While attending New York Institute of Technology in the early 1980s I saw the Jim Carroll Band. I was amazed by bits and pieces of Jim's lyrics I heard at the show:
"I want the angel
That knows rejection
She's like a whore in love with her own reflection."
"I want the angel
That will not change
Into a four-legged monster in love with the strange"
"You know when they got nothin' to give
They only part their legs for what's negative."
"...because it's too easy
To rely on worshipping devils and strangers in bed,
Though they do get good drugs, and they do give good head."
The next day I went out and bought Jim Carroll's book The Basketball Diaries. I read all of Jim's books. The writing style of The Book of Nods and especially Forced Entries had an enormus impact on me.
Jim's gracious sharing of knowledge of the fine arts and the street; his eclectic mixing of that knowledge with humor, and the eventual transformation of that knowledge into wisdom, as Jim would say: put the light in my eyes. It was a revelation that took years to assimilate. |
