Three Views of a Secret
2024
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I have spent, charitably, 50 hours of my life in a tent. Maybe 95% of those hours, in blissful campy sleep. I’ve spent very few waking hours in a tent. Just those waking hours you spend in a tent wondering if you really want to get up and pee in the morning. This weekend we were in the storms in cabin country Wisconsin. Saturday night, Solon Springs. The rain starts up around 5:30pm. We are finishing up a lightly stressful pizza dinner at the town bar in anticipation of a rainy night. I pull up the car to spare the kids the rain only for the kids to take for-fucking-ever to actually get into the car. Back to the cabin.
Our two kids are watching an ipad on a porch. The 15 or so neighbors from Saint Paul we are with are mostly gathered in a small cabin room with couples tag teaming one another to handle the start of children’s bedtimes. Our kids go to bed later than most. Rachel goes into the tent for a little break that I know will be a long break. The storm’s going. I am sitting in the couch next to my kids and I’m listening to “Bad Luck Blue Eyes Goodbye” by the Black Crowes in my headphones trying to decide if the drinks I had at the town bar are having any impact and also trying to decide if this is the greatest Black Crowes song of all time. I am also thinking about those artists, movies and other offerings of culture that played a disproportionately big role in my upbringing compared to other families. The Black Crowes. The movie Liar Liar. The TV show Twin Peaks. The Allman Brothers. Two rock bands you have never heard of I guarantee it: The Hatters and Reef. I am now encouraging you to listen to “Bad Luck Blue Eyes Goodbye” by the Black Crowes.
I have spent, charitably, until August 3, 2024, zero hours in a tent during a rainstorm. The family uses a green Coleman Skydome. It was selected for its ease of assembly and goddammit the satisfaction I derive from setting up the tent even though it is easy to assemble. I was not on a “yeah I can set up a tent” path in life and having shoved myself onto that path I smile from ear to bug-bitten ear admiring the cover I have created for my children in the rugged wilderness of the mowed grass next to Silus and Kelly’s cabin. I did not know that as rain hits a tent the beads of rain dance and move in orchestrated improvisation much like they would on my parent’s Chevy Nova on rides home from Pittsfield, Massachusetts. The rainfly and the tent in a taut bounce to keep the rain away from the people. The rain shakes the tent gently, the wind shakes the tent violently. My two daughters barter, cajole and acquiesce their way to an understanding of who gets what glow-sticks. With the exchange complete between the two of them I imagine some part of their attention also goes to the beating Mondrian painting that dances above our eyes. The sleep slowly rolls over both of them largely in rhythm with the storm rolling past us. Their bodies move less, their breaths more rhythmic, their glowsticks lazily sliding out of their loosened fists now shining inside their sleeping bags.
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2012
In my experience the tense conversations on tours never happen during the hours of easy driving between major and minor population centers. The conversations about publishing percentages, about who needs to help more with merch, about whether we can play an encore when only fourteen people come to our shows. . .those all happen amidst turns, the fighting happening in tandem with Siri reading take a right on Douglas, then continue straight on Douglas. One such argument came up in the Dessa band in regards to the ownership of sounds. The ownership of patches that Dustin, our amazing guitar player and keyboard player used in the studio and on stage. He played a tremendous role in both imitating sounds that had been acquired by other means on Dessa records and on creating his own sounds for new Dessa material.
So that’s the question. If Dustin subs out a gig, if Dustin quits, if Dustin gets fired. . .does the schmo who replaces him get those files? Does he get those patches or is the new schmo at square one? Dustin rightfully feels a level of ownership and identity over these patches. For some of the songs, it might be the hardest, most impactful work any of us in the band had done on the song. On the other hand, what about the Three Musketeersiness of all of this? If Dustin has to go play another gig or go to a wedding, isn’t the classy thing to send the patches over to schmo one so that they don’t have to spend hours crafting them for one sub gig? Continue straight to go on Hwy 12, then, stay in the right lane. But, how Three Musketeersy is the band at this point? Dessa’s making music with other producers, Dessa’s making music on her synthesizer, she’s restless. The writing is not on the wall, but the pen is out and the wall is there. Are we hired hands or are we in it for the long haul? Once they are shared with the schmo, what prevents you from saving them and using them after you fire me? Silence. Not even Siri is talking.
I want to be the peace keeper but there isn’t a needed peace to find. The argument is largely hypothetical. I don’t believe there is a gig we are subbing Dustin out for. I am a side person in the Dessa band. But I have been a bandleader a lot longer. My allegiance is to the advancement of the music with little patience for increasing the difficulty of advancing the music due to concerns of intellectual property. But I am not stupid enough to think that I am right, I just know where my allegiance lies. I say to Dustin “I haven’t been in the position to have a sound I felt strongly enough about to want compensation for it or to keep it for myself”. Without malice and without pause Dustin says “that’s right, cause you haven’t worked hard enough on a sound to feel ownership of it”. He’s right and it hurts. It hurts because when people say “you haven’t worked hard enough” it strikes a resonance in me, a harmony with the 24/7 screaming soundtrack of “you haven’t worked hard enough” already blasting through my head. I eat, sleep, work hard and think I don’t work hard enough. Those are my activities. Dustin just did the out loud on it. And it hurts. But I don’t have that perspective and I don’t have that experience. He’s right and fuck it hurts.
I didn’t understand, given Dustin’s level of sweat equity dumped into these patches, what his bargaining position could be. Dustin was right, I can’t speak as somebody who has put in that time. I can speak from my position, but it isn’t Dustin’s. I am working this story from 2012 into my campaign to not go back to one on one therapy. I had a strong year of therapy, I got through a lot of shit. I replaced it with yoga. I want to stay with yoga. But I feel under-appreciated in the grand majority of my relationships and Rachel and the couple’s counselor think there is work to be done there. Work to address my chronic feelings of not being appreciated enough. I don’t feel that Rachel sees what I do to keep our family thriving, especially in these years where she is stretched thin with grad school. I don’t feel that Heiruspecs understands how much work remains for me even if we don’t play that many shows. Rachel doesn’t know what it is to be me in this family. The gentlemen in Heiruspecs don’t know what it is to be me in our family. And I don’t know what it is to be them. I don’t know what Rachel or Peter or DeVon feels unappreciated about. I know my struggle. I know my pain points. I know the sweat equity I put in. I am not in charge of making the people I love understand it. We aren’t always in this together. It’s not three musketeers. It’s six guys. It sucks. It’s a marriage where your contributions feel invisible, feel ephemeral, feel negotiable. Why do I need to have someone else validate it? Dustin knew he had busted his ass to make these sounds, he was willing to hold his sounds hostage to have things work on his terms. Am I a leader or just a worker bee? Do I lead others in a meaningful way or do I just eat the shit others won’t? Am I one musketeer? Does that sound fun to you?
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2024
Today is my mother’s birthday. She’s been dead seventeen years. My relationship with her has gotten worse since her death. And it’s gotten worse in the last three years. The therapy I have done has been largely focused on my childhood years. Am I on my one musketeer program in adulthood because that was the comfortable way to get love from my family? I remember my parents rejoicing when I learned how to make them coffee in the morning, when I learned how to do laundry in the sixth grade, when I told my Dad I would happily be part of a book he wanted to write about how great our relationship was. The youngest child. I’ll play rhythm guitar Steve, no problem! Oh, you’re playing rhythm guitar? I’ll buy a bass! I’m just along for the ride and I’m also the road. One musketeer.
When I say my relationship with my mom has gotten worse I mean it’s gotten thicker, it’s gotten realer. There is more to it. There is more there. I understand our relationship differently. I was 25 when she died. I wasn’t really grown. I certainly wasn’t looking back much at the time. I wasn’t a dad. I wasn’t a grown man. I wasn’t a work in progress. I wasn’t working. I was a young man living. And now the good times we had are tainted, the always bad times look worse. Today I went to the bench they have for my Mom at Macalester, where my Dad was the President during one of the happiest stretches of her life. I sat at the bench and felt my body vibrate a little. I slowed down. I almost fell asleep. I wanted a security guard to walk up and ask me what I was doing here and I wanted to tell him that this is my Mom’s bench and I wanted him to read the plaque. The plaque for my mom said she had a genuine curiosity in everyone she met. That’s very correct Mr. Plaque writer. I know she loved me. I don’t believe she knew how to raise me. I don’t believe she knew how to care for me and how to give me the structure I needed to thrive. I don’t think she had that in her quiver, or if she did I don’t think she had the energy to call it up.
I leave the bench and walk to the President’s Mansion, the first place I lived in Minnesota. 1750 Summit Ave. Big ass khaki brick house. I drive past it sometimes just in regular life. But today I approach it on foot. I look at the alley. Just really one memory from the alley. A phone argument with DeVon from Heiruspecs as he was telling me he was going to miss the rehearsal the rest of us were all set up for. DeVon said “now if I understand correctly, you got laid last night, so I really don’t want you to be an asshole after I tell you this. I am not running late, I am not coming at all.” One musketeer.
I walk past the house up and down but don’t want to linger there, lest I scare the folks who live there now. The little driveway. I pulled the first Heiruspecs trailer up that driveway full of our gear all on my own after our first tour but I shit my pants about halfway up the incline. We had driven basically straight from Cleveland and I thought I’d wheel up about 700 pounds before hitting the commode. So instead of triumphantly walking in to the house and bragging about our week and a half long tour I frantically ran downstairs and tried to get the shit all cleaned off before I saw my parents and my aunt.
I then walk back to my car but I do the walk on Summit, not Grand. A couple steps in I realize I’ll go to a place I’ve never revisited before on foot. The Macalester Alumni House on Grand. It’s right near Great River Junior High which used to be called Ramsey. It was there, as my Dad was doing a round of meetings for his new job and Mom and I were shopping for high schools that she proposes that she and I get a divorce. I’m in ninth grade, we are fighting, and she says that we can’t seem to get along and we should just stay out of each other’s way. Worst moment of my life. We had watched Apollo 13 in the Alumni House the night before. I loved it, but even at the time I could feel the movie melting in with my memory of Mom suggesting that we would be well-served to stay out of each other’s way. Tonight I look out on the little extra parking strip of Summit where it happened, sitting in a rental car. Is that the worst thing that has ever happened on this little square of planet earth? Maybe somebody starved there in an unforgiving winter in 1837. Maybe someone got shot and died right there. I don’t have the data, but it’s possible a Mom proposing a divorce with her ninth grade son is the worst thing to happen in the parking space right outside of the Macalester alumni house. I turn the corner, great memories. Heiruspecs did the Battle of the Bands right here at Grand Old Day probably 1997 or 1998. Kicked ass, got second place. I think Curious Yellow got first. I remember walking around here, dreaming about kissing Christina Gosling on the mouth, thinking the high placement in the Battle of the Bands was bound to help my odds. I am back to Grand. I unnecessarily unlock my car from across Grand. I look at the bench. I’ve done the circle. 17 years you’ve been gone Mom. And I love you. I see you differently, I have lived so much life. I understand how much life you were robbed of. 60 seems so old to somebody whose 25. Today you’d be 77. A different person. I don’t know what we would have worked out. I don’t know what would have stayed unaddressed. You always had an appetite to talk. I’ll always wonder how you remember those times? Does your soul still negotiate with them? Are you at rest? The family that are still here aren’t really talkers like you and I are. When it’s in the rearview it’s gone. You and I are different from them and we are different from each other. I don’t think I’ll ever get to know who you are, cause I didn’t know who I was when you died. I am one musketeer. And I am your baby. And I can love you. And I can forgive you. And I don’t want a divorce.