I want to tell the whole world about Gig in a way that would suit him and I'm finding it difficult. I mean, there really is just too much to say about this complex individual and I only knew him for this brief period of what turned out to be the last years of his life. I know he had many lifetimes and manifestations way before that and that others may see him differently than I do. We became fast, close friends through a lot of conversation, walking, creativity and music.
I see him in many flashes of memory, sometimes strolling along in his beloved Maplewood neighborhood on a late grey December, examining the slick sidewalk with deep study. Naturally, it is raining and a flock of blackbirds is pirouetting from a stark tree behind his bald head. He appears gangly yet graceful, sporting a heavy deep green corduroy jacket of good quality and a dignified beard. His solemn face is folded and furrowed in thought over piercing, deep set eyes. Probably superior and harshly judgmental, was my very first impression of him, but it didn´t take long to discover that this opinion was way off base. Humble, supportive, funny and confused: continuously grappling with inconsequential subjects like truth beauty love death nature or the human condition: tying his thoughts in sailor`s knots and hanging them from the ceiling. Combing through the ashes for discarded reasons. Bragging incessantly that he didn´t know a thing.
Sometimes I see him leaning back in a crooked chair with a cup a coffee and a few days stubble on his face, cutoffs, tee shirt, his face in the morning sun looks fuller, masculine and warm. He is in the midst of composing something or fixing something but he is attentive to our conversation never the less. Scholarly classics on the floor in a pile by his feet. Without ever going to a proper school, but instead spending most of his time stealing cars, designing doors, raising a family, hanging drywall, fighting in wars, driving cement mixers, fooling around with electric guitars and outdated recording equipment, through his own reading he still had extensive knowledge of the abstract. Sports, for one, but also history, politics, philosophy, art, music theory, geology.
But these are the serious things but Gig was not often very serious. Imaginative, playful, self deprecating always, Sometimes I see him as the person in his song lyrics, playing cards with Pascal, bumming around with Henry Ford and some mad Archangel on the borderland under a crazy moon. His love life in his songs was global yet also a perplexing mess. Once he danced with a curvaceous Aphrodite in a Cuban barrio. Of course she turned out to be an angiosperm, not a real person so who knows what was really in that glass of gin he was drinking. Another time he was beaten with a brassiere in Appalachia by a rowdy woman with advanced physical prowess and an advanced degree. Naturally he was dumped in Paris on several occasions which for him was the city of getting his fragile heart trampled upon, not necessarily the city of love. Or maybe that was Seattle. Anyway, love was another modality that, much like truth, seemed to be something he searched for but never quite believed was there. His best company, it seems, were flocks of birds, hungry dogs and demons and always the rain.
In addition, he also struggled with his identity. One need only to review his history of naming himself for clues into this quandary As if the name`Gig weren`t sufficiently odd, he adopted several other monikers over the years...Hokemburg Goombah was one, a name he abandoned when the instant fame of uncovering an eerie photo that captured the human figure for the first time became too much high brow attention for this introverted proletarian to bear. Blasphemer from the Hinterland, which despite several attempts for me to comprehend its meaning, was never quite explained since inquiries were met with a scornful and unsatisfying `How am I supposed to know?`` The third that I am aware of, Gargoyle in the Corner, was a reflection of his self image which I think was wildly inaccurate but whether you agree is partially dependent on your opinion of Gargoyles.
Despite all of this dubiety, he made excellent selections regarding his attire including the coat I mentioned, whose history was explained so often that it got worn out from being discussed too much. He liked wearing hats but discreetly and not so frequently that one assumed he was hiding something. Surprisingly, he was very concerned about mussing up his hair, as he once (this is also in his song lyrics: an astonishingly accurate record of his history) declined a perfectly decent hood prior to his execution for this reason. The reason for the execution however was never quite clear, but he was a trouble maker. Did I mention he liked to gamble a lot? Mostly he put up his soul as collateral and he wasn´t very successful at games of chance so he almost always lost it. He was also very frugal once complaining to the Devil that the price of souls just wasn´t what it used to be. Anyway, he was not a good judge of prices since on the subject of economics one could only describe him as benighted, pronouncing that everything of value was worthless and everything worthless had value.
On spiritual matters he claimed to be a skeptic yet he seemed to possess many irrational beliefs. For example, though he rejected flatly the theory of taking out the trash, he embraced the medieval practice of alchemy, claiming that the sixteen neatly stacked containers of expired evaporated milk in his cupboard were bound to turn into a type of refined fuel if he left them there long enough, fuel that he would use to power his time machine. Though his quarters were festooned in a slurry of clothes, instruments, books and recording equipment thick enough to disguise a time machine, When he was sufficiently distracted, I searched thoroughly for this alleged rocket and never found it.
Sometimes I saw him as a wise old guru with all of the answers. For example, I`d say that most all of our time for the years I knew him was spent mulling over one very significant question. It was a question posed to me at a job interview that I bombed so embarrassingly that I had to flee the interview on foot, moving with such speed that streams of tears and the swirling colors of my best business casual shirt formed a chem trail in my wake. I ran all the way to his house since I knew he`d have the answer. `Gig,` I asked, falling on my knees at his feet and feeling the sting of castaway thumb picks and as they sunk into my flesh. ``If you had a dinner party and you could only invite three people who would they be?`` He pulled sagaciously at his beard for several long moments. I awaited his answer, bleeding, my breaths staggered and my heart pounding.
``I don`t give dinner parties.`he said.
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