Pardon Me, Sir, But Where Have You Misplaced Your Anachronists?

I should always be hesitant when creating my own idealized mental images of how an upcoming event will be. In my head, the Decemberists show would be chock full of those boys still stepping out of a hansom cab (and hitting every rung on the way down, if you know what I mean), but as it was I saw nary a pair of legitimate knickers. This was a brief disappointment to an otherwise (what word to use? Magical? Fantastic?...no...) delightful evening. Really though, a slap on the wrist to me for not having realized that when a local radio station advertises the heck out of a show by playing the new single and then proceeds to charge ten dollars for the event, there will most likely be scads and scads of young'ns, still trying to figure out what that funny taste in their mouth at the end of the night is. It's goodness, kiddos. Good Music. Maybe all of the knickered boys and cat-eyed girls were prowling the streets in hopes of finding whomever it was that stole the Decemberists' trailer/gear and then rendering the offenders to a archaicly stylist yet still bloody pulp. I, however, saved that excursion for today. That said, the show was utterly wonderful, with Safari outfits and the glories of an accordian and violins and some very enthused tambouriners. It was one of those concerts where the only thing I really regretted was that everyone wasn't as into it as I was, and I don't have those nights very often. If they had been, the ballroom would have returned to its former glory as a dancehall, with a cast of thousands (?) swaying and dancing like it was 1899. Or 1929. Or whatever the hell era that band hails from. All of the new songs they played off of Picaresque (look up the definition of that one, dear readers, if you haven't already) were wonderful (with the unfortunate exception of Petra Haden's contribution, which may very well have been excellent if you disregard the fact that I couldn't for the life of me make out what she was singing over the pitch and timbre of her voice.); Infanta, We Both Go Down Together, Eli The Barrow Boy, Sporting Life, (From My Own True Love) Lost at Sea, On the Bus Mall, and the most rollicking of them all; Mariner's Revenge Song. Semi-colons can go to hell. Mariner's Revenge song was probably the highlight of the entire show (if you discount the madly grinning tambourine boy from the opening act; Okkervill River), and it was filled with all the tastiness that I've come to know and love in a Decemberists song, with oaths of anvenging sons, long quests and travails, and even a brief stint in a priory. Foot stamping was encouraged, fancy dancing should have been par for the course for a shantey such as that. I continually wished I had just a bit of whisky in me. In fact, ideally, I would see the Decemberists in a crowd slightly tipsy and all clad in authentic period wear. Ideally. Other notable tracks included Billy Liar, July July, Leslie Ann Levine (which proved a rather morbid sing-along) and Los Angeles I'm Yours, wherein Colin was dissapointed by the crowds' forgetting the first three lines of this O what a rush of ripe elan! Languor on divans Dalliant and dainty! But the smell of burnt cocaine, The dolor and the drain It only makes me cranky but I do believe we made up for it by really knowing the last bit. Who am I kidding? I was shamed. As it was I returned from the show with my feet sore and smelling of a scent that prevails no matter what century you're from...the salty musk of sweat. According to the latest Oprah magazine I accidentally read, if I sweat too profusely and antiperspirants high in aluminum zirconium don't work, I should invest in underarm Botox injections, which block the signals that trigger sweat production. I may need five to ten injections per armpit. Results last six months to a year. Cost per visit: $750 to $1,500. The other flicker in the brightness of the evening was a previously submerged messianic egomania on the part of Colin Meloy, Esq., in the form of his choosing to end the night (post encore) with a lurchingly grandiose performance of "I Was Meant For The Stage." I can empathize that for a man who used to play to little acclaim at The Rabbit Hole back in 1999, selling out a show at the Crystal Ballroom to throngs of radio listeners could quite possibly be his sweet sweet revenge to all those who ignored him in the past, but I didn't know if I really needed to be reminded of it in such a manner, since the person of the song itself is so singular that I think it ignores the accomplishments of the band as a whole. Does that make sense? I would rather a song that spoke of more than just a charicture of the lead singer as a closing finale.

Sudden De-railment:

You know how I think Sam Beam is like if Love were to take human form and make an album about it? Does it then follow that, say, if there was someone who I felt I'd never be able to love, giving them a 10 minute long Iron & Wine song would serve as a surrogate form of emotion towards them? 'Cause I care, I really do, but maybe not as much as I should, and I had this moment where I thought that if I made him a mix cd with that song and some others on it then he could feel something good in regards to me, instead of some sort of negative unrequited affection. It's like the emotion that I can't feel, in a form where he can experience it as much as he wants, pressing play again and again to get his fix of it just like everyone else does.

Tell My Mother Not To Worry

I pull out of the driveway with a crunch of gravel as my wheels turn on the empty country road, and when I point my headlights down the steep hill and look up I can see the mountain silhouetted on the night sky with the first stars coming out flicker by flicker. In the rearview mirror I can still catch the small moving bodies of my parents' dogs darting back and forth black against the glow of the big house windows, jumping up and crossing in front of each other in their eagerness to slather the glass with puppy noses. As I turn left and closer to home Sam Beam is telling me to Fuck the Man with a catch in his breath and he brings to mind occasions past and present which are neither here nor there and I think that if I wanted, on this full moon night, I could flick off my lights and coast silently down these back roads, letting only the sky's ethereal dark guide me. I've done it before, but it's too early tonight, too many people still making their way home, which leaves me wistful at the lost opportunity. In summer it's sheer beauty being ingested, with the windows down and the heavy scent of warm air filling your nostrils like what cocaine should be as you duck up and over hills with the flat of open farmlands stretching away on both sides in wide bands of silver moonlight and golden windows dotting the shadows of houses. The dashboard is dark, the gauges all obscured by night and refusing to light up because of Volvos' notoriously negligent wiring systems. Even if I wanted to know how fast I was going I couldn't tell. Luckily, there's something in this vehicle that makes it too heavy to speed, something that holds it back from accelerating too much for its own good. The only things that show up on the instrument panel are two bright green arrows that point opposite directions, the only options in front of me contradicting each other even though they remain, essentially, exactly the same damn thing. I push the button on the console that lets me hear this song once more, that allows me to pretend the last nine minutes are happening all over again and that none of the decisions I'm making at the wheel are new. The music lulls me as I steer the car, fixing my eyes on the curves ahead of me that I know too well, the gentle slopes of road I can take at 45 miles an hour; a beast of metal in freefall down to where the suburbs crouch waiting to lap with yellow tractor tongues these thick forests and valleys smelling of cold dirt and slowly rotting wood. Fifteen miles later, I merge onto the highway a changed driver, alert once more with the curving of the onramp that serious things are upon me. Navigating evening traffic, I'm a small silver fish maneuvering between the hulking semis that loom above me on all sides, great white whales making their ponderous way north, red brake lights flaring at intervals as they edge too close on one flank or the other. There's a wreck in the lane heading south, and the cars stretch like Christmas lights pulled across the four lanes of the freeway causing slowing in the northbound lanes, as they say, so I cut across to the next exit and make my way northwest through the city blocks one stoplight at a time, stop-and-go through the used car lots and neon signs, through the streetlamps and bicyclists pedaling madly in my periphery. I'm only a few blocks from home when an ambulance turns the corner and heads my way, multi-colored lights strobing, followed closely by a fire truck that blazes blue and red down the city street. I don't realize until they grow close that they've turned off their sirens, choosing instead to plummet soundlessly to their destination, and I thank them for letting me stay in this soft envelope of sound, swaddled in the blackness of my car's interior at the side of the road. I stay pulled over a few more moments then I have to, engine idling and the same track still playing through the two-bit speakers with a short in them, so I only hear one side of the song.

What A Beautiful Life This Mess Can Be

There have been places and events which have benefited me greatly through my attendance, even if they proved uncomfortable at the time of their occurence. Last summer, when I saw the Violent Femmes with Tyler after we had broken up, it was a crazy sort of catharsis. They ended with Kiss Off, or at least it was one of the songs towards the end of the set, and my entire body was wired with a nervous tension that could barely stand existence in a flesh-and-blood body. I was crackling with the frustration and irritation and confusion. It was good, though. Afterward, I was still manic and weird, so it's not that the show fixed anything, by any means, but it provided an outlet that cleansed something out of my system. Now the ice storm and Saul Williams have trumped that to an umpteenth degree. Friday night was Saul Williams at the Portland State Campus, and Erin and I attended, standing at the back of the crowded hall. Tyler detached himself from the faceless masses to join us, and later Matthew appeared at my elbow. The openers were both incredible. Intelligent female spoken word artists who blew me away with every other sentence. They were talking about beauty and love and insecurity and the places we've made for ourself in the world, with words I knew and some I didn't. They peppered their ideas with references to art, music, the Bible, and every time a piece ended I grew more and more excited for what would come next, while trying to remember all the good things they had just said so I could pull them out to think about at a later date. They went too fast, but I was glad to see them. Saul Williams always surprises me on first sight. I forget how dark he is as he emerges onto the stage, and how his slight frame silhouettes itself by its own relative character, even without a spotlight. He is his own shadow. I build him up taller and broader in my mind, in between the shows. He pulled off his sweatshirt, and for a second I thought he was going to literally and metaphorically strip for us up behind the mic. I don't know how to talk about how Saul Williams effects me, really. I always make a point to call it a religious event, and that seems to ring true. The only other thing I could really think of is when you play Boggle. There's the plastic box with the see-through cover, and all of the letters sprawl out on top of the grid, haphazardly turned this way and that. You've got to shake the box back and forth, and then all the letters fall into place and you can start finding the words you need. So many things have seemed ephemeral and confusing for me, lately. The place of art, the place of me, the place of my art. What are friends and how should they be treated? Why do I have the friends I do? Life as a whole was a very large and alarming place, and I was feeling uncertain, even though external events, by all accounts and purposes, felt like they'd be ok. Saul Williams was the hands, I was the Boggle game. When he talks, everything is illuminated, and I have a tactile awareness of the place of the things around me in this world, whether they're physical or not. These are the people I know, and this is what they mean to me and to others and to life as a greater whole. These are the possibilities open to me, these are the responsibilities I have as an individual to create and love. After it ended, all I really wanted to do was talk about the show. I wanted to hear more, I wanted to keep him looping through my head on a hourly basis so I could continually bask in the afterglow of that stunning clarity. Unfortunately, all things of that ilk must climax and then end, and it's up to the individual to take what they need from the experience and live in a way conscious of what has occured. So i went home and listened to my only Saul Williams mp3, Coded Language, about 5 times. The next day was the ice storm, and my first day off in about eighteen days. I was trapped, which i don't mind, for the most part. We decimated the alcohol supply by the end of the day, and wound up rummaging through the cupboards for the last bit of vodka and Kahlua from old bottles. It was cold enough to swear. In other words, every time you go outside, all you can think of to say is "Fuck! It's cold." Live Journal was down, as some of us know, but even that was good for me in its own way, forcing me to find other ways to occupy myself in my confined space. I read. I drew. I talked about writing, and then I wrote. We went to bed late, with a warm buzz in a house that was covered in ice. Today is like the chrysalis splitting, it's like the fresh breath you take after you leave a dark smoky club. It's when it snows, and as you're removing the thick white layers from your car, all of the dirt and grime comes with it, and your car looks cleaner than it has in ages. And I feel that mentally, too. Things are relevant and interesting, and I have a renewed dedication to..to what? I'm not sure how to sum up anything in particular, but I really like Saul Williams, and to have the people that were there with me in the same room while I was feeling all these things meant so much in how the scene plays back. Their proximity weighted the air with a knowledge of what exists between us, and for that matter, what doesn't. On the way to work again today, I had to take it slow over the Fremont Bridge, but it was worth it to look at the city poised beneath me in glistening stillness . I hope it never grows old, my joy in the perspective I get.

I'm Lusting, I'm Trusting, I'm Wet And I'm Rusting

Life is so pretty. Yesterday was Iron & Wine at the all-new Meow Meow, and as much as I chafe at all-ages shows, and as much as it was overly warm and uncofortable on heels, I still nearly died at the sheer amounts of Loveliness. Sam Beam was lacking a backing band (but not a wedding band, if my eyes weren't tricking me), and so he could rework the songs a little and gosh it was swell (And to be honest, it would make me sad if someone who can sing about Love in such a way was only doing so in a retrospective fashion. I would much rather he stand up in front of us all, a bearded Messiah who serves to remind us that love is real (it is not just in long distance commercials or something that you thought you felt back in high school)..... And it's a love i forget about that he sings of, like Yeats. "I had a thought for no ones but your ears: that you were beautiful, and that I strove to love you in that old high way of love..." Ah, Sam Beam. You were the most beautiful thing I saw since the night before, when Craig Thompson painted his luscious brushstrokes on the walls of Nocturnal (and of my heart, of course). That was incredible. So grand, to see these forms and figures unfurling from underneath his fingers. And I recognized them, too, and knew the stories of the characters. And then Joseph Arthur was the night before that, and even though he's a strange man he's got a voice that makes me feel at home so well. He loops a lot of stuff, which is something I didn't recognize from the album, but it gave such a full sound to his performance. A couple songs just went crazy towards the end, but it was a contained sort of madness, where you felt that you were going to have to hurt someone or something just to find an outlet for the emotion. But it was pretty, too, and I could lose myself in the cacaphony. --------------- If you have a chance, listen to this song by Papa M. It's kind of sing-songy and darling, but you gotta edit yourself if you're in mixed company. Sorrow Reigns Blue sarah jane, sorrow reigns blue sarah jane, sorrow reigns blue there was something like a wall between us that stopped your going down on my penis the ghost of lover's past still await your response was I just a medium in your seance I had to turn off all my feelings towards you for I am not the one that rewards you I'll be with other women you'll be with other men still I can't help but wonder about what could have been sarah jane sorrow reigns blue you didn't love me the way I loved you