parents are now hoarders. Visiting them on any day, but especially the holidays, is a gut-wrenching, stomach-turning trip into depression. He didn’t describe much of their house, the same one he grew up in, but he did say it was falling apart, and the bathroom had not been cleaned in twenty-five years.

Both the hosts had difficult childhoods. As a matter of fact, so did the producer. He joined them at the end of the holiday show to share his own memories. They talked of divorce, past and current, mental illness, loneliness, exhaustion. I often find myself envious of others, of famous writers, successful comedians, happy friends. I want to pluck that single, shining thing about their lives and have it as my own, or at least a copy. But you can’t covet à la carte.

--Previous Journal Entries--

"Too many flames with too much to burn, and life's only made of paper" --Ronnie James Dio

"Words are flowing out
Like endless rain into a paper cup
They slither wildly as they slip away
Across the universe" --John Lennon

"Bow to the paper Gods in a world that is paper thin
The fools in town are ruling now" --Duran Duran

"Here I sit writing on the paper
Trying to think of words you can't ignore"
--Alice in Chains

"Working for paper and for iron
Work for the right to keep my tie on
Working for paper and for iron
Work for the unicorn and lion" --XTC