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all my surmisings do converge
“this one’s for you,“
I’ll say with a wink and a sly grin. for a moment
I’ll pretend I’m a big rock star (or mebbe a slick
lounge singer) with the buzzing sweaty lights
and mebbe it is for you, the ones that poked at me in
my corners and disturbed my peace and mebbe even made
me laugh a lot while doing so. I guess I can say that
the fact that I am working on this letter (draft 6 I
believe) is a statement to some good folks out there
on this here digest that are forces to be reckoned
with, I’d reckon.
the people here are not shy...
and shuffling away some shyness while knawing my
fingernails, allow me to feebly wave:
hi.
how are you?
I’m fine.
I’ve been keeping words in drafty pages and locked in
my head where they spill out the cracks--sometimes I
hope you’ll catch my wind anyways. I’m full of a lot
of wind anyways. sometimes even enough to fly by.
life has been remarkably good and remarkably quiet. I
would say that circumstances are quite remarkable and
God is infamously remarkable to us these days. that’s
all I have to remark on the subject.
(is that enough? can I get away with that? can I say
goodbye now?)
but I continue on, and hope you’re reading anyhows.
besides, I would tell you about over the rhine, if you
care to hear. (I shall presumptuously assume this is
why you are on this digest?)
this particular letter is a belated account of
the Brady’s Cafe cabaret the previous weekend....
he did not speed too much and this time we did not
lose our way.
we watch out for every crooked sign along the
interstate and hope that we can still make it there,
nursing coffee, the windows down low, the music loud.
and it is summertime.
so, we’ve been taking lots of road trips. for some
reason, I am designated navigator for our journeys.
for all appearances, I have hardly made a right turn
in my life, but we seem to get there anyways. one
weekend it’s pennsylvania, the next stratford, grand
rapids. cincci. wherever. might be that we won’t know
until friday night I am throwing black garb in a bag
and jay is making all the necessary phone calls.
our trip to Kent, Ohio last weekend was another one of
those unexpected getaways.
I wish I could report that it began exuberantly, us
like Bonny and Clyde, Mickey and Mallory, Thelma and
Louise, flying out the door with the wind in our hair
and cocky cock-eyed grins.
more acurately, we started shuffling our feet around
three:thirty saturday, after I walked home from an
unusually quiet day at the library. it was jay’s
birthday, and he was sluggishly making coffee on the
other side of our kitchen door.
“so do you wanna go?”
“do you wanna go?”
and so the dialogue of indecision repeated until
roughly around five or six, when we started our
venture across ohio.
and I can’t rightly tell you what our dialogue was,
that four or five hour venture across ohio. I know
that I did not once open my book. I know that we
smiled and laughed a lot. I know that outside the
windows the air was moody like it was going to
rain--the sky dull grey and all foliage is bright
green.
I thought for sure we were very late, when we pulled
into Brady’s lot and scavenged for a space for the
saturn. people were spilling out, smoking cigarettes.
we saw a handful of kentites: jen and jamie at the
door. in a room full of people, we didn’t see anyone
else familiar and no spaces to settle down with
overfull cups of Brady’s coffee. having wound our
searching feet up the staircase around the balcony and
down again, we eventually found a place to sit. that
teeny, tiny space in front of the speakers, right
there on the hardwood floor.
all right, so we couldn’t have sat closer to the band
if they’d been playing in our living room.
and we have a small living room.
and rather like a living room it might have been, with
the ruddy oriental rugs spread out, strewn over with
chords and notes and wires. several dozens of healthy
plants crowded in a dusty windowsill. the neon
“brady’s” sign buzzing above the activity. there was
a big piano and a miniature organ for linford. then
there was a teeny, tiny toy piano, for whom we shall
discover later. there was a piece of slate propped
against this, with a rockwell kent sunburst etched
into the stone.
linford hiked through the crowd, wearing jeans and an
untucked shirt. jay stood up and addressed him:
“hey, linford, I have a question for you.”
“you want to sit closer?” linford finished with a
smirk.
“actually, I wanted to share my murderous deeds with
you ...”
I ducked my head into my lap and would have felt like
a right guilty stalker, should we have not left jay’s
large collection of tactical knives at home.
while the band set up, we squirmed and murmured in our
small space in front of the speakers. I found how
many ways a body is flexible (or not) in the time that
we waited for the concert to begin.
and at long last, things started.
you, who have had the privilege of experiencing
over-the-rhine, will know that this is the hardest
part of the story. if I could easily put into words
that awe and stuff fluttering in my head and filtering
into scrawlings on scrap paper, I might be a novelist
by now. but the stuff of over the rhine is not easy
to define, as I find it gets under my skin, into my
veins and in vain I might try to explain it. if you
haven’t heard it, you don’t know.
karin has blond hair. she is sitting directly in
front of me and to my right. she is wearing a green
“property of indians” t-shirt and a long wine calico
skirt. pigtails. high, strappy sandles. a beaded
bracelet or two. she is lazy and poised and casual
and regal. contradictory and steady, I would suppose.
they break into the very first song and I am broken
again. the heartbreak is different now. though I
don’t know the stories behind the tales of good and
bad dogs, why they might wag or waver or wail then,
the sorrow is different in these new songs. I hear
more certainty in who they are. I hear more certainty
in the words. the longing is more eternal than ever.
they want to know what they will leave behind when
they go.
(at this point, if I could have, I would have loudly
and enthusiastically told them what they’ve dropped
for the lost and found already, but I have said these
words before, and I do not want to repeat myself here
{please refer to “and we’ll all scratch our heads”
circa dec 1998 or “trailing my own sentances” circa
march 1999 for more information. thank you, please
drive through.)
I can’t tell you the words of the song. I wish I
could. I know they had an incredible resonance in a
crowded room. I know that Karin squints her eyes
tight and you can hear passion come out of her throat
like so many cries where the rest of us would whisper.
or whimper.
anyways.
I would say easily the first three to four songs were
very new. Karin had to refer to the lyrics a few
times. jack missed a chance or two. you listen to
it, intent, like it’s the latest letter from a dear
old friend.
all were very lovely and very real. I think
considerably less evasive and more bold in a more
common language. you hear some of their familiar
phrasings repeat into a tailored slang.
I also will note that they played relatively little
material off of Nice Doggy, except one or two upon
request. quite a bit of things from amateur shortwave
radio. a surprise or two from dem good ol’ days.
jacksie. june. and can it be. anyways. goodbye.
fairpoint diary
one of the new songs, I remember begun with “we wake
up in a different country every day.”
while they toured in europe, linford informed us, they
would come home and tell of their journeys. linford’s
mother would smile quietly while linford offered the
accounts and say, “yes, yes I remember.” and he
discovered that before she became the minister’s wife
and the mother of the talented detweiler brood, she
had traveled extensively in europe. he seemed rather
surprised and pleased and sobered when he told us that
they compared haunts and trails and habitats of the
places they had been. quiet. reverent. he wrote the
song, inspired of it.
there are other stories, that were told. wonderful,
funny, stories.
my story here must shuffle on. I am getting sleepy
and my husband is waiting quietly on the couch.
I have yet to tell you the best part of the story.
my favourite part.
mr. jg caught us up in conversation. is a jolly good
chap and a dear friend. a witness of our wedding
even. I highly recommend to you, if you get the
chance to know john glassford, pray do so. not only
is he one of the sweetest fellows you’ll know, but
he’ll know that you like to get christmas cards and
what concerts are playing in your town on your
twentieth birthday.
mr glassford, sir, me and my dearly
beloved were very happy to see you and catch up on the
past few months. I hope we’ll be hearing wonderful
words from you very soon.
we caught up with dm and jenn.
I acquainted myself with ms hazel while she folded up
the last of the t-shirts. asked a little of her
travels and her life...
I said a rushed goodbye, nice to meet you, however, as
I saw my husband, mr. harnish leaving the building.
with mr. detweiler.
linford had very graciously taken up jay’s invitation
to listen to our murder of one of their songs..
it is a very surreal moment, when you find yourself,
one muggy june evening, flying out the door to chase
after two of your biggest heros on their way to your
car.
we rolled down the windows , the crickets
and the night and the city filtering in. we adjusted
the chairs. I gladly took backseat for this one and
didn’t mind peering over shoulders.
so, we played murder.
we subjected linford to a twisted, banging, screaming,
foreign exchange version of his song and he grinned
and nodded and laughed the whole way through it.
liked it so well, he suggested jay send an mp3 version
of the song to their site where it might serve as a
“teaser” to the coming tribute album.
we were both pretty well and mighty pleased.
we parted with grins and good conversation.
it wasn’t until a half hour later, when we were alone
in that parking lot that we split our grins long
enough to speak.
“that was the best birthday present I could have ever
received!” my beaming husband exclaimed.
this is saying a mighty dose. Jay received a pretty
swanky cocktail shaker that day as well.
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