Henry Rollins and I will never hangout and smoke pot together. But in the dream I had the night after seeing him perform a two hour 'spoken word' at the Bearsville theater near Woodstock NY, we got along marvelously and I seemed to be in charge of his coat and ride as he bopped in between black clad aesthetes reveling in his innate coolness. 
Up close live, he's a bundle of anger, humor and uneasy energy that doesn't belie an almost fifty year mortal coil. A simple gray t-shirt and pair of dickies are testament to an underlying physical presence that houses a set of tatooed pipes attached to a taught chest. The only thing I recall from a Rolling Stone interview over a decade ago was how annoyed he was at the reporter for being late and messing with his workout regimen. Fortunately he just met the ten minute late rule, so as not to rouse my own internal ire of the moment. I didn't start laughing and buying his schtick the moment he graced the stage however.
Instead I was waiting to pounce on whatever political he revealed after expressing his relief at being in front of the enlightened Woodstock set.
A couple weeks ago after I sent Doug Stanhope's website a note wondering if he'd be interested in carpet bagging into New York to run for governor. I had a silly notion that maybe Rollins might be a good fit. Surely he's anti-establishment, populist material with enough intellectual wherewithal to be a possibility. Low and behold I find out he's in Woodstock on May 15th ! That's about an hour just over the river from us and it fit nicely into a whole mother's day treat for the wife just to get out and do something different.
I remember sometime in the mid-eighties when a bunch of friends didn't wait for me to come back from a MacDonald's shift to go see Black Flag at the Albany VFW. They had an awesome time and still talk about it, I think. While I wasn't a 'spastik' as Rollins describes his own peers in high school who couldn't play soccer or baseball, I never quite fit into any hardcore, straightedge or punk mold. Being pasty white with curly red hair does that to a kid. But I have maintained a general awareness of what's ultra-cool, like Rollins, and have seen some of his interviews on IFC etc. I'm so clueless, I didn't even consider the ramifications of khakis and a yellow LL Bean shirt to an affair like this. At least kate had sandals and a pseudo hippy shirt and necklace.
After he pegs the crowd as transplanted Manhattanite and Brooklyners escaping crack vials and rats in the walls and before he talks about tears for Obama and the plethora of material from Bush, he let's you know his basic worldview. No war is acceptable and there's always a better option. All people everywhere want and need dignity and a reasonable shot at making it from day to day. Check, all of those. If Americans travel and interact with the world it won't seem like a place full of evil bogeymen. Check. He just starts skirting the issues of public education and healthcare as enormous stupid problems that Americans don't get and prefers to beat up conservative stereotypes rather than bite to hard into the latter. A definite libertarian disappoint. He's no anarchist, still distrusts 'the man', but is willing to give Obama a chance because he's better than Bush. Ugh.
So the general world cosmopolitan argument turns to a litany of rather hilarious travel stories around the world. Of course my political arrears are relaxed somewhat and enjoying this multiple association and anecdotal diatribe is far easier. Aside from some obvious 'daddy' issues and a real weird molester sequence that went from John Steinbeck to justifying the FDR abominations, which started as an odd description of a TSA pat down and real dark point about touchy people, heartbeats and ripping brains out through the nostrils, Rollins proceeds to take the audience around the world on his journeys. He ditches his government appointed guide in Tehran and finally gets a shop keeper to laugh as he works the mic with loud thumps and booms, showing us how he beat himself in emulation of that practice we all marvel at here.
In between a hilarious recounting of joining a protest in Islamabad and getting excoriated for being there by his assistant Heather, he shows a compassion for human interaction as simple as just identifying himself simply as Henry and proceeding with whatever happens. He takes coffee in Syria with a cab driver and his family, leaving sweaty 'glute prints' and a rickety chair after bursting around the house on a five shot caffeine fix. And back through TSA checkpoints with Syria on his passport getting the work over from agents. His own self-deprecation about the contents of his whacky dire journals as the agents start to read it aloud is as self-effacing as any outside observer of oneself can be.
A decision to proceed to Loas, Cambodia and Vietnam as a waylay between Australia and Europe evokes a sequence about another guide whose antics and recounting of makes the first hour melt away as the who's on first type of things leads to 'what's your life' and Mr. Curves and a existential battle with a bug that gives real belly laughs. While I will look up the 'plain of jars' for lack of knowledge, its not so vague when its about the Cambodian killing Fields and Vietnam sequences, which are as poignant as they are incredible human and some humor to boot. While I'm farther along the tyranny sequences as far as my dim view of any government, Rollins does evoke a sympathy for those hounded and killed by tyrants first. Thus a whole diatribe about intolerance and the hope that the bigots like his dad die off soon.
Rollins has a left bias and an anti-right grind that sort of excuses the equally insidious counterpart that is the inevitable American yin and yang. His autodidatic high energy approach to time and life is what makes him an awesome ambassador to all crowds and human deviations. There's no break in the two hours that he riddles with stories, asides and general huamn truths and observations. I'm sure we'd get along great while traveling. I'm just like him, throw the bags in the room and hit the streets. He's fortunate enough to have a career and life outside marriage, suburbia and the dreary sequences that follow. While he's a city kid gone global, my own bucolic pursuits serve my own awareness as deeply as any THC induced burst of energy and dynamics that fit Rollins without the infusion of the latter. Aside from his kidding about divorced guys and Ebay album sales, there is a fleeting glance at some trifle perhaps of loneliness that doesn't completely transcend the intense go see the world kinda guy that he in fact is. He does seem to revel in the hotspots, though he doesn't tell of any ventures to Somalia while traveling Africa. But whether this is a natural inclination to some Bono-ism type tendency is hard to discern.
The 'spoken word' is funny, ambitious, touching and revealing of one man's nature and its relation to the world. You do hope that the insular hipness that ends up in the busy Bear Cafe bar does go beyond the boomer angst there for those who might be there themselves in twenty, thirty, forty years. This X'er appreciates Rollins and wonders if he'd be interested in making one of those next five documentaries in Iceland, rather than some exotic locale in order to bring back news of rage and hope to a placated Americanism that needs to see the rest of the world.
For me this consciousness of peace and prosperity may go no further than my shed and wood pile today, but having beat me brains out electorally against the rage of war and hatred so recently, I have no suburban pangs of guilt about my relation to it all. Now if only I can find Henry's email and send this along to him in all it's unedited Saturday morning glory . . .
Nice post Eric. I've never been a big fan of Black Flag or punk in general, and none of Rollins' spoken word stuff stands out in my memory enough to have made an impression, but reading your account makes me want to hear him do a travelogue. I'm that kind of traveler too. Not that I'm keen on traveling into war zones, but I kind of like being in places that are a bit gritty and edgy, or just culturally unfamiliar enough to be surprising.
Did you ever read "Get in the Van"? I found it inspiring when I read it a good 15 years ago. The comedic element was less evident then - the book is raw introspection. Something like Bukowski might have written if he had more wanderlust and less booze.
Bukowski's wanderlust only made it to the Post Office . . . I'll check it out.