Reborn Again

There’s this bar in town I like to go to every Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday night. Thursday is spaghetti night at my Mom’s house and Monday I hang out with my friends on Minecraft. Part of the reason I go to this bar so often is that I think it is the kind of thing a cool person might do. Another reason I go is that I suffer from OCD, and after drinking ten beers, I stop caring how many times my hand touches the glass before I take a sip. Tuesdays and Wednesdays are pretty dead, so I mostly sit at the bar watching whatever is on the TV and talking to the bartenders about the merits of Julian Casablancas’s solo albums (everybody likes Julian Casablancas’s solo albums). But on Friday, everybody in town goes there, including The Cowboy. At first, I didn’t really notice him—an anonymous man sitting in the corner under the shade of his black cowboy hat—but gradually he came to occupy my thoughts. My curiosity was first sparked when I asked the bartenders who this guy was: Chantelle said he was a famous country singer, but Fred was convinced he was a retired stunt man. Nobody in the bar knew anything about this guy, which was weird for a town of three hundred. 

My nights at the bar became filled with Cowboy hypotheses. He had a strangely majestic demeanor, like how you’d expect Oscar Wilde or Johnny Depp to act. When he spoke to the bartenders, it was as if the words had been written by Cormac McCarthy. One night I asked Chantelle to ask his name next time he came up to the bar. I heard him reply, “Ain’t got one,” to which she followed with, “Well, what’d your mama call you?” He took a deep, satisfied breath, picked up the whiskey she had just poured, and said: “Been called all kinda names by all kinda mommas. None of em seemed to stick.” He winked and went back to his table. It was the coolest exchange I had ever witnessed. 

I started to dream of The Cowboy. I wanted to be like him. I craved the peace of mind he displayed; he was so cool he didn’t need a name. Were names just for people who cared too much? I imagined what life would be like without a name—it didn’t make sense. The world is made of names. How could I talk about The Strokes if they didn’t have a name? How would I differentiate “Phrazes For The Young,” the coolest album of all time, with Creed’s first album, the least cool album of all time? It’s so uncool I don’t even know what it’s called.

One night I was talking to Chantelle about who the coolest country singer of all time was. She thought it was John Prine but I knew it was Willie Nelson. John Prine is the third-coolest. She told me The Cowboy had started giving guitar lessons out of his ranch. I stood up and counted seven steps during the walk over. I breathed in exactly three times and asked, “Can you teach me to play guitar?” on the third outbreath. He smiled gently and took off his hat, revealing a familiar face, both older and younger than I expected. He looked me straight in the eyes and said, “What’s your name, boy?” I paused and scanned my mind. There was nothing there. “I can’t remember,” I replied, embarrassed. The Cowboy laughed and said, “Good. Come to my ranch around five tomorrow. It’s alright, boy, you’ll be home in time for spaghetti night.”

That night, I couldn’t sleep. I stared at the ceiling trying to remember my name. Was it David? No. Donavan? No. I felt like it began with a D, but I couldn’t be sure. I checked my pants for my ID, but my wallet wasn’t there. I must have left it at the bar. Eventually, I slept. I dreamt I was wandering the desert looking for my name—it was so hot I could barely breathe. I walked desperately toward the horizon, the Sun setting behind me. I was chasing my own shadow. Eventually I came upon a glass wall and realised I was trapped in a giant terrarium. In the glass I saw my reflection, but it was The Cowboy.

I woke up around three p.m. and went to buy a guitar on my way to The Cowboy’s ranch. There was this acoustic that looked like something Johnny Cash—the second-coolest country singer of all time—would play. I didn’t bother testing it out. I didn’t want to embarrass myself, like one of those non-smokers who pretends to smoke just to look cool but actually looks awkward. I didn’t really know what made a guitar “good” anyway, so I paid the $850 price tag and drove to the ranch without playing a single chord.

I arrived just as the Sun was getting low in the sky. The Cowboy sat in the shade of his porch, noodling on his guitar. It sounded strange, foreign, not the kind of notes you’d expect to hear from a guitar. He was wearing a silk robe and stared at the instrument in my hands. “You never played before, huh?” The fact that he could tell just by the way I was holding it made me feel like a total poseur. “Not in a while, no,” I lied, which led to a silence which made me very uncomfortable. I said, “Daniel! My name is Daniel!” The Cowboy laughed and rose from his chair. “Well, Daniel, I’m glad you remembered. But if you wanna play guitar, you gotta leave your name at the door.” He went inside. I followed him into an empty room.

“Where are all your things?” I asked. 

“When you’ve been around as long as I have, you tire of things” 

“How old are you?” I asked.

“By my count, about as old as you,” he said.

“Maybe you’re not so good at counting, then,” I joked. He was clearly older than thirty-three.

“Maybe you’re not so good either. Tell me, boy, what’s the first thing you remember?”

“I was wandering in a desert, looking for my name,” I said, confusing myself.

“And how long ago was that?” he asked. 

“Seven thousand years ago,” I replied with a profound certainty I had never experienced in this lifetime.

“And who were you then?”

“I was you.”

“You were me?”

“Yeah, I was Ezekiel in the desert”

“Who was Ezekiel in the desert?”

“He was you.”

“And what did Ezekiel say to offend his people so much that they sent him to the desert?”

“Shallow be thy name.”

My mind reeled back to an ancient sadness: I remembered it all. Over and over again, I had learned the truth. I was either banished or put to death. I was reborn, ad infinitum. I was Socrates drinking hemlock. I was Jesus on the cross. I was the Buddha feeling the profound loneliness of freedom from individual suffering. I was Julian Casablancas releasing masterpiece after masterpiece to a tepid reception. I experienced thousands of lives: all of them equally full of joy and horror; all rooted in the illusion of ego, in a name. But the essence of those lives was so much more; the names could never quite contain the truth. Now, I was free of the shackles of names, and with that freedom came the sweetest bliss. 

The Cowboy looked into my eyes and I saw mine reflected in his. Both sets of eyes were perfectly clear. I saw that he was done with the trip of names and had given me the key. I saw that names were an illusion as empty as words, but as heavy as stone. They were the vessel into which we placed our egos, our material obsessions, our fears. The Cowboy said, “You are ready to begin.” 

I asked him if he knew how to play any songs by The Strokes.