"Three Tears on Fifth & Copper" turns one year old this month.
For constant readers, you'll recognize this one; for others, it was a piece that flowed out of me one afternoon, last winter, while experiencing a man's pain through music.
I stepped out into the low-slung winter sunlight as he stood looking down at his hands. I looked down at them also, his dirty hands, that shook involuntarily as he worked feverishly to roll loose tobacco into a filterless paper while my intuition deemed him safe; just another transient looking out into a large, hollowed-out, concrete stairwell below his feet as people scurried along the sidewalks of the adjacent skyscrapers. I checked him off as I waited for the pedestrian crossing light to illuminate before I heard the cold concrete walls amplifying the first note and syllable that flushed my skin with goosebumps. I knew instantly what the song was and who it was coming from. Instead of crossing the street to go on about my day, I turned back, kept my head down, and followed the projection of his voice.
He continued to sing into the empty space below him as the empty shells around him walked without direction; without empathy; without compassion. I positioned myself behind a thin pine bush, on a decline leading away from him as he continued to sing, better than the original version I’ve been hearing for the last 31 years.
- - All five horizons revolved around her soul - -
The man never looked up. He never stumbled on the lyrics. And unlike Eddie Vedder, he didn’t intentionally mumble through the words. The man sang from a pain and confusion so inciting that it altered his life; his state of being. In some extreme cases of a traumatic event, a human will become “stuck” in a time or an instant the trauma occurred, often memorizing patterns, wall art, or a popular song of that period.
- - Now the air I tasted and breathed has taken a turn - -
Tears began to well up inside my eyes as I watched him work with hands not of his own. His mind couldn’t calm the shaking, no matter how hard he tried. His voice boomed out of his body and sent shockwaves around the encircling, concrete walls. The acoustics of the empty stairwell eliminated the need for any accompanying instrument. His pain supplied the beat, the rhythm, and the tempo. The voice from within, likely some 20 odd years since the event, howled through the crisp, December air as he closed his eyes and tilted his head back, allowing the southerly sun to illuminate his face. I counted three tears tattooed under his right eye. Prison ink. His anger fueled the volume that pierced my own fortress of childhood misery and could be heard in the nearby rail yards over the diesel engines and screeching of metal on metal.
- - Oh, all the pictures have been washed in black, tattooed everything - -
My legs were getting wobbly and I felt like Mike McCready was standing next to me with his signature guitar riffs cutting the cold air like a samurai sword carving new life into a dying carcass before it passed on to the next world. I kept crying as the man with a distorted past kept singing through his own pain and existence, not understanding the source of either.
- - How quick the Sun can, drop away - -
- - And now my bitter hands cradle broken glass - -
- - Of what was everything - -
The man outside the public library that day continued to sing “Black” with a hyper-focused memory that paused and breathed during all the proper breaks, while sounding like a 35 year-old baritone who has suffered more than his burden’s share in this life. The man endured a loss so tragic it robbed him of his maturity and logic, imprisoning him for reasons likely unknown to him at all. The sort of kicks that our society gets off on by casting them out of protected circles and into a permanent drifting of merciless suffering.
I’ve been hearing “Black” for 31 years now but the man outside the public library made me listen. I heard clearly and distinctly, for the first time, every word to the song written about first loss; for some, first rejection. A song about coming of age and losing a first love, utterly mind-boggled as to why, that it causes a terrible amount of grief so insufferable, that some never escape its clenches. The man with three tears tattooed under his right eye made me feel, through song, what he was feeling inside. The man, shouting to the world with a booming and raging baritone voice, was doing the best he could do with the cards dealt to him. His loss, so severe that stunted his mental development, now finds an abandoned little boy in an adult body, absolutely clueless why he is without a home; why his hands are soiled and shaking; why he was locked up for trying to survive; and why the whole world now spits on him for merely existing.
- - All the love gone bad turned my world to black - -
- - Tattooed all I see, all that I am, all that I’ll be - -
The man finished the song and lit his freshly-rolled cigarette as the imaginary Mike McCready took the crowd on a bone-crushing journey of amplified psychosis that lasted nearly as long as the featured artist's cigarette. As the ghost guitar solo gently faded into black, I began to walk away from the arena and at the exact same time, both Joe Smith (Stringer) and The Man With Three Tears sang out, in perfect harmony, the renowned last notes of the live version sang by millions before us:
Do-do-doot-doot-do-dee-do
Do-do-doot-doot-do-dee-do
Do-do-doot-doot-do-dee-do
Remastered and edited (proofed) on Dec 10, 2023 by Stringer.
Song Credit: "Black" recorded by Pearl Jam and released in 1991 under Epic Records