Happy David Herschfield day, Jan 2. He died about fifteen years ago. Of childhood friends, his birthday was easiest to recall, the first of us each year to become older. They had an upright piano in their living room, shag carpet, big windows lots of sunlight. He played guitar but it was a nylon string with a classical strap which despite the sensible ergonomics, embarrassed him. The opposite situation of an electric bassist hanging the instrument below front blue jean pockets and using straight arms which impede accuracy, but look cool. At some point in grade five or six, with Shawn Corne we formed a band: The Apples. I think only one practice ever. In later years he had a copy of Neil Young’s Tonight’s the Night and Decade. This was amazing, especially the cover photo and the fact that it was three albums and Love is a Rose with the most amazing first verse that killed me on contact, a high watermark of poetry in rock, for me anyway. Stars n’ Bars is also indelibly printed into my ear drums and we listened together for hours. I learned about Emmy Lou Harris, homegrown, motorcycle mama and that there is a horse called a palomino. As adults, we lived in different cities at different times and the few times we met, the teenage chemistry no longer existed. I wanted the adult version of him to be more like who I originally knew but that isn’t necessarily how things work. Maybe his idea of me and who I should be, was just as disappointing. Bruce Berry was a working man he used to drive that Econoline van. For years I sung those lyrics but had no idea what they meant, even owned a Ford Club Wagon to tour with, but never put it together until all at once one day, it’s not cryptic but what do you know when you’re sixteen. I sat behind Neil Young and Darryl Hannah and Elliot Roberts five years ago at an awards ceremony at Massey Hall. Amazing seats, four rows behind them, center. Man could I ever have blown David’s mind if he was still alive and we met again. For a little while we both read Dostoyevsky and at Jets games amidst the best swearing of inebriated neighbours, we upped the ante yelling character names from the Brothers Karamazov or the Idiot as if we were foreigners speaking another language that employed more vulgar curses for missed shots than anyone ever heard before. Smerdyakov! Raskolnikov! Prince Myshkin!

Love is a rose but you better not pick it,

It only grows when it’s on the vine,

A handful of thorns and you’ll know you’ve missed it,

You lose your love when you say the word mine.