Uncle Bob and Jonny and the Dream

If you saw yesterday's post, you know Uncle Bob was The Great Plotnik's first songwriter mentor. Of the three people in yesterday's photo, Diana is today still playing violin in the Big Shmapple, Plottie is still writing songs, and the man in the Grateful Dead shirt, Plotnik's old friend and bass player Jon, is dead.



After seeing Bob and Janet last night for the first time since Jon died, Plotnik realizes that Jon left a crater in Uncle Bob's heart as well as in Plottie's own. After all, Bob knew Jon all his life and Plotnik and Ducknik only met Jon at 19. There has been no closure for anybody. Cancer and heroin are deadly ways to live and when you put them both together they're rough to fight, and even rougher for anyone on the outside to comprehend. It's hard, now, to get our fingers around it, we reach and come up empty. It's a wound that just keeps on giving.



Uncle Bob turns 74 today. His voice has Jon's same upper Manhattan lilt and he cocks his head a little bit to his right when he can't answer a question immediately, the same way Jon did. Bob is in some ways from an earlier generation than Plottie (Bob once wrote a song with Hoagie Carmichael, one of Plotnik's heroes) but Plot was the same amount older than Jon and nobody ever really felt it. Jon and Bob and Plotnik shared a few golden years in the Big Shmapple and after last night Plot realizes he can't think of the Shmapple without thinking of Jon and can't think of Jon without thinking of Bob and can't think of those days without being almost overcome with...what? Well, Marvin Gaye said it: Pride. And Joy.

It's wonderful to see Janet and Bob. But they live in the Berkshires and that may as well be Berserkistan.

Early this morning Plotnik dreamed once again of the old house on Avon Street in Stiletto City, the house his kids grew up in, the house right around the corner from where The Great Punkydunky and The Great FiveHead and Baby Isabella live now, the neighborhood they're trying to leave.

Usually, when Plot dreams of this house, he is a usurper there, the new owner doesn't know the Plotniks have snuck back in, and Plotnik is frightened the new owners will come home and find Plot and his family crashing in the living room. But in last night's dream Plotnik had purchased the house, and moved back, and was very, very happy to be there. All was not only well, it was exciting to be home. The only question was which of the many, many strange and new rooms Plot would use for his office.

And then he woke up in Saint Plotniko, in his bed, in his house, filled with questions and with no answers in sight. Why do we live the way we do? What makes some people live long and some people die young? And what will ever make us happy?



Maybe all any of us needs is someone to stand guard for us, to face back our demons. Plotnik and Uncle Bob both wish to the bottom of their hearts they could have done that for Jonny. That feeling is not going to go away soon, either.