There’s a honey bee batting at the window outside. I can’t imagine how it’s survived this long. It wafted away on the wind a moment ago, and I’m sure it’ll mix with the leaves and dirt and be invisible in seconds.
It’s good to be almost-home. Almost-home meaning I got back to Maryland in time for all of my friends to make a run amok to their families and out-of-state gatherings. Almost-home meaning Baltimore which is a Living, breathing and ever-changing creature that I’ve neglected for far too long. All of my secret knowledge of her is outdated, and I don’t know where to find kittens or roses any longer, and all the secret passages are either under construction or already demolished. I miss Living there, seeing her change.
Anyone who hangs around me long enough, or comes to enough shows, or reads between the lines – they’ll hear about Lisi from me. The gorgeous redhead that lead me on a forlorn and ragged chase over the winter months of a long-time-ago. She knew all the right answers, all the right buttons to press, and I had no problem being led on knowing that anything coming out of it other than wanderings and friendship was an impossible dream. She madeit pretty clear with every word she spoke. But every action was come-hither, and I knew it was hopeless but was willing to tag along, play the game out till its end.
That’s the part that most people will hear about, because it’s that broken-hearted longing that got written into all of the songs. The part I’m thinking about now was the comfort – she was a soothing presence, and a creative one. No-one else has ever combined that muse and angel catalyst; I’ve never felt comfortable just sitting in a room and creating with anyone else. She’d be in a room painting, and I’d be in the window writing. We could critique one another’s work, talk comfortably, even when our own presences were inspiring it. She pained me, and spurred me and spurned me, and I could still create around her. It was a precious thing.
She vanished one night to be a rumour and a disconnected cell-phone number. She’d always talked about leaving and wandering and starting over. She had the strength to do it. I’ve received two phone calls in the years since, just to say hello, but they don’t fit into the story too well.
Baltimore was a similar creature. Frightening and beautiful and enigmatic. Just the presence of the brick and the stone and the sirens makes me want to create. As we’ve travelled, I’m always looking for other places that have a similar energy – though I Love Baltimore, there’s always the awareness that the first time I moved out of the city I got really emotional over not hearing police cars. A little weird, I suppose, but I’ve bled there and spilled blood there and watched people bleed out there. There’s a lot of power to that.
There are a couple of places that stick out: Providence , RI with its artists and its shoreline capriciousness. Estes Park , CO with its low-oxygen-high and its ruggedness. Bethlehem , PA with its dying steel mills and eternal Christmas celebration. California , PA with its river and its people and its isolation. California , of course, is the most recent Love.
Providence was a place of escape for many of my friends through school, and the secret rendez-vous of many. They made their plans and moved suddenly in the night, saving quarters for tolls. When we go there, I’m reminded that there are a lot of people Living off of their passions, though why they’ve all collected in a town where the cost of Living is quite so painful, I’ll never figure out. They fall in Love with it through RISD, perhaps, and return to struggle, but I don’t find much worth in the struggle for its own sake. The community of talent is awe-inspiring though, it must’ve been like when we were first made, before all of our souls got watered down by division.
Estes Park – the cost of Living is worse, and though I was there on an off-season, I know that most of the year the place is p rob ably overrun with tourists (memory of how as a child I used to confuse “terrorist” and “tourist”). We discovered Estes Park through a randomly landed gig and a four day lead-pedalled drive from New England to Colorado at the very beginning of the Trip. We went out for a week and stayed for a month. I’m not quite sure how we lost that luxury, but I Loved the ragged clouds over mountain and over valley and the hiding of the full moon over snow tainted red by fires. Hidden trails and elk and people hiding in their homes from a blizzard so strong that there would be no return.
Bethlehem , PA I discovered through an old girlfriend. I spent 8 hours driving every weekend to be with her. Her college town and Christmas City . Nooks and crannies and crumbling stone revitalized by trading on a name with religious implications. I Love the lights and the river and the dying, rusting, miles and miles of old Bethlehem Steel complexes. I finished many of my first albums there, recording off the cigarette lighter of my Volkswagon.
And California. I Love the people there – intensely. I don’t really understand what’s going on in that tiny town – perhaps we just managed to plug into the right community or something, but I spend a lot of time in heaven while we’re crashed there. There’s something about the light, and the fact that mornings are golden but days are grey. There’s something about how it’s hidden in a nook of a map and how isolated it is and in the midst of all of that, some people are building amazing things.
My computer’s been slowing, crashing. I know that the best way to take care of the problem is to wipe the whole thing and start from scratch. It’s a lot of work, but nothing too heinous. I wish the same thing could be down with my own heart and head. (ha! remember the Van de Graaff accident, rob? You can SORT of accomplish it.) Discover things anew, and be amazed again.
My friend Amanda brought me snow last night. That went a long way towards making the longings stretch.
