Catholic Boy

"There will always be a poem, I will climb on top of it and come in and out of time, cocking my head to the side slightly, as I finish shaking, melting then into its body, its soft skin is not a lie"--Jim Carroll, "Poem" from Void of Course (1998)

Jim Carroll died on September 14, 2009 and hardly anyone noticed. He had the twin misfortunes of being a fringe artist and dying on the same day as Patrick Swayze. I'm sure many people have no idea who Jim was. Jim was an author, poet, and occasional punk rocker. And he was a genius.

I first became aware of Jim in 1985 while watching a film called Tuff Turf that actors James Spader and Robert Downey Jr. have surely excised from their resumes. Turf was a run of the mill teen flick about a newly poor preppie (Spader) who lands in a rough (or Tuff) high school and falls in love with the girlfriend of a half ass bad ass who doesn't take well to him playing tonsil hockey with his lady. Yeah, it's that kind of flick. And the only reason I remember it at all is because of the cameo by Jim Carroll. Exceedingly tall, with alabaster skin, and as thin as a cadaver, Jim shows up in a club scene where he and his band play two songs. He was incredibly striking and vibrant, not to mention completely out of place in this sub-John Hughes wannabe but not even close in their wildest dreams crapfest.

I didn't reacquaint myself with Jim's work again until the release of the Leonardo Dicaprio movie The Basketball Diaries in 1994. Based loosely on Jim's autobiographical take on his high school years in New York City, Diaries didn't make much of a splash upon it's release. While Dicaprio gives a terrific performance playing Jim, the film's heroin using, homosexual hustling protagonist was not the kind of subject that was going to extend to the masses. But it did put Jim back on my radar. I searched out his cds, purchased books of his poems, and read his diary, so to speak.

What I found was a man with a great gift for a turn of a phrase. Nakedly honest, and alternately hilarious and harrowing, his collected works were a revelation to me.

The book version of The Basketball Diaries was far darker and funnier than the film that bore it's name. Jim tells the story of an NYC boy from the ages of 12-15. A star on his catholic school basketball team, Jim soon descends into heroin use, gets kicked off the team and prostitutes himself to pay for his habit. Dark stuff certainly, but clever, fast, and surprisingly triumphant (if not repentant) in the end. Jim became a bit of a New York legend after it's release. Diaries was like Scorsese's Mean Streets in a printed form. Every word seeps with the grimy knowledge of New York's underbelly far below it's blinding lights. Consider this passage:

"We got off in the park tonight with some nice scag that Joey L. copped down around Chelsea and we hit into the Bucket Of Blood, that friendly neighborhood tavern, totally twisted. Jimmy Mancole and Henry rapped to Joey at the bar. Brian and I sat in the booth on the nod. Everything was cool until three gentlemen strutted in through the side door and headed to the bar. They were all wearing trench coats and little feathered fedoras, two white guys and one black. They had a slightly-for-the-worse grey car parked in front. Their outfits meant one of two things: they were either basketball scouts or narcotic cops. Since basketball scouts seldom hung around in the Bucket, it seemed likely they were the latter. In fact it couldn't have been more obvious if all three had little red lights spinning around the tops of their fedoras."

Spare, streetwise, and more than a little wicked, Jim was a natural from the start.

Jim wasn't afraid to stretch himself either. His debut punk rock album Catholic Boy was released in 1980 to effusive praise. The title track, "City Drops Into The Night", and the classic rollicking eulogy for lost friends, "People Who Died," prove that Jim could have just as easily been another Lou Reed if he wanted. "People Who Died" is particularly stunning and truly serves as his musical calling card. Moving at a breakneck pace "Died" recounts a laundry list of lost friends in Jim's rather young life. Here's a lyrical sample:

"Herbie pushed Tony from the Boys' Club roof, Tony thought that his rage was just some goof, But Herbie sure gave Tony some bitchen proof, "Hey," Herbie said, "Tony, can you fly?"But Tony couldn't fly, Tony died."

Jim went on to make a few more fine if increasingly overlooked albums. After his brush with Dicaprio level fame he seemed to settle into his cult status and return to his first love, poetry.

By no means am I any sort of expert on poetry. In fact, I consider a great deal of it pretty tiresome. I mean hell, Jewel put out a book of poetry. Jewel, the woman who wrote "Hands" for Pete's sake. But Jim's stuff is something different. It feels lived in, with exposed bones, and even when I don't quite understand it (which is more often than I care to admit), I am transfixed by his striking use of words, his bare knuckled prose. Chelsea May from "Fear of Dreaming" is one of my favorites, and it goes a little something like this:

A pair of frozen dice come
tumble through picture windows
the sun slips out and
she is standing at the gate
with all her possibilities

I conceal so much
moving in and out of poetry
I could have simply left a note
tell you how I hate
getting up each morning and
drink coffee, feeling unsightly sick and...

What Coleridge couldn't admit, well,
Dequincey, he cashed in on it.

do you see,
Chelsea May?

it's just a feeling I have at times
I want to live until I want to die
and I don't want their cures
no matter what they say
my mind is shot into storms
and she's leaning on the gate

Several years ago Jim came to Notre Dame to perform a poetry reading on campus. I was stuck at work that night and unable to attend. For me, it's up there with not seeing Nirvana before Kurt took his own life. There will be no more second chances. Because Jim Carroll died on September 14th 2009 at his desk with his boots on, working. Moving in and out of poetry with his mind shot into storms. Goodbye Jim.

Sumo-Pop
November 4, 2009

Here is the link to the music video of Jim's classic "People Who Died"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bOjc70f4p8