Posted on by Matt Thomas

The Days and Nights of the 50s, 7/25/26. He Gets on Base.

Epigraphs:

So you wanna get out?
Let me draw a map

–Superchunk

Good sex it never makes you feel hollow
Good sex it never makes you clean

–Kevin Drew

I watched your face die backwards
Little baby in my memory
You told me victory’s sweet
Even deep in the cheap seats

–Conor Obrest

I. Morning

I slept better than I have in a long time. As best as I can recall, I went to bed around 12:40 AM. and woke up around 6:40 AM. Six hours is not necessarily a full night’s sleep, but lately it has felt like a luxury. I woke up clear-headed, made coffee in my room, and headed down to the Lawson around the corner for another one. I picked up some potato chips while I was there, wandered back to the hotel, and settled into the morning.

The first order of business was practical. I checked my messages, replied to my son Hugh, and told him I’d be happy to swing by home on Monday as long as he let me know what time he expected to be home. “Love, Papa,” as always. I checked in on Elliott as well. Nothing had changed. As of this writing, we’re still meeting at 6:30 this evening at a beer bar in southern Osaka, and I am looking forward to it.

Once these logistics were out of the way, my mind drifted, as it sometimes does, toward movies and television.

I started thinking about The Sopranos. I’ve watched this show all the way through twice, and I’ve revisited a number of episodes over the years. I think James Gandolfini and Michael Imperioli both give remarkable performances, and there are many individual scenes I genuinely love. Even so, I’ve gradually realised that David Chase’s aesthetic simply isn’t mine. Whether the repetition is intentional or not—and I suspect it is—I find both the storytelling and the character arcs to be cyclical.

The performances remain compelling, but the show continually circles back over the same emotional territory. I understand why so many people consider it one of the greatest television dramas ever made. I don’t. I like it and I’m glad I watched it, but I don’t imagine I’ll ever watch the series again.

Thinking about The Sopranos naturally led me to the dialogue that has stayed with me over the years. Not necessarily the greatest lines ever written, but the ones I find myself returning to.

Roger Wade, in The Long Goodbye, pours two glasses of anisette and says to Philip Marlowe, “Take that goddamn J. C. Penney tie off.”

Marlowe calmly replies, “I’m happy to drink with you, but I’m not taking my tie off.”

I don’t know why I love that exchange so much, but I always have.

Another favorite comes from Godfather II. Michael Corleone’s sister comes to him with her new boyfriend Merle to ask Michael for money.

“Connie, I don’t know this Merle. I don’t know what he does. I don’t know what he lives on. Tell him you’re never going to see him again, and come and live with me in Tahoe.” She does of course. It’s funny, oddly romantic, a little menacing, and super funny.

Then there’s The Wire. Bodie has always been my favourite character, and one of my favourite exchanges comes in Seasons 3 shortly after Cutty gets out of prison.

“I’m surprised Avon lets y’all get your heads up.”

Bodie shrugs.

“Sometimes you got to.”

Four words. An entire philosophy.

Seinfeld contributes one as well. Kramer proudly shows Jerry his silk boxer shorts and encourages him to buy a pair. Jerry politely declines.

“No thank you. They’re just a little too delectable for me.”

Perfect.

Finally, there’s Michael Clayton. Arthur Edens has come apart at the seams strips off in the deposition room. Michael flies to Wisconsin to rescue him, and after a brief argument simply says,

“Let’s get out of Milwaukee and we’ll talk about it.”

Sometimes a single sentence can contain an entire friendship.

As I thought about these great quotes, I realized something that hadn’t quite crystallized before. I don’t dislike slow films. I dislike static ones. I love Tarkovsky, but I don’t love all of Tarkovsky equally. Mirror and Stalker feel alive to me. Nostalghia does not. Likewise, I don’t need constant action, but I do need movement—emotional, philosophical, psychological, narrative. I want to feel that a story is becoming something different from where it began.

That, I think, is the aesthetic I’m really chasing. After that my thoughts wandered to Craig Finn, the singer-songwriter who heads the Hold Steady.

The first Hold Steady song I ever heard was “Sequestered in Memphis.” At the time I misunderstood the entire premise. I thought the narrator was giving an interview to a journalist rather than being questioned by the police. Looking back, it seems obvious, but it never occurred to me then.

What always stayed with me, though, was a single line:

In barlight she looked alright. In daylight she looked desperate.

I’ve know exactly what Craig means here. I’ve been there too.

By then the morning had slipped away from me. As of this writing, I’m still working on my essay, Am I Bisexual? It should probably have been published two days ago. It’s one of the more complicated pieces I’ve written in a while, and I’d rather finish the edit properly than rush it out simply to keep the daily streak alive.

The plan from here is straightforward. I’m going upstairs to keep editing for another hour or two. I’ll get organised, probably grab a short nap later this afternoon, and then head down to southern Osaka in plenty of time to meet Elliott at 6:30.

Everything else can wait.

II. Afternoon

By nine I’d finally stopped putzing about I was about to start. I rearranged the room one more time, put on Neil Halstead instead of Ryan Adams, then Ryan Adams instead of Neil Halstead, opened three browser tabs, closed two of them, looked at hotel dates, thought about escorts for exactly as long as I had promised myself I wouldn’t, and somehow convinced myself this counted as preparation.

It did, in a way. Every writer has their rituals. Mine mostly involve avoiding the sentence I’m about to write.

I remembered a much loved Superchunk lyric:

“So you wanna get out / well I’ll draw you a map.”

This turned out to be the whole morning. Dude if this place sucks so bad just jet. I’ll buy you and Amtrak ticket. Seriously bro. Hit the brinks.^

The next few days existed only as pencil marks: maybe Osaka until Monday, maybe longer, maybe Pattaya, maybe Litz, maybe Hugh, maybe Mio. None of it fixed. Just possible roads branching away from the same hotel room.

The night before, Litz had mentioned how much she loved the ending of piece I wrote about her. I had already mostly forgotten this part, so I took another look. It went like this:

The challenges in our relationship are the product of two imperfect people, each bringing old habits, old fears, old hopes, and old wounds into something new. This is not failure. It is simply the complicated business of being human.

I made it halfway through before I started crying. Not dramatic crying. Just enough that I had to stop reading. Sometimes a paragraph waits until you’re ready to understand what you wrote.

III. Early Evening:

Around 6:30 this evening, after working for about an hour and a half on the edit of yesterday’s journal, I walked a few minutes from my new hotel to a nearby convenience store to get something to drink.

Several hours earlier, I had texted my friend Elliott to ask whether he wanted to grab a drink tomorrow night. As I walked to the store, he replied that he was up for it and suggested a beer bar in southern Osaka. I told him I would meet him there.

Thinking about Elliott, I reflected on how much I admire his intelligence. I am a high school teacher, and Elliott used to be one of my colleagues. He left the school years ago and now tutors economics online and manages various investments. He also used to teach mathematics.

I am a social studies teacher. Over the years, I have taught a wide variety of classes, and I feel that I could adequately instruct students in almost any area of social studies. Elliott’s mathematical intelligence, however, has always struck me as remarkable.

In fact, I sometimes envy the mathematics teachers I have known, because mathematics is simply not one of my strengths. I was a decent math student for a time, but I hit the wall with calculus during my junior year of high school and never took another math class. Today, I almost never use mathematics except for the calculator on my phone and a little basic financial housekeeping.

This does not mean that Elliott is smarter than I am. I consider myself highly intelligent. Nonetheless, several times over the years, I have wondered whether he might indeed be smarter than me.

Thinking about it today, I realized that this is probably because his intelligence expresses itself very differently from mine. If I absolutely had to, I could probably relearn enough mathematics to teach middle school. That would be about my limit. Elliott is whip-smart and could probably teach most of the social studies classes I have taught without too much difficulty.

I often reflect on how strongly my intelligence expresses itself in certain areas of life, while in others I am essentially incompetent. I have a solid understanding of subjects such as history, politics, philosophy, psychology, religion, and metaphysics. However, I could not change a tire to save my life.

Although I am not exactly made of money, I almost always call a professional to handle household tasks such as fixing a faucet or clearing a drain. I find these jobs to be a tremendous hassle. In fact, they piss me off. I am happy to pay someone a few dollars to come and sort them out.

As I entered the convenience store, my thoughts turned to the screenwriter Aaron Sorkin. Sorkin is one of the greatest television and film writers of all time. I love The West Wing and The Social Network, and I have enjoyed much of his other work. For reasons of his own, however, Sorkin insists on directing some of his films.

He wrote and directed Molly’s Game. Molly’s Game sucks ass. The script is incomprehensible and all over the place. It is, without question, the worst piece of writing he has ever produced. The direction is equally terrible. The characterization is weak, the emotional beats are overdone, and the entire film is syrupy and sappy. I cannot stand it.

A second film of interest here is The Trial of the Chicago 7, which Sorkin also wrote and directed. The script is actually quite good, and the acting is strong. Once again, however, Sorkin’s direction is awful.

The film concerns the protests surrounding the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago. I was not alive at the time, but my understanding is that thousands of protesters gathered in the city, largely in opposition to the Vietnam War and to the Democratic Party’s handling of it. The police responded with tear gas, clubs, arrests, and widespread violence. Some protesters fought back, and things became extremely ugly.

There are only a few major action sequences in the movie. Sorkin’s handling of them is pure trash. He has no idea how to direct physical chaos. The cameras are always in the wrong place. It is difficult to tell where anyone is or what is happening. The entire thing feels out of control, and not in an intentional way.

Molly’s Game is a bad movie, and I do not care. The Trial of the Chicago 7 could have been a good movie with competent direction. Sorkin was simply not the man for the job.

As I walked back to my hotel, I began thinking about how strange it is that otherwise intelligent people, for reasons of ego, ambition, or simple misjudgment, sometimes insist on doing things at which they are obviously bad.

Then I thought: Well, I have probably done this too.

There have certainly been times when I believed I could handle something and ended up over my skis. I suspect this is true of everyone. We all have strengths and weaknesses, and intelligence manifests itself in different ways.

Over time, I have tried to learn how to pick my spots and stay in my lane. I do not always succeed. However, I hope I do a better job of it than Aaron Sorkin.

IV: Evening Back at My Hotel

As I walked to the train station to go meet Elliot I called Annie. Annie has always been completely outta control, and she absolutely loves it. Within five minutes she’d decided to crash her ex-husband’s wedding in a tent, seduce one of the guests, reminisced about working at Spokane’s Mars Casino, told me stories involving cocaine, dresses, gambling, and an older gay man who’d taught her “everything about sex,” invited me to her hypothetical future wedding, and, after I jokingly suggested we skip straight to sex ourselves, said she’d think about it. Talking to Annie has always been like standing beside a fire hose. The stories don’t really have beginnings or endings. They simply arrive.

The morning passed quietly. I answered a message from my brother Hugh, who was planning to stop by the house in Kyoto sometime during the coming week, and sent a few encouraging replies to several women I’d been chatting with online. One woman in the Philippines was hoping to find work overseas in Singapore or Malaysia. Another, somewhere in Thailand, simply wanted to know how my morning was going. Others had drifted into that peculiar limbo occupied by most dating-app conversations: friendly enough to continue, but unlikely ever to become anything more.

After a while I found myself scrolling through far more conversations than I probably should have. Dating apps create the illusion that your social world is constantly expanding, when in reality most interactions simply fade away after a few messages. Every now and then somebody surprises you, but most conversations end not with an argument or rejection, but with simple inertia. Nobody does anything wrong. Life just moves on.

Perhaps that’s why I no longer find the process frustrating. Years ago I probably would have chased every lead, replied to every message immediately, and wondered why nothing seemed to develop. These days I treat it more like browsing a bookstore than shopping for groceries. If something genuinely interesting appears, wonderful. If not, I’ll probably enjoy my coffee just as much.

My musical companion for the morning was Craig Finn. I first discovered him through “Sequestered in Memphis,” and, like many first-time listeners, completely misunderstood the song. I thought the narrator was speaking to a journalist after a reckless night in Memphis. Only later did I realize he was being questioned by the police. Somehow that misunderstanding didn’t lessen the song; if anything, it made me appreciate Finn’s writing even more. His characters are so vividly drawn that they feel real even when you’ve misunderstood the plot.

One line has always stayed with me: “In bar light she looked alright. In daylight she looked desperate.” Finn is ostensibly describing someone else, but the brilliance of the lyric is that it cuts both ways. By dawn, they’re both desperate. We’ve all had moments where the previous night’s confidence evaporates with the morning light. Finn simply found the perfect sentence to describe it.

V: On the Way to See Elliot

After finally giving up on the day’s editing, I showered, threw on a clean shirt, and hurried toward Taishō, where I was meeting Elliott at a craft beer pub called TNT. I was running a few minutes behind schedule—as usual—but Elliott has never struck me as the sort of person who minds waiting over a pint. I figured I’d make up the time somewhere between the hotel and the station, although experience suggested otherwise.

The train ride became one of those familiar periods of suspended possibility. While checking directions and changing lines, I also found myself checking dating apps, replying to messages, and idly wondering what the rest of the evening might bring. If everything went perfectly, I’d spend a few hours drinking good beer with Elliott, head back toward my hotel, and perhaps finish the night with a date. It wasn’t exactly a plan so much as several loosely connected possibilities competing for my attention.

Somewhere between stations my thoughts drifted to Tomoyo, one of my former students whom I’d seen again at the book launch. We’d nearly gone out together once before, years after she’d graduated, but circumstances had gotten in the way. Twenty years have now passed since I first taught her, which removes any ethical hesitation I might once have felt. I found myself wondering whether I should simply ask her out the next time I am in Tokyo. Sometimes life becomes unnecessarily complicated because we spend too much time calculating the odds instead of asking straightforward questions.

That seemed to be the theme of the journey. I checked my bank balance, priced a few possibilities for later that evening, briefly reconsidered future trips to Thailand and even South Korea, nearly walked the wrong way through a station, and at one point came within a few feet of being clipped by a taxi while jaywalking. None of it mattered very much. My mind was simply ricocheting from one possibility to another while my body steadily carried me toward a beer with a friend.

By the time I emerged from Taishō Station, the mental static had largely disappeared. Elliott was waiting, the pub was less than a minute away, and for the next few hours the only decision I intended to make was which beer to order first.

=====

The Osaka Loop Line has a hypnotic quality after a while. Every minute or two another calm recorded voice announces the next station, another transfer, another reminder to mind the gap. After ten or fifteen minutes the words stop meaning anything. They become part of the rhythm of the journey, almost musical, drifting in and out beneath whatever happens to be occupying your thoughts.

Mine, for reasons I still can’t explain, wandered toward negative igloos.

I have absolutely no idea what a negative igloo is. I have never knowingly encountered one before or since. It arrived fully formed, demanded my attention for perhaps fifteen seconds, and then disappeared forever, leaving me no wiser than before. If someone were to ask me today what a negative igloo might actually be, I honestly couldn’t begin to answer. Nonetheless, somewhere between Kitahama and Taishō, negative igloos briefly became the most important concept in my universe.

The rest of my brain was scarcely more coherent. Ryan Adams was singing Drank Like a River, and I found myself thinking about the tiny crack in his voice—that moment where it sounds less like he’s performing a song than remembering something he’d rather forget. Some singers sound polished. Ryan often sounds wounded. There’s a difference, and it’s one of the reasons I keep returning to his records.

Then, just as suddenly, I realized I had absolutely no idea where I was.

I’d somehow missed my stop, wandered out the wrong exit, and was now standing in a station that looked vaguely familiar while possessing almost no useful geographical knowledge whatsoever. Google Maps insisted I was only two minutes away from Elliott. My instincts insisted otherwise. My instincts, it should be noted, have an unfortunate habit of arguing with Google.

For a few minutes I experienced what I can only describe as a minor travel panic. Not real panic—nothing so dramatic—but that familiar sensation every traveller knows, where every street begins to resemble every other street and every directional arrow seems specifically designed to send you somewhere else. I walked one way, doubled back, checked Google again, ignored Google, trusted Google, ignored it again, and somehow managed to end up exactly where I’d started.

Meanwhile my thoughts continued their usual pinball routine. Was the Sony credit card finally on its way? Should I spend part of August in South Korea instead of Bali? Would Yo still be available later that evening? Why hadn’t Jennifer replied? Why did Meinster have time to send me promotional emails but apparently not royalty statements? None of these questions had anything whatsoever to do with finding a pub in Taishō, but my mind saw no reason to separate one subject from another.

Eventually I admitted defeat and messaged Elliott. Dude I am totally lost. His reply arrived almost immediately.

Where are you?

It was the perfect question because I genuinely didn’t know.

Google claimed I was standing practically on top of TNT Craft Beer Pub. My own eyes suggested I was standing outside an Irish bar that definitely wasn’t TNT. For a brief moment I began to wonder whether the pub existed only as a cartographical rumour.

I texted him back and said I was looking at Taisho Station. He said he would be right there. One minute later I saw him across the street and crossed to meet him.

When Elliott finally rescued me from my navigational incompetence, TNT turned out to be exactly where Google had insisted it was all along. The fault, as usual, lay somewhere between the phone and the human operating it.

“You’re hopeless,” he said.

“I prefer ‘geographically imaginative.'”

He laughed. “Come on.”

One minute later we were golden.

VI: TNT Craft Beer with Elliot

The pub was everything I hoped it would be: a long wooden bar, a dozen taps of rotating local craft beers, a cheerful bartender in a baseball cap who somehow managed to keep everybody’s glass full without ever looking hurried. When one of the kegs kicked halfway through pouring my pint, she apologized and handed me the remainder for free.

“Sorry” she said.

“No worries,” I said. “I’ll always take half a beer for free.”

She laughed.

“I like your hat,” I said.

“I get that a lot,” she said.

I turned to Elliot and asked if he wanted to hear a joke.

“A shepherd is in bed with his girlfriend for the first time. She asks him, ‘How experienced are you?’ He closes his eyes…starts counting…and falls asleep.”

The bartender laughed.

Elliott buried his face in his hands.

“Please,” he said, “never change.”

“I make no promises” I said.

By the time the quizmaster welcomed everyone, we’d accumulated enough empty glasses to suggest we were taking the evening seriously while simultaneously possessing almost no confidence in our ability to answer questions about anything.

“What’s are name?” Elliot asked me.

“How about the Glorious Mofos?”

“Of course.”

“Ladies and gentlemen,” the quizmaster announced, “welcome!”

“He seems enthusiastic,” I whispered.

“He’s paid to be.”

We were spectacularly mediocre.

Spain had won something. Bananas were radioactive. Kobe Bryant was apparently named after Japanese beef. Beyond that we entered a sort of intellectual free fall.

“What do you think?”

“No idea.”

“You?”

“Less than no idea.”

“Write banana.”

“I already did.”

“Excellent.”

Our strategy rapidly evolved into letting Elliott answer the questions that sounded plausible while I concentrated on drinking beer, admiring the bartender, and periodically checking whether Yo had confirmed our appointment.

At one point Elliott looked over my shoulder.

“You’re really going after this?”

“I think so.”

“You ever think about…you know…not?”

I considered that.

“For about three seconds.”

He laughed.

“I thought so.”

That was one of the things I’d always appreciated about Elliott. He never judges. He asked questions. Usually he agrees with me. Other times now. Occasionally he looks at me as though I’ve completely lost my mind. But whatever I do he never tries to become my conscience. Old friendships eventually settle into that rhythm. You stop trying to improve each other and simply learn to enjoy each other’s company.

The conversation drifted from Japan to Canada, from the weather to my girlfriends, from travel plans to parents. I vented a little about my mother bitching about my writing. Elliott listened more than he spoke, occasionally nodding, occasionally smiling in that understated Canadian way that somehow communicated, I don’t entirely agree, but I understand why you’re upset.

By the time the second round ended, I’d glanced at my watch three or four times.

“You’ve got somewhere to be,” Elliott said.

“I might.”

“You definitely do.”

“Indeed I do.”

He grinned.

“Go lose your T-card.”

I laughed so hard I nearly spilled my beer.

“I’ll report back.”

“You’d better.”

We settled the bill, shook hands outside TNT, and headed in opposite directions. Elliott toward another ordinary Saturday night. Me toward Umeda, where Yo-chan was waiting.

VII: On the Way to See Yo Chan

As I entered Taisho Station the JR announcements began their familiar chant once again.

The next stop is…

Somewhere between stations my mind wandered back to negative igloos. I still have absolutely no idea what one is.

The JR announcer continued serenely informing us that the next stop was Kyobashi, or Osaka Castle Park, or somewhere that probably existed. In my head it became:

“Please enjoy negative igloos. Transfer here for the glorious nonsense line. Please exit on the right.”

“Yeah, yeah,” I muttered. “I got it.”

I did not, in fact, have it.

Somewhere between the craft beer and the heat, I’d managed to convince myself I’d fallen asleep on the train. Maybe I had. Maybe I hadn’t. Either way, I suddenly had absolutely no idea where I was.

Oh, shit.

I checked Google Maps again. Every time I opened it, it confidently gave me a different answer.

“Seventeen minutes.”

I calculated that I would get to the shop about five minutes early. This turned out to be off. The announcer cheerfully reminded us to mind the gap.

“I’m trying to mind all the gaps.”

I got off the train and looked around. Then decided getting off had been exactly the right decision. I checked the train map on the station board. I was also seventeen minutes past Umeda. Oh great. Back we go.

I thought to myself: I need cash. Then a taxi. Then a cigarette. Possibly in that order. First I had to get back to Umeda.

The train came and I rode the short distance back. The instant I stepped onto the street, I lit a cigarette and hailed a cab. I had just a fee drags when a cab pulled up and I had to toss the cig.

The taxi driver nodded when I said, “Umeda.” Progress. Seven minutes, Google claimed. For once, we agreed. As the cab rolled through the humid Osaka evening, I realized I was no longer worried about getting lost. I was worried cause I was a little late.

I’d spent the entire afternoon imagining meeting Yo chan, and now my grand entrance was shaping up to be me arriving slightly sweaty, smelling faintly of cigarettes and carrying too little cash.

Great first impression I thought.

The driver dropped me exactly where Google said he would. Google immediately betrayed me again.

Fourth floor. I found the fourth floor. Everything was locked. No people. No reception. No Yo-chan. No nothing.

Just an eerily quiet hallway that felt like the set of a film where everyone had disappeared moments before I arrived.

I called the shop.

“I’m here.”

A reply came back almost instantly.

“First floor. It’s hard to find.”

No shit.

A guy walked over and picked me up. We walked five minutes to where the shop really was, no where near where Google said it was. Typical. This guy knows nothing. Apparently.

Five minutes later I found the place.

VIII: Yo Chan

The shop staff took me up in the elevator to the 7th and opened the door to room 701. For some reason I found this number to be fitting. There was a shower but no sink. I took my own clothes and began to rinse off. Yo chan soon entered the room. She looked like her picture, but not quite. The agency website said she 24, a fact she confirmed in person. She looked about 28 to me, and I supposed her life was perhaps not the easiest.

I found her attractive, and knew I would be able to cum. She joined me in the shower, soaped up, and began to stroke my dick. In general, I prefer to handle my equipment. It is a sensitive area, and I just know it best. I turned my back to her, and then a minute later I stepped out and toweled off. She followed shortly thereafter.

As we stepped out of the shower, she assessed my naked body. She said, “You look like Boris Johnson.” I laughed away and didn’t reply. I decided then that there were some conversations not worth extending.

We climbed onto to bed. I was already erect, and she was at half mast. She unwrapped a condom and slid it on my dick. I had never sucked anyone’s dick before, and I was both exited and just a little nervous.

We began kissing. I like a bit of tongue during kissing, however, her tongue was a little aggressive. Oh well I thought, kissing, at least tonight, would not the main event. I broke the kiss, and went down on her. She was semi-erect, however I was able to fit her full penis into my mouth. The first thing I noticed was her large foreskin. The second thing was, the act was neither pleasant nor unpleasant, and she tasted neither good nor bad. I was eager to make her cum.

After a bit, she motioned for me to come back up to the head of the bed. She climbed back on top of me, and slid my dick into her ass. She had applied lube to her asshole, and hard dick slid in easily. After a short amount of time, I asked her to turn around and entered her from the rear. She began to moan and pant, and I found this very sexy. I was about to cum, and then, as I usually, do, I pulled and finished on a towel while sitting on my knees.

I then collapsed back the bed. She also sat on her knees, and came on the towel. Some of her cum landed on my leg, which I found faintly amusing. After this, I needed a cigarette. There was no smoking in the room so I asked her if I could go downstairs. She said sure, just pick me up a Pocari Sweat and call reception to get back up. I told her I would be back in five minutes, however I knew this was a lie. The fact was I would smoke three of four cigarettes and decompress for a while. This was about an hour into our date, and I had paid for ninety minutes. I did not want to re-engage in sex, so smoking and thinking quietly seemed like a good plan.

When I stepped back onto the street, the wind had gone out of my sails. Not in a bad way. Just…gone. For most of the day I’d been propelled by anticipation. Catch the train. Find Elliott. Don’t get lost. Meet Yo chan. Get the cash. Find the building. Try not to make an idiot of yourself. Then, just like that, there was nothing left to chase.

Osaka was still humming around me, but I’d become a spectator again. I checked the time on my phone. It was 12:30 AM. This immediately made me think of the Katheryn Bigalow film Zero Dark Thirty. I found myself thinking about Zero Dark Thirty. I’d never understood the criticism that it somehow endorsed torture. Showing something ugly isn’t the same as celebrating it. A film can portray violence honestly without recommending it, just as Goodfellas isn’t an argument for joining the Mafia. Sometimes a story simply trusts the audience to tell the difference.

I ducked into a nearby convenience store and bought two Pocaris, two beers, a burrito, and a pack of pack of cigarettes. I smoke another heater and drank one of the beers on the street. Then I called up to reception. There was no security, and I did not see any other customers the whole time I was there, however, at least time, I did what I was told.

Back in bed with Yo, we both undressed again and she fell asleep. I found our legs entwined. He body was very comfortable, and I can honestly say this was the sweetest part of the evening.

She woke up and pointed at the clock. It was time to go. We dressed and walked to the elevator. I leaned to give her a goodnight kiss, and she kissed me back, lightly. This was goodbye.

=====

It was after last train, so I got a taxi back my hotel near Yodoyabashi Station. The taxi rolled silently through the warm Osaka night I leaned my head against the window and watched the city slide by. Tomorrow I’d probably throw myself into another impossible plan, another train, another woman, another glorious and bizarre day. I was, by this point, quite tired.

A few hours earlier I’d been arguing with Google Maps, inventing negative igloos, convincing myself I’d missed stations that probably never existed, and experiencing a full-blown case of what I can only describe as travel boggle. Now all that urgency seemed faintly ridiculous. The date had happened. It had gone OK. I lost my T-card. I’d survived.

Travel does that. What feels catastrophic at eight o’clock becomes a mildly amusing anecdote by twelve-thirty.

But for the moment, there was nowhere I needed to be.

IX: Late Night Hotel and Bed

Back in my room I took off my shirt, washed up, and prepared for bed. For reasons I can’t entirely explain, my thoughts eventually wandered toward football. I’ve always enjoyed the sport, even if basketball remains my first love, and one of my earliest football memories comes from a Washington State game against Stanford. My mother, Claudia—CL to longtime readers—was friendly with Janet Elway, John’s mother, and at one point Janet served as something of a mentor to her. Through that connection, we ended up at the game while John Elway was still Stanford’s quarterback.

Before kickoff, Elway apparently told my mother that if he threw a touchdown, he would point toward us in the stands. Naturally, he did throw one. He was John Elway, after all. And after the score, he looked up and pointed in our direction while we yelled ourselves hoarse. I was still rooting for Washington State, which complicated the moment slightly, but even then I understood that we were watching somebody exceptional.

Elway went on to become one of the defining quarterbacks of his generation, first at Stanford and then during a long NFL career with Denver. What stays with me, though, isn’t the statistics or the championships. It’s the strange intimacy of that afternoon: my mother’s connection to his family, the promise made before the game, and the tiny gesture toward the stands after the touchdown. Sports are full of enormous public moments, but the memories that survive are often the small private ones folded inside them.

I claimed into bed, and indulged in one final reflection for the day. I thought about how funny it was that one minute you are deep in the throes of passion, moaning and panting your partner’s name, and the next you are smoking a cigarette, drinking a beer, and thinking about Zero Dark Thirty on the street. Sex, which feels so wonderful and necessary at the time, does tend to recede pretty quickly. However, the power of good sex, as Kevin Drew says in out epigraph, cannot be beat.

Dedication:

For Yo chan. Thank you for taking my T card baby. Godspeed. You rule.

Posted on by Matt Thomas

The Days and Nights of My 50s I: 7/20/26, the Unwritten Libretto.

Author’s Note:

Five days ago, I made what may prove to be the most important professional decision of my life.

For months—years really—I had been thinking about giving up my teaching career and becoming a full-time writer. I have talked to many of my family and friends about this and taken several small steps in this direction. I recently published a novel, have written and published hundreds of essays, and written almost every day for eighteen years. I have hundreds of pages of dream records, journals and letters, some sent and some only in draft form. I am hard at work on the sequel to my first novel, and am currently working on five books with many more in the making.

Over this time I have also become very good at making excuses. School is too busy. Life is complicated. The timing isn’t quite right. Next month. Next term. Next year. One day. It was all true, and yet it barely matters. A few days ago, I finally admitted what had been staring me in the face for a long time: if I wanted to call myself a writer, I had to stop waiting for someone else to make that decision for me. Whether I eventually succeed or fail is almost beside the point. The decision itself changed something in me. I stopped thinking about the life I wished I had and started taking responsibility for the one I actually have.

Today wasn’t the happiest day of my life, nor the saddest. It wasn’t the day I got married, the day my son was born, the day I published my first book, or the day I realized my marriage was ending. Objectively speaking, it was an ordinary Monday in Osaka. I listened to music. I wandered the city. I shared dinner and my bed with a woman whose path happened to cross mine for a couple of hours before diverging forever. By tomorrow morning she would be somewhere else, and so would I. Yet somewhere between checking into a modest hotel, thinking about my future, and sitting alone quietly after she left, something finally clicked. My teaching career is rapidly coming to a close. The marriage that defined most of my adult life is over. The books I dream about haven’t been written yet. The cities I may someday call home are still only possibilities. The people who will matter most over the next twenty years are, at this moment, complete strangers.

For the first time since I was a young man, there is no obvious script. That realization is exhilarating. It is also terrifying. Most of all, it is deeply liberating.

So this seems as good a place as any to begin this series.

Epigraph:

Yesterday is history. Tomorrow is a mystery.

Anonymous

Anything could happen.

Bash and Pop

I: My General Situation As of Today

For the better part of thirty years, my life had possessed a remarkable amount of structure. I graduated from college. I moved to Japan. I found a teaching career almost by accident and stuck with it for a quarter of a century. I got married, and my wife and I bought a house together in Kyoto. We raised a wonderful son together who we both love more than words can say. We have paid bills, argued over groceries, worried about our dear dog Daisy, taken vacations when we could afford to, and slowly accumulated the ordinary rituals that eventually become a life. There were wonderful years and there were difficult ones, but there was almost always a next step waiting patiently in front of me. Whether I liked the script or not, there was a some kind of a script.

Then, almost imperceptibly at first, it disappeared.

My marriage ended not with a single dramatic explosion but with the gradual realization that two decent people could simply reach the end of the road together. My teaching career, once the defining feature of my adult identity, began to quietly recede into the background. Friends scattered across countries and continents. My parents grew older. I turned fifty-two without feeling especially old, but with the unmistakable sense that I had entered the second half of whatever story remained.

It is a peculiar thing to discover that freedom and uncertainty are twins. For years I imagined freedom as something uncomplicated. Finish work. Write books. Travel. Meet interesting people. Drink coffee in strange cities. Listen to music until two in the morning. Wake up whenever I pleased. Answer to no one.

There is truth in that fantasy. There is another truth as well.

Freedom also means that no one hands you tomorrow. No institution is waiting to promote you. No family obligation automatically determines your next decision. No invisible current carries you downstream. Every meaningful choice becomes your responsibility. Every success belongs to you. Every failure belongs to you too.

That realization can feel less like opening a door than standing on the edge of a cliff. You can step forward. Or you can spend the rest of your life admiring the view. Five days before the evening you’re about to read about, I decided I was done standing still.

I wasn’t retiring, not yet anyway. I wasn’t exactly reinventing myself. I wasn’t chasing some impossible dream. I was simply acknowledging something that had probably been true for twenty years. I am a writer. I feel like I was born to be one. Whether anyone else eventually agrees is, in many ways, beside the point. The work itself has become the destination. Everything else—the cities, the books, the women, the music, the bars, the victories, the humiliations, the friendships, the failures—is simply material for my work.

This series is an attempt to pay attention to the contours of my daily life, in whatever form the may take. And, perhaps for the first time in my life, to trust that the story doesn’t need an outline before it begins.

II: Osaka

Osaka has always felt different to me than Kyoto.

Kyoto is the city where I built my adult life. It is where I have worked, and lived for more than twenty years with my life and son. It is where the mortgage was paid and our dog was walked, where ordinary afternoons quietly accumulated slowly into decades. I know its rhythms inside and out. I know which coffee shops open early, which bridges are worth crossing at sunset, and where to stand beside the Kamogawa when I need to remember that almost everything eventually passes.

Osaka has always been to me something else entirely.

It has never asked me to be responsible. When I come here, I feel somehow lighter. Less like a teacher. Less like a husband. Less like the man who spent twenty-four years inside the same corporate institution. Osaka has always given me permission to become, if only for a day or two, a slightly different version of myself. Not a better man or a worse one. Just someone with fewer expectations resting on his shoulders.

Perhaps every city we visit has a role to play in our lives. Kyoto has been my home. Tokyo has often been a dream. Singapore has long been my favorite escape. Osaka, though, has become my intermission. A place where I can step off the stage for a little while before the next act begins. A place to just get away.

This Monday afternoon I checked into a small APA Hotel not far from Shinsaibashi Station, which I affectionally call Mr. Shin. Like most APA hotels, it is clean, efficient, and just a little too compact. The room isn’t exactly designed for lingering. It is designed for sleeping, showering, and moving on. My suitcase for neatly against one wall. The desk is barely large enough for my laptop and a cup of coffee. The large television in front of my bed I will barely use. It suits my current mood perfectly.

I took a taxi to the hotel from Shin-Osaka Station and arrived around 7:30 PM. I dropped my overnight bag on the floor, drew the curtains apart, and looked out over another slice of Osaka. Nothing spectacular. Just traffic, apartment buildings, and the quiet machinery of a city getting on with its day.

I remember thinking how strange it felt to have absolutely nowhere I needed to be. No lesson to prepare. No meeting to attend. No papers to grade. No one waiting for me at all.

That realization no longer frightened me the way it once might have. It felt… spacious. There are moments in life when freedom announces itself with fireworks. This wasn’t one of them. It arrived almost silently. Like an empty afternoon. Like a city that has never asked me to explain myself. My hotel room is simple. It is what I can afford.

Outside, Osaka continued exactly as it always had. Inside, almost without me realizing it, the next stage of my life had already begun.

III: Meeting Yuki

I should flash back briefly here to introduce my date for the evening. There are evenings that require months of planning. This was not one of them.

The plan, such as it was, consisted of very little. Conversation. Sex. Cigarettes. Dinner. That was enough. As I stepped out of the taxi, I saw her standing quietly on the street.

She was slightly built, dressed in a simple black skirt, and carried herself with the quiet confidence of someone accustomed to meeting complete strangers. There was no dramatic meeting, no cinematic slow motion, no instant thunderbolt. We smiled, introduced ourselves, and within a minute or two were walking side by side into the hotel through the warm Osaka evening as though we had agreed to meet as old friends rather than someone we had never laid eyes on before.

Her name was Yuki.

We went up to my room and made the sort of awkward conversation that strangers always make at first. Where are you from? Where do you live today? Had I been to Osaka often? Was I enjoying the summer?

Nothing remarkable. Which, in retrospect, was itself remarkable. There is something deeply comforting about ordinary conversation. For a little while, neither of us had to be anything more than two people just getting to know each other.

Eventually, because pretending otherwise would have been absurd, the reason we had met entered the conversation. She is thirty-six and works as an escort. I had hired her for the evening.

There is no point dressing those facts up in prettier language. They are neither the whole story nor something I feel any particular need to defend. They simply belong to it. Human lives are untidy. We make decisions for reasons that are sometimes noble, sometimes lonely, sometimes curious, and sometimes impossible even to explain to ourselves. This was one of mine.

I went into the bathroom to wash up, took my clothes off, and hung them neatly on the hangers on the wall. By the time I came out of the bathroom she was naked too. That was what we were there for. I put on one of my favorite bands Whiskeytown, lay back on the bed for a few minutes, listened hard, and let the sweet sweet sounds of Ryan Adams’ voice wash over me. I was, briefly, in heaven.

Then, inevitably, we began to kiss. She is a smoker and tasted like stale tobacco and faintly like green peas. I am a smoker too so I am sure I tasted the same. She unwrapped one of the condoms that I had bought earlier for occasions just like this and began to pleasure me with her mouth. While I do enjoy oral sex to some extent, it is far from my favorite sexual act and I have never been able to cum this way. Not for lack of trying, I simply find that the women who have performed the act on me can never sufficiently been able to get their teeth out of the way. It is not their fault at all, but it is just that simple.

Soon enough, I asked her to climb on top of me. My penis was already erect and she was slick as well, and I entered her cleanly and easily. After a little while, we flipped around and began to engage in the missionary position. I was on the urge of cumming when I pulled out, turned over on my back, and finished my self off with two hands. Nine times out of ten I finish this way if I finish at all. After all, I know my own equipment better than else, so to speak. Before we began to have sex I put on some porn. I chose very quickly as we were on the clock. I selected some perfectly nun priest porn, totally chalk. Of course we both barely watched it as our eyes were mostly closed. The moment I came I toweled off, shut off the porn, and immediately pressed play on the Whiskeytown video I had paused before sex.

Then a funny thing happened. During sex she had repeatedly asked me to turn down the porn and to shush in general. She said we were at a business hotel and that we were bothering the other guests. Although I love to be babied. I do not like to mothered at all. It is just not my thing, and I have written about this at some length here. I already knew that I would not book Yuki again, and this moment helped crystalize my decision. She is sweet and cool, and I am glad I met her for one night, however she is just not my jam. And also, nobody shushes my boy.

Anyway, she asked me to turn my music down. I just laughed and cranked it. Then she laughed too and the mood lifted and passed. Neither of us was yet in the mood for a shower, mostly because we were on the clock and by this point only had about 40 minutes left in our appointment. I did not feel like a round two, so I suggested we head down to the street to smoke for a smoke and then get a little dinner. Although we had less than an hour left and the hotel restaurant was a little busy, she agreed to have dinner with me.

We finished our cigarette and entered the first floor hotel restaurant. We sat down and briefly consulted the menu. The restaurant specializes in pasta, so I ordered tomato pasta with eggplant and she ordered the zucchini linguine. The food took a while to arrive, so halfway through the meal she asked for a doggie bag. I quickly finished my meal and we went upstairs so she could pack her bag.

The evening had never pretended to be anything it wasn’t. Neither of us confused it with romance. Neither of us imagined it was the beginning of some extraordinary love story. It was simply two lives crossing for a few hours before continuing in different directions. There is something quietly beautiful about that too.

Outside, Osaka was still very much alive. Trains rattled somewhere in the distance. Traffic rolled steadily beneath the hotel windows. Thousands of strangers were beginning nights that had nothing to do with ours. Ours, quietly and without complaint, was coming to an end.

I told her I was going to wash up for a minute. She said through the door that she had to leave. I said goodbye babes and she replied in the same fashion. When I came back out, she was already gone.

And I didn’t even kiss her goodbye.

IV: Coda

For most of my adult life, my future had always arrived with an outline. There was always another semester to teach. Another report to write. Another mortgage payment to make. Another family holiday to plan. Another school year waiting just over the horizon. Even when life became difficult, I almost always had a sense of what would come next. The details may change, but the broad shape of the story had already been sketched.

And now it hadn’t.

As I write this the marriage that defined nearly half my life has come to an end. My teaching career, after almost thirty years, is slowly coming to an end. My son is a grown man, trying his best making his own way in the world and earning his own money. My wife and I are immensely proud of him as well we should be. Our house of 19 years will soon belong to someone else. My life is rapidly becoming quite different and everything that had once seemed permanent has become part of the past.

This all may sound just a bit sad. Some of it may be, sure. It also happens to be exhilarating. Tomorrow I might wake up in Kyoto. Next month I might find myself in Singapore. A year from now I may be living in Osaka. Anything could happen.

Perhaps I’ll write ten more books. Perhaps no one will read them. Perhaps I’ll fall in love again. Perhaps I won’t. There will be close friends I haven’t made yet. There are cities I have not yet wandered. There are songs I haven’t fallen in love with, thank god.

There are mistakes waiting patiently for me. There are joys I cannot yet possibly imagine. For the first time since I was in my early twenties, the next chapter of my life has not yet been written.

As I stood there in that little Osaka hotel room, listening to Whiskeytown waft through the room, I finally understood what life had trying to tell me for days.

My life hadn’t fallen apart. It had, in fact, opened up. And somewhere beyond everything I thought I knew, waiting patiently for me, was the unfinished libretto.

Dedication:

For Yuki. Thanks for a lovely evening. I’ll never see you again, babe. Go with God.

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Craig Finn on Nightlife and Adult Relationships III: Jessamine (Craig Finn’s Miniature Masterpiece)

Epigraph:

Jessamine must have had some dreams/ but she never really said what they were.

Craig Finn

Note: This is the third entry in my little ongoing series on Craig Finn / The Hold Steady songs that take up nightlife, messy adult relationships, and the long shadows cast by fleeting encounters. Part I and Part II are available. I’ve also written at length about what I consider Finn’s two greatest songs: A Bathtub in a Kitchen and It’s Never Been a Fair Fight.

Jessamine is track 8 off of A Legacy of Rentals, Finn’s 2022 solo record distributed on his own label, Positive Jam Records. It clocks in at a tight 3 minutes and 25 seconds, and once again I am simply overawed by Finn’s concision and his ability to tell a whole story in just a few words. It is my opinion, and I do not say this lightly, that Finn is the greatest short story writer to have ever lived. 

Jessamine tells the story of a three week relationship between the narrator, who we will continue to call C. for convenience, and a goth girl with a need for speed. A Legacy of Rentals contains at least three excellent songs, the crime caper “The Amarillo Kid,” the gorgeous “The Year We Fell Behind,” and Jessamine. I would love to write about The Year We Fell Behind as well, however Jessamine falls neatly into our conceit of nightlife and adult relationships, although this one seems to depict more of a young person’s relationship. Close enough. 

Jessamine is folky and lilting, of a piece with Finn’s later work which tends toward folk and country as opposed to Lifter Puller’s indie fever dreams and The Hold Steady’s soaring rock anthems. The Finn song that it most closely resembles is “Esther,” from a 2018 EP by The Hold Steady which also depicts an intense and short-lived relationship. “The party ended suddenly, suddenly it’s over/ That left me and Esther all alone and getting older/ All alone and getting older smoking in the street/ Now everything is Esther and it’s been that way all week.”

Jessamine opens thusly:

I met Jessamine in Cherry Hill

Her dress all done in daffodils

The sticker on her skateboard said, “Speed kills”

And yeah, it probably did just what it said

Cherry Hill is in New Jersey, where the song is set. Jessamine is probably a younger woman, and a skater. The first verse foreshadows her ultimate fate. Incidentally, the first time I visited New Jersey was junior year of college with my Asian Art History class. It was also on this trip that I first visited New York City, the most intoxicating place on earth which I have written about relatively extensively. I wrote about my Art professor in my piece on my senior year at Hamilton College, in relation to a girl I had a total crush on, called L. L. was not exactly goth, but she might have been goth-adjacent. And she was totally intense. More on goths in a minute.

Verse II adds a little more context.

I only knew her for like three weeks straight

And the whole time we were wide awake

You know “Trenton Makes, the World Takes?”

She had it spray-painted over her bed

It is my experience that short-term relationships can be, probably are, the most intense and intoxicating type of relationships in a sense. The depth that comes with a true crush, while of a completely different valance from a long-term relationship, is, I believe, without parallel. But then again, I’m an action junkie, as is Finn. I wrote about the power of a crush in my Bad Moves piece where I confessed to a serious crush on their lead singer, Katie Park. I actually sent the piece to the band via Instagram, and they responded saying “Thanks for the write-up.” I don’t know, but I like to believe Katie read, or at least saw, my piece! Unfortunately, Bad Moves are disbanding and are, I believe, on their farewell tour.

The wording “three weeks straight” implies that C. and Jessamine were, temporarily, inseparable, sleep deprived, and deep into each other. Trenton is, of course, also in New Jersey, and though I hadn’t heard of the exact phrase quoted until I listened to the song, it is apparently well known locally and appears in neon on a bridge.

Verses III and IV introduce Jessamine’s death obsession, and to me anyway suggest that she is what I would call a kind of a goth.

We used to hang around her room

Getting off on all the gloom and the doom

Watching cavemen in the cartoons

Playing xylophones made out of bones

She was sexy, but still death-obsessed

She said the bloodshed makes such a mess

But you really don’t even have to market it

Yeah, it pretty much sells itself

Now I am not really into a lot of bones and blood personally, but I do like me some goth girls. In fact, in the course of my life I have sort of quasi-dated a few, and for whatever reason they are just my speed. I find goth girls sexy, like Jessamine, caring, and deeply intriguing. And mysterious, of course. I have a weakness for crazy women; I cannot lie. And already I can totally see Jessamine’s appeal.

Jessamine has a number of semi-chourses, and the first one goes like this: 

I should’ve asked her before she departed

How did all these wars get started?

Why do rival crews show up to the same parties

If they hate each other so much?

It’s like they’re secretly in love

Again, we foresee Jessamine’s demise up front. Why would Jessamine have insight into the origins of global conflicts? I’m not quite sure, however the image of rival gangs being secretly in love is oddly compelling. However, it is with the next verse and chorus that the song really gets going.

Verse V and Chorus II go like this:

She said, “Suspicion isn’t wisdom

And the drones look just like doves”

And there was something laying siege to her kingdom

But she never really said what it was

While the incense turned to ashes

And the sunrise was unsure

Jessamine musta had some dreams

But she never really said what they were

Yeah, she never really said what they were

Here we learn that our goth girl heroine has something going on that is unarticulated, or perhaps inarticulable. “Jessamine musta had some dreams/ But she never really said what they were” is such a wonderful and moving line. We all have dreams, I suppose; some come to fruition and some don’t. But Finn is in no way judging Jessamine’s relative inability to describe her dreams; instead this aspect of her character only adds to her obliqueness, her mystery.

The next verse and chorus show that Jessamine in the end, and probably in the beginning, had the upper hand in the relationship.

We kinda ended how we began

With Jessamine meeting a man

And liking that man just a little bit more

Than the boy she had before

I hadn’t even seen her since

I guess this new guy was some kind of prince

I guess his castle was a front for some fence

And then the whole damn city got warm

And they were trying to ride out that storm

Again, Finn is a total master of precision and compression. C. is immature, Jessamine is, to some extent, on the make, her new boyfriend is crime-adjacent (so many of Finn’s songs feature characters on the margins of the legal world), and the whole damn city mirrors Jessamine’s flightiness. The crush is over; C. is dumped and he never sees her again. That’s a weird and kind of almost frightening part of short-lived relationships–while their depths are as intoxicating as anything in life, people will just move on and the moment exists only in memory, burned into the fabric of time, but still fleeting.

The next verse points toward C. getting over Jessamine, and alludes to the idea that what may seem for a time to be a storm will pass; a crush, with all its power, is also somewhat illusory.

‘Cause the rain is inconsistent

And the thunder is insincere

‘Cause it makes a big commotion

But eventually it clears

The next verse and chorus puts a pin in Jessamine’s story, and Finn employs his classic penchant for alliteration along the way. Maybe to get away from the scene, or perhaps for some other reason, C. moves out west, loses his shirt, metaphorically, and literally perhaps, and gets word of Jessamine’s demise.

I went out to San Francisco

And some sailor stole my shirt

I was sitting on the passenger side in a taxi

The first time that I heard

That she was probably speeding

And no one else was hurt

Jessamine must’ve had some dreams

But she never really said what they were

Yeah, she never really said what they were

I love the line here “and no one else was hurt.” It’s hard to fully explain why, but it’s oddly moving that Jessamine, on her way out, with all her attraction to blood and bones, didn’t take anyone with her. Finn doesn’t even really register what C.’s reaction is to Jessamine’s death is, he simply repeats the lines about dreams such that she dies as she lived, unknown to herself and unknowable to others.

Overall, Jessamine might seem like kind of a minor song. It’s short, and maybe doesn’t have the deep metaphorical richness as a song like A Bathtub in the Kitchen. Nonetheless, I love it. My sense is that a writer has to write for years and years before they can get to a song like Jessamine. Finn is a few years older than me, and has accumulated the wisdom and compassion to make a song like this look easy. It is not.

I wish her to say a brief word about AI, which may seem unrelated. The other night I met up with a few friends and some friends of friends were there as well. One of them, a slightly older gentleman who used to work in tech, started talking about how much he loved AI music, especially some kind of mash-up of two well-known bands. I appreciated that fact that he liked this “music,” but I have to confess that I could not have cared less. The idea of AI music, especially music with lyrics, interests me not at all. And this is, essentially, because I like people better than machines, but also because I don’t think AI, at least at this point, can come close to writing a song like Jessamine. I won’t get super political here, however the idea that AI can replace, or even duplicate a Jessamine, or Return of the Grievous Angel by Gram Parsons, or Come in from the Cold by Joni Mitchell, for example, just seems absurd to me. As implied above, Finn had to live 50 years, listen to tens of thousands of songs, and write hundreds to get to Jessamine. At 3 minutes and 25 seconds it is a mini-masterpiece.

Dedication:

For goth girls everywhere.

Note: If you enjoyed this piece you might also enjoy the pieces below, which also cover the singer-songwriter Craig Finn.

Craig Finn on Nightlife and Adult Relationships I: Most People are DJs
On Subcultures and Scenes in Craig Finn’s “It’s Never Been a Fair Fight”
On Craig Finn’s “A Bathtub in the Kitchen”
Posted on by Matt Thomas

Levels of Lucidity in Dreams: A Close Reading

Illustrations presented with thanks by Riko Kusahara

Note: This piece was written for the Psiber Dreaming Conference offered by IASD in September 2018, under a strict word limit that forced a level of compression I don’t always allow myself. It draws on a series of lucid dreaming experiences to explore how we determine whether we are dreaming or awake, and why those determinations so often fail under pressure. Looking back, I’m less interested in the specific techniques of lucidity than in the broader question the paper circles: what happens when our usual markers of reality—stability, plausibility, even self-awareness—prove unreliable? The result is less a theory of dreaming than a compact record of trying to think clearly inside a system that continually revises its own ground.

Epigraph I:

The difference between most people and myself is that for me the “dividing walls” are transparent.  That is my peculiarity.

—Carl Jung

Epigraph II:

The conventional scientific sentiment has become that—while we don’t totally understand why dreaming happens—the dreams themselves are meaningless. They’re images and sounds we unconsciously collect, almost at random {…} Which seems like a potentially massive misjudgement.

—Chuck Klosterman

Dream I: I awake in a warehouse.  The bed is against one wall–on the other is a thirty-foot mountain of cantaloupes.  I realize I am dreaming.  I get up and run my hands over the cantaloupes.  They feel absolutely real—as tangible as in life.  I remember that tangibility is not a viable reality test—I’ve made that mistake before.  Now fully lucid, I decide to levitate.  The room dissolves, and I float suspended somewhere in dense, colourless space.  Eventually, I feel the need to come back to earth but cannot locate it.  I feel something beneath me.  This is my bed, and I awake back in the warehouse, relieved yet exhilarated.  The cantaloupes are still there, however I don’t question them.  I just happen to live in a room full of fruit.  Moments later I awake again, this time in diurnal “reality.”

The most common dream experience is of waking from a dream we take to be real, only to understand that it was “just a dream.”  However, a subset of dreamers, probably more than we generally imagine, have experienced lucid dreams, dreams in which, to some degree, they are aware they are dreaming.  Lucid dreamers may also experience “false awakenings”[1]— the sensation of waking progressively through dream “levels.”  False awakenings can be disorienting (Robert Waggoner writes that after seven successive false awakenings he “would accept {…} any reality {…} as long as it stayed put”[2]), or sought after (Daniel Love and Keith Hearne have independently developed techniques to induce false awakenings[3]).  Regardless of the desirability of the experience, the existence of dream levels, far from a simple oddity, provides a potential window into massive metaphysical questions.   

First, we need to understand how dreamers use evidence to establish whether they are dreaming or awake.  

II: I am in a dreaming contest with another dreamer.  The contest begins and slimy amphibians begin to appear.  Some resemble frogs; others are in shapes that don’t exist in nature.  Their size varies from that of a pinky to that of a fist and they are very colourful.  I am not trying to dream them, rather they are spilling everywhere around my feet.  I sense this is a dream and check on the other dreamer.  He is standing to my right in empty space.  He looks just like me and hasn’t begun his dream. 

This dream is non-lucid at first and becomes lucid because of the bright color and absurd number of the amphibians.  An awareness beyond the dream senses a non-natural situation.  

III: I am picking out fruit at a fruit stand.  There are some huge avocados, almost too good looking.  I wonder if I am in a dream, and touch an avocado to check.  The one I choose is ripe and soft—I squeeze it a little.  There is no doubt that I am having a tactile experience, and I conclude I am not dreaming.  Of course, I am. 

Two dreams, two types of evidence.  In Dream II, I correctly identify the amphibians as anomalous, and become lucid.  In Dream III, my attempt to test the lifelikeness of the avocado as an indicator fails.  Simply put, realistic sensation is not sufficiently indicative of reality.  Love agrees: “we are not looking for a qualitative difference in how realistic the experience feels {…} we are {…} on the lookout for issues with stability and plausibility.”[4]  In Dream I, at first the huge pile of melons in my bedroom appears implausible and triggers lucidity; after moving up a dream level, my mind overrides the implausibility by “justifying”[5] the anomaly.  

Because we awake from sleep and dreams every morning, we are very familiar with the experience of awakening.  It is therefore unsurprising that when we wake inside a dream we accept the new reality as the waking world, even if it contains anomalous elements.  

IV: I am in a huge house where a large group of families on motorcycles arrive.  The families are making noise all night.  I realize I am dreaming and levitate over to the families.  Later I decide to wake up.  I ease myself out of bed, bumping my nose into an ironing board.  The room looks and feels exactly like my room.  I don’t recall the ironing board being there, but whatever.  Moments later I awake again—the situation is identical, only, the ironing board is gone.  I feel a pit in my stomach, wondering what is ultimately real.

Dream IV is a good example of how dream levels can become increasingly realistic as we move through them.  An ironing board in front of the bed is (for me) more plausible than a house full of bikers.  Dreams such as this beg the question of how we can ever be sure we are awake.  I have dreamt of getting up, walking to the front door, opening it, and emerging into the sunshine in my neighbourhood.  At every point, this dream felt entirely realistic with no anomalies.  After experiences like this, is it wholly unrealistic that we could dream an entire morning?  An entire day?

There are different ways to approach this kind of question.  The first is to use rigorous reality tests.[6]  Using reality tests after each fresh awakening can help us filter anomalies in what may be an increasingly realistic dream state. The second is to open ourselves to a wider set of questions.  Although space limitations make full exploration of these questions impossible, modern dreamers would do well to recall that throughout recorded history people have speculated on the meaning of the dream state and what it can tell us about space, time, life after death, and the nature of reality. 

As dreamers, we know that dreamtime behaves very differently than waking time.  Robert Moss distinguishes between Chronos (“linear time”) and Kairos (the “spacious now.”)  He writes that when Kairos operates in waking life, “ordinary time is {…} suspended or elastic,” and that the world can “quiver or shimmer.”[7]  Moss’ Kairos time sounds a great deal like dreamtime.  Jung in his memoir writes “our concepts of space and time have only approximate validity,”[8]  and “there are indications that at least a part of the psyche is not subject to the laws of space and time.”[9]  Jung makes multiple connections between dreams and life after death, suggesting that our waking world,

in which we are “conscious,” may in fact be a projection of a more “real” and permanent, even timeless, unconscious.[10] 

In the Tibetan tradition of dream yoga, the yogi prepares for death through dreams and meditation, entering death consciously by releasing the bodily energy in such a way that the body partially or entirely dissolves into pure light.  This “rainbow body” is well-documented in Tibet and China, and cases of this phenomenon have been reported across multiple religious traditions.[11]  Finally, Moss connects dreams with the much discussed Many Worlds theory, as does, in popular culture, Richard Linklater. [12]

V:  I am among a large group of people on the top floor of a building.  We lie down on our backs and form bundles.  The molecular structure of these bundles begins to dissolve, we become lighter, then totally empty.  This process is dictated by a power outside of us which doesn’t speak.  Once empty, we have the choice to become anything we want.  I choose to become white light.  Suddenly I am transported through space in a burst of pure white light, my old body left entirely behind.  This is the most peaceful and thrilling feeling in the world.  Then, I am back into a new bundle, trying again to become empty.  I make progress, but it is hard and I am over-concentrating.  Progress ceases; I wake up. 

Although I have thought at length about dreams, I am a normal person with a normal job, dreaming anonymously night after night.  I don’t belong to a spiritual tradition, am not a yogi or a meditating hermit.  As a lucid dreamer, like many of us, I am self-taught.  While we anonymous dreamers are wise to suspend judgement about the particularities of a theory as mind-boggling as dreams as an interface to infinite parallel universes, it is perhaps not by chance that my dreams of ascending to a state of pure white light bear close resemblance to innumerable near-death experiences or the reported manifestations of a lifetime of dream yoga.  Although admittedly outside of our normal rational mode of apprehension, the experience of journeying through multiple dream levels, and the energy and amazement which often accompany these experiences, may point the way toward worlds far above, below, or beyond our own.  

Who are we in our trek through life?  Are we the maker, or the made?  The writer, or the page?  The actor, or the stage?  The happening, or the happened to?  Perhaps, our ability to exercise agency in the vastness of forever depends in part on learning to navigate levels of “reality,” however we encounter them.  Or, perhaps, journeying to the far side of the dream can bring us face to face with that which is actually dreaming us.

Bibliography

Jung, Carl. Memories, Dreams, Reflections. Vintage Books, 1989.

Linklater, Richard, director. Slacker. Orion Classics, 1990.

Love, Daniel. Are you Dreaming? Enchanted Loom Publishing, 2013.

Moss, Robert. Sidewalk Oracles. New World Library, 2015.

Rinpoche, Gyalwai Nyugu.  “About Rainbow Body.” http://www.gyalwai-nyugu.com/about-rainbow-body/.  Accessed 24 July 2018.

Rinpoche, Tenzin Wangyal. The Tibetan Yogas of Dream and Sleep. Snow Lion Publications, 1998.

Thomas, Matthew.  “On Coming Through”: A New Meditation on Intention. https://craftfollowsconcept.com/2013/05/13/on-coming-through-statement-of-intent-on-the-approach-of-my-39th-birthday/#more-11. Accessed 24 July 2018.

Waggoner, Robert. Lucid Dreaming. Moment Point Press, 2009.

[1] Waggoner, 61

[2] ibid., 63

[3] Love, 131

[4] Love, 71

[5] Love cites “poor reasoning skills” as one common reason for failing to recognize dream signs and achieve lucidity.  Love, 73.

[6] Love, 78-79; Waggoner, 259.  (Wagonner uses the term “reality check” instead of “reality test.”)

[7] Moss, 49

[8] Jung, 300

[9] ibid., 304

[10] ibid., 324

[11] Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche, 314; Gyalwai Nyugu Rinpoche

[12] Moss, 74-74; Linklater

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Scenes from Hamilton College VI: Junior Year in New Zealand

Note: This is Part VI of the Hamilton series. Part I, Part II, Part III, and Part IV and Part V are available.

Epigraph:

They all come and peep through a hole in the wall
Keep the bastards guessing
He likes to take the long way home,
It’s another fine decision

Peter Jefferies

I spent a full academic year, the second semester of my junior year and the first of my senior year, at The University of Otago in Dunedin, New Zealand. Otago is a pretty good university, but Dunedin is pretty small and kind of country. Overall, it was a good experience, but I was flat broke and not on a meal plan due to an oversight by I guess myself and my parents. More on that later.

After I landed, I spent one night at a hotel and bought a bottle of wine, for the first time in my life. I was of legal drinking age in New Zealand. I drank about three-quarters of it and was a little hungover the next day. At Hamilton people did not drink wine.

The first few days I was on a homestay in the country with a sheep farming family. The father spent the day watching cricket, and then would rouse and take the sheep out and move them around, with sheepdogs and all. I remember going to a local pub with two of his sons and their friends and we had five or six beers and they drove home. On the drive home they tried to run over rabbits on the road, and roared with delight when they got close. That was a scene.

Then, I went back to Dunedin, and met my roommates who were all in graduate school studying to be teachers. These were Tim, Ho (who was of Maori descent), Sharlene, and Donna. Tim was a musician and there was a large piano in his room. The roommates were good folks, however I think I disappointed them a little because they asked for an American roommate and were apparently expecting someone really flamboyant and loud. I was not that, and kept to myself much of the year. One time though that I lived up to their expectations was when Tim once again said “you’re from Washington D.C.” and I said “I’m not from fucking Washington D.C., I told you before I’m from Washington State!” Tim said to the roommates, “I told you rooming with an American would be fun.”

There were a number of other exchange students from the U.S. there and I got to know some of them a bit at first, but for some reason I was a little standoffish, and we didn’t hang out much after the first week or so. I was back into running, not smoking and barely drinking, although I did go out once with Ho and his Maori friends and got blasted. I would run 8-10 miles a day, sometimes more, and was in training for a marathon.

As I mentioned, my food situation was bad. We had neglected to put me on a meal plan, and I think my parents didn’t even know this, and at first I chipped in what I could to the communal roommate shopping. However, they ate very poor quality mutton all the time and I just couldn’t hack it. Mutton is pretty bad at the best of times, and cheap mutton is awful. So I went off the roommate plan and ate mostly trail mix for dinner. Trail mix, it turns out, is among the best value for money food around. I would buy raisins, peanuts, and carob chips and that’s what I ate at the flat. For lunch I would eat one apricot yoghurt bar and a cup of coffee, costing around $3.50 NZD. I would eat super slowly, taking about 45 minutes to finish the apricot bar and somehow this made me feel like I’d had a meal. I was living on about $7 NZD a day and was hungry all the time. With this and the running, I was also super thin.

At Otago I studied some more literature, and also a lot of Indian History, with a focus on Ghandi. I learned a great deal about Gandhi this year, and found him interesting. One incident I recall was in one class on Buddhism the professor assigned a paper on Zen. I had the bright idea to turn in an empty paper, which I thought would be symbolic, but the professor was a step ahead of me. “Don’t try and turn in an empty paper for this,” he said, “I’ve seen that move before.”

One more interesting thing that happened was when I was invited to the faculty club for drinks by my Australian literature professor. He was in his 60’s and was an Otago lifer. At first I was kind of flattered to be invited, however on arrival it was clear he had other motives. He started hitting on me in a most egregious manner, and it was obvious he had done this many, many times. I had two drinks and politely removed myself. To his credit this had no impact on how he treated me in class, and things went on as normal. I guess it was all par for the course.

The Otago campus was on the north side of town, and the south side was said to be pretty rough. “Don’t go down there,” I was told more than once, “it’s dangerous.” But I thought it couldn’t be that dangerous, so one day I walked down there by myself to check it out. There were a lot of industrial areas and such, and it was a little run-down, but I got home safe just fine. I suspected that “dangerous” in a New Zealand context might mean something a little different than in a U.S. context.

My roommate Sharlene had a friend who just had a breakup and Sharlene wanted us to get together. She invited us both to a party, and sure enough we started making out, under a table as I recall. It just lasted that one night, but Sharlene thought it was hilarious. “They were pashing,” she cried, “pashing away.” Pashing is apparently Kiwi slang for kissing, or maybe it was a Sharlene original.

Sharlene had a stepfather and I visited his house once. He had a nice car and complained on and on about how many tickets he would get from traffic cameras. Traffic cameras were on the scene in 1995. This appeared to be his only topic. He should have driven more carefully.

After the pashing incident, there was another girl who was interested in me. I forget her name, but it started with an M. M. was really into me, maybe because I read a lot and so did she. There was a kind of club place for students with TVs (I remember watching the O.J. Simpson car chase there), and I would hang out there. M. would come in and lob a snickers bar from over my shoulder for me and buy me a coke. This was really nice and super helpful because I needed all the calories I could get. M. wanted to get together, but I wasn’t into it. We did spend a fair amount of time together, at the club and going to the bookstore with another friend of hers.

As I mentioned, I was in good running shape this year and actually went out for a marathon. I was doing great through the first half, but started to fade really bad around the 20 mile mark. I had terrible blisters and pulled my groin and couldn’t imagine doing another 6 miles, so I pulled up. I asked a couple with a car for a ride to the finish line where there were buses, and they gave it to me but made it clear they were not impressed with me packing it in. I wasn’t impressed with myself either, but marathons hurt like hell.

In addition to running, and starving, I also went out for Aikido. Aikido is a Japanese martial art, and I was already well on my way to my Asian Studies minor and was getting into all things Asian. Aikido was taught by a white couple, and this was their life. They were ok teachers, but the atmosphere was just a little culty. Despite my father’s fears, I have never been amenable to cults-like scenes. I stuck with it for a number of months however, and managed to get my first belt.

I don’t remember listening to a lot of music that year because I don’t think I had a stereo in my room, however, one day on the radio I did hear a song I immediately fell in love with. This was “The Fate of the Human Carbine,” by a Dunedin artist called Peter Jefferies. It was spooky and weird and totally captivating. Cat Power would later cover it, and lines from this song serve as the epigraph for this piece.

One more thing that happened this year was that Jenny from Hamilton visited. I don’t think she came specifically to see me, but I’m not sure. I was traveling, with god knows what money, in the New Zealand Alps which are on the South Island there and are really lovely. Jenny and I stayed at a hostel, and hung out which was really cool. That’s the same trip when I went for a walk in deep snow and almost died when the snow suddenly came up to my neck. Deep snow is almost as dangerous as the ocean, it turns out.

Those are my memories of New Zealand. Despite being so broke I had to eat a 45 minute apricot bar, it was a good year and I got really good grades. My academic focus would fall off, however, when I got back to Hamilton, but that’s a story for the next post.

Dedication:

For apricot bars and trail mix. You literally saved my life.

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Scenes from Hamilton College III: Sophomore Year I (with cameos from Sonic the Hedgehog, Ani DiFranco, and Candle Time)

Note: In Part I and Part II of this series I wrote about my freshman year at Hamilton. Part III will take up sophomore year where I lived down the hill in Bundy Dorm.

All you ladies and gentlemen
Who made this all so probable

Big Star

After freshman year I returned back to Washington State for the summer. I have written glancingly about this period, suffice it to say I was not up to much. Still broke, I did have a short lived girlfriend but she dumped me mid-summer. I spent a few days moping around playing nerf golf at my parents’ house, then got over it. I don’t remember much else from that summer except that I got back in good running shape, and when I got back to campus in the fall I turned out, once again, for the running team.

One thing I neglected to mention in my pieces on freshman year is that I actually competed on the JV running team at Hamilton for a time and ran a few races. I was not in great shape that year, and JV was not that exciting. As I have written, I had other pursuits. Sophomore year, however, I was in better shape and had a shot at making the top five. The only other runner I recall was called Harry. I thought Harry lived in Sig, but Jake tells me he was in a frat called THX, about which I remember nothing. In any case, Jake knew him. Harry was a hardcore runner and scolded me about my lifestyle, wanting me to devote myself to the team. I was not going to do this, but I was able to run with Harry and the first team for a number of practices. In the long run though it didn’t work out–they ran mornings and afternoons, and my summer shape wasn’t going to carry me through a hyper-competitive season. I was a good runner, but I just didn’t have the drive. Sooner or later I left the team, this time for good. I look back fondly on Harry however–he was right; I was lazy and needed a kick in the rear.

As a sophomore I roomed in a double with John Innes (there were two John’s in my friend group, John Innes and John Slack), in a dorm halfway down the hill to Clinton called Bundy. Marc Campbell was also on our floor. Ian was living in his frat, but spent a lot of time in Bundy as he was dating Ann, someone who I became close with over the year as well. Jake was over at Sig and I didn’t see much of him, mostly for geographic reasons.

Bundy was a way different story than North. First, I spent a lot more time in my dorm room with John Innes. Innes would watch the soap opera Days of Our Lives and insist I watched it too. I could have cared less, but watched it to be a good friend. We also played Sega, almost exclusively Sonic the Hedgehog and Sega Hockey, at which John usually beat me (however not in the biggest matches, as I’ll get to later). Innes liked rap music and had a pretty good collection. I could get into some of the rap; I liked Public Enemy, KRS One, De La Soul, and a minor band called Basehead which wasn’t really rap. However I was by then deep into what would today be described as alternative or indie music, so Innes’ taste and mine mostly diverged. We were both good about sharing airtime though, so he got to know my music and I his.

The record I listened to the most, by far, that year was Big Star Third: Sister Lovers from the then mostly forgotten American band Big Star. I loved this record (which was on Rykodisc), and played it endlessly while trying to advance in Sonic the Hedgehog. I stuck my mattress in the closet and hung a tapestry over the door area so I had a little cubby to sleep in. Overall, the whole scene was much more domestic than the pretty chaotic North.

Other than Marc and John Innes, I don’t remember exactly who the other guys who were on our floor, but I’ve been reminded that John Slack was one of them. Ian and Jake were living in frats, and over the year I got to know a new crew of people, including several girls. These included firstly Jenny and Jen, who lived in the female area on our same floor (maybe the second floor? Innes will remember). Innes and I became very close to Jenny and Jen, and spent almost every evening hanging out in their room doing something called “Candle Time.” Candle Time was pretty much exactly what it sounds like–we would turn down the lights, light candles (which was probably against school rules) and talk for hours. We would talk about our days, people and goings on in the dorm, and just life in general. It was really wholesome and again, a major change from North.

Candle Time lasted, in my recollection, for a number of months, but not all through the year. Despite spending so much time together, there was no romantic involvement, although I believe Innes and Jen did get together later, and briefly; I’m not really sure. I think it was supposed by some that I myself had a crush on Jen; however although I liked her a lot this was not the case. I did have a little bit of a crush on Jenny, but she had other people who were interested in her and we all hung out so nothing ever happened. That was fine–it was actually really nice to just have close female friends with no expectations.

Jenny and Jen were both from the upstate New York area, broader Rochester as I recall. My guess is they came from relatively less money than many of our classmates, who came from preppier areas, and schools. I actually visited Jenny’s house once or twice, and I think a bunch of us slept over once and watched the film Glengarry Glen Ross. These included Amy Holland, who was one of the coolest chicks around. She was called “Red,” on account of her red hair, and was totally my speed. Everyone else fell asleep during the movie except Amy and I and as I recall she loved what is, to be fair, a pretty stereotypically male film.

Jenny’s house was nice, but seemed pretty middle-class and maybe that’s part of why we all bonded–the richer kids, although I obviously hung around with them a lot, had their own life ways to some extent. I remember one evening Jenny and I went to see the band The New Dylans on campus. I thought they were a good band, and had found their cassette at the campus radio station where John Innes and I had a sports talk show. Their record has a song I liked called “The Prodigal Son Returns Today.” They sounded kind of like a minor league Big Head Todd and the Monsters or something, and are kind of dated today if I’m honest, but I was excited for the show. At first it was pretty full, but people left little by little and by the end it was just me and Jenny. The band played their hearts out for the two of us, including encores! After the show, I joined them for a cigarette outside and chatted. I told them that I really liked the show and they said thanks and all with no mention of the fact that the venue was totally empty. That’s professionalism, I thought, and I imagined that as a band trying to break through playing small colleges and sending cassettes to radio stations they’d had their share of ups and downs. I doubt they are still around, but if so I’m rooting for you guys!

A bigger star that played Hamilton was Ani DiFranco. I saw Ani several times, both on campus and off, as she was pretty huge in New York State at the time. She had not yet released “Dilate,” which came in 1996 and was her mainstream breakthrough to the extent she ever had one, but she was a star on campus, mostly with the women but with a lot of the guys too. Ani put on a great show, and I totally got the appeal. She was kind of the Jeff Rosenstock of the day I suppose.

Shawn Colvin also came, and I knew some of the people who were assigned to take care of her backstage. They reported that she was a total asshole, asked for coke, and generally threw her weight around big time. Shawn Colvin was OK, but no so great that she could act like a diva I don’t think. Full on divas are acceptable-like Joni Mitchell might be a diva and what are you going to do–but minor league divas pretty much suck.

Anyway, like I say over the year although we still saw each other, I saw less of Jenny and Jen, and more of other people like Ann, Amy, and Matt Thornton. I’m not sure where Matt lived, maybe Bundy and maybe not, and I don’t recall either how or when I met him, but we soon became fast friends. Matt was full speed ahead, and argumentative, but I can handle my own in an argument, and I really liked him. Matt ran with an interesting group of friends, including several Asian-Americans who I believe lived on the Kirkland side of campus. Hamilton used to be a guys’ school and Kirkland was the attached girls’ school. Then at some point they merged, but the Kirkland side and the old Hamilton side always felt distinct to me and were separated by a bridge.

One time we were talking about going to New York and Matt told me about some clubs for Asians that he was interested in. Matt’s friends told him that he (or I) could not go to these clubs because we would get the shit kicked out of us. Had to be at least half-Asian apparently. But I think Matt went to these kinds of clubs anyway and did not get beat up, because he just sort of rolled that way.

Matt and I and Ian did go to New York eventually, and spent a few days uptown at some person’s apartment where I commandeered a prime sleeping space and we ordered pizza three times a day. I believe this was actually after graduation, as Matt transferred before graduating from Hamilton.

As I mentioned in an earlier piece, this was also the year Ian and I went to Boston to see music shows. We went with a fellow called Cale who was a freshman. Cale was cool, and also we liked him because of his name, reminiscent of John Cale, violist for the Velvet Underground who Ian and I were both fans of. With Ian and Cale I felt like I was in good company–we were all very simpatico.

My academic performance sophomore year was just OK. I took more English classes, and also started to take some History classes including some Asian History with Tom Wilson. Tom Wilson was a good professor, but I think he was one of those guys who really saw himself at U. Chicago or Yale or something. A lot of academics are like that. Nevertheless, Tom was good–tough but fair–and pushed me to really deepen my research abilities. Outside of Tom’s class, my effort was a little mixed, and during the dead of winter I skipped some morning classes because the climb up the hill was just too tough. The winters in upstate New York are pretty brutal, and I preferred to stay local down in Bundy a lot of the time.

One more thing I remember from this year is starting, and then dropping, photography class. I had an old camera that barely worked, and was interested in learning how to develop film in a darkroom. However, photography class was really expensive because we had to regularly buy these huge rolls of film which cost like $50 at the school store. A classmate I’ll call C. to protect his identity told me, “just tuck your pants into your socks and drop the film down your pants and walk out. That’s what I do.” But I wasn’t going to steal film all year and there was no way I could pay the outrageous costs. On top of that, I wasn’t all that good–certainly my classmates outclassed me, crappy camera or not. So I dropped it after six weeks or so; however now that I think about it I may well have met Matt Thornton in that exact class. It’s a possibility.

Note: That will do it for Part III. In Part IV I’ll write more about my friendship with Ann as well as the Sports Talk Show we did on the Hamilton radio station.

Dedication: For the whole Bundy dorm, actually. It was a pretty chill year.

to be continued…

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Scenes from Hamilton College II: Freshman Year Continued (with cameos from Honey, the Print Shop, and Billy Bragg)

Note: In Part I of this series I wrote about my freshman year at Hamilton, focusing on two friends, Ian and Jake. Part II will branch out and cover a fairly wide, and somewhat random, set of memories.

Epigraph:

I had an uncle who once played for Red Star Belgrade
He said some things are really best left unspoken
But I prefer it all to be out in the open

Billy Bragg

I have already written quite a bit about the characters who lived in the North Dorm freshman year at Hamilton, however there are a few more to cover. First were the first floor stoners. Basmo was a stoner, and he lived on my side of the dorm, but on the other side of the first floor lived the hardcore stoners. This consisted of a quad of guys whose names I don’t totally recall, but one was Peter Kimber, and who got baked at all waking hours and played Roger Waters’ Amused to Death solo on repeat. Next to them, in a double I believe, lived Keys. Keys’ actual name was Caleb, but everyone called him Keys because of the six to eight keys he had dangling from around his neck at all times. What on earth did he need all those keys for? One for the dorm, maybe one for a car (although he should not have been driving at all because he was the single biggest stoner in the dorm and perhaps on campus), what else? I can’t imagine.

Keys and I were not that close, but I did see a lot of him because we had the same job, which was in the school print shop. I don’t know if print shops still exist in the same form in this digital age, but back then the print shop was busy as. We held the campus down. There were two slightly older women who worked at the print shop full-time and three of us students helping out. The full-timers were Sally and Deb. Deb was the boss, and she was kind of motherly and kind to the students. Sally was nice too, but she could be tough. She would bark at us when we made mistakes, which was often because we were running large machines that would glitch pretty frequently. Sally was both the little sister to Deb and also the enforcer. I liked them both, even though Deb ended up firing me, which I’ll get to later.

So Keys would come in lit every day and sort of fumble through his work, which consisted mostly of stapling and collating. I was trusted more than Keys, with good reason, so I ran the machines, but I also did stapling and collating. We printed things for professors, menus for the dining halls, the school newsletter, and a bunch of other stuff. The third student was a girl whose name I don’t recall, and she was a super-hardcore feminist. Everything in the world that was wrong was men’s fault, and it was her only topic. She didn’t seem to dislike me so much as just want to lecture Keys and I all through work, which usually lasted two to three hours in the afternoon, about the ills of men. I was, and am, up for a little feminist theory but Keys was no help and I don’t even think he noticed her, so it was kind of just me and her. Serious feminism and collating are, perhaps, not best paired.

I didn’t originally want the print shop job. I needed work, and there was kind of an intake for all working students where you put your first choice. I put library, but didn’t get the gig. John Innes put audio/video and he got it, which meant he often had to get up early to set up videos for professor’s classes. I would not have been good at that. The print shop was more my speed, but eventually it got really repetitive and I started skipping work more and more. I would go walk in the woods behind campus, or just drink coffee with about a half cup of honey and hang around after class. I also improved as a student through the year, and took my English classes pretty seriously so I was spending more time in the library, although still not sleeping much.

My money situation was tight, although not as bad as it would later be during my junior year abroad in New Zealand where it was super tight. I had a little income from the print shop and my parents sent a small allowance once in a while, but I usually didn’t have more than about 15 bucks in my pocket at any one time. What money I did have went mostly to CDs, as many as I could afford. I had a dining hall pass, but the dining hall food was not really my style so I mostly lived on toast and coffee with honey. Then at night people would order pizza from a local shop, but that was too expensive for me so I would get “friend dough.” Fried dough is just what it sounds like–deep friend pizza dough with powdered sugar, and it cost about $1.50 for a big box. Not the best diet, but it was what I could afford.

One time the father of one of my classmates from high school visited for some reason; he must have been in the area. We met for lunch, and when he left he handed me $100 bucks. This was a serious windfall, and I immediately blew it on CDs, perhaps Neil Young’s Harvest Moon and others. My CD collection, although no rival to Ian’s was slowly increasing and I liked it.

Back in the dorm, in addition to the guys I have discussed, there were also girls, who lived on the second and fourth floor. I got to know the girls directly above us on the second floor pretty well, although not many of the others in the dorm. Among these was Rochelle, who was the girl I was closest to. Rochelle was, I think, from New York, and when she arrived on campus she made a big deal about having a boyfriend. This didn’t last long however, and although I didn’t want her to be my girlfriend I did like hanging out with her. She kind of mothered me a bit though, which I wasn’t so into, because I was going to do what I was going to do. I still have her contact, and I believe she might even read this piece! I think I also met Marie Bishko freshman year, and Marie is someone I thought was really cool.

I don’t really remember any us North guys hooking up with the second floor girls, but it must of happened. Another incident which occurred around this time had to do with my roommate B. and his girlfriend from high school. Like Rochelle, and even more so, he made a big deal of his girlfriend and told us all kind of semi-salacious details. Then one day he told us she was coming to visit and he wanted the three of us in the quad to go to a hotel for a night. I told him sure, if you pay, but he said no. He was dead serious but we told him to forget it, so sure enough she arrived and they hooked up while we all pretended to sleep. That only happened once, thankfully, and it still strikes me as pretty odd. He later broke up with her and fell in love with a Jewish girl, but that didn’t last either because he wasn’t Jewish.

I mentioned in Part I that Jake pledged the fraternity Sig. Ian and John Slack also pledged, Chi Psi (I had to Google the spelling). I spent some time at Chi Psi as well as, where I was alleged to sit on the steps in my trench coat, but I preferred Sig. There was another frat called Deke, and that was where the wildest, and the worst parties were. At Deke there was copious amounts of Milwaukee’s Best (the fabled Beast) and jungle juice. The parties were terrible, but there was a pool table which was a bonus. I didn’t drink much at college, mostly because I had no money, but I did drink some at Deke, with exactly the results you would imagine. I believe it was at Deke where Marc Campbell pulled off his famous pacification move. I didn’t pledge a frat, and I was and remain glad I didn’t. Greek life wasn’t for me.

One guy who I believe lived in North was called Gabe. Gabe was super popular at first in freshman year, and he played guitar on the grass outside the dorm. He was pretty good and he would play “Sexuality” by Billy Bragg which was surprisingly popular in 1992. People, including girls, would flock around him, but over time something seemed to happen to Gabe. He ran for class president and lost to a guy called Kerry who was African American. Kerry lived down the hill in a different part of campus, and he ran really hard for the job. I think Gabe’s ran mostly on a music ticket, and although he got a lot of votes I think he came in second. He may have taken this hard, because he kind of faded into the background, or maybe he just changed up his action. I think I voted, but may have voted for Kerry.

As I mentioned, Jake and I saw less of one another once he started pledging, however we still saw each other in English class and in the English building. We overlapped professors, although he knew some I did not. The two best professors in the English department were George Balkhe and Fred Wagner. Balkhe was still in his prime, maybe late 50’s, whereas Wagner was older and I believe in a semi-emeritus role. I wasn’t even sure I ever took a class from Wagner, but it’s been confirmed that I did, Modern British and American Drama, which makes sense. I didn’t much like 20th century American plays, as plays are mostly blueprints anyway. In any case, Mr. Wagner knew me early in the year because Balkhe praised my reading knowledge to him. Jake and I would go to Wagner’s house, also down the hill toward the town of Clinton (the closest town to Hamilton, about a 15 minute walk), and I recall once we played him the song “Marlene Dietrich’s Favorite Poem” by Peter Murphy, formerly of Bauhaus, with Peter Murphy murmuring “sad-eyed pearl and drop lips…”

Peter Murphy is super underrated by the way, and Wagner liked the song, which just showed how cool he was.

I took a few classes with Balkhe, and we studied poems, and novels–typical choices mostly. I enjoyed these and read most of them, even Faulkner who is really dense. For the ones I didn’t I just faked it. Like I said, Balkhe thought I was amazing because on the first day of class he asked for a list of books we had read and I listed like 200. These were mostly Agatha Christie and John LeCarre and such, but I guess it was good enough. Balhke liked the singer Donovan and the song “Mellow Yellow.”

Electrical banana
Is gonna be a sudden craze

(I later saw Donovan at a new age convention in Boston when I was visiting Ian after college, which I will recount later).

Wagner and Balkhe are both passed away now, so rest in peace to two great English teachers and mentors.

That’s about all I have on freshman year. The last thing is about the featured image for this post, which is the album cover for Bob Dylan’s Oh Mercy. I have written about The Pogues quite a bit, but the album I listened to most freshman year was Oh Mercy. After geology class had a break before lunch and would go back and semi-sleep to Oh Mercy. The quad was always empty at that time of day, and this was the best rest I would get. The album still makes me sleepy to this day, and features excellent production from the famed producer Daniel Lanois. So thank you Bob and Daniel.

Dedication: For Fred. And for George–I hope you are enjoying a little electrical banana up there in heaven.

to be continued…

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Scenes from Hamilton College I: Meeting Ian and Jake

New Note: It’s been a while since I last posted this piece, and I’m glad to bring it back here as a republication. “Hamilton I” remains one of my favorite entries on the Kyoto Kibbitzer—an early chapter built around friendship, music, and the strange, formative textures of freshman year, especially the central presence of my good friends Ian and Jake, who shaped so much of that time. It’s also one of the more widely read pieces on the site, which I appreciate. Re-reading it now, I’m struck by how much of what came later was already there in embryo: the scenes, the sounds, the late nights, and the people who mattered. As always, thanks for reading.

And I recall the moment
More distant than it seems
When five green queens
On a black bin bag
Meant all the world to me

The Pogues

I attended Hamilton College, and managed to graduate–possibly in linen. At Hamilton I was an English major, and intended to be from when I enrolled. This was a decent choice; however both Hamilton and English were kind of my father’s choices. I also managed to cobble together an Asian Studies minor through the good auspices of my advisor who checked out my credits and told me I could put that together. This was a good call on his part, and even though I kind of stumbled into it, The Asian Studies minor was my choice.

I was pretty unprepared for college. Before going I was asked to fill out a kind of questionnaire to help the college place me with roommates. One of the questions was, are you clean, messy, or in the middle. I chose in the middle, which was sort of a mistake because it turns out men are pigs, and I was cleaner than most. At the same time though it wasn’t a mistake because if I had selected clean I may not have met Ian and Jake. Jake was my roommate, and we lived in a quad. The other two roommates were Brian and Geoff, and although I had a relationship of a sort with both of them freshman year, we were not really on the same page. Jake and I were. Ian was our next door neighbor, and he roomed with Marc Campbell, and two other people. Ian, Jake, and Marc are still in my life.

My parents came with me to upstate New York, and before I moved into the dorm we stayed for a few days in a hotel near campus. I was kind of apprehensive, and spent the days listening to The Pogues and quietly stressing. But when I moved into the quad things were fine. This was mostly because of Jake.

Jake was a bit of a wild character. He was from either New York or Connecticut as I recall, and I think he came from decent money. When I visited his house later that year it was very patrician, for lack of a better word. His father seemed like a super old-school WASP patriarch, and his mother didn’t work I don’t believe. His younger brother held right-wing political views at the time, while Jake was a lefty. This was a point of serious disagreement between the brothers, but other than that the family seemed pretty solid. I believe that his brother has since switched his political views.

I didn’t meet Jake’s family until Thanksgiving however, and got to know him first in the context of the quad. We lived in a dorm called North, on the first floor right by the door. (My buddy John Innes, who joined me at Hamilton from our high school lived in the neighboring dorm Kirkland, and next to that was South.) The door to North would be locked at night, and other dorm folks would regularly misplace their key and crawl through our always open window. Jake and I rarely slept, and I got in the habit of staying up until about five AM. After that I would get a little sleep before first period English class. Then I would attend Geology class, which satisfied some kind of Science graduation credit. For English class I was alert and on top of it, although I was still hand-writing my papers, which changed once I got in the habit of using the computers in the library. English class was small, maybe 12-15 people, whereas Geology was huge and held in a lecture hall. I would go lay down in the back in the aisle and try and sleep. I ended up getting As in almost all my English classes, and a C- in Geology, which was deserved to an extent because of the sleeping. However, the main question on the final was brutal and pretty unfair, which was to draw a seismograph. Literally, draw one, which we had never studied and I did cram for the final. Brutal action. Somehow I still made the honor roll that year, and every year, because of my performance in the humanities.

Jake was an English major as well as far as I recall, I kind of forget, but he knew a lot of the teachers I knew. In any case, we did not bond primarily in the classroom, but in the dorm and then at “Sig,” the frat he was associated with and later pledged. Sig was the alternative frat. I hung out there a bit, but when pledge season started they kind of cracked down on non-pledges attending parties. For Halloween, Jake snuck me in early, and although that night I got a few looks I was good with Jake’s blessing. That night I wore all black with a turtleneck and a paper sign on my back saying “No future for you.” As in the Sex Pistols. I was talking with an older guy, an alum (there were always some alums that hung at the frat parties at Sig) at the party and he said something to the effect of “I like you, but I don’t like your shirt.” OK dude.

That was the same night I believe that inspired the following little ditty I later shared with Jake:

I pissed in the toilet

He pissed in the sink

He said I haven’t got a god above

I haven’t got a drink

Jake later took umbrage with the lines, not the sink part, which was and remains credible, but the god part. I think he is, or was, a believer. In any case, he’s my friend and won’t sue.

I appreciated Jake showing me the ropes at Sig and elsewhere. In the dorm we would play his music–he was into the classics, Beatles and Stones, Kinks, Bowie. We would sing “The Ballad of John and Yoko,” and “Come Together,” mostly the former over and over, no doubt to the annoyance of our roommates. Jake also liked The Pogues, and this made me think even more highly of him.

Jake smoked, Marlboro Reds, and I soon started smoking too, the same brand. This was not out of a desire to be a smoker, but rather as a way to keep my hands occupied and look busy at parties, where I had some difficulty mixing. I picked up, or invented, a little trick where I would fold up the flaps of a cigarette pack so they looked like a paper airplane, and then lob the cigs around the room, usually to any girl that wanted one. This got me some attention and some affection, and I kind of became known for the move. It didn’t get me laid, but at least it was something. Jake and I were fast friends, and hung out a lot in the early part of the year, before he began to branch out. Once he started pledging Sig though I saw less of him, naturally enough I guess.

By the time Jake started pledging, and even before, I was spending more time with Ian. Ian was from Boston and his father was a medical doctor. He lived in a nice house in the suburbs–both Jake and Ian had quite a bit more money than I, a common feature at Hamilton where pretty much everyone had money expect me. I was on a pretty decent scholarship, despite my not so impressive high school record, and could not have afforded the school without the scholarship. I visited Ian once or twice I believe in college, and then stayed with his family for a few months in the fall after college, but that’s a story for a future post.

Ian had a massive record collection in his quad, next door to mine as I have said. I liked Jake’s music, especially “Rebel Rebel,” “Come Dancing,” and The Stones, however his selection was somewhat limited. Ian’s was capacious. He was into bands like The Stone Roses, The Charlatans, Ride, and a bunch of other British bands I didn’t know at the time. But he was really into everything. I spent hours in Ian’s room soaking up his music, and my association with him kind of took over where Dyche Alsaker’s left off. I think it was Ian who also introduced me to Luna, who was coming up at the time and is still one of my favorite bands to this day. Later, in senior year I think, Ian and I had a radio show together and one night we got to play records all night long when a few other people canceled suddenly. I would play The Replacements and the Pogues, and Ian would play his music, but I was also getting deep into the 4AD label and bands like Big Star, This Mortal Coil, and a little known band called The Binsey Poplars (who I’m not sure were even on 4AD), named after a Hopkins poem. But my favorite around that time was Nick Drake, who was on Rykodisc.

Drake is now pretty well known, mostly on the back of his song “Pink Moon,” which was featured on a Volkswagen commercial, but back then he was not well known outside serious music circles. I loved his song “Rider on the Wheel,” and was an evangelist for him, telling all and sundry to listen. Most people didn’t, of course, but the whole move was just odd enough to get a little attention, which I was definitely seeking. (Another friend from that time John mentioned to me a few years ago that I would sit on the front steps of his frat in my trench coat and read a book. I don’t really remember this, but if it’s true it was for sure for attention.) I remember one evening Ian had a kind of band that was playing and I “opened” for them. My act was simply talking about Nick Drake, painting him as a forgotten genius, which he was, and pleading with the crowd to listen. It went over pretty well, like I said probably just because it was different.

Later on, mostly the next year I think, Ian and I went to a few shows in Boston, including The Red House Painters, The Fall, and Love Spit Love. Ian would drive, and blast The Pogues with the window down to stay awake on the way home. Before one of these shows we managed to source a little green, which was enjoyable. We would park, illegally, in some lot Ian knew. In the lot, there were rats.

Jake and I were sort of on the same level–both semi-degenerate English majors–but Ian I looked up to. He was definitely the leader in the friendship, although he must have seen something in me because we hung out a fair bit. Ian was also friends with Marc, but he was perhaps closer to another group of guys who lived in two adjacent quads on the third floor. This included John and a guy called Will. I would go up there too, and Will would ask “what Dead do you want to listen to?” I always went with Reckoning because I liked the country-folk sound and the song “It Must Have Been the Roses.” I liked the third floor guys too, especially John.

Next door to Jake and my quad was Adam and Basmo. Adam and Basmo (a nickname) were seniors who for some reason decided to stay in what was basically a freshman dorm. Adam was cool, but pretty grown up. Basmo was still a kid, and loved to get high. Loved to get high. Early on in the year he would come over and ask “anyone want to get stoned and session?” A session, it turned out, was you would smoke, put on The Beatles, and watch Bugs Bunny or something with the sound down. The idea was the music would synch up with the cartoon and it would be hysterical. It totally worked, although I just liked to listen to music and bullshit rather than session. Real heads will remember the session. (Jake told me that sadly Basmo later took his own life as a result of the worsening effects of ef. That was really too bad because Basmo was just a pure open-hearted soul.) So basically we would get stoned when we could, smoke Reds, and stay up all night and listen to music, which was a pretty decent life all in all. Jake and Ian took me in, and made the first part of freshman year so much better in all ways than it would have been if I hadn’t known them.

Dedication: For Ian and Jake, for seeing something in me, and helping make me a little somebody.

to be continued…

Note: If you liked this piece, you may other like the other pieces below in the Hamilton series.

Scenes from Hamilton College III: Sophomore Year I (with cameos from Sonic the Hedgehog, Ani DiFranco, and Candle Time)
Scenes from Hamilton College IV: Sophomore Year II: The Sports Show, Ann, Getting Fired

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On Subcultures and Scenes in Craig Finn’s “It’s Never Been a Fair Fight”

New Note: It has been a little while since I last posted this piece, and I’m glad to bring it back into view. It remains my very favorite essay on the Kyoto Kibbitzer, and has continued to circulate far beyond what I ever expected, with many hundreds of reads over time. In an entirely unscientific but pleasingly persistent corner of the internet, it still seems to rank #2 in search results for the term “Katie Park Bad Moves,” just behind Wikipedia, which is pretty cool. I have no idea what to make of that, but I’m not complaining.

The piece itself—on Craig Finn’s “It’s Never Been a Fair Fight”—has always felt to me like one of the most complete things I’ve written about music, scenes, and subcultures, and I’m grateful for the continued readership and responses it has received. Reposting here in full for anyone who missed it the first time around, or wants to revisit it.

Original Note: This piece is about an absolutely amazing song by Craig Finn called “It’s Never Been a Fair Fight” released in 2020 on All These Perfect Crosses from Partisan Records. We will also expand on the song’s theme, which is how subcultures (and “scenes”) operate. Finn is, in my opinion, the greatest lyricist working today (not the greatest living lyricist, that’s still Dylan). I’ve written about about Finn before here, and here.

Craig Finn himself has commented on this song and says that “It’s Never Been A Fair Fight”:

“Is about the extreme difficulty of staying true to the rigid rules of a subculture as you get older. The character in the song revisits an old peer and finds struggle and disappointment in the place he left behind.”

In this case, the narrator had been part of the punk/hardcore scene in the 1980’s and 1990’s, has left the scene, and reflects on his time there and what it meant as he meets his old friend—and we suppose former lover—Vanessa. I’m not sure I understand the entire chronology of the song, as it engages in some apparent time jumps that can be a little hard to follow. Overall however, it is pretty clear what the song is about.

The opening verse sees the narrator (let’s call him C., because while we will grant Finn the understanding as an artist that his characters are characters, in this case the song feels pretty autobiographical) checking in with Vanessa. The song opens in the present day.

Finn has C. meet her “right in front of her building,” Vanessa “vague in taste and drowning,” telling him she’s “got a new man…in a new band,” and “they’ve got a new sound.”

We get the impression that C. has been out of the scene for a while, while Vanessa is very much still in it: new man, new band, new sound, same old place. Vanessa’s man, we assume, is in a hardcore band, and I believe it is the case that Finn came up through the hardcore scene before forming his first band Lifter Puller. Lifter Puller is not a hardcore band, and I don’t know if Finn was actually in a hardcore band or just in the scene.

Then comes one of Finn’s perfect little deadpan truths. C. shrugs that “hardcore’s in the eye of the beholder,” a funny line for a number of reasons (it also reminds me of the classic David Berman line: “punk rock died when the first kid said / punk’s not dead.”) The humor hits because it’s both self-aware and scene-aware.

After C. recalls his “broken heart from 1989,” Finn pivots the timeline. The song shifts back—back to when C. was attending hardcore shows, hot and sweaty, elbows in his eyes. The chronology bends, but the emotional logic stays firm.

Vanessa says there are “threads that connect us,” and “flags and wars we should never accept.” Angelo’s off seeing “snakes in the smoke” from someone’s cigarette. And Ivan? He isn’t concerned at all — for him it’s mostly just about “what you wear to the show.” C. admits he “heard a song…on the radio” that he liked, which we can assume violates at least one of Vanessa’s unwritten rules.

Finn is an absolute master of sketching characters in just a line or two. Here, he uses a sort of pointillistic approach to introduce us to two additional members of the scene, Angelo and Ivan. With just a few short verses we already understand a great deal about “the scene.” Here is what we can deduce:

i) All four members of the scene have very differently valenced loyalties. Put another way, they want different things from it. Vanessa is a purist; for her being part of the scene is like being part of an tribe, an army, and we take her to be a fierce protector of the in-group/ out-group aspects that tend to arise in subcultures. Angelo, it seems, is a little out there; he’s seeing snakes in the cigarette smoke and probably not all that interested in the ultimate nature or meaning of the scene. Ivan likes the t-shirts and jeans, likes the look. He’s not a purist either. And C., well he likes a little pop music, an inclination we assume is strictly verboten for folks like Vanessa.

ii) Probably because of the differences in ideas and ideologies between the scene members, C. sees things coming to an end, both with the scene and between he and Vanessa. Here we are reminded of the difficulty of keeping any kind of group together, whether a scene, a band, or just a group of friends. Everyone knows the feeling of having a group of friends who tell each other they will be tight forever, however life doesn’t usually work that way. The best film about this dynamic is Whit Stillman’s Metropolitan, which depicts a young group of friends in Manhattan who come together and then slowly, but inevitably, come apart over the course of a winter. There is a great moment in Metropolitan where the main character, Tom, looks around and realizes the scene is dead. Where did it go? It was here one day, gone the next. Scenes are like that, and this is what Finn is writing about.

iii) The inherent differences between people which make keeping the scene together are also something that Finn celebrates to a certain extent I think. One of the most salient features of Finn’s writing is his compassion. Finn has compassion for Angelo and his snakes, Ivan and his jeans, and for Vanessa, in all of her rigidity. As of the time of the song we know for sure that Vanessa is still in the scene and C. is not. I guess that neither Angelo nor Ivan is still around, however if only one of them is my money’s on Angelo, if he’s still alive.

Through the course of my own life, I have been involved, for a shorter or longer time, with a variety of subcultures. One category of subculture that I have frequented is what we could broadly call “new age.” My explorations of this category have been reasonably extensive. Back in my early 20s, I was involved for about 4–5 months with a Tibetan Buddhist group back in Washington State. I would get up at 4 AM, drive an hour across town to a beautiful old house on the hill, and meditate with the folks there. This group also organized some outings, such as mountain hiking.

I enjoyed the group and the meditation. The group leader, a slightly older woman who was lovely, asked me to pay like 6 dollars for a little book with chants in it, which I did. There was a total cross-section of people in the group of different ages and backgrounds, and all in all I liked it there. However, I peeled off from the group after a time for reasons very similar to those discussed by Finn. There were two specific things that led to me leaving. The second I’ll discuss a little later. The first was one day I was chatting with one of the members on the street outside after meditation. He was telling me how his daughter used to play chess, however he would no longer allow her to do so because it was interfering with her studies of Tibetan Buddhism. “There’s just not enough time,” he told me.

I had talked with this guy before and he was a perfectly nice guy, but I didn’t agree with his approach. I felt, in fact, that it was bad action. Now, I understood that people joined the group for different reasons and had different levels of investment. I was not looking to become a Tibetan Buddhist or anything—I was just “checking it out.” To circle back to Finn, the valence gap between this fellow’s take on the subculture and my own was vast, and his entire approach turned me off. This was the first step in my deciding to leave.

The next three verses of “It’s Never Been a Fair Fight” see C. trying to keep the door open to Vanessa even as he edges out of the scene. He wants to meet her and if she agrees he will know that she like him feels that “punk is not a fair fight.” Finn doesn’t say, but I’m guessing Vanessa doesn’t show.

If things change quickly/ just remember I still love you/ and I’ll circle ’round the block tonight/ between 9 and 10 o’clock tonight

If you’re still standing here, I’ll take that as a sign/ that you agree it was a sucker punch/ punk is not a fair fight/ it’s never been a fair fight

We said there weren’t any rules/ but there were so many goddamn rules/ we said that they’d be cool/ but then there were so many goddamn rules

Verse VII is the hinge-point of the song and basically its thesis. Finn’s point is straightforward: the appeal of the scene is the potential for freedom, exploration, rebellion, however once inside the subculture C. finds himself increasingly hemmed in by the strictures of that culture and the requirements necessary to remain within it. The very thing that drew C. to the subculture (flight from an over-determined social reality) is that thing that ultimately drives him away. “It’s Never Been a Fair Fight,” appears in two versions on All These Perfect Crosses; the main version is horn driven and upbeat, and there is also an acoustic version. On the main version, Finn, realizing perhaps that the repeated line is a bit poetically unorthodox, spits out a laugh on the “then” in “but then there were so many goddamn rules,” and in the process underlines the centrality of the sentiment to the song as a whole. It’s a great verse, and one which tells us something fundamental about C.’s nature: he likes the action, and as such needs to be free to pursue it wherever it may be. Action is not limited to the Minneapolis hardcore scene, after all.

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On Being Early to Shows

Note: Getting to shows early, I realized, isn’t really about beating the crowd but about entering the space before it hardens into an event—when the room is still provisional, the bartender relaxed, the band half-mythical figures moving casually through soundcheck, and the whole night feels less like a performance and more like something forming in real time; you notice the lighting before it matters, the empty floor that will later surge, the stray conversations, the merch table still untouched, and sometimes—if you’re lucky—the musicians themselves, unguarded and human, which subtly rewires the experience so that when the set finally begins you’re not just watching a show but inhabiting a continuum that started hours earlier, a private prelude that rewards patience, sharpens memory, and turns what could have been just another concert into a small, self-contained narrative of anticipation, proximity, and the quiet pleasure of being there before everything becomes official.

Epigraph
“There’s a thin line between a guy with a backstage pass /
and a guy walking around with his gut hanging out like a jackass.”
— Sun Kil Moon, “Ben’s My Friend”

I’ve always been fascinated by the green room. First of all, why green? They can’t all be green. Second, there’s the whole rider situation. The rider is where things get really interesting. I think it was Van Halen who had in their rider that all the brown M&Ms had to be removed from a bowl. This sounds totally bizarre, but the point was attention to detail. If the venue screws up the M&Ms, they might screw up something much more important, like stage rigging or pyrotechnics. The M&Ms were just a test.

Other riders go in different directions. Iggy Pop reportedly asked for things like a Bob Hope impersonator and other surreal odds and ends, more like performance art than hospitality. Meanwhile Beyoncé is famous for highly controlled riders: temperature, lighting, water, environment, everything calibrated. One approach is chaos, the other total control. Both happen in the green room, which most of us never see.

My first concert was Dire Straits in Pullman, Washington, in a big arena. I was nowhere near the green room, of course. Most of us aren’t. So the real question becomes: what happens before the show, if you’re not backstage?

One answer came when I saw They Might Be Giants in Spokane with my friend Kelly Rudd. Kelly told me his cousin was in the opening band. They got paid twenty bucks for the show. The whole band. Twenty dollars. Totally unbelievable. Outta fucking control. TMBG were already a pretty big indie band, “Birdhouse in Your Soul” had been a hit, and I liked “Istanbul (Not Constantinople)” quite a bit. But after hearing that story I never quite looked at them the same way. The green room fantasy took a hit. Backstage wasn’t glamorous. It was twenty bucks and a handshake.

Another time I went to see Cat Power at the old Club Quattro in Osaka. I got there early, of course, and there was an opener dressed like a fairy with fuzzy, messed-up hair who sat down at the piano and proceeded to play dirge after dirge for what felt like an hour. Solo piano can be great, but this was brutal. I honestly thought I might have to cap myself. At some point I checked my ticket just to make sure this wasn’t actually Chan Marshall. It wasn’t. Thank god.

Then Chan came on and instead of playing from the stage like other artists do, she wandered through the crowd with a wireless mic, half-rapping, half-singing, talking, improvising. It wasn’t really a concert. It was more like some kind of performance art happening. Totally outta control. If I’d come late I would have missed the whole bizarre prelude. Being early meant enduring the dirges but also getting the full weirdness of the night.

Another early-arriver adventure came when I saw Deerhunter at the Hostess Club Weekender. These shows started early and stacked openers all day long. I once saw Mogwai at one of these and had to leave after fifteen minutes because I was hungry, tired, faded, and they were boring the living shit out of me. It happens.

The Deerhunter show in Osaka was even more outta control. The headliner was scheduled for 7 PM, but there were something like six openers. One of them was Ivo Watts-Russell of 4AD, a legendary figure, but he droned on so long that by the time Deerhunter came on they only had about forty minutes. Bradford Cox introduced him with dripping sarcasm, emphasizing “LABEL BOSS,” clearly taking the piss because the band’s time had been cut. I ended up having to see them again months later in Nagoya to get the full set. That’s the risk of being early: sometimes the openers eat the show.

The flip side came when I saw The Hold Steady at the Brooklyn Bowl in December 2018. I arrived two hours early, ate a hamburger, and smoked up outside. That’s where I met Austin, a total Steadyhead. He knew everything: lineups, labels, deep cuts, all of it. We talked music, smoked, and waited. When doors opened we grabbed territory near the stage with the other early-arrivers, a semi-cliquey group of diehards.

Later, when Austin wanted to get back to the front for the encore, he told me to follow him. He moved through the crowd at a half jog and the people parted in front of him like he was Barry Sanders hitting holes. Seconds later we were hugging the stage. I knew then I was in the presence of greatness. I also knew he was my friend. I didn’t get the VIP meet and greet, but getting there early gave me something better.

My one true VIP experience came when I saw The Afghan Whigs in Amsterdam in 2017 at the Paradiso Amsterdam, a beautiful converted church. I arrived three hours early, met Greg Dulli and the band, took photos, bought merch, and watched soundcheck with maybe fifteen people. They played “Going to Town” acoustically, which was a revelation. Later they crushed the full electric set, ending with “Faded.” I paid fifty bucks for that meet and greet and it was completely worth it. Being early paid off directly.

Getting to shows early, then, is not really about the green room at all. The green room is a kind of fantasy—green walls, bowls of M&Ms, riders with impossible demands. Most of us never see it, and even when we do, it turns out to be smaller and more ordinary than imagined. And probably not even green. The real action happens in that strange in-between space before the show: the smoking area, the empty floor, the long wait while the openers drift on and off.

If you arrive early, you get all of it. You get the terrible fairy-piano dirges and the label boss who drones on too long. You get the moment of doubt when you check your ticket and wonder if this could possibly be the headliner. You get the rail territory battles and the cliquey early crew. You get the conversations with strangers who turn into temporary friends, like Austin, who parts the crowd like a halfback and gets you back to the stage in seconds. You get the soundcheck if you’re lucky, the acoustic revelation, the quiet before the storm.

Most of all, you get time. And time at a show is a funny thing. Once the lights go down, everything compresses. The band plays, the songs blur together, and before you know it the encore hits and everyone spills out into the night. But if you were there early, the show feels bigger. It has a beginning, a middle, and an end. You saw the room empty and then full. You watched the night assemble itself.

So while some people drift in late, grab a drink, and wait for the headliner, I’ve always preferred the long route. Get there early. Kill time. Smoke a cigarette. Talk to whoever’s around. Endure the openers, good or bad. Maybe you meet someone. Maybe you don’t. Maybe the band walks through the room. Maybe nothing happens at all. But every once in a while, if you’re lucky, something does. And that, in the end, is why I like to be early to shows.

Dedication:

For music lovers everywhere. You are my tribe baby.