Al Sullivan’s Journal
Guitar
May 1, 1972
Garrick showed her how to play it.
Now she spends hours and hours strumming the chords over and over.
Without success.
She just can’t get the knack of the simple words and melody, but worse, can’t hear how bad it sounds, thinking hers version is just like the record’s.
Pauly and Garrick have come, strummed out Neil Young’s Heart of Gold for her to play.
She just doesn’t get it.
They are kind to her because she is my girlfriend and the mother of my kid.
But whatever talent necessary to sing and play, Louise doesn’t have.
I can’t even imagine what the landlord thinks, wondering what whacky radio station us crazy hippies have hooked into, pounding on the floor upstairs when it all gets to be too much.
Outside, street thugs and winos piss on the street, their empty booze bottles clattering against the pavement like an additional beat to Louise’s song.
Hank visits frequently, but is convinced that he will soon be mugged again the way he frequently was when he visited us in New York.
And still Louise plays on, as if singing the theme song of our lives, her tuneless tone echoing everything that is going wrong with us, the job, the lack of money, the feeling of being trapped in lives we never planned for.
Sometimes, I hide in the bathroom, it’s no better there, her tune echoing in my head magnifying its torture.