Cold. I set the thermostat way too low again. I arose before the alarms. I didn’t want to shower, I just wanted to leave. Hanging around would be like toeing quicksand. Slipping and sinking were inevitable. So I grabbed my things from the bathroom and threw them back into my bags. I brushed my teeth standing on the carpet with the “Keep Clean” message that consistently made me laugh. I brought my things out to my car one by one to make room for them all, forcing myself to thoroughly inspect each room. I folded a thank you note to Brooke and slipped the key into a fold. When I started my car my throat I felt a tinge of sadness. Goodbye, Louisville.
It takes four and a half hours to drive from Louisville to Chicago. Each time I passed by a sign for I-65 South to Louisville I came closer to convincing myself that another day there might be beneficial. The reality of the situation was that I had appointments to keep and had to move on. I crossed the Ohio River and landed in Indiana. If Ohio was yellow and empty…if Kentucky was rolling hills of green… Indiana falls somewhere in the middle. It is mostly farmland, but there are enough trees and things to make it so you don’t want to kill yourself out of boredom. For part of the journey north there were some confederate flag brandishing biker dudes by my side. Aside from narrating into my tape recorder, I spent most of the drive in cruise control taking stupid photographs of myself and fellow drivers from faux artsy angles.
At some point, I eclipsed the 1000 miles traveled mark. This is a bit of a fallacy though, because I only remembered to reset the odometer to zero when I passed through Allentown, which is 75 miles from my house. I stopped for an hour in a place called Zionsville, Indiana to get some coffee and do some writing.
Maybe 200 miles later, you come to a dinky little bridge and apparently it’s Illinois or Michigan or something. Interstate-94 takes you into the heart of Chicago. Once I exited from I-90 I realized I had completely forgotten that traffic even existed. So as I sat in a parking lot slowly approaching Lake Shore Drive, I snapped a photograph of US Cellular Field (aka Comiskey Park). On Lake Shore Dr. I drove past the harbor and got a few good looks at the city skyline. It was overcast so the low clouds floated by obscuring the Hancock Building and the Sears Tower.
I drove to North Avenue beach and plopped down in the sand a few feet from Lake Michigan and closed my eyes. There were children and families at play. Gulls like scavengers dug around searching for food. I strolled out to the end of a long pier and took in the scenery. It was still a bit overcast. A man was tossing tennis balls off the pier into the lake for his yellow lab to fetch, so we struck up conversation. I mentioned how much my dog loved swimming and jumping into pools, and he mentioned how his was a hunting dog, and smart the breed is.
I walked back to my car and as I was pulling away from the beach got a call from Tim Midgett. He wanted to meet at Cafe Boost at 7:15. He told me it was on the 5400 block of North Clark. Not having any idea how to get there, I pulled out of the lot and ended up on Clark. I took it through Wrigleyville and past the stadium, where the Cubs game had recently ended. I found the cafe but it was early so I went next door to Quiznos to buy a sub. By now I was dehydrated and beginning to tremble, after hours in the car and laying out in the sun without any water. I figured the Quiznos would either quench my thirst or be the requisite fodder for spending the next several hours slunk over a toilet puking my brains out.
I walked to Cafe Boost and saw a padlocked doors and covered windows. I called Tim.
“Hey Tim, does this place open at a certain time or is it, like, closed? Because the door is padlocked and the windows are covered in Happy Birthday wrapping paper.”
“Oh, shit. Maybe it is closed.”
“So I guess it’s not just for ambiance…”
“Ha. Well, there’s an Einstein’s Bros. Bagel place like a block down on the South side of the street… Let’s meet there.”
I showed up and noticed that this place too, was closed. I stood around waiting for Tim and we decided to just go to the Starbucks on the corner. We found a booth in the corner and began talking about the book idea. I asked about how Silkworm spent a long time in Seattle before moving to Chicago, and asked if he wanted to talk about why he felt that happened.
“We [Andy and I] grew up in Monatana… moving to Seattle was decision based mostly on the size of the town. I think the difference between Seattle and Chicago is the size of the city. Also I think that when we lived in Seattle everyone we knew in Chicago seemed to be doing something constructive. We knew people in Seattle who were too, but it seemed like many more were scuffling around or adrift… Seattle is kind of an outpost, I think there’s an attitude here that doing things and working on something that means something to you is important.”
I asked whether or not he felt there was an overarching aesthetic or “style” he would attribute to Chicago. He said that as far as the music itself goes no, there isn’t a common theme or sound (which, of course, is obvious–not all bands in a given city are going to sound the same). He did mention that there seems to be a “workman-like” attitude that does dominate the area bands.
“At times there are bands that have things in common. In the early 80’s there was Naked Raygun and Big Black that were like, tangentially related. It’s always been sort of like, people who have the same kind of spirit about what they’re doing. In New York that was true in the early- mid 80’s with Sonic Youth and the Swans and bands that were grouped together…”
As to whether or not the artistic community was close-knit, Tim said, “If you’re not totally anti-social you end up making friends that play music. Our drummer spends a lot of time out and about… I have a lot of good friends who play music and make posters or paint or do whatever. I think it’s kind of unavoidable. The people you meet are bound to be doing something. I think other places have things that handicap slightly groups of creative people. In a city like LA or something it’s so huge… plus its driven by the entertainment industry… it handicaps people interested in doing stuff. A place as small as Seattle is bound to get cliquish. In New York there’s the attitude that it’s the based to be. The music seems dog-eat-dog from outside. Lots of competition.”
It went on like that for a long time. But I’ll save it all for later. I’ve got to meet Jeff Mueller tonight and I’m going to a record fair with my hostess Jet now.
