I paid a little visit to Gary the other day. He wrote so many beautiful songs. He got to the bottom of it all. Completely inside of everything, from the outside. Always. He wasn’t playing in the game at all. Not yours anyway. He was in a different field altogether. Higher ground. There where people write and create for sheer survival and don’t even know they are slaving away in a diamond factory. There where there is nothing else. No glamour. No arrival. No acceptance. No place. No ground. No club. No validation. No hit parade, Guggenheim, Grammy, Canada Council, Juno, no, no, no. No website. No management, publicist, booking agent. No fucking chance. No record sales. It’s not so much that he was against all of that, it just kinda seemed against him. Because he was mercury. Because he was fluid. Because he was dangerously uncontainable. There was no big break for Gary. You can’t google him and get very much back. No videos. Except for one on youtube of him jamming w Ginsberg which is so beautiful. Poet. Picker. Shit disturber. I’ll always miss him. He drove me fucking nuts. He thrilled me. He believed in me. Told me I was the real deal. You know what? Wow. Therefore I am. The great Gary Cramer of Brain Damage. Of Ridgerunner. Of Slocan. Of Vancouver. Of California. Of Galiano. Even a recent storm wouldn’t touch his resting place. Music saved his life. A good woman saved his life. Vipassana saved his life. Buddha. He was one of the burning ones. The electric ones. Jumping out of his own skin. Twitching. Pulsating. Dazzling. Jesus how the great ones suffer and pass so often without barely leaving a trace. The Edge itself. That was him. Ultra Jester. Joker. Merry Prankster. Peter Pan. Beat Poet and rock and roll pirate. He suffered enough here for 2 lifetimes. Laughed like hell on wheels. What songs! Changes. Desire (is a fire and it burns without love). Falling Leaves. Ego. Etc. I loved his voice. Every bit of it. All the diamonds. In his fingers. In his eyes. He left me his dream guitar, his books and films, and a message: you’re the real deal. Keep going. Gary. 1952-2006. #greatsongwriters #garycramermusic #thegreatonespass #galianoisland #theoutsiders