My Vacation as Parallax, Pt. 8

I ran out of money in Chicago.

I had a reserve of eighty-something bucks through PayPal¹ that I set to transfer to my bank account, knowing it would take three days. I left Chicago on Wednesday, the fifth day of September. I spent the day driving through Illinois and Missouri on my way to Kansas City to visit my best friend.

I mention the date because it is significant to me and to this series of essays I’ve been writing about travel.

This was the 55th anniversary of the publication of On the Road by Jack Kerouac. I am unashamed to embrace my pretension on this point: I love On the Road. It was one of the three most formative reading experiences of my life.² The books I’ve loved most have always been about travel, ever since I was a child.

On the Road, on the off chance you’ve never bothered to read it, is a semi-autobiographical story of a young man who craves newness, novelty. He craves meaning. Kerouac disguises himself in the character of Sal Paradise who makes the wild friendship of another young man, an artist and writer named Dean Moriarty (a thinly veiled version of Neal Cassady, a writer who died in Mexico after passing out drunk near train tracks... not with a bang but a whimper). They undertake an amphetamine-fueled trip cross-country and back. And back again.

The plot of On the Road isn’t what’s important- or really even all that interesting- about the book. On the Road is about a road trip in the same way that Moby Dick is a book about a whale. The plot is there to distract you from noticing that you’re learning about the way people act, the way people change.

I read On the Road in the summer between high school and college. I then spent the next few years³ thinking about leaving whatever thing I was doing and grabbing a crazy person to go on a long trip and take a lot of drugs.

I see myself in these characters. For good reasons and bad reasons, self-effacing and self-deprecating. I am much like the sharks that terrify me so. It would seem I need constant motion.

I commented recently to my dear friend Brad that travel is in all of my stories. I realized that the book I’m writing is a road story.⁴ I told Brad that when I think about it a lot of my songs are about travel. Brad wisely said, “That’s largely your personal narrative. You’re always moving somewhere.”

Brad’s right. He’s identified a pattern that I overlooked in my own life. I’m always coming from somewhere and on my way somewhere. The act of settling seems to be a burden to me.

Like Salvatore Paradise in On the Road, I am ever dissatisfied. And it isn’t mere restlessness. It is darker than that. When I arrive at whichever destination I discover that what I was looking for has moved on. My friends may still be there but they’re busy with lives that they’ve been building while I was away, burning through my options.

Before I left Chicago on Wednesday I cleaned the car of the empty water bottles and sunflower seed packages and other detritus attendant with a road trip. I was fortunate to discover a CD wedged beneath the driver’s seat. “My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy” by Kanye West was a happily received Christmas gift from my wife several years ago. I blasted that music from Springfield to the Mississippi River. One song in particular fascinated me on this drive. “Runaway” describes a man who loves deeply but self-sabotages routinely. The song seems to come from the perfect median between id and superego, without the mitigation of the pesky ego.⁵

This song, and a surprising number of other songs by Kanye West, opens a window into my own behavior. The narrator in the song and I have in common the fear-based impulse to get out of a good situation early, hopefully before it goes bad- to get out before it is boring.

Boredom is the greatest sin.

There is no insult to life that is greater than finding it dull. That is the moral lesson of On the Road. The same goes for “Runaway”.

I crossed the famous river in the afternoon and couldn’t help myself. I left the highway to slow-roll through Hannibal, Missouri.

You must know the significance of Hannibal. This once was the home of a young man named Samuel Clemens. He moved there at the age of four. Hannibal was the role model for the town of St. Petersburg in the books The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

I’ve been to Hannibal a few times. I love it. Its Twain-iness in spots is exactly as charming and as opportunistic as you’d expect. They can’t have an ice cream shop, it has to be Becky Thatcher’s Olde Fashioned Ice Cream Parlor or something to that effect. Huck’s Candy Shoppe. Indian Joe’s Olde Indian Emporium⁶.

On Hill Street in Hannibal is the Mark Twain Boyhood Home and Museum. It is a house and Samuel Clemens lived in that house for nine years of his youth from age 9 to age 18 or so. The house is decorated with fascinating looking objects from the era of Clemens’ boyhood that DID NOT NECESSARILY BELONG TO TWAIN AND WE NEVER REALLY SAID THEY DID. For a small fee you may wander through the house not touching these objects that didn’t belong to the famous writer or his family.

A sign on the fence next to Mark Twain’s possible childhood home says something to the effect of: “Authentic Replica of Whitewashed Fence in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.” And you may, if inclined, take pictures of yourself and your family in front of this real thing that is like a thing that ONLY EXISTS IN THE IMAGINATION. And they do not charge you for this privilege.

God, I love things like this.

Places like this are where metatext becomes ACTUAL TEXT. Awesome.

Mr. Clemens would love it, too, I’d bet. But he’d love it the way I love seeing commercials for Golden Corral. He’d revel in how heartily he shook his head, how aghast he could feel at the obviousness of it.

You see, Twain was a prophet. And I don’t mean that in the Delphic Oracle kind of way, I mean that in the Jeremiah of the Old Testament kind of way. He took a look at the behaviors and practices of the culture around him and he recognized the danger our habits created and he felt compelled to try to change the path. He tried to use classic satire to make cartoonish balloon animal shaped warning signs. Like Swift, he hoped that if he held up a garish mirror his contemporaries would see their mistakes and clean off the clown makeup before it was too late.

But he knew they wouldn’t.

In one of Twain’s last writings, The War Prayer, Twain describes a religious service. War is beginning. The minister prays to commission the patriotic soldiers of the land to go with god into battle and be victorious. A mysterious stranger takes the podium from the minister and explains to the people there that the Almighty has heard the prayer that was spoken but also the unspoken prayer. He says God has sent him to put that unspoken prayer into words. It is brutal.

Twain tried to publish the piece and it was rejected. He told his friend Dan Beard that he wouldn’t publish it. He said that he had told the whole truth in it and only dead men could speak a truth like that. That was in 1905. It was finally published in 1923, well after his death.

Twain had a way of looking at multiple sides of a problem. He had compassion for even those with whom he disagreed. But he was no sucker, no sissy.

That’s a commonality between the three artists I encountered on my drive that day. Jack Kerouac, Kanye West, and Mark Twain each display a passion for life. Each wanted to have it both ways, but knew better than to think they could. Now, these three men couldn’t be much different. One from the Southern Gentry, one from a working-class half-Quebecois Catholic family, one a poor black kid from Chicago. But each transcended those roots to become symbols to people looking for symbols. People like me. People who choose to believe there is deeper meaning in the messages that people send. Signal is more than sign, right?! It must be.

And yeah, I’m building Kanye up a lot here by putting him in this lineup, I know it. So what? You know who he is, don’t you? Yes. Everybody does, even people who have never voluntarily listened to a second of hip-hop. And that is his own doing. He’s a vital artist, even if he can be a douche-bag. And Twain and Kerouac burned bridges, too. Both of them were followed by controversy. The main difference being that Twain was charming. Kerouac and West stepped on toes and defended themselves by refusing to apologize.⁷

There are few artists who succeed. And fewer still who appear fearless in their attempts to create something new after they’ve achieved acclaim. Fewer still who shove the newness of their work brazenly into the maws of their critics. These three are among those elite, to my mind.

In On the Road Kerouac says “The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who never say a commonplace thing.”

I believe that all three of these artists would sign on to that sentiment. And I believe that sentiment applies quite well to each of them. And I think they’d each agree with me about that.

I left the town of Twain’s childhood and the river that was his inspiration. I drove toward the sun for a few more hours. I was going to see the least commonplace person I know. She wasn’t going to do any drugs with me, nor would she leave behind her job and apartment and responsibilities to drive to the next ocean west of us. But she’d know exactly why I wanted to. And she’d buy me a tattoo instead. That’s good enough.

1 I’m not really sure why it takes 3 days for PayPal to transfer money to my bank account. I guess this fancy online payment service has to use terrestrial couriers to bring the cash from their online accounts to my brick and mortar bank location. Oddly, when somebody buys music from me online the money comes out of their account IMMEDIATELY. Not so with getting that money to my account. PayPal frequently has fourteen American dollars that belong to me tied up in super-important high-risk investments, I have to assume. Do I complain to PayPal? No. They have been known to temporarily suspend the account of whiners. By simple fiat. They have the temperament of a petulant child. As do I. But they have the power in this relationship. Who else would I use? They have my money, so they win this contest. ^↩
2 The other two are also stories of traveling. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Pirsig and Melville’s Moby Dick. ^↩
3 By “the next few years” I simply mean “all of the years since”. ^↩
4 This was unplanned. I had an idea for a story about a man and looking back over the almost finished story I see that each chapter has a different tale of traveling. Many things about this project have lined up by happy accident. It will make me seem so much smarter than I am. ^↩
5 Wouldn’t it be awesome if Freud and Kanye were contemporaries?! Oh, the possibilities! ^↩
6 Does not exist. ^↩
7 SUPER tempted to try to make a case for some weird linear reincarnation thing right here. Clemens died in 1910, Kerouac was born in 1922. Kerouac died in 1969, West was born in ’77. Each created prolifically and each was embraced and rejected by their fans. Each created a persona to shield them from their own creative work. I love each of them. There’s a lot at work here. ^↩

My Vacation as Parallax, Pt. 7

My Vacation as Parallax Pt. 7

All vacations develop into sadness.

I truly believe this.

Here’s the part where my vacation got sad:

On Tuesday I visited what I consider “my neighborhood”.

I lived in Chicago’s West Town neighborhood for several years. It’s the neighborhood in which I felt most comfortable. It’s the neighborhood I chose, you know?

Now. I left years ago. I left West Town, left Chicago, and left a life that was a struggle in which I reveled.

I have long held on to the childish, naïve, and ultimately self-damaging delusion that when I leave a place it will remain as it was until I return.

It will not.

West Town is different now, but not entirely, of course.

It’s good to see that Permanent Records is still thriving. It was pleasant to have still-excellent chilaquiles at Flo, served by the same attentive but beleaguered waitress as years ago. And I enjoyed a cup of coffee at Atomix, just as I did (at least) weekly since 2003 or so until the week I moved away.

But Vigilante Press ¹ was closed. They’re supposed to open at noon. I passed by several times and they were still dark and gated. ²

I don’t want to paint an inaccurate picture of things in West Town. The neighborhood isn’t dying. It’s quite healthy, in fact. The streets are busy. There are several new bars and restaurants on Chicago Avenue between Ashland and Damen (my old “main drag”) and quite a few more east of Ashland.

These new places have customers, too, lots of them. And that’s part of what’s so strange to me when I visit.

Who are these people? Since when is my neighborhood teeming with Iowa and Notre Dame ³ graduates?

One of the new businesses in the neighborhood is a bar that features “Quad-Cities-style” pizza; a thing I believe does not exist ⁴. But people sure go for it. On a weekend night the place is so crowded it looks like the old phone booth gag, various limbs and faces sticking out from the windows and doors.

Walking up and down Chicago Avenue and in and out of various shops a very dark and unsettled feeling came over me.

I hit upon something in my search that underscores the sadness of returning to any former “home”:

This is how it feels to be a ghost.

I move about in a space that used to be my own. It’s changed, but I identify what it once was. What it was is what I am looking for. Nobody sees me. No one will notice me unless I act out.

I went to Permanent Records, a favorite of mine. The couple who opened the place, Liz and Lance, have long since moved to Los Angeles and opened a second location. The kid working was busy at some random shop stuff and didn’t look up when I came in. A few minutes later the Billy-Corgan-looking owner of Atomix came in and they chatted amiably, never acknowledging me. I walked out without comment.

I believe I could have shoplifted a couple of CDs for my drive without notice, so

invisible was I.

I needed contact. I needed, not validation, but verification.

Somebody note that I exist, please.

Where else would I go but to Cleo’s? It was my neighborhood’s answer to Cheers. On the rare occasion that I knew none of the patrons when I came in, I’d certainly know some by the time I left and would see those there again. It was the most affordable place to go when I lived around the corner (apart from home, but who wants to go there?) simply because the staff and owners of the place liked me and felt somehow compelled to not charge me most of the time. For my last week as a neighbor I visited Cleo’s every day and was charged not a single time for any item.

But that was almost five years ago. Everything passes, yes? It was an opportunity for deep disappointment, going into this old familiar place in hopes of solace.

I went into Cleo’s. I was the only customer. The bartender was Lance. He’s one of the guys who bought the place just over a year ago, well after I decamped for Oklahoma. I met him one evening when I was in town last September.

As I sat down at the bar I said, “How’s it going?”

Lance said, “I remember you. Is it Marty?”

Voila.

I exist. I am known.

I was at Cleo’s for a couple of hours, just chatting. We talked shop, talked food, and talked about the excellent music playing (heavy on British New Wave with occasional forays into old good punk like the Buzzcocks).

Somehow my old neighborhood, my “home”, had been again normalized. And by somebody I didn’t even know when I lived there.

This visit to West Town was a mirror I needed to see.

It was cracked, sure, but there I was looking back.

The neighborhood has changed, just like I have. There have been great new things and awful new things. There will be more of both.

1 It’s hard to explain the significance of this comic shop. I like comics, but it hardly has to do with that. This shop opened well after I was established in the neighborhood. Sean and Lily, the owners, became dear friends to me. In fact, I spent my last night as a Chicago resident having dinner and drinks with them. We’ve sadly fallen out of contact. This happens.^↩
2 I saw a post on Facebook the week before saying, “Help Save Our Shop!” It was a dark feeling indeed to see that gate closed all day. An update: I came back to the neighborhood a few days after writing this essay and found them open again. They worked out whatever problem they had. Please visit them and give support. Keep this vital little shop open, yeah? ^↩
3 Notre Dame grads- or “domers” as they disgustingly call themselves- are not the worst people in the world, but they are obvious “also-rans". They’ll try to trick you into buying that Notre Dame is an Ivy League school. Do not believe them. ^↩
4 I asked my friend Corey from Anty Shanty, a Quad Cities native, about this. His response: “That’s not a thing! What, does the pizza have meth sprinkled all over it or something?” ^↩

My Vacation as Parallax, Pt. 6

Rogers Park is the second neighborhood I lived in during my time in Chicago. It was
my first to visit on this vacation.

I lived in Rogers Park during one of the darkest times of my life ¹. I lived in a two-
bedroom apartment on Colombia. My roommates were great people who essentially
just took me in when my life went haywire. And they tolerated me for several
months. I slept in the living room. On a couch. It was very glamorous.

These guys- Michael and Jeremy- were incredibly gracious. They quietly tolerated the
depths of my depression and all the attendant bad behaviors.

Now. I’m going to tell you something, dear reader. It is something unpopular and
embarrassing.
The album that is most inextricably linked to that time in my mind is Parachutes by
Coldplay.

Yeah. I’m embarrassed by what you just read.
See, I don’t like Coldplay.
In fact, I dislike boring music in general. And I’ve long held to the belief that if I wish
to listen to U2, I’ll just go ahead and listen to U2 instead of some pale surrogate.

But it was different then, different for that album. ² It’s their best album. Strike that.
It’s the good album by Coldplay.

Are you buying my apology?

Whatever.

One of my roommates ³ had the Coldplay CD. It played a lot around the apartment.
I remember marveling at how the overarching tone and emotion of the album
matched my own hazy, inchoate dread and regret.
Michael said once, “I don’t know who or what made this guy so sad, but think of
how much action he’s getting now.” Because that’s how people talk in real life. And
Michael was right. Chris Martin married Gwynneth Paltrow ⁴.


Coldplay was certainly not the only music I was listening to at that time. And it
was far from the best. At The Drive In was popular at our place. And Mojave 3. And
lots of old punk stuff. I swear to god we weren’t sitting around in Polo shirts and
backwards baseball caps listening to Coldplay oh please believe me.

I should never have brought it up.

Maybe there’s a broader point to be made here. One about how music attaches to
you even when it’s not-so-good. Sometimes hearing a song often- whether by choice
or not- just works that song into your subconscious, and then your conscious, mind.
You think of a time in your past and you remember a tune even if it’s a tune you
hate.
I recall an ex-girlfriend being discovered by a mutual friend as she sat in the floor of
her bedroom sobbing while Shania Twain sang “Looks Like We Made It” on repeat ⁵.

When I lived in Rogers Park I wrote prodigiously. I sometimes worry that it was the
best writing I’ll ever get done. It’s all gone now, so I’ll never be able to review it.
I bet you, though, that those dumb Coldplay lyrics are liberally ripped off in my old
writings.
I’m glad those pages are gone now. I can’t spare any extra shame.

1 I have no real scale for darkness in my past. Honestly, dark is my go-to adjective when describing any isolated period in my adult life. Oops.^↩
2 Am I trying to convince you or am I trying to convince myself? “No comment.”^↩
3 Jeremy would want me to point out that it WAS NOT he.^↩
4 She’s grown insufferable in motherhood, sure, but when they married she was pretty special business. I blame her for Coldplay’s subsequent awfulness. She’s Coldplay’s Yoko. Nobody writes good songs when they’re happy.^↩
5 We did not make it, obviously.^↩

My Vacation as Parallax, Pt. 5

The real meat of this vacation, the longest and most potentially meaningful stretch
of it, began Friday evening.

The sign says “Chicago 30”, but that does not mean you will be in Chicago in half an
hour.
There is no good time to drive in or out of Chicago.
Every artery in and out is a seemingly endless construction project. And where are
all these cars going at all hours of the day and night?! Do people not work for a living
or have homes where they sleep?

Listening for the traffic report is fruitless. I swear, the lady who reports traffic for
WBEZ (Chicago’s NPR station) must know and despise me, for she leaves out travel
time for whichever highway I am on. Without fail.

The frustration of driving ¹ on the outskirts of Chicago did not faze me. I was coming
home.

I lived in Chicago for the better part of a decade. I didn’t grow up here, but here is
where I became a grown up ².

To my mind Chicago is a series of neighborhoods, each describing a slightly different
synecdoche of the city.
Some of the neighborhoods show me much of what I love about Chicago; some show
the things I do not. There is great creativity there, and great work for justice. There
is also darkness, great injustice.

It’s a complicated business, this walking around with eyes opened.

During my time in Chicago I lived in seven different neighborhoods. I did a lot of
wandering, a lot of floating.

I’m hoping to do some work while I’m in town.
You see, I’m writing a book and album- companion pieces- about losing something
important. A lot of references to Chicago come in during the book. The thing I’m
writing about losing I really started losing in Chicago.
I’m not here to find it again. I’m not interested in having it back, frankly.
What interests me is the trip I took when it disappeared.

I’m going to visit each of my old neighborhoods while I’m in town.
I’m going to visit the shops, restaurants, bars, and coffee shops I used to frequent.

I’m going to visit a couple of my old workplaces and lots of old friends.

I plan to treat these visits as mirrors of my loss and shame and damage. I doubt I’ll
improve greatly through the process, but I assume I’ll get some good songs out of it.

Apparently that’s all that really matters to me.


1 Sitting still.^↩
2 This is most certainly dependant on who you ask. MANY people in Chicago have known me for being quite childish, indeed.^↩

My Vacation as Parallax, Pt. 4

the River Monks

The third day of my vacation was spent largely in the car, mostly driving through Iowa.

Say what you will of Iowa. I love it. I have nothing but happy memories associated with Iowa.

I used to have many friends in Decorah and I would go visit them twice a year. We always had a lot of music and a lot of outdoors. It was a magical time.
One of my favorite bands is namelessnumberheadman. ¹ All three members have deep roots in Shawnee. Their previous iteration, the Fauves, recorded in Decorah. Their album reminds me still of my early college days. I wish I’d had that CD for my drive through Iowa.

Another musical association I have with Iowa is the brilliant Des Moines band the River Monks. In April they stopped through Shawnee to play at sips Downtown Kafe’. It was beautiful music played by sweet, gracious people. I convinced them to stick around after the shop closed and we hung out for a couple of hours. I quickly learned that I didn’t just enjoy their music, I genuinely liked the people playing it. The next night I had my first post-break-up solo show in Norman. They came to hear me since they were playing down the street later that night. It might have meant little to them, but I found their presence at my set really touching. I believe I’ll always think of them when I pass through Des Moines.

What else about Iowa?
Should I write about the Day the Music Died? There is a pretty touching memorial at the crash site, I hear. The family who owns the land there is gracious enough to allow American-music pilgrims free access to it.

That’s what I think is classical Iowan-ness.

Let me play the role of Counting Crows for a moment as I generalize a large population based on where they live:
Iowans are good, nice people. They are, by and large, friendly and intelligent and earnest.
Okay, the ones I’ve met are.
But it must be broadly so. How else could their politics be so moderately populist and sensible?

Take Richard Waack as an example. He was born just a couple of miles from the earlier mentioned crash site. He was my art teacher. I learned more from him than any teacher I’ve ever had.
He talked about music in almost every lesson. (He introduced me to Bob Dylan ².) He taught me that the real key to getting good at making art is to produce. “Make lots of art and your art gets better.”

And Corey Gingerich, another Iowan I like a lot.
He owns Anty Shanty on Main Street in Norman, OK#. He hosts concerts at his shop often, mostly during Norman’s 2nd Friday Art Walk. He’s invited me to play at his shop a few times, and I’ve loved playing there each time. Corey loves music and has spent many years in music promotion. His encouragement and embracing of my music and my performances has increased my confidence significantly.

Where do all these people learn to be so kind? Does farm and dairy work instill some sort of native bonhomme? It’s not been my experience.

No, seriously. How do they get this way? I’m asking you. I have no theories.

1 Full disclosure: They’re very long-time friends of mine, so I may be biased- but I truly love their music.^↩
2 Not literally.^↩

My Vacation as Parallax, Pt.3

My second day in Omaha was spent mostly alone. I ate lunch alone at McFosters ¹. Alone I walked to Scott and Michael’s home, past the church Scott pastors. I sat alone on their porch for a couple of hours since nobody was home and I had no key.

I’ve made a rookie mistake on this vacation. I somehow neglected to bring headphones.
Perhaps I suffered some sort of stroke while packing. ²

You see, anytime I take a trip of any sort I anticipate time spent alone, usually in public. Headphones are a must. Without them I'm left only to my thoughts. My thoughts are scattered and ugly. I need the music playing to slow them down, maybe.
But there I sat on a porch in Omaha watching bearded weirdoes cycle by with no music.
I cheated myself out of a soundtrack. Like an idiot.

In spite of- or perhaps because of- my contempt for it, the hideous Counting Crows song “Omaha” started repeating in my brain. It’s a song that so fetishises the “Midwestern-ness” of the city as to suggest that its writer has never in fact been to Omaha.
Adam Duritz- sporting the largest messianic complex in popular music since Jim Morrison- sings,
“Omaha, somewhere in middle America.
We get right to the heart of matters,
It’s the heart that matters more.”
What could that possibly mean? How could it possibly reflect the city of Omaha?
He may as well somberly croon “Old MacDonald”.

Sigh. There’s no explaining what appealed to me in the nineties.

In the evening I was no longer alone. After dinner with Scott and Michael, Travis and Linda came over for a bit. The five of us sat on the porch, enjoying the breeze and the company. We had a lovely, laid-back time.

My day spent alone lingered with me, though. And after Travis and Linda left I chose to kill the upbeat mood we had fostered by playing three very sad songs I had written about loss.
And then I went to bed.

This is how a real rock star vacations, I guess?

1 McFosters is a weirdly political diner with excellent and surprising- if expensive- vegetarian options. I had a seitan Rueben with raw milk cheddar and kimchee instead of sauerkraut, sautéed Brussels sprouts on the side.
This in the shadow of Warren Buffett’s office building.
It’s a mad world.^↩
2 An obvious joke. I don’t pack. I shove pairs of socks equal to the number of days I’ll be travelling plus two into a shopping bag and grab whatever pants and shirts happen to be nearby.
I buy a new toothbrush on every trip I take.
I am as lost as a child.^↩

My Vacation as Parallax, Pt. 2

After seven and a half to eight and a half hours on the road¹ I arrived in Omaha at
the home of my friends Scott and Michael. We had plans to meet the only other two
friends I have in Omaha, Travis and Linda.
Each of these friends is a great and interesting and vital person. But let’s focus on
Travis for a moment.

Travis is a native of Tecumseh, OK. He moved to Omaha to attend Creighton
University.
He’s been in a lot of bands through the years. Most of them may be unfamiliar to
you, but that’s because you don’t live in Omaha². Some of his credits include Dark
Town House Band, the Black Squirrels, All Young Girls Are Machine Guns, the
Whipkey 3, and lately the Electroliners. Great bands, all.

I first learned of Travis when I moved to Tecumseh in the early nineties. He
graduated the year before leaving the high school band with slots in the saxophone
line and at bass guitar, gaps I attempted to fill. I quickly learned that no matter how
well I performed I’d remain firmly in his shadow.

I got to hang out with Travis when he would visit home for holidays and school
breaks. It turned out he wasn’t just good at playing music, he was also this energetic
and patient³ and cool and genuinely great guy.

Last year around this time my band went on a mini-tour. Travis helped us out by
getting us on a bill with his (award-winning!) trio All Young Girls Are Machine
Guns. We were sandwiched between them and another local act. Putting the pretty-
unknown touring act in the middle is apparently a common preventative measure, I
learned.

Driving to the gig Travis said, “I hope you guys don’t get Omaha’d.”


Omaha’d: v. when a little-known touring band plays with a local band that
draws fans, all of whom leave when the touring band takes the stage

All Young Girls Are Machine Guns played to a meager crowd, but my band played
to a crowd of ten (half of whom were All Young Girls Are Machine Guns and their
spouses/significant others).

Color me Omaha’d.

I was disheartened. There were few in the room where we played but the bar out
front was pretty full. Why wouldn’t they come in?
After cutting our set in half I walked outside to smoke a cigarette, angry. On my way
back in I saw that the television sets above the bar where the patrons had had their
eyes glued were a closed-circuit feed of the stage where we had played.
This crowd of bug eaters had sat fifteen feet away watching us on television rather
than sitting in front us.
Buncha weirdos.

The next day Travis sent me a very kind and encouraging message. He pointed out
that a lot of good bands don’t get audiences sometimes. I got from him that I need to
play to the crowd that shows up rather than playing with resentment for the crowd
that doesn’t.

On this trip I have no performances booked in Omaha, nor any other city. But
I’m making it a point to take a look at some of the places I’ve played in the past,
retracing my steps as I said in “Part 1”.
Wednesday night my friends and I went out in the Benson neighborhood⁴. We were
right around the corner from the Barley Street Tavern, the venue where my band
was Omaha’d last September.
I took a break from my friends for a smoke and walked down to look at the place.

It was the same.
Same wood paneling. Same bartender. Same televisions. Same mixture of beardy
hipsters and haggard townies.
But it was different.

I stood across the street and looked at the bar. What appeared was a palimpsest.
There, fading through my view of this old bar, was this: My two-piece band is now a
solo act.
Last year I had company when I went to Omaha. This year I came alone.

I can play as well as I did before, and now I can sell these sad songs possibly better
than I did. But it will always be different.
The venues I played before will always have that shadow in them.
I’ll play the songs in the venues and I’ll wonder if anybody recognizes the subtext.

They probably won’t know the details, but they’ll know something about it is real
and present to me, right?
They’ll know that my performance isn’t an act, but a way of displaying my past?

Probably not.
But if they show up I’ll play to them anyway.
And somebody’s going to feel it, whether that somebody is in the audience or on the
stage.

---

1 While on the road I obsess with the time I’m making. When I arrive at my destination, it is forgotten entirely. Ditto gas mileage.^↩
2 I am not an expert on Omaha. This was my second visit. I find the place delightful and confounding.
What I notice about Omaha is that it is nothing like what you expect. Except for when it is exactly what you expect.
Here you may eat surprising and innovative cuisine and drink excellent locally handcrafted beer before listening to several hyper-talented local bands for a very low cover charge. Then on your walk home you may, as I did, pass a 20-year-old hesher in Tap-Out shorts, black high-tops, and no shirt polishing his bowstaff skills with an old broom handle.
A little something for everybody!^↩
3 The first song I ever wrote, I co-wrote with him. Which is to say that he came up with a pretty good chord progression and I awkwardly sang one of my terrible poems over it. See? Patient!^↩
4 If you visit Omaha, make sure to go to Benson. Do. Not. Miss. Krug Park and Lot2.^↩

My Vacation as Parallax, Pt. 1

I’m on vacation. Shawnee to Omaha to Chicago to Kansas City to Shawnee.
The goal of my trip- apart from the obvious “not-working” and “spending-money-
I-don’t-have”- is to visit some significant places I’ve been and observe how they’ve
changed. I have hopes this will give me some insight as to how I’ve changed too.
I’m retracing my steps so I can maybe find the joy I’ve lost along the way.

I visit these cities and it is as if a massive projection of each city is playing across the
city itself, an overlaid transparency of the buildings gently overlapping those same
buildings.
The places and the people are exactly as they were before. Except they aren’t.
The differences aren’t something my eyes are keen to see. They are differences only
slightly perceived by my mind, consciously felt but just barely so.

I’ve got it.
Each site I visit delivers a hastily sketched simulacrum of my previous experience
with it.
I am living a biopic of my last ten years.

The soundtrack is fantastic.

My vacation began, as all vacations do, with a haircut in my sister’s south OKC home.
As I sat still and made small talk I watched her four-year-old play. She is not a baby
anymore. She’ll be five soon. I moved from Chicago to Oklahoma in time for her
birth. Contemplating the swift movement of that time was the perfect set-up for an
emotionally bereft drive through some of the most soul-crushingly boring terrain in
out fair nation: Kansas.

Kansas wishes you to fall asleep at the wheel.
The only radio stations with consistent reception are dreadful arch-conservative
talk and equally dreadful 3-chord Christian pop music.
I discovered to my horror that I had only one CD in the car.

Armchair Apocrypha, Andrew Bird’s 2007 album, is a CD my wife and I picked up
shortly into our marriage. We lived in Portland, OR at the time and were classically
newlywed-poor.
I listened to this godforsaken reminder of my past for probably four and a half of my
eight-hour drive.
I could now happily choke Mr. Bird.

It’s a lovely album, really. Bird’s voice is self-aware and quite pleased with itself. His
arrangements are interesting enough to keep one’s attention. He whistles a lot and
plays the saw.
Charmed, I’m sure.


There is no single lyric on this album that speaks to some deeply pained or needy
part of my spirit.
Driving through the torture that is central Kansas the songs became the only texture
on the plains. The solitude and boredom of the drive teamed with the music to
assault me with images of the early days of my marriage.
It was quite painful.
I leaned into it.

I, like you and everybody else, am a rock star while driving alone. I sing along with
every song- even those with unfamiliar lyrics- and I do it in full voice.
There were times when I could almost hear her in the passenger seat harmonizing
perfectly just like a few years ago.
Just awful.

I broke from Andrew Bird infrequently to listen to the shrill invective of talk radio
for a couple of minutes at a time, just to hear another human voice speaking.
By the time I was near enough to Omaha to tune in NPR, the afternoon programming
was instrumental music.

The gall.

Brotherly Love

The first two hours I spend at work are the best part of my day. The sun is barely up, like most of my clientele. I show up at 7am- much earlier than I need to- and until 9am I see very few people.
My shop is quiet, still. It is an ideal environment for reflection and playing melancholy records.

Lately I’ve spent those two hours listening twice (or more) to the album I and Love and You by the Avett Brothers.¹
It’s perfect for the time I’m mostly alone.
These songs turn from quiet regret to boisterous hope and back (and forth and back and forth).

Much is made of the power music has to conjure memories and “feelings” from our lives. We attach songs to events. My counselors always called those “grounded feelings”.
Grounding our feelings to song is an automatic gesture that helps us order the events in our personal timelines. It’s important to have order because as we grow older and our individual histories lengthen we simply have more memories, ugly and beautiful.
It’s a lot to keep up with.

The emotions I’ve experienced over the last couple of months will always be “grounded” to this Avett Brothers album.

This record manages to drag my mind roughly across the last decade of my life.
It recalls success and failure.
In these songs I hear the story of my dear friend Kacie Jo moving to Kansas City, great for her but heartbreaking for her many friends left behind.
I hear these songs as I saw the paintings of my buddy Lucas Simmons, vague abstraction and vivid accuracy all at once.
This album feels personal in those ways. These are words I’ve spoken.
The key line of the title track is this: “Three words that became hard to say: ‘I’, and ‘Love’, and ‘You’.”
No words could hit so close to home as these.

For me to be reminded through song of pleasant things is a delightful entertainment. But to hear songs that goad me to face my loss and regret and shame? That is exercise. It is a practice that builds the muscles of my internal life, my emotional strength. And with the blows I’ve suffered- frequently at my own hand- in the last few years, I need the workout.

---

1 I’m a newcomer to this band. I heard them a few years ago and thought it sounded nice, but I never bothered listening to more of their work. Then they appeared on the Grammys and got quite famous. I have the sophomoric habit of assuming that if a lot of people are into a band the band must be lousy, since most people have the kind of taste that makes Nickleback a group of millionaires. But I was wrong about Avett. They’re the real deal. And this is the album that sold me. ^↩

Collecting Bowie

I’ve always been a collector. As a child I collected GI Joe and Masters of the Universe figures and toys. As a pre-teen and teen I collected baseball cards (and as an adult… as Mitch Hedberg said, “I still do, but I used to too.”). In early adulthood I collected rare books, because I had finely tuned my pretension.

Now I’m collecting Bowie.
As in, I’m now in the habit of spending time and money in the pursuit of owning David Bowie’s official discography- in its entirety- on vinyl.

“Why?” is a question I’ve been asked, and fairly.
I answer variously.
“Why wouldn’t I?”, is one answer.
“There’s nobody better than Bowie and I want to have all of what’s best,” is another.
“Shut up and mind your own stupid business,” is probably the most sensible and complete answer I can give.

The fact is that I’m the kind of guy who obsesses about things. I’ve long been obsessed with the music of David Bowie, his early work especially. I often say that even if you don’t hear it in my actual music, Bowie is the single greatest influence on me as a songwriter. He was my introduction to concept albums and all but one of my own albums have been concept albums. His work is diverse and beautiful and frequently discomforting if not downright scary. And no popular musician has reinvented themselves as many times, nor as successfully.
He’s the best and I love him and I’ll brook no argument on the topic.

Currently I own vinyl copies of only eight of the 25 studio albums David Bowie released (and two haven’t been issued on vinyl, so let’s say 8 out of 23). I have these and a few more on CD and/or MP3, but that doesn’t really count. It doesn’t sound like many, but let’s see your collection.

Here are the ones I have:

• Space Oddity (1969) This album was originally released under the title David Bowie: Man of Words, Man of Music. The later title is obviously superior. And I love my copy and will always keep it, but I would give my eye teeth for a good first issue under the original title and cover art.
• Hunky Dory (1971) This is my favorite Bowie album. My record is near-mint but I’d sure buy a better sleeve to keep it in. (Vanity, is what it is. I want it to look as good as it sounds.)
• The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars (1972) Probably Bowie’s most famous album, or at least most popular. I’ve owned no fewer than four different copies of this album. Smart money says I’ll buy more before I’m done.
• Diamond Dogs (1974) This album is scary and has a dystopic future/post-apocalyptic feel, a theme I’ve liberally cadged throughout my work. My copy is in excellent condition and you’ll get it from me when you pry it from my cold dead hands.
• Young Americans (1975) Bowie’s most “saxophony” album. I own one copy (that I listen to way too often) but I own two sleeves. One has a badly damaged copy of Diamond Dogs inside and I will give that to you if you want it and ask me nicely.
• Station to Station (1976) I own an incredible first pressing of this record (that I got for an astoundingly cheap $9!) and have never been able to listen to it only once. Side B ends and I flip it back to side A for a second spin. It’s beautiful.
• Let’s Dance (1983) This album has my favorite Bowie song, “Modern Love”. It’s a happy dance tune with perfectly bleak lyrics. “I don’t believe in modern love,” he sings. Agreed.
• Tonight (1984) This album boasts my favorite cover art. He’s painted blue and appears almost as a religious icon super-imposed over a stained-glass window. Weird and beautiful, just how I like my Bowie.

Now. What’s my next purchase? Whichever one I come across next. My priority is Aladdin Sane (1973), a record I HAVE NEVER SEEN. More likely I’ll pick up Pin-Ups (1973), an album in pretty thick supply at record stores (I’m guessing there are so many copies because it’s a studio album comprised entirely of covers).

After I own all the studio albums I’m sure I’ll feel an overwhelming sense of peace and fulfillment. One week later I’ll start tracking down all the live albums, bootlegs, and novelty releases I can find. This is my quest, and it is a noble one. I guess.