Empire Rocket Machine, Glass Elevator, Wizard Boots at Someday Lounge 3/9/11

Jotted down at the Empire Rocket Machine/ Glass Elevator/ Wizard Boots show at Someday Lounge 3/9/11:

So, Piotr, here's the notes:

This place is a delight for an old man like me– lots of room, no one at my elbow, plenty of white to fill with drunken schoolboy fantasy– loud but not too loud– crowd just learning to enjoy itself, not gone existential on its own predilections–

A roundabout way of saying the place is full of beautiful, naturally graceful women, none of which I am allowed to even consider as anything more than platonic definitions of "woman"– as anything more than a stark line drawing in a desktop dictionary–

Nevertheless, I have the great good fortune of seeing a young man on his way up, a guy I don't even really know but for whom I have so many genuinely good wishes– because if his future remains unbroken, so there is hope for my own– woven as he is into my childhood– and apart from this selfish reason, as much as anyone deserves success, certainly this serious-minded young man does– he wants to feed people's imaginations as he feeds his own and that's all. I only talked with him a few minutes and yet I know this– and who can argue with the rightness of this proposition? No one but a liar with something to sell... I must back his play, it is an imperative.

This means I buy him a drink and buy his cd. This is my "rent"...

Perhaps I can just drop all this foolish resentment I feel for the young– those younger than me that is– because they're better equipped than I to deal with this shit we're in, and can't I learn from them? Why not?

"Vincent of Jersey"– Big Head Todd & the Monsters

There is a bus line that runs across the ocean– to a rock island that has no close neighbors. The bus runs every five years. No one ever seems to take it– the fare is unbelievably cheap.

There's a station on the island– a peeling one-room cabin with a sink whose drain goes nowhere, points straight down into the cabinet like a surprised mouth– a sprung cot, some ancient, tattered porn and a Tecumseh refrigeration catalogue are the only reading material.

The structure is not well-insulated. When the wind blows, and it always blows, there's a chill blade in the cot and your ass feels like a popsicle. There's only room for one– but that's one more than is ever there.

There is a portrait on the wall– John McLoughlin, the Father of Oregon– the White Eagle, staring at you through the decades with those white daguerrotype eyes and the single most arresting and non-erotic image imaginable, guaranteeing that no couple, however misguided, however dominated by one incomplete intellect– would ever stay under his watchful gaze.

Provision there is none.

There is a battered locker outside with a corroded padlock, better than any cooler– anything left outside will stay cold, don't worry– but it's empty.

Incredibly, there are signs of habitation– in a surprisingly well-appointed desk opposite the cot there is a ledger– filled with fading script, pushed into the cheap paper with a fountain pen– but the pages have been torn out for fuel, at random.

The entries are not dated but record a mundane session of surf fishing and desperate masturbatory fantasies that attenuate into meditations on the last station before the island, a kiosk that offered soggy hoagies puncutated by gritty, blackened lettuce and a puckered tomato slice that announced itself on the tongue only– posing a question that only the violently ill could answer.

The man that sold the hoagies, along with month-old copies of Truck Trader and Nickel Ads, had a face like the wilted tomato– all seams and expectation burned and scraped off to a killing point. He spat frequently and copiously, yet never seemed to take in any kind of nourishment, liquid or otherwise. He disdained any sort of interaction, including trade– the sight of money triggered a dismissive hock across the bow, a revolting parabola of slime– the only change in expression one of angle, like a lizard eyeing an ant.

Nothing will ever be repaired, nothing will be quite the same again– only the mountains and the sky stay the same. We say they change so they can change with us, so we can pretend to swing in their stride– while we round out– in looking on them we look on infinity and build our expectation on this childlike lie– when it's as Hank Stamper says and it's nothing but working & screwing– and the mountains look down on us.

Perhaps the old man at the kiosk knows all this, I wouldn't put it past him. If he does, he doesn't have the time or the inclination to tell the likes of you. He is a place marker, a human null, and resists successfully all attempts to guess his "special case". And, of course, he could give a fuck about yours.

..........

Look at Empire Rocket Machine's page on Facebook and buy their album. You can preview the songs on Grooveshark here. These guys care about their sound, and you can't take that for granted, now certainly more than ever. They put me in mind of some of these earnest, careful indie bands of the early 90s whose serious approach has seemed to go by the board completely.

The music industry is so full of empty hucksterism and offensive leering now, it's practically a public duty to support guys like this. They are the glue that hold a rock scene together.