Woody Guthrie’s Brain

As featured in The Mad Studies Reader published by Routledge Press

I was in the main yard on a scorching August afternoon when I saw him step out, slower than usual, his huge bear-like frame shuffling almost aimlessly when I waved him over. His bearded face was slackened, as if in shock. Even in the brilliant sun he wasn’t wearing his customary shades. His eyes were vacant, like a child who has lost his dog or his best friend, and I discovered that he had.

            “Jerry has left us. Jerry has left us,” he repeated softly, as if to convince himself that his spiritual mentor and idol Jerry Garcia has died, and he will never again see God after one of Garcia’s 14-minute solos and a hit of grass. Father Chuck was never the same after Jerry Garcia’s death. His sermons lost their trippy, otherworldly leanings and slow-dived into more traditionally Catholic guilt-inspired cautions bereft of his humor and quirkiness.

Becoming more preoccupied with death and admittedly disappointed with how Creedmoor handled its patients, Father Chuck would often go on tangents about mistreatment, malpractice and the hospital’s history of quickly and quietly settling lawsuits to prevent the further soiling of its already shaky reputation. He was one of the rare few employees who spoke the truth to the patients about what went on, and what still goes on, here in Creedmoor. Perhaps the creepiest injustice in Father Chuck’s recurring nuthouse nightmares is his understanding of the tragic story of Woody Guthrie, who reputedly walked through the gothic iron gates of Creedmoor Hospital and left a vital part of himself behind.

Father Chuck and I grew close by talking music. I’d often ask him if there was anything new or good he was listening to.

            “Well, the new Tom Petty is pretty good. A lot like his other stuff but he’s pretty reliable. And I heard the latest offering from The Stones, which wasn’t too bad. I don’t know why they still bother to make records; I guess they need the money. They’ve got an artistic and creative range that’s an inch wide but a mile deep that they’ve been mining since 1963. There’s an audience for them though. And I think they could possibly do it till they die.”

            I came to realize that if I wanted a review or commentary on any artist under age thirty, I should probably look elsewhere, but I also recognized a lot of myself in him. Not terribly impressed with any of the Seattle Grunge bands besides the first wave, suspicious of the annoying adenoidal White boy whine of the alternative pop-rockers popping up in the 90s, and basically holding on for dear life to the new wave icons that moved me as a teenager some twenty years previous, I was slowly becoming an old rock and roll fart.

            Still, I always enjoyed talking tunes with Father Chuck whenever he made his rounds of the wards, or if I happened to run into him while I was on my grounds privileges as he traveled to the increasingly few open buildings. He saw the de-institutionalization of this hospital that started decades ago and was pleased that the wards and buildings were emptying out and shutting down. That I was committed in the early 1990s, when New York State realized that policy wasn’t working and started locking us mental patients down harder, upset Father Chuck. He thought me and the other Insanity Plea patients deserved the shot at freedom that many other less politically uncomfortable patients received. I saw this compassion in him, and it moved me. He was one of the few who I could open up to, about my crime, my remorse, reveal my fear of not ever getting out, my anger at the system, my frustration at the everyday indignities, and my hopes for a better life, symptom-free, marijuana free.

            “Well, I guess reefer isn’t for everybody,” he’d often say enigmatically.

            Like a good chaplain and soul supporter Father Chuck remembered all the things I said to him. He got to know me, and he would comment on a new song or local concert appearance by an artist I might have mentioned liking. I delighted in his giving me a song-by-song account of the reunion concert he saw of Elvis Costello and the Attractions, saying “they played their hearts out but in the end the audience didn’t seem to appreciate the specialness of it besides a few committed fans. I bet you would have loved it, though.”

            “Yeah, I probably would’ve,” I sighed ruefully, but also grateful for his review.

Father Chuck was born Charles Edward Brodeur in Rural Valley, Pennsylvania in 1937. Fifty miles northeast from American songwriting pioneer Stephen Foster’s hometown of Pittsburgh. Charles grew up on a modest farm with his God-fearing parents and protective older sister. Charles and Emily would spend many evenings after their chores and homework were done listening intently to radio dramas, laughing at the various comedic programs and dancing together to ballroom waltzes and the polite jazz sounds of the Paul Whiteman Orchestra when their parents had gone off to bed. Charles had an affinity for music. He was an avid listener though he never learned to play an instrument, his parents likening it to dereliction in deference to his studies and their hopes for him being the first in their family to go to college and possibly even pursue his talents in youth counseling into a life in the clergy.

Charles did indeed graduate with honors from Saint Joseph’s University in Philadelphia with a degree in psychology and followed that up with a master’s in divinity from The Lutheran Theological Seminary and fellowship in Saint John Lutheran Rectory. However, though his nose was in the good book his ears were always tuned to the radio, seeking out the best sounds broadcasting the Negro beat music for juvenile delinquents that was scaring the bejeezus out of America that was dubbed “rhythm and blues.” While he would be flogged by his parents were he to be caught listening to the Be Bop and hard Swing that he caught fleeting sonic glimpses of as his sister Emily whizzed the dial on the family RCA, searching for Jack Benny and Dinah Shore, he was happy to have studied away from home so he could have access to the driving drum thunder of Gene Krupa, the blistering blare of trumpeter Harry ‘Sweets’ Edison and the confounding but still satisfying scat of Ella Fitzgerald.

We are talking music, as usual, when Father Chuck suggests as a topic “classic shows that blew your mind.” I mention catching The Clash playing Bond’s Casino on Broadway when I was fifteen.

“I cut school that day and got on line at 10 a.m. to ensure a good place for the General Admission show and after a lot of pushing and shouting and a near riot during the opening act I wound up stage center, looking up Joe Strummer’s nostrils, impressed by the dental work done on his once-infamous atrocious teeth and baptized by his sweat, saliva and soul. Absolutely life changing!”

            Father Chuck nominates the Dead, of course, but on a double bill with Bob Dylan in the summer of 1987. “While the Dead were better than usual Dylan was transcendent,” he says with awe and reverence.

            “Yeah, I hear ya,” I enthuse, “I saw him at Radio City in ‘88. He was amazing. What was really cool was he had grown tired of doing all his old stuff the same old way so by this time he was re-inventing the hits. Like, more than halfway through a song you’d find yourself saying, ‘Oh, that’s ‘Like a Rolling Stone,’’ or ‘Oh, that’s ‘Just Like a Woman.’’ It was wild. I overheard some fans, or so-called fans, walking out complaining but Dylan’s cool to do that, if for no one else than himself. He’s gotta keep it fresh, you know?”

            “Well, Dylan learned from the best. I give him credit for continuing to grow as an artist while still to a degree after all these years remaining true to the very root of where he came from musically. Blues, traditional folk and even the standards.”

            “Even though he freaked Pete Seeger and the die-hards out by going electric?”

            “Especially! It’s the message, what you’re saying that’s important, not so much the vehicle that you drive up in to deliver it. Woody Guthrie would’ve been proud. But only the two of them know how he really felt about that. Bob made the long trek to New York City to seek out his idol. Haunted Woody’s old apartment on Mermaid Avenue in Coney Island in brutal winter weather with just the bare clothes on his back to catch a glimpse of the now infirm and reclusive troubadour. Bob eventually tracked Woody down with the help of Guthrie’s protège, Ramblin’ Jack Elliott. With Woody sick with Huntington’s disease at Greystone Psych Hospital in Trenton, New Jersey, Bob was taking notes. Not actually writing stuff down, although who knows, maybe he was, but that young kid was sitting with this living legend, this folk icon, the great Woody Guthrie, stricken with this progressive genetic neurological disorder inherited from his mother, Nora.”

“Bob was soaking it all up. Like a twenty-year-old baby faced sponge, carting his cheap, battered acoustic guitar with him, him and Ramblin’ Jack sitting at Guthrie’s bedside, Elliott acting as a medium in a séance for someone not yet dead, schooling Bob on the ways of Woody. In his rare lucid moments Guthrie would proclaim, ‘If you want to learn something just steal it⎯that’s the way I learned from Lead Belly.’ The three kindred spirits traded folk and roots music passed by the oral tradition, political songs, labor songs, and children’s songs and ballads, most of which came from Stephen Foster’s quill, even some of Woody’s tunes, rare ones, some even Woody forgot and others that he would remember and tell Bob where he was when he wrote them, what they meant to him, what they really mean. And Woody, in the delicate state that he was in, befriended Bob Dylan, AKA Robert Allen Zimmerman, the wandering Jew from Hibbing, Minnesota.” 

“And Woody’s wife and kids took Bob in when he visited, amused by this youthful pretender, who at that time was nakedly emulating Woody’s style, while also appreciating Bob’s open, childlike awe of this man who was just a husband and father and musician and loudmouth and was now bed-ridden, discombobulated with jerky body movements and behavioral and psychiatric problems. Woody would have good days and bad days and eventually suffer worse days. Bob would sing to Woody for hours during some visits, challenging himself, trying to remember every song he knew. On others Woody would berate Bob mercilessly. With increasing muscular distress, unable to control his movements, declining health and erratic mood swings Woody endured various misdiagnoses including alcoholism and schizophrenia. Woody got sicker and sicker, and his condition and illness wasn’t fully understood by most of the doctors he visited. Due to lack of information about the disease at the time his illness went essentially untreated. Had he more money or access to better medical care maybe he could’ve been more comfortable. Either way, he grew difficult to be around. He had a deficient memory, egocentrism, aggression and compulsive behavior and eventually he was committed to Creedmoor.”

            “Get out!”

            “Yep.”

            “Seriously?”

            “Yep.”

            “Woody Guthrie was here? In this dump?!”

Come his senior year of high school, Father Chuck first heard what was salaciously called “rock and roll” in the form of Bill Haley and the Comets’ “Rock Around the Clock” via the film ‘The Blackboard Jungle’ and his mind, his soul was rocked. Though he was changed forever, in another profound way he was bound, professing a lifelong love of rock, rhythm and blues yet chastened by his familial obligation and commitment to the church. Like rock architect Richard Penniman, Charles adored the beat and the attitude of the new form yet was torn by the perception that it was “the devil’s music.” While Little Richard wrestled with his demons, dropping out then returning repeatedly to his obvious calling as a musical visionary, Charles spent the 60s hiding his Beatles and Stones LPs beneath the quaint efforts of Mantovani and Englebert Humperdink. He attended landmark concerts from Café Wha? to the Fillmore East, making the scene, blowing his mind, and covering his tracks with invented tales of bible studies and peaceful retreats.

            In the late 1960s Charles discovered The Grateful Dead and marijuana, two potent mind-altering forces that continue to influence his sermons to this very day. Through bleary eyes and a bemused smile, Father Chuck would quote an eerily appropriate line from The Dead and weave a dizzying 45-minute tapestry infusing the lyrical relevance of ‘Death Don’t Have No Mercy’ or ‘Attics of My Life’ with the wisdom of Solomon or the compassion of Christ himself. Sometimes he would nail it and other times he would meander to a mumble, lidded eyes indicating a carelessness, and blissed out dry mouthed smacks suggesting his high had long since peaked, the sermon was over, and he was now eager to dig into the Hostess cupcakes waiting for him in his desk drawer.         

            This is not to suggest Father Chuck was a habitual stoner, however during the 70s and 80s the laissez-faire Creedmoor hospital administration didn’t notice or care if one of their more popular chaplains rambled occasionally during services or wore sunglasses indoors. He had excellent time and attendance, performed compelling and inspired memorial services including a taped rendition of The Dead’s “Ripple” whenever an inpatient passed away, and was exceptionally good relating to the current crop of MICA patients, mentally ill chemical abusers, like me.

“Believe it,” Father Chuck says to me. “One time bound for glory; Woody Guthrie ended up one of the many institutionalized mentally ill. He was pretty bad off by the time he got here. His muscular coordination was shot, he’d suffered significant cognitive decline and had developed dementia. I heard stories of a paranoid/post-motorcycle accident Dylan coming down from his reclusive retreat up in Woodstock to visit Woody here in Creedmoor, but some people who were there say he showed up in disguise and was acting really strange and stayed only 5 or 10 minutes, saw the state Woody was in and started freaking out because Woody didn’t recognize him. Bob caused a ruckus and was practically thrown out of the place. I don’t know if that’s true but it could’ve happened. I wouldn’t dismiss it out of hand. So, Woody finally passed away. I think it was in the fall of ‘67. He was 55.”

            “Damn, that’s young. My dad died of cancer at the same age.”

“And apparently the hospital got him or his family to sign away his brain. For study.”

            “What?”

            “Yeah, Creedmoor took Woody Guthrie’s brain. Though I don’t think it was legal, or let’s just say someone may have signed the paperwork but it’s morally questionable. When his son Arlo became somewhat famous in the late 60s for that silly song,”

            “'Alice’s Restaurant?’”

            “Ugh, yes. Well, there was talk of having him come out here and sing and play in a concert, to honor his father, raise a little money for research, maybe help improve the hospital’s image but he wasn’t interested. He was fairly disgusted by the whole thing. Marjorie, Woody’s wife, did a lot to raise awareness of the disease which led to the founding of the Huntington’s Disease Society of America, although there’s still no cure. When I came here in ‘73 and heard the story I started to look into it and discovered the usual sloppy record keeping and convenient amnesia which suggested to me that the Guthrie family may have been coerced or Woody might not have even been competent enough to sign that waiver.”

            “So, what happened to it?”

“Woody’s brain sat in a jar of muddy formaldehyde in the basement of Building 40 in a storage room down the hall from the hospital morgue where they kept excised organs and body parts from patients who died of unnatural causes. There were other brains in jars down there, stacked on dusty metal shelves, with index cards strung to the lids all with no names and only patient identification numbers and the disorder that the particular brain suffered from. It was a shame and seemed a crime that the body and soul of the writer of ‘This Land Is Your Land’ wandered this lunatic’s landscape toward the great beyond like a zombie with empty eyes and a concave skull while his brain sat unsung amidst the remnants of the homeless and the hopelessly mentally infirm. But perhaps Woody would see the beauty in that, champion of the downtrodden, friend of the forgotten, up-lifter of the underdog that he was. Perhaps the most important part of him, the part besides his heart that conjured up those haunting melodies and stirring lyrics, perhaps his nameless, fameless brain wading in those staid chemicals would find a sense of peace and contentment. Not getting any special treatment in death, no amenities or privileges of the pampered pop culture put-on artists, of which his acolyte Bob Zimmerman has struggled successfully against, would make Woody proud.”

            “Wow. But there’s no more morgue here, is there? I mean, when I first came here in ’92 I saw the sign in the back of the building but since the renovation…”

            “You’re right. After the renovation in the 90s where they updated the medical records office, restructured the clinic, and gutted the basement to put the Rec center down there, basically changing their identity from ‘Creedmoor Hospital’ to a ‘psychiatric center’ all of the old equipment was modified and whatever didn’t adhere to the new mode of treatment and protocols was eliminated. Nobody I know is aware of what happened to the bodies, body parts and brains that were housed down there, and the few who were around in the thirty or so years it took to phase out the old system and implement the current way of doing things aren’t talking.”

            “Man, that’s wild.”

            “Yes, but that’s not all. Here’s something you as an artist will find interesting. While most of the remains went missing, probably rudely and disrespectfully disposed of, I’d been hearing talk of the former director’s interest in collecting what now goes by the name of Outsider Art, most of the “found objects” variety, are you familiar with that?”

            “Definitely. I’ve done some pieces, artwork, sculptures comprised of found objects.”

            “Hmmm. Well it seems our former CEO may have had a morbid fascination with the macabre, and though I’ve never been in her office, Rabbi Rosenberg has told me that he’s seen, sitting deep in her mahogany bookshelf among Haitian fetish objects, a large, filmy, glass jar with a brain in it and propped up next to it is a framed photograph of Woody Guthrie famously strumming his guitar emblazoned with the slogan ‘This Machine Kills Fascists’.”

            “Aw, now that’s just sick!”

            “No, it gets better. I’ve been working here a long time, and I’ve made a lot of friends, some in medical records. And I’m not ashamed to say that as a music lover and fan of Woody’s I went down there to see if I could look up his records and do my own little investigations.”

            “Really? Whadja find?”

            “Not much. There was little on him years ago when I went down to check his file and in recent years, due again to the renovation and overhaul and consolidation of the records, there’s virtually nothing. Except, Rabbi Rosenberg would swear that he saw what looked like an old, yellowed death certificate framed and sitting next to the photo and the brain.”

            “Well, I dunno, Father Chuck. Rabbi Rosenberg is also said to frequent prostitutes and carry a loaded gun in his briefcase.”

            “Ah yes, I’ve heard that too.”

            We sit in silence for a little while, Father Chuck resting his thick arms over his prosperous belly as if just finishing a filling meal, my face screwed up into a knotted mask of stupefaction. I look into his eyes, stoic yet sad. I can see that he will mourn Jerry Garcia for the rest of his days, as he’s mourned John Lennon, and Phil Ochs, and Jimi Hendrix, and Janis Joplin and Brian Jones, and Otis Redding…and Woody Guthrie.

            “So…”

            “So what?”

            “So, did she take it? Did she take it with her when she left?”

            “Well, you may remember she was let go. Asked to retire so as to avoid the ugliness of a forcible removal of a state figurehead, and under those circumstances she was not allowed to return to even clean out her desk…or her bookshelf.”

            “So, where is it?”

            “Like I said, nobody’s telling. But I stay late on some nights, preparing the next day’s sacrament and though I’d like to think it’s the wind rushing up and down and through this tall drafty building, sometimes, just as I’m leaving, I have heard what sounds like a low mournful whistling coming from the director’s office. And I’ll be damned if that whistling, like the chilling gust rattling through the bones in a graveyard, doesn’t veer into a spectral wail of one of Woody’s songs. That folk tune telling the story of a man imprisoned for unknown reasons…the song ‘Worried Man Blues’.”