Sentimental Journeys

         

            There weren’t many people in the Southern Cross bar when I arrived at the Tranzac on the Monday night of August 29^th. When I went to put my name on the list I saw that Anthony and Kwezi’s names were numbers one and two. I would have taken number three, but since those two had wandered off without performing last time, that would have potentially made me number one. I took number six and then went outside to tune up.

            Outside I met Anthony, who told me how much he appreciated my writing and my way of performing “live on the floor”.

            Once I was back inside, I set myself up at a table near the stage and began to write this down. A guy that I’ve never seen before, who was sitting at a table with two of his friends, came up to ask what I was writing. He was curious if it was music or lyrics. I explained to him that I was writing a journal about everything that happens to me, but that some of it could and has turned into poetry.

            Yawd Silvester was our host. He started at about eight minutes after the hour. Sitting at the piano he said, “My name is Yawd, and you guys are you guys!”

            A young man named Amarji, who was sitting with the guy who’d come to ask me about my writing, announced that he was available all night if any of us wanted a drummer to back us up.

            From Yawd’s first song  - “Waiting at the top of your roller coaster … My pores are running faucets, my shirt is like a sieve … remind me once again how to spell quarantine, caught a virus from a magazine …”

            From his second song – “I once knew a girl named Lee, she lived down the road from me. I used to dream of how happy we’d be … As sharp as a tack was she, she even won the grade four spelling bee and wrote it all down in her diary … When grey clouds would hang over me I’d think of how it would be and all the rain would fall off of me cause I had a girl named Lee … Now everything hangs by a strand, so much that I don’t understand, like why what leaves like a lion comes in like a lamb …”

            First up on the open stage was Kwezi, who did two of his original reggae songs with his great voice.

            From the first – “ … Travel in these choices, I know where my voice is …”

            From his second – “Please know, this love won’t let you go, it shows in every moment, every proof … I wish in a great big space on a hill you and me get our fill …”

            Next was Anthony, who began by telling us, “If you get a can opener and open up my pea brain, it’ll be about the friends I meet along the way.”

            His first song was the one that he says is about a woman he knew that played piano and danced in the parkette – “I see you dancing … dancing right down in my mind … round and round and round …” When he finished his first song, Amarji called out to ask Anthony if he wanted a drummer, but he didn’t seem to hear, so I repeated the question a little louder, and he answered, “Sure!”

            So Amarji walked to the drum kid and played along with Anthony’s second song – “ … I don’t worry when you get that way, I just walk away …” It sounded fine with the drums. I had considered asking Amarji to accompany me, but drum kits are very loud and I would have had to play with a microphone in order to be heard. Maybe if he’d brought a hand drum with him it would have been okay.

            Yawd read Chas’s name from the list, but he wasn’t there. I had seen Chas’s friend, John P. earlier when I was outside tuning my guitar. He had told me he couldn’t stay. I assume he had put Chas’s and his own name down before making that decision.

            So then we had Ardin, there for his second time. He told us that he would sing two songs about a terrible housemate that he’d had when he lived in New York City. He said, “She was intense, she did cross-fit!” Yawd said, “Strike one!” She went on a lot of dates, and his first song was about her recurring complaint – “I like a lot about you, I think you’re pretty smart … There’s just one thing that bothers me: You don’t work out … Call me superficial, but I know what I like … You’ve got class, but I’ll have to pass, cause you don’t work out … I want a love to last all night and hum like a motorbike …”

            Ardin continued to tell us about this person. “There was a lot of yelling. I don’t know if you have ever been yelled at by a roommate, but it’s bad. At 1:30 she would start screaming, “I just fucking swiffered!” He said that after he moved out, his other roommate couldn’t understand why he’d left. That situation inspired his second song – “You say you’re lonely, you’ve just lost the closest friend you ever had … You threatened and screamed at them to stay … Was it the screaming? If you’re screaming and all your friends are leaving, we might have found the reason … Should you have gone out more when they went out to shows … or was it the time you cussed them out so hard they cried …”

            After Ardin came my set. I started with “Sweet Nothings”, which is my translation of Serge Gainbourg’s “Ces Petits Riens” – “It’s better to think of nothing than to never think a thought. Nothing’s already, nothing’s already a lot. We remember nothing; it’s all we never forgot … But it’s all of those sweet nothings, in a chain that I link up. Those sweet nothings that make something out of us …”

            My second song was “One Hundred Hookers”, that I wrote based the first line of a poem by and on the life of my friend Cad Gold Jr. I explained that Cad had been, at one point in his life, an accidental pimp. Arden didn’t see how it was possible to be a pimp by accident. I told him that Cad once had an apartment in a red light district, and prostitutes started using his place for their tricks. I think he also brought them clients and since they gave him some money for the service, he was essentially doing the job of a pimp.

            From the song – “I’ve got a hundred hookers in love with me, I take my pick, they suck my dick, they do it all for free. I’ve got 100 hookers in love with me. They’ve all got big bazongas and they’re all from Sicily. They’ve got a crush on me cause they get so much from me … and their names are Betty, Sonja, Tina, Maria, Rosa, Julie, Benjamina, Suzie, Tootsy, Sugar, Cherry and 89 girls named Gina …”

            I was followed by No MSG. As he requested, as usual, that the lights be turned off, I asked him if he’s ever thought about just playing blindfolded. He said, “No, but some people play deaf-folded!” I called out, “That’s me!”

            Then he requested that the lights be turned back on, as he’d forgotten that he’d prepared something that he needed to see. He began to play and to read from notes that he’d made – “My fantasies are family entertainment. I fantasize about bingo cards because I like all the numbers, because all the numbers correspond with notes …” He pushed the microphone away and explained that it was getting in the way …” Through the window I could smell a skunk, and remembered that I’d also caught the whiff of a skunk on my way there. No MSG continued – “Somebody tuned the piano and they did the regulation right … My buddy passed away recently … Was originally Jerome the Silber Man, Jerome, a man from Milwaukee … I gotta go back to the black keys … Changed it to Gene Wilder because of Thornton Wilder … When Willie Wonka came out I was at a birthday party … I remember all of us in a taxi in the snow, and it was Jamie’s birthday and his mother was with us and there we were in the cab in the middle of the storm … We were all enchanted by the movie … A few years later when it was on TV, none of us would know that the picture was a commercial failure … I’d been to the tailor, ready for my friend’s birthday party … I can still hear the taxi meter ticking … We were hoping that somehow the taxi driver could drive a special way so we could get there sooner … Now Gene is gone … The years have gone by … We were told Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory has become a children’s classic … The sun sets so slowly as it sets, and even now the echoes and ripples … Early 70s cinematography … Child innocence … I’m on the white keys, but I gotta get back to the black keys … We are so happy you have purchased the latest model of the Toaster Company’s Toaster Number Five! Be sure to be gentle … Your toaster will take care of you … Each and every morning your toast will be hot and crisp … Toaster Number Five will keep you alive!”  He began to scat for a while and then ended with, “and so on and so on …”

            No MSG’s nostalgic presentation seems to have had an effect on Yawd. With the open stage over, he returned to the piano and said, “I was over there, I got thinking of my life. I got a couple of sad songs, or as I call them, “songs”. It’s the anniversary of my dad’s suicide, so I’ll try this.”

            I remember that he did this song at around the same time, last year. It’s called “Sad September” – “It was a sad September, but I remember the time we stopped by the drive-through, coming home … I remember his mischievous eyes from that time he and I pulled a fast one on Mother. We weren’t getting any thinner, popping by Burger King before dinner, but it was our little secret … Sweet, sweet justice, tell me how does it feel to have blood on your hands? Are you chilled to the bone out there in the field, out there cold as a stone?”

            From Yawd’s second song – “I’ll tell you something of chocolate and time. It’s not a bad song, but it isn’t John Prine. Now the rain falls all week and the sun doesn’t shine. My branches are barren, I’m feeling as lonely as your favourite white pine. Oh, but I can stand tall, watch me straighten my spine. Now was I that misguided, thinking we were as rare as your favourite white pine? Do you love the designer if you hate the design? So now you’re walking down your path and I’m walking down mine. You were dark chocolate and I was white wine.”

            To close down the night, Yawd invited Amarji back to the drum-kit to do a song with him. They played Lou Reed’s “Satellite of Love” – “Satellite’s gone up to the sky. Things like that drive me out of my mind. I watched it for a little while. I love to watch things on TV …”