Yes, Further From Here

I’ve started several times…and then things keep happening and there’s less time to record them than there is to be inside of the happening.  What an intensely sustained high—how can I stop?  But here is a quiet moment, and I’m aching to release some…   

I.) Miami

The festival on Virginia Key in Miami was a dream.  Familiar faces, new ones too, SO much great music (Rubblebucket and Telekinetic Walrus have my number), sore calves from so much dancing, daiquiris and piña coladas in the sun blended up on our merch table by the van, singing Grateful Dead and Beatles numbers on the dark beach with Suave, Deb, and some random festival goer whose guitar was covered in stickers after all the shows were done, picking through piles of weird sea stuff tucked into the white sand bordering a curl of aqua blue water, stretching our limbs, sighing a lot, shielding our eyes from the sun and letting our shoulders burn, diving right in and spending an afternoon treading water with some girls from North Carolina… And the very surreal moment that was sitting in the Songwriters’ Circle on the main stage on Sunday morning beside some of the finest musicians I’ve had the pleasure of watching perform since I was a kid—contemporaries now, kinda.  (Secretly/not-so-secretly, I sometimes still feel like a kid, in over my head and awed at the invitation, but what a joy!  What an honor!  I’ll take it.)  The untamable cacophony of the last big night, countless musicians crowding the stage, dancing, singing, celebrating, sharing—what insane beauty.  Just crazy.  Thank you, thank you to everyone who helped make it possible for all of us to be there together, out of the snow and into the sun, just when we needed it most.  I’ve taken it with me.         

That sun roasted us out of our tents and back into the van on Monday morning, and we waved goodbye, blew kisses, and flashed peace signs to our camping neighbors, then headed to a Cuban food joint called Tuto’s, where Tuto himself bustled around cracking crass jokes, putting the six pack we brought into the cooler and delivering frosted mugs to pour them into, and before we left, he tacked our band sticker on the wall between all kinds of goofy paraphernalia.  And into the Everglades to follow Alligator Alley toward Panama City where it didn’t get old to shout out at the sight of a black-green gator (there were hundreds), stacks of big turtles, cormorants with their wings flexed, great blue herons, egrets, and ibises all along the swampy canal.  We didn’t see any panthers along the panther reserve, but we kept our eyes pealed for 'em.    

II.) ZigZag Around

The club in Panama City was a big, airy, youthful space attached to a 24-hour record store (with a dangerous $1 bin) and sandwich shop, and on a Tuesday night after Trivia, the porch was packed with an odd mix of cigarette-smoking hipsters and Florida rednecks, sharing photos on their phones of guns and dead animals.  We met Kenya out back as we were loading out: a large, chatty, philosophical, middle-aged homeless black man, very concerned with color coordination and fashion.  He wore huge pieces of blingy costume jewelry and told me about his sisters and daughters, who wouldn’t let him out of the house if his clothes didn’t match.  He followed us back and forth to the van as we loaded the gear out, and he said one day, when he finally had all the money he wanted, he’d paint the walls of his dream house red and put images and statues of Jesus in every corner.  He had a big smile and a great laugh, like a kid’s, and I gave him half of my sandwich, a CD, and a big hug before we left.  

We spent the next day driving around in the rain and meeting people at every local music venue, trying to score a last minute gig (no luck), found some good Mexican food at a little cantina (called Maddie’s!), hung out for hours with the cool folks at Leitz Music store where Khris was an inch away from buying a new bass, caught an epic sci-fi movie at a $2 theater, and shared an oversized bag of buttery popcorn.  Suave cracked his beers during the loud parts.  That night we slept in a meditation room filled with silky pillows, a bubbling fish tank, Tibetan singing bowls, and crystals at a retreat center owned by a first generation hippie named Darce with long white hair, whose sweet granddaughter, recently off parole from a seven-month stint in county after a stupid misunderstanding, we’d met the night before — she had an awesome little poodle named Falcore who dragged his bed wherever the people were and fell asleep right there in the center of everything.  They invited us back, and I’m sure we’ll see them again.  

Heading from Panama City to Mobile, the sign welcoming you to Alabama doesn’t say “Welcome to Alabama,” but rather, “Sweet Home Alabama,” so by default, we sang.  I talked to the owner of the club for a long time after our show, and he shared pictures of his two-year old and hooked us up with a nice hotel room where his friend worked, so we all slept in comfortable beds with clean white sheets for a night—a huge step up from the van in the Walmart marking lot or the motels we coughed up $50 for.  I hit up the gym with my key card before meeting the guys at the complementary hot breakfast bar where we loaded up on fruit and oatmeal for the next ride.   

We didn’t see much of Pensacola, and there weren’t many people at the show at the start, except for a young, pierced up punk couple playing like puppies at the bar, pinching, twisting arms, giving charlie horses, and smoking smoking smoking.  A crew of locals came in late, and I chatted with a toothless older woman who called herself Judy-ism (“It’s not a name—it’s a state of mind!”) who desperately wanted us to play “Great Gig in the Sky.”  My favorite was Carl, a grizzly bearded ship captain who joked that he was really just a pizza delivery guy (but don’t tell his mom) who drove a boat 20 mph hundreds of miles into the ocean to deliver four tractor trailers' worth of supplies the people drilling for oil out there.  He probably didn’t like our music, but he made us feel welcome, and out of nowhere, right as we were about to drive away, he started talking so eloquently about the power of art—that “when the whole shithouse goes up in flames, the apocalypse, ya know?  Music’s gonna be the only thing left that makes life worth living, so you just keep singing, y’all just keep playing yer music, and travelin’ around, and doin’ it.  I think you got the right idea there…. And I like that trailer.  I could fit two bikes in’ere.”  Carl made Pensacola.  

III.) New Orleans and Sweet Leyla

And New Orleans.  Hot damn, where do I begin?  Maybe it’s too hot to touch… I could try.  Our darling hosts turned friends—a couple of hip Ithaca transplants with a killer costume collection, a neighborhood of wild new friends (some of whom hosted a boozy, crash-worthy karaoke party on our first night), and the right plan—offered up the spare beds in their gorgeous uptown house with hardwood floors, high ceilings, and all the cool shades of carnival; Suave’s and mine was a king size, which we hadn’t slept in since we moved out of our house in November, so we sprawled like starfish and slept like royalty.  

The shows were booked haphazardly and last minute, so we played them recklessly and with great joy—just to be in such a magical city, with each other, with our instruments, playing them in New Orleans, Louisiana for folks we’d never met, who’d never heard of us and may not have cared—but it didn’t matter.  It was a thrill, and I’m sure my face showed it.  And in between shows, a speakeasy in a jazz singer’s house: big dinner, open bar, full-on Absinthe ritual, horns and keys, two white wolves in a pen out back, a table full of handmade pendants up for grabs (Gypsy gave me one with a chili pepper on it…and a gold cape.)  On our days off we rode the streetcar into the French Quarter to listen to buskers, eat and browse the music stores, stroll along the Mississippi through the thick fog, drink coffee and marvel at everything.  Tourists walked slowly in groups with slushy drinks, shopping bags, and sequined masks on, and the side streets were crowded with packs of gutterpunks, all tattoos, torn fishnets, and dreadlocks with their pit bulls, loose compliments, borrowed buzzes, and shitty manners, demanding hot dogs and the shorts of Khris’s cigarettes.  All a gritty and glorious sanctioned spot of chaos, like one long burlesque show where the dancers cling to cross sections of frayed ropes above, on the brink of crashing down but forever suspended there, the threat part showbiz, part real danger—perfect.        

And the food—holy shit, the food.  Boiled crawfish, filé gumbo, seafood sausage jambalaya, beignets and coffee, shrimp creole, mint juleps, red beans and rice, French martinis… All masterpieces, no foolin’, and the culinary highlight of the whole adventure was Jacques-Imo’s, where I got to meet Jacques/Jack, the owner and chef, who is my paternal grandmother’s godson: the parish priest in Cortland, NY brought Jacques’s French-speaking mother, Beatrice, to the doorstep of 28 Pleasant Street with a baby in her arms when my dad was seven years old, and they lived there with the Walshes for quite a while, some of the many satellites who passed through that house, before settling close by in Port Crane.  Beatrice and my grandma, native French-speaking, Ottawa-born Olive Beauchsne, remained close until she died, and my dad and his siblings keep in touch with her still.  I’d heard of Jacques’s place in New Orleans for years, and when we met, we hugged like old friends—like family.  He told us about the rockstars who’d eaten there, like Robert Plant and Metallica, and the food just kept coming.  I think we tried everything on the menu, and we left so stuffed, we missed the Rebirth Brass Band show a couple doors down.  Next time.  The food was art, truly.                           

And I suppose it was fitting that in the beautiful home of our new friends, Dusk and Eileen, I woke up one morning to the sound of birds and knew there had been a shift—Leyla.  Something in my heart told me.  And the birds—           

Everything I tried to say and the whole way I walked around that day after the news of her peaceful exit felt a little off, not quite there, so different and strange, and I did my best to see everything around that glittery city with wonder and joy, the way she would have, living it like Leyla, but there was an ache I couldn’t escape, which I’m sorry for; maybe if she’d been a little less wonderful…but therein lies the painful paradox—she was too wonderful to lose without leaving a giant cavern in her wake.  Luckily, there is an army of people who love her rushing in at home, the way water does, to grab each others’ hands, pull themselves in, huddle and help, feed and patch, soothe and sing, to be both the tide pool and the buoy for each other in that giant, open space.  

What a gorgeous human motion that is—it's what saves us and makes us a better race, this love, this ability to swoop in and lift each other up.  Leyla built this beautiful wave by living in the graceful way she chose to.  The loss is still unfathomable, but here we are in it.  It’s tough to be so far away, but I can feel it radiating from here.  

~

Dear Leyla, 

       I need to say a quick thing to you, even if it’s not you so much that can hear me as some folks who loved you well— 

       There is a deep-rooted, palpable, bloody and real kind of love that I learned way too young how to respond to and take inside of myself—I grew up with a lot of quick loss, and by the time I was eighteen, older than you, this stuff, however shocking each time, became something I understood.  I grew up (with it, out of it), I moved around, fell in love, broke my own heart, moved some more, let the wrong people in, let some great folks in too, stumbled, admitted everything, did my best to make new without leaving anything behind, and I move forward still, trying to take it all with me, incorporating every bit of the pulp it took to get here.  I lost people early, and with that, I learned the best parts… And I’m just someone; a wandering blip on the current of a million mad rivers—the ones that carry and carry and carry.  And you, darling girl, you’re the force that pushes the current through the rock.  And lucky me, I knew you for a moment in time.  You tripped the breaker and broke open a fresh sector of my heart.  I am new.  Thank you.  

       And I will always sing to you.  I’d say I wish I said that to you…but I think near the end, you knew that kind of thing anyway—knew it about everyone you touched, as that wisdom wove its way into the language you used to assure us that you were at peace and that everything—everything—would be okay.  On a morning in New Orleans to the sound of birds singing, I let you go.  And I’m taking all of this Love you gave with me.
Always.             

~

Before we hit the road, we walked solemnly through some crumbling cemeteries, and I thought about all those lives lived, the people who loved them and felt lost and broken when they left—the mourners who purchased those headstones; there were ceremonies and tears, depression, long recoveries, people who never recovered and just died of grief themselves because to be here on earth without the one you love can be too much; others got stronger, fell in love again, had more babies... Such a cycle.  An unavoidable, integral piece of the passage of time.  Oh, Leyla girl...

Afterwards, we rode an elevator up to the fifty-second floor of the tallest building in town, and from a conference room in some office, we looked quietly over the whole mess.  You’d have no idea from so high up, where all you can see is miles of grey and brown rooftops, the muddy winding river, the slate-grey grid of streets, the black plots of parked cars, just how vibrant it is inside—all of the color and culture and roughed-up beauty on the ground.  Man.  N’awlins.  There’s a lot I still don’t know about it, and I’m certainly not a child of its truth, but I’m busting with gratitude for getting the chance to paddle around in it for a spell.  We'll be back.

IV.) This is Only the Beginning

I can’t speak to sweetness of Tallahassee or the raucousness of Daytona Bike Week yet—I’ve already said too freakin’ much.  (It’s easy to get behind when so many things are still happening!)  And although we’re nearing the end of this tour, we’re nowhere near the end of this story—this blog, this journey, this pumped-up life, these wild adventuretimes that just keep piling up and expanding and spilling over the sides and toppling into the next thing, nudging it, knocking it over, bumping into something else, which strikes up a new conversation, and then we have something in common so we move onto other topics, and then someone eavesdropping joins in, and it’s a bigger dialogue, it’s the discourse of a community, it gets important, it takes itself too seriously so it starts laughing, and the laughter is contagious, and it spreads and spreads, on and on like this, and on…… I made a crazy choice, and even when shit gets rough, I’ll do my best to remember that even one solid night’s sleep in a decent bed can change my whole perspective and renew all the reasons for making it in the first place.  So with that, and with my being super stubborn and restless as hell and relentless in my quest for moremoremore, there is nowhere to go but Further from here.  What a trip.  ’Til the next quiet moment, rage on~