TheHellmouths
Since When
As I said, the lyrics for “Since When” came from that same fruitful session at the drop-in centre in downtown Guelph as “Marshall”. It’s a sad place, and the food is sticky and starchy. You look around at all the people there and you wonder what happened to them to bring them to this. I got to talking to one guy standing in line who told me he was planning to shoot himself that weekend. A hopeless alcoholic, he was liable to go into convulsions if he didn’t get a drink immediately upon waking in the morning. He stuck out his tongue, the end of which had been partially chewed off as result of one of these seizures.
“The ladies like it though,” he said smiling.
Your meal is free, but you have to pay a quarter for a cup of coffee, no exception. It’s hard to find a seat, and when you do and ask if it’s taken, you mostly don’t get an answer and you just have to sit. Everybody smokes, but you’ll never see a pack of premium cigarettes, only bags of home-rolled filters or pouches of hand-rolled, which is what I smoke. I wouldn’t be eating here if I wasn’t better with money and knew how to cook, or didn’t smoke. I also feel unwelcome at my usual haunt, having occasionally gotten too many refills, feeling a little like a monster in the face of all that bohemian beauty and sophistication and self-reliance. But the people here at the drop-in centre are not “my people”. A teenage girl tells me that doctors told her she only has a few years to live, but she looks forward to moving into a place in Kitchener where things will hopefully be better. You look for a little conversation with the person you’re sitting with, and you get more than you bargained for. When she leaves, I take out my notebook and start thinking about the things at the back of my mind with an eye on the clock for serving time. The line-up is always long.
“Since When” is a simple song that writes itself, based on a speech made by Rosy Robotham at Hempfest, a festival promoting marijuana for medicinal use held yearly in Sault Ste. Marie. Garrry wrangled an invitation for us and we drove up with his father the first year we played, and he leaves us at the grounds to tour the festival. We flip to see who shares tents. Brendan gets one tent to himself, which is appropriate if you know him. I set up Garrry’s and my tent and watch amused as they fumble with the other one until they guilt me into helping. Garrry is showing abominable ass-crack and I complain about it. Garrry ignores me until Brendan complains too and Garrry graciously attends to the matter. I’m nervous about the show so I talk them into playing Frisbee with me, which I find relaxing. Brendan throws an ambiguous arc and Garrry and I both go for it. By the time we realize what’s happening, it’s too late. There are a lot of people in Guelph and Toronto who would have paid to see that collision. We rolled around on the ground for a bit and got up nursing our respective knees before limping off to the stream down in the woods for a swim. The cold water washed away my anxiety, and I swear I will return. We take the stage like we own it; the soundman does a brilliant job. A woman puts a joint on the stage during “Old Folks” which we later give away to the people camping across from us. None of us smoke. As Garrry tunes for the next song, I make a speech about the dangers of marijuana when used by people with serious mental illnesses, though I do end up having a tiny toke after the show after we rehash (re-hash... ha ha) the performance and start into the booze. I usually think we sounded pretty good, but I don’t hear things as well as they do. Then we head back to the field where a guy is caber-tossing logs into the bonfire. I end up seeing him the next morning when I arise before everybody else, having drank the night before. He’s guarding the equipment with his dog, who he says is very dependable. I never said otherwise. Turns out he’s paralyzed in one arm, and is HIV positive. We are joined at the picnic table by the woman who gave us the joint, and she takes issue with my remarks regarding marijuana use by the mentally ill. She is a member of thee Cree nation, and a survivor of the native boarding schools. She’s been through everything you can go through as a native and as a woman. We agree to disagree. I would later feel like just another white man who talks a lot. We are also joined by a young woman who declares that she would never take pharmaceutical medication, even if she had a fatal illness. It would be better just to die; let nature take it’s course. The security guard and I raise our eyebrows at each other.
“That’s what you say having never truly faced death,” I say.
He says, “I know when my little girl looks up at me and says, ‘Daddy, I don’t want you to die,' I’ll do whatever I can to stay alive.”
I ran into the native woman again the following year, again, early in the morning.
“There was an appeal to donate weed to the bands because they didn’t have much of their own.” She rolls her eyes, “The one band I donate a joint to doesn’t smoke it and says you shouldn’t do it when you have a mental illness.”
“Sorry,” I said. “We passed it along to somebody who appreciated it.”
But that didn’t seem to make it any better, though we were more amicable this year than last. Rosy gave his speech that night. He talked about the cops raiding Rochdale, beating up hippies and pregnant woman for a few dime-bags, as well as running a pot shipment in cooperation with a Christian organization based in the middle east that was permitted to breach the naval blockade during the Iran Hostage crisis, as well as bribing customs officers to look the other way.
Listening to him speak, I experienced a sensation of the world rolling under me and not knowing where to set my feet before being carried away by a struggle that had overtaken stronger people than me, a cold wind that cuts through all the layers. You turn to the person next to you and they’re naked.
I woke up early again the next morning and sat with some locals. The girl sitting next to me complained to me about her boyfriend. It was like I was back in high-school again. Her friends, a bunch of male narcissists admiring each other, started talking about the riches that may be in the area, gold on the side of the road. Things were getting harder.Like it used to be.
“It’s getting like that, isn’t it?”
Every man for himself. That kind of talk scared me, and I saw how it scared me, and scared me in the past, those wandering neuroses… could I survive in the woods. The spirit of adventure, to know and experience everything in this world seemed to go here hand in hand with the avarice that was destroying the planet and wiping out entire peoples.
“There will always be a need for music and laughter," I said. And they looked at me like I was crazy or stupid or naïve. I thought of the Group of Seven and how they carried their livelihoods in their eyes and their hands. I thought about my writing as I looked at the rolling hills beyond where these men were planning to go in the afternoon. I thought of the stories I had heard about the police breaking camera equipment at demonstrations to destroy any record of excessive force on protesters. Images were dead, discredited by manipulation. All you needed was your eyes — no — your senses, and you could carry the truth with you. I looked up at the hills they were pointing to in the distance that they planned to climb that afternoon, and I knew I could survive in the woods.
“Since When” was a tough one to record. We recorded uncounted takes, and in addition to the problems Brendan and Garrry had, I was never happy with my backing harp in C under Garrry’s vocals — not the high keening solo harp in F, I think that’s some of my best work on record — but the rootless meandering that seemed to detract from the whole instead of contributing to it. Salvation came in the form of my Ozark jaw harp, which happened to be in C, though it is a very difficult and even slightly dangerous instrument to play, both to my teeth and to my left hand pressing the harp against my teeth. Putting it down for the harp solo and picking it up again for rest of the song wasn’t easy either. I don’t think it comes through very well in the mix, but it was better than doing nothing and it added a little showmanship to our live shows. These days we perform “Since When” with a double-sided double reeded C/G Echo vibrato harp that my grandmother found amongst my late grandfather’s things when she was selling the old house. They gave me my first harmonica when I was thirteen. The Echo has a glorious organ-like sound that suits the song beautifully. Needless to say, Garrry and Brendan’s work on this track gives me cause to think yet again how lucky I am to be in this band.
Yours,
K