My Time as a Human

I woke up and there it was, a new song. Sometimes I struggle for hours trying to get anything interesting to happen but the best music just pours out in a quick, continuous session. A fair amount of crafting and polishing follows but once the core is there the excitement drives the rest of the process.

This piece is about an experience I had seeing my old friend Margaret and having the strange sensation that everything that had happened in the years we’d been apart had been some sort of silly game I’d been playing, or a dream I had until we could get together and laugh about it. Like reality only existed when we were together. I had this sensation with her and several of my old housemates from the same era a number of years ago at a wedding. I can’t help but feel that maybe this set of friends were there for just the right moment in time and we were all marked forever.

I made a promise to myself to start trying to share more of my music, most of which never leaves the pile of cassettes in an old tool chest in the corner. This seemed like the perfect opportunity so I got to work trying to record a version to throw out to the internet audience and see what happened. Paralysis set in immediately. There isn’t enough life in the vocals. The tempo drifts. The lyrics are trite and meaningless to anyone but me.

I have a motto, though: anything that scares me, and won’t kill me, I must attack. So this song is going to go live to the world well before I’m ready for the simple reason that being ready 1) would mean that there is no more fear and 2) will probably never happen.

The vocals on my crude first recording are really not quite listenable at the moment, so I’ll start with the lyrics as they poured from my brain yesterday morning and post the music later.

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Awake With You Again
by
Kai Mantsch

——————————————————

[MELODIC LINE]

I had the strangest feeling
when I talked to you just now
I felt as though the years in between
were meaningless somehow

It’s as though our time apart
was a story that I made up just for you
and now that I can hear you laugh
it’s all a joke and I feel like it’s true

what’s real was shared with you

—————————-
REFRAIN
—————————-

Being with you again
feels like I just woke up from a dream

everything I’ve done
since we were together
has passed like texas weather

hearing your laugh
and knowing what has passed between us

it feels so good to be awake with you
a-gain

———————————————————

Around the corner, from our house
wondering what to do
It was cold and early and all it would take
was to let myself kiss you

I’d already sworn it could never happen
But you weren’t going to let it get away

I said goodnight and tried to leave
but there was no where else to go

so we went wonderfully astray

—————————-

walking ’round the block and holding hands
in the morning after sun’s rays
all bright colors and sunrise light
felt like hippies in all the right ways

our house was full of constant laughter
so full of friends exploring what was new

we were all in tune and in sync and in rhyme
writing music with you
writing new lines all the time

—————————-
[REFRAIN]
—————————-

you laughed and pointed out with glee
as hallmark’s day descended
how very far, we had strayed,
from what was intended

while everyone else was uniformed,
and spending money on expensive meals

we were dressed like total freaks
preparing to tear our clothes off for a crowd

we had nothing to conceal

—————————-
We drove out to Colorado
Lost my car on the way
Wrapped our gear in duct tape
and took the last greyhound that day

when we got to the mountains
we rode the snow like waves between the trees

you were that snow rabbit that I’d
always dreamed of
having next to me

—————————-
[MELODIC LINE]
—————————-

After three months apart I wandered Buenos Aires
looking for your face
I turned to see you run to me
and nearly died in our embrace

you taught me all my spanish directions
and then we marched and practiced in the park

we learned folklore dancing
from strangers who saw us
safely home after dark

—————————-

we snuggled on an overnight bus
riding westward toward peru
a wide eyed little boy wondered
by what luck I had found you

when we finally reached the mountains
we sang all night in spanish in a fire-lit room

the daytime sun watched us waist deep in snow,
trying to reach the lake
at the base of the hill

and smiled when we finally got through

—————————-
[REFRAIN]
—————————-

We did so well together
and so much was so right
but then at last the time came
for our last kiss goodnight

we only had, so much time,
I think that we both knew it from the start

I stole your car and with my broken leg
drove away with my broken heart

and headed for the mountains one more time

—————————-

And now that’s a story too
one more in our collection
the romance that we shared was just
part of our connection

and all we’ve dared and time we’ve shared
now is part of something we can feel

when we are together
I can tell again
what is real

what is real

[MELODIC LINE TO CLOSE]

I stood in line for a few minutes before a big friendly tough looking guy with wild hair and soft eyes asked me if I was Kai. His name was Blue and he had the other half of a ticket. I picked up a Macallan 12 and a single cube of ice and followed him to the far front corner of the little club known as the Rickshaw Stop. I appreciated that they’d gone so far as to park a crude bike hacker style rickshaw in front of the place, although I still haven’t seen one in actual use anywhere in the city.

Within minutes of arriving I started to spot the various people I’d seen during the day in the Haight. They were scattered throughout the crowd that was quickly thickening as people were poured in like Kuzu to a sauce. I was either in just the right place that night or this was some kind of regular ritualistic gathering for everyone in the surrounding area.

The first few songs were a great mix of west African style riffs, gospel choruses, folk pop and nicely built psychedelic digressions. The lyrics were about bears seeking honey over the mountains. One guitar player had a beautiful hollow body Gibson and wore a headband under his long hair and beard, syncing up beautifully with the tie dyed American flag draped behind them. The one closest to me looked like Ted from Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure. (He was apparently a guest musician from the Dodos.) They wrapped up the set with a warning and a request for extra water, as though we should be preparing ourselves for what was to come.

The second round started out slowly. Another solid stomp tune got the whole place clapping and moving, until one song ended and the continued rhythmic clapping or snapping became the bed for the next. I found myself swept up in the rhythms and when they stopped, singing out the choruses in harmony with the rest of the swaying, grinning crowd, only to return to bouncing and leaping when the music kicked back in.

The audience and the band began to feed each other in a loop. The exploratory breakdowns grew longer and longer, becoming an evolving dialog between the crowd and the performers, unifying us all until our emotions rose and fell as one. The lush crimson drapery surrounding us made sense and bouncing against the people around me became communion instead of aggression. I felt like I was moving and singing and pulsating with the crowd almost against my will, beyond the point where I was an individual who had a will, beyond the point where I cared to have one.

The band slowly left the stage one by one with the crowd singing, in harmony, “If the window wasn’t dirty there would be so many colors”. Every throat vibrated with this chorus and continued on unbroken until the band began adding small bits of quiet horn or shaker, weaving them in and out and around the chorus that fell and receded against the stage again and again like saltwater waves to the beach outside. No one wanted it to stop and so it continued, rising and falling, some snapping or whistling around it, but none breaking it up or stopping the flow in any way. We continued on like this for at least fifteen to twenty minutes.

In the south, they would say that we “got church”. To some this probably sounds like a cult gathering about honey bears. An American plains Indian would nod in understanding.

Despite being well past 2:00AM, Zikk started IMing with his father back in Texas, who is apparently up at such random hours. Zikk was explaining that he’d been to “church” and his father refused to accept this. “In order for this to be church there has to be an object of worship. I worship the son of God.” Zikk tried to explain how experiencing great feelings of shared love and light can themselves be worship, and the experience can only be called spiritual. The discussion ultimately broke down over a long standing chasm of understanding.

What we call “church” and what we call “culture” are equally interwoven. While there is always room for any large group of people to argue about which music, writing, or art constitutes a given group’s “culture”, few would argue that these are threads from which the fabric of culture is made. For the people in that room, sharing that experience, there is no question that this music and this experience were culture just as much as another might say the same about classical music hundreds of years old, much of which was originally written for liturgical use.

At the same time that this seemed a profound fact to me, I had a corresponding thought: were not these musicians, magicians, scientists of the emotion really just extremely skilled manipulators of the human brain? Trance music, and its power to move people in a deep way has been used by countless cultures and while modern Americans have tucked it away in warehouses and southern churches, it remains no less powerful. As Jill Taylor described at TED, despite being a brain scientist and being able to analyze what was happening during her stroke, she was no less moved by the awe she experienced when she was suddenly enlightened by a severed connection to her left hemisphere.

The bottom line is that if you get a chance to see Akron/Family live, check it out, and when you find yourself in your church, just breathe it in.

My friend “Wikki” was feeling that most bitter of sorrows last night: the desire for a mate. There’s something about having someone to cuddle and rant at that makes the rest of life easier to live. I can’t say that I’m not dealing with a bit of the same thing. When the weather is beautiful there is nothing better than feeling the soft touch of a hand to hold, and the way a simple squeeze shivers up my arm and into my chest. At the same time, I know that soon I’ll have to get back to work and my energy will be dispersed enough to leave that same hand waiting, empty, far too often. Wikki knows this too but she couldn’t imagine finding anything that would fill this genetically engineered hole in her heart. Here’s where I’ve learned at least one way to hold off this forever distracting desire.

Rob Hanczar was the crazy kid all through Jr. High. He wrote absolutely brilliant short fiction in our writing class, but was known to fail any class he didn’t care about. At one point he decided that sloths were particularly funny and became an encyclopedia of sloth knowledge, just to get in as many obscure sloth references as possible. Late into High School, when I had just started playing guitar, I found out that he had been playing electric bass. I know instantly that he was going to be an amazing and completely out of the box creative musician and I jumped to form a band with him that lasted well through college.

One night I remember sitting with Rob, drinking a cheap beer and discussing life. We were talking about how much we loved playing music and he said to me, “You know, sometimes when I think about having to choose between sex and playing my bass…”

Most people put sex, and through implication, relationships, highest on their lists. Unlike Wikki, however, I’ve found some experiences in life that rival it. My friend Jonathan March was being indoctrinated into a corporate culture, and the new recruits were each told to share an emotionally intense moment. He started describing the time he played acoustic bass with an orchestra in a particular hall and as he recalled the event, tears began streaming down his face until he couldn’t speak.

After playing blues guitar live I was often accosted by women who appeared to have been overpowered by a mysterious force, their eyes melting and their brains bent on seduction. It was baffling to me, but my girlfriend at the time, Lisa Kvasnika, told me, “You are so intense and focused when you play. You’re putting so much energy into the guitar, that I want more than anything to be that guitar in your hands.”

When I’m improvising a solo, or even a whole piece with a group, I start to get lost in it. I revert almost entirely to the right brain, feeling out where each moment will take me next. I’m not thinking about the fact that as I stretch up into a bend the drums are dropping just enough to make that note want to sing a little longer before sliding down into a whisper, but I’m feeling all of that happen. As my fingers play through a range of gentle to intense the strings tremble, snap and shiver in response. I don’t think I have to push this analogy very far. The rise and fall of intensity. The rush of adrenaline.

Of course there are other intense experiences that give me similar feedback. When I’m rocketing down a hill feeling every twitch and shift of my body turn the snowboard into a knife carving snow I feel it. I aim for a pocket of moguls and hammer them, leaping into the air and flexing the board on the hard turns as I land, my heart dropping as I catch long air, landing with a fwap before cutting smooth arcs again, my legs vibrating over the rough spots.

But when the lonely nights arrive, my nylon guitar is the old friend that has always seen me through. I can spend hours working out a new piece of music or crafting lyrics that, when sung, carry the emotion I feel up a level, from my chest and out into the room. I think it’s telling that I’ve rarely, if ever, played the songs I’ve written this way for anyone else. I think they are written more to feel that emotional connection with the universe, something outside myself, than a way to get attention or respect. Cuddling with the universe, as it were!

I encouraged Wikki to find something that would feel this way for her. I’ve tried to encourage many people throughout my life to explore these other options. Ultimately, the desire to love and be loved is probably too great but at the same time humans are just too unreliable to depend on for all of these needs. Finding a passion outside of human relationships has made me a stronger, more independent person and I think that, ultimately, this is the best foundation for any real loving relationship.

click on the image to see the photographer’s page on flickr