Body High 27: Surviving a new phase

My pain is your entertainment, but in an instructive kind of way

As my new predawn habit demands, I was sitting on the backyard swing, looking out over the pool and the shadow of a hill and listening to the 1997 Rick James song I’ve been obsessed with all month. The screenplay was in coalescing in my mind’s eye. Everything was as the norm as I’d come to know it, except for a sense that nothing would be the same.

I hurt my knee last week and had begun walking with a cane. The past couple of days had been punishing, psychologically as well as physically painful. As in, If I am not ambulatory who even am I, really?

Walking the stairs back inside had become such a painful chore that it made sense to minimize trips to the kitchen. I was eating less and my caffeine consumption is down— so I had that goin’ for me—but climbing and descending hurt to an extreme, in a way that struck me permanent.

I felt my… my age. Even older, I suppose.

An old man with a cane, I exhaled into the brightening sky, reached for my support, and hoisted myself out of the swing. Getting up only hurt a little bit—the new benchmark of success. Once back inside, I made my way through the dark living room, dreading the stairs in my future.

My obsession with Rick James’ “West Coast Thing” is pretty rich. Even if the ambitious funk track were not a terrific sorta culmination of 20th-century Black American music—extraordinarily arranged for funk of that period—I’d have been all over it. Fallen hero stories are among the most fascinating kind.

The song came out seven years before James died at 56. Its album Urban Rapsody was the artist’s first since going to prison for an array of drug-fueled transgressions.

Pickin’ up honeys in his hot whip and runnin’ them over to Venice Beach? Shoot, the nigga who wrote this perfect piece of pop needs hip replacement surgery and has worn out his White LA welcome worse than OJ.

Back in 97, at the kitchen table in James’ San Fernando Valley mansion, he gave me a guitar lesson after an interview. (That shit did not work) And the inventor of punk-funk wept when recounting the harm and disappointment that his hubris and entitlement had caused over a hunk of rampaging years.

What most stays in my soul from that interview, however, is a song Rick James wrote and produced for The Temptations.

It was way back in 1982, and the reassembled Motown vocal quintet hadn’t had a Top-40 hit in a dozen years. Meanwhile, the song’s author was way, way out there. Still, an incomparable hit-making machine, but over his skis on the coca leaf, James remained with it enough to see his own next act taking form.

In one of my all-time favorite writing feats, the former James Johnson of Buffalo, New York Cyrano’d his very personal vision to the masses, using one of the greatest vocal groups in the planet’s history to deliver his narrative. James and his vessel Temps made a prescient R&B classic.

When you're on the top
There's no place you can really go but down, down, down
People on the street congratulate you
They say they love the way you sound, well

When you're on the low
No one wants to chit or chat or even know your name
Your agent's never there
Your manager has ripped you off and gone somewhere
Standing on the top

Reflecting on the good times is what you make of it. “West Coast Thing” made me appreciate James’ gift for looking back.

Sure, in 97 the house and pool were a part of his life. But the sunny, bouncy version of California that he describes belongs to a heyday he’s a dozen years out from. Pickin’ up honeys in his hot whip and runnin’ them over to Venice Beach? Shoot, the nigga who wrote this perfect piece of pop needs hip replacement surgery and his status as Popular Negro Who’s Lost the White LA Welcome was second only to OJ.

West Coast perfection had moved deep into Rick James’ punk-funk past. After 1985, James had a really tough road, but the mature artist found his way back to the good part again. He made enduring art of glory days recollections, the sound of curated memories that in 2025 is still satisfying at least one LA stoner and his associates.

As James aged, he learned. We’re talking about a track that he didn’t have in him even at his “Standing at the Top” peak. And, James would even get pop-culture famous again, thanks to Dave Chappelle. Not that this reacquaintance with celebrity was ultimately in his best interests.

Among my favorite poor-person hobbies was chasing the bus. It was was my Urban Olympics. I didn’t sprint for everything, only public transit that seemed a reasonable challenge in the moment.

Can I make that bus / this train? I did it half for the spectacle, to catch the disbelieving eyes of a transit driver in their side mirror. To shout, “Did you see that!” to some young rider-witness. The definition of a cheap thrill. Here was where I picked up the idea of training for the Senior Games.

In the living room at dawn, the feeling is that I should stop dreaming of chasing down vehicles, like some dumb little doggie. The end of those stakes as we knew them has come. And, if I was not super ambulatory, who even am I?

This trip up the stairs is dramatically different though.

The consequences for gangly walking will be immediate sharp pain, shot up the leg. Occupying my hands are the cane, a bannister, and a full coffee cup. Anticipating in itself makes me wince. I plant my cane before tipping my body weight onto it and walk up one step with unprecedented thoughtfulness and coordination.

Then another stair step. Perfecto—because sharp pain’s so undesirable.

Past the landing and up to the second set I go. My coffee does not once slosh over its cup’s side. And I’m like, I came out of the womb doing things too quickly, forever considering insufficiently before launching into my thing. Instruction against that behavior hasn’t gotten through to me.

Yet, proceeding with caution like an enfeebled old man insists on greater reflection. More time between here and there.

Really into what I’m doing? Contribute to the WCS travel budget.

On these stairs I cannot walk and carry coffee while peering into my iMagnetize. Focus is enforced by my limited condition. Like the dangerously disappointing political epoch that we’ve entered, it’s possible come of out of this crisis improved in important ways.

Not to be Pollyanna in excess.

At the top of the stairs I hobble over to my laptop. A quick and belated search reveals that I’m most likely not gonna a forever cane user. Then I touch wood and hope the intentionality lessons don’t fade away. It’s privileged information.