Friday, August 7, 2015

Missing Joe and Janis


I miss Joe Cocker and Janis Joplin.
That’s right.  Both of them.
Equally powerful, equally mesmerizing, each in their own inimitable and wonderful way.

If you’ve never seen or heard either of them, you may not know it, but you miss them too.  And if you have experienced them you know you miss them.  More so than I can even express. 

I don’t need to be reminded about the void left in my once well-satiated soul.  My psyche is just a little out of sync since they’ve been gone.  My equilibrium is just a little bit off-kilter.  The pop-star-strippers the star-makers keep running out in front of us are mere wannabe’s, pickpockets, and imposters compared to the likes of Joe and Janis.  These pretenders are not here to enhance our lives with their pop drivel.  They never have been.  They’re here to enhance themselves.  And they’re here to allow us the privilege of purchasing four hundred dollar tickets to their shows so they can maintain their mansions, their private yachts and jets, while collecting costly wardrobes to impress their equally narcissistic friends, even though their designer garments are dripping with the sweat of our own brows. 

But Joe and Janis . . . . . passionate, authentic, captivating, fascinating; each in their own peculiar way.  Each one as unique as the other.  Each with a voice the size of their desire, and a heart the size of their fiery voice.
Janis was the tortured soul-searing singer who could bring you to your knees in a passionate plea for mercy.  She could give you gifts you never knew existed.  Take it.  Take another little piece of my heart now baby.  You know you’ve got it, child, if it makes you feel good’. 
And Joe, the trembling vocal jester with convulsive soulful gestures resembling both the agony and the ecstasy simultaneously in song.  ‘You are so beautiful to me.  You’re everything I’ve hoped for,
e v e r y t h i n g   I    n e e d.  You are so beautiful to me’.

Joe and Janis.  Gone too soon.
Gone but not forgotten.
Never have been. 
Never will be.

Not in my house.