writing

This entry originally appeared in Powell’s Books blog and is reprinted by permission.

It’s 2 a.m. and the rain is so loud and the moon is so bright that I’m lying on the closet floor, trying to get some sleep. It’s hard. I mean, the floor is hard and it’s hard to sleep on it.

You’re supposed to empty your mind of all thought, in order to fall asleep, right? Or is that meditation? Either way. I believe the brain’s first order of business is to lie to you, so I like to shut that organ down every chance I get.

Tonight, though, when I try to shut it up, it keeps asking this question: why do people think I’m foreign? My brain raises a good point. I’ve never been sure why people tend to guess I’m foreign. ‘Cause they do. Often. They ask me “what part of the world” I’m from. And it bugs me. What does “foreign” even mean in a melting pot? I mean, I speak English.

“You speak it…weird, though,” says my husband, Billy. “And you like to dress like a refugee.”

“Weird? What do you mean, ‘weird’? And good like a refugee or bad like a refugee?”

“Oh…good,” he says. “Like you were the first girl to the bale.”

I’ve seen Billy asked for directions in Milan, Boise, Barcelona, New York and Dublin. Clearly he has no trouble fitting in, wherever he is. In most of these places, he is foreign.

I’m not asked for directions anywhere, not even in my hometown where I should look like I know where I’m going.

Today, walking down NW 23rd, here in Portland, I saw no less than six different ladies wearing the exact same shoes. Shoes that were being sold in several places on that very street. I guessed that those ladies weren’t foreign — they certainly looked like they belonged.

I began to wonder if besides wearing the same shoes, maybe they all listened to the same music, too. As a musician, I wonder this a lot. Marketing is very effective when it comes to shoes and music.

I looked down at my sturdy refugee shoes and thought, “Fashion. Again.” In music it often seems to come down to that tiny bit of evil: style over substance, ephemeral over timeless.

Recently, a music journalist told me that he hadn’t kept up with my career for the past few years, because I had “fallen off [his] radar.” The last record of mine that he’d heard was the subject of a well funded major label marketing campaign; I was on the radio and in most music publications as well as some of the magazines one might read at, say, the dentist’s office.

It hadn’t occurred to this man, who works in the music business, that what he thinks of as his “radar” might just be the result of marketing dollars spent by a corporation whose job it is to create popular culture by creating the impression of popular culture in order to… Make Money.

I was amazed. How could this be? I thought. How can this process be invisible even to a person who plays a role in it? Well, I guess the answer is in the shoes. Belonging at the expense of individuality. No one seems to want to give it up. We like matching feet and reliable coffee and using the same perfume as rich and famous people.

Our American cities are disappearing under the weight of corporate giants who drive out competition while peddling sameness. Once the rents go up, no store other than a chain can afford to pursue the all-important Coed Consumer Monster, waving Daddy’s credit card.

Over twenty years of touring the states, I’ve watched local accents and local music slip away from cities like Austin, Texas, Athens, Georgia and Chapel Hill, North Carolina. So sad! There used to be places to go in this country, pictures to take, people to meet. Now they look the same and sound the same. We even eat the same food! Do you remember regional cuisine? Can you really find any? It’s even happening in foreign places like Europe, Asia, Australia, even my beloved New Zealand!

I’m done. I’m going back to sleep now. My sturdy shoes are right next to my face, but I don’t mind. I like them now. They’re on my radar. I love being an American, but I don’t feel like I have to look like one. And I listen to all kinds of music, from lots of different places and eras; not because some giant sold it to me, but because it never sucked.

I think I might just keep talking funny, too.

It’s been raining for… ever. The sky is dark and it dumps water on us all day long, every day. How much water is up there anyway? It’s not that I mind it, really; it’s just strikingly different. It isn’t even weather anymore —- it’s climate. Or another planet.

And I think I might have a walking problem.

Now that the record is done and even the B-sides are recorded, I’ve got no reason to be in the studio and I’ve been asked to “lie low” as far as touring goes, so that the big tour, the one on the record release, will have more of an impact. So technically, I’m “off” which is a good word for it. Without work , I’m just a little off. Well, maybe a lot.

I’ve been hearing this sound, like the industrial noise at the beginning of my song “Listerine”. It’s not unattractive, but since no one else seems to hear it, I’m wondering if it’s really there. Which makes me want to drown it out. An iPod works really well for this. I listen to my friends’ records and feel engaged and loved. My ears are full and so is my heart.

But I can’t sit still, so I walk. And walk and walk. I pretend I’m going somewhere -— running errands, shopping —- but I’m not. I get to the store and just walk by.

This rain is not a cold rain; it’s actually unusually warm, so I wear ludicrously unseasonal sundresses and walk around Portland, drenched. First, I go look at Screaming Bus Stop Man. What he does is kind of horrifying (screaming), but he really throws himself into his work and he makes me feel exceedingly normal. Then I tend to get lost because if I see a squirrel, I move towards it; if I see a human, I avoid it — my only real criteria for walking. And people are everywhere, as it turns out; so I’m forever spinning on my heels.

Lost is good, though, because it means I get to walk more.

When I finally get home, I look at the front door for a minute and then keep walking. Something about stopping, being still, turns me off. Plus, I don’t want to put down my umbrella. Umbrellas! How did I not know this? They’re great…like having a tent and sunglasses combined: protection and no eye contact. Amazing. I’m going to miss mine if it ever stops raining.

I tried to take my dog, Kitty, along with me once. She was game at first, but the wetter we got and the more tired she got, the more frequently I saw that sideways dog-glance that means, “who the fuck are you”? And “where the hell are we going“?

She seemed truly embarrassed as we splashed through the small lakes that Portland puddles have become, past pedestrians trying to navigate their way around them. The wetter the better, I say: extra outside — but now I’ve embarrassed the dog. By the time we got home, Kitty was dismal.

So now she stays home, where things make more sense. Maybe if she could have her own doggie iPod, she’d know that there’s no period at the end of any musical sentence. Every song leads into another song, no matter who wrote it, no matter when. How can I not listen? And then there’s the next song, and the next. So physical that they’re spiritual.

How could I go home when there’s always another song?

So, if no band van pulls up and tells me to get my ass back out on the road, if no studio opens its doors to me, I’ll keep listening to the next song and then the one that follows it, falling in love again and again and again.

Enough sitting still and typing. I have an umbrella and errands to run…

Love,
Kristin

I’ve been told that, in the future, due to the inevitable pulls of evolution and deforestation, humankind will have to live without blondes — and bananas. Apart from the loss of trees, I’m thinking, “No Great Loss”. I’m not sure there are any real blondes left anyway. A makeup artist once referred to my hair as “dishwater” blonde, but it’s more dishwater than blonde, frankly. And it’s hard to miss bananas when I always seem to have some green ones turning brown on top of the fridge.

My kids and I were discussing this yesterday morning while they ignored their workbooks and the baby took a bath in the kitchen sink. We all agreed that the human race should be the color of toast — a nice monochromatic species might solve a lot of problems, but there was some difference of opinion when it came to bananas.

“What’ll monkeys eat?” asked Wyatt.

“Mangoes,” said Ryder.

“Oh. Okay, then.”

That settled, we moved on to the disappearance of frogs from lakes, ponds, and wetlands, fragile organisms and ecosystems that they are, and the disquieting number of flies in our courtyard. Wyatt supposed the two might be related:

“Well, if there were more frogs, we’d have fewer flies, right?”

“I guess if there were more frogs in our courtyard we’d have fewer flies. Also? If we didn’t keep our garbage cans out there.”

“And butterflies,” said the baby helpfully, blowing bubbles off of his palm.

Last week, Billy sent me a NY Times article about “mirror neurons” an idea that may explain the tendency we humans have to physically relate to one another’s emotional state – a kind of cellular-resonance. It’s both infuriating and touching to Billy and me that we can be so moved by each other that it creates an ongoing dynamic tension between us that is unseen and unexpressed yet it overshadows everything else we’ve got going on. That article helped to explain the phenomenon a bit.

I tried to introduce this topic into the kitchen/sink-bath discussion because I wanted to hear what the kids had to say about it. In my experience, they can be almost freakishly engaged in sensory input with which adults have long-ago lost touch. No such luck this time, however.

“Humans can’t do that,” said Wyatt, the junior naturalist, angrily. “Humans don’t care about each other. Humans don’t care about anything but making pollution.”

“Now, wait a minute honey,” I cooed ineffectively. “Lots of humans like…dolphins.”

He glared at me. “It’s our fault those monkeys won’t have any bananas.”

“They’d be happy enough with mangoes anyway,” said Ryder.

“How do you know?” demanded Wyatt.

“How do you know they wouldn’t?”

I tried to reign them in, “Okay, okay. Let’s start over. If nothing else, we can agree that humans are a social species and as a result, biologically dependent upon each other, right?”

“Right,” answered Ryder.

Wyatt thought for a minute, “That’s basically true, I guess.”

“So all I’m saying is, there’s this theory about just how deep this social tendency goes. Could it exist it at a cellular level?”

“No,” said Wyatt.

“That was a rhetorical question, Wy,” said Ryder.

“Well, think about it. I depend on you for my happiness.” I said. “And your brothers and Daddy. I can only assume you depend on us for your happiness.”

“I only depend on people I know really, really well,” said Wyatt.

“I think maybe mirror neurons work the same way,” I answered. “After all, it wouldn’t work for you to be dependent, emotionally or otherwise, on a guy who’d pollute wetlands or take bananas away from monkeys.”

“It’d work for me to hit him.”

“Yeah, well, be that as it may…” I pressed on, “Why do you suppose you draw on those little note pads they leave out on the nightstands in hotels?”

“What?”

Wyatt is a master of this crazy thing: he can make something appear on a piece of paper in every single hotel room we stay in without anyone seeing him do it. That’s cool enough, but what he puts there is even cooler. Poems, drawings, sometimes just one word—my bookmark is a page from a Travelodge memo pad with the word “wieners” written on it.

“I think that’s the most social thing you do and you do it every night we stay in a hotel. I know you pretty well and I think for you to act in a social way, the need would have to come from a pretty basic place – like your cells maybe?”

“Maybe I do it for me,” he said stubbornly, but I could tell he was thinking.

“Then why do you leave it out? Why don’t you just shove it in your pocket?”

He grinned, “’Cause pajamas don’t have pockets?”

Just then, the baby looked over from the sink, “Who depends on butterflies?” he asked.

On tour with my band last week, I read a preview of our show which quoted the Wickipedia definition of my name. Meaning, Kristin Hersh = “this”. It never occurred to me that I might even have a definition, but I understand that while this seems surreal to me, it’s not unusual. Lots of people’s names have definitions now. The problem for me was that, included in my Wickipedia definition, was the statement that I write songs about “marriage and motherhood”.

Immediately I worked myself into a feminist froth “How many male songwriters are married with children? Tons of ’em! But does anybody say their songs are about marriage and fatherhood? No! Their songs are about anything they want them to be about ’cause they’re people! Women aren’t allowed to be people, they’re just women!” etc. Billy played along, but I could tell he was only mildly infuriated, and probably only because I was talking so much.

“You can change your Wickipedia entry, you know,” he said. “Why don’t you just make it say what it you think it should say?”

Yeah, make it say what it should say, I thought. And I thought about it some more. And I kept thinking about it for the next few days. Tell them what my songs are REALLY about…right…

Of course, I have no idea what my songs are “really” about. They just are. Also, I suspect that some of them might be about marriage and motherhood, of all things, but not in the way you might think. Personal experience and pages out of one’s diary aside, songs are simply sound and images. They’re snapshots, in color, sweat included. What’s a snapshot of a whole marriage look like, anyway?

I flashed on one of the greatest things I’ve ever seen. A million years ago, at a high school party. A real high school party with the 80’s equivalents of jocks and cheerleaders And The Rest. There was this…how do I put it? I suppose heartless and blunt high-school kids would call the Ugly Girl, I guess. But she was the Hot Girls’ class pet — like a gerbil or guinea pig that each popular girl would take turns taking home & caring for.

All hot girls know about the Nancy Drew phenomenon, that titian-haired Nancy was only titian-haired Nancy (Is “titian” even a color outside of Nancy’s hair?) because she stood between “pudgy” Bess and “boyish” George. In my high school, standing next to pudgy, boyish Cindy had real value. To be the kind of person who would show kindness to pudgy, boyish Cindy meant serious points on the human-kindness scale, too, so she was invited to every party. This meant the poor girl often seemed dazed and exhausted.

She was especially exhausted because, as ugly girls tend to do, she got seriously wasted at every opportunity. On this particular night, she was wasted on a disturbing and inventive mixture of sweet alcoholic things and by the time I made it to the party she was already violently ill. For some reason, she’d headed down to the basement and was sitting on the bottom step of the basement stairs, staring at her giant feet. A crowd of partiers had gathered around the basement door to stare and whisper. “Cindy’s really sick–someone’s gonna have to go down there and hold her hair.”

But no one moved. And I wasn’t popular enough to hold the hair of someone who served such a high-ranking function as the Hot Girls’ gerbil. So we all just watched as Cindy’s head hung lower and lower and people listed all the gooey things she’d had to drink. Then my old friend Steve pushed his way through.

Steve was a football player with nothing to prove except that jocks can be kind and intelligent. He was a boy of few words with a sweet smile and a wicked sense of humor and now he was bravely making his way down the basement stairs. Perfect, I thought. He’s popular enough to be allowed near the class pet and nice enough to say the right things and coax her back up the stairs where she can puke politely — into a toilet.

Steve sat down on the bottom step next to Cindy and said nothing. We all held our breath. He looked down at his giant feet, but still he said nothing. “What are they doing?” someone whispered. But before anyone could answer, Cindy let go. All four giant feet were covered with copious amounts of vomit which slowly spread out in front of them in a kind of beige lake. Neither of them moved.

“What are they doing?” the same person asked again.

“I don’t know,” I answered, but I guessed that they were fighting internal battles. Which turned out to be true, because the next moment, Steve lost it. He was in training — he had had no schnapps, no Bailey’s, no blackberry brandy and yet his stomach was no match for the beige lake. He heaved like a hero and the lake grew, spreading out into the darkness of the basement. Then he heaved again and then he just sat there, next to Cindy, in silence. Which is when I left the party.

Apparently, they sat like that for a long time, but no one I know remembers the end of the story. I love that we all just remember them sitting side by side, in the cool of the basement, the most underappreciated room in the house, together, puking. What a snapshot, in color — sweat included.

My poor husband, that this is my favorite image of marriage, but honestly, if I ever write a song as perfect as that moment, I just might deserve that Wickipedia entry.

Love,
Kristin

Howe Gelb called me up a little while ago and asked me to participate in a…thing. I don’t remember what he said it’d be, it’s more that I just do anything Howe says to do. Plus, his “things” are always in Tuscon and I never need to be talked into going there. All I know he is that he used the word “barbecue”. So we whipped ourselves up into a familiar desert froth and headed south yet again.

As it turned out, Howe’s event was the something’th anniversary of the Hotel Congress, a beautiful old hotel/venue/restaurant in downtown Tuscon that looks like a scene from Paper Moon and feels like a scene from a Cohen brothers movie. Plus, Vic Chesnutt and John Doe were there which shot the superhero quotient up to dizzying heights.

The afternoon I got there, John showed me how to play X songs in his room until some fans busted in (I couldn’t blame them, John’s voice carrying down the hallway really added to the cinematic effect), then I proceeded to cling to Vic for two days. I hadn’t seen him since we were in Spain together last year. He’d almost died in the interim, apparently. Fucker.

So we played Howe’s barbecue under a beastly pretty Tuscon sky. Alone and together and then all together. It was “loose” but I found it very hard to care. I felt so lucky to be there.

The morning after, we sat in Howe and his wife Sophie’s kitchen as long as we could, sucking down as much of Sophie’s coffee as felt prudent before the long drive. The children played, the dogs slept under the table…I felt like I hadn’t been allowed to breathe for a long time. And Howe’s backyard air is a nice thing to breathe.

Now, of course, 50Foot is back in the van, itself associating with superheroes. I’ve never seen Mission of Burma live; back in the day, the Muses missed them in Boston by about a year. We played with its offshoots, Birdsongs of the Mesazoic and the Volcano Suns. I used to sit next to Peter’s kit to watch the Suns play because, being 18, I was only allowed in the dressing room or on the stage. Some of my favorite live shows ever were the backs of the Volcano Suns.

The first time I heard Burma play in person was at soundcheck in Seattle. Holy crap. Unbelievably huge. The kind of huge sound that only a signature band can make, because nobody else knows how.

I can’t be starstruck. I don’t have the capacity, simply because if someone does truly great work, in my mind, they’re not responsible for that work — they just knew enough to get out of the way, and if they suck, well, then they suck. But I can be starstruck by a song. “Mica”, a song that was a big part of the soundtrack of Billy & Kristin – The Early Years, absolutely blew me away. It’s the kind of song — and sound — that’s more than the sum of it’s parts, bigger than the three people playing their instruments and singing. The song — the right song — becomes another individual, in the room with us and onstage with the band. They make it look easy, I guess because it is easy — they speak their own language.

We’re so lucky to be here.

Love,
Kristin