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Ann Howell,
Brewton, Alabama, USA
Dear Jim,
So many of the people in this yearbook are as much your kin as your songs are your children. They are extreme, courageous, and quite comfortable living on the edge. When you write your songs you are in a very real sense writing their lives. There is no wonder to behold their citizenship in Neverland. "They? Them?", I hear you question. "Not we and us?"
Jim, I stand as testament to the universality, power, and seductiveness of your music. I am probably the most traditional, conservative and timid of your fans. Heck, I even listen to Rush Limbaugh and vote Republican. I have always loved your music……from the first strains of Bat out of Hell right to the present, but I have always been the good girl who only goes to heaven or Jenny, Jenny who didn’t have a lot. If your music appeals to me, the one who seems to be almost the antithesis of the Steinmaniac, no one is immune to the music.
Several years ago when I went on the internet and met other fans, there was a dear man who also loved your music and who would exhort us all to come to the edge and hang our piggies off. Through your music I have met the nicest people. I wanted to go to Germany to see Steffi, a friend I met on the internet and, more than anything, I wanted to go to Vienna and see Tanz der Vampire, but I had never been anywhere alone. The power of your music carried me all the way across the ocean, some five thousand miles. My mantra was "If you are too scared to jump, then you gotta be shoved", and I was determined that the lines, "So many chances in your life that you are bound to regret ‘Why didn’t I do that. Why didn’t I do this?" would not apply to me. I traveled with your hands figuratively on my back, pushing. I went to Vienna, not once, but twice. I saw the great Steve Barton as Krolock. A part of me thinks you can never surpass Tanz, but another part knows you will.
So often in the cold, silent light of day, I think about your songs and I question their hold on me. I mean, sure, "I’ll Kill You If You Don’t Come Back" is a great song, but when Mark who lived down the road did, in fact, kill his estranged wife, precisely because she would not come back, a person questions enjoying such a song. Or "Two Out of Three Ain’t Bad". Oh really? So… as long as a man wants and needs someone, it’s O.K. not to love her? I don’t even like vampires….nasty, evil creatures. Oh, right, I would love to go to a midnight ball with one.
But, when the music begins, all these ‘head’ arguments go right out the window and the ‘heart’ takes over. The music weaves its spell and I become like soft clay. I go so willingly to that velvet mattress. Every single time.
Happy Birthday, dear Jim.
I hope to see you on Broadway around All Hallows Eve, 2001.
Ann
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Short Stories | Narratives | Drawings | Poetry + Prose | Digital Art | Novels
Paintings | Commercial Art | Symbiosis | Kingdom | The 8 Laws of Excess | Complete Works
Xavier T Home | Cycling Stuff | FAQ | JSP Archives | Rubdown Archives | EmailXAVIER T : JSP ARCHIVE
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