Lying supine upon a seaside rockface large enough to hold two people. Not far from the city, and yet, removed enough that little light pollutes our view as we float up into space with our mutual gaze. Staring up at a blackening sky salted with glistening stars, some of which are moving very slowly.
They are not planes, but satellites. They interrupt an otherwise ancient airspace as they traverse our planetary ceiling, moving robotically along their predetermined paths.
Had I ever seen so many satellites before? There must be dozens visible just from this spot. Extrapolate: there must be thousands out there.
We’re supposed to head out soon on a little tour back to Ontario: Halifax to Quebec City to Montreal to Waterloo to Toronto to Kingston. Nothing major, but it’s big for us, lying on our backs and scraping them on lumpy rocks that easily breach our American Apparel t-shirts and cheap mall-store via-thrift shop denim jackets. Looking up at how light travels; how information commutes. For seven months we’ve lived by the sea, seated atop many such rocks perched malevolently above crashing, white capped inky waveforms. Understanding the danger yet disregarding it with every exhalation of smoke from our lungs into the dark sky above.
We’d been listening to the Kills consistently - nay - obsessively since I introduced Ryan to them back in 2008. A duo clearly in platonic love. Just two. They were everything we were and were not. A song rang in my mind as I stared up into the starry void: Lost her behind the station/Lost her behind the moon/Operator, operator dial her back/Operator put me through. The song conjured, for me at least, the lamentations of a brooding rock star lover of a jet-setting supermodel, the victim of dropped calls and unsent texts and painful fantasies of loss and infidelity. And I relished every note and nuance, every bassy whomp of down tuned guitar-through-octave pedal.
We owned the very same model of guitar pedal and Ryan would soon pack it and his half-dozen other pedals in their silver flight case into our tiny hatchback. A Gretsch guitar case occupied by his own downtuned semi-hollow body Power Jet, a Fender Bassman and my Pearl Export kit and various hardware and ephemera would render climbing around the car to fetch things - or rearranging our belongings in any useful way - impossible. Our overnight bags and my omnipresent oversupply of thrifted clothing would join us in many a bar bathroom, Tim Hortons and 24-hour grocery store restroom in the wee hours before dawn. Our GPS would undoubtedly lose its signal and maybe we’d go off course, just a little bit, before finding our way again.
What bewitched me about Satellite in particular was the inclusion of a chorus of voices other than the core duo, Alison and Jamie. A small gospel choir carried the lyric-less chorus gainfully, well beyond a dozen notes and made it evident to my 2011 ears that The Kills were expanding. Their lives and their songs and their reach felt more grandiose, and I welcomed the growth of a minimalist electro-punk duo as they scooped up a few collaborators, informing and elevating themselves by carefully deployed osmosis.
We’d moved to this city on the East coast to escape some nasty psychological patterns and to give ourselves an expansive environment in which to grow as a couple. We’d hoped we might also, ideally, transform our band from something painfully visceral to a more intellectual, thoughtfully crafted entity - which I believe we did with the three records we released during our time there.
We’d moved to the coast “because it’s so beautiful,” too, and indeed it was. Seemingly endless coastal drives by cliffs and fishing villages and rocky roadside stop-offs like this one. Pulled over in the gravel, climbing dry boulders that could become slippery black with the shift of the tides, we always trusted our instincts (and those of fellow wanderers who partook in the very same treacherous pastime).
I’d spent the autumn after our arrival wandering downtown and North end streets, walking greying steep-hilled avenues, applying to breweries and cafes, looking for a day job that wouldn’t hurt. I found one, at a hipster-y brunch restaurant frequented by local musicians and run by a quintessentially cranky, Bourdain-informed chef.
The job itself was more than adequate but my mental health had tanked. The languid aimlessness of youth had begun to clash violently with my now very clear lifelong path: to make music; to be a musician. The mental and spiritual stew that comprises every depressive person’s psyche had been bubbling on high heat for years. Now, as I found myself in a brand new environment away from all of my friends and family and previous triggers I realized: it wasn’t any of them.
It was all me.
The cauldron had damn near boiled over by the time the album Blood Pressures was released in April of 2011, two weeks before the start of our earnest little 10-date tour. The Kills had released Satellite as an advance single, so I’d been able to take it in for weeks, memorizing every word and sonic shift. The extended “ohhhhhhhhhhhhs” that comprised the entire chorus took on a decidedly less fatalistic bent than any of the lyrics on my own album, which we had just spent many months whole-heartedly concocting and releasing into the firmament.
Back by the ocean, Ryan and I sent our breath upwards as we watched the stars, and the sideways crescent moon, and the planes and helicopters carrying travelers both reluctant and willing. It was the ever-moving artificial satellites, though, that made me feel: something other than giddy, hopeless, fraudulent or lost.
Another early morning and another little tour loomed and beckoned - self-imposed and yet wholly daunting - and nearly nothing could keep my mind from wandering over to its dark side. That psychic stew had finally dried up, burned and stuck to the bottom of the pot, unwilling to budge. Harried anticipation and dread volleyed in my mind at equal turns, save for these long hours spent resting my bones on solid granite alongside my lover, following the trails of satellites with my young but weary eyes.
An unfamiliar sense overcame me as I eventually sat up, bathing my retinas with the lights from Shearwater Air Force base and an errant party boat before dipping them back into the jet black sea. On a late-night excursion to escape our insecurities, and our cavernous half-empty apartment, and our nosy neighbours who judged and complained if we spoke or sang above a whisper, I felt it. I recognized the truth of my own existence.
My purpose. My mission. A sudden awareness that the constant, eternal act of me making music was necessary. It had no end or beginning. It was not an anomaly or an indulgence, this life. It was me.
A few days before our tour, we were asked to appear on a radio show by a gracious local music aficionado who’d grown to appreciate our music. We sat rigidly for 90 minutes, a proverbial million miles away from the stars and the satellites, in a harshly lit decades-old radio station booth nervously chatting with the host and as he spun tracks by Brian Eno and the Misfits, waiting to perform our own songs live on air.
I spoke and sang with a contradictory blend of uncertainty and determination woven through my voice. I cherished so deeply this chance to showcase my music. My raison d'être. To feel myself in relation to my bandmate/partner, our guitars, the host, the listeners, the microphones and headphones and the radio signal itself as it was propelled across the city by an accelerated electrical charge.
Everything I had felt in the moment, earlier in the day, and in the weeks and months and years preceding that radio appearance had been distilled into an unassuming and intangible radio signal adrift in the atmosphere.
To create art - and to accept art into our lives - is vital. It is how we understand everything and everyone around us. Listening to music carries us through our most profound losses; it amps us up and gives us wings we never thought we’d have. It keeps us company. It teaches us. It gives us time.
We make art not as an act of rebellion but as a mode of connection with ourselves, each other, our families, our neighbours, our coworkers, and even our enemies (if we have them). Making music, in my world, isn’t easy or cozy or luxurious. It isn’t about being carried off on a silver spoon, but it does involve getting lost in that unfathomable darkness behind the moon. Making music is an endless expedition to find our way home.
After our radio appearance in the city ended at 11pm, we’d loaded up our hatchback with our guitars and instead of driving home, embarrassed and elated, to our apartment to rest, we’d driven towards the coast. We’d pulled over in the gravel, and climbed over the steel barrier down onto the rocky cove. We’d taken off our slippery wooden-soled boots, and laid our adrenaline deficient bodies onto granite, hand in hand, eyes on the sky.
Where better might we explore our inner worlds as artists than by projecting our consciousness up into the ultimate expanse? The heavens. The blackness of infinite space interrupted by countless glowing satellites, every one analogous to a group of humans down below gathering wisdom as we orbit, tugged along for eternity by our respective “planets” of inspiration as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
Your are such a good storyteller.