Every Saturday, we’ll be posting a new illustration by David Lester. The Mecca Normal guitarist is visually documenting people, places and events from his band’s 26-year run, with text by vocalist Jean Smith.
This is strange, but I think I understand it. In thinking about this type of guy, this guy in particular, my mind is processing unresolved drama from the past. When I think of this guy, the one I’m referring to, I notice I am thinking of him by the name of a guy from many years ago. That is to say, in wondering what it will be like to see him in the street—will we return to avoiding each other? Or will I say, “Hi Kevin” … but wait, his name isn’t Kevin. And no, I’m not going nuts. Actually, I think this is a very healthy function that my brain is performing, reminding me that I’ve done this before and I now have the skills to go back and put other situations in order in my mind.
Kevin was 20 years ago. A tall, insecure white man, a painter who would not paint. He had crappy jobs: cab driver, dishwasher. He skulked around the neighborhood feeling hard done by. He felt entitled to stuff other people had. He’d had a kid who he hadn’t become involved with—he’d left them, the mother and his child, early on, and that was a source of pain for him. He showed me a photo that his ex sent him years later—the little guy looked just like him. It was heartbreaking all around. He and I had a very dramatic three years together—back and forth between Vancouver and Tucson. Back and forth between fights and break-ups. Many of the songs on Dovetail—maybe Mecca Normal’s most popular album—are about him.
Trapped Against
swing the wax cradle
in the burning tree
lay flat in rusted cage
pale moon of a half-face waking
yellowed up by fear
he is the thing he hates
he is the thing he hates
I have been reviewing these songs because they are the upcoming free downloads. “Throw Silver” is probably Mecca Normal’s most well-known song, yet when I’m asked what it’s about, I draw a blank. I hate the “what’s it about?” question when it comes to the novels I write. What’s a song about? Who gives a shit, right?
Hearing “Throw Silver” again, right now, I recall that it is about breaking up after returning home from a tour, in that unstable time when emotions are fractured by exhaustion, projects long-in-the-works completed, the possibility of disappointment—expectations not met. The return to normal life is depressing. Name five things musicians do when they get off tour. Survey says: drink, cut-the-fuck-loose, sleep, break-up, have a fucking bath.
On May 2 and 3, Mecca Normal recorded with Calvin Johnson for the first time in more than 15 years—the seven-inch will be out on K Records in the fall. From 1989 to 1993, Mecca Normal recorded four studio albums with Calvin.
In a dream I just woke up from, at the end, I was walking down a hallway in the house I grew up in, after many attempts to get up out of bed and being very disoriented, seeing my family members talking, strange cars in the driveway and I kept having to stagger back to bed and try again to wake up and in this final attempt to get up, I saw that was 3 p.m. and my family was acting strangely towards me—they didn’t understand me and this created fears in them that they didn’t question, they just reacted to me strangely and as I was walking down the hallway to see what they were doing, my old dog Jill, a black lab, was walking towards me and she sniffed me and then sniffed again because she could tell there was something different about me and she was very old and I bent down to run my hand over her back and I got the feeling she was going to start talking; she sort of licked her lips and clacked her jaw and I said, “Just don’t start talking about art and anger”—then I woke up for real, and it felt like all the other times I woke up, but this time it was real and it was only 8:30 a.m.
I went outside to clear my head. Snipping off the yellow leaves of the spinach I’m growing in a container, I said to myself, “I’ll gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today.”
