Many years ago, in another life with another wife, I decided to take a break from the growing tensions of marriage and give it a week’s rest.  So I gathered up a quick overnight bag and a couple of changes of clothes and went off to spend some time with a musician friend and his girlfriend at their house ostensibly to do some writing together, but really, just to get away.

Without knowing what I was getting into, I moved from the frying pan to the fire.  My piano playing friend and his girlfriend were on the verge of their own breakup and fought like cats and dogs day and night so much so that I started to go a little nuts.  Finally begging off, I left them and moved into another friend’s apartment for the rest of the week back in the city.  He lived in a 5th floor walkup in a railroad flat on 46th street just off the Broadway Theater District and adjacent to Hell’s Kitchen.  He was to be gone for the weekend and kindly left me the keys to his crash pad.

It was a hot August in New York City.  No air-conditioning, noisy and lonely.  I was miserable, feeling sorry for myself, upended, forced out of my own home and pretty low.  Saturday night came and I had nothing to do, nowhere to go.  I sat around this lonely apartment trying to figure out my life until I just couldn’t take it anymore.

So about midnight I headed out to Times Square, man on the loose, to where the action is on a hot August Saturday night in New York City.  I got what I asked for.  With a whore on every corner and the drunks in between, the pushers and the wide-eyes, the narcos and the queens, it was the wild and wacky 70s of Times Square.  The heat only increased the feeling of desperation in the city and the air was heavy with the funk of the street.

I wandered around for a couple of hours in the midst of all this wondering where in Hell I was and what had brought me there.  Luckily none of Times Square’s pleasures held any appeal for me that night and so I returned back to my 5th floor walkup a beaten and even more depressed outcast of a man.

When I got back into the apartment it seemed even hotter than before – the temperature still in the high 90s at 3 am.  I lay in bed and tried to sleep, but my jumbled mind just would not let me.  So I finally got up, grabbed my guitar and went out to the only place I could think of to get a breath of air – the fire escape.

For the next 3 hours I sat, played and finally figured out my life until the sun rose on another hot August day.   In the course of that turning point on a fire escape, I wrote this song.

Sweet Purity

My childhood dreams are faded
And life is not at all
As I thought it would be
For everywhere I look the world is jaded
And time moves on
While I’m madly turning corners
Searching for the child in me

Sweet purity
Deep within the memory of me
I long for my sweet purity
Deep within me

Rollin’ on an’ on
An’ on an’ on in me

My shallow hopes have ended
And I am not at all as I thought I would be
In time the shattered images are mended
And life goes on
While I’m slowly learning lessons
Looking for the child in me

Sweet purity
Deep within the memory of me
I long for my sweet purity
Deep within me

And there
Behind the staggered steps of time
And there
Behind the shambles of a lifetime
I am seeking out the traces of a child
I’m searching for my
Sweet purity
Deep within the memory of me
I long for my sweet purity
Deep within me

Rollin’ on an’ on
An’ on an’ on in me
I’m searching for my
Sweet purity
Rollin’ on an’ on in me
I’ve been looking all over this world
But I think I’ll find it
Deep down within the very soul of me