the Fool, having leapt

good morning ~

(click the link / bubble fish to listen)

My Big Breakthe Fool, having leapt

today’s track is a rare one that includes singing, kind of a melted hyperpop power ballad

you ever feel extremely behind? I’m logging experiences from over two weeks ago at this point, feels like I’ve got too many applications open on my brain.

here’s the Portland album I mention below, btw.

we’re getting ready to do another big band one riff set next Wednesday at the Avalon - me plus six on stage, ripping oncely. the pedal steel / percussion improvising duo of Sam Wenc & Stefano Grasso play as well, will be a sick night:

It had all been leading up to this, our last set of the weekend, the last set of the tour we'd play together. Oh, Galaxy Barn on Sunday? That's going to be nuts. We had heard this many times. Sweatiness promised, hordes of people anticipated, delight guaranteed. On our way to stage an enthusiastic dude shaped like a linebacker and wearing Costco hot dog merch gave us an impromptu prayer, thanks mr. big dawg stranger. We stuck our hands in the middle and gave it a whoa. Felt like I had nothing in the tank but we pushed it down the hill and got it rolling, pretty soon we were lifting two wheels up on the curves. And there it was, the mirth. I threw t-shirts into the crowd as Nico sang "meet the Mets," Léna bravely soldiered forth on the kit despite the overhead mics that kept falling on her (I like to think that we rocked the stands loose). Last song, a second long guitar solo, here I go deep into the crowd throng, arms upon me, sweat and limbs, kind folks near the front of the stage guiding the highlighter yellow of my guitar cable so no one trips or nothing gets unplugged - in a very real way, held. And then the set was over, we had no more music to offer the farm.

Backstage I hustled to get my shit together and ready for pickup - a golf cart would eventually arrive like 40 minutes later - and while I wrapped cables and the Cumbia band got ready to rip two figures appeared: the lady who serenely laid through my entire first ambient set (and who kept flirting with my drummer) and the strong fella in the hot dog shirt who had just (very successfully) charged us up. I felt in that moment very strongly that we were occupying three of the archetypal roles of the tarot: the High Priestess, connoting the insight and wisdom beneath the chaos of the gathering, the Knight, upright and forceful in action, and me, the Fool, having leapt.

Many years ago my buddies turned their early 20s five roommate food stamp living situation into a kind of paradise - this wasn't your average house in a cul de sac in northeast Portland, this was an art space. The basement? An excellent venue that quickly became a place people wanted to play. The garage? A recording studio that got surprisingly great results. And for a few weeks around Thanksgiving they turned their living room couch into a luxurious artist residency, one in which they invited me to take part.

Our plans then had the unbridled ambition of youth - we were going to write, record, and perform an album's worth of music in something like 18 days, plus we'd throw a truly great orphan Thanksgiving in the middle. I came to them with a few ideas, a wisp of a chorus, a riff or two, a lyrical preoccupation with dogs that has thankfully since died away and a fascination with southern California that unfortunately appears lifelong. I was really interested then in the notion of the Holy Fool and Parsifal, the eponymous character from a Wagner opera who wanders through life lacking personal mythology or a contextual past. He's described as pure, made enlightened by compassion. I was fixated on this particular idea - which leapt out at me from a copy of Patti Smith's "Just Kids" - because, well, I was 23 years old and making it up as I went. The fool was not so much the subject of the record, but the approach. I wanted to live in this holiness, maybe that's where we could start. But there were no arrangements, no parts besides what I had written for guitar, and no checklist of things I knew we had to get done. We ran right at it, though, and found something strange, loud, and singular. The record is good. And it is also foolish.

On the way to the festival we stopped by Léna's parents house for a quick hang, say hello to the cat, etc. In the backyard I learned that not only were we quite close to that beautiful cul de sac I remember so fondly, but I also found out that Léna's dad is a regular at the bowling-alley-turned-dive-karaoke-bar we went to every other night back when we were working on that record together. I asked the gang if we could go make a quick detour and stop by the house and pretty soon we were posted up in front. It looked exactly the same and as our group chat pointed out the pews - which they had gotten somehow from a demolished church - were still on the front porch. But we clocked a lockbox and some nosy neighbors, had Badlands PDX succumbed to short term rental? It's quite possible. Live long enough and you'll see the spaces of your dreams chewed up by app capital. I tried not to fixate on the fact that Léna was definitely just entering high school when we worked on that music.

14-ish years later I was back in the Portland metro area playing music on a scale that finally felt appropriately matched to my efforts. And though depleted entirely, I felt a sparkle of triumph, and a huge love for my two bandmates, and in a real way a pretty profound thankfulness for my existence (who was I thanking? That is the question). And before I could fully realize what was happening, here comes the Knight, his arms wrapped around me. I have been hoisted, I have been lifted, I am aloft and I am giggling loudly uncontrollably. I am a large, heavy man, rarely am I slung into the air - it felt as magical as flying. Catharsis beyond catharsis, a literal ascension.

In the morning we packed, we got the check, we ate a hearty brunch. Nico wrote my name in dust on the hood of the car and then I drove without stopping serpentine to Reno. Walking through the casino floor I knew I wouldn't touch a table - all my luck had been used up.

But what about you? Have you been physically lifted in the air recently? How much luck do you have in your pocket? Are you a little holy? Are you a little foolish? Are you standing with arms outstretched begging for uppies from the cosmos?