Resurrection

I returned from Paris last week after showing Strophische Gedichten to enthusiastic crowds in London, hobnobbing with directors and producers, meeting Slovenian writers and professors of architecture, sharing a panel discussion with leading academics on medieval mysticism and generally feeling cultured and educated. My first gig back in San Diego was at a barbecue joint.

Of course that’s no dig on the barbecue, one of my favorite cuisines found in desperately short supply around these parts. Nor is that meant to dismiss Sandpiper, the hardest working band in San Diego and one of the most fun. But a marked contrast nonetheless makes itself apparent between Goldsmiths’ St. James Cathedral where we screened Strophische Gedichten and the outdoor stage at Flinn Springs’ Grand Ole BBQ:

I rolled with Sandpiper’s T.C. aka GMacGuffin out to El Cajon around eleven in the morning, at which point the thermometer was already reading 85° and it only rose from there. Thankfully the good folks at GOBBQ were kind enough to provide us with a veritable stack of drink tickets and I spent the next four hours chugging hibiscus mules to keep cool. If between the heat and the location I’m making it sound as if this show was a bad time, allow me to clarify by pointing out that in addition to paying us GOBBQ also granted us each “unlimited barbecue (within reason),” and of course I live to probe at the limits of reason.

After three sets spanning Dylan, Morricone, Willie Nelson, Santo & Johnny and more we finally reeled things in to make room for Jeff Berkley and the Banned. A running bet within Sandpiper dictates if T.C. ever manages an entire show without someone asking him what his melodica is he owes the rest of the band a drink. I very nearly had another mule until one of the Banned expressed his astonishment at T.C.’s mystery instrument.

My Lyft driver on the way home didn’t speak much English, but he also didn’t let that stop him from enthusiastically asking a lot of questions about my guitar. Turns out the guy’s a drummer and played me a bunch of rad garage psych bands from Tijuana. Conversation on the long drive eventually came back to my music and in no time he was vibing hard to pilostyles wildflower and Winterlong.

I let him know Tall Can and I were playing that night at FeeLit in the hopes we’d meet again, but first I made the most of my brief time at home and ran a quick lap around the island — not quick enough, it turned out, to make it back to my house before Nathan and Tall Can pulled up, so I booked it double-time and dripping with sweat to load my guitar and amp into Nathan’s car without even time to change. Gross! By the time we reached the next venue I was beginning to regret drinking all that vodka in the sun and going on a run. Pedialyte + coconut water to the rescue…

Every musician knows the best part of playing small venues is any sort of turnout automatically translates into a packed house. When a bunch of your homies actually do show up the effect is even better:

I’ve essentially been using all of Tall:Shadow’s recent gigs as platforms for extremely harsh prepared guitar work in a hip-hop setting. Don’t ask me to explain why.

Any time I write about the music Tall Can and I make I end up contemplating the place of protest in art. Under the best circumstances I have these questions in mind during our performances, as a kind of theoretical engagement parallel to the praxis of bringing this music to an audience. At this show, I was mostly just tired. Longs hours of drying out under the hot East County sun left me little more than a zombie. So how can exhaustion factor into political art?

We live, of course, in the age of exhaustion, where infinite growth hits finite limits with apocalyptic consequences, a condition we must plumb to uncover the faint forms of the political hidden in its depths.

In Pierre Guyotat’s Tomb for 500,000 Soldiers a captain in the army tells a child rebel the war is nearly over.

“I am tired neither of fire nor blood,” the child rebel declares.

“Well, I am,” the captain answers. “How fortunate you are, who still have the urge to kill.”

Guyotat himself “dreamed up” Tomb as a young soldier in the mountains of war-torn Algeria in the early 60s, “high up on the watchtowers, half-asleep on guard duty, with before me the space of the night illuminated only by the moon and the stars.” ‘course you already know my thoughts on writing on the job.

In After the Orgy: Toward a Politics of Exhaustion, Dominic Pettman calls for a “radical passivity” to threaten “the prevalent ethos of relentless productivity,” and certainly I’ve written in this space before about attempting resist the productivist mindset when it comes to my own artistic practice. But passivity becomes Pettman’s own greatest hindrance, and his provocations never move beyond outlining his concept. Nor will mine, at least right now; I’m supposed to be writing about the show I just played, remember?

But first, another aside for the infantry: after years of wavering back and forth during which I repeatedly discouraged him, Lucas finally enlisted in the Army and shipped out for Basic Training at Fort Benning in January. He’s been without his phone for most of that time and when he has been granted access it’s been necessarily restricted. So it came as quite a surprise when he called me on Friday with both the news he had graduated from boot camp and that our country is now at war with Iran. The U.S. Army: last to know, first to go.

Despite not being a horror fan Roger is an ardent zombie fanatic, particularly of his beloved Resident Evil games, and in preparation for Zach Cregger’s upcoming film adaptation watched Barbarian and Weapons. Roger confessed there were still plenty of horror films scary enough by reputation to keep him from taking the plunge, including The Exorcist, so of course I had to go off a bit about how great Friedkin and Blatty are and about the real-world experience the latter drew on from his time as first lieutenant in the Air Force’s Psychological Warfare Division in crafting both his original novel and his incredible third installment in the film series.

I must have still been haunted by Blatty’s mindgames because as I tried to sleep that night I was plagued by nearly undefeatable insomnia. When I finally managed a meager half hour of sleep I dreamed I myself was the exorcist summonsed to the home of a family whose twelve-year-old son was possessed. The son was played by Dwayne Johnson, who Satan transformed before my eyes into a bloodthirsty Rock/pitbull hybrid who leapt for my throat.

Stove Jesus / I was cooking for three days / And then it rose up out the pot

Happy Easter.