Summer Darling, Vanaprasta, Voxhaul Broadcast, Chasing Kings - The Satellite - Monday, November 28, 2011

"Ape in cage with wire cutters,

I'm in the tiny car, with the big-shoed feet."

-WHY?

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I only have one good story, and I told it on this blog almost a year ago. This is long enough for it to be depressing, but not so long that I can get away with telling it again.

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What did that even mean?

*

It was Sunday, the end of a very long weekend. I was still hungover from Friday night, and probably from Thursday night too. Two options presented themselves to me: another day in bed, studiously observing the ceiling and the light bulbs and the fan while my thoughts devolved into an ever inkier blight as I played a stone-still game of fetch with the yipping dogs of despair; or a trip to the bookstore. I went to the bookstore.

*

I'm tired of occupying my brain. I wish the cops would evict me.

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With Manhattan Murder Mystery playing a residency in December and Seasons playing one in January, I shouldn't be dipping too deeply into my overpriced booze fund to buy books, given that I have a magic card that I can use to borrow books for free if I don't mind the shit-cheese odor of the Santa Monica Public Library. But, as I've informed most people at one time or another when they've gently inquired into my rather dim prospects for a future as a stable and self-sufficient human male, I'm kind of banking on that whole Mayan-calendar-2012-end-of-the-world business being true. And if that doesn't pan out, and we do make it to 2013, I'm assuming that our whole financial system and the broken society that props it up will collapse once and for all soon enough, and we'll all find ourselves on equal--though quite terrible--footing, and any debts I run up buying books will be confined to vague, laughably quaint memories of the days of First World leisure. Or, if that doesn't happen, maybe I'm going to die soon. In any event, it's totally okay for me to spend money on a book now and then, as long as it's from and independent bookstore and it's one that I really, really want.

*

I have a sense about these things. For the past twenty-nine years, I've been haunted by a premonition that I'm going to die. Just because it hasn't happened yet doesn't mean that I'm wrong. Someday. You'll see.

*

After a few stops, I tracked down a copy of Dana Spiotta's Stone Arabia. I kind of wish I hadn't, because, while the book is dazzling on its own terms--and a good read too; much like in her previous book Eat the Document, Spiotta's facility with language and detail made the story hard not to devour in a single evening--I liked my idea of the book better than the book itself. In reality, it's a story of family and sacrifice and decline. But what I had expected more of--in my cloistered, parochial fashion--was information about the protagonist's brother, a man named Nik: a musician who almost achieved minor commercial success twenty-five years before the book takes place, and who, since then, has continued to record music under various band names several times a year; he records and designs these releases himself, puts them out on fictional record labels, and, year after year, he shares them with about a dozen people; and, concurrent with this recording, he has written an entire Chronicle--a scrapbook of fictional press clippings, fake album reviews, fabricated fanzine interviews--documenting his imaginary career as a world-famous rock star and mercurial visionary. And he's more or less okay with this. I mean, he's a drunk, and he's poor, and possibly suicidal, and he works a shitty job at a bar, and his foot is swollen with gout. But beneath the accoutrements of despair, he's fundamentally okay. He doesn't care if more than a small handful of people--limited to close family and ex-girlfriends--ever hears the music he's toiled at for decades. He does not appear to long for fame, or recognition, or any part of the life he's invented for himself in his Chronicle. The acts of imagination and creation are enough.

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Here is a video of Dana Spiotta being interviewed in France about her last book, Eat the Document. It's completely irrelevant to our current discussion, but I like seeing fiction writers treated to fawning celebrity-style interviews. I like when the guy calls it a "must-read."

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I guess my partiality to the portions of Stone Arabia that deal directly with Nik stems from my affection for a certain type of classic existential hero: those who create their own meaning, divorced from any divine or societal demand and approval; those who stand before the void, create something beautiful, and throw it right down into that abyss. Although, if I'm being honest, I must admit that my affection for this type of existential hero has flagged a bit since I was fifteen. The void becomes less romantic and more unforgiving as you age. But I maintain an affection for my long-lost affection.

*

Many of my friends play music. Many of them will never be heard beyond a handful of close family and friends and ex-girlfriends. I wonder how this affects their lives, their outlooks, their creative processes. I could ask them, I suppose, and on certain drunken occasions I have. And in their answers, underneath the dissembling and the odd delusion and the desire for easy access to intercourse, there always lies that compulsion, an unquittable artistic drive that may begin with a desire to be loved but ends somewhere far more peculiar, and scary. It's not about acclaim or sex or record sales or packed houses or 8.4 album reviews. It's not even about rocking out and having fun with your friends. It's about seeing the buzzards constantly circling overhead, and doing anything one can as an artist and human--taking every risk, making every mistake, stumbling into every success--to keep them at bay. The buzzards occasionally fly away, but they're never gone for long. And they don't care how many people like your band.

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I'm not sure what any of this has to do with Vanaprasta. Judging by the turnout at Monday night's final residency show, and the enthusiasm of all the gorgeous people in attendance, whatever obscurity the band maintains isn't long for this world. They're running from the same buzzards as everyone else, of course, but they appear to be getting the masses running right alongside them.

It had been far too long since I'd caught one of their sets. Back in the day I used to push up close and pump my fist, but this time around I hung back. The crowd was too dense and young and glamorous, and I was feeling too old and ugly and fat and drunk. But even from a distance with my fist unpumped, the exhilaration was palpable. They make me want to spout cliches about the power of good old rock and roll, but this is something I'm lately trying to resist.

But....

Maybe, some nights, it is about rocking out and having fun with your friends.

*

"You here for Vanaprasta?" a man next to me at the bar asked.

"Yeah," I said. "Haven't seen 'em in a long time."

"Oh, you've seen them before?"

"Many times."

"Yeah, they're really good ... for an L.A. band. Most L.A. bands suck. Which L.A. bands do you like?" he asked.

I didn't answer. It was an odd question.