Venice

He lived, for a while, in a shack on the edge of a polluted canal, and then he moved onto an empty warehouse rooftop. There he had a candle for light, a Bunsen burner to warm his occasional canned meals and a blanket to keep warm. He rarely slept or ate, but he began to write creating in a single flare of enlightenment more material in less time than he ever would again.

These first song-poems were shot through with the darkness Jim was so attracted to, felt such a part of. Visions of death and insanity were expressed frighteningly, with compulsion.

In the "Celebration of the Lizard" Jim wrote:

Once I had a little game
I liked to crawl back in my brain

I think you know the game I mean
I mean the game called go insane

Or, from Moonlight Drive:

Let's swim to the moon/uh huh
Let's climb through the tide
Penetrate the evenin' that the
City sleeps to hide

Jim said, "I think the music came to my mind first and then I made up the words to hang on to the melody, some kind of sound. I could hear it, and since I had no way of writing it down musically, the only way I could remember it was to try and get words to put it to. And a lot of times I would end up with just the words and couldn't remember the melody."

Hello, I love you
Won't you tell me your name?
Hello, I love you
Let me jump in your game.

It was 1965, three years before the world would hear "Hello, I Love You," and Jim was sitting in Venice on the beach sand watching a young, long thin black girl insinuate her way toward him.

Sidewalk crouches at her feet
Like a dog that begs for something sweet
Do you hope to make her see, you fool?
Do you hope to pluck this dusky jewel?

Visit Venice Beach, California.

taken from No One Here Gets Out Alive, by Daniel Sugerman