One silver lining I love about getting sick is the “house cleaning effect” that almost always shows up after the creaky turn back towards wellness. The sheets and sweat-soaked comfies go into the wash. The kitchen gets a thorough disinfecting after all the mugs of tea and soup bowls get washed and put away. The inbox gets combed, sorted, and at least partially wrangled into submission. Texts get replies. On special occasions, various, rarely used belongings get listed on eBay or craigslist, or donated. When my cells finally get the upper hand on a virus (covid finally got me, guess it wasn’t fake news), I sometimes like to think of their victory as getting my own little software update. I already enjoy almost any opportunity to tidy up my space, and this past week left a mess so unruly that it felt existential. So, this morning I expanded my usual sprucing spree into my social media, instagram in particular. Occasionally I get a “hit” that says I need to delete the app and take a break. Previous to this morning, I would pore over the accompanying post for an hour or two, crafting some long-winded explanation to an audience which I was certain would hang on my words for several beats before unleashing a chorus of congratulatory cheers while waving from the dock as I sailed away on my envy-inducing digital detox voyage. I suppose I’m just doing that here, instead… NO BUT WAIT THIS IS DIFFEREEEENT! (echo, echooooo)
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Several months ago I went with some friends to see Damien Jurado and Gregory Alan Isakov in concert at the Arlington Theater in Santa Barbara, CA. I’ve seen Gregory before, and around a decade ago I even played a show with him at a pub in Dallas, before the world tours. He’s a petite, sweet man with a gorgeous voice and heartfelt songs, but the show that night felt over rehearsed and predictable, and we left after just a few songs. Perhaps it was the stark contrast to a wickedly good, tear inducing opening set by Damien, an artist whose records I’d long loved but hadn’t yet caught live. I don’t think the lights even came down before he meandered out from side stage clutching a stack of written lyrics, which he nonchalantly shuffled onto a music stand next to his microphone before sort of milling around for a moment. He wore a pair of brightly colored, knitted high top slippers that are a bit hard to explain further here without a photo (I didn’t take any, surprisingly), though he did reveal the mystery towards the end of his set (his wife crocheted them). Across from him was Lacey Brown, our contact, settling (in similarly unpretentious fashion) into a keyboard and acoustic guitar station. One might be forgiven for mistaking the somber pair as the act’s road crew, they were so casual. When he began to sing though, it was unmistakable.
Damien possesses a voice that I might call haunting. I’m just gonna go ahead and call it. The manner in which the breath and tone combine to whistle through his voice box invokes a distant, almost spooky wind being funneled through a weathered set of wooden shutters set into a crumbling three story house at the end of the cul-de-sac. It’s glorious, and mournful, and I love it. He never once picked up a guitar, which was a surprise, but I’d learn the reason soon enough. Even more remarkable was Damien’s dry wit and playful, sarcastic banter. I guess I didn’t expect him to be funny. Looking around between songs at the Arlington’s ornate facade of Spanish architecture and painted sky ceiling, he compared the venue to a fancy Mexican restaurant and half expected the chips and salsa to arrive at any moment. And then there was this (as yet unreleased) song about smoking. It’s probably about something way deeper, but you’ll see what I mean. Chill inducing.
As a subscriber here, you might be aware that I’m chipping away at writing a mixed media performance piece around my memoir. I didn’t expect Damien’s set to have such a profound impact on my ongoing work, and I really didn’t expect to get to chat with him and Lacey out front of the theater. I suppose that was an unintended perk of leaving uncomfortably early. They were across from Gregory’s merch table, talking to a fairly winsome couple, one of which I recognized from the screen as Aaron Paul’s short lived gf in Breaking Bad, Krysten Ritter. That might be neither here nor there, and I didn’t dare interrupt, but goddammit I loved that show. Anyway… the conversation circles did their thing, and I soon learned why Damien isn’t playing guitar at the moment, reasons that I think are best left to him to talk about, should he want to. The reason I bring him and this concert (and chance meeting) up at all… is the manner in which he has curated his lived experience, both social wise and business wise, and likely otherwise, to his changing tastes. Fed up with, disillusioned by, and/or just exhausted from the insatiable grinder of social placation and responsibility, he’s taken to shepherding his career into a shape that he feels excited about and able to manage in a meaningful way. That vision doesn’t include much online access at all. I just went to reference something on his insta, and at the moment there is no trace of an account. Respect. I know he just launched a substack focused on music, and maintains a simple, clean website, and has been experimenting offering rarities and test pressings on eBay, but that’s about it. He doesn’t travel with merch, and even online it can be a challenge to find a particular physical album. He told me, kind of matter of factly, that some fans find his reclusive tilt bothersome, but he himself appears unbothered, even emboldened by that. It’s his life, and he’s living it his way. I mean, it was such a huge Fuck Yes for me to hear that, right then, and surely some disruptive seed of thought was planted, some permission granted.
So I thought about that fateful meeting today as I downloaded all of my instagram content to my personal archives and proceeded to delete all 14 years or so of my feed along with the app from my phone. I stopped short of deleting my account altogether though, and left a “link in bio” to this space. The space that I feel inspired to spend my creative time in, to foster the longer form work that lights me up. I mean to repeat the process for Facebook, and perhaps even axe my archaic “official” website. Using SM too often leaves my mind feeling like I have a hundred open browser windows, or a gang of CPU sapping programs running in the background, to really push it over the edge here with the computer metaphors. At this moment, I’m enjoying the culling process, the edit, the simplification of my flow… and I woke this morning intent on honoring an inner voice that has long grumbled (albeit sort of incoherently) at me to make some bold changes to my M.O.
“Make Space” it could have been saying… though I can’t be certain, as it’s quieted down, for now. Maybe it was saying “NOOOOOOO!!!”. Too late, punk.