Opening
The following volumes are a historical record of sorts, and if nothing else a remembrance of a poet, singer, icon and wounded soul.
Zed Starchild died on 5 October 1996, and with him died a haunting vision of the world--one in which all was possible, yet at the same time one overpopulated by demons and dream-beasts, an onslaught of varieties of soul, an invitation to a living death or perhaps just one great stage show. He often challenged people to seek out dreams and dare fate; to question authority and forge their own truth. In the end it was a crushing set of truths that did him in, and cruel Fate that taunted him to pronounce his demise in heavy & dark syllables still a code to most of the barely waking world.
We cannot simply dismiss this 19 year old as an overemotional teen, nor his band, the Horsemen, as just a cast of misfits--though these descriptions would be on some level accurate. We must dedicate ourselves to realize there are realities far deeper that the world most can see--and that Zed and his Horsemen rode roughshod thru them, viewing them as a bold paradise of feeling and thought. Coming from a tiny Pennsylvania town but apt to bolt from it like a western gust, the Horsemen were a musical vehicle with which these youths could travel to lands of hope and despair, love and violence, trust and unmitigated evil, beauty and the limitless hatred of the world. The journey they led, with Zed at the helm, was one for which most are not ready, but one no one would ever forget.
Zed often viewed himself as both the "Walking Dead" in their popular song and as the spokesman and facilitator for these "Dead" to continue paradoxically living in this turbulent crucible in which minds, hearts and souls are forged, destroyed, remade & twisted into new evolutions, aimless and blameless as all is forgotten, relearned and reremembered.
Even his biographical details were often shaded in contradictory tales to cover over in a multicolored fabric the tapestry of his days.
What we know is that Zed was born with a far more commonplace and soon forgotten name (Harry Brown, later adopted as Anthony Zedmore) on 30 August 1977. He was a child of already blotted out and gone parents, emotional refuse or irreconcilable unrecognizable wreckage. Cast to fortune at a young age, he would be shrouded evermore as his youth slipped away until he nearly met a violent end, a rolling stone already crashing into iron walls. His 1992 accident, at the hands of someone else, left him a shell, and as such only hungering for more--more answers, more questions, more travels, more searching, more repeating destiny. Ultimately, he found his truest face and boldest voice only to be snuffed out in the night of brothers' betrayal and love's indifference. Improbably, perhaps intentionally (and certainly adding to his myth) he left with no physical remains. His body was torched in the fiery wreck, just as his soul was burned up in the wake of the final and thus overwhelming tragedy, betrayal by his one true love. No one saw him at the end and all we could do was follow his final known footsteps and speculate--and dream of past and now a future never to be.
A deeply reptilian soul, shedding his skin and blinding his eyes in a lone march toward the Sun and his ultimate destiny. This was Zed, hung-up on symbols; tied to the primal; yet coldly refined and unquestionably (till his last known moments) wise beyond all years; rootless, but unfailingly devoted and maybe even obsessed with what little connective tissue he appeared to possess in the body of his life.
To attempt to understand Zed, we must first retrace his journey more completely and then look through the eyes of those who met him and knew him. A journey once solitary, now common knowledge on the surface by various followers, admirers, even sycophants. This work aims to pick up the pieces of the scattered and shattered glass and try to reflect his life therein....
I also knew that yet again Zed felt abandoned. This, too, could have led him to kill himself. After all the list of people Zed had lost in his 19 years of living was seemingly endless: his real parents; his adoptive mother dead from cancer; his adoptive father Anthony Zedmore Sr, who like Cynthia's dad shot himself dead; and then of course always the specter of Debbie, whose long and twisted history which we will explore even more later could in and of itself be a book (perhaps some type of masochistic romance novel with a most unhappy ending). And not to mention good friends (he was fighting with the band when he died) and who knows who else. I knew that Anthony and Diane Zedmore were nomadic people mainly due to Anthony's occupation in sales, and this is why Zed could never truly get attached to one place, why he claimed to have no hometown--he'd often say "like some pro wrestlers I come from Parts Unknown". They'd settled in my hometown, but I never met him until years later. By then, they were long gone and Zed remained, now on the outskirts of town with his uncle Teddy.
I was starting to believe even more faithfully in the notion that Zed was in the midst of an emotional vortex no one person or force could stop, and it led him to his death. A host of people and events had hurt him so badly there could have been no turning back in his faithless, clouded mind. I finally did conclude that Zed Starchild's sudden death was no accident.
Cynthia and I continued to talk over several pots of coffee, well into the evening, mostly about her recolections of "Harry"s early years. He was a happy and rambunctious young child, innocent and playful, willing to trust anyone and blissfully unaware of the circumstances that so tormented his mother. It seemed so sad that Zed would evolve or devolve into such a dark, mysterious, and faithless human being. I do not think this was the path he wanted, but it was what he decided was best. He couldn't trust; he just didn't want to be hurt anymore. He sought refuge in his work; his favorite music and books; and in the shadowy curtains of night. A life on the run was all he knew and he simply ran away from his pain for good. It still didn't make it any easier to accept, but I now understood.
I came away from this meeting only more deeply intrigued of what else Zed may have been holding in the emotional prison in which he lived and of which he knew no better alternative. Almost out of a morbid and misplaced desire to fill in the blanks of his existence but, paradoxically, to help him even though he was gone. He wasn't just an artist on an addled trip from some dubious "greater meaning" even said artist would never understand if he found. Zed was questing for resolution to the crises of his very existence, the most personal parts thereof. Perhaps by digging to the bottom of this all I could make up for the fact that I could not save his life. I had to rationalize somehow, I guess. The first thing to do was to seek out some other opinions as I learned more of Zed's woesome tale, from those who knew him best. I would soon find that no one knew him completely and each person only seemed to hold one facet of the jewel of his mind and soul, one reflection that could not be changed even with knowledge that it was incomplete. Nonetheless, to "make the picture clear" as my friend wrote in a song called "Crazy Larry" (about a societal dropout as well), I would begin with Teddy Moonbeam.
Most people regarded Teddy as simply an eccentric burnout, a Jim Ignitowski come to real life; a hollowed-out relic of the hippie era. Zed told me that Teddy had split off from the family in the mid 1960s and lived in a commune for a while. He was the eldest of three boys and rebelled enthusiastically against the responsibilities that come with being the first child. His split from the family was acrimonious, especially after taking his college fund and buying a van, filling it with LSD and weed, and questing across the country with no end or purpose they could understand. He claimed to be one of the few flower children who never lost his ideals or "sold out"; he still kept a large organic garden, played guitar and wrote, and made a living partly as a clairvoyant. His politics were still left wing and his attitude toward the world still one of peace. He was a mellow man who meditated daily and was heavily into Eastern philosophy but not one specific one. Eventually his brothers reconciled with him and he was charged with caring for Zed when Anthony Sr died. Zed was only 16 then and so identified with Teddy's philosophy that he even changed his name to Zed Starchild.
Teddy was there when Zed had been in the first accident on the same stretch of road, which kept him hospitalized for months. It too was an auto collision in which he hadn't been driving; the car skidded off ice on the same stretch of road that would later kill him and his body was battered terribly. From then on Teddy and Zed were nearly inseparable. As I had always considered Teddy warm and genuine, as well as so close to Zed, I figured he must have some insight on this whole sorry series of events. While I wanted to talk to him to see what he thought of my theory, I never could have seen coming what he would actually say in response.
Copyright 2006, Edward Myers
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