It’s been five months since that night..Feels like yesterday. Maybe it’s still happening:

The experience;

the weirdness;

the delirium;

the gig;

the thrill;

the trip;

the gig…

the ecstasy…

the journey...

the agony..  ……………  

The Gig…

..THE GIG...

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Yes.

… pain,

…………..misery….

.. the post-gig agony….

The Blanche Dubois pathos;

The apocalyptic chimera,

Rumbling through my unconscious,
Spilling over into conscious,
Floodwaters lapping the curb on Sanity Street,
My own personal storm surge,
….unchecked idiocy.
The lapse,
The stray synapse,
Eventual collapse,
Of the ego levies,
Already weak,
From decades of neglect.

The agony and the ecstasy..
Michelangelo was a master,
I am but a dilettante,
Happy in obscurity,
Flopping against,
Hyper-dimensional walls,
In the padded cell of the psyche;
Casual…
……….cool…
……………..royal blue
……………………...grippy socks….
…………………....…...Straightjacket
…………………...unbuttoned..

…………………………………..How are you?..................

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The ecstasy.. .. Yes!!.. Ecstasy.. !!

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//You know ecstasy//MDMA is native to Central Texas, right? A chemical compound whipped-up by adventurous University of Texas chemistry students? Manchester and Austin forever entwined by tongue dissolved tabs fueling endless Granadaland raves; a million Ibiza bathroom stall tristes; and countless other deliciously decadent acts liberally sown upon the patchwork spaces, mountain faces, worn out places, and daily races of our mad world.\\

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My ecstasy wasn’t chemically inspired. The means may have varied, but the ends were similar…

I’m flying….

The WGB^[1]: live, en vivo, San Antonio, Texas, the easternmost metropolis of El Norte, winking back at its brothers to the west - Monterrey, El Paso, Juarez, Albuquerque, Tucson, Phoenix, Los Angeles and all the hermanitos - Laredo, Santa Fe, Taos, Alpine, Cruces, Willcox, Nogales - in between.

That’s my trip;

more than a gig--

……………….consciousness expansion.

I was so high, I could look west and see all those hermanos and hermanitos twinkling in the night, white splotches sprawling, amoeba coke dust tweaking my nostrils as I floated through space. I absorbed it through every pore.

San Antonio is where another world begins. The world I left, like the nebulous marching powder of the sprawling landscape, is white.

The white permeates its cells, its psyche, its soul. It thinks white, it moves white, it lives white-  if you can call it living. Why do I always return to this white world? What is left to find there?  

I’ll bet there were hermanas and hermanitas in my stratospheric purview. I must have been too white and sexist to notice. Back on earth, there were many inside Paper Tiger as the WGB invaded the stage [again], taking aim at a crowd of a hundred or so soul-siblings with all the energy they could wring from their road-worn souls. I was too white and sexist not to notice.

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The band…

The hit...

The boost…

Ahhhhh….

……….”Time to Go Home”…

.. Strange choice of set opener…ya think..???

...Further evidence of road-weariness….?

Mixing,

………...mixing

……………………..so liberally,

………………………………..so hazardously…

………………………………………….Insanely..

Flake,

………snow,

………………..blow…

..Snowflake on blow...

E-bombs

………….and

…………………..disco biscuits…

..mixed...

I am mad.

Hatter mad..

Wonderland bonkers.

Rabbit Hole Rabid…

...The bunny flies…

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I’d been waiting 647 days for this moment.

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Ms. Lund floated off into her own Marrtian spacescape, paying homage to the great bestower of the “Moz” sobriquet and myriad shimmer and jangle masters who saturated the decade prior to her birth: Peter Buck; Cline and Richmond; Randall Bewley; Will Sergeant; and others I will eventually find as I sift through the copious gold flecks panned from the frigid snow-melt torrents of River Chazzy. I swear there’s some ‘90s stuff in here somewhere - Kristin Hersh, Kurt Cobain, maybe more. Thanks to Lund and her bandmates, Manchester, Liverpool, Athens, GA, and Seattle are forever entwined.

Shapiro, gaining her sea-legs, transformed from hoodie-bound zombie to wild-maned insurrectionist, howling her trademark existential bedroom navel gaze drone poetry with the force and fury of OAS storming les Cordons de Police in May ‘68^[2].  Sure, it would be fair to say Ms. Shapiro doesn’t boast the most stellar voice in the rock firmament, but you can say the same of Patti Smith, Janis Joplin, Ozzy Osbourne, Michael Stipe, and the mighty Moz himself. What makes her voice and vocals transcendent is another trait she shares with those greats: BIG FUCKING ATTITUDE.

She is a rock n roll Rebel with iron will staving-off not only Nausea but The Plague itself. No Stranger to the Sisyphean trials and tribulations of art, music, and life on the road, she refuses to Fall even if she hits The Wall. Shapiro is never The Guest, but always the proprietor of the stage from which she knows there is No Exit.

She is the Mersault of Rock n Roll; the Dr. Rieux; the Antoine de Roquentin; Inez; Estelle; and Garcin of post-Riot Grrrl reality. It’s hard out here for an Ego drenched in Id; where to fuck up is human:

I wanna have some self control

I wanna be sincere

But nothing’s ever really free when you’re living in fear

-- “I Used to Spend So Much Time Alone” from IUTSSMTA^[3]

 And to say “fuck it”, divine:

Kill time in between the fake lies

Then gain a sense of self

Try to get to a place of stillness

Wonder what it feels like not to care

-- “It’s Obvious” from IUTSSMTA^[4]

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While it is natural to seek calm resolution, she’s at home in the confusion. Her aim is not to resolve, but to revolve and evolve.

Yeah, I think [she] (has somehow) figured it out. ^[5]

Sartre and Camus would be so proud.

Like Lund, Truscott disappeared into her own world, leaping about stage left as if it were her own personal bouncy castle. If Mike Mills, Michael Lachowski, and the other punchy bass players of the great Southeast need an heir, look no further than Truscott. Her bass takes the tone and grit of those stalwarts, cranks it up a few notches, and adds just enough Pacific Northwest grunge to make you say, “Generational progression, indeed!”

But the night belonged to Ms. Grimm, and not in her role behind the drum kit, but up front, guitar in hands, sultry pipes crooning over the PA.. --Man, oh man, she’s got an amazing voice. In contrast and compliment to Shapiro’s revolution and evolution, she was revelation and elation. I became “Stuck” on the Lush/Cocteau Twins^[6] strains of her first song, and, after the second, I said to myself, “‘Don’t Worry’,  she is gonna sing on future Chazzy tracks. She has to.”

What other talents are these guys hiding? Is Shapiro going to whip out an accordion and go all weird Al on us?

The Chazzy universe keeps expanding. New worlds appear, stars are born.

Of course, Lund sang her eponymous song from the Time to Go Home album - the highlight of the night for me..

What does this song mean??

Really….What is it?  What’s going on?

Brontean poem?

Ionesco absurdity?

Jungian mindfuck?

A thesis on the transformation of unconscious material into conscious art and the true nature of reality as an individual’s perception???

A love essay to allusions and images.. ?

A meditation on the emotional power of the union of gases and liquids?

An alchemical acclamation?

A rhapsody to the wondrous watery sensation of being drunk and confused?

Introvert anthem?

INFP power ballad?

It’s something….

Something… that ….cuts deep….^[7]

When the fog meets the water I will ask

What is real?

It's what you feel^[8]

Few truer things have been said. It’s very real for me this night - Monday; March 13, 2017; San Antonio, Texas; Paper Tiger; St. Mary’s Street. Really, really real; so real, all notions of linear time and space have have melted, or perhaps, evaporated; or both -- the fog and water meeting.

Some 5 months later, from the hellish depths of the boiling Texas summer, it’s as real as ever, getting realer by the day.

It could be the gig for eternity.