veiled in the cheesecloth of exhaustion

good morning ~

(click the link / rave trees to listen)

My Big Breakveiled in the cheesecloth of exhaustion

today’s track is a sleepy, soggy piano improvisation that I captured on my phone and stretched to its limits

I feel very lucky to be heading to the burlington, vermont area tomorrow for what promises to be an extremely good show - the lia + whitney set is definitely gonna whip ass, there might be as many as seven clarinets opening the evening, and my dear friend lydia kern is going to do something wild and exciting with videos, frames, flames, and flowers. you can get tickets and info here - - sincerely hope you join us, here’s the flyer:

Standing in the first of many weekend downpours telling people they couldn't yet come into the party - it was my job for the evening to keep the sweet young folks looking to bask in gender euphoria lined up out in the weather until we could squeeze them in. Was the party beautiful? It had many fine trappings - loud music, too much fog machine, drag queens squeezing into their costumes in a hallway outside a utility closet. They clandestinely sold packs of cigarettes from behind the bar and offered a chill out room with large, poetic beanbags and lighting that made you feel like you were inside an orange jellybean. People screamed and seemed to have fun and at the tail end of the function many people took to lying on top of each other and the gravel outside, lighting up like they were on their smoke break from the dancing factory. Strictly speaking I did not attend the party - I was peripheral to it, sober as a judge, there to lock up and, at one point, nearly beat the shit out of somebody who stomped into the party and refused to pay (not handing over the money was one thing, but the bad male energy was another, I couldn't permit that and I am once again horrified to learn that I am walking around hoping that someone provides me with an opportunity to grab them and scare the shit out of them). Had I also railed ketamine and worn a much sluttier outfit, could I have ascended? Perhaps. Instead my reward was wet socks, the masochistic satisfaction of completing a 17-hour workday, and a breakfast sandwich from the gas station on the way home. Good morning, the woman working said, rightly assuming that anyone up at 6am would be starting their day anew.

The weekend saw me and Ged ripping as hard as we've ever ripped at the outdoor vibey stage crammed into an overcrowded tent and sweating our damn dicks off. The festival had little to no rain contingency and I couldn't help but notice that the plastic they threw over all of the speakers gave the music a crispy, distorted flavor. I was told later that there were in fact people losing their minds in the creek in the rain, but no one could figure out how to turn on the overhead lights, so it appeared to us that we were simply playing into the void of thunder before us. He called it "our apocalypse now" set and I have to agree, sodden and muddy with a certain amount of grand, brutal joy. We sounded sick and the wet march to our cars was brutal. I wanted to move but I started falling asleep on the dance floor - Gracelee drove us home and did her best to avoid the many, many frogs hopping across the road, so moist was the road.

The next day at Opus 40 would have already been hilariously pleasant but in comparison it felt like we had been rewarded a gig in heaven after perishing in the mud the night before. The music Ged and I are making is so awesome! Really perfectly at the midpoint of action movie soundtrack and "E2-E4" with some sections of pure, chordal bliss. I regretted not being more energetic and present in the moment of playing - but veiled in the cheesecloth of exhaustion as I was I still enjoyed myself, still tapped my little melodies on the fretboard. I was back home and asleep in my bed by 4pm.

I will admit that I was more dazzled and amazed by another interesting display of gender euphoria shortly after the pride party on Friday - the Eve of Destruction at the Lebanon Speedway was everything I had hoped and feared it would be. "MAKE SURE TO DRINK IRRESPONSIBLY" was the first thing I heard the derby clown say, the first of many such questionable comments made over a loudspeaker - it ricocheted ominously through the turf parking lot. I recognized much of the crowd from my trips to the county fairs last year - 4H participants and volunteer firefighters, veterans and retired nurses, screaming children in weirdly gender affirming or politically sloganeer t-shirts, unwashed dudes tan from their landscaping gig or with black streaks running down their forearms from pouring asphalt for the county. But I also saw, like, at least 50 people I know personally - punks and drunks and the polyamorous from my days as a bartender, music scene freaks, etc. - and there was considerable overlap in attendance from Friday to Tuesday. This is the beauty of an exurban community, there just isn't that much to do, particularly during the week, so we all wind up wearing real tree and high vis at the speedway. And because I was the first of my group to arrive I basked in the torrential flow of humanity, just watching people walk by, fried dough sputtering powdered sugar all over ever other person's shirt.

Honestly? I hoped for more pure destruction and less racing, although I did enjoy the race where everyone drove backwards. The school bus race was also impressively terrifying, but they didn't feel like true competitions, really. But there was this band? And they were shooting a music video? And they lit the drum set on fire? And then this guy drove a muscle car off a ramp, over the flaming drummer, over a full-length school bus, and then directly into the middle of another school bus stood on its end? Fucking fantastic. I would like to swap the memory of every Matthew Barney film I've ever watched for having attended a destruction derby instead. But I felt so out of place, still peripheral to the proceedings, again perhaps the least drunk person. I thought about where I had last felt comfortable and in my lane. Ah, screaming the lyrics to Vroom Vroom by Charli XCX as the last participant at Avalon karaoke. There is a through line, I thought, driving home in my nearly derby ready vehicle in the dark.

But what about you? Are you standing in the rain, sober at the party? What have you seen blow up lately? Are you also fucking tired?