Interview With the Dead Boy - Raymond Mizsak

Interview with The Dead Boy -Raymond Mizsak So Raymond, do you know what happened to you? Why you died? Yeah, I know what happened to me, man, but I don’t remember it happening, Cause I was in my sleeping bag sleeping, I never heard nothing that morning, except, wait, I do remember some guys talking from the stage saying good morning everyone, then all the sudden I am hearing nothing. Where I am now, you get to find out what happened to ya, you know, when you croak. Never thought I’d be run over by a freaking tractor, man! Heard later a couple other dudes died there like me. A big bummer in the summer. So Raymond, where were you from before dying at Woodstock? I grew up in New Jersey in areas around Newark, My house was always filled with music and dancing on the rug, From Jim Lowe to Fats Domino to Buddy Holly, then Elvis and Bobby Rydell, and Frankie Avalon to Jimmy Charles and Ricky Nelson, man, those were some kind of crazy great times for music! But the best music was still to come! Beatles and the Stones were rocking and knocking inside my bedroom walls in 1965! Then came the greatest, the Jimi Hendrix Experience, the band I went to see at Woodstock! But, he went last man, and…by then, damn! I went to Woodstock, not to die, man, but to hear the music of The Experience! Instead I heard Sweetwater and Ravi Shankar, while lying in the grass there, looking up at the stars. Dig It! Like it was really really cool, man. Like, I had a psychedelic experience, man! I was with this chick named Prism and We cried tears when Ravi played… I can still hear him, man! Still hear him playing that cool haunting music, as it soared winglike way up high there, in the heavy air that night; Think I saw my death coming before it happened, man! Had some icebag from Prism as a sort of cocktail, And then I saw a lot more than stars! I saw gods in the millions coming out of the crowd like electrified gnats in misery after a black rain. Raymond, were you there when Richie Havens played? Yeah man, I was there. He was on stage playing his guitar like a madman. It seemed like he’d play forever ‘cause Sweetwater couldn’t get in! Too much freaking traffic! But yeah, man, I saw him play. Great guitar strumming on a few of those pieces. Handsome Johnny, that’s it! I remember now, he was playing Handsome Johnny when I met this brown-eyed girl named Prism. She had reefer, so we went to the same field where I died, and we smoked away my final night, through Bert Sommer and Tim Hardin, until Ravi Shankar took the stage with his sitar. Any lessons to be learned in retrospect Raymond? No man. No lessons to be learned at all! Dude, look at me, I am a dead kid, A dude who never grew up. Never became a man or a father with a family, Never found love with a girl or had a career. I am eternally seventeen because Some stoned idiot ran over me with his tractor On a sunny Saturday morning in August of ’69, while I was sleeping, man! I was only sleeping! No lessons learned at all! Interview over now.