Somebody to Love? (34 page)
“It's all going the way it's supposed to be going
Otherwise, it would be going some other way.”
—S
ANDY
H
ARPER
, 1978
Sandy is a normal guy I once met, who made that statement just before giving me several tapes by Ram Dass. Both men are gentle, searching individuals who seem to be as comfortable as the animals with “the way it is.”
When I look carefully, the physical
pain
of dying is what I fear more than the actual death itself. And then, pride enters into it, too. I don't want the mailman to show up one day and discover a bloated, gassy mess with a rictus grimace. The poised sleeping beauty pose would be nifty, but since it's too late for that, a more artistic alternative has occurred to me. The following is in no way a death wish. I like life just fine, but when the time comes, my favorite way of dying would be by …
EXPLOSION—all over white walls!
I would initially swallow a tiny pill—unfortunately they haven't invented it yet, but imagine it's on a timer. Maybe the duration would be fifteen seconds, just so there's not too much time to think about it. When the thing explodes, I'll be pulverized into so many millions of tiny pieces, nobody will be able to identify me. I'll simply be all over the place, splattered on the walls, the ceiling, the floor, the furniture. And the fragments will be so minuscule, the effect won't be the slightest bit disgusting. You won't be able to identify my brains from my liver from my heart from my fingernails. There'll just be reddish, bluish, yellowish colors all over the place. Body colors. Then you can cover the whole thing with Verathane to preserve it as a one-room art piece. The ultimate art piece. Too bad Andy Warhol is gone; I know he could have gotten into it.
My last idiotic contribution to humankind.
My only stumbling block is the pill. Somebody needs to invent it. If a medical scientist reads this and is interested in getting involved, you know who to contact. Good old Rick.
Until then, concentration on living in balance seems to be the ticket, so I intend to continue my artistic pursuits by drawing and writing because it makes me feel at peace and alive. During this year, 1997, as Andrea and I are writing this book, so many people who've contributed to the happiness of the world have died in just the two months of August and September. It's a grouping of losses that seems to ask all of us to rethink our own priorities, to appreciate rather than deprecate, to enjoy, to laugh, to help, and to try to get to our own truth. A spiritual teacher, Stephen Levine, reminds us: “Live like it's your last year of life.”
A Few Closing Words
I
see this life as a portrait that is mine to manifest in my own way, a universe of pictures we trade with each other as kids trade baseball cards. And on the other hand, if information comes through that renders that concept ineffective, I'm going to have to swallow either my pride or a bowl of battery acid and get over myself.
Do I contradict myself? Of course. When the evidence comes in that I've constructed yet another house of cards that's about to fall (unless I start over and construct a different foundation), what am I going to do—stand under all that crumbling plastic-covered paper and try to hold it up?
So what are
you
doing with
your
empty canvas? Here's what
I've
done with mine, and I'll continue to change it as the opportunity arises.
Looking backward or forward is easier than looking in the mirror
right now
to determine who I am. The image is crowded with past perceptions and tantalized by future possibilities. All I can say for sure is that at the moment, I'm living in a house in Malibu, painting life and wondering about death, being enchanted by the beauty of this land by the ocean, watching time carve lines in my face and hands, running up long-distance phone bills to my friends spread across the country, turning up the heat in the pool for my thin-skinned friends here in L.A., getting to know and love my cowriter, wishing my mom and dad could come and stay in my peaceful house, hoping my daughter enjoys the “trip,” and waiting for the next curveball to come sliding out of the Master Pitcher's mysterious south paw.
Will I get back into the music business? Not unless Mark Isham calls up and says he has a title track that requires a singer with the vocal range of a four-ton frog.
Will I get married again? No, I still feel married to Skip Johnson, and besides, Timothy Leary's dead.
I love that the changes keep surprising me, that we're given the palette of colors at birth and the majority of images are ours to create.
Life, the constantly mutating funeral party.
Do I have anything I'd like to say in closing?
YES.
JEFFERSON AIRPLANE
Jefferson Airplane Takes Off
(RCA, 1966)
Surrealistic Pillow
(RCA, 1967)
After Bathing at Baxter's
(RCA, 1967)
Crown of Creation
(RCA, 1968)
Volunteers
(RCA, 1969)
Bark
(Grunt, 1971)
Long John Silver
(Grunt, 1972)
Early Flight
(Grunt, 1974)
Jefferson Airplane
(Epic, 1989)
Live Albums
Bless Its Pointed Little Head
(RCA, 1969)
Woodstock
(Cotillion, 1970)
Woodstock Two
(Cotillion, 1971)
Thirty Seconds over Winterland
(Grunt, 1973)
Live at the Monterey Festival
(Thunderbolt, 1990)
Monterey International Pop Festival Volume 3
(Rhino, 1992)
Woodstock—25th Anniversary Collection
(Atlantic, 1994)
Compilations
The Worst of Jefferson Airplane
(RCA, 1970)
Flight Log
(Grunt, 1977)
2400 Fulton Street
(RCA, 1987)
White Rabbit and Other Hits
(RCA, 1990)
Jefferson Airplane Loves You
(RCA, 1992)
Best Of
(RCA, 1993)
JEFFERSON STARSHIP
Dragon Fly
(RCA, 1974)
Red Octopus
(Grunt, 1975)
Spitfire
(Grunt, 1976)
Earth
(Grunt, 1978)
Freedom at Point Zero
(Grunt, 1979)
Modern Times
(RCA, 1981)
Winds of Change
(Grunt, 1982)
Nuclear Furniture
(RCA, 1984)
Live Albums
Deep Space/Virgin Sky
(Intersound, 1995)
Compilations
Gold
(Grunt, 1979)
At Their Best
(RCA, 1992)
STARSHIP
Knee Deep in the Hoopla
(RCA, 1985)
No Protection
(RCA, 1987)
Love among the Cannibals
(RCA, 1989)
Compilations
Greatest Hits (Ten Years and Change, 1979–1991)
(RCA, 1991)
PAUL KANTNER & JEFFERSON STARSHIP
Blows against the Empire
(RCA, 1970)
PAUL KANTNER & GRACE SLICK
Sunfighter
(Grunt, 1971)
PAUL KANTNER, GRACE SLICK, & DAVID FREIBERG
Baron Von Tollbooth and the Chrome Nun
(Grunt, 1973)
GRACE SLICK
Manhole
(Grunt, 1973)
Dreams
(RCA, 1980)
Welcome to the Wrecking Ball
(RCA, 1981)
Software
(RCA, 1984)
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SOMEBODY TO LOVE
S
he was the original “great rock diva,” the lead singer of Jefferson Airplane who stood at the forefront of the sixties and seventies counterculture and belted out classics like “White Rabbit” and “Somebody to Love.” Now, in her own inimitable voice, Grace Slick offers a revealing self-portrait of the complex woman behind the rock-outlaw image, and delivers a behind-the-scenes, no-holds-barred view of rock’s grandest stages. Wildly funny, candid, and evocative. SOMEBODY TO LOVE? tells what it was really like during, and after, the Summer of Love—and how one remarkable woman survived it all.
“CANDID, UNPRETENTIOUS...REFRESHINGLY IRREVERENT...A CAUSTIC CANDOR MAKES HER BOOK MILES MORE APPEALING THAN THE STANDARD ROCKER’S AUTOBIOGRAPHY.”
—Entertainment Weekly
“WITH GUSTO AND DIGNITY, HILARITY AND DEBAUCHERY, GRACE SLICK, THE FIRST LADY OF ROCK, HAS RECOUNTED for OUR EDIFICATION THE ERA SHE REIGNED OVER.”
—Danny Sugerman, coauthor of
No One Here Gets Out Alive
and author of
Wonderland Avenue