gasps of backlit dust

good morning ~

(click the link / preposterous contraption to listen)

My Big Breakgasps of backlit dust

today’s track is based on some ceremonial materials I assembled for the gig tonight

speaking of which - - there are some excellent bands playing at the Avalon Lounge tonight, two of my faves in fact. I’ll be doing a cleansing, closing zone, as well, plus there’s free music upstairs from 7-8pm which sounds really promising. Here’s da flyer:

On Saturday we should be playing some rock ‘n’ roll at the beach but the weather’s gotta hold - if it threatens too seriously to rain we’ll have to reschedule, stay tuned.

Two county fairs within one week of each other, such is the bounty of my life in late summer. Some count tomato sandwiches, others get in one more grill out, I make sure that I witness all the available splendors of the 4H pavilions. "Summer Sun Phantom Tiramisu," ain't it just poetry? The name of a heifer I saw dozing on a soggy pile of straw, sired by Pit Crew Rich Phantom to a dam named Cutting Edge D Truffles, all this genealogy proudly displayed on a cow-shaped shingle. It was around this time that the galloping storm overhead broke - Jana and I huddled under the dairy ruminants barn and watched a first-prize rainbow cut through the sun showers. A big blue ribbon for you!

The following Sunday we snuck out early from the excitement of the piglet races (where both Gracelee and I were recognized and messaged on Instagram, what a Columbia County celebrity happening!). Taking in the final waking moments of the dozing barn animals in the sprawling Labor Day dusk I am taken aback quite suddenly by a big mama pig named Shania. She's recumbent and rosy pink and running in her sleep, little huffs and grunts escaping from her dreams to our realm, where I stand arrested at the edge of her stall fully reimagining my diet. I don't think I can eat anything that dreams and besides, the man hosting the pig races told us that they're the 4th smartest animal out there (dogs rank at number 9, according to his weary monologue - they do four sets of races a day).

Had I not communed with the slumbering swine I, too, might have enjoyed a hollowed out half loaf of French Bread filled to bursting with pepperoni assembled by the local fire department - I saw multiple cops on multiple golf carts shaking hands with the devil in this manner, agita their inevitable penance. Instead we enjoyed a delightful meal of vegetarian Indian dishes and one slice of cheese pizza in the beer tent while a man who spoke with an upstate New York accent sang with a decidedly southern Georgia accent over slide guitar. When, exactly, did anywhere that wasn't a city become also the South?

But oh, to be lightly toasted during the small engine demo! The delightful pops, whirrs, and mechanical exhalations! Everything was chugging along at once, a fucked up oil burning marching band accomplishing obscure tasks - the antique water pumper, for instance, sucked up and dumped out water from the same bucket, mechanical tantalus. And over there! They're sawing up little discs of wood, the smell of seared timber puffing up into the air, the saw blade singing and whirring manically. The corn husker grinds the golden nuggets down to meal, the gravel pounder threateningly gnashes its teeth, gasps of backlit dust.

There's no chance I'm getting on a ride these days - I don't care to learn that I exceed the weight limit of a portable ferris wheel. And the rides feel too similar to their small engine demo relatives, their sputtering mechanics far from smooth - I no longer wish to be strapped into a contraption. I've come to resemble my parents in this way - they used to always say they enjoyed watching other people ride, now I can understand it. Screaming and inverted we watch the bodies of strangers hurtle through the twilight air and every time miraculously survive elated and giggling. It is a rare delight in a divided America to watch another unknown to you smile and revel in type 2 fun - at the fair it is permitted.

And it is the other people ultimately that I want to see. The suntanned faces selling whole house backup generators and mini excavators. The children proudly and protectively showing off their prize winning hares, their terrified bodies clutched, ears jittering. The teenagers who look and act exactly as I did when I was a teenager, seeking indeterminate intrigue. The petting zoo operators, the reserved local farmers watching over the ribbon winning tomatoes, the exhausted slouchers in hi-vis vests waving people through the parking lot with very little conviction left. The old lady ticket takers, the entire family happily chatting in south American Spanish who seem unconcerned with actually selling their offering of arepas, the yearners feeding each other bites of loaded french fries from a plastic dog bowl seated knees interlocked at the top of the empty destruction derby bleachers. The quilting experts, the apiary operators with their straws of flavored honey, the ancient grandpa demonstrating the use of a morse code machine. The scary people, too - the mustached men raffling off actual firearms, the drunk woman in a cowboy hat suggestively swaying, a Trump flag like a poncho around her shoulders. I live among these people, we go to the same gas stations and supermarkets, but here they're lit up. And the people not of this community at all, the itinerant midway workers who presumably go from town to town selling cotton candy and inviting the masses to try and win a goldfish. Do they live in the winding neighborhood of RVs just beyond where we parked? Where do they go when the summer ends?

Near the end of both of my visits to both the county fairs we are inexorably drawn to the youth dairy stands where hefty milkshakes and giant, instantly melting scoops of ice cream are on offer, presumably made somewhere nearby from cows known to the folks serving it up. Sweet and fleeting, some much needed caloric richness after many miles of wandering. Until next year. But fear not, because the available servings of kettle corn are appropriately enormous - my plastic bag runneth over. This is a seasonal richness that you can take home with you - you can get little bits of it all over the floor of your car and the last third of the bag will remain on top of your fridge long after the grandstand and the midway have been returned to fallow.

But what about you? Did you go to a county fair or two? What did you enjoy about this ancient-feeling tradition? Did you buy an airbrushed t-shirt? Is your summer over?