Requiem for a Bone
I knew a man once, few years back. He was a sailor and a drinker and he could've been a contender, or at least, he sure as hell thought so, and with a couple of beers in him he'd need no provocation to get up there and bawl it into the microphone. Fact is, Bone only had a few lyrics, but they were infinitely interchangeable, and he put them to good effect. The nights would get late, and everybody was drunk, and the boys would be strumming away wasted at the same chord like a wanker worrying at a soft cock. Whoever was playing the drums that night would be bashing blindly at the snare. It may have sounded like shit, but there wasn't a one of us on those nights who'd still give a flying fuck at that juncture, with the hour so late and life so short and all. I'd do my diva thing, sucking on the mike like it loved me back, and then it would be old Bone's turn to bust it out: "I could've been a contender!" All gravel and spit and wasted dreams and halitosis, was Bone, and there he'd go again; we all knew it well, and on occasion someone would sing along with him, although everyone knew that this was The Bone Show, and that the song, at that moment, belonged to him. "I could've been a contender!"
The lyric ended there, and so nobody ever found out what had stopped old Bone from being a contender, or what he might otherwise have become had he not drowned in the Ij on the 18th of September 2007, fished out in his underpants four days later all cold and blue and silent; but in all probability, you know, not much. He was one of the professional losers one finds on every corner and in every bar in a drunken wet sin-city like Amsterdam where people go to lose themselves instead of find themselves, and where the losing can go on forever, or at least until the party's over. But the party never stops if you've got it in you to carry on; until it's over for good, that is. Until they come and drag you out of the river, pull you three weeks dead from your apartment with a needle stuck in your arm; until you're lying retching on a respirator breathing in the sorrows of a lifetime of sins. Bone would've gone sooner or later, you know, the way he carried on, and at his age, too; to say it was better this way makes no sense, but at least he quit while he was ahead. Arguably.
Mark Laurence Scott, known as Bone, was born one day ahead of Saint Valentine's in 1963. I never knew his full name or how old he was until the obituary came through; forty-odd years of hard livin' had made him look older than his years, and I'd always guessed him to be somewhere in his mid-to-late fifties. Bone was of the old school, and riddled with superstitions and tales; he told me once that the reason he'd never learned to swim was because it was bad luck for a sailor, a jinx on the voyage. The worst case scenario which would necessitate swimming for one's life must of course never happen, and must therefore never be pre-empted or even thought of, for fear that the prophecy would fulfil itself. After all, a sailor who's witnessed the gnashing waves of a hungry sea at close range knows better than to pray for a drawn-out death. One frothy gulp of a moment, and you're gone.
Bone lived on a boat, as he always had throughout his life; it's likely that he was drunk when he got up to piss and lost his footing. He was usually drunk, after all, and like I say, he couldn't swim. It all figures.
Bone was a regular at the Sunday evening sessions at the squatted Pakhuis Afrika, a behemoth of a warehouse all ship-blackened concrete and great wooden shutters and the boom, boom, boom of stone ghosts and old storm-water dripping in the dark. Afrika (RIP) was home to many and heart to more, a concrete honeycomb of makeshift bedrooms, living rooms and artists' working spaces partitioned by chipboard and canvas and old curtains gaffer-taped to the ceiling. I could write pages and pages about the wild years of Afrika, about psycho Peter who hung out in the dark stairwell talking to girls about demons and angels, about the dizzy red-wine waltz I had with Daan in the wet black dark of a great concrete hall. The walls echoed our steps like a samba, noisy in the stone silence, and the moon threw a tongue of sudden light into the pool of rain on the floor, and I could almost hear the violins. There was the time I was in love with Tessel and waited for three hours on the roof for my heart to break, smoking her cigarettes and throwing small things into the water far below, before deciding that I should probably go home, one of these days, and sleep. But these things, as with all things that make life worth living, are ephemeral as well as temporal, and also -- significantly and definitively -- gone forever.
That's how we lived, always: we made the most of the reclaimed spaces and the long hours and the music that sprung out of the air as though fully-formed and blazed for a moment in perfect synergy before disappearing into the night, leaving just the faintest trace of melody on the tongue. We made the most of each other, too, but the nights were cold and the beer was cheap and there wasn't much else to do. We were shit-poor and busted and fucked up, and it was this that made it all possible, and what made it worthwhile.
Oh, don't get me wrong: it was a choice to live like that, spending time as though it were free -- reclaimed, like our homes and our bikes and our endless cyclical love affairs, from whence these things are rationed out to the decent and the perfunctory and the straight-laced -- and with our grand houses all held together with gaffer tape and the grace of God, we were richer than the rich. It's not big or clever or revolutionary to drop out of the bottom of society -- usually it's part default and part defense, with a streak of lazy social consciousness attached by a safety-pin -- but Jesus Christ, it's fun. We were unimpeded by mortgages and taxes and all the little costs of renting or owning a place in decent society; proudly dispossessed of any kind of a future or past, touched by the great God of Why-Not and protected by Saint Christopher as though his own. Like I always said: people go to India to find themselves, but people go to Amsterdam to lose themselves. And it ain't always such a bad thing to lose yourself, in music or love or the jangling parade of life; to not know what the hell you're doing, to place your lips to it and sing, with such a sound that seems to come either from above or below or anywhere but your own empty belly. My Esoteric friends are all pretty sure that being dead feels like that, and although we'll never know, I hope for old Bone -- a lost soul by profession -- that it does.
Every Sunday a janky and disparate crew of musicians and liggers and drunks would gather to make magic and music. It was our church, our choir, our Sunday service, and we attended devoutly. We'd roll up for a few beers beforehand, or else we'd drink a few coffees at home and smoke a joint before heading over for eleven-thirty. It would go on pretty much all night; sometimes until four, other times until six. Those of us with jobs made sure to work the shift-shuffle and get Mondays off. We weren't nine to fivers, any of us, and there was always a good turn-out. The Afrika was directly on the other side of a bridge which led to a road which led to a music studio and our music would fly out of the great holes in the concrete and fill the foggy night, a call to prayer for the boys in buttoned-up coats with their guitar cases or trombones who would drop by for a beer on their way home and end up staying until dawn. Bone and I used to share the mike sometimes, and it sounded like sand being poured through honey. We gathered applause like confetti. He'd get drunk and kiss my hand, and then he'd do it again, and again until I'd snatch my hand away and pat him on his snarly old head, going that's enough, now, Bone, that's enough for tonight. And it was never enough, never enough for anybody, and there was always another kiss, another song, another beer where that one came from, and the night was long, and life is short and all, and there wasn't much else to do.
What can I say about those sessions, that place, that time, this man who is dead? This is the price you pay for living for the moment: the moment is gone and lost as soon as it falls, and you're left with empty hands and a hangover and a skein of melodies you can't quite remember.
I'm still singing a couple of the songs I jammed out into the mike on those nights, but even with a full string section and a bad-ass guitar it'll never be the same again. God, who doesn't exist, lives exclusively in the moment, and the moment, like God, doesn't exist after the fact. But to have your mouth full of God, man, and your head full of drums!
Godspeed, Mark Laurence Scott. I wish you sea legs and cold beer and long nights of music, and if you're ever hanging round these parts, man, then this song's for you.
The jam sessions were hosted by the endlessly generous, talented and life-affirming Zibabu. Thanks, boys, for everything.
The lyric ended there, and so nobody ever found out what had stopped old Bone from being a contender, or what he might otherwise have become had he not drowned in the Ij on the 18th of September 2007, fished out in his underpants four days later all cold and blue and silent; but in all probability, you know, not much. He was one of the professional losers one finds on every corner and in every bar in a drunken wet sin-city like Amsterdam where people go to lose themselves instead of find themselves, and where the losing can go on forever, or at least until the party's over. But the party never stops if you've got it in you to carry on; until it's over for good, that is. Until they come and drag you out of the river, pull you three weeks dead from your apartment with a needle stuck in your arm; until you're lying retching on a respirator breathing in the sorrows of a lifetime of sins. Bone would've gone sooner or later, you know, the way he carried on, and at his age, too; to say it was better this way makes no sense, but at least he quit while he was ahead. Arguably.
Mark Laurence Scott, known as Bone, was born one day ahead of Saint Valentine's in 1963. I never knew his full name or how old he was until the obituary came through; forty-odd years of hard livin' had made him look older than his years, and I'd always guessed him to be somewhere in his mid-to-late fifties. Bone was of the old school, and riddled with superstitions and tales; he told me once that the reason he'd never learned to swim was because it was bad luck for a sailor, a jinx on the voyage. The worst case scenario which would necessitate swimming for one's life must of course never happen, and must therefore never be pre-empted or even thought of, for fear that the prophecy would fulfil itself. After all, a sailor who's witnessed the gnashing waves of a hungry sea at close range knows better than to pray for a drawn-out death. One frothy gulp of a moment, and you're gone.
Bone lived on a boat, as he always had throughout his life; it's likely that he was drunk when he got up to piss and lost his footing. He was usually drunk, after all, and like I say, he couldn't swim. It all figures.
Bone was a regular at the Sunday evening sessions at the squatted Pakhuis Afrika, a behemoth of a warehouse all ship-blackened concrete and great wooden shutters and the boom, boom, boom of stone ghosts and old storm-water dripping in the dark. Afrika (RIP) was home to many and heart to more, a concrete honeycomb of makeshift bedrooms, living rooms and artists' working spaces partitioned by chipboard and canvas and old curtains gaffer-taped to the ceiling. I could write pages and pages about the wild years of Afrika, about psycho Peter who hung out in the dark stairwell talking to girls about demons and angels, about the dizzy red-wine waltz I had with Daan in the wet black dark of a great concrete hall. The walls echoed our steps like a samba, noisy in the stone silence, and the moon threw a tongue of sudden light into the pool of rain on the floor, and I could almost hear the violins. There was the time I was in love with Tessel and waited for three hours on the roof for my heart to break, smoking her cigarettes and throwing small things into the water far below, before deciding that I should probably go home, one of these days, and sleep. But these things, as with all things that make life worth living, are ephemeral as well as temporal, and also -- significantly and definitively -- gone forever.
That's how we lived, always: we made the most of the reclaimed spaces and the long hours and the music that sprung out of the air as though fully-formed and blazed for a moment in perfect synergy before disappearing into the night, leaving just the faintest trace of melody on the tongue. We made the most of each other, too, but the nights were cold and the beer was cheap and there wasn't much else to do. We were shit-poor and busted and fucked up, and it was this that made it all possible, and what made it worthwhile.
Oh, don't get me wrong: it was a choice to live like that, spending time as though it were free -- reclaimed, like our homes and our bikes and our endless cyclical love affairs, from whence these things are rationed out to the decent and the perfunctory and the straight-laced -- and with our grand houses all held together with gaffer tape and the grace of God, we were richer than the rich. It's not big or clever or revolutionary to drop out of the bottom of society -- usually it's part default and part defense, with a streak of lazy social consciousness attached by a safety-pin -- but Jesus Christ, it's fun. We were unimpeded by mortgages and taxes and all the little costs of renting or owning a place in decent society; proudly dispossessed of any kind of a future or past, touched by the great God of Why-Not and protected by Saint Christopher as though his own. Like I always said: people go to India to find themselves, but people go to Amsterdam to lose themselves. And it ain't always such a bad thing to lose yourself, in music or love or the jangling parade of life; to not know what the hell you're doing, to place your lips to it and sing, with such a sound that seems to come either from above or below or anywhere but your own empty belly. My Esoteric friends are all pretty sure that being dead feels like that, and although we'll never know, I hope for old Bone -- a lost soul by profession -- that it does.
Every Sunday a janky and disparate crew of musicians and liggers and drunks would gather to make magic and music. It was our church, our choir, our Sunday service, and we attended devoutly. We'd roll up for a few beers beforehand, or else we'd drink a few coffees at home and smoke a joint before heading over for eleven-thirty. It would go on pretty much all night; sometimes until four, other times until six. Those of us with jobs made sure to work the shift-shuffle and get Mondays off. We weren't nine to fivers, any of us, and there was always a good turn-out. The Afrika was directly on the other side of a bridge which led to a road which led to a music studio and our music would fly out of the great holes in the concrete and fill the foggy night, a call to prayer for the boys in buttoned-up coats with their guitar cases or trombones who would drop by for a beer on their way home and end up staying until dawn. Bone and I used to share the mike sometimes, and it sounded like sand being poured through honey. We gathered applause like confetti. He'd get drunk and kiss my hand, and then he'd do it again, and again until I'd snatch my hand away and pat him on his snarly old head, going that's enough, now, Bone, that's enough for tonight. And it was never enough, never enough for anybody, and there was always another kiss, another song, another beer where that one came from, and the night was long, and life is short and all, and there wasn't much else to do.
What can I say about those sessions, that place, that time, this man who is dead? This is the price you pay for living for the moment: the moment is gone and lost as soon as it falls, and you're left with empty hands and a hangover and a skein of melodies you can't quite remember.
I'm still singing a couple of the songs I jammed out into the mike on those nights, but even with a full string section and a bad-ass guitar it'll never be the same again. God, who doesn't exist, lives exclusively in the moment, and the moment, like God, doesn't exist after the fact. But to have your mouth full of God, man, and your head full of drums!
Godspeed, Mark Laurence Scott. I wish you sea legs and cold beer and long nights of music, and if you're ever hanging round these parts, man, then this song's for you.
The jam sessions were hosted by the endlessly generous, talented and life-affirming Zibabu. Thanks, boys, for everything.
posted by JD at
10:15
7 Comments:
There is a classic 'Murican movie called "On The Waterfront," about a has-been boxer who descends into despair and alcoholism. One of his famous lines is when he screams in rage, "I could have been a contender."
Brad
Nice peace.. It could be read like a radio hearing adventure on radio Babylon... Because we must confront the buggers... But I don´t care I´m an exile!!! merooned on this Island.!!Robinson villefied. I´m Robinson crusified.
Expose the monkey business!! oeehoehodeheopoheoheohaaahhahahhaaah!!! monkey business. You know that empty people make the most sound?!! TOK TOK TOK!!!
THat´s right monkey busines. On a tequila sunrise.
For I walk the croucked mile just to see you smile. I´d walk the whole way to hear you say. I LOVE THIS LIFE!
quotes To the bone!
damn, that was beautiful - x
Bones, he would phone some of us sometimes, the rancid voice of the night at any time, calling loud and from far out of a pitiful handheld speaker, talking about the next place to record what we never recorded, to fix on a tape what was life (& death), to tell about an invisible address i personally never understood, blaming the british accent and a bike that kept breaking on the way to our immortality. I don't know what and why, after all we all recorded something and, memento mori, Bone did it well right here in my brain and guts. I slown down into my drink every time i think of him, as a duty or tribute to his success in failure, absolute, as another looser who died and another artist who will live forever.
Bone was born in 1963 February 13th-Yes it was a friday! He was a high leveled self educated person whom inspired and lectured a lot of us. Please quit remembering Bone like the way you described. Look beyond, PLEASE do not try to emphasize towards this man within the limited and so called logical self explaining structure of your mindless limiting blog, it sucks! (Plus it hurts)
Don't let the mo-fo's grind you down
I was Bone's neighbour in Liverpool, '89...the bravest ever known and the devil himself was afeared to go to sea with him.
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