We took off down the road - literally and figuratively - and hours later saw a pick-up truck with a teetering toy horse on back of its otherwise unexceptional silver body. The mist, and the grey, and the haunted rocking of that toy horse forth and back warded away all other ghosts while it alone left us transfixed. I took some video of it and took stock of life as a pony. The delirium of the faded daylight and the master key wore on our minds. Talking blues. Jesus Christ in his grave. The yellow snippets of ground beneath our feet through a hole in the bottom of the car. And we drove on.
Existentially speaking, I am rightly aware of my status in this universe as I am unaware, knowing that any awareness arising from certitude cannot be true awareness. Or so I am told. We trust that those above us have the knowledge and tenacity to solve all our problems while we wonder if they even exist? Wondering aloud in the car, I recall asking "Where are we going? Are we headed straight or are we headed up? Are we making the whole trip together?" What whole trip? With nothing to speak of you are without pride, and its opposite. You notice something in their eyes as you gaze, when they lock with yours. You notice these moments. These are transfers of electricity, and not always mundane - they can in fact be quite heavenly. I am no better a judge than you are. I just do.
We arrived at our first show, a concert in a loving sense, a warm heaving log cabin packed to the brim with friends and familiars, and a lot of heart. Things were soft and welcoming, a haven from the cold blue dejection of solo sets in empty campus bars, where Ryan shook as he played his songs knowing he would forever do better. I sat and I watched and listened and jumped up for a song or two, to sing or play organ or glockenspiel or drums. But not really. I was a shell, a pretend artist whose real self had not yet climbed out of the hole in its head. I played, but without a clue. In hindsight I can see that the impetus was pure passion and I have no regrets, but at the time I felt like a grizzled underdog rather than an eager young musician. I was an old hag doing it for reasons relating to past lives. Ryan took a real step back - several, in fact - from the glory of a well-oiled music scene and audiences of hundreds back down to scratch. His confidence just grew and my own dissolved ever so gradually, but when you feed off of each other it's difficult to stay too far apart. I had always been a supporter of music and continued to back things up, but something was missing. So we chose a band name and I chose to commit myself to something greater than hundreds of unseen poems and stories. If not something greater, then something more challenging to access. It's like a taxidermy raccoon - adorable at turns but vaguely unholy. I sit and stroke its fur, and wonder. Wait. Sure I've been angry, but we so has everybody else! It ain't healthy but it is human code.
The love in that room, that very first show, outweighed all cold dead animals combined. The comments of encouragement left me stunned. I am good at the things I am most compelled to do? How did I hit such a stroke of luck, to be washed down a clear bright stream of inspiration? And why do I question it so? After that first Oh Bijou show, and a few more, after few really solid drummers in town said I played some cool rhythms (though I didn't believe them and thought that I had just given the most terrible performance and I felt inadequate as a drummer, as a girl), after my friends whose ceaseless words of real urgency - YOU SHOULD DO IT - kept me going for several years, we became something. An entity that existed in a dimension just askew of our current one. After we recorded a bit more, and Ryan continued mastering local bands' outputs, and I continued meandering through the metaphysical, we met a lot of people. Hundreds and hundreds of really cool people, musicians, (tattoo) artists, bar owners, stylists, shop owners, photographers, doctors, community activists, civil servants, street people, and so many hippies in the finest sense. Our first show onstage together may have several been years before, 2004, I think, at the Rivoli, again to a full room. My fear and my utter lack of appreciation of the beauty of a warm heaving room full of bodies haunts me still, and karmic penance is most certainly being paid. At night (and some days) I witness a vortex of shows past, from the perspective of an audience member and a performer alike, Ryan's shows with Jim Guthrie, Wintersleep, The Constantines, the Arcade Fire, and By Divine Right. Myself with Pere Ubu, and Rockets Red Glare, and as a spectator (whether onstage and stupefied looking out or on the floor and awestricken looking up) at too many shows to count. The life in those smiling faces in the crowd, the applause, the silence, the growing mutual respect. The packed, breathing rooms. Living breathing rooms. The undue inadequacy we felt, the way that our fear overrode our love, or vice versa (I still cannot figure out which). The bizarre life form in which our music together took shape. As the years have ticked on and our inspiration increased exponentially I have channelled something that leads me straight down those yellow lines on a road that exists only in my mind. I know where I am headed - as much as anybody can - and I recall it fondly. There are warm reassurances and writhing screaming bodies in ecstasy waiting for me there, in the past, in a bathtub filled with endless cups of coffee.
Let them turn you down
Let them switch you around
For a better view
Let them turn off the sound
Let the hot lights burn down
Onto a stage in front of no crowd
This song is for you.
