shoulder fixed before. Jimmy asked that Harry go see his doctor in the morning, insisting that he report back to the rest of the band by tomorrow evening; but for now he would have to sit out this rehearsal.
In the studio Jimmy told Harry to listen closely to the lyrics, to concentrate on the words and not the music, pressed him to seek out the possible sources for the songs story, prized him to measure, to feel if the darkness was balanced by the light.
Jimmy stood aloof at the microphone, began with a whisper, stepped slowly as if following a rivers swell, before becoming a raging torrent of repetition; repetition without rhyme or reason, but louder and louder, increasingly more tormented.
Occasionally Jimmy would kick out; it appeared to come from a deep subconscious, or was a reflex that no one understood; the musicians played along, clattering cymbals, thrashing guitars; then a fall back, to the soft sublime steel slide mourning wail, a sound from the deep; a lost soul sound that echoed Jimmy's cry, as if a wolf cub parted from its mother.
Jimmy's mother loved him but she could not forgive his love of so many others, she was the mother who named him Benjamin, for all the wrong reasons.
Jimmy had been unable to explain his insatiable desire for love to his mother; so unable were they to talk that instead they fought; and when drink was present they fought with intolerant passion, their hatred, of the desirous love of the others lovers caused wild explosions. As animals they scratched and tore at each others skin, settled only by the drawn blood and the mutual humiliation.
But Jimmy showed no remorse, to the point that he became a braggart about his beastly disregard for his mothers dignity. It seemed he wanted to strip her totally of her precious dignity, Jimmy wanted to see her bare and bleeding, he wanted his band to see her bare, bleeding and in tears; he wanted all the hangers on, all the down and out and dead beats to see his mother bare, bleeding and in tears; stripped entirely, uniquely stripped by Jimmy of her precious bloody dignity.
Jimmy lived for music and drink and sex (he called it love). He live so that all his waking hours were entirely consumed by activity.
