“Put Out The Fire In Your Head”- With Patti Griffin’s Not Alone In Mind

“Put Out The Fire In Your Head”- With Patti Griffin’s Not Alone In Mind 

By Bradley Fox, Junior

[Sometimes this generational divide between parent and child that occurs naturally once the younger generation comes of age and begins to make its own way, make its own mistakes, and have its own problems grappling with day to day life in a hectic, dangerous world can only be deciphered by someone from that generation. That is the case here with the story of Sam Lowell’s youngest son, Justin. Sam told me his side of the story, really his take on Jason’s story since Sam had had little directly to do with what got Jason into his difficulties. I tried to write it up as a cautionary tale of sorts to help inform Sam’s, my generation, the generation that the late Peter Markin, our mutual friend who passed on under mysterious circumstances down in Mexico after the 1960s had ebbed and we had lost the cultural battles, called the Generation of ’68  about what was troubling our children. I failed in that effort.

I told my son, Bradley, Junior (with Sam’s permission), who knew Justin when they were younger, the details to see if he could write something that would make sense to Sam and me about what makes their generation tick. As for the grandkids, forget it between the Internet and its subset social media and the trials and tribulations they confront in an extremely dangerous world going forward it would take, as young Bradley told me, the minds of Freud, Einstein, and Rapper Rocco combined to even know what subliminal language they were speaking. Here’s my Bradley’s take on the whole mess [BF, Senior]:      

Justin Lowell had been a late love child of Sam and his third wife since divorced, Rebecca, and as such, with eight years between him and the next youngest child, Brenda, and hence eight years of being the only child at home after she left for college, was pampered by her, cocooned Sam said.  And frankly had been by Sam as well although the number one thing all of his children from his three failed marriages said of him was that he was a good and generous father but he that was a distant figure always off doing some lawyerly business and not around enough to get rid of the that foggy picture of him. But enough of Sam Lowell’s failings since this is about how Justin navigated the world not Sam. 

Of course Justin had all the advantages that accrued to a financially successful small town lawyer’s son from living in a nice large house with his own room (and later own rooms since he took over Brenda’s as well), a good if not great college education (good since Justin was not a particularly studious type like myself and unlike Brenda who gained entrance to Harvard with no problem), and all the diversions that leafy suburban life in Riverdale could bring. All through high school at Riverdale High we were very close buddies so I knew a lot about his make-up, knew too that he resented his mother’s overweening attentions (and as already mentioned Sam’ distance which Justin called indifference unlike my father who went out of his way to be attentive and was a reason why we would spent much more time at my house than his). Many nights out with hot dates we would go wherever we went together, tried out and failed to make the championship Riverdale High School football team, things like that. Mostly though we talked serious stuff about dreams and what we would do when we flew the coop, when we had what Sam and my father always called when they got together and regaled us with their stories the “great jail-break.”          

Naturally after high school, members in good standing of the Riverdale High Class of 1992, when Justin went to State U and I went to NYU since I was desperate to live in New York City and breath the air there as part of my becoming a commercial artist we drew apart. Maybe we would call, see each other at Vinny’s Pizza in town and cut up old touches. That was mainly freshman year when everything was new and we were “free.” Then Justin kind of fell off my map as I got involved in some school projects and Justin from what he told me one time at Vinny’s got involved in the furious social life that dominates lots of school out in the boondocks and where kids are away from  home for the first time. That was when Justin, who had hated even the idea of liquor when we were in high school and wouldn’t speak me for a while after l got Kathy Callahan drunk (and horny you can figure the rest out yourselves) on a double date, started doing drugs. Started first I had heard on easy stuff marijuana to be sociable (Justin, me too, as much as we got along with girls were both kind of shy and inward at times which is probably why we gravitated toward each other beyond our fathers knowing each other since their youth) and bennies to stay up and study for those finals at the last moment. Later senior year I heard from Jack Jamison who had gone to high school with us and was also at State U Justin had graduated to cocaine, serious cocaine, serious enough to have to begin to do some small time dealing to keep up. He did graduate but it was a close thing, very close.         

After college Justin moved to Boston to take a job in a bank, work his way up in the banking industry to make lots of money. In any case in Boston is where he met Melissa, Melissa I won’t give her last name because now she is a big deal in the college administration of an Ivy League college. He met Melissa at the Wild Rose nightclub, the one just outside of Kenmore Square. Met here and quickly came under her spell (a lot of guys had, did, would do that before she was through). Melissa, not a beauty but fetching was one of those women who loved kicks, loved the attention her desire for kicks brought. Her kick at that time was heroin which some previous lover had turned her on to. She something of a manic-depressive as it turned out said grass, coke, pills didn’t do it for her, didn’t put out the fire in her head, the feeling that she could never get close to anybody. (Later it also turned out that she had been sexually abused by her drunken father and had had plenty of reason to want to put the fire out in her head.) She turned a very willing Justin to smack (it goes by several names, H, snow, the lid, sweet baby, and the like we will just call it smack). Se he had been having trouble adjusting to having to actually work his ass off to get ahead in the banking industry and he too needed something to put out the fire in his head.

Melissa, as far as anybody ever knew, never got seriously addicted to the smack, maybe cut it enough to keep from going to junkie heaven. Justin of course got himself a jones, a big sleep on his shoulders. He before too long got fired from his job, went on the bum, started muling down to sunny Mexico for the hard boys to maintain his habit, went back on the bum and finally got picked up by the cops on Commonwealth Avenue trying to break and enter some Mayfair swell condo. All he would tell them beside his name was that he “had to put the fire out in his head, needed to get well or he was going to jump into the Charles River. At that point, Sam, who was clueless about his son’s drug problems as most parents are until some tripwire turns the lights on had to come into the action, had to defend his youngest son on a damn B&E charge. Got him into a “detox” program too. Did what he could without recrimination, or just a little other than bewilderment that his son would succumb to drugs.                        

Well I wish that I could say that Justin turned it around after that first “detox,” effort but that was not the case. He went through programs for five years before he sobered up for good, or what Sam and Rebecca thought was for good. One night I was home to see my father and to attend our twentieth anniversary class reunion when I ran into Justin on the street who said he would rather not go to the reunion since he would have to explain too many things about his life. He suggested we go into Vinny’s a few blocks up the street and have a couple of slices of pizza and a soda for old times’ sake. We did so and while we were munching away Justin explained as best he could what had happened to him. He reminded me of that night senior year when we were sitting down by the river and he had told me how much he hated his father, hated Sam, since he was such a pious bastard, was almost non-existent in his life, yet tried to be cool about his own bogus jailbreak youth like they had changed the world, like his youthful coolness made everything alright. I had forgotten about that night, had had my own small (compared to him) troubles adjusting to my own father’s whims. Then Justin said he had spent all that time since that night trying to put out the fire in his head.           

Here comes the sad part, about a year later Justin met a woman, Selina, in Portsmouth, New Hampshire where he went to live to get a fresh start. They fell in love, planned to be married, and had made all the arrangements, the church, reception and all. The night before the wedding when he was out with some guys celebrating he went off the bus. Somehow he had made a connection, and before the night was over he was sitting in Prescott Park by himself as the cops came by based on a disturbance yelling “I‘ve got to put the fire in my head, I’ve got to put the fire in my head out.”               

Yeah, Put Out That Fire In Your Head-With Patti Griffin’s Song Of The Same Name In Mind

Yeah, Put Out That Fire In Your Head-With Patti Griffin’s Song Of The Same Name In Mind   

By Fritz Taylor 

[Sam Lowell and I have known each other for a long time, since a time back in the 1970s when our paths met at an anti-war veterans’ conference in New York (a conference which would wind up setting up a Vietnam Veterans Against the War [VVAW] chapter in his hometown area in Boston and mine in my hometown Atlanta, Georgia area. We would see each in places we were protesting one or another egregious acts of the American government, the American military against some poor benighted country that got caught in the cross-hairs of some fool president. Later, after the ebb tide of the anti-war, the Vietnam anti-war had happened we connected in other ways via our veteran connection and I would, at his request, write something veteran-related that he could not put a handle on. Something that Allan Jackson, who was the editor then when this publication was in hard-copy form, would accept and for when I needed some ready cash.

The subject matter of this piece, Sam’s not being at peace with himself is done with his permission since it is such a personal and emotional matter. None of us men from the Vietnam era, soldier or civilian, political activist or not, have been as forthcoming as the younger men who have come after us, our children and now grandchildren (I dare not say great-grandchildren but I know some of us ae in that category). We were all about change and seeking a newer world as a guy named Markin, also a vet, who didn’t make it through used to say but we were more like our World War II fathers when it came to speaking of personal matters. A shame. This piece while not a breakthrough since we have been mulling things over the past few years, is a big step for Sam and me, Sam to narrate and me to write about such matters.

The conversations we had around putting this piece together actually happened a couple of years ago just after, as will be noted below, his long-time companion, Laura Perkins, not wife, for he had had three of those and they both agreed they were better off just living together since she had been married twice had left their house (Sam had made us laugh one time when he mentioned that it was cheaper too between alimony and child support). This piece was, is something of a therapy session for Sam’s angst at Laura’s leaving and his inability to put out the fire in his head. We decided to put it aside for a while until it made sense to publish the results of those conversations. Better Sam and Laura have been talking again since both recognized that the bonds between them were very strong and they both, frankly, my frankly, missed each other’s company. Sam is really sending Laura a bouquet on this one.  And I am glad to play the florist. Fritz Taylor]       

************    

Sam Lowell was, is a queer duck, an odd-ball kind of guy who couldn’t stop keeping his head from exploding with about seventeen ideas at once and the determination to do all seventeen come hell or high water. And not seventeen things like mowing the lawn or taking out the rubbish but what he called “projects” which in Sam’s case meant political projects and writings and other things along that line. Yeah, couldn’t put out “the fire in his head” the way he told it to his long-time companion, Laura Perkins, one night at supper after she had confronted him with her observation, and not for the first time, that he was getting more irritable, was more often short with her of late, had seemed distant, had seemed to be drifting into some bad place, a place where he was not at peace with himself. That not “at peace” with himself an expression that Laura had coined that night to express the way that she saw his current demeanor. That would be the expression he would use in his group therapy group to describe his condition when they met later that week. Would almost shout out the words in despair when the moderator-psychologist asked him pointedly whether he felt at peace with himself at that moment and he pointed responded immediately that he was not. Maybe it was at that point, more probably though that night when Laura confronted him with his own mirror-self that told Sam his was one troubled man.  

Yea, it was that seventeen things in order and full steam ahead that got him in trouble on more than on occasion. The need to do so the real villain of the piece. See Sam had just turned seventy and so he should have been trying to slow down, slow down enough to not try to keep doing those seventeen things like he had when he was twenty or thirty but no he was not organically capable of doing so, at least until the other shoe dropped. Dropped hard.      

It was that “other shoe” dropping that made him take stock of his situation, although it had been too little too late. One afternoon a few days after that stormy group therapy session he laid down on his bed to just think through what was driving him to distraction, driving that fury inside him that would not let him be, as he tried to put on the fire in his head. That laying down itself might have been its own breakthrough since he had expected, had fiercely desired to finish up an article that he was writing on behalf a peace walk that was to take place shortly up in Maine, a walk that was dedicated to stopping the wars, mostly of the military-type but also of environmental degradation against Mother Nature. 

Sam, not normally introspective about his past, about the events growing up that had formed him, events that had as he had told Laura on more than one occasion almost destroyed him. So that was where he started, started to try to find out why he could not relax, had to be “doing and making” as Laura called it under happier circumstances, had to be fueling that fire in his head. Realized that afternoon that as kid in order to survive he had learned at a very young age that in order to placate (and avoid) his overweening mother he had to keep his own counsel, had to go deep inside his head to find solace from the storms around his house. For years he had thought the driving force was because he was a middle child and thus had to fend for himself while his parents (and grandparents) doted on respectively his younger and older brothers. But no it had been deeper than that, had been driven by feelings of inadequacy before his mother’s onslaught against his fragile head.        

As Sam traced how at three score and ten he could point to various incidents that had driven him on, had almost made him organically incapable of not ever having an active brain, of going off to some dark places where the devils would not let him relax, that kept him going around and around he realized that he was not able to relax on his own, would need something greater than himself if he was to unwind. Laura had emphatically told him that he would have to take that journey on his own, would have to settle himself down if he was to gain any peace in his whole damn world. Sam suddenly noticed after Laura had expressed her opinion that she had always been the picture of calm, had been his rock when he was in his furies. Funny he had always underestimated, always undervalued that calmness, that solid rock. He, in frustration, at his own situation asked Laura how she had maintained the calm that seemed to follow her around her world.         

Laura, after stating that she too had her inner demons, had to struggle with the same kind of demons that Sam had faced as a child and that she still had difficulties maintaining an inner calm, told Sam that her daily Buddha-like meditations had carried her to a better place. Sam was shocked at her answer. He had always known that Laura was drawn to the spiritual trends around their milieu, the “New Age stuff” he called her interest since it seemed that she had taken tidbits from every new way to salvation outside of formal religion (although she had had bouts with that as well discarding her Methodist high heavens Jehovah you are on your own in this wicked old world upbringing for the communal comfort of the Universalist-Unitarian brethren). He had respected her various attempts to survive in the world the best way she could but those roads were not for him, smacked too much of some new religion, some new road that he could not travel on. But he was also desperate to be at peace, a mantra that he was increasing using to describe his plight.    

Then Laura suggested that they attend a de-stress program that was being held at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston as part of what was billed as HUB-week, a week of medical, therapeutic, technological and social events and programs started by a number of well-known institutions in the Boston area like MGH, Harvard, MIT and others. Sam admitted to being clueless about what a de-stress program would be about and had never heard of a Doctor Benson who a million years before had written a best-selling book about the knot the West had put itself in trying to get ahead and offered mediation as a way out of the impasse. Sam was skeptical but agreed to go.

At the event which lasted about two hours various forms of meditative practice were offered including music and laughter yoga. Sam in his skeptical mind passed on those efforts. The one segment that drew his attention, the first segment headed by this Doctor Benson had been centered on a simple technique to reduce stress, to relax in fact was called the relax response. Best of all the Doctor had invited each member of the audience to sample his wares. Pick a word or short phrase to focus on, close your eyes, put your hands on your lap and consecrate, really try to concentrate, on that picked term for five minutes (the optimum is closer to ten plus minutes in an actual situation).          

Sam admitted candidly to Laura that while attempting fitfully focusing on one thing, in his case the phrase “at peace,” he had suffered many distractions but that he was very interested in pursuing the practice since he had actually felt that he was getting somewhere before time was called. Laura laughed at Sam’s response, so Sam-like expecting to master in five minutes a technique that she had spent years trying to pursue and had not been anywhere near totally focused yet. He asked her to help him to get started and they did until Sam felt he could do the procedure on his own.

We now have to get back to that “other shoe” dropping though. Although Sam had expressed his good intentions, had felt better after a while Laura had felt that he needed to go on his journey without her. She too now felt that she had to seek what she was looking for alone in this wicked world despite how long they had been together. So Laura called it quits, moved out of the house that she and Sam had lived in for years. Sam is alone on his journey now, committed to trying to find some peace inside despite his heartbreak over the loss of Laura. Every once in a while though in a non-meditative moment he curses that fire in his head. Yeah, he wished he could have put out that fire in his head long ago.