Occasionally the universe demonstrates that it still knows how things are supposed to go. L, M, and I went out to dinner with some friends tonight at Threadgill’s World Headquarters. After we’d eaten M decided she wanted to explore a little bit, so I went with her as she toddled to the front of the restaurant, favorite blanket in hand and thumb in mouth (which is one of her default poses).
When we got to the front, I looked up and realized that Roky Erickson was standing all of five feet away from me. Roky Erickson, the screaming frontman for the Thirteenth Floor Elevators, one of the fathers of the entire psychedelic music scene, writer of some of the most twisted lyrics ever put down on paper, casualty of the Texas mental health system . . . standing in the lobby of Threadgill’s while his companions (I think it was his brother Sumner and son Jegar) got the dinner bill settled up. Nobody was hassling him, nobody was fawning on him or pestering him—it was just a moment of “hey, that’s Roky Erickson right over there.”
I didn’t pester him either. It was one of those perfect Austin moments when you see the past standing in the present. Talking to him would have ruined it.
John Ashcroft has been working in the Kremlin with a two-headed dog. Fnord.
2 Responses to The past stands in the present