Scratch

3 short stories about a grocery store

3 short stories about a grocery store

The Solomon Railroad company spread throughout Ohio, Michigan, and into eastern Illinois under Uri's empathetic eye.  And while his rails continued a westward expansion, he found a modest home in the Shaker Heights area of Cleveland.  He did his best to live simply, directly. But his railroads went everywhere, and such was his fame that, when his children would later introduce themselves to a hotel clerk or professor, they would be asked whether they were from the "Cleveland Solomons".

The Solomon Railroad company spread throughout Ohio, Michigan, and into eastern Illinois under Uri's empathetic eye.  And while his rails continued a westward expansion, he found a modest home in the Shaker Heights area of Cleveland.  He did his best to live simply, directly. But his railroads went everywhere, and such was his fame that, when his children would later introduce themselves to a hotel clerk or professor, they would be asked whether they were from the "Cleveland Solomons".

I hitchhiked to Santa Fe once and spent the day wandering around the art galleries and adobe huts.  The pueblos felt simultaneously modern and primitive - like space ships built a thousand years ago - and I lost track of time.  I started making my way back - 30 miles in one car, 10 miles in another.   The afternoon turned into a brilliant sunset that radiated an azalea green from behind the hills. My final ride had on Automatic for the People, and the song New Orleans Instrumental #1 played as the sky turned from green to red, red to purple, purple to blue, and blue to black. It smelled like ozone and old leather.

I hitchhiked to Santa Fe once and spent the day wandering around the art galleries and adobe huts.  The pueblos felt simultaneously modern and primitive - like space ships built a thousand years ago - and I lost track of time.  I started making my way back - 30 miles in one car, 10 miles in another.   The afternoon turned into a brilliant sunset that radiated an azalea green from behind the hills. My final ride had on Automatic for the People, and the song New Orleans Instrumental #1 played as the sky turned from green to red, red to purple, purple to blue, and blue to black. It smelled like ozone and old leather.

I'm not aiming to write a finished song when I write an hoursong.  I'm aiming to get a piece to a point where I can be comfortable either abandoning it, or investing more time.  And in the case of Lena, I thought I had the start of something.  This episode tells the story of how the song went from an interrupted idea, to an abandoned sketch, to ultimately, a finished song.

In this episode we discuss:

The ambient religious background of our town started to change when I was in Middle School and the Brownsville Revival happened.  I started hearing stories about the Revival, and it sounded like something out of a movie - altar calls, full-water baptisms, people writhing around on the ground speaking in tongues.  Over time, the religious fervor that was focused on the Church started bleeding into the town at-large, amplifying what was already a pretty religious community.  People started speaking in tongues in school, falling out of their desks and convulsing.  It was memorable.

I went once.  I remember the sweat slowly staining through his entire shirt as he preached through the night.    I remember the preacher walking around and touching people's foreheads, which caused them to instantly collapse and start writhing on the floor.  I remember him walking up to me, and placing his hands on my head, and nothing happening.

In this episode we discuss:

Everybody writes songs differently - some people write words first, and then write music that goes along with the words (the idea of this makes my brain hurt - I have no idea how people write songs this way).  My technique, most of the time, is to improvise on an instrument and sing nonsense ontop of it until I find something that feels right.  I build out the structure from there, and then write to the form.  But this one had a different start - music first, no vocals.  I call it a "Reversal".

In this episode we discuss:

I can't escape my hometown.  My Sunburned Town.  Its coves and shorelines, its pine trees, its summer rain.  It is a constant drip drip drip that seeps out of me and into my songs.

And part of that, for me, is hurricanes.  I remember printed maps of the Caribbean distributed with every purchase by the Albertson's grocery store, where I had my first job. I remember sleepless nights, waiting for the coordinates of the storm, plotting the latitude and longitude, and connecting it to the previous location to get a sense of the trajectory.

In this episode we discuss: