nude in the fluorescent light

good morning ~

(click the link / Montreal church to listen)

My Big Breaknude in the fluorescent light

today’s track is pulled from the set I just played at Light & Sound Design, foggy

we just announced a really great NYC show next month - playing Stone Circle Theatre with two of my fave performers, Dan Kleederman and Shara Lunon. Stone Circle is an actual church and I’m really pumped to bring the reverence of the Youth Pastoral songs to that reverberant setting. tickets are on sale now, here’s a flyer:

The first time I ever drove into Canada I was maybe eight years old. We were on our way to Vancouver from Seattle in a rented car and there was some issue - I think it had something to do with the fact that I didn't have a passport and my mom planned on bringing a copy of my birth certificate and didn't have it handy? Something like that. Panic started to creep in as we approached the border, but the person in the booth waved us through. No problem - we laughed about it, great trip.

The next time I drove into Canada I had just turned eighteen and my friend and I were two weeks into an absolutely degenerate road trip that saw us blacking out on Malibu and smoking weed all across the American southwest. We got kicked out of a strip club in Houston, we got pulled over for speeding by an openly anti-semitic cop on the way to Roswell, we tore our way through New Orleans, crashing in the attic of a house that had not yet replaced its front door from Katrina. We swung north, attending the annual candlelight vigil outside of Graceland. We went to the Museum of Holography in Chicago, a place I really wish still existed. And we had big plans to spend the night in Windsor, which as we understood it is kind of a Tijuana to Michigan's Detroit, the laws are different and kids could cross over to party there. But the border crossing did not go as planned. The main issue was, we were ostensibly driving to college, and my buddy's Prius was loaded full of all of the shit we were bringing with us. We couldn't even see out of our rearview mirror. So of course the man in the booth was suspect. He flagged us for additional screening.

For a long time after this day I held anger in my heart towards the man in the booth, and all the other border security personnel we were to soon meet. But the thing was - my friend did actually deal drugs. He was absolutely the plug at our tiny private school and if one of the tasks of border security was to ensure that controlled substances didn't enter the country, they were more than justified in searching our car. They nailed it. We didn't have any weed on us - we were smart enough to smoke it all before we crossed over - but my buddy did have an incredibly fancy three foot bong with its own carrying case stashed in the back and a scale in grams in the center console. Plus we had purchased a bunch of fireworks on the side of the road - illegal - and we also had a decent amount of alcohol hidden under the mat in the trunk - my buddy had used his spare tire and never replaced it, so that was a great place to stash our beer and liquor, which we were definitely not supposed to have. They discovered all of this within a matter of five minutes or so. The more they found, the more thoroughly they searched - suitcases opened, they looked through my buddy's computer, they looked through my wallet - I remember one of the guys looking at the prom photo I kept in there and asking about my girlfriend. Things escalated further and we were brought into holding, then subjected to a strip search. Metal bench, concrete floor, me nude in the fluorescent light before the authority of the nation of Canada. But they still let us into the country. We weren't even fined - we just had to give up our fireworks.

I had that degrading afternoon in mind last week when Gracelee and I drove to Montreal. Which is not usually the case - we've driven back and forth from Montreal many times in the last four years, I've gotten over my valid distaste for that crossing. She shows with a gallery there and has brought a lot of artwork in and out of the country. It's really been a major blessing on us, lowkey healing for me. But the jaggedness of borders has ramped up considerably in our current geopolitical situation, these folks don't wanna be annexed. Plus we heard this recent horror story about a painter bringing in work to show having to pay an insane amount of import tax on the spot and in cash - maybe she had been extorted? Maybe things had gotten really bad between our nations. And similarly to that time in Windsor our truck was full of 3D-printed sculptures, wrapped in bubble wrap and taped up tight, so we were not feeling super relaxed when it was our time to pull up to the window.

The man in the booth greeted us in Quebecois and Gracelee handed over our passports. At nearly that exact moment, a training exercise we had noticed out of the corner of our eyes ramped up and became what I later understood was an active shooter drill. The agents in training went from inspecting a vehicle to assertively running about, shouting in a language we don't speak, and pointing orange dummy handguns out before them. From our vantage point it really looked like someone was about to get got, my eyes were darting around all crazy, but the man in the booth told us not to worry about it and continued calmly asking questions. He was satisfied after a time - Gracelee was able to sufficiently demonstrate that she was not about to make a bunch of big money sculpture sales in Canada - and he handed back our passports. Thing is, we've gotta do this drive again soon, with considerably more art in a U-Haul trailer. We asked him how we could best ensure a smooth crossing the next time. It'll probably be fine, he said, just come prepared - we're getting a bunch of new agents this week and I don't know what they'll be like. I clocked the orange handguns once more as we pulled through.

But what about you? What implied violence are you adjacent to? How does it feel for you in this moment to cross a border?