What would Keith Richards do_ - Jessica Pallington West [11]
If you can keep this in mind, you can get through it. If you see it as a bright shining star of possibility off on the horizon, a realm of “I’ll get there,” you have something to see you through the rough patches. It’s a punctuation mark that Keith uses often when talking about something that was less than glorious, a fall into personal failure, a gig gone bad: “There’s always the future.” It’s a ticket out of the present when the present doesn’t live up to the hype of “be here now."
As much as they tell you that the present is a present, sometimes you feel you can do without the charity of the tainted gift. That’s when the future really becomes your friend. And it can be a good friend.
26. PASS IT ON.
It’s the same thing that Muddy Waters did. And Robert Johnson, and Buddy Holly, and Elvis. They passed on the tradition, the knowledge that came before—all that was experienced and learned. You learn it, you master it, you give it to the coming generations that follow you. And it’s the message that Keith says he’d like on his tombstone: “He passed it on."
There are a lot of ways to pass it on and a lot of things to pass on—whether it be in lessons of kindness, or the playing of an instrument, or the understanding of all the blues (and other colors) in your life. Pass on love, kindness, good deeds on the sly, cheer, music, and wisdom. And through this act, you will continue on. Even if the process of acquiring the knowledge was more like passing a kidney stone, still, in the end, the art and the act of passing it on is one of the most profound actions toward immortality.
CHAPTER TWO
WHAT WOULD
KEITH DO?
LIVING LIFE THE
KEITH WAY
RICHARDS
SOLVING PROBLEMS BY
CHANNELING YOUR
INNER KEITH
The troubles keep coming: You fall off a ladder in a library and are buried under the entire Encyclopaedia Britannica. You fall onstage in Frankfurt, slipping on a frankfurter. You fall onstage in Hamburg, slipping on a hamburger. You fall out of a tree. Your head is opened by surgeons for a look around. You innocently snort your father’s ashes and are seen as a degenerate by the entire world when the news gets out. You’re given six months to live. You live past those six months. You grimly go to the funeral of the doctor who gave you the bad news. You stay up for three straight days on purpose. Then you stay up for seven more by accident. You’re banned from Japan. Your daughter is sent away to live with your mother because your lifestyle is too extreme. A teenager shoots himself in your house while you’re away. Your girlfriend was reportedly in the bed where it happened (while she was also practicing witchcraft and playing Russian roulette). You fall asleep standing up and break your nose. You’re given a permanent place on the international customs watch list. Every time you look around, you wonder if there are unmarked cars watching you. You’re usually right. You’re arrested at the airport when you thought they’d given up on that game already. Martin Scorsese watches it all from the sidelines without intervening. You’re attacked onstage. You wake up with cops around your bed. You’re spit on. Your hair is yanked. You’re threatened with death. You’re put on the most-likely-to-die list yet again. You’re insulted by being taken off the most-likely-to-die list and replaced by some amateur punk.
Maybe some of these things have happened to you.
Or maybe they will happen to you. There is, after all, as Keith says, always the future.
And when they do happen, if they happen, what do you do?
First: Accept the fact, as stated by Keith in Commandment 24, that “Hey, shit happens."
That’s step number one.
That done, you have half the battle won.
Solving a problem involves 50 percent attitude and 50 percent technical know-how.
Fifty percent of each comes through