SUSS @Culture Lab in LIC 3/31/2023
When I get off the train, this quadrant of LIC strongly reminds me of being on Anna Maria Island - oddly like that deserted beachtown at the edge of nowhere, except I was in a quaint industrial district in NYC, tiny shops closed early, the flatness of warehouses reminding me of the drop off that told us as kids when we were close to the beach because the line of buildings stopped and became ocean.
The visuals being projected before the show begins are of a country road wrapped in trees, lit in the darkness by the headlights of the vehicle the camera is in. Gainesville is a lot like that, the trees in the outlying parts growing together over the ribbons of 2 lane roads leading in and out of the town's center. My friend who invited me seems to be drawn to Country styled bands made up of elderly gentlemen - wiry, weathered men with white hair and gnarled fingers sliding up and down vintage guitars. He too is wiry and tall with a full head and beard of white hair, and though he grew up in Ohio, I believe that being connected to the sound of Country music is more about growing up in lonely wide open spaces, Rural as opposed to Urban, not just south of the Mason Dixon line.
I was expecting something clearly bluesy, a smoky mountain twang that might pair well with Dolly Parton vocals (from her later years), or even a harder Bonnie Raitt edge, but as the band members sauntered on stage, I am stricken by their look - all Leonard Cohen with just a hint of Johnny Cash - and the sounds that they make - winding wooshing droning sounds, each chord like an extended exhale coming from a limitless store of breath. The projections shift to what very closely resembles the landscapes of driving in Florida - specifically in my memory tied to driving to random motels in tiny towns with a correctional facility to visit my incarcerated stepfather. Sad songs on the radio in the night from the host Delilah, our headlights carving a path through the trees - like these men and their instruments, long legs in dark pants, tree like silhouettes too mundane to be scary, white hair like spanish moss dripping from those trees, ghostly but benign. My mother and I, together in the front seat, but alone in our thoughts, an atlas 3 times the size of my 13 year old lap as I navigated the boat of our car, a million county roads crisscrossing like a tangled ball of yarn for us to find our way through.
The sound too, washes over me like the coolness of wet predawn air slowly transitioning into the warmth of early sunshine burning the wetness away, buttercream color drenching the verdant green patches and scrub brush. A crisper edge comes in and the winding watery sounds take me back to the wood paneled station wagon of my earlier years, my older brother and I with our arms out the back window of the extended trunk bed (illegal today) as we ascended a mountain in North Carolina. Feeling the temperature change in an instant as our elevation shifted and being shocked by the way the world worked - different rules then the flatlands of Florida. Walking barefoot in that mountainous backyard looking for mica rocks, getting lost staring at the million sparkling flaky layers when we found it. At some point a flock of ruby throated humming birds descended upon us like fairy creatures.
All of a sudden I'm looking out the kitchen window at the humming bird feeder in my childhood home - a memory of a memory now, since I haven't set foot in that house in almost 15 years, it's like watching a movie of someone else's life to remember washing a million dishes while standing there, looking out over our failed garden made of railroad ties that was eventually taken over by catnip, and the compost pile in the corner with a wall of elephant ears larger then me when they unfurled - behind which we had made a kind of club house, where my brother and I dragged chairs to congregate out of view. Adjacent to that stands the the skinny prepubescent peach tree and the place we very briefly kept chickens. I recognize these images surfacing as I listen - like a Wikipedia article of my life, or a movie I saw once - I wonder if that is just what happens as we get older, or if these memories are unexamined recently so feel particularly dusty and discolored.
This man's harmonica is the sound of late afternoon in Florida when the heat dies down and the orange light peeks through the trees. I am distracted by how beautiful the mouth of the guitarist is and the feeling of that time of day, its specific quality of light and air that I recognize like a person I have loved but lost before I was done loving them. The intimacy I feel with where these sounds take me - a deep familiar beingness - I also notice I feel with my friend next to me, for the first time since walking away from the familiarity of my bond with my mother, of having witnessed the world next to each other - and for maybe the first time in decades I have a sense of what it feels like to be home.
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