greeted as liberators (.pdf)

I had a brilliant idea for a project to work on during the ten weeks of my Fall 2004 spoken word tour. I was going to write a book called Greeted As Liberators: Notes on America During the Waning Days of the Bush Administration. A collection of essays about the cultural climate of America in the build up to the election, written from ground-level. I was traveling the country anyway, seeing it from gas stations and truck stops and Waffle Houses. And I was so sure I had this place figured out. Writing this book would be a victory march.

Greeted as liberators.

Fast-forward two and a half months. Cue me. I have extensive notes taken for the book – seventy-some pages of thoughts, observations, and conclusions I’ve drawn based on what I’ve seen and who I’ve met.

On November 3, 2004 all of those thoughts, observations, and conclusions were revealed to be wrong.

That wasn’t the great tragedy of that day, of course. I lost a couple months worth of work. You – if you’re an American – lost the respect of the rest of the world, what’s left of the New Deal, and a lot of the value of your house and bank account. Sliding scales of tragedy, not a great loss.

I stuck the notes in a drawer. I had bigger problems anyway, the same ones you did. I had to figure out how I was going to be able to look at myself as an American when the majority of the people who cop that title were willing to look at a picture of a brown fella with a black bag over his head and electrodes attached to his nuts and say we’re the american people and we approve this message. I had to figure out what my role was in this place that suddenly felt very, very uncomfortable. Same as you. Same as everybody except the half the country who watched election results come in and breathed a sigh of relief.

Do you remember that moment? Maybe it was midnight or so on November 2 and you were at the election night party or the bar or just sitting on the couch watching CNN – flipping around the channels, but staying mostly on CNN at that point because they were the very last to call most of the states and you wanted to maintain at least the illusion of hope – maybe it was midnight on November 2 or maybe it was when you saw Kerry give his speech on November 3, but do you remember that moment when you watched and listened and couldn’t believe what you were seeing, what was happening, what was about to happen, what it meant that this semi-literate retard was going to be running things for another four years – do you remember that moment when, while you saw it and couldn’t believe it and didn’t know what to do, you realized that half the country was happy about it?

I wasn’t too worried about the fact that I wasn’t going to be able to write my little book. I was trying to decide if Montreal would be warmer than Vancouver. I was remembering history classes I took in school, where they would talk about how Hitler rose to power in Germany and we all kept wondering how it was possible that nobody did anything about it.

Same as you, probably.

It’s 2008 now, and America is gearing up for another campaign. As I write this, John McCain is fully expected to become the Republican nominee, while Barack Obama approaches inevitability in his primary battle with Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination. It’s taken me several years to figure out what to do with the work I did on Greeted as Liberators, and I was pretty sure my solution would be to leave it in that drawer indefinitely. But there are true things in this book, even though there are also a lot of things that seem wildly naive in hindsight, and as we’re about to go through this again, I think it’s a good time to look at where we were the last time we did this.

I spend a lot of time in Greeted as Liberators talking about how, if Bush wins, I have to leave the country. I live in London, England now, but one thing I hadn’t considered at the time is that getting out of America makes you more American, not less. As an expatriate, you have to have a damn good idea of what being an American means to you, because everyone you meet has an idea of what it means to them. If you’re not going to pretend to be Canadian, you have to know why you’re still willing to be identified as a part of the country that gave the world George Bush. Anything less is a tacit endorsement of George Bush’s idea of what it means to be an American.

Burlap sacks, electrodes, and all.

And I’ve realized that the two americas that John Edwards talked about so charismatically with those dimples and that sculpted hair and that fiery populist rhetoric – that exists, yeah, but A), it’s not just the rich and the poor and B), there are more than two Americas. And living abroad, being aware that I am not a part of the America that was so eager to send homeboy back to Washington, and trying to make sense of that –

Well, I still have all these notes that told me that there was a time when I had seen with my own eyes that there was another America out there.

I was wrong about the election. In this book, you’ll see me get cocky a few times. I wanted to edit those, but fuck it. I thought the observations I made meant that certain conclusions would be true. That’s my mistake. But the things I saw are still true things. And if, as an American, you have any hope toward building a greater country, the first step toward figuring out what role to play is figuring out what role everyone else is playing. I have notes on the subject.

This book is the things I saw in America as I went to every part of it during the only time in my life when every man, woman, and child you met in this country was actively political. It represents three months of my life. It knows things you don’t, and you know things it doesn’t. Whatever we’re supposed to do next, we’ll have to learn from each other.

–d
London, England
26 March 2008

 

(for Matt Fuller)

 

08 30 04. 14:38.

Brooklyn NY.

 

What follows is a true rock and roll account of grabbing defeat from the jaws of victory, and vice-versa.

I have many new things to tell you.

This is the first chance I’ve had to write or think outside of the car since Ft. Worth. Ft. Worth was on Wednesday, they tell me. Has it really been less than a week since this tour began? These have been interesting times.

The chronology of events is we played Ft. Worth on Wednesday night and went back to my brother’s apartment in Denton to sleep. Leaving Denton at two o’clock the following afternoon, we made off toward Monroe LA for the show that night. We got to Monroe at eight o’clock on Thursday night. Waited for the promoter, who showed up at nine and then left again before the show started at ten. Did the show to a tiny, but polite audience, and then got back in the car at midnight to get to Asheville NC by six o’clock the next day to play at a record store.

We slept for two hours at a rest stop on the Mississippi / Alabama border and we ate breakfast at a Waffle House using money we didn’t really have. Other than that, Monroe to Asheville was done without stopping for such mundane concerns as food and sleep. We pulled into Asheville at four o’clock in the afternoon. Checked in at the record store and then spent the last of our money at a copy shop to make flyers to promote the show in the two hours before it started.

Necessity breeds new skills; I learned how to talk to people about what I’m doing very easily because if I did not then no one would watch us play and we would make no money. In a coffee shop, I gave a flyer to a young woman named Jennifer. We exchanged about ten minutes worth of conversation before I left to pass out the rest of the stack in what turned out to be a futile attempt to drum up interest in a free spoken word and experimental electric folk show at the local record shop.

Only Jennifer showed up. So we did the show for her and the owner of the store. After the show, we started talking. Forty-five minutes later, we were still talking.

She turned out to be the coolest person I’ve met in months, and I knew that she liked me. I looked like shit — I had not bathed or slept except in spurts in a car since Ft. Worth two days before, my eyes were wild with hunger, and still she liked me. And she was awesome. An instant connection. I gave her all of the paltry merchandise I had because I wanted her to read it. She offered me a stack of her own poems. She lived in a treehouse, she said, without electricity. She had moved there two weeks prior in an attempt to strip away all that was unnecessary from her life. Her plans for touring the country included going to cities and doing a series of sketches of each town, writing poetry, and publishing them in handmade books. She had big plans; so did I. and tonight?

And Tony’s voice was reality, reminding me that tonight was a second show in Sylva NC, forty-five minutes away, far beyond the reach of her treehouse. We exchanged goodbye and really great to meet you and then it was time to go do the Sylva show. She handed me a pair of handmade blank books and we left.

The Sylva show was cool but my heart was in a treehouse. You know I’ll never talk to her again. She hasn’t even got electricity. I read the poems she gave me in the car and of course they were great.

Sylva was at a restaurant that served amazing food, made all the more amazing by the stark fucking hunger of not eating since the ill-affordable Waffle House in Alabama sixteen hours prior. The food was free because Heather, who managed the restaurant and booked the show, was awesome. We then did the third show since sleeping in Ft. Worth two days earlier. After hanging out for a few more hours we finally got to sleep.

The next day, Saturday, was to be Philadelphia, but it was not meant to be. A late start in North Carolina coupled with weather and traffic and we reached Washington DC at the exact time we were supposed to take the stage in Philly. More futility and we eventually threw in the towel as we were passing through Baltimore. Baltimore was the site of Sunday’s show so we saw no point in arriving in Philadelphia late, doubling back, and then stopping in Baltimore. However, we knew no one in Baltimore, and had spent all of the staggering twelve dollars we made from both North Carolina shows combined on gas, so we tried to think creatively.

We ended up at a coffee shop because coffee shops are a safe haven for us and any port in a storm, right? In the coffee shop a don’t mess with texas sticker was noticed by two girls who were passing through. Necessity bred a social streak in me that had lay dormant and we managed to befriend the pair, recent transplants in Baltimore from Houston. I had played a show in June with a band that they’re good friends with called Scattered Pages. They offered to let us sleep at their house.

The rest of the night was spent hanging out with them and their roommate, walking Baltimore streets with new friends as they dropped dollars in empty guitar cases for a song — in Little Italy a boy played guitar and sang “All Tomorrow’s Parties” while a girl accompanied him on the violin. Their house was massive and their kitchen was stocked. Defeat from the jaws of victory? Not this time.

We picked up an additional Baltimore show for the following day at the coffee shop at which we met the girls. It went all right for an impromptu gig, a good warm-up for the show at the Mojo Room and Lounge later in the evening.

The second Baltimore show turned out to be the best show of the tour thus far by miles; an amazingly receptive, packed crowd who re-filled our coffers and had nothing but kind words. Every single performer on the bill was great. We made friends. The next time I’m in Baltimore I’ve been offered a chance to collaborate onstage with The Wire Orchestra, who were my favorite of the locals. Too fucking cool.

We met a band from San Francisco called Shelshag who we hit it off with very well, as well. They have a show here in New York on Wednesday. We were talking about the protests and about how Pier 57 has been converted into a giant holding pen for those arrested.

we should set up on pier 56 and do a show that afternoon.

And we should, and maybe we will.¹ It is very good to meet people who share your impulses, who want to rob the bank with you the second they meet you.

We pulled out of Baltimore energized again after a few demoralizing days of abject poverty with a full tank of gas, some money in reserve, and a place to stay in Philadelphia.

This morning we woke up and drove through New Jersey. We drove through Manhattan and then decided to leave the car in Brooklyn, a few blocks from the Lucky Cat. This has been the first chance I’ve had to write since before we left Texas. The next stop is Madison Square Garden. Things are about to get a whole lot weirder.

23:31. New York, NY. No action today. Just walking. We left the car in Brooklyn, walked to Queens, took the train to Times Square, and walked around Manhattan until we landed in the East Village. We are staying with all-around badass and www.dansolomon.com webmaster Will Mofo’s apartment. Calm before the storm?

Tomorrow is the direct action day. I’m nervous, but mostly excited. We spent a few hours in Union Square Park tonight, meeting people who have big plans but mostly just watching. This city has been good for my creativity already. I wrote most of the first track for the new record in that park.

This city is as incredible as I hoped. It’s an amazing feeling, to get these streets beneath my feet. We have three more days here. A day off tomorrow and then we get to figure out how we’re going to get out of jail in time for the show at SUNY-Stonybrook on Wednesday. Rock ‘n roll!

 

09 01 04. 01:22.

New York NY.

 

Hi, dad. I’m calling you from jail. Say hi to mom from jail. I like it here.

I lie. I am not in jail. All three times, I managed to avoid arrest.

Things I did today that could have gotten me arrested including crossing the street when the police told me to and standing on the sidewalk to observe other people getting arrested. But I am far too clever and agile to be taken in by such simple tactics.

This afternoon was walking around, taking in the sights and feeling this amazing city more. By three o’clock, it was time to get to work.

We walked down to Ground Zero. It was a long walk to an intense place — there are numerous booths set up along the street and inside the tour facilities where people are selling memorabilia, magazines with tragedy emblazoned across the front, tacky hologram portraits of the Statue of Liberty and the Twin Towers. There was to be a vigil followed by a march to Madison Square Garden, site of the Republican Convention.

Organizers told us that they expected two hundred and fifty people to show up. There were two hundred and fifty cops — closer to seven hundred demonstrators there to march.

We had no permit but negotiated with the cops — we would walk two-by-two and observe all traffic signals and they would not stop us.

The first three hundred people who went followed the police instructions to cross the street to the park across from Ground Zero. As soon as they did so — flash! The barricades went up and everyone was arrested. In the park they were told to go to, you see, there was not enough room for everyone to remain lined up two-by-two. Clever.

If I had been forty spaces ahead in line I would have been arrested. I wasn’t, so I didn’t, so I marched.

We were told to maintain our two-by-twos under penalty of arrest. Passers-by who kept up with our gait were immediately a risk to our safety.

you fool! you’ll have us all arrested if you don’t pick up the pace!

Long and boring walk to follow. We were yelled at by sixteen year old anarchist boys in punk rock t-shirts for ‘buying into the bullshit’ since we were two-by-two and not, I dunno, beating the cops who outnumbered us down. Apparently if we had been truly hardcore we’d have gone across the street to yell at people. I’d have taken them a lot more seriously if they had been doing anything on their own. One brick through a Starbucks window and I’d have bought it, boys, but that Subhumans t-shirt isn’t enough to convince me that you’re the real independent thinker on the street.

When we were four blocks shy of Madison Square Garden they stopped the march — no further, they said, and so a ‘die-in’ was planned. What a ‘die-in’ is is everybody lies down where they are as though they’ve been killed. Exciting stuff, I’m sure, but a little bit silly if you ask me. I watched as everyone lay there and a guy dressed as the Tin Woodsman from The Wizard of Oz lay flowers at the feet of the ‘dead’ folks².

The police threatened the Tinman with arrest and he backed off to the side. They threatened everyone with arrest who was on the sidewalk. We were told to disperse or face arrest. We were lucky; most people were not offered such warnings in other parts of the city. We moved up, block by block, to continue to watch police action. A line of cops in riot gear blocked the exits from the North, East, and West. You know what that means.

I started watching the block South of where we were and noticed a riot cop poking his head around the corner. Shit. Time to go. We walked up the block and against the wall was a whole line of riot cops. A minute later they got the signal and started being very particular about who they let in and out. Well. Time to split.

We made for Union Square, which has been a very active part of the demonstrations, mostly as a meeting/resting place. We decided to walk down Broadway.

On Broadway and Sixteenth we watched a group of about a hundred protesters march single-file down the sidewalk. Peaceful and unobtrusive, right?

Well, sure, but not so peaceful and unobtrusive as to, y’know, keep them from being arrested.

Police met them as they turned the corner onto Sixteenth Street. As the last in the line turned, police blocked their exit. Boom! All arrested! Don’t even think about it, killer, or you’re next! what?

They handcuffed the poor bastards as we watched it go down from across the street. There were six of us. A cop who had just received his good cop/bad cop handbook approached.

y’know, i don’t like george bush either, but you can’t stand here right now. if the boss comes down and sees you here, he’s going to make me arrest you.

Arrest us for standing, unorganized, on the sidewalk? We could be waiting for a bus, a store to open, the next Star Wars picture to come out–

it’s a nice night, just take a walk downtown so you don’t have to worry about where you’ll be spending it. i don’t want to arrest anyone.

We had done nothing but that simple fact did little to help the unfortunate souls across the street. Part of me wanted to challenge him. do it, you bastard, throw your little plastic cuffs around my wrists and we’ll see who laughs last!

I’d be acquitted eventually, I’m sure, but I’d also spend two days in jail for accomplishing nothing except wasting some time and money, missing shows, and making no statement whatsoever except that, um, the people! united! can often be defeated! –

So I split and made my way down to Union Square, as per the plan.

Union Square was a different story. It was full, hundreds of people playing songs and talking, making friends and watching what was going down. It was fun.

Because police hate fun and they hate to see people having it, they shut down the north two-thirds of the park.

park’s closed early tonight, they said as though they had the authority to do that. This just meant that everyone had to congregate in the smaller area, which meant more people, which meant more fun.

So a barricade got knocked down and a kid got arrested. Everyone lost their shit. Riot cops swarmed the area. All of this happened out of nowhere. One moment it’s fun, the next there were riot cops and people screaming at the cops.

My favorite chant was strike! strike! strike!³

Somehow the situation cooled down. A group of demonstrators, led by two kids who couldn’t have been more than teenagers, started singing, dancing, clapping, and chanting hip-hop inspired slogans.

My new favorite chant was move, bush, get out the way, get out the way, get out the way, bush, get out the way!

Riot cops moved on the perimeter. The whole thing got tense, but as the kids chanted nypd, back the fuck up the NYPD did, in fact, back the fuck up.

The cops hovered around the park on and off until near closing. No arrests. Did they not have the numbers? Were we a low priority? Were they moved to back the fuck up when asked to?

No answers, just observations. It happened. So did a whole lot more.

Tomorrow’s the show on Long Island. It’s on the SUNY-Stony Brook campus at the University Cafe. I hope some folks come out — I have all sorts of new dark shit to talk about. And the show isn’t until tomorrow night — who knows what will happen in the afternoon? I may have new stories by the dozens.

 

09 04 2004. 17:55.

Syracuse NY.

 

Don’t remember the last time I wrote in the journal. Probably only a few days ago, think it was before the Long Island show, after the two-day break from touring for full-time RNC demonstrations. Four days ago, then? There were Long Island, Brooklyn, and New Paltz. This is how time is measured. Last week it was measured in miles.

Long Island. The crowd was small and noisy, kind of disrespectful. They had Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom playing on the television against the wall opposite the stage. Between the loud crowd, the movie, and the fact that I was trying fifteen minutes of previously unperformed material, I lost my train of thought too many times to give a coherent performance. This was confirmed when, after my set, the sound guy handed me a CD he recorded of my set. For a moment I thought perhaps I would have something I could add to the merchandise table. Listened to it in the car. No. Not something I can add to the merchandise table.⁴ Definitely my weakest set of the tour. It was Tony’s best, tho, so I guess it all balances out.

Stony Brook and the SUNY campus are nice, too. Very green. It got cold at night. I’d forgotten about cold weather, this endless summer having run for as long as my addled memory can recall. But that’s Texas for you.

We slept at Sam Cook’s house that night. He cooked us dinner and breakfast. It’s funny how much things like that mean when you’re on the road and never have much money for anything except for gas. The house we stayed in in New Paltz last night, one of the people who lives there works in a bakery. We left this morning with loaves of bread in the back seat.

From Long Island to Brooklyn, hardly a drive which meant we had time to see more of the city, more of what was happening in the city. It was the last day of the RNC.

We spent the afternoon in Manhattan, near Union Square. The park was full, like it’d been all week. The atmosphere was still festive. I didn’t feel strange about the fact that I fell in love every five minutes. Fell in love every time I turned my head. A group had built a paper-mache statue of George W. Bush, signed a declaration of independence that addressed their own specific grievances, and toppled the statue. It’s not the first time in New York a statue of a ruler named George was toppled by people who wanted a better world.

Police presence was minimal and so we just enjoyed the park and the atmosphere, making new friends frequently. There were vendors set up all throughout the park, which I found a little bit offensive. One sign read FREE Speech T-Shirts - $10. I’m presuming the visual pun was lost on them.

My problem with that whole way of thinking is that it exploits a person’s discontent by trying to sell it back to them. don’t like george bush? prove it with this t-shirt! If you stand for anything, give the shirt away.

On this tour we’re putting our money where our mouth is. All of the merchandise on the table, at every show, is free. Otherwise we’re no different than the people selling lick bush buttons for three bucks a pop. And what good does that do anyone?

Last summer I wrote and drew a comicbook called Hard Volume. It was about a lot of things, but mostly it was about a punk rock band in an Ashcrofted America and the way that dissent is commercialized, then stifled. The way you can hear Black Flag at Urban Outfitters now, and it’s not Black Flag’s fault and it’s not the fault of the employee who wants to listen to her favorite band at work, it’s not anyone’s fault but when you do it then it all loses its meaning, it all becomes a symbol of the things it was meant to destroy.

Because it was meant to destroy. You get that, right? It was never just supposed to be singing about destruction and riots. It was about destroying and rioting. Every brick thrown through a Starbucks window by an angry teenager is about something bigger than broken glass. That’s why Hard Volume said free on the cover.

That’s why everything we have on this tour is free.

And that’s why it all seemed suspect, the booths on the perimeter of Union Square. Ten dollars for a t-shirt with a two-tone picture of the President with a line through his face. And if someone else turned up next to them with the same design, selling the shirt for five, you can bet they’d sue.

My pal Karl wants to make clay pigeons for skeet shooting with pictures of Michael Moore on them. He wants to donate the profits to MoveOn.org. It’s a good gag. But how many people were trying to turn the legitimately angry demonstrators in the park into the punchline? You can trick people into thinking they’re doing their part by buying a t-shirt.

We left the park and I was glad to have been there but it didn’t escape my notice that not everyone shares the same brand of idealism.

We left the park and went to Brooklyn. The show was small again, but I felt a lot more comfortable on stage. It was an interim set, evolving from the way it had been for the first week, before New York, into what it is now. I felt good about it. People seemed to like it. We sold free merchandise.

We split Brooklyn to get back to Manhattan, to get to Madison Square Garden, to see what’s happening — The President is speaking. We want to be there. We walk as fast as we can.

On the way we meet people. A motley crue, truly, was assembled. Tony and I, your stalwart American boys, accompanied by a first-grade teacher, a young woman in a star-spangled bikini, a former touring member of the Mickey Hart Band, and Tenzen, a Tibetan monk. It was like The Muppet Movie.

Tenzen was the angriest of all of us. He would shout at delegates as they left the convention site after Bush’s speech– shame on you! shame on you! no bush! no bombs!

Tenzen was angry, but we were all pissed. Everyone was pissed. The cops were pissed. And not just at us. The way it worked, the cops gave us time to yell at the delegates, then told us we had to move or get arrested. The three-way dynamic was interesting. It was very easy to avoid arrest on Thursday night. So we did.

We found Will’s apartment in Brooklyn like a lighthouse. Passed out. Woke up the next morning for the drive to New Paltz.

I was a little bit sad to be leaving the city. I might have to go back. Maybe for a lot longer.

New Paltz is a cool town, tho. Small, with a short downtown section to check out and walk around and a lot of undeveloped area. I liked it. The show was in a basement, soaked by the bad weather of the previous week, smelling vaguely like a gym sock. The ceiling was no more than seven feet high. Punk rock! The set I did felt good to me. Said what I had to say. Left out the things that I’m tired of talking about. People responded well. We made enough money to cover an oil change and gas to the next two shows. Which means we might start to have a little bit in reserve. Let’s not talk crazy just yet, but it sure seems possible.

But tonight it’s time to think about Syracuse. This city reminds me of Indianapolis, where my parents live. New Jersey reminded me of the parts of Indiana I grew up in. The Midwest stretches for a thousand miles, in all directions, these days in America. I’m not sure yet what that means.

 

09 08 04. 14:33.

Burlington VT.

 

It’s raining in Burlington. This coffee shop has been playing Herbie Hancock for fucking hours. The two don’t seem congruous. I love Herbie Hancock, but not today. Instead I’m listening to Charlie Daniels Death Wish on my headphones to remind me that despite what the Vermont hippies say, it’s not all sweetness and light.

Not that I need a reminder. We listened to Death Wish in the car on the way into Burlington from Ithaca yesterday. “Mercenary Song Pt. 2″ — when your voice breaks in an empty room did it even happen — and it was singing the song of the previous evening.

I guess Ithaca was the roughest but I know I said the same about them all. In Ithaca no one had heard of us — not just no one who may attend the show, but no one at the venue, no one who was supposed to be promoting the show, no one at all knew who we were or that we were coming. When we finally tracked down the promoter for the show’s cell phone number, we discovered that the reason for it was that, uh, the computer must have crashed or something and she forgot to put it back in or put our posters up or tell anyone we’d be playing, but it’s cool, she’ll call the venue and tell them that we’re allowed to play, hope it goes well, she’s on her way to Syracuse.

allowed to play? Motherfucker, we drove from Texas because you said you wanted us there.

So the employees of the venue are pissed because they have to turn off the Phish record to listen to us and our hopes of getting paid or finding a place to sleep or getting something to eat or drink are dwindling by the second. We run to a copy shop and make a stack of fliers to pass out in the Ithaca commons to promote the show, hoping that perhaps we will have some success.

Four hours of promotion nets us one audience member — a seventeen year old girl who has nothing else to do. A friend of mine shows up a few minutes later. Great. Two people? I am determined to give them the best show they have ever fucking seen. I do my set to the blank stares of the employees and the polite applause of the seventeen year old and my friend, trying not to worry too much about having nowhere to sleep.

Tony does his set and we load out, full of hate at Ithaca, Ithacans, baristas, and promoters in general. My friend advises us that we may have some luck sleeping in the Ithaca College dorms as school just started and we could sneak in and crash on the couches. Sounds great! Punk rock!

At this point, the seventeen year old opens her mouth — my dad’s asleep, she says, just keep quiet and you can sleep at my house. Sounds great, we figure. So we do. We pass out around ten o’clock at night and wake up very, very early the next morning, leaving the house with great stealth, terrified all night of Pops waking up and taking a shotgun to the two twenty-something dudes from Texas in his house. But we survive because we are survivors, blazing our way out of Ithaca like two men escaping from prison.

The day before that, in Buffalo, was a little bit better. The crowd responded well to my set, Tony played one of the best versions of “Winter” he’s done so far, and one of the locals we played with, a male/female duo called Team Chocolate, was great. We made some money and had a place to sleep. We had expected things to go up from there. As it happens, it was the last good thing there was.

Buffalo is a depressing city. Rust belt, Midwestern towns in the Northeast, closed by five o’clock on weekdays and never opening at all on Sunday. Women walk quickly to the bus stop, muttering meaningfully to themselves and staring at their shoes, trying desperately to avoid the afternoon drunks screaming at them from car windows. The man behind the wheel waits impatiently for the Bills game to start and will beat his children if Bledsoe throws too many interceptions, even in the pre-season. Wander those streets and see the students waiting for the semester to start, holding keg parties and fucking in the bushes not out of any desire but simply out of boredom, hoping that maybe by the time they’re done someone will have re-opened the run-down movie theater so they can find some form of entertainment, something that isn’t beer and cheap, sweaty encounters with people they’d rather have avoided anyway until graduation hits and they can go off and become their parents.

Am I a cynic? The twenty-odd people who came to my show in Buffalo, they were cool. It was everyone else, you understand.

We walked down the main strip in Buffalo that afternoon before the venue opened, looking for a place to kill some time. The bookstores were closed, the record stores hadn’t been open in months. We had no money so a restaurant was out of the picture. We had ramen noodles and macaroni and cheese in the car and confidence that we would find a place with a kitchen to sleep that night so we could cook.

Everything was closed and we wandered into the only open shop, a gaming store owned by a lonely fifty-five year old virgin who loved Dungeons and Dragons and twenty-sided dice and hated George Bush. We didn’t even bring George Bush up — he did, as we did a brief lap around his shop before deciding that the streets of Buffalo would offer more amusement.

The man who owned the shop was angry. Fifty-five and a small business owner in a rust belt town and he was talking coup d’etat to strangers, not even knowing their political persuasion. We called him chief and told him we were on his side. He wanted to hear stories of the Republican National Convention and we told them. He laughed cynically at the reports that Osama bin-Laden was nearly caught. some timing, huh? he asked. We agreed. Some timing.

We will be on the West Coast in October when the Bush administration pulls out their final surprise. It won’t be enough, but we will see it happen from California, where Schwarzenegger reigns as philosopher-king for life. The people of California will boo me when I speak of the protests at the RNC and hate my poetry, but if Tony plays a version of “Winter” that sounds anything like the one he did in Buffalo we will still have a place to sleep every night, our coffers filled and with food in our bellies.

I will single people out in California, pointing at them directly, blaming them for electing the unbeatable star of Jingle All The Way to the highest office in their land, and they will laugh at me and relish the role that they played in his ascension. California will be ugly.

But Vermont has been all right, minus the weather and the jamming on every stereo. Vermont has given us a restaurant will all-you-can-eat buffalo wings — ostensibly because there are only a dozen meat-eaters in the city, and so they can eat as much as they wish — that even on our paltry budget we were able to afford. Last night’s show at the coffee shop I currently inhabit was a mixed-bag but people saw our poster in the window earlier in the week and made a special point to check it out, a rare occurence. A beautiful young woman named Katya offered me extensive praise and I countered with a phone number; if she calls then Vermont will automatically catapult to tour highlight status.

And tonight we revisit the Willard House, a venue I played in June on the tour with the Malcontent Party. We are opening for touring lame street punk icons The Virus and Clit 45 — my parents should be very proud of me, yes — and I expect that we will be greeted as liberators by the good people of Burlington in a scant four hours.

I will refrain from writing about the attic show we played in Syracuse, but it was glorious and Tony declared that the next three shows can suck because of the success we were met with that night. To some degree, they did, but my spirits remain high. Tomorrow is the third night of the three-day stand in Burlington VT. The next day is Montreal, my first time performing in outside the United States. The day after that was alleged to have been Toronto but as our ability to procure a venue has been compromised, we may merely wander the streets of that Northern town until we go down to Michigan. Either way, I don’t expect things to get bad until we hit California and the legion of newly-minted Republicans turn on me savagely during my set. There’s no stopping this train.

 

09 13 04. 14:04.

Ann Arbor MI.

 

We spent September 11 driving through Canada, passing from Montreal through Toronto. The Canadians had just made it into the finals in the hockey world cup; the entire country was jubilant. The mood was different from what I’ve come to expect of America on that day of the year.

That morning I ate a vegetarian omelette with mushrooms, green peppers, and onions in the sparse kitchen of a French-Canadian, talking about America. Her mother was French and her father was Egyptian; she had only been to the States once and it terrified her. She said that in Montreal she could walk home, two miles, stone drunk, by herself, at three in the morning. When she was in America during the summer, she was frightened to walk to the corner store by herself.

canadians, I scoffed to myself.

Montreal is a beautiful city, one of the most compelling I’ve been to. In another context I could have spent much more time there, the city underneath my feet for more than just a few afternoon hours, testing my high school knowledge of French against the signs in every window, against the conversations that bounced off every wall. I was in a different country, and I knew it. I could have stayed much longer in those parks, on those streets. I may yet.

The show that night, however, was not beautiful. In fact, it was without much doubt in my mind the worst one of the tour. A dive bar on Boulevard St. Laurent and the hockey game had started early that night so the locals had been drinking since the early evening. By the time I took the stage near midnight they were in no mood to hear me.

I spoke anyway because I thrive on their hatred and refuse to let a gang of drunken French-Canadian hockey fans shake me from the task I have undertaken. But it was painful. Constant interruptions, a noisy buzz from the back of the room louder than my microphone, the abject hatred of a bunch of Montrealers who wanted nothing more than for me to stop talking about America. I kept going. No one had a good time that night.

well, I figured, at least we can call it a draw.

The nights before in Burlington were better by comparison. Three days is too long to be in a city the size of Burlington VT. As much as I like it there. It is too long, especially in the rain, especially when your days are spent in a coffee shop and you have twenty-two hours a day to fill with things that aren’t the show. But the shows were better than Montreal.

On the second night in Burlington we opened for touring hairpunk bands. Clit 45 and The Virus. Diabolical stuff. The way those bands operate is they write songs that sound like early American punk rock and then, to round out the set, they cover more than a handful of songs by actual early American punk rock bands. A band that sounds like the Circle Jerks covering Black Flag, the Ramones, and the Circle Jerks all within a twenty-five minute set? Gosh. Way to keep it real, son. It was our first experience on this tour playing with cover bands.

But the kids liked them, though the kids also liked me. I was asked if I would speak in front of a high school the next time I’m in Burlington. I said yes, of course I would. The next time I am in Burlington I will do three shows in one day. The high school, the university, and the punk rock house. It is much more interesting than doing three shows in three days.

Everyone told us to be wary crossing the border into Canada. they will search your car and ask many questions, they told us. do not tell them that you are on tour. they will want to tax you on the merchandise you sell. I told them that we did not sell merchandise, that we were foolhardy American socialists who gave our merchandise away. don’t be ridiculous, we were told, they will never believe that. tell them that you are going to canada to record and cover your merchandise carefully so they do not see it.

And so we spent the drive into Canada rehearsing our cover story, adding layers to it and creating an ever-expanding narrative that no paltry border guard would be able to penetrate. And then we were asked four questions and waved across the border without so much as a glance into the backseat of the car.

If only the show that night had been so agreeable.

But before the show, and after. I slept in a park in Montreal, awakened by a group of teenagers playing hackeysack and speaking French. When I woke I looked for a restaurant so I could spend the few Canadian dollars I had in my wallet, stopping when I found one that had pictures of the food items on the menu so I could point to what I wanted. I didn’t ask any questions about the language for fear of appearing the Ugly American. Montreal was a lonely city to walk, and I liked it. The loneliness of walking through a city bigger than Dallas where the primary language was not my own, where I knew no one, where I felt comfortable sleeping in the park — it filled me up. In a good way. The loneliness made everything feel very real. When I met back up with Tony I was ready for the show, but I could have shivered in that park as the sun went down for hours.

I also think I fell in love, just a little, with the guitarist for the last band of the night, and she offered to let me sleep at her apartment after the show⁵ because I needed a place to stay and she was very nice. It would infuriate George Bush. An all-American boy like Dan Solomon — Man of Action! falling for a woman of French and Middle-Eastern descent on September 11 in Canada? The PATRIOT Act was designed to bring people like me to justice. I feared for crossing back over the border in Michigan.

do not let him across, they would say at the checkpoint, he awoke this morning in the home of a sand gook. My position would be argued passionately, valiantly, and ultimately futilely. No, I realized, when I tried to cross back into America they would pull out Karl Rove’s loyalty oath and make me declare my undying fealty to the Republican Party and Donald Rumsfeld’s goal of destroying all the brown people in the Middle East. It would be trouble, and I would not betray the place she occupied in my heart. Visions of a re-education camp in Guantanomo Bay danced through my head. Trying to cross back into America just before midnight on September 11 after performing a set rife with anti-Republican sentiment in a French city in Canada two weeks after being photographed a hundred times in four days in New York during the RNC? son, it’s for your own good. her terrorist charms have crashed into the towers of your heart like a commercial jetliner full of civilians.

We opted instead to sleep for the night in a McDonald’s parking lot outside of Toronto. We would awaken on September 12 and cross the border into Detroit early in the morning with the answer to where were you in canada amended to include a mcdonald’s parking lot, sir, because we love mcdonald’s and our bold, courageous leaders.

The morning of the 11^th we exchanged mailing addresses and said our goodbyes after a morning that bled into afternoon, still ending too soon. She asked me to write her. I told her I would. Our trip from Montreal to the McDonald’s parking lot proceeded without incident and the Canadian landscape looked like the Midwest as we neared Toronto. Wal-Marts and AMC megaplexes, an Outback Steakhouse and Exxon stations. Montreal is very different from America, and the rest of Canada is very different from Montreal.

everyone else in the world wants to vote in the us presidential election in november, she said, why is it that half of you don’t even do that? I didn’t have a good answer, not really, but maybe if she lived in suburban Toronto I could have shown her. Maybe if she lived in suburban Toronto she’d not have asked.

The morning of September 12 we crossed into Detroit without incident. The cursory examination we received was less severe than the Falfurrias Checkpoint⁶ that one must pass through when leaving deep South Texas on the way to the rest of the state. are you american citizens? do you have any illegal immigrants or automatic weapons in the back seat? And we were across. They never suspected me.

We spent the day sleeping, mostly. Restful as McDonald’s parking lots are as places to spend a night, we went to the home of a friend of mine in Ann Arbor who sheltered and fed us before the show last night in Ypsilanti.

The show ended up being exactly what I needed after the horrible ordeal with the drunk French-Canadian hockey fans in Montreal. I felt relaxed during my performance and tried out new material that I liked. The crowd was small but I liked them all and they seemed to like what I did. Tonight is Ann Arbor, the hippie/college town ten minutes away. We are playing a house show that begins at midnight with ten bands, running all night long. It is advertised as a pajama party.

From here we move on to Chicago tomorrow night. I can’t wait for that. Strangely, after spending a week in the parts of New York that look like the Midwest, now that I’m here it’s really where I want to spend the next week of shows. Michigan and Illinois and Wisconsin and Iowa and Kansas. A chance to look at another part of this country in the waning days of the Bush administration.⁷

09 18 04. 19:06.

Iowa City IA.

 

I wanted to paint the town we played in last night with words, but I don’t know enough shades of grey.

Lansing IL is not much of a town to speak of. Businesses that used to be open on the main street, a Walgreens and maybe a restaurant or two. We were at a cafe that no one goes to. I have a lot of things I could say about Lansing IL. I grew up about ten minutes east of there.

But why dwell on that? We are in Iowa now. Iowa City, home of the world-famous writers workshop. Every time I pass someone on the street in a sportscoat and beret I wonder if he has been accepted into the illustrious institution, if his fiction will be crowding the shelves at the local bookstore. Iowa. These are the people who gave us John Kerry. Never forget that. He’s from Massachusetts, but these are the ones who wanted him, the ones who were so frightened of an enthusiastic yodel from the mouth of a short, strange doctor from Vermont that they picked that strange half-dead creature that lumbered in from the east coast. They pinned the hopes of the part of the country that did not want to be ruled by an illiterate frathound drunkard from Connecticut-by-way-of-Texas on the pompadoured freak of nature that right-thinking people in this country are forced to begrudgingly support. Iowa did this.

The flyers that were printed for our show tonight say tony presley (texas) / dan solomon (texas) / frankenixon (ames) / d.a.w.n. (iowa city) / (fuck george bush). The sportscoat-wearing pedestrians we pass them to dismiss us but chuckle at the last line. We did not make these fliers. I talk enough about George Bush as it is. I have seen many faces of this country in the final days of his rule. It is how I am so confident. I have seen lawyers and nuns and gap-toothed, corn-fed farmers in baseball caps driving pick-up trucks through rural gas stations express their discontent at the state of this country. I have been approached by middle-aged small business owners who caught part of the show and who wanted to discuss these things, the politics that everyone keeps buried under the surface. If I accomplish anything on stage, if my message of the bridge between the political and the personal means anything, hopefully it means that we can talk about these things.

I don’t know who will be President next year, but I know who will win the election.⁸

I know many things. I know how grey it is in Illinois, the parts that aren’t Chicago. How the Midwest is like kudzu, devouring more and more of the country, a sad place where everyone likes to talk about the people who came from there and got away. Everyone wants to get away from it. I know. It is where I come from.

I went to Texas, but I like the mythology of the place. The ones who choose to stay in the Midwest without resorting to six-year sabbaticals in the greatest state in the union go to the more interesting parts of the region, the pockets that remain vital. But if you venture twenty minutes away from even Chicago or Milwaukee, you’re back in Lansing IL.

And so Chicago and Milwaukee is where we spent much of the past week. In Chicago we played at a coffeeshop next to Wrigley Field the day of a Cubs game. Attendance was sparse but we were in Chicago and so my spirits were high. I felt good about my set that night, the ten people in the room signed the mailing list. We will be in Chicago twice more before we return to Austin.

Milwaukee was a much better city than I expected. It smells like beer and people smoke everywhere, but I did not mind. The company was good and the show was fantastic. The one that happened, anyway.

The first Milwaukee show was on the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee campus. I didn’t know what to expect; what I got was about fifty people, all of whom responded very well and took much merchandise. I am almost out of merchandise now. It’s a good thing.

The second Milwaukee show was to be a house show and so we went to the house that we were to be playing an hour and a half before it was to start. Knocked. No answer. We continued knocking for an hour and fifteen minutes before the door was answered. The promoter apologized profusely for not contacting us, or answering the door, to let us know that he totally couldn’t get around to it, sorry. But next time, he said.

There have been flaky experiences on this tour. There always are. Santa Fe and Phoenix have both been pulled from under us. We still have giant holes in Northerrn California at the end of the month. But we are professionals, or becoming more professional by the day, and we soldier on. We have learned nothing if not a knack for last-minute surprises and I am confident that we will endure.

We blaze our way out of the Midwest after tomorrow. After bouncing around Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin for a week, we arrive like Hurricane ivan in Iowa tonight and Lawrence KS tomorrow before we land in Colorado. If we make some money over the next few nights then we should be able to weather the storms that may come if we find ourselves lost in the desert in New Mexico and Arizona and El Paso, and I fear nothing these days. Not a Bush re-election, not a broke, broken night in a Midwestern dive bar, not the sneers of disdain from a sportscoat-wearing aspiring novelist who labors under Joyce Carol Oates and rolls his own cigarettes. Motherfuckers, I’m from Texas.

 

09 20 04. 18:18.

Denver CO.

 

I am delirious from cold medicine. My throat is raw and I don’t know how I’m going to get through the set tonight without sneezing, let alone without losing my train of thought a dozen times.

Sorry, Denver. You’re not getting me at my best.

They got me at my best, or at least close to it, last night in Kansas. The attendance was sparse at best, about twelve people for the best-attended portion of my set, but I gave them everything I had anyway because I wanted twelve new people to see me trying. Some of them left early, some of them stayed. what the hell? I figured. I was in Kansas. They say if you build it they will come, but they weren’t in Kansas when they said it.

They were in Iowa, though, and we built it and they came. I was not looking forward to the show before I went on — a keg party in the basement of a number of Iowa State students’ house. I thought they were going to hate my ass.

But no, they loved my ass. They cheered and hooted and hollered and when I walked off the stage at the end of the set, they demanded one more piece. The Iowans loved the stories of the RNC and they devoured our merchandise. We became fabulously wealthy that night and have been living the high life ever since. Tomorrow Tony is buying a new tire for the car and readjusting the alignment. If we find nowhere to sleep tonight in Denver, perhaps we will check into a hotel. One good night in Iowa and suddenly we are in Metallica.

We didn’t have to check into a hotel last night, though I expected we might have beforehand. A young man of infinite talent on the electric guitar who accompanied Tony during “Mourning Elephants” and “Menlo Park” by the name of Bucky opened his home to us. Bucky wants to graduate from college and move to Austin, playing with the Austin country and folk musicians, before moving to Nashville and becoming a session player.

more focused direction than i got, I figured. by a long shot.

But the rough estimate of a focused direction that I have is one that leads me east. Yes. The Alamo marks my arm and I think I knew when I put it there that Texas and I were at a breaking point. I think that’s why I put it there. A visual cue that six years has been enough, and it’ll be seven by the time I actually make my break from the state.

And so there will be a nine-month long going away party. Much of the state will be thrown into an overwhelming depression in August when I board the train out of town, and children will approach me in the street with tears in their eyes, not understanding why I must go, and I will not be able to explain it to them properly. But I must go. That much is clear.

And where? That much is not clear. But part of the answer will depend on what happens on November 2. Because I have been talking about America for a month now, every night talking about it and why I love it and fear telling people I come from this place at the same time. And I do not want to ever have to tell people that I live in the same place, that I am one of the same people, who chose to put George Bush in office twice. That saw Guantonamo Bay and Abu-Ghriab and Pier 57 and his cowardly fear of his own constituents and said yes, that is what i want. My confidence is that people are much smarter than that. They were in Kansas, the half-dozen who stayed. They were in Iowa, despite backwards baseball caps and a floated keg. And so I think that when my lease ends you will find me in Brooklyn. But it’s possible that I will be brushing up on my French, living above a tattoo parlour in Montreal and paying 300$ Canadian a month in rent. I will learn to like the taste of mushrooms and prepare breakfast tacos the way they make ‘em in the Rio Grande Valley for my new countrymen in my kitchen. If they let me down, I may have to do it.

I needn’t dwell on that, however, since it’s hardly an eventuality. Montreal and Brooklyn both have their peculiar charms.

And so does Denver, though I’d be more equipped to appreciate them if I did not have a head full of cold medicine. My tolerance is famously low for such things but I am a professional and will hunt down coherent thoughts and bring them to the malcontented youth of Colorado as clearly as I am able.

At any rate, I am trusting my immune system to shake this strange 24-hour sickness that hit me while I slept on Bucky’s couch by morning. We have no show tomorrow night due to flaky Santa Fe promoters and in good health, with a clear head, I will experience Denver tomorrow properly. We will not be rich very much longer, unless that same malcontented Colorado youth just got their allowance and loves semi-coherent spoken word, but we have every intention of riding this train out to the last stop. El Paso and Phoenix are still up in the air, and as we re-route things because of those questions that remain unanswered we may find ourselves in Los Angeles, but if that’s the price of glory then what the hell? Sometimes you gotta fight the bear.

 

09 25 04. 20:00.

Riverside CA.

 

Oh, I have many new stories for you.

But they aren’t coming just yet. Not from Riverside, California, not right now. But when you wonder, when you look at all your Southern California stereotypes, your horror stories about Los Angeles, when you hear them all and you wonder if they could possibly be true, if they can’t just be slightly exaggerated –

I am here to tell you that they are true. That this is a place that was designed to be lived in by cars and dinosaurs, not real people who do things like walk where they want to go, who want to breathe air made of oxygen, who want to see something other than palm trees for fucking miles. This is a place for cars and dinosaurs and Arnold Schwarzenegger and if the cars and dinosaurs could vote they would have elected him Philosopher-King For Life and not just Governor. There is no humanity here. These creatures that surround me are not people.

What are they? I will find that out later, when it is time to do the show. Perhaps they will be actors. Or models. I am certain they will drive Humvees. Tomorrow, as we drive to San Francisco, I hope dearly that the Big One will follow us in our wake. We will drive up the freeway and as we make our way up north the pavement will crack and fall away. We will outrun it in our desperate little Saturn, pushing further than ever and powered by the music coming from the radio — Cat Stevens, terrorist threat, singing of being followed by a moonshadow, or an NSA shadow — and we will watch from the back window as this place falls into the ocean and the cars sink to the bottom and the dinosaurs evolve into something even more horrific, something that even Schwarzenegger would fear.

But that is tomorrow. Tonight I will meet many of the denizens of Riverside and I will likely enjoy the company of many of them despite my misgivings. But, oh sister, those misgivings are there.

They were there last night, too, though they more or less remained. The people who came to the show were nice enough, if largely disinterested in not just Tony and I but also the headlining bands, Austin-natives Those Peabodys and The Only Children, made up of members of former emo vanguarders The Anniversary. In Phoenix last night, they did not care much about us boys from Texas — or anywhere else — at all. Aside from a few very nice people who made it to the venue specifically for our sweaty, unshaven asses, Phoenix’s enthusiasm was among the lowest of the tour.

Phoenix itself is not much of a city to speak of. It reminds me of the things I like least about South Texas and Central Florida, smooshed together like an accordion, and then expanded to nearly two million people. Sprawl and palm trees, always palm trees, and streets that were made for driving even in the arts district. An arts district full of mediocre, over-priced work and a general feeling that this is enough, that just having an arts district at all, just having a venue that will host touring bands and poets, that just having any of these things is enough and that they bother to properly support them. That is Phoenix. It is no surprise that those are the people that have given us John McCain.

He’s been in the news lately, too, McCain has. He fills an interesting role in American politics and the Republican Party, almost the same role that Phoenix seems to have taken on for itself in its cultural aspects — that just being there is enough. McCain positions himself as a free-thinker, the most respectable of the sad, cowed Republicans, when he himself embraces their platform whole-heartedly. It’s a good trick, and an important role. When McCain makes news for criticizing the President, he affirms his role as the loose cannon of the party, and when he recants, satisfied, a week later, deciding that the President is the right man for the job, his words carry extra weight. Of course he comes from Arizona.

Many, many other people come from Arizona, like the girl at the show last night too drunk to stand who stumbled onto the Only Children’s tourbus in a t-shirt with a diamond-shaped hole cut out of the chest, her skirt so short that even before she climbed over the short wall to get to the club I couldn’t help but know what color her underwear was. Many people come from Arizona. Sad-eyed emo boys, the kind they stopped making in 1999, who stare blankly as their favorite band plays to them, boredom echoing in their eyes. It’s Arizona. What do you expect?

But it’s a pretty place, if you like the desert. I like the desert, and I like to see a cactus every dozen feet or so. I could live happily without revisiting Phoenix, and someday the rest of the evening and the bit of autobiography that makes up the rest of the story will be told — I could live happily without Phoenix, but Arizona has some charm I’ve yet to fully explore. Maybe another time.

And maybe another time for further updates. The Riverside Public Library closes early and I am about to be homeless until the show starts.

 

09 27 04. 00:31.

San Luis Obispo CA.

 

A day off. Let me tell you what a day off means. It means driving, sometimes, or it means trying to fill hours in towns where you were cool the night before, when there was a show. It’s staying too late at a party, when everyone you wanted to talk to has already gone home and you’re just hanging around because you don’t know exactly how to leave. It’s a lame-duck day, and we’ve got another one tomorrow.

But the one tomorro