Going For A Song: Early Days 7

At a party for folk singers and friends, during the early folk club era, in Toronto, I sang a blues song I had pains-takingly
practised, being very much aware it was far from the way the blues singers of the southern United States would do it. After,
I heard this voice next to me say, "So...you want to sing the blues then?"...I nodded in a vaguely affirmative way. "Well...there's only one way to do that........." said the red bearded blues man at my side, his voice trailing off towards his
meaning. He had a side line to the blues that needed new customers from time to time, and I am sure I presented a prime
target to him. I got his meaning and was reaching for words to slip out of his noose, when I was rescued by someone coming
into the room, and offering shots from a bottle of Jack Daniels. I stuck my glass out, the new-comer poured, and I gulped my
way out of becoming an initiate to mind benders other than the liquid kind. It's ironic that it was a double standard that saved me that night, from explaining that I was not going to be a customer for his goods. Over the drug inundated sixties,
I was able to stay away from illegal delusion makers, not necessarily beacause of high moral fibre, but because I didn't want
anyone or anything, to be my master. The one thing that blew me away about some of my compatriots of the sixties, was how willingly they surrendered themselves, to LSD, with its unpredictability, and well documented "bad trips". This was
something I, myself wasn't prepared to do, as easily as it seemed to be happening around me. Perhaps, they knew something I didn't know, about the good side of surrender, but giving away my power to forces outside of me, has been something that
has never come easily to me. I also carried in me the notion, that there was a way of getting naturally high, that was available, that I would connect with some day. In the interim, whisky or rum would do on those social occasions when a pause in a refuge from the greyness, was needed. It has been many years now, since these liquid comforters, have also been
put aside, although I think I understand the pain that drives some people in that direction.......................Quester.