by Nicole Skeltys
On Friday night, Tanya was bouncing around in front of the bathroom mirror in her new slinky black stovepipes, rock and roll stud belt, black skivvy and red neckerchief. She was getting ready to go out and see a concert with Scott and was sparkling with happiness. As she tossed her dazzling blonde mane over to one side and blasted it with the hairdryer she yelled "Hey, I feel like a teenager again!" After she snapped it off, she bounced out into the loungeroom looking for her handbag, then chuckled gleefully with a wink: "A baad teenager!"
Tanyas remark about feeling like a teenager again reminded me of Montana, where we both started to have "teenager revisited" experiences. Given I started this blog in New York in September, which was almost at the end of our epic road trip that began in May, perhaps now is a good time to get some 'back story' in and recount some of our neo-juvenile adventures in Montana in June.
Escape from paradise
Life in an artists refuge shows just how contrary human desire is.
Tanya and I had finally arrived at an idyllic retreat. The Montana Artists Refuge was a cluster of historic Wild West buildings in a tiny former gold rush town called Basin (pop. 250). Basin was nestled in a tiny high plains valley framed by soaring mountains and forests, many miles away from anywhere that could be called a serious town. The Refuge was run by a bunch of women artists who had discovered Basin in the '70s and settled there. They were pioneering women of enormous courage and hardiness, who had the vision and conviction to pool what little money they eventually saved to buy some of the tiny town's historic buildings and turn it over to the use of other artists. They joked with us that in the early days of '70s counter-culture lifestyle experiments, bemused locals would muse that "there will surely be a war between the hippy bikers and the arty lesbians". But in fact, everyone got on just fine, and the women run artists' refuge was now just as much a part of the region's proud history as the disused gold mines and the cowboys.
Our residence was the top floor of a former 19th century bank, all old exposed beams, high ceilings and buttery mountain light through enormous windows. The faded wooden floors creaked like a ship at sea every time I walked from the kitchen through the bedroom/ living area to the large open studio where I had set up my work station. I tapped away at my computer each day in front of a panoramic view of Basin's main street (where a 3 legged dog limping down the middle of the road was the most exciting thing that ever happened) and I could gaze for hours at the nearby mountains which were still snow capped in early June. Tanya set up her laptop in the kitchen, where she could look down on the backyard and domiciles of our fellow artist residents, one of whom was a handsome young poet from Pittsburgh called Scott.
Here we were finally getting longed for rest at last - after all the weeks of stress getting ready to leave Australia for an extended period of time - possibly for good. Then the nerve wracking build up to our second only ever gig at Vancouver's biggest New Music festival. Followed by our back-breaking stint as volunteer organic farm workers on Galiano Island, one of Canada's Gulf Islands, off the coast of Vancouver. Then the long, intense cross-examination by US customs officers as we tried to cross the Canada/US border in an overstuffed SUV with a Taiwanese driver, courtesy of a rideshare lift we'd found on Craigslist. But finally we had made it. Here we were in the promised land - America! And nowhere looked more like God's own country than western Montana; the drive from Seattle to Basin had been the most spectacular of my life - verdant mountains, serene valleys, glassy green rivers gushing everywhere, diamond clear lakes, and the famous Big Sky - the eggshell blue of the earth's outer atmosphere was so close here, you could see the curve stretching forever.
But after two weeks of splendid isolation in this astonishing environment, we got bored.
When Saturday morning rolled around again, the sun dazzling in through all the windows, I sat down at my computer to work, but then I immediately got up and creaked all the way down from my studio to the kitchen. T was fixing some kind of breakfast, a "cowboy meal" as we called them, because so much of our diet for the last 2 weeks had been based on beans and leftovers as there was nowhere to buy fresh food in Basin. I said "I can't stand it anymore, I feel like I'm trapped in a nunnery, I have to get out of here". T agreed. She was going stir crazy too. She was easily persuaded that we had to check out Butte - a town about 20 miles away that apparently had great bars and was full of slightly unhinged but friendly people.
A couple of hours later, we were scrambling over some barbed wire fencing on the outskirts of Basin, making our way to a verge on Interstate 15. We held up a hand scrawled sign saying 'Butte'. And we waited.
We took turns holding up the sign and tried out our friendliest Australian smiles. Neither of us had hitch-hiked since we were teenagers, and we were a tad nervous. Cars whizzed past, many of them not even bothering to glance at us. There were frequent pauses in traffic: it was not a busy interstate, and besides, it was not a busy State - there were less than 1 million people in the whole of Montana. Half an hour passed. Then finally a red 4WD screeched to a halt up ahead of us, and with a mixture of relief and trepidation we ran up - quickly glanced at the guy - he looked small and non-threatening - and jumped in.
A few minutes down the road, the scenery went from serene to sublime. Out in front of us in the distance, a ring of gigantic snow capped mountains suddenly jumped out from a curve in the highway against the intense blue sky. I gasped out loud. Our small, bearded, driver, who wore paint stained overalls and gripped the steering wheel intently with his calloused, grease stained hands, had said almost nothing since we hopped in the car. But finally he volunteered: "Thats the Rockies. Don't know their names. Just the Rockies".
As we got to the outskirts of Butte, our driver opened up a bit more. He launched into a favorite topic of conversation by Montanans, and that was how Californians - who could no longer afford to live in their own over-hyped, over-priced State - were migrating in droves to Montana, putting condos on perfectly good grazing land, driving up property prices, and generally screwing up everything with their yoga studios and their organic decaffeinated coffee houses. Our driver explained - "You know what they call Missoula? Miss-angeles. And Bozeman? Boze-wood. But those Californians haven't got to Butte yet - its still our town and we hope it stays that way."
As we drove into Butte, the gigantic open faced copper mine that our driver informed us had been the town's source of boom and bust throughout its history spread for miles around like an artificial canyon. Old drilling towers came into view down long empty streets, their black frames silhouetted high like skeletons against the sun. As we headed downtown, some of the town's most important bars were pointed out to us. There were a lot of biker bars. Butte was Evel Knievel's birthplace, and every year the risk-obsessed showman's birthday attracted about 30,000 bikers who paraded down the mainstreet non-stop for over an hour and probably made enough money for the biker bars to keep going for another year. A former train station was now a watering hole; that former crumbling brick drygoods warehouse is now a snug bar. We asked about the Silver Dollar which we had been told was the most hopping bar in town - there it was, still with its '50s/'60s neon saloon sign, right next to the original Chop Suey restaurant with its blinking sign from the same era.
The further we drove downtown, the more excited we got. Abandoned buildings, warehouses, shops everywhere, most with their original faded advertising painted on their sides, promoting long gone products and services. Glorious heyday architecture starting from late 19th century right through to 30s, 40s, 50s, now razed across with broken windows, crumbling eaves, boarded up wooden doors, paint peeling in the breeze. The town looked like it had lost its wealth suddenly and pretty completely decades ago, leaving the town in a time capsule. I was reminded of pictures I had seen of Cuba, where the US embargo kept people poor and living in an immaculate simulacra of the '50s. But we could see that the locals were starting to reclaim some of these spaces, and transform them into bars, eateries, quirky shops, art spaces - so there must be money coming back in again, the town was starting to slowly be reborn.
The Cohen brothers and deja vu
We were let out uptown Butte, the oldest part of town high up on some hills, outside the Capri, a rundown '60s style motel, which our driver informed us would give us a room for $35 a night. That was our kind of budget. We stood on the pavement and looked around; the streets were silent except for the soft breeze, some kind of clinking tin sound in the distance (the drilling towers?) and the occasional dusty car cruising slowly past. We could see for hundreds of miles across the town, across the surrounding plain, our vision halted only by the cresting grey and white waves that were the Rockies in the distance. I felt the thrill of discovery and the eagerness of a child to run up and down the steep streets looking at everything, gulping in the atmosphere, which seemed full of secret messages about times past. For some reason, this was the kind of town I was hungry for.
First things first - we walked into the Capri's peeling foyer and were shortly greeted by a skeletal elderly woman, in carefully coiffed hair and an ironed-thin pastel outfit from the '70s. She looked genuinely startled to see us. She shook (not from shock but from Parkinsons). The thought flashed into my head "This is just like a scene from a Cohen brothers' movie - maybe some of their stock characters are real after all". She told us with a wary look that rooms were $55 a night; disappointed, we thanked her and left. T said outside: "She put the price up just for us". Later that night, one of the bartenders told us that was right - rooms were usually only $35 - but that was because the hotel was a hangout for crackheads!
T took off up the hill with her long Swiss legs shouting "I'm in photography heaven!". I wandered around with the video cam. Can a town have too many sagging gabled rooves, colorfully painted Victorian turrets, overgrown lilac bushes, porches lined with old bowling pins and other found kitsch, nooked and crannied laneways, rusting gold-tipped '50s Pontiacs, rainbow peace signs and mountain views from every corner? No, it cannot. Many porches were hung with wind chimes so that gentle tinkles wafted everywhere through the lazy Saturday afternoon sunlight. And most houses, no matter what their state of repair, sported 'Welcome!' signs on their front doors. People smiled greetings passing us on the street, or from heads lifted up from gardening. Despite the obvious hard times that had hit and stayed, it was clear that people were happy here.
T said: "The hills, the architecture, the feeling here reminds me so much of San Francisco in the early days, when it was still vibrant and still affordable to live there." T had spent the best times of her life, the times when she had felt "the most alive and most free" in San Fran in the early to mid '90s.
Our impressions of a largely happy, friendly town (except, presumably, for the biker meth and crack addicts) were confirmed when we came across an old bar high up on a hill called The Goodwill. I needed a wee badly. T peered in through the window to make sure it was ok to come in - it could well have been another biker bar. She saw all the locals in the little bar staring back at her, gesturing eagerly for her to come in.
When we walked in, people called us over to the bar and started talking to us immediately. After our first beer, a middle aged man and his son-in-law bought us a second round. The bar owner Annie (in her 70s at least, custodian of The Goodwill for 30 years) gave us a packet of chips and refused to take payment. After a while, one of the three older women sitting next to me - the one who smelt delightfully of old hairspray - offered to drive us up to another bar further up the hill where "there is a poker game going on this afternoon, its going to be really hopping, honey". We declined the kind offer, as we had our heart set on seeing some live music at the Silver Dollar - and we wanted to meet some younger people. I handed around one of our few copies of our album 'Larceny of Love' for the regulars to look at - and was gratified to see how they were genuinely impressed - by the look of it anyway. And once again we were congratulated heartily on choosing a great name. We've hit upon something for sure, I thought, something that resonates, but it did intrigue me: why do people like the concept of jilted brides so much?
After a couple of hours, we reluctantly left our new friends to continue on with our wandering and photography. As we started off down the hill, the father in law ran out and asked if he could buy one of our CDs. We had to explain that we sadly didn't have a pressing yet, but we gave him our MySpace site so he could hear some tunes. He hoped we would come back soon and play at the Silver Dollar; we really hoped we could too.
As we made our way down the hilly streets to look for food and more bars, T said: "I have never been made so welcome by strangers in a bar before - never". I couldn't recall a similar experience either. I looked around the town as the sun started to decline and another strong wave of nostalgia hit me. "Does all this seem very familiar to you?" I asked. "I mean very familiar"? "Yes!" she said. "It sure does".
Teenagers revisited
A couple of hours later, we were cruising downtown, sitting in the back of a Chevvy driven by a curly haired teenage girl called Sarah and her buddy Megan. They had spotted us walking down the street after we had had our cheap dinner at the Sports Bar. Once again I did not get through my alleged American meal -most of the 'pork chop sandwich', Butte's specialty dish - a squashed and deep fried bit of meat product in an aerated bun - sat in a styrofoam container in my backpack, infusing it with crumbed meat smell; I didn't leave my meal behind this time as I calculated that this combination of fat and protein would be precisely what I needed later to soak up a night of bar hopping.
Megan and Sarah were driving us to the local bottle shop so we could buy them a 24 pack of Pabst and a pint of Nikolai vodka. When they saw us on the street they said "You looked like teenagers" who might be able to buy them some booze, so they stopped and offered us a lift. Although we turned out not to be teenagers, we were still most happy to oblige. In the bottle shop, we were astonished that the pint of vodka they asked us to buy only cost $4. So we bought one for ourselves too.
Back in the car, the girls were full of gratitude. They had everything they needed now for an evening "with some boys". "Lucky you" I remarked. They laughed and dissed Butte: boring as hell, and most of the boys "are backward and goofy looking". I felt transported back in time: I remembered being a teenage schoolie so well, the emotions fresh like they were lived yesterday - the sexual drive straining against parental restraint, the hunger for excitement, the frustration of growing up in a dull town, slim pickings when it came to boys (actually, this is starting to sound like my recent life in Melbourne). Megan asked if we were married. "Do we look married?" I asked. They laughed again and said "No way. You sexy ladies look like you've just stepped out of Sex in the City". Thats great, I thought! My confidence was boosted, ably assisted by the Moose Drools we'd downed at the Sports Bar. I was looking forward to a good night out. Maybe even a wild one.
They dropped us off at the former railway station, The Depot Bar as it had now been reincarnated. But there was a wedding reception there (irony not lost on us), so we wandered back up the hill to find another bar. We found the warehouse bar that our driver had pointed out. Inside was indeed cosy, all exposed beams and golden pine chairs and tables. But it was full of mums and dads treating themselves to a Saturday night meal. It was dull. We downed our dangerously large and cheap bourbons quite quickly, and waited to be given the bill. We weren't. We started to make our way to the cash register, when I suddenly turned to Tanya and said. "Lets pull a runner". T said: "Thats exactly what I was thinking".
So we just kept walking, out the door. Once on the pavement, we picked up our pace and giggled hysterically as we ran towards Main St where the Silver Dollar awaited. Neither of us had pulled a runner for a very long time - probably not since we were teenagers.
The Silver Dollar reeked with old saloon atmosphere - long polished wood bar, blinking red Bud lights, old photos and assorted band paraphanelia - the kind of place I would live at if it was my local. But it was empty -at the bar, there was a plump, heavily made-up barely 21 year old girl, and further down, a geeky looking guy (who turned out to be a petroleum engineer). And that was it. The house band turned out to be a mediocre white blues band. Mediocre country is ok with me, but blues played by white guys- and ok, reggae too - white blues and reggae are genres I have always failed to 'get', striking me as genres that are presumably a lot of fun to play, particularly if you are stoned, but monotonous beyond belief to listen to. We hung around, downing more bourbon, but no more people showed. Our hopes for finding some friendly Buttites to party long into the night with faded.
The Silver Dollar bargirl was helpful, and recommended we go to the old Finlan Hotel for the night, and gave us directions to the historic hotel, and also to a good diner for breakfast the next day. At the end of the night, we staggered up the road, found the Finlan and pushed open the heavy glass doors into the foyer.
The Hotel Finlan foyer looked exactly as it must have in the '30s when it was the hotel of choice for rich and famous visitors who, according to the faded black and white photos on the walls, had, for some inexplicable reason, frequently found themselves in Butte. We slowly wobbled through an imposing row of gold and pale green gilt columns illuminated by art deco chandeliers throbbing out pale yellow light from high up in the ceiling. We eventually found ourselves at the front desk. The night porter guy, who was of around the same vintage as the columns, slowly looked up from his book and stared uninterestedly at us.
Sixty-six dollars for a room, he told us blankly, with a take it or (hopefully, for customers like us) leave it attitude. He elaborated: "Thats a good price. A third less than the flats. You've come down from the flats haven't you? Everyone is pleased when they find out the Finlan is a third less than the flats". It was 1.30 in the morning, we were sozzled, and could not figure out what he was talking about. Once again, I felt I'd stepped into a Cohen brothers film - not 'No Country for Old Men' as up at the Capri, but 'Barton Fink'.
We had no choice so we accepted, and grabbed the keys from his reluctant hands. To my disappointment, the actual accommodation was not an atmospheric piece of Americana, but a room in a standard low budget motel which had been annexed to the grand old original building; the old Finlan infrastructure had apparently been turned into apartments. But I didn't care too much. After we got into our room, I made myself eat my pork chop sandwich remains (which then tasted ok) while T excitedly got a much needed TV fix, surfing through late night movie channels. I must have then passed out for maybe 3 hours; only to be awoken by doors slamming and T swearing. In the room next to ours, there were teenagers - going back and forth to the balcony, drinking, smoking, laughing and talking loudly. T rang the front desk to complain- she hadn't been able to sleep at all. But the old Cohen Brothers porter didn't seem to intimidate the kids, so the noise continued. Finally, after T made a second call, the door slamming and loud talking stopped. Good, I thought, glancing at the clock and registering 5.00am, we can get some sleep at last.
Then the unmistakable thump, thump and cries of bad teenage sex. The walls were paper thin. This is one memory, I thought, I could do without. Although I admired the fact that these kids had the stamina and sheer good times determination to stay awake all night. Later, T wondered how they could rent a room while being so young. In a cash-strapped town like Butte, I suspected that the Finlan would rent out to toddlers if they could produce a credit card. More of a mystery to me was where their parents thought they had been for the evening. Crawling home at 7.00 in the morning, stinking of cigarette smoke and alcohol, ruffled hair and clothes, what possible story could they produce? Out cow-tipping all night?
Back to Basin: lesbian capital of Montana
Sunday morning was, as I knew it would be, painful. After checking out, we eventually found one of the diner's that the bargirl had recommended. Cheerful mom and pop '60s decor, shiny red leather stools, the smell of pancakes and coffee. After a cup of weak coffee (weak to Australians, who are used to Italian style cardiac arrest concentrations of caffeine), my hangover felt temporarily cushioned. We both ordered the vegetarian omelete, which sounded promising as it listed broccoli and cauliflower as two of its ingredients; but no, when the gigantic egg mound arrived, all the vegetables had been thoroughly fried then strangled in two kinds of cheese, including the ubiquitous fluro cheddar kind. I ate my rye toast, picked out all the vegetables I could recognise, and once again left most of my meal on the plate.
Hitching back to Basin required trudging a long way down the highway as it led out of town, to the turn off to Interstate 15. The sun was now high in the sky, my head ached. Once again, I felt how conspicuous we were, two women with thumbs out trudging down the road. I asked the angels and guides to protect us, make sure we got home safely. Later, T told me she had done the same thing.
A red car turned around when it saw us, and pulled up. Two very dodgy looking guys with tattoos, wrap around sunglasses and faint smell of beer leaned out of the car and grinned. "Basin? Oh yeah, we uh, just were talking about going there. Its got a bar we could all go to." T and I looked at each other and shook our head: we'll just keep walking thanks.
That was rattling, but at least it proved we could just refuse to put ourselves in a dangerous situation. After picking up some groceries and much needed painkillers, we eventually made the on-ramp to 15. I noticed another figure further up the ramp, hitching. That made me feel better, less of a freak. Within minutes, an SUV pulled up - a sketchy, unshaved guy as a passenger, but a peaceful looking Indian with a welcoming smile behind the wheel. We checked each other's look to see if we should take it, but we both felt it would be ok.
The journey back was dominated by Mr Sketchy, who was clearly an ex-junkie or speedfreak, proclaiming loudly about nothing and everything. I wished he would shut up and let the Indian guy speak, who was calm and thoughtful - he was from the Blackfoot reservation, his son was training in Basin to be a volunteer firefighter for the season. T and I both wanted to know more about local native Indian culture. But Mr Sketchy wouldn't shut up: "Won't be any f**n fires this season" he cried maniacally at his friend, laughing loudly. " Too much f**n rain! Too much f**n rain!" and then, swivelling around to bore his eyes into mine, "Hey, you know Basin is the LESBIAN CAPITAL OF MONTANA?"
Tanya and I couldn't help but laugh nervously. "Really?"
"Oh yeah. Bunch of bush bumpers down there man! Oh boy, bunch of BUSH BUMPERS!"
It was a huge relief when we were dropped off outside the refuge and waved goodbye to our lift. I pitied the quiet Indian guy who was going to have to put up with his friend's ranting all the way to Helena. And although T and I got to have our much needed night on the town, and arrived back in one piece, nevertheless neither of us really wanted to have to hitchhike again. That was one teenage experience we were happy to leave now in the past!
Tuesday, December 16, 2008
Saturday, November 29, 2008
The Extraordinary Alien
by Nicole Skeltys
Man About the House
Where I have settled in Pittsburgh, the freight trains wait until dusk then come out like great mechanical cows and commence their lowing which continues long into the evening, increasing their frequency in the early hours. I am a poor sleeper, waking often in the witching hours after midnight. In Melbourne, I would lie awake for hours, with nothing but my thoughts to keep me company. But here in the railway-zippered suburb of Lawrenceville, I will never again be alone at night. I am kept company by the conversation of the freight train horns. Every half hour or so, a new blare of exquisite tonalities erupts, a unique plaid of harmonics that is flung into the universe. Its 5.00 am as I write this propped up in bed with my faithful laptop Larry, and Larry and I have been digging horn solos for hours.
There is no predicting the rhythm or timing of the blares. Sometimes they are short, insistent bursts suggesting urgency, danger, get out of my way. Other times, they are are long, languid squirls of sound, like the cries of a delighted lover. The cry of each train as it rattles through is so erratic, that I think it must surely reflect the different moods of the men pushing the horn. Before I got up to write, I lay awake and listened closely to what I imagined to be the morse code of yearning. Some railway guy was leaning against a metal cab interior, he finished a cigarette and flicked it out the window, he reached over and and pushed on the horn pedal (or pulled the lever, depending on how old the train is) according to how he felt about his life at that exact moment in time. And motionless under my mountain of borrowed blankets, miles away, I heard it and I got it. Like him, I could hear what the sound contains: the the off-key, stained satin, diaspora of emotion that sums up our lives.
The freight trains have been providing the romantic soundtrack to our new lives, as Tanya and I settle into our second floor apartment, right above our buddies Scotty and Dan. My nights of sleeping on the floor of Scott and Dan's basement were now over. No longer did I have to battle with my constantly deflating air mattress while Tanya rustled and flopped behind the makeshift curtain that Scott had pinned up to separate our sleeping areas. I had my own completely solid mattress - heaven! T and I each had our own room - heaven again! It was typical of the great good fortune that had swooped upon us as soon as we arrived in Pittsburgh: the cheap, groovy little oak paneled, bi-level apartment above our hosts just happened to have become vacant. It was all too easy - why don't we just move in?
We did, however, have one hurdle to cross before we could settle down after our exhilarating but exhausting 5 months of being on the road. And that was our potential landlord, Jim. We needed to persuade Jim to hand over the keys to us, that we would be good tenants. Jim, according to Scotty, was around quite a bit. And usually fairly tanked.
We first met Jim when one day he was bustling into the back yard, about to climb to the steps to the 2nd floor apartment. Scott saw him from the kitchen window and called him over to introduce us. He poked his head into the kitchen, saw us, and his eyes bugged. He knew that Scotty and Dan had a couple of Australian women, "aussie chicks" staying with him for a while: but our corporeality, the actual sudden presence of two female bodies in a house that had previously only contained two young male bodies clearly hit him with some force. He barked a slightly startled hello and after some awkward pleasantries, asked with great curiosity how long we intended to stay. When we replied maybe for the long term, and that we might be interested in the 2nd floor apartment, Jim looked even more startled and affected a skeptical stance: "Well. We'll see, we'll see. We can talk abart it, we can talk abart it." He backed away and retreated up the back stairs, carrying his 6 pack of Yuengling lager.
Over the next couple of weeks, Jim's presence became familiar, as every second day he bustled up and down the back stairs and rattled and banged away upstairs fixing whatever it was that needed fixing in the wake of the last tenant. Jim was probably in his late 40s, early 50s, and was a 'yinzer' - what the locals call native Pittsburghers. This meant he was never without a baseball cap, even (or especially) indoors and at night, talked in a crimped, guttural Pittsburgh accent, drank goodly amounts of lager, barracked for the Steelers and engaged in a blue collar profession - in Jim's case, he was a plumber. Tanya had further expanded on the classic yinzer definition by including what she regarded as the defining physical characteristics of native Pittsburgh men: they looked like moles. Cute, cuddly moles perhaps, but moles nevertheless.
When we had finally made the decision to stay, we lay in wait for Jim's next appearance. One afternoon we spied him out the kitchen window, coming through the gate with his tool box in one hand and his lager in the other, looking every inch an industrious mole. We stopped him and told him we were definitely interested in renting the apartment. Jim affected a skeptical stance again. "Well, nah, well nah, do yez have a job? How are yez gonna pay the rent if yez dont have a job?" Luckily Tanya had just been offered some teaching work at the Point Park University film faculty; I mumbled some outright lie about doing "contract work".
However, as it turned out, Jim didn't actually require much convincing. He tried to look hard nosed, and complained sternly that "every tenant sez thar gonna pay the rent but they don't" (his last tenant had split without warning, rent in arrears). But moles, as we know, do not have hard noses, they have soft noses, and after chatting to Jim for a while, he loosened up quickly. Soon, we were heading up the steps and he was showing us proudly around the newly painted apartment. He showed us how he was now fixing the shelves in the kitchen and even started asking us what other repairs we thought we might need. This was a first for Tanya and I: neither of us had ever had a landlord who was anxious to improve a property to the tenant's liking. Jim was turning out to be just like everyone else we had met in Pittsburgh: generous-hearted to a fault.
At one point, as Jim was showing us the downstairs bedroom he said: "Theres a bedroom for one of yez." then he glanced at us and added in an almost apologetic tone of voice "Or both of yez! What yez get up to is none of my business! You know yez can do what yez want, do what yez want. Doesn't worry me!" He paused and he looked at us. We smiled broadly and didn't respond. We moved out onto the verandah so Jim could show us the sealant he intended to apply to the railings. We mentioned we would be continuing to share some facilities and tasks (such as gardening) with the boys. Jim couldn't help himself again: "Well, nah, one big happy family is it?" he asked with another meaningful stare in his wide eyes. "I mean, I don't want to pry, what yez all get up to is your business, none of my business, yez can get up to whatever you want!" In Jim's mind, 227 45 St had clearly turned into a hothouse of sexual intrigue - just who was sleeping with who? The possibilities were endless! and exciting! anyway you cared to think about it.
T and I just smiled knowingly back at Jim after every leading statement and continued to ask questions about the apartment. We let his imagination continue to cook away.
The Boston Marriage
We started to move in our very few belongings the last week of October. As we set up our new home over the following weeks, we became aware that there was a term for our new co-habitation status. Scotty sent us a link to an MS article entitled "So are you two together?" The article was about women who decide to move in together to provide each other with emotional support, share financial responsibilities and work together on creative or other kinds of joint endeavors. Other people (such as our landlord, who reminded me strongly of the forever perplexed and titillated Mr Roper in the classic '70s British sit-com "Man About the House") would often assume a lesbian relationship where this was not the case. The term for this kind of living choice was a "boston marriage" - a term derived from Henry James' 1886 novel The Bostonians whose main female characters have chosen to move in together as each other's "helpmeets".
Our ability to actually set up the rudiments of a household was assisted greatly by the financial generosity of donations from family and friends, particularly those triggered by the now infamous "flying mattress incident". We were also highly dependent on the only two people in Pittsburgh we knew with cars - Charlie and Scotty - to help ferry us around to buy household goods and act as our surrogate husbands. One glorious day, we found three perfectly good (if somewhat faded) armchairs, plus a couple of sidetables just sitting outside a church around the corner from us on 46th St. Scotty was once again pressed into service with his Chevvy pick up, and by late afternoon our loungeroom started to look like a loungeroom.
Jim continued to drop around and fix things, and we started to enjoy his company. One night when we were hanging out with Scotty downstairs, he even went next door to the mysterious AmVets hall (he was a Vet as it turned out) and bought us all back a bunch of beer. This was no small favor as in Pittsburgh, for reasons that defy all logic, you can easily walk down the road and buy dangerously cheap wine and hard liquor from a liquor store, but the only place you can buy beer is from specially designated outlets. Why relatively low alcohol beverages are in restricted supply whereas serious liver and brain corroding beverages are everywhere is beyond me. But it made us especially grateful to Jim for saving us having to go on a quest to find a distant beer depot.
Our Boston marriage was certainly more functional than Jim's. Jim had divorced after only 4 years, but 2 years later the divorce proceedings carried on and were clearly causing him a great deal of pain and anxiety. We felt sorry for him, as he had a good heart, and clearly his general yinzer fondness for brews had developed into a stronger addiction to cope with post-marital stress. However, he had not lost his sense of humor and he too became another surrogate husband, cheerfully complaining about "typical women, always wantin' stuff done round the haus" as he trudged in with his tool box and beer to fix a blocked drain, or to bleed the heaters.
Jim was perhaps becoming a little too comfortable in his role as surrogate husband as one night last week he gave a perfunctory knock and walked in the kitchen door, starting to tell me how the boiler pressure was all wrong and needed adjusting when he stopped dead in his tracks. There I was sitting in the loungeroom in our borrowed pine hutch having a drink with another man. It was only Charlie, who had dropped in briefly after some new errand he had uncomplainingly done on our behalf. However, the sight of a strange man in our apartment was enough to make Jim visibly embarrassed, and clearly provided yet more fodder for an already inflamed imagination. He moved quickly upstairs to Tanya's attic room to adjust the bleeds, then hurried down back past us again moving quietly and sheepishly as if he had interrupted something momentous. I burst out laughing after he left.
The extraordinary alien
Something momentous did occur, though, a couple of days later, as I accompanied Charlie to see an immigration lawyer about my plight. My visa was due to run out the following week. To say this caused me some anxiety was an understatement: I had just put down a deposit and moved into an apartment in a town I was determined to live in with no legal means of staying or working there. This was a major cause of waking up in the middle of the night and spending hours focusing on train horn harmonics. Charlie had to see the lawyer on behalf of Dan Jemmett, a British playwright who also wanted to stay in Pittsburgh. He asked me to come along so we could get some advice on my situation too.
Prior to the meeting, I did some research on visa categories, and for the first time I saw a glimmer of hope. The category of visa that Dan was applying for might - just might - apply to me. That visa category was an EB-1 or "extraordinary alien" visa. To qualify to be an "extraordinary alien" you had to have received an academy award (it was THAT easy); but more relevant to my situation, you could also be considered if you had an outstanding record of achievement in your field of endeavor. As I scrolled through the criteria, it dawned on me that my years of slogging it away punching out electronic and electronic influenced music, album after album, might make me an "extraordinary alien". After all, I had been nominated for an ARIA once, wasn't that kind of extraordinary? It certainly stunned me at the time.
Charlie oscillates with nervous energy pretty much all of the time. As we sat in the all white po-mo waiting area, I too was oscillating - if someone could have plugged us into a circuit board and hooked us up to an amplifier, we would have made a very high pitched sound. Larry, our lawyer, greeted us warmly and ushered us into the conference room, asking us to take a seat at an extremely long walnut table. The small talk consisted of Larry's plans for the sterile white foyer - he intended to use it to showcase local artists' work. Charlie quickly jumped at the chance to offer to broker curatorial services as part of a deal, and within minutes he was gone, ferried away by the marketing lady to talk artwork turkey. I sat alone with the lawyer, almost unable to keep my buttocks on the chair due to anxiety and looked at him as a penitent with heavy sins might look at a confessor.
Larry asked me what I wanted and I mumbled that I well, just wanted to stay here, and write and perform music. Larry nodded enthusiastically and, after asking after my visa status, noted that we were "looking at a rather tight timeframe" to sort all this out. Then he put on his glasses and started reading the material I had sent him - my CV/biography and the two pages worth of self-promoting bravado I had put together as my claims to be an "extraordinary alien". The funny thing was, though, that as I had sat down the previous night, gone through the acceptance criteria and jotted down my potential claims, I realised that I had, in fact, achieved stuff. I had always moved through my music career like a salmon spawning up-stream: I never looked behind me or thought about what I'd done, after an album or project had been completed and promoted, I just wanted to hurry up and get onto the next one. But as I forced myself to go back over the last decade, particularly over the tons of press clippings that I'd scanned before I left Australia, I thought maybe if you were looking at all this from a consciousness other than my own self-deprecating Australian consciousness, particularly if yours was an American can-do, boosterish consciousness, you might form the opinion I was a person of some note in my field. You might start slowly mouthing the words "extraordinary alien".
Larry scanned the documents silently then put them down and looked at my half-terrified, half-pleading face. "This is excellent. No problem, I'm almost certain you will qualify. The green card takes about a year, but in the meantime we can rustle up an application that should be able to get you a temporary work permit so you can stay here while we work on the EB-1 process." It was a Rocky moment. I leapt up from the chair and punched the air:"YEEEESSSSSS!!!!" I cried, then composed myself and sat down. It did indeed seem possible that I was not just any old alien; I could hear the theme from Close Encounters start to build, I could see the massive disk of light descend from the sky over the Devil's Tower formation, I could see rows upon rows of speechless people, faces upturned in awe: they were looking at me as I emerged triumphantly from the spacecraft and started to walk grandly towards them: watch out America here I come - I'm an extraordinary alien!
Man About the House
Where I have settled in Pittsburgh, the freight trains wait until dusk then come out like great mechanical cows and commence their lowing which continues long into the evening, increasing their frequency in the early hours. I am a poor sleeper, waking often in the witching hours after midnight. In Melbourne, I would lie awake for hours, with nothing but my thoughts to keep me company. But here in the railway-zippered suburb of Lawrenceville, I will never again be alone at night. I am kept company by the conversation of the freight train horns. Every half hour or so, a new blare of exquisite tonalities erupts, a unique plaid of harmonics that is flung into the universe. Its 5.00 am as I write this propped up in bed with my faithful laptop Larry, and Larry and I have been digging horn solos for hours.
There is no predicting the rhythm or timing of the blares. Sometimes they are short, insistent bursts suggesting urgency, danger, get out of my way. Other times, they are are long, languid squirls of sound, like the cries of a delighted lover. The cry of each train as it rattles through is so erratic, that I think it must surely reflect the different moods of the men pushing the horn. Before I got up to write, I lay awake and listened closely to what I imagined to be the morse code of yearning. Some railway guy was leaning against a metal cab interior, he finished a cigarette and flicked it out the window, he reached over and and pushed on the horn pedal (or pulled the lever, depending on how old the train is) according to how he felt about his life at that exact moment in time. And motionless under my mountain of borrowed blankets, miles away, I heard it and I got it. Like him, I could hear what the sound contains: the the off-key, stained satin, diaspora of emotion that sums up our lives.
The freight trains have been providing the romantic soundtrack to our new lives, as Tanya and I settle into our second floor apartment, right above our buddies Scotty and Dan. My nights of sleeping on the floor of Scott and Dan's basement were now over. No longer did I have to battle with my constantly deflating air mattress while Tanya rustled and flopped behind the makeshift curtain that Scott had pinned up to separate our sleeping areas. I had my own completely solid mattress - heaven! T and I each had our own room - heaven again! It was typical of the great good fortune that had swooped upon us as soon as we arrived in Pittsburgh: the cheap, groovy little oak paneled, bi-level apartment above our hosts just happened to have become vacant. It was all too easy - why don't we just move in?
We did, however, have one hurdle to cross before we could settle down after our exhilarating but exhausting 5 months of being on the road. And that was our potential landlord, Jim. We needed to persuade Jim to hand over the keys to us, that we would be good tenants. Jim, according to Scotty, was around quite a bit. And usually fairly tanked.
We first met Jim when one day he was bustling into the back yard, about to climb to the steps to the 2nd floor apartment. Scott saw him from the kitchen window and called him over to introduce us. He poked his head into the kitchen, saw us, and his eyes bugged. He knew that Scotty and Dan had a couple of Australian women, "aussie chicks" staying with him for a while: but our corporeality, the actual sudden presence of two female bodies in a house that had previously only contained two young male bodies clearly hit him with some force. He barked a slightly startled hello and after some awkward pleasantries, asked with great curiosity how long we intended to stay. When we replied maybe for the long term, and that we might be interested in the 2nd floor apartment, Jim looked even more startled and affected a skeptical stance: "Well. We'll see, we'll see. We can talk abart it, we can talk abart it." He backed away and retreated up the back stairs, carrying his 6 pack of Yuengling lager.
Over the next couple of weeks, Jim's presence became familiar, as every second day he bustled up and down the back stairs and rattled and banged away upstairs fixing whatever it was that needed fixing in the wake of the last tenant. Jim was probably in his late 40s, early 50s, and was a 'yinzer' - what the locals call native Pittsburghers. This meant he was never without a baseball cap, even (or especially) indoors and at night, talked in a crimped, guttural Pittsburgh accent, drank goodly amounts of lager, barracked for the Steelers and engaged in a blue collar profession - in Jim's case, he was a plumber. Tanya had further expanded on the classic yinzer definition by including what she regarded as the defining physical characteristics of native Pittsburgh men: they looked like moles. Cute, cuddly moles perhaps, but moles nevertheless.
When we had finally made the decision to stay, we lay in wait for Jim's next appearance. One afternoon we spied him out the kitchen window, coming through the gate with his tool box in one hand and his lager in the other, looking every inch an industrious mole. We stopped him and told him we were definitely interested in renting the apartment. Jim affected a skeptical stance again. "Well, nah, well nah, do yez have a job? How are yez gonna pay the rent if yez dont have a job?" Luckily Tanya had just been offered some teaching work at the Point Park University film faculty; I mumbled some outright lie about doing "contract work".
However, as it turned out, Jim didn't actually require much convincing. He tried to look hard nosed, and complained sternly that "every tenant sez thar gonna pay the rent but they don't" (his last tenant had split without warning, rent in arrears). But moles, as we know, do not have hard noses, they have soft noses, and after chatting to Jim for a while, he loosened up quickly. Soon, we were heading up the steps and he was showing us proudly around the newly painted apartment. He showed us how he was now fixing the shelves in the kitchen and even started asking us what other repairs we thought we might need. This was a first for Tanya and I: neither of us had ever had a landlord who was anxious to improve a property to the tenant's liking. Jim was turning out to be just like everyone else we had met in Pittsburgh: generous-hearted to a fault.
At one point, as Jim was showing us the downstairs bedroom he said: "Theres a bedroom for one of yez." then he glanced at us and added in an almost apologetic tone of voice "Or both of yez! What yez get up to is none of my business! You know yez can do what yez want, do what yez want. Doesn't worry me!" He paused and he looked at us. We smiled broadly and didn't respond. We moved out onto the verandah so Jim could show us the sealant he intended to apply to the railings. We mentioned we would be continuing to share some facilities and tasks (such as gardening) with the boys. Jim couldn't help himself again: "Well, nah, one big happy family is it?" he asked with another meaningful stare in his wide eyes. "I mean, I don't want to pry, what yez all get up to is your business, none of my business, yez can get up to whatever you want!" In Jim's mind, 227 45 St had clearly turned into a hothouse of sexual intrigue - just who was sleeping with who? The possibilities were endless! and exciting! anyway you cared to think about it.
T and I just smiled knowingly back at Jim after every leading statement and continued to ask questions about the apartment. We let his imagination continue to cook away.
The Boston Marriage
We started to move in our very few belongings the last week of October. As we set up our new home over the following weeks, we became aware that there was a term for our new co-habitation status. Scotty sent us a link to an MS article entitled "So are you two together?" The article was about women who decide to move in together to provide each other with emotional support, share financial responsibilities and work together on creative or other kinds of joint endeavors. Other people (such as our landlord, who reminded me strongly of the forever perplexed and titillated Mr Roper in the classic '70s British sit-com "Man About the House") would often assume a lesbian relationship where this was not the case. The term for this kind of living choice was a "boston marriage" - a term derived from Henry James' 1886 novel The Bostonians whose main female characters have chosen to move in together as each other's "helpmeets".
Our ability to actually set up the rudiments of a household was assisted greatly by the financial generosity of donations from family and friends, particularly those triggered by the now infamous "flying mattress incident". We were also highly dependent on the only two people in Pittsburgh we knew with cars - Charlie and Scotty - to help ferry us around to buy household goods and act as our surrogate husbands. One glorious day, we found three perfectly good (if somewhat faded) armchairs, plus a couple of sidetables just sitting outside a church around the corner from us on 46th St. Scotty was once again pressed into service with his Chevvy pick up, and by late afternoon our loungeroom started to look like a loungeroom.
Jim continued to drop around and fix things, and we started to enjoy his company. One night when we were hanging out with Scotty downstairs, he even went next door to the mysterious AmVets hall (he was a Vet as it turned out) and bought us all back a bunch of beer. This was no small favor as in Pittsburgh, for reasons that defy all logic, you can easily walk down the road and buy dangerously cheap wine and hard liquor from a liquor store, but the only place you can buy beer is from specially designated outlets. Why relatively low alcohol beverages are in restricted supply whereas serious liver and brain corroding beverages are everywhere is beyond me. But it made us especially grateful to Jim for saving us having to go on a quest to find a distant beer depot.
Our Boston marriage was certainly more functional than Jim's. Jim had divorced after only 4 years, but 2 years later the divorce proceedings carried on and were clearly causing him a great deal of pain and anxiety. We felt sorry for him, as he had a good heart, and clearly his general yinzer fondness for brews had developed into a stronger addiction to cope with post-marital stress. However, he had not lost his sense of humor and he too became another surrogate husband, cheerfully complaining about "typical women, always wantin' stuff done round the haus" as he trudged in with his tool box and beer to fix a blocked drain, or to bleed the heaters.
Jim was perhaps becoming a little too comfortable in his role as surrogate husband as one night last week he gave a perfunctory knock and walked in the kitchen door, starting to tell me how the boiler pressure was all wrong and needed adjusting when he stopped dead in his tracks. There I was sitting in the loungeroom in our borrowed pine hutch having a drink with another man. It was only Charlie, who had dropped in briefly after some new errand he had uncomplainingly done on our behalf. However, the sight of a strange man in our apartment was enough to make Jim visibly embarrassed, and clearly provided yet more fodder for an already inflamed imagination. He moved quickly upstairs to Tanya's attic room to adjust the bleeds, then hurried down back past us again moving quietly and sheepishly as if he had interrupted something momentous. I burst out laughing after he left.
The extraordinary alien
Something momentous did occur, though, a couple of days later, as I accompanied Charlie to see an immigration lawyer about my plight. My visa was due to run out the following week. To say this caused me some anxiety was an understatement: I had just put down a deposit and moved into an apartment in a town I was determined to live in with no legal means of staying or working there. This was a major cause of waking up in the middle of the night and spending hours focusing on train horn harmonics. Charlie had to see the lawyer on behalf of Dan Jemmett, a British playwright who also wanted to stay in Pittsburgh. He asked me to come along so we could get some advice on my situation too.
Prior to the meeting, I did some research on visa categories, and for the first time I saw a glimmer of hope. The category of visa that Dan was applying for might - just might - apply to me. That visa category was an EB-1 or "extraordinary alien" visa. To qualify to be an "extraordinary alien" you had to have received an academy award (it was THAT easy); but more relevant to my situation, you could also be considered if you had an outstanding record of achievement in your field of endeavor. As I scrolled through the criteria, it dawned on me that my years of slogging it away punching out electronic and electronic influenced music, album after album, might make me an "extraordinary alien". After all, I had been nominated for an ARIA once, wasn't that kind of extraordinary? It certainly stunned me at the time.
Charlie oscillates with nervous energy pretty much all of the time. As we sat in the all white po-mo waiting area, I too was oscillating - if someone could have plugged us into a circuit board and hooked us up to an amplifier, we would have made a very high pitched sound. Larry, our lawyer, greeted us warmly and ushered us into the conference room, asking us to take a seat at an extremely long walnut table. The small talk consisted of Larry's plans for the sterile white foyer - he intended to use it to showcase local artists' work. Charlie quickly jumped at the chance to offer to broker curatorial services as part of a deal, and within minutes he was gone, ferried away by the marketing lady to talk artwork turkey. I sat alone with the lawyer, almost unable to keep my buttocks on the chair due to anxiety and looked at him as a penitent with heavy sins might look at a confessor.
Larry asked me what I wanted and I mumbled that I well, just wanted to stay here, and write and perform music. Larry nodded enthusiastically and, after asking after my visa status, noted that we were "looking at a rather tight timeframe" to sort all this out. Then he put on his glasses and started reading the material I had sent him - my CV/biography and the two pages worth of self-promoting bravado I had put together as my claims to be an "extraordinary alien". The funny thing was, though, that as I had sat down the previous night, gone through the acceptance criteria and jotted down my potential claims, I realised that I had, in fact, achieved stuff. I had always moved through my music career like a salmon spawning up-stream: I never looked behind me or thought about what I'd done, after an album or project had been completed and promoted, I just wanted to hurry up and get onto the next one. But as I forced myself to go back over the last decade, particularly over the tons of press clippings that I'd scanned before I left Australia, I thought maybe if you were looking at all this from a consciousness other than my own self-deprecating Australian consciousness, particularly if yours was an American can-do, boosterish consciousness, you might form the opinion I was a person of some note in my field. You might start slowly mouthing the words "extraordinary alien".
Larry scanned the documents silently then put them down and looked at my half-terrified, half-pleading face. "This is excellent. No problem, I'm almost certain you will qualify. The green card takes about a year, but in the meantime we can rustle up an application that should be able to get you a temporary work permit so you can stay here while we work on the EB-1 process." It was a Rocky moment. I leapt up from the chair and punched the air:"YEEEESSSSSS!!!!" I cried, then composed myself and sat down. It did indeed seem possible that I was not just any old alien; I could hear the theme from Close Encounters start to build, I could see the massive disk of light descend from the sky over the Devil's Tower formation, I could see rows upon rows of speechless people, faces upturned in awe: they were looking at me as I emerged triumphantly from the spacecraft and started to walk grandly towards them: watch out America here I come - I'm an extraordinary alien!
Tuesday, November 18, 2008
Pittsburgh (Part2) - Hope
by Nicole Skeltys
Graeme and Eugenie: the ties that bind
Last night I Skyped Canberra to try and speak to Eugenie, my adopted Mum. I have been more than usually anxious about Graeme, my adopted Dad, for over a week now. When I was in Philadelphia I received an email from Eugenie about Graeme with news I never wanted to get. Graeme was in hospital, he had had a massive stroke which left him paralysed down the left side of his body. In shock, I read the email twice, once out loud to Tanya who gasped.
My heart wrenched. I felt a deep tangle of emotions which even now, I struggle to describe.
Graeme had been there for me through all my major life transitions and struggles over the last 10 years.
In 1997, I finally made a break out of the sterile, small town/ government-town atmosphere of Canberra, where I had been working in the public service since graduation, trying to save some money. I fled to the music haven of Melbourne, where I was initially giddy with the stimulation of being in a real town with real stuff happening all the time. Here were lots of great venues, cool bars, restaurants, large herds of people from other cultures and sub-cultures, people who knew how to dress snappy. I was at the time in a long-term relationship with Peter, who I had met at University, and he and I moved into an old warehouse on top of a shop in Smith St, in the hip inner city suburb of Fitzroy. Each morning I would walk down the crowded street like I was stoned, listening joyfully to all the different languages being spoken, smiling at all the junkies and freaks, delightedly sucking in the dank pot-pourri of Vietnamese cooking, musty second hand clothes shops, and pollution. Trams crashed past my windows late into the night, as soothing as the throb of the ocean. When I met new people, I would joke that I had just spent the last 7 years "in a sensory deprivation tank", which I still think is a pretty accurate description of Australia's capital city even today. Melbourne, in contrast, was an acid trip.
Graeme had been my last boss at the Department of Finance; but once our formal relationship ended, a richer connection developed. We stayed in email contact. Gradually we realised we were starting to rely upon each other to talk about our minor worries and celebrate our little life victories. We emailed each other regularly, not every day, but frequently enough to make it feel like our lives were becoming more and more connected. Over the years, Graeme would come down to visit, often as part of a work trip, or sometimes just to visit his ex-wife's sister, and to see me. When my relationship with Peter ended, and I found I could no longer afford to live in increasingly yuppie-crammed Fitzroy, I moved further out to a share house in Brunswick, a sprawling working class suburb full of Italians, Greek, Turks, Arabs and eco-activists. The house was '70s 'wog kitsch', and featured a little concrete porch facing the plane-tree lined street. Graeme and I would spend many hours on the porch, watching the Greek mommas vigorously sweep much hated leaves from their gardens out onto the street. We'd drink wine and discuss relationships, his kids' ups and downs, people we knew, spirituality, politics, all the while giggling a great deal as we shared the same irreverent sense of humor.
Graeme became more and more important to me as a shoulder I could lean on, an older, wiser man I could rely upon to give me unconditional love and inflinchingly honest advice. My relationship with my own father had been distant. As a child I knew he loved me very much as he was always giving me presents and was proud of both myself and my brother's academic achievements. But he was a reserved man, and hid much emotional turmoil behind his proud Lithuanian masculinity. He was a taxi driver and a workaholic, driving late into the night, 6-7 days a week. When he got home in the early hours of the morning, he would go down to the rumpus room which he had helped build, put on his headphones and play the Lowrey organ for hours - although he was a war refugee from a poor farming background, he had taught himself (amongst many other skills) to read and play music. Late one night, he did not come home. There was a knock on the door, and I got out of bed to answer it. There was a young policeman standing there who held his cap in his hand and looked down awkwardly as he told me my father had committed suicide by hanging. I was only 14, which meant that I then went through the formative years or adolescence and teenage-hood not knowing what it would be like to have fatherly support around.
Later in my life, Graeme filled that gap. His naturally warm and generous heart simply expanded to include myself. Three years ago, as I went through the durm und strang of yet another relationship breakdown, Graeme was there, patiently wading through my angst ridden emails, striking just the right balance between genuine concern for my broken heart and fatherly annoyance that I should be so bonkers over someone who Graeme regarded as "a twit". Graeme would often refer with pride to the success of his own relationship with Eugenie, his second wife. While they argued about many topics, he regarded this as a sign of relationship health, that the friction (within bounds) kept the spark alive and indicated genuine engagement. He adored Eugenie, who was temperamentally quite opposite to him in many ways - she was a highly gifted landscape painter, who could let fly with strong emotions at dinner parties, particularly when she felt in the presence of fools, a situation which, in Canberra, happens particularly often. Graeme told me over and over again he and E accepted and valued each other's differences, and that was a key to their relationship longevity.
In mid-August 2006, Graeme 'just happened' to be down for a visit when the Queensland police rang to tell me they had found my mother, she had died suddenly in her Brisbane flat. I could not have got through that night or the following few weeks without Graeme and Eugenie's tireless emotional and practical support. And when 6 months later, I was diagnosed with breast cancer, Graeme flew down and stayed, sharing the journey with me, making sure I got through the surgery and the subsequent diagnosis ok. Before I left for my epic supertramp through the US, Graeme and Eugenie let me know that I always have a home with them if I need it, they are my family and will always be there for me.
The night I got the news about Graeme's stroke, I called Eugenie who turned out to be at the hospital in the stroke ward with Graeme. When she passed me onto Graeme, he could hardly speak, and his voice was almost unrecognisable, like that of a frightened child. When I finally put down the phone, after a long silence, I recognised a familiar emotion - grief. Grief that this formerly cheerful, energetic, charismatic man was lying scarcely able to move in a hospital bed, facing awful uncertainties about his future. I could feel his own grief, frustration and terror about the loss of bodily power. But I also grieved for myself, that my rock had crumbled, that the person who I loved and could rely upon in my hour of need now was in direst need himself. And here I was thousands of miles away, helpless.
For two nights I hardly slept, considering seriously whether or not to fly home immediately and join Eugenie. Tanya was disturbed too, as she and Graeme had hit if off when they met briefly before we left for America. Graeme had come down to Melbourne to visit before I left, as he knew he may not see me for a long time. After our first group lunch at Bimbo's pizzeria on Brunswick St, Graeme had pulled me aside at the bar while T had gone to the toilet (thats a 'restroom' in American), and said "Shes great, you'll make a great team". Although he could now scarcely form sentences, he had asked after Tanya when I called him.
But then I considered the situation more objectively, and realised that Graeme would be facing a long recovery and rehabilitation process, after the initial crisis rally-around, many friends and family would probably taper off, I could be of most help in a few months time when I had originally planned to use my return flight to Australia.
Last night I found myself talking to a woman with a rich Scottish accent, Graeme's niece who was staying with Eugenie and helping her out. She told me progress was slow but steady. Some mobility and balance was being gained. Graeme was finding it easier, although still tiring, to talk. I asked after his spirits. "He keeps saying how much he is determined to ride his motor bike again" she said, adding sadly "But the doctors say that won't be possible." I thought about my own journey through cancer, and the number of stories I read about sick and gravely injured people beating the statistics, people written off by the medical profession who pulled through, some testaments to the individual's sheer pig-dog determination to survive, others bordering on evidence of divine intervention, miracles. I said "The biggest healing power of all is hope. Graeme needs hope more than anything else. I'm glad he is thinking about his beloved bike. Its a symbol of hope."
Hope
Three weeks ago today I clicked on "post" for my first blog about Pittsburgh. I was in the bleakest of moods because of the dramatic loss of my brand new mattress. It had blown off the back of Scotty's Chevvy pick-up on the way back from the shop, and instead of providing me with badly needed nights of soft passage into the land of nod, it had turned into a terrifying zeppelin with a short lived flight down the highway, crashing to its premature smouldering end under the wheels of an SUV. More than that, both my money and my visa situation were looking hopeless. I loved PIttsburgh and I loved the people I had met here, but I couldn't see how I could keep the dream going much longer.
Things were continuing to look up for Tanya, as (thanks to Charlie yet again) she was offered the job of filming five promotional reels for Mount Washington's Grandview Scenic Byway Park, the newcomer in Pittsburgh's impressive cornucopia of parks. The park's authority wanted a series short promotional films shot over all 4 seasons. I could do sound design, music and narration...provided, of course, I could somehow stay in Pittsburgh.
The day after the blog post, Charlie emailed. He asked if T and I wanted to go for a ride to a local music shop. I agreed for the sake of an outing from our freezing flat, although musical ambitions were far from my mind. As we cruised down more leafy autumnal Pittsburgh streets, I was preoccupied with the problem of how we could get hold of another mattress for free. The concept "free mattress" was blooming and repeating in my mind like a Hindu chant. At the shop, I wandered around in a distracted sleep deprived haze, twiddling with a few synths. When Charlie asked which one would be best for The Jilted Brides, I pointed at the Korg X50 and said it was very good value and would do the trick, I would buy something like that one day. Suddenly, Charlie was at the counter clutching the Korg, handing over cash. When I realized what was happening, I tried to protest, but to no avail. Is there a word for "feeling shocked, humbled and made speechlessly happy with gratitude?". Well there should be, lets say its "shumbled". I was shumbled. I remained quiet in the back of the BMW, occasionally stroking my brand new Korg, all the way back to our Lawrenceville flat.
The day after that, I received an email from Tom Gates, a man I had met once in New York. Tom was a partner in an ultra-cool music management/publishing company called Nettwerk. He liked our music and was supportive of our crazy journey, which made us feel good as this guy had discovered then managed Cold Play and was as warm as he was smart. Tom wanted to know how much money I needed to keep going, 'just tell me straight how much you need', he'd help me out. When I got the email, I was shumbled all over again - someone I hardly knew was offering me hard cash to keep going.
And this was quickly followed by more offers of help: Nick Meyers, an old friend and ex-lover from Sydney, offered to cover the cost of the AWOL mattress: when we next looked at the bank balance, there was an extra $2000 sitting there, enough for 4 mattresses!! Gabrielle Dalton, an Australian film producer who is a friend of Tanyas but who I have only met once, also put money into both our accounts, to help us improve on our scanty can-o-beans biased grocery list and "buy yourselves some good food!". And my dearest oldest friend in Melbourne, Kazza, offered to go through all the expense and paperwork of organising to sell my little Hyundai for me, so i could get more cash that way too.
As a result of this extraordinary outpouring of generosity by strangers and friends, I felt my spirits start to climb again. It started to become clear to me that neither I nor T were entirely on our own. We wouldn't fail to start a new, more hopeful life, we wouldn't sink into penury and oblivion, because there was a safety net. A safety net made of the kindness, altruism and passionate imaginations of people we had had the great good fortune to become friends with over our lives. People who would help us out because they believed in us, they believed in ideals of freedom, kookiness and romance, and they believed in 'spreading the love'.
And I felt that what was happening on a personal scale for me, was happening for America. Over the last few weeks, the Obama campaign had boiled down to a simple image; Obama's handsome face stenciled with primary colors , tilted upwards, looking passionately but intelligently into the distance, stylistically hearkening back to a time of late '60s cultural revolution and optimism. This poster was all over America. I saw his youthful, black, iconic face in residential and shop windows - cafes, supermarkets, bars, record shops, book shops, clothes shops, libraries, everywhere, all over Montana, all over Colorado, all over New York, all over Pennyslvania, everywhere I went across the country. And underneath his face was one word: HOPE.
Yes, we can!
On Tuesday 4 November, Charlie lined up a meeting between myself and Councilman Bill Peduto, a progressive local Pittsburgh politician with wide ranging portfolio responsibilities and interests, including arts and cultural development. Bill had at one stage been recognised by the Democratic Leadership Council as one of the "100 to watch" New Democrats in the nation. Charlie described Bill as a man of impeccable integrity and vision and who should be the next Mayor of Pittsburgh. I was glad to be meeting a rising star Democrat on this historic day, the day when Americans had to decide if they wanted more of Bush's policies delivered in the Republican chicken-suit of McCain or if they wanted real change as represented by Obama. I was meeting Bill because there was a chance he could help me find employment in Pittsburgh, a sponsor to help me stay in America. It was, I thought, a slim chance, but one worth taking.
We shook hands outside a Butler St cafe, and started to shuffle towards the door. Before we got there, cars beeped and waved in recognition to Bill. We were then further delayed by another pedestrian recognising Bill and wanting to shake hands and chat. When we finally got into the cafe, the cafe owner lit up when she saw him, and more local political gossip was exchanged before we could order our sandwiches. I noted this was the life of a popular Pittsburgher politician, Bill had all the visibility of a sheriff in a one horse town. Still, Bill thrived on the interaction, he was clearly a people's representative born and bred.
We talked about Bill's history in the Democrat party, how he had opposed the Iraq war right from the start and initially paid the price by being marginalised by the party's power brokers. As time wore on, and popular opinion began to swing against the war, his status in the party rose too. Now he was now one of 8 local Pittsburgh Councilmen; his personal priorities were to tackle environmental sustainability initiatives, social equity programs, improved public transport, and enhanced support for the arts.
As we rose to leave from our lunch, Bill suddenly said: "Don't worry, I'll help you. I know everyone involved in the local not for profit arts and welfare sector. I can help you find a job. And I know a Congressman who can help with the visa process too. Together we got a friend's wife released from a Chinese prison where she had been held for her Fulan Gong beliefs. If we can do that, we can help an Australian stay in America". I felt shumbled again, as Bill had now beat the record of complete strangers wanting to help me out - we had known each other for less than an hour.
As we parted ways outside of the cafe, instead of shaking hands we now spontaneously gave each other a hug. I said "God help us, that we win tonight. What are you doing? Are you hanging out with some Democrat folk?". He responded with a supremely confident shake of the head "N'ah. I'm just going to play ice-hockey with some kids. Obama is going to win. Its in the bag".
As I trudged back up the hill to our 45th St apartment, I drank in Bill's confidence about the election results. He'd crunched the numbers, he knew the predictions, better than most. So it was really going to happen?! We would soon have a new, black, young, progressive president of the United States? and (just as life changing from my own micro-personal perspective) - I would have real help for me to remain in this country? For both those reasons, I felt more and more tension unravel out of my body. When I reached home, I made a quick dinner then fell asleep early.
The next morning, I woke up at dawn and rushed out to log-on to find out the election results. The first email headline that came through was from my dear old friend Aaron, that told me everything I needed to know, that told me that an historic change had happened in America, and there was now hope for a better global future:
"YES WE CAN!!!!!!!!!!"
Graeme and Eugenie: the ties that bind
Last night I Skyped Canberra to try and speak to Eugenie, my adopted Mum. I have been more than usually anxious about Graeme, my adopted Dad, for over a week now. When I was in Philadelphia I received an email from Eugenie about Graeme with news I never wanted to get. Graeme was in hospital, he had had a massive stroke which left him paralysed down the left side of his body. In shock, I read the email twice, once out loud to Tanya who gasped.
My heart wrenched. I felt a deep tangle of emotions which even now, I struggle to describe.
Graeme had been there for me through all my major life transitions and struggles over the last 10 years.
In 1997, I finally made a break out of the sterile, small town/ government-town atmosphere of Canberra, where I had been working in the public service since graduation, trying to save some money. I fled to the music haven of Melbourne, where I was initially giddy with the stimulation of being in a real town with real stuff happening all the time. Here were lots of great venues, cool bars, restaurants, large herds of people from other cultures and sub-cultures, people who knew how to dress snappy. I was at the time in a long-term relationship with Peter, who I had met at University, and he and I moved into an old warehouse on top of a shop in Smith St, in the hip inner city suburb of Fitzroy. Each morning I would walk down the crowded street like I was stoned, listening joyfully to all the different languages being spoken, smiling at all the junkies and freaks, delightedly sucking in the dank pot-pourri of Vietnamese cooking, musty second hand clothes shops, and pollution. Trams crashed past my windows late into the night, as soothing as the throb of the ocean. When I met new people, I would joke that I had just spent the last 7 years "in a sensory deprivation tank", which I still think is a pretty accurate description of Australia's capital city even today. Melbourne, in contrast, was an acid trip.
Graeme had been my last boss at the Department of Finance; but once our formal relationship ended, a richer connection developed. We stayed in email contact. Gradually we realised we were starting to rely upon each other to talk about our minor worries and celebrate our little life victories. We emailed each other regularly, not every day, but frequently enough to make it feel like our lives were becoming more and more connected. Over the years, Graeme would come down to visit, often as part of a work trip, or sometimes just to visit his ex-wife's sister, and to see me. When my relationship with Peter ended, and I found I could no longer afford to live in increasingly yuppie-crammed Fitzroy, I moved further out to a share house in Brunswick, a sprawling working class suburb full of Italians, Greek, Turks, Arabs and eco-activists. The house was '70s 'wog kitsch', and featured a little concrete porch facing the plane-tree lined street. Graeme and I would spend many hours on the porch, watching the Greek mommas vigorously sweep much hated leaves from their gardens out onto the street. We'd drink wine and discuss relationships, his kids' ups and downs, people we knew, spirituality, politics, all the while giggling a great deal as we shared the same irreverent sense of humor.
Graeme became more and more important to me as a shoulder I could lean on, an older, wiser man I could rely upon to give me unconditional love and inflinchingly honest advice. My relationship with my own father had been distant. As a child I knew he loved me very much as he was always giving me presents and was proud of both myself and my brother's academic achievements. But he was a reserved man, and hid much emotional turmoil behind his proud Lithuanian masculinity. He was a taxi driver and a workaholic, driving late into the night, 6-7 days a week. When he got home in the early hours of the morning, he would go down to the rumpus room which he had helped build, put on his headphones and play the Lowrey organ for hours - although he was a war refugee from a poor farming background, he had taught himself (amongst many other skills) to read and play music. Late one night, he did not come home. There was a knock on the door, and I got out of bed to answer it. There was a young policeman standing there who held his cap in his hand and looked down awkwardly as he told me my father had committed suicide by hanging. I was only 14, which meant that I then went through the formative years or adolescence and teenage-hood not knowing what it would be like to have fatherly support around.
Later in my life, Graeme filled that gap. His naturally warm and generous heart simply expanded to include myself. Three years ago, as I went through the durm und strang of yet another relationship breakdown, Graeme was there, patiently wading through my angst ridden emails, striking just the right balance between genuine concern for my broken heart and fatherly annoyance that I should be so bonkers over someone who Graeme regarded as "a twit". Graeme would often refer with pride to the success of his own relationship with Eugenie, his second wife. While they argued about many topics, he regarded this as a sign of relationship health, that the friction (within bounds) kept the spark alive and indicated genuine engagement. He adored Eugenie, who was temperamentally quite opposite to him in many ways - she was a highly gifted landscape painter, who could let fly with strong emotions at dinner parties, particularly when she felt in the presence of fools, a situation which, in Canberra, happens particularly often. Graeme told me over and over again he and E accepted and valued each other's differences, and that was a key to their relationship longevity.
In mid-August 2006, Graeme 'just happened' to be down for a visit when the Queensland police rang to tell me they had found my mother, she had died suddenly in her Brisbane flat. I could not have got through that night or the following few weeks without Graeme and Eugenie's tireless emotional and practical support. And when 6 months later, I was diagnosed with breast cancer, Graeme flew down and stayed, sharing the journey with me, making sure I got through the surgery and the subsequent diagnosis ok. Before I left for my epic supertramp through the US, Graeme and Eugenie let me know that I always have a home with them if I need it, they are my family and will always be there for me.
The night I got the news about Graeme's stroke, I called Eugenie who turned out to be at the hospital in the stroke ward with Graeme. When she passed me onto Graeme, he could hardly speak, and his voice was almost unrecognisable, like that of a frightened child. When I finally put down the phone, after a long silence, I recognised a familiar emotion - grief. Grief that this formerly cheerful, energetic, charismatic man was lying scarcely able to move in a hospital bed, facing awful uncertainties about his future. I could feel his own grief, frustration and terror about the loss of bodily power. But I also grieved for myself, that my rock had crumbled, that the person who I loved and could rely upon in my hour of need now was in direst need himself. And here I was thousands of miles away, helpless.
For two nights I hardly slept, considering seriously whether or not to fly home immediately and join Eugenie. Tanya was disturbed too, as she and Graeme had hit if off when they met briefly before we left for America. Graeme had come down to Melbourne to visit before I left, as he knew he may not see me for a long time. After our first group lunch at Bimbo's pizzeria on Brunswick St, Graeme had pulled me aside at the bar while T had gone to the toilet (thats a 'restroom' in American), and said "Shes great, you'll make a great team". Although he could now scarcely form sentences, he had asked after Tanya when I called him.
But then I considered the situation more objectively, and realised that Graeme would be facing a long recovery and rehabilitation process, after the initial crisis rally-around, many friends and family would probably taper off, I could be of most help in a few months time when I had originally planned to use my return flight to Australia.
Last night I found myself talking to a woman with a rich Scottish accent, Graeme's niece who was staying with Eugenie and helping her out. She told me progress was slow but steady. Some mobility and balance was being gained. Graeme was finding it easier, although still tiring, to talk. I asked after his spirits. "He keeps saying how much he is determined to ride his motor bike again" she said, adding sadly "But the doctors say that won't be possible." I thought about my own journey through cancer, and the number of stories I read about sick and gravely injured people beating the statistics, people written off by the medical profession who pulled through, some testaments to the individual's sheer pig-dog determination to survive, others bordering on evidence of divine intervention, miracles. I said "The biggest healing power of all is hope. Graeme needs hope more than anything else. I'm glad he is thinking about his beloved bike. Its a symbol of hope."
Hope
Three weeks ago today I clicked on "post" for my first blog about Pittsburgh. I was in the bleakest of moods because of the dramatic loss of my brand new mattress. It had blown off the back of Scotty's Chevvy pick-up on the way back from the shop, and instead of providing me with badly needed nights of soft passage into the land of nod, it had turned into a terrifying zeppelin with a short lived flight down the highway, crashing to its premature smouldering end under the wheels of an SUV. More than that, both my money and my visa situation were looking hopeless. I loved PIttsburgh and I loved the people I had met here, but I couldn't see how I could keep the dream going much longer.
Things were continuing to look up for Tanya, as (thanks to Charlie yet again) she was offered the job of filming five promotional reels for Mount Washington's Grandview Scenic Byway Park, the newcomer in Pittsburgh's impressive cornucopia of parks. The park's authority wanted a series short promotional films shot over all 4 seasons. I could do sound design, music and narration...provided, of course, I could somehow stay in Pittsburgh.
The day after the blog post, Charlie emailed. He asked if T and I wanted to go for a ride to a local music shop. I agreed for the sake of an outing from our freezing flat, although musical ambitions were far from my mind. As we cruised down more leafy autumnal Pittsburgh streets, I was preoccupied with the problem of how we could get hold of another mattress for free. The concept "free mattress" was blooming and repeating in my mind like a Hindu chant. At the shop, I wandered around in a distracted sleep deprived haze, twiddling with a few synths. When Charlie asked which one would be best for The Jilted Brides, I pointed at the Korg X50 and said it was very good value and would do the trick, I would buy something like that one day. Suddenly, Charlie was at the counter clutching the Korg, handing over cash. When I realized what was happening, I tried to protest, but to no avail. Is there a word for "feeling shocked, humbled and made speechlessly happy with gratitude?". Well there should be, lets say its "shumbled". I was shumbled. I remained quiet in the back of the BMW, occasionally stroking my brand new Korg, all the way back to our Lawrenceville flat.
The day after that, I received an email from Tom Gates, a man I had met once in New York. Tom was a partner in an ultra-cool music management/publishing company called Nettwerk. He liked our music and was supportive of our crazy journey, which made us feel good as this guy had discovered then managed Cold Play and was as warm as he was smart. Tom wanted to know how much money I needed to keep going, 'just tell me straight how much you need', he'd help me out. When I got the email, I was shumbled all over again - someone I hardly knew was offering me hard cash to keep going.
And this was quickly followed by more offers of help: Nick Meyers, an old friend and ex-lover from Sydney, offered to cover the cost of the AWOL mattress: when we next looked at the bank balance, there was an extra $2000 sitting there, enough for 4 mattresses!! Gabrielle Dalton, an Australian film producer who is a friend of Tanyas but who I have only met once, also put money into both our accounts, to help us improve on our scanty can-o-beans biased grocery list and "buy yourselves some good food!". And my dearest oldest friend in Melbourne, Kazza, offered to go through all the expense and paperwork of organising to sell my little Hyundai for me, so i could get more cash that way too.
As a result of this extraordinary outpouring of generosity by strangers and friends, I felt my spirits start to climb again. It started to become clear to me that neither I nor T were entirely on our own. We wouldn't fail to start a new, more hopeful life, we wouldn't sink into penury and oblivion, because there was a safety net. A safety net made of the kindness, altruism and passionate imaginations of people we had had the great good fortune to become friends with over our lives. People who would help us out because they believed in us, they believed in ideals of freedom, kookiness and romance, and they believed in 'spreading the love'.
And I felt that what was happening on a personal scale for me, was happening for America. Over the last few weeks, the Obama campaign had boiled down to a simple image; Obama's handsome face stenciled with primary colors , tilted upwards, looking passionately but intelligently into the distance, stylistically hearkening back to a time of late '60s cultural revolution and optimism. This poster was all over America. I saw his youthful, black, iconic face in residential and shop windows - cafes, supermarkets, bars, record shops, book shops, clothes shops, libraries, everywhere, all over Montana, all over Colorado, all over New York, all over Pennyslvania, everywhere I went across the country. And underneath his face was one word: HOPE.
Yes, we can!
On Tuesday 4 November, Charlie lined up a meeting between myself and Councilman Bill Peduto, a progressive local Pittsburgh politician with wide ranging portfolio responsibilities and interests, including arts and cultural development. Bill had at one stage been recognised by the Democratic Leadership Council as one of the "100 to watch" New Democrats in the nation. Charlie described Bill as a man of impeccable integrity and vision and who should be the next Mayor of Pittsburgh. I was glad to be meeting a rising star Democrat on this historic day, the day when Americans had to decide if they wanted more of Bush's policies delivered in the Republican chicken-suit of McCain or if they wanted real change as represented by Obama. I was meeting Bill because there was a chance he could help me find employment in Pittsburgh, a sponsor to help me stay in America. It was, I thought, a slim chance, but one worth taking.
We shook hands outside a Butler St cafe, and started to shuffle towards the door. Before we got there, cars beeped and waved in recognition to Bill. We were then further delayed by another pedestrian recognising Bill and wanting to shake hands and chat. When we finally got into the cafe, the cafe owner lit up when she saw him, and more local political gossip was exchanged before we could order our sandwiches. I noted this was the life of a popular Pittsburgher politician, Bill had all the visibility of a sheriff in a one horse town. Still, Bill thrived on the interaction, he was clearly a people's representative born and bred.
We talked about Bill's history in the Democrat party, how he had opposed the Iraq war right from the start and initially paid the price by being marginalised by the party's power brokers. As time wore on, and popular opinion began to swing against the war, his status in the party rose too. Now he was now one of 8 local Pittsburgh Councilmen; his personal priorities were to tackle environmental sustainability initiatives, social equity programs, improved public transport, and enhanced support for the arts.
As we rose to leave from our lunch, Bill suddenly said: "Don't worry, I'll help you. I know everyone involved in the local not for profit arts and welfare sector. I can help you find a job. And I know a Congressman who can help with the visa process too. Together we got a friend's wife released from a Chinese prison where she had been held for her Fulan Gong beliefs. If we can do that, we can help an Australian stay in America". I felt shumbled again, as Bill had now beat the record of complete strangers wanting to help me out - we had known each other for less than an hour.
As we parted ways outside of the cafe, instead of shaking hands we now spontaneously gave each other a hug. I said "God help us, that we win tonight. What are you doing? Are you hanging out with some Democrat folk?". He responded with a supremely confident shake of the head "N'ah. I'm just going to play ice-hockey with some kids. Obama is going to win. Its in the bag".
As I trudged back up the hill to our 45th St apartment, I drank in Bill's confidence about the election results. He'd crunched the numbers, he knew the predictions, better than most. So it was really going to happen?! We would soon have a new, black, young, progressive president of the United States? and (just as life changing from my own micro-personal perspective) - I would have real help for me to remain in this country? For both those reasons, I felt more and more tension unravel out of my body. When I reached home, I made a quick dinner then fell asleep early.
The next morning, I woke up at dawn and rushed out to log-on to find out the election results. The first email headline that came through was from my dear old friend Aaron, that told me everything I needed to know, that told me that an historic change had happened in America, and there was now hope for a better global future:
"YES WE CAN!!!!!!!!!!"
Monday, October 27, 2008
Pittsburgh (Part 1): The End of the Road?
by Nicole Skeltys
Pittsburgh: Je T'aime!
As I write this, we have been living in Lawrenceville, Pittsburgh, for almost 3 weeks. Lawrenceville is an inner working class Pittsburgh suburb which is in transition to becoming a funkier neighborhood. You can tell its 'up and coming' because there are little designer clothes shop down on Butler St (the main drag) and several quirky art galleries. You can tell it has not yet 'up and come' because the eateries are still dominated by low rent diners offering hoagies with 6 kinds of meat and plenty of cheese, and you can't buy soy milk or sourdough rye bread anywhere.
Lawrenceville, like other similar inner Pittsburgh areas, features steep, narrow streets, zig-zagged with rows and rows of semi-detached houses. These are wooden, thin, multi-storied turn of last century structures with peaked attics, many of them seemingly drawn crookedly by children, then painted in all colors of the rainbow. Most houses have cute little yards and gardens (including ours). Architecturally, sometimes you could be in Amsterdam, sometimes northern England. The air is fresh, the streets are clean. Now, as fall fades the days in earnest, there are psychedelic shocks of colour everywhere, as the maples and other desiduous trees burn themselves up in explosions of orange, scarlet and yellow. Combine this with sweeping views from every corner, and you've got one hell of a picturesque town.
In Lawrenceville and the nearby Strip district, the landscape near the river is dominated by shambling old warehouses from Pittsburgh's former days of steel mill prosperity. At night, freight trains pass by somewhere near here and are heralded by their long lonely piping. I'm hearing it now as I type. Truly one of the loveliest melancholy sounds you can ever hear.
Before we came here, when we announced we were going to spend fall in Pittsburgh, many people looked at us incredulously: "why on earth are you going to that stinking cesspool of a town?" they asked. The answer then was because we wanted to see our poet buddy Scott again, and because he and his roommate were generously offering us a free place to stay for 3 weeks (in their basement). Our fully funded residency with the Blue Ridge colony in Georgia had fallen through at the last minute, and we really needed somewhere to go after New York that cost little, or no money for accommodation.
Pittsburgh in the '60s was described by Frank Lloyd Wright as "hell with the lid off" : a polluted, grimy, rough steel town. Then in the '70s and '80s, the economic basis of the town steadily collapsed as the US became a net importer of steel, and several other iconic companies (such as Heinz) moved many of their jobs elsewhere including overseas. Pittsburgh lost about a quarter of a million jobs throughout the '80s, earning a reputation then as being being one of America's dying, crime riddled "rust belt" towns. But since then, the town has reinvented itself remarkably: its economic base is no longer resource based, but high tech (robotics, biotechnology, medical research and healthcare), academic (the town boasts 8 universities) and (most encouraging for T and I) the arts, supported by numerous foundations and private philanthropists. Boosterish Pittsburgh bank advertisements now quote Forbes.com: "Top 10 world's cleanest and greenest cities", and Places Rated Almanac: "No 1 most livable city in America".
The more we saw of Pittsburgh in the days following our arrival, the more we thought we might have found our new home at long last.
On our first Saturday here, there was an open day where punters could wander into the various local Lawrenceville studios and see artists standing proudly by their creations. T and I spent a glorious sun drenched afternoon wandering from site to site, pouring over paintings, photos, hand-made graphic novellas and encyclopedias, 'found objects', all the while chomping on corn chips and chugging down wines. Everyone we met was happy and relaxed. They told us how cheap it was to live, which meant it was possible to live as an artist and not starve. One woman, a photographer, had moved here from California and her business was now booming - so much so that she had recently purchased a beautiful old former 19th working man's singing school for $80'000 and was fitting it out into a photographic studio, artist rooms, performance space and multimedia complex.
Most people we met expressed amazement at meeting real live Australians - their first reaction also was "Why on earth are you in Pittsburgh?" It appeared Pittsburghers, like most Americans, think of Australia as an impossibly distant sun drenched utopia which no-one in their right minds would ever want to leave. But when we explained that we were artists looking for a new home, everyone quickly told us how great Pittsburgh was for artists, how happy they were living here, and they urged us to stay with great warmth - they really meant it. Local artists liked new artists to move to Pittsburgh, so the community gets bigger, and there is a richer social and creative life for everyone. Everyone gave us their emails, one artist even gave us a free copy of his book of full color prints. And without us having to wheedle at all, people plied us with the names of people in funding bodies that could help us out.
At the end of the day, we walked home, a bit sozzled and on a huge high. "That was one of the most magical days we've had on our trip" Tanya said. I agreed. I felt somewhat overwhelmed, like I'd just been to a love-in and licked everywhere. T said: "My dream has always been to set up my own photographic studio, specialize in portraits. Rents are so cheap, warehouses are so plentiful, you know I think I could actually do it here" I agreed again. Someone with T's extraordinary talent would shine here, and the infrastructure was affordable, it could be done. In Sydney, rents were the same level as New York. In Melbourne, all the old warehouse spaces had been snapped up by developers and turned into 'yuppie dog-box' apartments a decade ago. And when we boarded the plane for North America in May, 1500 people were moving into Melbourne every week, the rental vacancy rate was less than 1% and rents were skyrocketing.
But no matter how cheap it was to live here, would we be able to make a living? It seemed that one person might actually know the answer to that question. As we had wandered around around the Lawrenceville artist studios, the person most artists urged us to meet was a guy called Charlie Humphrey. He is the head of the Pittsburgh Filmmakers Society, the Pittsburgh Arts Center, and the Glassworks Center. He is "the man" they said, the guy who knows everyone in Pittsburgh, he is the philanthropic sluicegate that directs trickles of funding into the quivering outstretched hands of artists. We decided it would be a good idea to see if we could meet with Charlie - very soon.
Charlie: Patron Saint of The Jilted Brides
Sure enough, after we sent Charlie an email outlining our improbably large span of artistic projects (filmmaking, musical performance, video clip production, book writing, travel blogging, photography) he got back to us straight away, saying he was keen to meet us - that day. That was Monday.
However, Monday was the day I had planned to henna my increasingly rat-like hair (I had not had any hair grooming since leaving Australia, except for a $3 bangs trim by a Mexican barber in Austin, who left me with a marked diagonal slope up my forehead). We delayed the meeting until 4 pm so Tanya could slap the muddy slime all over my head at midday, and I could sit there for a few hours, my head incubated in a garbage bag while underneath my follicles changed color as quickly and remarkably as the autumn foliage. When I rinsed all the muck off, I blow-dried my locks and stood back and admired how new I looked. I was more confident now, I could meet the chief executive officer of a prestigious art institution, assured that my radiant mane would speak volumes about my creative skills.
Finally, it was time to set off for our important appointment. We slammed the door behind us at 3 pm, an hour ahead, because we didn't have a car, couldn't afford a taxi and the glory days of Pittsburgh public transport had long passed: we had to walk there. Up the cardiac conditioning hills of Lawrenceville, along the 'Little Italy' stretch of Bloomsfield (which T and I joked should be called 'micro-Italy' due to its barely noticeable Mediterranean character), then over onto Shadyside, along traffic choked Baum Avenue, left into Melwood Avenue, up to the headquarters of the Pittsburgh Filmmakers Institute. As the droll receptionist paged Charlie and said "There are two Aussies here to meet you", I realised that, although I had no expectations whatsoever, I was nervous.
We were greeted enthusiastically by a tall slender man with a mop of greying hair, boyish face, curious kindly eyes and quick movements. As he spoke to us, he oscillated ever so slightly with nervous energy. Within minutes, I could tell this person was not cut in the senior arts bureaucrat mould that I was used to jousting with - he was not the kind of person that "had tickets on themselves" as my mother used to say (Australian slang for a self-important person). Far from that, Charlie was like everyone else we had met so far in Pittsburgh - down to earth, warm and friendly. As the conversation progressed, he too made it clear that he wanted us to stay. "You women have media coming out of your pores. I would consider it a moral victory if I could help you stay in Pittsburgh". He said he would send any work he could our way, and he would introduce us to "everyone we needed to know" in the film and post-production community.
Sure enough, the next day Charlie set the ball rolling for what turned into a week of frenzied networking and socialising. Within a few days, Tanya was being asked if she would like to apply for a job as video projection mistress with a cool multi-media troupe called Squonk Opera. A few days after that, Point Park University asked if she was interested in applying for a position in the film school there, teaching camera and lighting, something she knew lots about due to her training as a cinematographer. Off her own initiative, T got work as a camera operator to film a motivational 'wealth creation' seminar, and was following up a number of other leads on the ever bountiful Craigslist.
Charlie's most spectacular act of generosity, however, happened when I showed him my last two CDs - the Dust album 'Songs', and the as yet unreleased Jilted Brides album 'Larceny of Love'. I had hoped that a US label would want to release 'Larceny' (we certainly couldn't afford to manufacture any), but I had low expectations. In the face of world wide plummeting CD sales, these were very grim times for independent labels, most labels were cutting their roster, not looking for new bands. But it turned out Charlie's hands weren't full enough being the CEO of three major artist institutions, he also played in a band and ran a small music label (no wonder he oscillated!).
At the end of last week, Charlie asked us if we would we like him to manufacture 1000 'Larceny of Love' CDs for us courtesy of his label "Uh Oh Music"?. He loved the music and wanted to be part of the project. We were over the moon. At last, someone was taking a punt on our music, someone thought we were truly destined for a brighter future. And we would have something to sell at gigs, just like any other 'normal' band.
That's it, we agreed, we are staying here. We also agreed that Charlie should henceforth be known as "The Patron Saint of the Jilted Brides", and was clearly in cahoots with the rock and roll angels who had guided our journey thus far.
Jean Luc Godard and kidney beans
The apartment just above Scott and Dan's had become vacant just before we came to Pittsburgh. We decided to rent it out, from the first of November. It was only $600 a month, for a spacious bi-level two bedroom place, renovated kitchen, polished wood floors, garden, and a large balcony with (of course) spectacular views. Our neighbors would be a Veterans hall with fairly mysterious goings on on one side, and a gay couple, Timmy and Jimmy in a little bungalow on the other. When Timmy and Jimmy found out we were moving in, they were delighted. Scott and Dan were excited. Rosy pictures of neighborly pot lucks, swopping garden cuttings and sharing wireless internet access appeared in everyone's minds.
But the strangest thing about the course of events of the last 3 weeks was that is has been like a Godard film. On the one hand, the visuals are all pointing in one direction - happiness, Anna Karina smiling seductively to the camera, beautiful Paris streets, Hollywood musical poses, bonhomie! But underneath, the soundtrack is subtly telling a different story - dialogue out of place, inappropriate music coming in and suddenly stopping, strange sound effects hinting at another world behind what is displayed on the screen. Something is wrong.
That something hit Tanya first. As we started to talk about the costs of setting up the flat (bond, furniture, utilities) she became more agitated. "I'm really going to have to budget" she said, as she had often stated over the course of our journey. But then this became "Actually, I don't know how I can do this". T was about to slip into the shark infested waters of credit card debt. The sea of red was already lapping at her bank statements. I said, "Well, I've still got cash, we'll get by". I had been managing my cash stash like a life support drip, carefully restricting money flow to essential homeopathic droplets.
But over the last few weeks, the financial market Frankenstein had kicked its way into the US/Australian dollar exchange rate and strangled the value out of our pathetic currency. When we arrived in May, the OZ dollar was equivalent to the US dollar. Almost overnight, it lost 40% of its value. I was hemorraging cash, faster and faster.
The make matters worse, the sleeping arrangements in our basement camp were terrible. My blow up mattress regularly lost its air during the night, and as we had no pump in the house with which to blow it back up (we relied on a car pump), I lay for hours awake, twisted on the slowly but insistently deflating lumps of my alleged bed. I tried sleeping on a makeshift arrangement of cushions for a few nights, but this was scarcely any better than lying with my spine crimped into the floor. The floors were paper thin, and Dan's every animal-like movement, along with his sub-woofered I-Tunes playlist, echoed down hour upon hour into our airless, dark living quarters, further disrupting sleep. Each day, I was running on the adrenaline of being in a sensual new place with wonderful people who instantly called me "friend", a place that was seemingly the answer to both T and my longings for a new home. But as the days progressed, my sleep deprived mind started to feel more and more unhinged. I found it harder to concentrate. I felt physically weaker, frightening memories of radiotherapy fatigue started to come back. My emotional stability started to slip.
T and I ran out of food and went for a grocery shop at the local Shop and Save. We found ourselves trying to get enough food for both of us for a week on $40. This isn't actually possible, notwithstanding the appealing giant tins of kidney beans for $1.69 that we purchased. I sat on the bench outside the supermarket as T passed the supermarket chain's discount card back to Scott so he could use it for his own purchases too. I put my head in my hands and noticed all the spittle from previous bench occupiers next to my feet. When T came out, I said, "I can't take anymore of this. I feel completely bleak about my future."
When we got home, Scott went to work at his $5.00 an hour job at the local coffee shop, and I tried to get some daytime sleep on his free bed. Later in the afternoon, I heard a knock on the bedroom door. T came in, tears in her eyes. She had called her father, a man who had separated from her mother when the family was quite young, a man with whom she had a complex and often difficult relationship. She summoned up enough courage to ask for help, and she expected rejection. But he had come through. He even sounded proud at what she had managed to pull off in our crazy American adventures so far. He gave just enough ("no more!") to help her get on her feet and start the new life that was clearly just about to happen.
T was overjoyed: "We are going to be ok! We are not going to freeze and starve through the winter!!" she said. We hugged and I was overjoyed too. A great weight was lifted from my heart. I had never ceased to worry about T's financial situation, which had been more precarious than mine since the beginning of our journey. T's bravery was paying off, long deserved opportunities were opening up for her here. She deserved a break, she deserved the opportunity to establish herself as a formidable photographer, videographer and artistic force to be reckoned with in Pittsburgh and indeed the whole Goddamn US of A! And I was very moved that she was saying "we" would not starve, that we were indeed a team, we would sink or swim together.
Warhol, mattresses and rude awakenings
When T's money came through a couple of days later, at my insistence, we headed off to buy two new mattresses. I explained that I couldn't bear another night without a full sleep, I would literally start to crack up. I was already starting to lose it.
Scott kindly agreed to drive us out to the Northside to forage for mattresses, despite the fact that time would be tight - he had to be back at his coffee shop to work at 3 pm. To our enormous delight, we found two Queen mattresses worth over $1300 in the clearance section of the store for only $300 US (make that $515 in Australian pesos). Giddy with our purchasing good luck, and euphoric at the idea of a good nights sleep at last, we tied the mattresses awkwardly onto the Scott's Chevvy pick-up and took off home with our booty.
Half way there, Scott started to accelerate faster down the highway, anxious to get to work in time. What followed next happened extremely fast and was very shocking. I looked out the rear window to see one of the mattresses rear up with the windforce factor and fly off the truck, off into the face of 3 lanes of busy traffic.
I screamed at Scott to pull over. T and I stared horrified as cars started to veer around the huge obstacle that was half flying, half bouncing across the lanes. A pile up was surely imminent. We somehow got into the emergency lane and pulled up. As the car skidded to a halt, I wondered with terror if a serious accident had occurred yet, and if not, how on earth we were going to get the mattress off the highway before one did. But as I turned to look out the rear window again, what I saw was a surreal divine intervention worthy of a Spinal Tap tour tale- the mattress was being safely dragged towards us under the chasis of a 4 wheel drive under which it had become stuck.
The SUV stopped behind us. T, Scott and I piled out, shaking. I was sure the driver was going to go nuts at us. But instead, a friendly middle aged woman got out and was far more concerned about the (now completely ruined) state of our mattress than the fact that we had almost caused her to have a major accident. She explained apologetically that she had no choice but to try and drive over the mattress because there were cars on either side and behind her who would have collided with her had she attempted evasive action. She waited patiently with us while we struggled and heaved to try and remove the mattress from under the car body, into which it had become wedged. She was on her way to the airport, but was seemed completely unphased and joked that "it was lucky she set off early".
Finally, after much struggle, we got the smouldering, tattered remains of the mattress out and had no choice but to pitch it into a trench by the side of the road. As the woman turned to go back into her SUV and resume a (hopefully completely uneventful) trip to the airport, she dug into her wallet and stuffed something into Scott's hands. Scott, who was (like the rest of us) still in a state of shock, stared in disbelief at his hands - she had given him $25. He started to protest, but she just hopped airily back into her truck wishing us the best of luck and took off.
If you are going to have a highway accident with someone, that woman is the one to do it with.
On the way home, we hardly said a word. My dreams of a good nights sleep lay crumpled off a Pittsburgh highway (we got to see all its lovely layers that would have made it so comfy because they were all now shredded and exposed, like a filleted and smoked fish). We did note that we were very, very lucky that potential catastrophe was averted, that angels had most certainly been at work here to save lives. But the mood in the Chevvy was as dark as the looming thunder clouds.
That night, we tried to cheer ourselves up by attending two Pittsburgh arts events that sounded promising. At the Pittsburgh Fim Institute, there was the opening of an installation by Bill Daniel, an artist who claimed he led a hobo life in a vegetable oil powered truck and made films about his experiences. Sounded like our kind of guy. Then after that, at the Wexner Center, there was a screening of Andy Warhol's "Screen Tests" with live soundtrack performances by super-stylish mood-meisters Britta and Dean, formerly of lauded US indie band Luna.
We arrived at the Institute early. Our new landlord Jim, a lonely middle aged guy who was spending most of his afternoons lavishing attention on fixing up our apartment, kindly offered to drive us to the Institute (after T dropped a few heavy hints), thus saving us another hour's walk. When we got there, we made a beeline for the bar to try and calm our nerves and temporarily blot out the loss of money which we couldn't afford. Later, the artistic irony struck me; two of the biggest and most prestigous contemporary art museums in Pittsburgh are The Mattress Factory and The Andy Warhol Museum. The image of our mattress flying freakily down the highway would have made for perfect Warhol footage, slowed down infinitely and looped. If only I had had the presence of mind to whip out the handycam instead of hyperventilating in horror!
Half way gulping down a wine, I turned around to find to Charlie in the foyer with his beautiful wife and one of his college student daughters. Everyone seemed to be in good spirits and looking forward to the night's entertainment. I realised with growing alarm that I was ill-equiped to deal out conversational niceties, and slunk off to look at Daniel's installation. He had a lot of 'road memorablia' stuck here and there on the wall, plus a scrapbook of 'hobo' musings and doodlings that he was trying to sell. In his bio, Daniel lists a prestigious string of awards, including a Rockefeller nominee and current Guggenheim fellow. I should have felt excited at the idea that in America someone could call themselves an itinerant while still receiving lots of money. But instead I felt nothing.
We got a lift to the Warhol/ Britta and Dean concert with Charlie and his wife, in their BMW. Once there, I ordered a whisky for myself and T which turned out to be almost pint-sized. I watched the performance in an alcoholic daze. Some of the staring, tear streaked faces of Warhol's screen test victims mirrored my own bleak soul-state too well. After a while, I realised I couldn't take anymore and suddenly got up. I stumbled past the rows of Pittsburgh's glitterati, mumbled my apologies to a startled T, and fled. I found myself outside in the pouring rain. Next thing I know I was in a stretch limousine with a chubby guy who liked '80s music. Luckily, I could still remember where I lived, or rather subsisted, although everything else in my consciousness was fading from view. The limo driver and I finally got home, after singing together many '80s hits playing on the local hits and memories stations. I groped my way up the stairs to sleep on the remaining, surviving mattress in the freezing cold in our new apartment, which had yet to be connected to heating or electricity.
As I lay there, the reality of my financial situation hit me with complete clarity, a rude awakening. I was going to run out of money very soon. And, unlike T, I was not a dual citizen, I did not have an American passport. I only had a tourist visa, that, like my money, would run out in a few weeks. I couldn't work here. I couldn't stay here. What had I been thinking all this time? Why on earth did I think I could make a new life here? For the first time in many weeks, I was in a bedroom by myself. And for the first time since I had left Australia, I cried all night.
Pittsburgh: Je T'aime!
As I write this, we have been living in Lawrenceville, Pittsburgh, for almost 3 weeks. Lawrenceville is an inner working class Pittsburgh suburb which is in transition to becoming a funkier neighborhood. You can tell its 'up and coming' because there are little designer clothes shop down on Butler St (the main drag) and several quirky art galleries. You can tell it has not yet 'up and come' because the eateries are still dominated by low rent diners offering hoagies with 6 kinds of meat and plenty of cheese, and you can't buy soy milk or sourdough rye bread anywhere.
Lawrenceville, like other similar inner Pittsburgh areas, features steep, narrow streets, zig-zagged with rows and rows of semi-detached houses. These are wooden, thin, multi-storied turn of last century structures with peaked attics, many of them seemingly drawn crookedly by children, then painted in all colors of the rainbow. Most houses have cute little yards and gardens (including ours). Architecturally, sometimes you could be in Amsterdam, sometimes northern England. The air is fresh, the streets are clean. Now, as fall fades the days in earnest, there are psychedelic shocks of colour everywhere, as the maples and other desiduous trees burn themselves up in explosions of orange, scarlet and yellow. Combine this with sweeping views from every corner, and you've got one hell of a picturesque town.
In Lawrenceville and the nearby Strip district, the landscape near the river is dominated by shambling old warehouses from Pittsburgh's former days of steel mill prosperity. At night, freight trains pass by somewhere near here and are heralded by their long lonely piping. I'm hearing it now as I type. Truly one of the loveliest melancholy sounds you can ever hear.
Before we came here, when we announced we were going to spend fall in Pittsburgh, many people looked at us incredulously: "why on earth are you going to that stinking cesspool of a town?" they asked. The answer then was because we wanted to see our poet buddy Scott again, and because he and his roommate were generously offering us a free place to stay for 3 weeks (in their basement). Our fully funded residency with the Blue Ridge colony in Georgia had fallen through at the last minute, and we really needed somewhere to go after New York that cost little, or no money for accommodation.
Pittsburgh in the '60s was described by Frank Lloyd Wright as "hell with the lid off" : a polluted, grimy, rough steel town. Then in the '70s and '80s, the economic basis of the town steadily collapsed as the US became a net importer of steel, and several other iconic companies (such as Heinz) moved many of their jobs elsewhere including overseas. Pittsburgh lost about a quarter of a million jobs throughout the '80s, earning a reputation then as being being one of America's dying, crime riddled "rust belt" towns. But since then, the town has reinvented itself remarkably: its economic base is no longer resource based, but high tech (robotics, biotechnology, medical research and healthcare), academic (the town boasts 8 universities) and (most encouraging for T and I) the arts, supported by numerous foundations and private philanthropists. Boosterish Pittsburgh bank advertisements now quote Forbes.com: "Top 10 world's cleanest and greenest cities", and Places Rated Almanac: "No 1 most livable city in America".
The more we saw of Pittsburgh in the days following our arrival, the more we thought we might have found our new home at long last.
On our first Saturday here, there was an open day where punters could wander into the various local Lawrenceville studios and see artists standing proudly by their creations. T and I spent a glorious sun drenched afternoon wandering from site to site, pouring over paintings, photos, hand-made graphic novellas and encyclopedias, 'found objects', all the while chomping on corn chips and chugging down wines. Everyone we met was happy and relaxed. They told us how cheap it was to live, which meant it was possible to live as an artist and not starve. One woman, a photographer, had moved here from California and her business was now booming - so much so that she had recently purchased a beautiful old former 19th working man's singing school for $80'000 and was fitting it out into a photographic studio, artist rooms, performance space and multimedia complex.
Most people we met expressed amazement at meeting real live Australians - their first reaction also was "Why on earth are you in Pittsburgh?" It appeared Pittsburghers, like most Americans, think of Australia as an impossibly distant sun drenched utopia which no-one in their right minds would ever want to leave. But when we explained that we were artists looking for a new home, everyone quickly told us how great Pittsburgh was for artists, how happy they were living here, and they urged us to stay with great warmth - they really meant it. Local artists liked new artists to move to Pittsburgh, so the community gets bigger, and there is a richer social and creative life for everyone. Everyone gave us their emails, one artist even gave us a free copy of his book of full color prints. And without us having to wheedle at all, people plied us with the names of people in funding bodies that could help us out.
At the end of the day, we walked home, a bit sozzled and on a huge high. "That was one of the most magical days we've had on our trip" Tanya said. I agreed. I felt somewhat overwhelmed, like I'd just been to a love-in and licked everywhere. T said: "My dream has always been to set up my own photographic studio, specialize in portraits. Rents are so cheap, warehouses are so plentiful, you know I think I could actually do it here" I agreed again. Someone with T's extraordinary talent would shine here, and the infrastructure was affordable, it could be done. In Sydney, rents were the same level as New York. In Melbourne, all the old warehouse spaces had been snapped up by developers and turned into 'yuppie dog-box' apartments a decade ago. And when we boarded the plane for North America in May, 1500 people were moving into Melbourne every week, the rental vacancy rate was less than 1% and rents were skyrocketing.
But no matter how cheap it was to live here, would we be able to make a living? It seemed that one person might actually know the answer to that question. As we had wandered around around the Lawrenceville artist studios, the person most artists urged us to meet was a guy called Charlie Humphrey. He is the head of the Pittsburgh Filmmakers Society, the Pittsburgh Arts Center, and the Glassworks Center. He is "the man" they said, the guy who knows everyone in Pittsburgh, he is the philanthropic sluicegate that directs trickles of funding into the quivering outstretched hands of artists. We decided it would be a good idea to see if we could meet with Charlie - very soon.
Charlie: Patron Saint of The Jilted Brides
Sure enough, after we sent Charlie an email outlining our improbably large span of artistic projects (filmmaking, musical performance, video clip production, book writing, travel blogging, photography) he got back to us straight away, saying he was keen to meet us - that day. That was Monday.
However, Monday was the day I had planned to henna my increasingly rat-like hair (I had not had any hair grooming since leaving Australia, except for a $3 bangs trim by a Mexican barber in Austin, who left me with a marked diagonal slope up my forehead). We delayed the meeting until 4 pm so Tanya could slap the muddy slime all over my head at midday, and I could sit there for a few hours, my head incubated in a garbage bag while underneath my follicles changed color as quickly and remarkably as the autumn foliage. When I rinsed all the muck off, I blow-dried my locks and stood back and admired how new I looked. I was more confident now, I could meet the chief executive officer of a prestigious art institution, assured that my radiant mane would speak volumes about my creative skills.
Finally, it was time to set off for our important appointment. We slammed the door behind us at 3 pm, an hour ahead, because we didn't have a car, couldn't afford a taxi and the glory days of Pittsburgh public transport had long passed: we had to walk there. Up the cardiac conditioning hills of Lawrenceville, along the 'Little Italy' stretch of Bloomsfield (which T and I joked should be called 'micro-Italy' due to its barely noticeable Mediterranean character), then over onto Shadyside, along traffic choked Baum Avenue, left into Melwood Avenue, up to the headquarters of the Pittsburgh Filmmakers Institute. As the droll receptionist paged Charlie and said "There are two Aussies here to meet you", I realised that, although I had no expectations whatsoever, I was nervous.
We were greeted enthusiastically by a tall slender man with a mop of greying hair, boyish face, curious kindly eyes and quick movements. As he spoke to us, he oscillated ever so slightly with nervous energy. Within minutes, I could tell this person was not cut in the senior arts bureaucrat mould that I was used to jousting with - he was not the kind of person that "had tickets on themselves" as my mother used to say (Australian slang for a self-important person). Far from that, Charlie was like everyone else we had met so far in Pittsburgh - down to earth, warm and friendly. As the conversation progressed, he too made it clear that he wanted us to stay. "You women have media coming out of your pores. I would consider it a moral victory if I could help you stay in Pittsburgh". He said he would send any work he could our way, and he would introduce us to "everyone we needed to know" in the film and post-production community.
Sure enough, the next day Charlie set the ball rolling for what turned into a week of frenzied networking and socialising. Within a few days, Tanya was being asked if she would like to apply for a job as video projection mistress with a cool multi-media troupe called Squonk Opera. A few days after that, Point Park University asked if she was interested in applying for a position in the film school there, teaching camera and lighting, something she knew lots about due to her training as a cinematographer. Off her own initiative, T got work as a camera operator to film a motivational 'wealth creation' seminar, and was following up a number of other leads on the ever bountiful Craigslist.
Charlie's most spectacular act of generosity, however, happened when I showed him my last two CDs - the Dust album 'Songs', and the as yet unreleased Jilted Brides album 'Larceny of Love'. I had hoped that a US label would want to release 'Larceny' (we certainly couldn't afford to manufacture any), but I had low expectations. In the face of world wide plummeting CD sales, these were very grim times for independent labels, most labels were cutting their roster, not looking for new bands. But it turned out Charlie's hands weren't full enough being the CEO of three major artist institutions, he also played in a band and ran a small music label (no wonder he oscillated!).
At the end of last week, Charlie asked us if we would we like him to manufacture 1000 'Larceny of Love' CDs for us courtesy of his label "Uh Oh Music"?. He loved the music and wanted to be part of the project. We were over the moon. At last, someone was taking a punt on our music, someone thought we were truly destined for a brighter future. And we would have something to sell at gigs, just like any other 'normal' band.
That's it, we agreed, we are staying here. We also agreed that Charlie should henceforth be known as "The Patron Saint of the Jilted Brides", and was clearly in cahoots with the rock and roll angels who had guided our journey thus far.
Jean Luc Godard and kidney beans
The apartment just above Scott and Dan's had become vacant just before we came to Pittsburgh. We decided to rent it out, from the first of November. It was only $600 a month, for a spacious bi-level two bedroom place, renovated kitchen, polished wood floors, garden, and a large balcony with (of course) spectacular views. Our neighbors would be a Veterans hall with fairly mysterious goings on on one side, and a gay couple, Timmy and Jimmy in a little bungalow on the other. When Timmy and Jimmy found out we were moving in, they were delighted. Scott and Dan were excited. Rosy pictures of neighborly pot lucks, swopping garden cuttings and sharing wireless internet access appeared in everyone's minds.
But the strangest thing about the course of events of the last 3 weeks was that is has been like a Godard film. On the one hand, the visuals are all pointing in one direction - happiness, Anna Karina smiling seductively to the camera, beautiful Paris streets, Hollywood musical poses, bonhomie! But underneath, the soundtrack is subtly telling a different story - dialogue out of place, inappropriate music coming in and suddenly stopping, strange sound effects hinting at another world behind what is displayed on the screen. Something is wrong.
That something hit Tanya first. As we started to talk about the costs of setting up the flat (bond, furniture, utilities) she became more agitated. "I'm really going to have to budget" she said, as she had often stated over the course of our journey. But then this became "Actually, I don't know how I can do this". T was about to slip into the shark infested waters of credit card debt. The sea of red was already lapping at her bank statements. I said, "Well, I've still got cash, we'll get by". I had been managing my cash stash like a life support drip, carefully restricting money flow to essential homeopathic droplets.
But over the last few weeks, the financial market Frankenstein had kicked its way into the US/Australian dollar exchange rate and strangled the value out of our pathetic currency. When we arrived in May, the OZ dollar was equivalent to the US dollar. Almost overnight, it lost 40% of its value. I was hemorraging cash, faster and faster.
The make matters worse, the sleeping arrangements in our basement camp were terrible. My blow up mattress regularly lost its air during the night, and as we had no pump in the house with which to blow it back up (we relied on a car pump), I lay for hours awake, twisted on the slowly but insistently deflating lumps of my alleged bed. I tried sleeping on a makeshift arrangement of cushions for a few nights, but this was scarcely any better than lying with my spine crimped into the floor. The floors were paper thin, and Dan's every animal-like movement, along with his sub-woofered I-Tunes playlist, echoed down hour upon hour into our airless, dark living quarters, further disrupting sleep. Each day, I was running on the adrenaline of being in a sensual new place with wonderful people who instantly called me "friend", a place that was seemingly the answer to both T and my longings for a new home. But as the days progressed, my sleep deprived mind started to feel more and more unhinged. I found it harder to concentrate. I felt physically weaker, frightening memories of radiotherapy fatigue started to come back. My emotional stability started to slip.
T and I ran out of food and went for a grocery shop at the local Shop and Save. We found ourselves trying to get enough food for both of us for a week on $40. This isn't actually possible, notwithstanding the appealing giant tins of kidney beans for $1.69 that we purchased. I sat on the bench outside the supermarket as T passed the supermarket chain's discount card back to Scott so he could use it for his own purchases too. I put my head in my hands and noticed all the spittle from previous bench occupiers next to my feet. When T came out, I said, "I can't take anymore of this. I feel completely bleak about my future."
When we got home, Scott went to work at his $5.00 an hour job at the local coffee shop, and I tried to get some daytime sleep on his free bed. Later in the afternoon, I heard a knock on the bedroom door. T came in, tears in her eyes. She had called her father, a man who had separated from her mother when the family was quite young, a man with whom she had a complex and often difficult relationship. She summoned up enough courage to ask for help, and she expected rejection. But he had come through. He even sounded proud at what she had managed to pull off in our crazy American adventures so far. He gave just enough ("no more!") to help her get on her feet and start the new life that was clearly just about to happen.
T was overjoyed: "We are going to be ok! We are not going to freeze and starve through the winter!!" she said. We hugged and I was overjoyed too. A great weight was lifted from my heart. I had never ceased to worry about T's financial situation, which had been more precarious than mine since the beginning of our journey. T's bravery was paying off, long deserved opportunities were opening up for her here. She deserved a break, she deserved the opportunity to establish herself as a formidable photographer, videographer and artistic force to be reckoned with in Pittsburgh and indeed the whole Goddamn US of A! And I was very moved that she was saying "we" would not starve, that we were indeed a team, we would sink or swim together.
Warhol, mattresses and rude awakenings
When T's money came through a couple of days later, at my insistence, we headed off to buy two new mattresses. I explained that I couldn't bear another night without a full sleep, I would literally start to crack up. I was already starting to lose it.
Scott kindly agreed to drive us out to the Northside to forage for mattresses, despite the fact that time would be tight - he had to be back at his coffee shop to work at 3 pm. To our enormous delight, we found two Queen mattresses worth over $1300 in the clearance section of the store for only $300 US (make that $515 in Australian pesos). Giddy with our purchasing good luck, and euphoric at the idea of a good nights sleep at last, we tied the mattresses awkwardly onto the Scott's Chevvy pick-up and took off home with our booty.
Half way there, Scott started to accelerate faster down the highway, anxious to get to work in time. What followed next happened extremely fast and was very shocking. I looked out the rear window to see one of the mattresses rear up with the windforce factor and fly off the truck, off into the face of 3 lanes of busy traffic.
I screamed at Scott to pull over. T and I stared horrified as cars started to veer around the huge obstacle that was half flying, half bouncing across the lanes. A pile up was surely imminent. We somehow got into the emergency lane and pulled up. As the car skidded to a halt, I wondered with terror if a serious accident had occurred yet, and if not, how on earth we were going to get the mattress off the highway before one did. But as I turned to look out the rear window again, what I saw was a surreal divine intervention worthy of a Spinal Tap tour tale- the mattress was being safely dragged towards us under the chasis of a 4 wheel drive under which it had become stuck.
The SUV stopped behind us. T, Scott and I piled out, shaking. I was sure the driver was going to go nuts at us. But instead, a friendly middle aged woman got out and was far more concerned about the (now completely ruined) state of our mattress than the fact that we had almost caused her to have a major accident. She explained apologetically that she had no choice but to try and drive over the mattress because there were cars on either side and behind her who would have collided with her had she attempted evasive action. She waited patiently with us while we struggled and heaved to try and remove the mattress from under the car body, into which it had become wedged. She was on her way to the airport, but was seemed completely unphased and joked that "it was lucky she set off early".
Finally, after much struggle, we got the smouldering, tattered remains of the mattress out and had no choice but to pitch it into a trench by the side of the road. As the woman turned to go back into her SUV and resume a (hopefully completely uneventful) trip to the airport, she dug into her wallet and stuffed something into Scott's hands. Scott, who was (like the rest of us) still in a state of shock, stared in disbelief at his hands - she had given him $25. He started to protest, but she just hopped airily back into her truck wishing us the best of luck and took off.
If you are going to have a highway accident with someone, that woman is the one to do it with.
On the way home, we hardly said a word. My dreams of a good nights sleep lay crumpled off a Pittsburgh highway (we got to see all its lovely layers that would have made it so comfy because they were all now shredded and exposed, like a filleted and smoked fish). We did note that we were very, very lucky that potential catastrophe was averted, that angels had most certainly been at work here to save lives. But the mood in the Chevvy was as dark as the looming thunder clouds.
That night, we tried to cheer ourselves up by attending two Pittsburgh arts events that sounded promising. At the Pittsburgh Fim Institute, there was the opening of an installation by Bill Daniel, an artist who claimed he led a hobo life in a vegetable oil powered truck and made films about his experiences. Sounded like our kind of guy. Then after that, at the Wexner Center, there was a screening of Andy Warhol's "Screen Tests" with live soundtrack performances by super-stylish mood-meisters Britta and Dean, formerly of lauded US indie band Luna.
We arrived at the Institute early. Our new landlord Jim, a lonely middle aged guy who was spending most of his afternoons lavishing attention on fixing up our apartment, kindly offered to drive us to the Institute (after T dropped a few heavy hints), thus saving us another hour's walk. When we got there, we made a beeline for the bar to try and calm our nerves and temporarily blot out the loss of money which we couldn't afford. Later, the artistic irony struck me; two of the biggest and most prestigous contemporary art museums in Pittsburgh are The Mattress Factory and The Andy Warhol Museum. The image of our mattress flying freakily down the highway would have made for perfect Warhol footage, slowed down infinitely and looped. If only I had had the presence of mind to whip out the handycam instead of hyperventilating in horror!
Half way gulping down a wine, I turned around to find to Charlie in the foyer with his beautiful wife and one of his college student daughters. Everyone seemed to be in good spirits and looking forward to the night's entertainment. I realised with growing alarm that I was ill-equiped to deal out conversational niceties, and slunk off to look at Daniel's installation. He had a lot of 'road memorablia' stuck here and there on the wall, plus a scrapbook of 'hobo' musings and doodlings that he was trying to sell. In his bio, Daniel lists a prestigious string of awards, including a Rockefeller nominee and current Guggenheim fellow. I should have felt excited at the idea that in America someone could call themselves an itinerant while still receiving lots of money. But instead I felt nothing.
We got a lift to the Warhol/ Britta and Dean concert with Charlie and his wife, in their BMW. Once there, I ordered a whisky for myself and T which turned out to be almost pint-sized. I watched the performance in an alcoholic daze. Some of the staring, tear streaked faces of Warhol's screen test victims mirrored my own bleak soul-state too well. After a while, I realised I couldn't take anymore and suddenly got up. I stumbled past the rows of Pittsburgh's glitterati, mumbled my apologies to a startled T, and fled. I found myself outside in the pouring rain. Next thing I know I was in a stretch limousine with a chubby guy who liked '80s music. Luckily, I could still remember where I lived, or rather subsisted, although everything else in my consciousness was fading from view. The limo driver and I finally got home, after singing together many '80s hits playing on the local hits and memories stations. I groped my way up the stairs to sleep on the remaining, surviving mattress in the freezing cold in our new apartment, which had yet to be connected to heating or electricity.
As I lay there, the reality of my financial situation hit me with complete clarity, a rude awakening. I was going to run out of money very soon. And, unlike T, I was not a dual citizen, I did not have an American passport. I only had a tourist visa, that, like my money, would run out in a few weeks. I couldn't work here. I couldn't stay here. What had I been thinking all this time? Why on earth did I think I could make a new life here? For the first time in many weeks, I was in a bedroom by myself. And for the first time since I had left Australia, I cried all night.
Saturday, October 18, 2008
New York to Pittsburgh in October - Philly and the Soul Train
by Nicole Skeltys
A week and a half ago, we caught a bus from NYC Chinatown to Philadelphia. What happens is you buy your ticket from hawkers off East Broadway, then a person waving a flag yells something incomprehensible at you and you run after them down the street, looking for the right bus. The Chinese bus company operators don't seem to follow any schedule in particular, and they don't bother with niceties like having the name of the destination in the bus window. With luck, you mount the right coach, then after the bus driver ejects the people who are on the wrong coach, you are on your way. After 2 hours of driving through drab New Jersey semi-industrial ruralscapes and stopping at several truck-stops with the occasional 'Haulin' for Jesus' stickered semi pulled into the corner, the Philadelphia skyline comes majestically into view. All this for only $10, the cheapest way to get to Philly by far.
Although New York was crammed, sweating, frantic, with all aspects of life being conducted at high speed and high volume, we never once felt threatened there. My sub-let was in the hispanic and black suburb of Bushwick, Brooklyn, which not so long ago had a reputation for "graffiti and burned cars". But I got on and off the subway alone at night and felt safe. Up at the local laundromat, where T and I were the only white people sitting around watching our undies flip, we felt conspicuous but not ill at ease. (T speculated that the chilled atmosphere could have something to do with the pervasive smell of weed, which sometimes blew like a furnace up from the apartments below my sub-let, often accompanied by bellowing booty rap).
For sure, there are still terrible ghettos in NY, no-go zones. And we were told about roaming Dominican machete gangs who engage in random, psycho displays of macho violence. That was in groovy, increasingly gentrified Williamsburg, where Tanya was staying illegally in the 6th floor of a warehouse, in her ex-fiance's writing studio. One of our fellow Byrdcliffe artist colonists told us how she had been mugged last year in Willamsburg, late at night.
But the most exotic displays of masculinity we saw in Williamsburg were the harmless Hassidic jews, who were everywhere walking at a smartish clip, dressed identically in their black overcoats, stiff white shirts and fuzzy top hats from under which flopped their cute religious ringlets. As we made our way down Diagonal Avenue, the sheer volume of these 19th century figures often made us feel like we had stumbled into a large movie set - a strange Dickension period drama, however, not a blood soaked reenactment of Mean Streets or Taxi Driver. We wandered all over Manhattan, Brooklyn and Queens because Tanya got a sub-contracted job photographing suburbs for a guidebook designed for people who were considering moving to the Big Apple. We spent long days navigating subways, sometimes popping up in the middle of projects neighborhoods, then tramping up and down strange streets with all kinds of languages, smells and looks issuing from every open doorway. We often ended up feeling frazzled, slightly deafened, and plain exhausted. But we never felt scared.
But as soon as we stepped off the bus in Philly, we felt calculating eyes upon us. A guy rushed up, pulled our suitcases out from the bottom of the bus, then immediately hassled us for money. We staggered down the street with our suitcases, looking for the right subway entrance. Cars slowed, looked at us. When we asked a young woman for directions, she helped us out, but as she was walking away, she looked over her shoulder and said "Be careful. Particularly at night." We finally got to the right train platform, walking past homeless people slumped against the escalators.
Hours later, we were sitting at a train platform in in the central suburb of Wissahickon, waiting for our couchsurfing host to pick us up as we had arranged before we left NY. The early afternoon light fell over the pleasant, slightly shabby Philly neighborhood. It was very, very quiet. The stillness more noticeable, perhaps, after our ears had spent several weeks blasted by the relentless, amplified cacophany of NYC. Still, it was a little on the eerie side. On the way to Wissahickon, we noticed that there were slow, empty streets, vacant lots. Very, very skinny multistory houses which had once been part of terrace rows, but which for some reason now stood alone, the houses on either side torn down, banks of grass now writhed between dwellings. As the train rattled past, it was like looking at multiple gap-toothed smiles.
Every 20 minutes or so, Tanya made a call to our would-be host, each one ringing out.
Eventually, in a Dr Livingstone spirit, I boldly set off up and around the hill to the left of the station, not quite sure what I was doing. There I found a small bar crammed with drunk men all craning at the TV screen. I walked in and asked the bartender for directions to the street where we were supposed to be staying. After a pause, he twisted his neck away from the TV, glared at me, told me he had no idea where Bourke St was, then turned back to the TV. I looked up at the screen. The Philadelphia Eagles were playing the San Francisco '49ers.
Then it dawned on me. The whole of Philadelphia had stopped. Everyone, everywhere, was sitting around in bars, in their homes or in their buddy's homes, glued to the TV, gunning for the Eagles. Imbibing vast quantities of the local Yuengling ale. There was no way our host, who was a self-professed sports nut, would tear himself away from this momentous event to pick us up. I trudged back down the hill to tell T the bad news. We swore quite a bit, then waited for another 40 minutes for the next train going back to downtown Philly.
But bad news turned into good news again. That night we fell asleep just north of the University district, in the cheapest non-hostel accommodation we could find, a bed and breakfast which called itself The Castle, for the good reason that the old stone building looked exactly like a kitsch version of medieval England, complete with turrets, bay windows and a '70s Lowrey organ in the parlor. On the way there, we were conscious of being the only white people in the public trolley. This time, we felt on edge.
The next day, we wandered around downtown Philly, and the Northern Liberties 'artists reclaiming a slum' neighborhood. After a while, I said to T "This is a great town if you are black or gay, but we are neither". It felt bad saying that, given I knew I owed Philadelphia a lot - after all, it had produced and named the super-lush, super-fly '60s/ '70s funk soul movement, which had provided the soundtrack to my dreamy hours spent as a small child rollerskating around suburban rinks. TSOP's "The Sound of Philadelphia" had actually been the early sound of sub-tropical Brisbane for me. And later in life, I had, like thousands of other remixers, sampled string stabs and sweeps from disco hits like "The Hustle" which, although recorded by the Soul City Symphony in New York, was saturated in the satiny Philly sound. I used Philly-type samples to add retro, loungy, funky character to my electro doofs which would have been as pale and straight as I was without those stolen grooves.
Before I left Melbourne, I was told that Philly was now a hotspot for psychedelic folk, the subgenre that The Jilted Brides occupies. But we didn't have enough time to do research into venues that might host our kinds of bands, and, after spending the next afternoon resting in a park by the Schuylkill river and lazily watching a drug deal take place in the bushes behind us, we were ready to leave. Our last night ended up being a very positive black experience, hanging out in the local African bar, talking to the bemused locals and stuffing ourselves with delicious, cheap Ethiopian stew wrapped in pancakes. But we still felt that Philly was not our town, despite the enormous attractiveness of its proximity to New York. I was pretty sure Philly wouldn't miss us either.
The 5 hour train ride from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh through gentle Pennsylvania farm and woodlands was as pretty as we had been told to expect. Not long after we wobbled up from the passenger car into the bar/diner carriage for a round of beers, one of the Amtrak conductors plomped down firmly in the seat opposite ours and without any introductions whatsoever, started to tell us the history of Pennsylvania railways and the differences between the various contemporary trains that ran on the Philly/Pitt route. The latter points he illustrated by reaching into his uniform pocket and producing numerous scuffed photos of trains which he spread out over the table. T and I lent politely over the images and tried to follow what he was saying. In the opposite booth, an older black guy, spectacularly rigged out in linen kaftan and super-stylish rivulets of gold bling, grinned at our predicament. He later introduced himself as a Pittsburgh-based fashion designer. "Oh, you're gonna love Pittsburgh" he said. "Its a great place to live. Believe me."
We arrived In Pittsburgh late on a hazy Tuesday night. Scott picked us up in his parent's Chevvy pick-up. He and Tanya had really hit it off when we first met at the Montana Artists' Refuge in June. I filmed him striding towards T down the dimly lit platform, then the welcomes, the giggles and hugs. I kept filming as I crouched with the luggage in the back of the pick-up, on our way to Scott's flat, moving the camera from the silhouettes of excited chatter, out the window to Pittsburgh flashing past. Even at night, I could tell the city was one of the most picturesque I had ever seen. We drove through a quilt of rolling hills, historic housing, lonely industrial spaces, all stitched through with parks and wooded areas. My view was often framed by moonlight glinting off the three rivers (the Allegheny, the Ohio and the Monongahela) that triangulated the heart of the city. Scott and T talked non-stop.
We arrived at Scott's 2 bedroom apartment in the old inner working class suburb of Lawrenceville, and shook hands with Dan, his James Dean look-alike flatmate. We were bustled down the stairs. Our accommodation was a couple of camp beds in their basement. A week later, I was bordering on psychosis from lack of sleep, lack of light and cramped living conditions. But that first night felt like luxury, because the air was fresh, the neighborhood was quiet, and we didn't feel scared or out of place at all. I slept soundly because I had a feeling I was going to like Pittsburgh, a lot. In fact I had a feeling, completely irrational given it was based on only an hours' observation late a night, that I might just have found a new home.
A week and a half ago, we caught a bus from NYC Chinatown to Philadelphia. What happens is you buy your ticket from hawkers off East Broadway, then a person waving a flag yells something incomprehensible at you and you run after them down the street, looking for the right bus. The Chinese bus company operators don't seem to follow any schedule in particular, and they don't bother with niceties like having the name of the destination in the bus window. With luck, you mount the right coach, then after the bus driver ejects the people who are on the wrong coach, you are on your way. After 2 hours of driving through drab New Jersey semi-industrial ruralscapes and stopping at several truck-stops with the occasional 'Haulin' for Jesus' stickered semi pulled into the corner, the Philadelphia skyline comes majestically into view. All this for only $10, the cheapest way to get to Philly by far.
Although New York was crammed, sweating, frantic, with all aspects of life being conducted at high speed and high volume, we never once felt threatened there. My sub-let was in the hispanic and black suburb of Bushwick, Brooklyn, which not so long ago had a reputation for "graffiti and burned cars". But I got on and off the subway alone at night and felt safe. Up at the local laundromat, where T and I were the only white people sitting around watching our undies flip, we felt conspicuous but not ill at ease. (T speculated that the chilled atmosphere could have something to do with the pervasive smell of weed, which sometimes blew like a furnace up from the apartments below my sub-let, often accompanied by bellowing booty rap).
For sure, there are still terrible ghettos in NY, no-go zones. And we were told about roaming Dominican machete gangs who engage in random, psycho displays of macho violence. That was in groovy, increasingly gentrified Williamsburg, where Tanya was staying illegally in the 6th floor of a warehouse, in her ex-fiance's writing studio. One of our fellow Byrdcliffe artist colonists told us how she had been mugged last year in Willamsburg, late at night.
But the most exotic displays of masculinity we saw in Williamsburg were the harmless Hassidic jews, who were everywhere walking at a smartish clip, dressed identically in their black overcoats, stiff white shirts and fuzzy top hats from under which flopped their cute religious ringlets. As we made our way down Diagonal Avenue, the sheer volume of these 19th century figures often made us feel like we had stumbled into a large movie set - a strange Dickension period drama, however, not a blood soaked reenactment of Mean Streets or Taxi Driver. We wandered all over Manhattan, Brooklyn and Queens because Tanya got a sub-contracted job photographing suburbs for a guidebook designed for people who were considering moving to the Big Apple. We spent long days navigating subways, sometimes popping up in the middle of projects neighborhoods, then tramping up and down strange streets with all kinds of languages, smells and looks issuing from every open doorway. We often ended up feeling frazzled, slightly deafened, and plain exhausted. But we never felt scared.
But as soon as we stepped off the bus in Philly, we felt calculating eyes upon us. A guy rushed up, pulled our suitcases out from the bottom of the bus, then immediately hassled us for money. We staggered down the street with our suitcases, looking for the right subway entrance. Cars slowed, looked at us. When we asked a young woman for directions, she helped us out, but as she was walking away, she looked over her shoulder and said "Be careful. Particularly at night." We finally got to the right train platform, walking past homeless people slumped against the escalators.
Hours later, we were sitting at a train platform in in the central suburb of Wissahickon, waiting for our couchsurfing host to pick us up as we had arranged before we left NY. The early afternoon light fell over the pleasant, slightly shabby Philly neighborhood. It was very, very quiet. The stillness more noticeable, perhaps, after our ears had spent several weeks blasted by the relentless, amplified cacophany of NYC. Still, it was a little on the eerie side. On the way to Wissahickon, we noticed that there were slow, empty streets, vacant lots. Very, very skinny multistory houses which had once been part of terrace rows, but which for some reason now stood alone, the houses on either side torn down, banks of grass now writhed between dwellings. As the train rattled past, it was like looking at multiple gap-toothed smiles.
Every 20 minutes or so, Tanya made a call to our would-be host, each one ringing out.
Eventually, in a Dr Livingstone spirit, I boldly set off up and around the hill to the left of the station, not quite sure what I was doing. There I found a small bar crammed with drunk men all craning at the TV screen. I walked in and asked the bartender for directions to the street where we were supposed to be staying. After a pause, he twisted his neck away from the TV, glared at me, told me he had no idea where Bourke St was, then turned back to the TV. I looked up at the screen. The Philadelphia Eagles were playing the San Francisco '49ers.
Then it dawned on me. The whole of Philadelphia had stopped. Everyone, everywhere, was sitting around in bars, in their homes or in their buddy's homes, glued to the TV, gunning for the Eagles. Imbibing vast quantities of the local Yuengling ale. There was no way our host, who was a self-professed sports nut, would tear himself away from this momentous event to pick us up. I trudged back down the hill to tell T the bad news. We swore quite a bit, then waited for another 40 minutes for the next train going back to downtown Philly.
But bad news turned into good news again. That night we fell asleep just north of the University district, in the cheapest non-hostel accommodation we could find, a bed and breakfast which called itself The Castle, for the good reason that the old stone building looked exactly like a kitsch version of medieval England, complete with turrets, bay windows and a '70s Lowrey organ in the parlor. On the way there, we were conscious of being the only white people in the public trolley. This time, we felt on edge.
The next day, we wandered around downtown Philly, and the Northern Liberties 'artists reclaiming a slum' neighborhood. After a while, I said to T "This is a great town if you are black or gay, but we are neither". It felt bad saying that, given I knew I owed Philadelphia a lot - after all, it had produced and named the super-lush, super-fly '60s/ '70s funk soul movement, which had provided the soundtrack to my dreamy hours spent as a small child rollerskating around suburban rinks. TSOP's "The Sound of Philadelphia" had actually been the early sound of sub-tropical Brisbane for me. And later in life, I had, like thousands of other remixers, sampled string stabs and sweeps from disco hits like "The Hustle" which, although recorded by the Soul City Symphony in New York, was saturated in the satiny Philly sound. I used Philly-type samples to add retro, loungy, funky character to my electro doofs which would have been as pale and straight as I was without those stolen grooves.
Before I left Melbourne, I was told that Philly was now a hotspot for psychedelic folk, the subgenre that The Jilted Brides occupies. But we didn't have enough time to do research into venues that might host our kinds of bands, and, after spending the next afternoon resting in a park by the Schuylkill river and lazily watching a drug deal take place in the bushes behind us, we were ready to leave. Our last night ended up being a very positive black experience, hanging out in the local African bar, talking to the bemused locals and stuffing ourselves with delicious, cheap Ethiopian stew wrapped in pancakes. But we still felt that Philly was not our town, despite the enormous attractiveness of its proximity to New York. I was pretty sure Philly wouldn't miss us either.
The 5 hour train ride from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh through gentle Pennsylvania farm and woodlands was as pretty as we had been told to expect. Not long after we wobbled up from the passenger car into the bar/diner carriage for a round of beers, one of the Amtrak conductors plomped down firmly in the seat opposite ours and without any introductions whatsoever, started to tell us the history of Pennsylvania railways and the differences between the various contemporary trains that ran on the Philly/Pitt route. The latter points he illustrated by reaching into his uniform pocket and producing numerous scuffed photos of trains which he spread out over the table. T and I lent politely over the images and tried to follow what he was saying. In the opposite booth, an older black guy, spectacularly rigged out in linen kaftan and super-stylish rivulets of gold bling, grinned at our predicament. He later introduced himself as a Pittsburgh-based fashion designer. "Oh, you're gonna love Pittsburgh" he said. "Its a great place to live. Believe me."
We arrived In Pittsburgh late on a hazy Tuesday night. Scott picked us up in his parent's Chevvy pick-up. He and Tanya had really hit it off when we first met at the Montana Artists' Refuge in June. I filmed him striding towards T down the dimly lit platform, then the welcomes, the giggles and hugs. I kept filming as I crouched with the luggage in the back of the pick-up, on our way to Scott's flat, moving the camera from the silhouettes of excited chatter, out the window to Pittsburgh flashing past. Even at night, I could tell the city was one of the most picturesque I had ever seen. We drove through a quilt of rolling hills, historic housing, lonely industrial spaces, all stitched through with parks and wooded areas. My view was often framed by moonlight glinting off the three rivers (the Allegheny, the Ohio and the Monongahela) that triangulated the heart of the city. Scott and T talked non-stop.
We arrived at Scott's 2 bedroom apartment in the old inner working class suburb of Lawrenceville, and shook hands with Dan, his James Dean look-alike flatmate. We were bustled down the stairs. Our accommodation was a couple of camp beds in their basement. A week later, I was bordering on psychosis from lack of sleep, lack of light and cramped living conditions. But that first night felt like luxury, because the air was fresh, the neighborhood was quiet, and we didn't feel scared or out of place at all. I slept soundly because I had a feeling I was going to like Pittsburgh, a lot. In fact I had a feeling, completely irrational given it was based on only an hours' observation late a night, that I might just have found a new home.
Friday, October 10, 2008
New York gigs - September - Part 1: The Lit Lounge
by Nicole Skeltys
When we introduced ourselves, the large black doorman broke into a big sly grin, showing a gold capped tooth. "The Jilted Brides, huh? Ha ha ha. Thats a great name". A couple of babes dressed in uptown fashions for their night out in the East Village, teetered past us on spiky heels into the club. The doorman nodded after them, still grinning "Hey, they ain't jilted brides. They ain't cooool enough to be jilted brides!".
We'd been booked to play at the Lit Lounge in East Village since April 2008, since before we had left Australia. I'd had an image in my head of New York band venues all looking like photos I'd seen of CBGBs in the late '70s. Dimly lit, low ceilings, dungeon-cool aesthetic, heroin-chic clientele sprawling on crumbling torn black vinyl lounges, decadence. I wasn't disappointed. As Tanya and I made our way down the steep narrow stairs into the band room, I saw with satisfaction that the Lit Lounge was, "a charming cellar hole" (as a delightful elderly lady who came to the show later described it). The venue fitted my NY stereotype perfectly.
Well, almost perfectly. The decor and feel was smouldering and edgy but the audience for the first band (a duo that looked and sounded just like The Dresden Dolls) were a handful of neatly dressed people in middle age. They were the proud parents, uncles and aunts of the band, who politely clapped after every tortured ballad.
Our brand new band arrived, one at a time. First, Stu - our doe-eyed, mild-mannered guitarist, who had been playing in bands ever since he'd been a kid in the late '60s. Then Brian our bassist, the youngest member of the band, who turned up sporting a fedora and spats, looking impossibly dashing. Finally, Garry, our black drummer arrived at the last minute and shook his head in good humored disgust at the tiny crack at the back of the cramped stage that was where he was supposed to set up his kit.
Before we left for the Byrdcliffe art colony in Woodstock in late August, we'd put ads up on Craigslist asking if any NY musicians wanted to join us for our two NY shows. We explained that there was no payment involved, they would be joining us just for the fun of it. I expected to get no response, due to the obvious lack of financial incentive. But I was wrong. A number of musicians responded straight away. One guy described himself as "your jilted guitarist", explaining he'd like to play with us because he "sure knew what it was like to be jilted". One bassist called Gio, a large hispanic guy covered in tattoos (he sent us photos) who seemed to specialize in metal and funk, boasted he could "do slap real well". A "romantic violinist" offered to join us: due to the lack of a Myspace page where we could hear his stuff, he suggested we call him so he could play some soulful strains to us down the phone.
Eventually, we settled on Stu, Brian and Garry because they seemed the most professional and suited temperamentally to our folky/psychedelic/ atmospheric sound. I was both grateful and amazed that musicians of their calibre wanted to help out an obscure Australian duo, purely because they loved our music. But I was very unconvinced that they could master a set list comprising a mixture of tracks from The Jilted Brides and Dust (my previous Melbourne band) in only a couple of rehearsals. For two reasons: most of the tracks were not simple, they had fairly complicated arrangements and chord structures. And it takes a long time for a band to get tight - Dust rehearsed for 9 months before we felt we were good enough to play our first gig.
For the weeks we were in Woodstock, I got a knot in my stomache everytime I thought about our gigs in the Big Apple and our as yet unseen band. Every day, Tanya and I would tramp down the upper Byrdcliffe Road to the Icehouse (a small barn which was our rehearsal space) and we'd sing to the backing tracks which I'd loaded up into I-Tunes on my laptop. As I stared out the window at the light falling through the woods, serenading the unseen bears that everyone told us were out there, I thought: "How are we going to master all these tunes live with only a few hours rehearsal? We are going to sound like a sloppy teenage garage band. We are going to make goofballs of ourselves".
But at our first rehearsal in Brooklyn, on the Monday before our Saturday night gig, I felt the rock and roll angels had once again been pulling cosmic strings on our behalf. Our Craigslist band had not only flawlessly worked out their parts, but they had memorized them already. They knew the songs like they'd been playing them for years. And they were charming, funny, easy to get along with, on our wavelength. They were very enthusiastic about the songs which they told us they loved playing. They were, in fact, a dream band.
On the L-train home to our sub-let in Bushwick that night, I repeated the phrase "dream band" to Tanya many times, who agreed with me. I alternated that phrase with shaking my head and stating. "We are going to pull it off. We are actually going to pull it off!". Tanya confirmed that we had indeed just witnessed another miracle and yes, we were going to pull it off. I scarcely noticed the grimy Brooklyn subway stations as they flashed past. I was not just feeling less terrified about the gig, I was now positively champing at the bit to perform- I knew we were going to sound great.
Sure enough, right from the first few bars of Set Apart, our alt.country opening number, the band kicked in with a vigor, confidence and panache that impressed the audience and resulted in wild cheering after every song. Tanya also looked jaw-droppingly good in her Brigid Bardot look-alike hotpants, fishnets and booties rig-out. Even the harmonium was a hit, with at least one member of the audience pleading for "more harmonium!" when our exotic, much traveled instrument was apparently not loud enough.
After the show, the boys had to split for various reasons, and Tanya and I had to wait around until the other bands on the bill finished playing so we could get paid our cut from the door takings. We didn't mind at all, as it gave us the opportunity to be repeatedly congratulated on our performance and to take liberal advantage of our bar tab. We wandered into the upstairs bar and then down again, pushing past many people dressed in new New Wave couture, drinking and jiggling and (sometimes) shouting compliments at us. The soundtrack to the evening - the house music between bands - could have been the house music at CBGBs in the late '70s/ early '80s: Iggy Pop, Blondie, Bowie, Lou Reed, My Bloody Valentine, Echo and the Bunnymen, Ramones. As we eventually degenerated into a slumped giggling clump in the backstage bandroom, I had (not for the first time on this trip) a sense of having returned to my adolescent years.
Finally Max, the venue manager, appeared Dr Who-like from (literally) a tiny hole in the wall. And, just like an episode from the iconic BBC sci-fi series, members of each of the bands that had played that night moved slowly, awkwardly towards him, the tentative way you would if you were an alien and you saw Dr Who land on your planet. Max clutched a fistful of dollars, and doled out measley sums to each band, followed by what looked like pep talks of some kind. When our turn came, Max at first looked a bit startled to see that we were filming the whole procedure, but then cheerfully informed us that we had pulled more customers than any other band and gave us the remainder of the takings - $80 (after the venue had taken its cut).
Tanya said "Look at this, musicians get treated like shit, its a dogs life!". I whole-heartedly agreed. We fell back into the sticky couch again and laughed and laughed. A silver skull graffitied on the black wall opposite grinned back at us through the gloom. One of my favorite shoegazing anthems of all time, one I had not heard for a very long time - Jesus and Mary Chain's "Just Like Honey" kicked in at full volume. We finally rallied ourselves and with the help of some fellow Byrdcliffe colony artists who had come to see us, we grabbed the harmonium and keyboard, and staggered out into the early morning ruckus playing out on 2nd Avenue. Our first gig on the Eastern seaboard had turned into the quintessential New York underground rock experience and as we hailed down a cab, we felt invincible.
When we introduced ourselves, the large black doorman broke into a big sly grin, showing a gold capped tooth. "The Jilted Brides, huh? Ha ha ha. Thats a great name". A couple of babes dressed in uptown fashions for their night out in the East Village, teetered past us on spiky heels into the club. The doorman nodded after them, still grinning "Hey, they ain't jilted brides. They ain't cooool enough to be jilted brides!".
We'd been booked to play at the Lit Lounge in East Village since April 2008, since before we had left Australia. I'd had an image in my head of New York band venues all looking like photos I'd seen of CBGBs in the late '70s. Dimly lit, low ceilings, dungeon-cool aesthetic, heroin-chic clientele sprawling on crumbling torn black vinyl lounges, decadence. I wasn't disappointed. As Tanya and I made our way down the steep narrow stairs into the band room, I saw with satisfaction that the Lit Lounge was, "a charming cellar hole" (as a delightful elderly lady who came to the show later described it). The venue fitted my NY stereotype perfectly.
Well, almost perfectly. The decor and feel was smouldering and edgy but the audience for the first band (a duo that looked and sounded just like The Dresden Dolls) were a handful of neatly dressed people in middle age. They were the proud parents, uncles and aunts of the band, who politely clapped after every tortured ballad.
Our brand new band arrived, one at a time. First, Stu - our doe-eyed, mild-mannered guitarist, who had been playing in bands ever since he'd been a kid in the late '60s. Then Brian our bassist, the youngest member of the band, who turned up sporting a fedora and spats, looking impossibly dashing. Finally, Garry, our black drummer arrived at the last minute and shook his head in good humored disgust at the tiny crack at the back of the cramped stage that was where he was supposed to set up his kit.
Before we left for the Byrdcliffe art colony in Woodstock in late August, we'd put ads up on Craigslist asking if any NY musicians wanted to join us for our two NY shows. We explained that there was no payment involved, they would be joining us just for the fun of it. I expected to get no response, due to the obvious lack of financial incentive. But I was wrong. A number of musicians responded straight away. One guy described himself as "your jilted guitarist", explaining he'd like to play with us because he "sure knew what it was like to be jilted". One bassist called Gio, a large hispanic guy covered in tattoos (he sent us photos) who seemed to specialize in metal and funk, boasted he could "do slap real well". A "romantic violinist" offered to join us: due to the lack of a Myspace page where we could hear his stuff, he suggested we call him so he could play some soulful strains to us down the phone.
Eventually, we settled on Stu, Brian and Garry because they seemed the most professional and suited temperamentally to our folky/psychedelic/ atmospheric sound. I was both grateful and amazed that musicians of their calibre wanted to help out an obscure Australian duo, purely because they loved our music. But I was very unconvinced that they could master a set list comprising a mixture of tracks from The Jilted Brides and Dust (my previous Melbourne band) in only a couple of rehearsals. For two reasons: most of the tracks were not simple, they had fairly complicated arrangements and chord structures. And it takes a long time for a band to get tight - Dust rehearsed for 9 months before we felt we were good enough to play our first gig.
For the weeks we were in Woodstock, I got a knot in my stomache everytime I thought about our gigs in the Big Apple and our as yet unseen band. Every day, Tanya and I would tramp down the upper Byrdcliffe Road to the Icehouse (a small barn which was our rehearsal space) and we'd sing to the backing tracks which I'd loaded up into I-Tunes on my laptop. As I stared out the window at the light falling through the woods, serenading the unseen bears that everyone told us were out there, I thought: "How are we going to master all these tunes live with only a few hours rehearsal? We are going to sound like a sloppy teenage garage band. We are going to make goofballs of ourselves".
But at our first rehearsal in Brooklyn, on the Monday before our Saturday night gig, I felt the rock and roll angels had once again been pulling cosmic strings on our behalf. Our Craigslist band had not only flawlessly worked out their parts, but they had memorized them already. They knew the songs like they'd been playing them for years. And they were charming, funny, easy to get along with, on our wavelength. They were very enthusiastic about the songs which they told us they loved playing. They were, in fact, a dream band.
On the L-train home to our sub-let in Bushwick that night, I repeated the phrase "dream band" to Tanya many times, who agreed with me. I alternated that phrase with shaking my head and stating. "We are going to pull it off. We are actually going to pull it off!". Tanya confirmed that we had indeed just witnessed another miracle and yes, we were going to pull it off. I scarcely noticed the grimy Brooklyn subway stations as they flashed past. I was not just feeling less terrified about the gig, I was now positively champing at the bit to perform- I knew we were going to sound great.
Sure enough, right from the first few bars of Set Apart, our alt.country opening number, the band kicked in with a vigor, confidence and panache that impressed the audience and resulted in wild cheering after every song. Tanya also looked jaw-droppingly good in her Brigid Bardot look-alike hotpants, fishnets and booties rig-out. Even the harmonium was a hit, with at least one member of the audience pleading for "more harmonium!" when our exotic, much traveled instrument was apparently not loud enough.
After the show, the boys had to split for various reasons, and Tanya and I had to wait around until the other bands on the bill finished playing so we could get paid our cut from the door takings. We didn't mind at all, as it gave us the opportunity to be repeatedly congratulated on our performance and to take liberal advantage of our bar tab. We wandered into the upstairs bar and then down again, pushing past many people dressed in new New Wave couture, drinking and jiggling and (sometimes) shouting compliments at us. The soundtrack to the evening - the house music between bands - could have been the house music at CBGBs in the late '70s/ early '80s: Iggy Pop, Blondie, Bowie, Lou Reed, My Bloody Valentine, Echo and the Bunnymen, Ramones. As we eventually degenerated into a slumped giggling clump in the backstage bandroom, I had (not for the first time on this trip) a sense of having returned to my adolescent years.
Finally Max, the venue manager, appeared Dr Who-like from (literally) a tiny hole in the wall. And, just like an episode from the iconic BBC sci-fi series, members of each of the bands that had played that night moved slowly, awkwardly towards him, the tentative way you would if you were an alien and you saw Dr Who land on your planet. Max clutched a fistful of dollars, and doled out measley sums to each band, followed by what looked like pep talks of some kind. When our turn came, Max at first looked a bit startled to see that we were filming the whole procedure, but then cheerfully informed us that we had pulled more customers than any other band and gave us the remainder of the takings - $80 (after the venue had taken its cut).
Tanya said "Look at this, musicians get treated like shit, its a dogs life!". I whole-heartedly agreed. We fell back into the sticky couch again and laughed and laughed. A silver skull graffitied on the black wall opposite grinned back at us through the gloom. One of my favorite shoegazing anthems of all time, one I had not heard for a very long time - Jesus and Mary Chain's "Just Like Honey" kicked in at full volume. We finally rallied ourselves and with the help of some fellow Byrdcliffe colony artists who had come to see us, we grabbed the harmonium and keyboard, and staggered out into the early morning ruckus playing out on 2nd Avenue. Our first gig on the Eastern seaboard had turned into the quintessential New York underground rock experience and as we hailed down a cab, we felt invincible.
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