Long Way Gone by Charles Martin

Author:Charles Martin
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Thomas Nelson
Published: 2016-09-01T04:00:00+00:00

Either through experience or condition, we think of a bar as a good-time hangout. It’s primarily a function of flashing neon signs and media bombardment, but think about the names we give them. Lounge. Speakeasy. Watering hole. Club. Do any of those sound like someplace you don’t want to go? ’Course not.

Think about every advertisement you’ve ever seen for wine, beer, or spirits. Very intelligent and well-paid executives have spent hundreds of millions of dollars to cause you, Pavlov’s dog, to salivate at the sight or sound of their ad. Television shows with catchy theme songs do the same. Who doesn’t want to go someplace where everybody knows your name? Where you can pull up a chair and laugh with your friends. Take a load off with total strangers. Turn your back on the outside world, even if just for an hour.

But the longer I lived on Broadway, the clearer it became to me. Truth is, folks frequent bars to medicate something. That something is one thing when they walk in. It’s another after a few drinks. Usually less shrouded. Alcohol is the great unveiler. The backstage tour. The thing that pulls back the curtain on Oz. Most who walk in that door drink to drown. Or drown out.

The second major lesson I learned is that an entertainer lives three lives. They occur in descending order. And like gravity, no one escapes the inevitability. The first is the best. It’s the ascendancy. The rocket shot. Where they feed daily on the all-you-can-eat buffet of hope and promise. That’s the one everybody talks about and likes to remember.

The brilliance of the flame varies, but for a star to be made, a rocket must take off. Some possess the blast of a bottle rocket. Some the Endeavor. Stars vary in their brilliance, and some shine longer than others. Whether a long, slow burn, a trip to Mars, or a self-inflicted flash-in-the-pan, they all eventually run out of gas. It’s the nature of being the rocket. And as their sustainability fades, the has-been entertainers are left orbiting the casinos, which are filled with broken people who have hung their hope on the lever, the wheel, the dice, or the cards, praying, “Please, dear God . . .” And because casinos are really good at taking people’s money and making them feel worse than they did when they walked in, they offer live entertainment to medicate the malaise. Or lessen the blow.

No matter how bright the marquees, the casino stage is the entertainer’s second life. And while there are exceptions, casinos are cemeteries for entertainers. Where stars go to flame out. From Biloxi to Atlantic City to Vegas, casinos pay the has-beens to be, once again, what they once were. Which they never are. Fading stars take the money—which they swore they’d never do when they were riding high—and gig to thinning crowds and tired memories, in clothes that are too tight, with voices that don’t carry. Because some applause is better than no applause.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.