sukks

Living in an Eternal Vacuum

Back in the days when I was a bit more impressionable than I am today, I like many a happy go lucky lad wanted a dog for a pet. Sure my myriad of stuffed animals named after baseball players was of some comfort (and exercise for the imagination) but somehow having a real live (as I defined it then if not now) faithful, tail-wagging companion in my life seemed something that was desirable. Alas my sisters were allergic to all creatures fuzzy and thus my pet options were somewhat limited. Mom and Dad did at one point buy my brother and I a pair of turtles but somehow Huey and Louie weren't exactly capable of cuddling and playing fetch and that type of thing.

So one day my friend Steve Benz and I were out at the swamp as we seemed to be most hazy afternoons and we caught ourselves a couple of Red-Bellied snakes. I wasn't going to take mine home but Steve convinced me that it was the prudent thing to do. Still sheepish I didn't exactly rush to tell anyone in my family about my new pet, the one I kept hidden in a shoe box down in the basement, the one I wasn't quite sure what to feed to keep it healthily and stealthy swiggling.

As a few days passed (more than enough time to seem like it time to move on to the next interesting thing to such a decidedly prone to that type of moving on type mindset) I opened up the top of the shoebox to where I was keeping the newest member our family only to discover that he (or maybe it was a she or maybe it was both) wasn't there. Yup my heart skipped a beat or two and my choices seemed limited to either ignoring the whole set of things and chalking it up to a learning experience; or looking around our palatial suburban estate for a snake no more than a cat tail in length; or maybe mentioning to Mom that there was a loose snake (no fault of my own naturally) in the house somewhere.

After a few days more contemplation I kind of came to the realization that I really should probably tell Mom about the loose snake. We began an immediate search that proved fruitless. As a last resort Mom, knowing she had recently vacuumed the whole house decided to look inside the vacuum cleaner. She carefully cut open the vacuum cleaner bag and began to sort, barehanded through its contents. In retrospect I think she was equally afraid of what she might find as afraid what she might have to tell me she might find. But in amongst the dust there was a wiggle waggle movement and Mom let out what may have been a sigh of relief or one let out of disappointment at the unexpected adventure her youngest child had most recently been the catalyst of. I eventually gave the snake back to Steve Benz with a certain sadness borne both out of the grief I caused Mom and the sadness that I really did still want a tail-wagging friend that somehow "belonged" to me.

This most recently passed cold cold winter I was vacuuming one of the few areas in my hardwood floored house I have to vacuum- the rug in my bedroom- when I had one of those frustrating OOPs moments when I saw a shiny object that was just too late identified to be my recently lost favorite earring just as I was running the vacuum cleaner over the recently lost piece of jewelry. Being way too cheap to immediately remove the garbage bag and retrieve the earring I decided that I'd wait until the bag was full and then deal with the lost object of my affection. So this past weekend I decided that I had gotten all I could out of this particular vacuum bag and I removed it. I grabbed a grocery bag, slit the vacuum bag and began emptying the dusty contents into the grocery bag.

So there I was sitting on the front steps of my house, hands hidden in a grocery bag, clouds of dust swirling around me like that that follows Pig-Pen in the Peanuts comic strip searching for a tiny lil green earring. I know I made quite the sight as a neighbor stopped by to ask what the hell I was doing. And on top of it all I was tearing up not so much because of the dust but because 90 percent of the contents I was shifting through was Max the Cat's sucked up fur. There was so much there that I'm sure I could sculpt a life-size replica of my much missed deceased buddy.

That same weekend my Dad told me his home voice mail went on the fritz and he dug out his last answering machine to temporarily take its place. He hit the play button airing the last tape inside and out played the voice of Mom talking to a grandchild about a school the girl had gotten into. The pride in Mom's voice rose above the accidentally erased and otherwise muffled parts of the conversation. Dad and I weren't quite sure what we should think or feel of the unexpected return of Mom's voice. The vacuum her absence continues (and will continue) to create to me remains absolute and astounding. It sucks at least as much if not much more than my now lifetime experience of combining vacuum cleaners with pets both deliberately chosen for comfort and those who were meant to be. Another explain it to me please moment in an time of that type of thing. At the very least putting in a fresh bag makes my vacuum cleaner work much better. It truly sucks. And that seems appropriate.

So You Wanna Be a Rock 'n' Roll Star or You're Hearing But Not Really Listening or Tentative 'D'

When Stephanie Jane decided she had had enough there was a vacuum created that really sucked. Big time.

The days that followed (and those days somehow turned to years) I found myself trying to recover from that and so much more, stumbling through the dark, in a tailspin, saving it for a rainy day, and then I heard the Jayhawk's Town Hall Music and it was such beautiful music and it was music I knew that had S.J. and I heard together she probably would have initially not listened to (she was much more prone to being a metal head rather than a country gal) but after some prodding by me she probably would have on an Autumn day where I wasn't around put the music on the stereo and tried to listen and eventually she would have liked what she heard.

The "last" time I talked with Stephanie Jane was in the days following September 11, and I don't want to trivialize any of the magnitude of that event but after a dozen years of deafening silence to hear her voice and then to hear her say when asked what music she was currently listening to, "Music isn't the passion it used to be... I don't buy as much as I used to..." made an already sad me go bitingly numb. Now a seamstress, formerly the finest connoisseur of what mattered that I had ever stumbled across to hear her say that made me feel how far the drift had been and I knew that was all ENTIRELY MY fault.

I was at First Ave Saturday night waiting to hear the Jayhawks live for the fourth or fifth time in my life. It was a benefit concert for the "Developing Arts and Music Foundation." The opening act, Kraig Jarret Johnson and the Program featuring the lead singer to the group Iffy (who I was introduced to by the lost in touch law school student Sarah McKenzie) grooved and was rather groovy as I'm sure the kids in the audience would attest to (did I mention I was carded at the door?). I was with the Feisty Garden Girl and her friend Dave Boquist (who played guitar and other instruments for Son Volt) with no skin on my right leg thanks to a spectacular softball slide (I was safe!) that caused my leg to burn and burn with a passion (I've been told by a couple of different people that the only time they've seen me truly happy was racing around the softball bases and that makes some sense. You never know how far you're gonna go or get or where you'll ultimately end up but as long as you can keep running and be safe you'll be OK and all eyes watching you know will know that and accede to your decisions. Run and run until you can't run anymore...). Ironically the first time I met Stephanie Jane was months after she broke her knee in a skiing accident and she was quite self conscious of the scar left after surgery and was noticeably limping which was one of the reasons I noticed her in my self absorbed dreaming haze and it all seemed so fitting in a novelesque way...

When the Jayhawks finally hit the stage I removed the Ace bandage wrapped around my limb and found my normally jiggling right leg hampered not only by my injury but also by the close proximity to the people around me. But it still found a way to jiggle during the second song, a tear inducing "Eyes of Sarahjane" from the latest CD. "I see the happy times again/and in the eyes of Sarahjane/I see happy times again/We couldn't sleep/Laugh 'til we weep/Then time stood still, so still, so still..."

I melted. Literally melted and drifted to times and ghosts past. I wanted to tell the FGG what was going on but there was a wall (of people if not of existing neurosis) and what can one tell these dayz?

The songs from the new CD Rainy Day Music worked well and seeped into cracks that weren't quite caulked by just listening to the recorded versions. When Gary Louris sang the lyrics to "Stumbling Through the Dark" my knees buckled as I thought about Stephanie Jane (and all her successors). "So much in love little girl/Running in circles, why?/You know it's a crime..." And how about a version of "Tailspin" that was a great example of how much the group has grown from the days I heard them opening for Dylan at the Orpheum years and years back? Forget that they will forever miss (in my ears) the country "Band-ish" influence former member Mark Olson used to provide (not to mention his harmonies) to Louris' otherwise devotion to Beach Boy pop the music in front of me was transcendental.

They closed with "Sister Cry" that had me alternating glances at the stage where Louris was playing the part of 'rock God' complete with feedback (most Moby Grapish) and with the Feisty Garden Girl who was swaying in a way that melted my already misplaced liver textured heart. I wasn't with Stephanie Jane, and I wasn't with whatever feelings being with her used to conjure, but I was in a place that for a brief moment I loved to be. Elsewhere in this publication you'll find an article about why music matters so much to the human soul and you'll find an article about why rock criticism is so dorky and you'll also now find this, a testament to an existing friendship that sometimes hurts more than an aching Jayhawks' melody.

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