I put my wallet on the roof of the car and put my things on the passenger seat. I didn’t look for it again until I was at the hockey store to pick up the boy’s newly sharpened skates. Must have left it at home. It was very hot and I could really feel it now. Sleep deprivation had opened my pores and screwed with my thermostat. I retraced my steps thrice and enlisted my reluctant minions to comb the property. Nothing. With the faith that it would come back to me I went about my very cranky business. I woke up twenty minutes later as my daughter said, “Dad? Shouldn’t you be looking for your wallet?”. I said, “I am. Einstein said, 'think differently'. I am thinking differently and I will find it”. Then I drove off and played road hockey in the shade right next to bright sunshine. The cell phone beeped from the gym bag and my daughter came on the line and bubbled, “a woman named Karen just came by with your wallet. She found it in the street and I think its all here but I think its been run over by a car.” The image of a wallet that has been run over by a car strikes me as life imitating art. Fond family pictures, receipts and I.D. rasped, bent and askew. My mug shot pokes out at the bottom to indicate who’s life story is being told.
Reading “Shakey”. Neil Young's biography. Biographies seem so wrong when its someone you respect. With every sentence you’re waiting for the next beautiful myth to be dispelled and the lining to fall out of every cloud. I stopped with bios many years ago because I found they were anti creative. I never got any good ideas from them. They took me in and spat me out minus a few idyllic notions. . .feeling a little like I had to wash and would never quite get clean. Nothing can ever make me think anything other than good thoughts about Neil Young and this is why. . .
I have an autographed picture of Neil hanging in my studio. I never ask musicians (only hockey players) for autographs much anymore but this was when I just did it without thinking. More on the whole idea of autographs later. It was July 30th 1983 at the Pacific Coliseum in Vancouver and (thanks to the magical interweb) this was the set list:
1. Comes A Time
2. Motor City
3. Down By The River
4. Soul Of A Woman
5. Old Ways
6. Old Man
7. Helpless
8. Dance, Dance, Dance
9. Heart Of Gold
10. Don't Be Denied
11. Sail Away
12. Powderfinger
13. Ohio
14. After The Goldrush
15. Transformer Man
16. My My, Hey Hey
17. Mr. Soul
18. Sugar Mountain
19. Jellyroll Man
20. That's All Right (Mama)
21. Wonderin'
22. Kinda Fonda Wanda
23. Bright Lights, Big City
24. Get Gone
25. Everybody's Rockin'
26. Do You Wanna Dance?
It was the tour where he played acoustically, then with a band, then did a couple of songs in his “Trans” set-up with the vocoder & big screen and finished the night with the full “Neil & the Shocking Pinks” band. He had a backstage camera with a reporter relaying the action to the big screen in a reality TV style.
My friend David Macanulty and I bought single seats to the show outside. I ended up on the floor in front of the stage and he ended up somewhere else. After the show we rendezvoused and he said he had been sitting beside Neil’s cousins and they gave him this thing. He held up this shiny cloth sticker and asked earnestly, “what do you think this is”? I said, “its a backstage pass”. Through sheer fluke we found the oldest man ever to work security in any arena catacomb and convinced him that David and I were both Neil’s cousins and I had left my pass at home. This does not work anymore.
When we got to the concrete antechamber in the bowels of the coliseum there was nobody there. The band and Neil were in their dressing rooms and the other guests had taken the conventional way around whilst we had snuck in through the marshmallow security zone in the back. There were two green garbage cans in the middle of the empty concourse with their lids off. We peered inside to find them full of delicious beer on ice. We inhaled as many as we could as quickly as we could. I was 21. This was quite a lot of free beer. We were thirsty and broke. The guests started to trickle in as we looked obviously inconspicuous. Eventually the band came out and we pretended to look like we belonged by standing near the people who belonged but not quite close enough that they would engage us in conversation.
Neil eventually came out. Soon a circle of people formed and I was in it. Neil was standing beside me and talking with the others looking at me...us...in the small circle. Through my dizzying beer filter I realized it was his family ( the cousins I think ). Just as they made plans to go to Fresgos for something to eat Neil turned to me and smiled in a way that said, “I think I’m supposed to know who you are but I don’t so I will smile and be warm and see you later at the restaurant and figure it out then . . . or maybe I won’t”. My legs were feeling like old celery and I was acting on sub molecular impulses. All rational thought left me and I held up the program I had earlier found on the floor and said, “I wonder if you could sign this for me”. He said, “sure” and opened it up to a nice portrait in the middle of the book and signed it in the perfect spot. As he smiled and handed it back I was struck by something that I would later experience every time I met a person I had seen in pictures or on TV hundreds of times. Their two dimensional image would now be freakishly altered to 3-D. Their physical being had actually entered your space and its life size form appeared odd shaped and gangly. My floating brain could no longer stop my swimming tongue and I said quietly, “did you know that your head seems much bigger in person than it does in pictures”. He stopped, turned, looked at me . . . and then ... he laughed really hard in that real Neil Young laugh and patted me on the back. This is how people should be.
There is always one hotel in the industrial park. Cheap land. Nothing nearby except the hotel bar and restaurant. Guaranteed business. I have been stranded in these outlands so many times the boredom seems to have its own unique flavour. This can be its own fresh hell. It even makes the TV seem less exciting. Seven story space stations with teal waistcoated minions in dress slacks. Round about the building are logos on expansive lawns and low slung square boxes looming desolate after 5pm. Oh yes...and there are cars and trucks and their smells. There are no sidewalks in industrial parks. Why would there be? The seams of the turf are still visible indicating this was unnatural green growth that would never be allowed to be there without it being a conscious decision -- not native to these parts. Having had shipping & receiving and warehouse jobs my soul ice skates back to that gray fluorescent space. A moving coma of task oriented hours punctuated by dirty jokes, accidents and lunch. Finding ways to look busy when you weren’t. Finding ways to steal glimpses of sunlight. Life on the tarmac.
I went for a run here because there was no place else to go. I ran past “Industrial Sandwich”. “Unpainted Furniture”. “Your Leaf Spring Superstore”. Yes. No reason to hide it. Things will not taste better or be as interesting here. It is understood. Then I saw it. At first I thought it was a fire hydrant painted a sandy colour to hip up the landscaping in front of the Teamster’s local. Then it moved. A hare...a jack rabbit. Not just a rabbit. Fuck no. These things are more related to white tailed deer than bunnies. Huge long ears and legs to match. I stopped so as not to startle it. It had probably stopped so I wouldn’t notice it. I thought about my own entertainment and how little of it I had at this time. I wanted to see what it looked liked when this creature ran but I didn’t want to see just a little bit. When a hare runs it looks more like an impala than a bunny. It bounds like the ibex running from the cheetah. The legs are thin and in proportion to a medium sized dog. I moved slowly toward it with the full intent to chase it at the top of my stride as soon as it gave flight. I guess the darned thing had scoped this turf for a long time and had become accustomed to the Teamsters ecosystem. Nobody ever came down this road after 5pm. Nobody ever moved too quickly. Nobody was ever interested in a hare unless it was already in a pre-wrapped sandwich or on a magazine logo. Teamsters. I was a rogue human. The hare let me get to within fifteen feet before it even flinched. As soon as it flinched I charged. For all you animal rights people who feel their gaunch tightening...get a life...of course I’d never catch it. I once tried my hand at rudimentary hunting with a b.b. gun back in my preteen days. I winged a Robin and it has haunted me ever since. I don’t even fish. My best chum Ross used to hunt me with the same bb gun ( it was his ) and shoot me with little pieces of carrot. That really hurt. I know what it is like to be the prey. The cops later took his gun away when they caught us in the ravine taking target practice on the LP records that skipped too much to play anymore. I think it was BTO’s “Not Fragile” we were shooting at the time (but we kept the cover).
Back to the hare. It was beautiful to watch and a test of my stamina. He had his route all planned out. At one point he thought he lost me in the central courtyard between the wings of the building. He cut a sharp right when he rounded the corner of the building before me and did the standing still trick again. This is the jack rabbit equivalent to Jim Rockford pulling into a parking space during the car chase with those two bent nosed thugs in the plaid jackets and the wide lapels. Usually the thugs drive by but . . . I was ready. I tore after him and he cut a hard left and hit open turf out on the berm that fronts the building on the roadside. I lost him before I ran out of gas but I was huffing pretty hard. When you have something in your sights you push your body a lot harder than you think. You learn to skate much faster when you have a puck and someone is chasing you trying to take it away.
Its been downhill ever since. I’m sure the hare knew I was just bored and he ran more out of a sense of dedication to his craft. Its what they do. If I came close enough to touch him I wouldn’t have done it. I’ve seen what the rabbit who guards the cave of Kyre Bannoch can do. They can bite through chain mail right to your jugular.
The sky here is full of ash and orange light. The giant forrest fires are nearby. I hope the hare will still have a place to go and hasn’t settled for this dump. I guess the one advantage is that the predators here are slow, stupid and easily amused.
Seal Beach. That’s what I call it. It is on one of my running routes. Development of the auto-mall on the waterfront has made the city make a bridge for me that connects to a nice strip of beach that used to be hidden behind industrial knuckles, pipes, grease, and utilitarian nothingness. The new plastic light box, stucco and polished metal auto-mall was a big priority for the community. New automobiles needed a place to lay fallow before they burst out onto the troposphere and lay ruts and farted fertile fumes that would pave the way for the next inhabitants of this planet. Those inhabitants will be much hardier than the poor souls who will soon be unable to tolerate such splendid smells and magnificently carved tracts of earth.
Before my beach was uncovered by the last retired mayor’s anachronistic pursuit of “progress” (he wore a brush cut right through the last decades ...badge of honour, comfort food) it was first mangled up by an early sawmill. I can now see in my time what our first nations elders so rightfully predict. They will sit and wait until all the buildings and crapola have fallen and dissolved and the white men have failed and left and died. Things will go back to the way they should be. Just pull up a lawn chair and watch the over serious “builders” with the fumbling hands erect the tragicomic legoland. Its easy to see, by how it looks, it can never last. Its easy to see that the Europeans are only really ever concerned about what happens in their lifetime. Only one of them seems to have achieved any kind of notorious immortality. . .oh . . . I believe that chap was middle eastern.
I run over my brand new bridge past the throngs of giant inflatable animals and bouncy castles of “family day” at the auto mall. Open the hoods of thirty two new cars on the same lots they sit on all the time and direct traffic with a Day-Glo vest on and you have a “free car show”. Invite the police department to park a few cruisers and speak of traffic safety and you have increased your community event child magnet quotient by three. A few free juice boxes donated by someone else and you have community spirited your way to commissioned sales on a Hyundai Elantra and a Pontiac Grand Am. “Sure they look like rental cars but why do you think rental companies buy them in the first place? Yes! So they can walk the fence of style and pretend that cheap and new is better than well maintained and classic”.
I run past the playground that keeps the wheels of commerce doing donuts and reach the beach on the other side. Here I stop and pretend I wear a veterinary dog cone on my head. It is translucent vinyl and blocks out all that is happening behind me. I look out onto the water and to downtown Vancouver where the water ends. I see a large bald eagle moving toward me across the water at about 30 feet up. It is chased by a seagull and I rotate on my hips to watch them skim the trees to my left. That image will stay with me and be used in last night’s bout of writing. I then begin to count heads. I count the heads of all the harbour seals that hang out in this one little bay. Each night I run here I count no less than ten and sometimes as many as forty. There are babies and moms and baskers and bobbers. Barges, empty or full of wood chips, are hitched to giant mooring spools in the near middle distance. Tugs shunt them around like a rail yard and the seals don’t mind. I have seen their heads turn to watch an overcrowded, 130 decibel, pounding disco yacht on pride day as it nosed in on its cruise around the harbour perimeter. Drunken sun burnt revelers trying to extend the good time vibe of a successful parade danced on the twilight deck with their hands above their perfectly shorn heads. The music was born in a laptop in a euro bedroom beside a poster of Cher. Mixed drinks dribbled accidentally overboard in festive colours as the conga line skirted the railings. The seals must have felt like I feel about the auto mall. Its all too stupid to last. Metal shouldn’t even float in the first place.
My uncle is a longtime skipper in these waters and I asked him tonight why the seals are there. He says they’ve always been there. My point exactly. He’s not sure why. He postulates that a change in current in that spot might signal a food source. I think they are watching that spot because the turnover in manmade endeavors seems to be fastest there. This could be the place where it finally all caves in and they want to be the first at the party. Seals love a party. This may be the Berlin Wall wrecking shindig before the continent opens up. Domino effect. This may be the lynchpin. Seal Beach.
Noise brings noise. Mayhem attracts mayhem. Quiet attracts noise. I can’t stop it. I speak more quietly. Then I try yelling. Then I try sitting down and stopping. Nothing. Everything must be delivered at once. All things are past some artificial deadline and I am racing just to fail in a lesser way. Freak occurances break the cycle. You can't rely on them but you can count on them happening. There are the freaks that go your way and the ones that don't.
The man sat down and said, “There, its all done. I have nothing to worry about or prepare for or finish. I have plenty of money. I have achieved all I ever want to achieve. I owe nobody anything emotionally or physically. I feel perfect all over. I have love. I do not fear death. I can handle anything.” He wasn't counting on feeling this way. It came out of nowhere after six months of intense depression. Why? The man walked out onto the sun dappled sidewalk on the edge of the green belt. He felt the whole world around him and half saw the invisible ribbons of celestial energy that connected all things back to him. He was stopped still as this enlightenment was overwhelmingly satisfying. His eyes closed and a beam of sunlight broke through the treetops and brushed its soft hand hand downward from his forehead to his chest. He closed his eyes.
A bald eagle being chased by two seagulls took evasive action and cut a hammerhead stall, tucked its wings in tight and dove straight for the strip of pavement below. At the last second he pulled up hard. His beak entered the doughy moist mass and things went black as the cushion was punctuated by something hard and boney at the back. He flapped backward, on a blast of adrenaline, against the warm moist vacuum. It let go and he fell to the pavement. Stunned he flew any direction he could as the warm trickle of human blood thinned over his brow and he regained his bearings. His vision cleared and the shock of heading up partially blind into the light from that dizzy darkness was tempered by the relief of open air. A few feathers would have to be adjusted back on the top of his favourite Douglas Fir but he’d lost those asshole gulls and things were looking up. Maybe he could go back later and fight off the local dogs for whatever he’d killed.
The bystanders stood over the dead man with the huge hole in his guts. He had everything going for him. Who was going to tell the story to the first cop on the scene? Maybe someone lucky would be on the news today!
Quiet brings noise. Noise brings noise. Then come the freaks.
Sorry that this isn't original work but I thought if I could make it up it would read like this. Apparently this is real. It is so extreme that the chances of it being a hoax are, however, high. I have it third hand that this place exists and that this was written by the person who books the place. People are paid only in tips. If its a hoax I think its brilliant. I love a good hoax. The word hoax even has an interesting shape. Eastern European in flavour. Hoax, hoax, hoax, hoax, hoax.... I say this word repeatedly to start to divorce it from its meaning. It gives it an absurd life of its own. The word levitates away from its intended useage and BINGO...oh... say bingo twenty times and...where was I? Oh. I love a good hoax. Even those Darwin awards remained entertaining for the first few times. Their "credible sources" were a hairsbreadth away from the ones the Weekly World News makes up but hell I used to buy that thing every week. Last week's WWNews headline was "Pope Just Wanders Off" or something to that effect. I thought that was subtly gorgeous. Almost as good as "the Onion". Back to the e-mail I received featuring the rules for the gig at Zou Zou's in Ann Arbour MI. If you hate forwarded e-mails then this is my way of getting you from another angle. I win.
I would like to try to do this gig in the same way I would like to see what its like to have my leg chewed off by a wolverine. FYI: a wolverine has recently been spotted several times near my neighbourhood (true).
rules for musicians who play Zou Zou's coffeehouse in Ann Arbour MI
Thanks to Derek Miller for the foward.
•Sharkskin are the band for Bob Kemmis's show at the railway club in Vancouver tomorrow night (Tuesday). 10pm.
•Sharkskin & featured guest Colin James will be performing at "The Paul Myers 1,2,3 Show Partio On The Patio"
AUGUST 8th between 1 and 3 pm on Vancouver's Mojo Radio AM 730
and on line at www.mojoradio.ca
The live location is: Doc Marlin's Pub is at 100 - 8831 River Rd. , Richmond. On the 604 273 9996
Window or aisle? Windows for the sleepers and those who need to be entertained by the tops of clouds and the action of a take-off or approach. Aisle seats for the seasoned veterans who need to: stretch, get to the bathroom without waking a neighbour, have easy access to their stuff in the overhead compartment. Older folks like the aisle. The middle seat? For the loser, the martyr and the late comer. What are its benefits? None. Never guaranteed any armrest for yourself. Blocked in on both sides, The most likely person top be forced into listening to the full life story of an unjaded window sitter. Who are the people who are uncomfortable with the responsibilities of an exit row? Maybe the infirm? That should be it. After the special instructions there are only upsides. More leg room. A guaranteed bee line to the outside world. Seat in the upright position. Tray table stowed and seat belt fastened. If the movie sucks this is the time to piss. Right after the movie comes the rush to the can. Put shoes back on before walking to the lavatory. The carpet is usually wet near the galley. Who knows what’s on the floor? The back rows are safer but noisy and smelly. Some seats don’t recline. Use the pillow for the small of your back. Those little things don’t make sense for your head unless you have a window seat. In that case take two pillows. This is not new information but it is what is on my mind lately. Sad really.