Heat and light. Midday running

May 26, 2002

Heat and light. Midday running along Phoenix sidewalks. There is always something in bloom. The dryness makes things easier. Any measure of humidity begins to pull energy out to meet the moisture. Phoenix can feel like its giving you power merely by being so dry and bright. The added arrogance of irrigation provides the illusion that explosions of life are constant in the desert. Running past Golf courses. Decadence. Lush organic carpets glued to the natural hardpan & dust underneath. The dirt, ironweed and scrub that would return the minute that money and manicuring turn their backs. Past Frank Lloyd Wright’s beautiful Biltmore Hotel smelling of such expensive cologne so tastefully applied. Spinach salad with warm Portabello mushrooms and marinated tomato. Iced tea and a game of croquet. White is not a colour. Looking ahead along the inside edge of the sidewalk I see the severed wing of a small pidgeon. No blood, beautiful and perfect. I run while playing out the bird’s final scenario in my head. My mind moves back to basic monitoring of my body’s systems under the circumstances of exercise and heat. Maybe three miles more and running on a parallel block, in the opposite direction, a small pidgeon with one wing lies face down at the sidewalk’s edge. No blood. Hardly dishevelled. No scenario reveals itself to me immediately. How did the wing get so far away and in such a similar feeling place? Cats at play? Different wing same species? How far can a pidgeon walk after losing a wing in a freak accident or attack? A long way. Pidgeons are a bird that does a lot of walking. When pidgeons die they die in weird ways. I’ve seen them splayed out in outlet fans for building ventilation and frozen headfirst in the ice in the Red River. They fall into the sleep that comes at 40 degrees below zero and rocket downward into the ice from the griders of the bridge under which they take refuge. Maybe evolution will lead them back to migration as a sensible solution. Maybe I should have gone back for the wing and placed it near the rest of the bird. The early Egyptians would probably think this would help in the bird’s afterlife. Similar climate, similar philosophies?
Heat and light and the test of survival. All the animals come down to the golf course for the water. Coyotes, birds of prey, rhodents, deer. Urban wildlife gets help but goes soft. There is always an upside. The pidgeon’s story has no middle. Most stories don’t have an end.

The tour is over. Pretty emotional ending after a show filled with inside pranks and wandering soulfully from the script. A bit more sadness in all the comedy. These guys have always incorporated a dark undercurrent that sometimes can be felt as sadness. This was emphasized by the general mood. Performance is transitory. Mistakes disappear into the ether along with brilliance. You can try to immortalize the performance on film or tape but the only way to actually feel it is to live it. We built a great vehicle for performance over these close to 40 shows. It was always getting better in some way. Its hard to reconcile that it has to stop but this is also part of the beauty. The people who really wanted to see it, and went through the effort to be there for the moment, can also embellish and relive the shows strongest impressions for years to come. They have the sense memory of being there. I have the sense memory of all these cities, climates, smells, hotel lolligagging, singing, trying not to laugh when its funnier if you don’t laugh, hangovers and hanging out. Waiting. Talking. Watching. Missing people. Using the phone. Secret languages of friends. Dragging a suitcase. Losing your bus key, your shoes, sunglasses, that CD jewelbox. Catering. Coffee. Airplanes. Taxis. Sleeping in strange positions. Too hot. Too cold. The purr of a generator, vegetable oil smoke, check.. one... two, What’s my room number? What day is it? Sexual frustration, modem squawk, forgetting to eat and then eating too much. Receipts. Bonding. Rituals. Rituals that I’ve learned to love.