Gigantic.11
Emerald City
All over Seattle in January 1989, young people operated gleaming espresso machines in a hundred different cafes. Skies were gray and threatened drizzle. Seattleites had grown accustomed to high-test caffeine in stylish settings years before residents of most other cities.
The word barista was not used. Being reasonably cute was the job qualification. If by the end of a week you were churning out lattes as fast as customers ordered them, you could probably keep the job.
I worked at a cafe called Espresso Roma on Broadway on Capitol Hill. It felt good to pack a filter with dark espresso, slam and crank it upwards into a hissing machine that could scald you five different ways. Frothing milk, likewise pleasurable.
On off days, I stripped paint and sanded woodwork at a large Victorian whose owners were in a perpetual state of remodeling.
My friend Joe had just broken up with his girlfriend. He needed a distraction and I needed a change of scenery. This is what had led me to his couch in Seattle.
About two weeks after I moved there, it snowed one night. The city had over half a million residents and not a single snowplow. We arrived by instinct at the top of Denny Way, a usually-busy boulevard with a grade of San Francisco proportions. Tonight it was empty. We mustered a variety of sled-sized objects. I rode a formica countertop. Halfway down I did a 360, regained control, and continued my run straight into downtown.
The thrifting in Seattle was unparalleled. I found an acoustic guitar for ten dollars. I squirted an entire tube of crazy glue into the fissure where the neck was coming off the body. Straddling the instrument facedown between two chairs, I set a TV on top and left it for 24 hours. It was solid as a rock by the next day.
The action was ridiculously high, the strings cut into my fingers with twice the bite, but I was up for the challenge. Joe was in a band with a guitar player who went by the name Dog. I sat with Dog on a daily basis, trying to figure out what he was doing. His eyes would roll back into his head, such was the trancelike state that would come over him.
Dog would not stop to explain what he was doing. You either followed or you didn’t. It was in the process of trying to keep up with him that I finally began to get the hang of changing chords in real time.
One secret is you can leave a little sonic mess between chords, so long as it’s in time and sounds intentional. Sort of like Rodin can leave dripping bronze on a sculpture because his figures possess life.
So, besides Dog on guitar, Joe sang, Bosco drummed, and Steve played bass. Steve also ran a basement art gallery in Pioneer Square. On a Thursday night in February, their band played the art gallery, and I opened up for them.
I’d been “playing” guitar for maybe two weeks. Dog let me borrow his Fender Mustang. It was the color of a banana cream pie and heavier than I thought. It hung awkwardly from my neck, halfway down to my knees.
I played two Elephant Gun songs plus one I’d just written, three songs total. There were 20 people in the audience.
These are details that I know because, in addition to committing to the guitar, Seattle also marked the beginning of keeping a real journal.
My performance was uncertain at best, but I had done it. I had stood at the mic with a guitar and propelled a very short, pared-down rock set, entirely under my own steam.
I had changed cities. And entered a new world.
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