2004-07-19
finally we are no one
My best friend, Thayer Pinsky, just emailed and asked three questions: How are you? What are you doing? When are we moving out of Miami?
Answer number one:
I still have a touch of New England jet lag. First week back at school after my journey to Vermont, the land of bread and puppets.
Answer number two:
My favorite Icelandic band, Mum, (pronounced Moooom) played in a dingy hole in the wall near my school...that is, the deep ghetto of downtown, a nowhere zone that hasn't been mowed into SoHo-style "lofts" with cocktail drink names like Neo or Quantum. But just wait. It will happen.
We biked past the performing arts center (still under construction). It reminds me of a crumpled wad of paper...if paper were metal and glass.
A few days ago, I noticed a rat tip-toeing around a pile of Burger King wrappers that the workers had tossed by the fence. Maybe his rodent ears could tap into the future, hear arias yet to be sung there.
The tour bus was parked outside the front door---along with a line that stretched down the dimly-lit sidewalk. Thayer spotted some nameless friends from school. Or maybe they spotted him. They beckoned for us to cut in front. A couple girls with vintage 80s purses muttered at me, but I latched onto Thayer's sweaty hand. I had already bought tickets online. Later, I heard they locked the doors with the usual "fire hazard" excuse. I'd say the fire hazard was in their so-called "garden," a palm-dotted patio equipped with a BBQ.
I pushed toward the back room. A pair of vaguely Nordic girls in granny dresses were on stage, plucking guitars. Then the dark-haired girl whipped out a saw (as if she might perform a magic trick...and then she did!) She wedged the floppy-looking saw between her knees and hacked away with a bow. A shimmering note melted the evil feedback and fidgety electro beats. Hands shot up in the crowd--people flashing digital cameras, trying to get a good shot of the twin sisters Gyda and Kristen Anna Valtysdottir.
"Tank yoo," they said, and curtsied. (When's then last time you saw someone curtsy? When's the last time you heard somebody play a musical saw? How about a piano-harmonica? Or glockenspiel? Or Xylophone?) The drum machine friction seemed perfectly suited against those old-fashioned, organic instruments. And then their throaty voices sang:
Down from my ceiling
Drips great noise
It drips on my head through a hole in the roof
Behind these two hills here
There's a pool
And when I'm swimming in
Through a tunnel
I shut my eyes
I thought about the quartet's experiments with "swimming pool concerts." Mum convinced the city of Reykjavik to buy underwater speakers, then played shows where listeners could only hear the music while swimming.
When we left the show, Thayer told me a story about his latest photo adventure, filming graffiti outside a 7-11 on the beach. A sleazy homeless man kept pestering him.
"Why are you taking that picture? Because I need to know. Because I'm living life."
The homeless dude told Thayer about a pigeon-catcher who rounded up birds and collected them in a cage. It sounded like drug-induced delirium. But walking to the next convenience store that night, Thayer saw the Pigeon Man near an office building, scooping up birds with a net. Thayer told a cop about it, but the pig just shrugged. Turns out, it's some kind of company that catches pigeons for a fee. Somehow I doubt they're released into the wild. Why can't we feed them seed laced with birth control, like they do in London?
Answer number three: still in the works.
f-i-n at 4:19 p.m.