Fucking A Train

Lee Ellen and I have entered the stage of spontaneous and uncontrollable fits of stir-crazy laughter. Yesterday we were trying to practice some guitar and vocals only versions of a few songs (the place we were planning on performing that night didn't have a piano and I didn't feel like doing the Casio-rucksack dance all the way to Brooklyn for a second night in a row), and we didn't get passed “The carrot and the onion sit and think...” before we both burst into jaw-hurting, chest -shaking, I am unable to stand fits of laughter. What was it? The coming home every night at 4 AM? the walking on concrete all day? the drinkin?, the getting up on stage after carrying our instruments all the way across New York only to realize that we are only one talented act out of...dozens..and dozens..? There is also just something supremely humorous about repeating in slow-mo lyrics like “to realize their place in the vegetable hierarchy...” while trying to figure out new vocal harmonies. “VEGetable...VegetAble....can you slow that down some more?.....VEGETABLE HIERARCHY” Whatever it was we could hardly get through the three songs we were keen on performing that night due to incapacitating guffawing.

At six o'clock we headed out, figuring that giving ourselves two and a half hours to get to the Livingroom Lounge in Brooklyn would be plenty of time, and that maybe we would even have enough time to frolic in a Brooklyn park and fill up our water jugs with Brooklyn tapwater, which by the way happens to be amazing. Compared to the tap water in Manhattan, Brooklyn water tastes like it's straight from a natural spring in Missouri. Evidently people actually buy Brooklyn tap water and ship it all over the country to make New York bagels... I bet you didn't know that.

We waited forever for the fucking A train but at least got the inspiration for a new song—waiting for the fucking A for fucking on first principle. The train came and Lee Ellen pulled out her sketch pad (she has been averaging two sketches a day, which I must say are quite good....my portrait is very Adele-like) and I kept working on lyrics for the new song. It got a little awkward when a middle aged black man sat down very close next to me as I was scribbling lines about “her ass and her thighs” and “tactile tactics for fucking you on first principles.” We arrived forty minutes later at Jay Street, which was supposed to be our transfer stop for getting on the R. We hop off the train, which is quite full by this point, and gaze around the station....no R train signs anywhere. We panic, decide this must be the WRONG Jay street, and squeeze back on the A-train. A few more stops come and go and we start thinking that was probably the right Jay street after all; then I had a moment of brilliant insight and remember that we were supposed to get out of the station at Jay street, walk a few blocks, and THEN get on the R. Damn. By this point the A has turned express and we are passing stop after stop, getting farther and farther into the heart of Brooklyn. I nudge Lee Ellen: 'We are the only white people on this train.' There is a young black man pushed up next to us in our car listening to his iPod who seems to be thinking the same thing—he looks at us, looks around the train, looks back at us. I wonder exactly what he was thinking. Probably something along the lines of...they are either lost or crazy, or both.

The A train finally stops at the Nostrand station and we ascend the station steps to cross the street to catch the Manhattan-bound A train. It's already 7:45. We exit the station with a sea of dark skin folks and enter into a new country... We were in Latin America when we descended into the subway and now we are in the ghetto-ist black ghetto I have ever been in. There are two sirens (police and ambulance) greeting us as we enter the streets, mountains of trash, a police officer running to break up a fight and storefronts in every direction of obscure fast food chains and wonderbread-selling grocery stores. We see the subway entrance on the other side of the street and cross quickly to enter. Deja vu. The same army officer guarding the station as before. The same turnstyles. A flash back to the disorientation I felt at the mirror maze in Luzern, Switzerland. Back on the same side of the fucking tracks. 7:50. We head out again, feeling like we are emerging from the trenches into a grenade zone and cross the street in the other direction as a pimped out black Cadillac slowly bumps up beside us.

We finally make it back to Jay street and wait for the R for twenty minutes. “Please be armed at all times” the women on the intercom soothingly tells us “and keep all small electronic devices hidden.” Oh Brooklyn. The R finally arrives, 8:25, and we hop on, convinced we can still make the open mic sign ups which start at 8:30. Our ears perk and our tails start wagging when we see the 25th street stop and we prepare our bags...Lee Ellen and I turn to congratulate each other. Five second later, we look out the windows of the car again only to see the light sof the 25th street stop slowly dwindling. “It...skipped our stop” I smile at Lee Ellen. “Sure did, Adele!” We both feel another laughing fit closely approaching and decide it would be best to get off the train at the next stop to ride out the laughter and catch the next train back to Manhattan.

Instead of going to the open mic we spent a nice evening in central park with a fresh salad and our thoughts and conversation. On the way to central park we came across a fire truck and thirteen firemen all more or less engaged in the project of fixing an American flag that had gotten partially detached on the side of a hotel.... seriously dudes? Manhattan and Brooklyn are only minutes apart but they are completely different cities.

On another note, our show at Bar 4 on Tuesday night was really successful. Jeremy Spangler came in from New Jersey to play with us, which really rounded out our sound with a nice percussion section. We got a couple of leads on people who want to collaborate with us and a few new fans who will come see us again.

(yeah, i've never been great with staying in one tense...you know, you are writing about something that happened but once you start to relive it, it's really like it is happening in the present)