“Back then, I was on my way to Greece, but somehow wound up in Spain on the tiny island of Formentera. The boat docked on Ibiza, but when we pulled in at 6:00 in the morning, the port was awash with people selling tee shirts and ecstasy, and Neil Young was blasting from a local bar. Peace be to Neil Young, I must have 20 of his albums, but I’d gone off traveling for silence and solitude, wind, sand, and stars. I got back on the boat.”
“Where do you dock next?”
“Formentera.”
“What’s there?”
“Nothing.”
It sounded perfect.
I found a little house in the middle of a pine grove, a twenty-minute walk to town. No running water. No electricity. Eight dollars a week. I couldn’t believe my luck. The people I rented from couldn’t believe theirs. No savvy travelers were paying more than $5. I didn’t care. I was home.
Fonda Pepe, the only bar in the nearest town, was the only place for miles around that had electricity. They were just up the road from a little church, and on Sunday nights, they would run a long extension cord into the bar, hook up an old projector, and show movies in the church. The priest insisted movies only be screened there so the devil couldn’t get in, but he allowed Fonda Pepe to serve beer during the shows.
On other nights, there was a small record player set up behind the bar along with five – count ‘em – five record albums: The Paul Butterfield Blues Band, East West, Ray Charles, What’d I Say, Creedence Clearwater, Willy & The Poor Boys, The Best of Mose Allison, Miles Davis, In A Silent Way. Back home, I’d usually devour five albums before breakfast. I had closets filled with records, shelves stacked with cassettes. But I was traveling, and I had to be open to the music of chance.
Soon I knew every second of those albums by heart—the 2-3-4 space between “Mary Mary” and “Two Trains Running,” the hiccup of horns at the end of “Rockhouse,” the unexpected softness of Mose Allison’s attack on “I Ain’t Got Nothin’ But The Blues.”
Bridget, who lived in a windmill on the other side of the road had been on the island for over ten years and had devised a sort of I Ching based on the order of the music.
“Side one of Creedence followed by side two of Ray Charles is a good omen. Money from a stranger. Good winds from distant shores. Side two of Butterfield followed by side two of Mose Allison means proceed with caution. Your pockets will soon be empty. Side one of Miles followed by side two of Miles? You’ve got to be kidding me.”
Once, she told me, there’d been a sixth album, something by John Lee Hooker. A German tourist had run off with it. “But if you need John Lee Hooker, you can always just hear him in your head.”
And on nights when there was no wind and no moon, I found that was true.”
—Brian Cullman
Brian Cullman’s The Opposite of Time is in stores now.
