The Experiment: Day Three

26 May 2012

Woke this morning with difficulty getting out of bed, due in part to soreness from soccer the other night, yet due in larger part to the lonesomeness of the house. A patter of rain on the roof, the flush green trees and white bell flowers of the courtyard. Where is my little Ada tramping about the rooms calling for us to make breakfast and start the day? Prying myself out of bed, the first thing to do was make a fire, give some soul to the house. I put on a coat and carried the wicker basket outside to the wood pile under the dripping eaves, came back in and made a snapping fire in the hearth. Then with Weekend Edition on the radio keeping me company, made coffee, eggs and toast, tidied up the kitchen and ate breakfast at a table very empty despite the newspaper sections scattered across it.

I have one duty today: to get out query letters for the novel. Duty lends structure, but not purpose. That must come from within. Oh where oh where is my Anna and Ada to distract me from it all?

The question we are faced with is the question that is always there, even if at times the noise of family life obscures it: what am I to do with my life? Practically speaking the question appears as: what am I to do today? But that is just an incremental exercise of the larger dilemma. And if, like most of us, you don't have a sure answer for the primary question, then merely spooning coffee grounds into the pot can feel like a colosol effort against the question of existence. This is where religious types might step in and coach faith and purpose found in god. But it's also where more skeptical souls might eschew those comforts for the hard-earned insights of doubt. Sartre's protagonist in “The Wall”, knowing that by not doing nothing he has condemned his comrade to death. In Buddhism there's a maxim: the roots of your doubt must be as deep as the roots of your faith. We can't get too cozy in our ideas about the world or our own existence. Discomfort is like a poker at the fire, keeping the logs turned over and the artistic flames snapping.

Speaking of discomfort, last night I wandered into something pleasantly strange. Tired as I was, I couldn't stand being in the desolate house and went for a walk downtown just to get some air, a drink, a view of the piled silver clouds left over from the rain, a catch at whatever randomness might throw at me. And for my efforts I found a band from Italy (from Treviso, in fact, not far from Venice) playing at a coffee shop on Main. Father Murphy is their name, and by how good and obscure they were, I couldn't help wondering what the hell they were doing in this tiny venue with only about thirty people watching them. The three-piece included a skinny guy on guitar, a woman who looked like Patty Smith on keyboard, and a mad genius on drums. Adjectives? Haunting, deconstructive, Noise but clean, cerebral, ceremonial, a continuous contorting dirge that comes at you in shearing waves that make you think of industrial warehouses on the outskirts of Milano. The vocals were more melodic wail than singing; the drumming more likely to convert the kit into a cello or a sheet of torn silk than to produce rhythm; the guitar a fiercely plucked harpsichord. It was all just dark enough to make you wonder how the musicians could endure their own lives.

But then after the show I talked with them and they turned out to be perfectly charming, kind, polite Italians. (It's so typical to meet some rough-looking Italian punk and they're the nicest cordial kid you'd ever want to introduce to your nonna. All good mamma's boys at heart!) I didn't catch the drummer's name, but we chatted about Treviso, the punk scene in Portguero, the six-month tour they were making across the U.S., the long stretch between Chicago and Seattle that had them stopping over in SLC and Boise, the friend of their producer who set up this weird little gig. I told him I'd never seen drums played like he did. Yes, he replied, he was trained as a violinist and always forgets he is playing drums. He was excited to see Seattle and Olympia, as Nirvana and Cobain were big inspirations when he was young. I met the other two band members, thanked them for the incredible show, and we wished each other a reunion in Italia.

And then I walked out into the quiet night. And for a little while I'd done it, forgotten my doubt, left my little patch of existence for the nether realms of a punk band from the land of my ancestors, the land of my escapism.