Desiderata: observations from the journey

…to Suede, perhaps the most underrated British band of the last 20 years. I was first turned on to Suede in 1998 when I was working at a record store. My boss and I were talking about the bands we really loved and he said his current favorite was Suede. He told me they reminded him of Bowie (Bowie himself when asked about the similarity commented that he liked them a lot because they sounded like him) and that I should check them out.

I promptly found their albums in the rack and when I saw Dog Man Star I was intrigued by the title. I unwrapped it and put it on. This strange, powerful, atmospheric rock and roll shot out of the speakers. I was entranced. It was like nothing I’d ever heard. The lyrics were poetic but I had no idea what the singer was talking about, but it didn’t matter. The guitar, piano and drums seemed to be overlapped in this way that emphasized the dark things to come. In fact, it was their second album and the lyrics reflect the fact that at the time, Brett Anderson, the lead singer, was addicted to crack and heroin. Ah, the glamorous life of a pop star.

My favorite track on the album was and still is The Wild Ones. It starts with a bright, stark guitar melody, followed by an ethereal keyboard note and then Brett Anderson’s voice comes in bell clear and covered in emotion. The song is an entreaty to get a girl to stay – in bed, in the apartment, in his life. That was it, by track four I was a fan.

The most amazing thing about the band, aside from their skill as musicians and talent for songwriting is their total lack of popularity in the United States. They were lauded as being the band that saved pop music and became a household name in 1993 when they won the coveted Mercury Prize. Their name was mentioned in the same breath as Oasis, Blur and Pulp and they sold out clubs all over Europe, even touring as far away as Japan. Among collectors the Japanese pressings of their CD’s are considered to be commodities, as they featured extra songs not available on the UK or Australia pressings, plus the novelty of getting the liner notes in Japanese. I used to own one of these and it was worth every penny I spent.

They toured the U.S. three times, but the last time they came here was in 1997, a year before I even discovered them. Each trip through the states was brief, with only 14 shows here in ‘95. Clearly Sony, which distributed them had decided that Americans couldn’t really get behind a band that didn’t sound like The Beatles (Oasis) or The Beatles and The Kinks (Blur). In Sony’s opinion, I can only surmise, if you sounded like Bowie or had Morrissey’s dark sensibility and knack for roundabout lyrics, you were relegated to a handful of dates for the first half of your run as a band. Suede broke in 2003 but not after putting out 5 brilliant studio albums and garnering praise from fans and critics alike. All of their albums were in the Top 40 Charts in the UK, but never made it to the old Billboard. Here’s a nifty .jpg for ya. Enjoy.

As I mentioned in down to sea pt. 1, in two weeks I’ll be flying to the east coast and going on a sailing trip. A long sailing trip. A very long sailing trip. In a straight line from origin to destination it will be 415 nautical miles. At an average speed of only 5 knots (5 nautical miles per hour, a nautical mile being 6,000 feet since they factor in distance traveled over waves) it would take us 3.5 days. It is more likely that we’ll be sailing at 6-8 knots on average, due to the fact that we’ll be offshore in stronger winds and weather-permitting we’ll be able to move into the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulf_Stream and have it push us north.

3.5 days of non-stop motion.

Think about it.

When was the last time you were in a moving vehicle for 3.5 days without stopping once?

Unless you’re a sailor and you’ve done a voyage like this, or you’re an astronaut or a billionaire adventurer like Steve Fossett: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Fossett
you’ve probably never spent more than 6 or 7 hours traveling.

If you’ve ever flown from New York City to Sydney, Australia then you’ve spent 25 hours traveling, but only 20 or 21 in constant motion, and that’s with a stop in Los Angeles where you waited for 4-5 hours before getting back onto the plane – thanks to Qantas and Orbitz for that bit of trivia. Plus, flying doesn’t really count because you can sleep for most of it. Really, you could drink heavily upon leaving LAX or just pop a Lunesta or Ambien and wake up in the “Land Down Under”. You don’t have to take part in flying the plane. Worse case scenario you can read or if you’re like many if not most people these days then you can watch DVD’s in your laptop. Not to mention the movies the airline will be screening.

On a sailboat on a blue water passage everyone works. Your job varies, depending on what has been assigned to you by the Captain and the jobs change on a rotating watch system, similar to the one the Navy uses. You might be trimming sails, steering, navigating, cooking, assisting someone or sleeping.

As you can imagine, sleeping can get pretty interesting on a boat – particularly during a storm. When the seas get really rough you have to tie yourself into your bunk. Whether it’s stormy or calm, cloudy or sunny, warm or cold this is guaranteed to be the trip of a lifetime (at least until I top it). It will be a wonderful span of moments in bold relief, a little 72 point typeface to leap off the pages of my life’s book. I promise this will be my last blog about it until after I return, but can you really blame me for being this excited?

It’s 7:27 on a hot Friday in LA. I’m halfway through the third revision of the second draft of a screenplay I started writing with my friend P back in 1999. 1999! I guess it’s true what they say, scripts are never really done. I’m really just doing what we call a “polish” at this point, tweaking some dialogue and description. Someone is playing rock in the apartment below – stereo or live, I can’t quite tell – and the guitar and bass thrum through floor and vibrate the soles of my feet. It feels groovy. Yes, I just used the word groovy, deal with it.

My friend J just sent me an IM. I’ll be starting a company with him one day, can’t tell you what we’ll be doing in the company, but it’s going to be a lot of fun. As I sit here in the thick heat I feel pretty good. I feel optimistic, even somewhat inspired. The sun is sinking and a thick band of pink has formed above the horizon. It may have come from smog, but I don’t care because it’s still pretty to look at. I feel loved and I feel blessed. I am reminded, both in thought and by J’s IM of how loved I am by my friends, how much I love them and how blessed I am to have them in my life. So if you are one of my friends and you are reading this, never forget how much I love you and that I wish you only health, love, happiness and success. That’s all I’ve got for now. Have a wonderful weekend.