When the moon rises,
the sea covers the land,
and the heart feels itself
an island in infinity.

Nobody eats oranges
beneath the full moon.
One must eat fruit
that is green and cold.

---Frederico Garcia Lorca



Laying down by the tracks

by Sergio Pastor
     The words sprang forth.  From the lips of the crowd the chorus came, chaotic at first but someone somewhere had a drum and soon our voices sounded together in time.  “Goodbye forever, once again.  Goodbye forever, once again.”  The boat rowed slowly away, a trail of fire marking its passage, flames pulled behind in its wake.  I stood up against the railing, looking out into the darkness of the water and all these pinpoints of light, trying to follow that boat with my eyes until it rowed out of sight.  The breeze blew cold off the Sound.  “I’m standing in the rain, with my lovers and my friends, singing: Goodbye forever, once again.” ---  O  ---

     His voice, full of strength and caring and sickness and pain, fills my room as I try to slip unnoticed into sleep.  It’s been a week now and I still feel sick to my stomach.  The image of her face burns in my mind and I have been searching for something to hold on to, but it is all so hard, so slippery and uncertain and filled with darkness.  All my definitions unravel at a touch and have come tumbling down around me; the slightest breeze cuts down to the bone and cherry blossoms bring me close to tears.  I am momentarily a wreck.  I know this will pass, but it is all so hard.  “Hold on to these words, I’d like to think that they may offer some protection against the night.  Against the night your life can seem transparent, a reflection, a trick of light.  Hold on to these words, they’re the best I have to offer at the moment as a lullaby.  As a lullaby, you can lay down by the tracks and watch the world slip by.  Hold on to me.”  His voice, full of strength and caring and sickness and pain, fills my room as I try to slip unnoticed into sleep.

---  O  ---

     It would be pointless for me to try and tell you everything about that night for you still would not have been there, and besides I don’t remember it all.  I can tell you a few things about the show, at least, though I am still unsure exactly what I need to say about it.  Perhaps I can paint a few pictures, sketch out a feeling, if nothing else.  Hopefully it will make sense.

     I can say that as the crowd filed in from the cold Seattle evening we were each handed clear blue 7” records and had our hands stamped: VOID.  The records, pressed for the show, were simply decorated with bible quotes, one from Job, the other a few lines from the Song of Solomon: “Awake, O north wind, and come, O south wind!  Blow upon my garden that its fragrance may be wafted abroad.”

     As the theatre filled up, a spritely figure with bright orange hair jumped up on the stage.  With exaggerated movements he wound up an old Victrola and placed the needle carefully before disappearing behind a puppet booth.  The small curtains of the booth were drawn and the figure of death emerged, backed up by a trio of vegetable puppets.  Music began to spill forth, weathered by time, from the horn of the gramophone and Death and his backup singers started into this old song I’d never heard before, “Welcome All True Lovers,” comic skeletal face crooning, crooning, and grinning at us all.  The song came to an end and the orange-haired figure darted offstage without turning off the Victrola.  White-faced men in tuxedos began to file in, some carrying large pieces of sheet metal upon which they began to create a quiet cacophony of musical banging and scraping and clanking.  Two of the men took away the Victrola and the puppet booth as one sat behind a drum set and began playing.  Soon another took up a double bass as the theatre grew more and more full of these eerie and anxiously amelodic sounds. 

     The pale-faced men kept taking up instruments, one a trombone, one a clarinet, one a saxaphone, and by this time the caterwauling had built up to an incredible intensity.  From the back of the room I saw him come high-stepping through the crowd in a white trenchcoat.  He held a shovel in his hand and he made his way through the audience jumping and stomping and banging the end of his shovel against the ground.  As he reached the stage the music brought itself into a recognizable beat and the show was on its way.  He grabbed a huge cardboard sign and turned it towards the audience, so that the few present who had not already been taught could sing along to the chorus of the song.  It’s a simple chorus, you could chant along as well.  I’ll tell you how it goes: igga-di  igga-di  igga-digga dup.  (repeat)

---  O  ---

     The first time I met Jason, about a year and a half ago, he was performing at a music festival in Seattle.  Not a part of the official show, he was playing in an alleyway and had assembled a small crowd.  I was there at Bumbershoot for a couple specific bands and most of the day’s shows were not interesting me much so I was pleased to come upon this crazy looking man with long greasy hair screaming and stomping his feet and squeezing music out of an accordion that hung about his neck.  I watched him work the crowd with an impressive deftness, getting them to yell like pirates as he tossed a large stuffed carrot in the air, or link arms upon shoulders in a ring singing drinking songs.  "If God wanted us sober, he’d knock the glass over, so while it is full we drink up, drink up!"  Little punk kids and families with children alike stood around, entertained by him.

     "Anybody here work for Bumbershoot?" he would ask in an exaggeratedly covert tone, chuckling, at the end of his sets.  When the answer came back negative he would open his accordion case and uncover a sign that said, CDs $8 EACH, BOTH FOR $15.  "I recommend this one," he’d point and say, "it’s my new one, much much better than the first album."  I only had twenty dollars on me for the weekend, but there was really no question where fifteen of them were going.  As I handed him my money he gave me a flyer for a show the next weekend.  "Thanks, I’ll try to make it," I said, wondering who I could convince to drive up to Seattle with me.  The flyer said "FOLLOW THE CARROT!" in big letters at the top and near the bottom was the man’s name, Jason Webley.

     The last time I came upon him that weekend he had just finished playing a song, and in response to someone’s question he was saying, "That was a song by Leonard Cohen called "Suzanne".  I’ve never really tried it before, I was just sort of wondering if I could do it on the accordion."  I kicked myself as I heard this for not having caught his rendition of the song, and I left Seattle determined to come back and see him play again in a week.  However, I did not end up seeing him play again for about a year.
      I did eventually get to hear him play "Suzanne".

---  O  ---

     You must understand: I have this thing for Leonard Cohen.  The birds are beginning to chirp outside my window and I am recalling a spring night a couple years ago when I drove to my friend Bon’s trailer after getting out of work, and tapped on his window.  He stuck his head out, confused.  "Hey, what’s up, Sergio?  What brings you here in the middle of the night?  I’m pretty high right now."  I laughed and said, "That’s perfect.  Here, listen to this.  I’ve decided that this is just about the best thing I own to me right now."  I handed him my copy of Best of Leonard Cohen and left, wondering vaguely why I’d lent out my CD just after deciding it was my favorite thing to listen to.  I am closing my eyes and recalling other things, how I used to sing Leonard Cohen songs with her over the phone.  She has a thing for him as well, it’s part of how we met.  "Suzanne takes you down--" and she did, over and over again-- "to her place near the river.  You can hear the boats go by and you can spend the night beside her."  I always knew that a relationship beginning with Leonard Cohen would end up being nothing but all too real and beautiful.  And it has.  It is.  They are.

     When I describe Jason Webley’s music to people I often find myself telling them to imagine an early 80s Tom Waits singing Leonard Cohen songs against a backdrop of dark, lyrical mysticism and an obsessive interest in vegetables.  Which is not an entirely accurate description, but it serves its purpose.

---  O  ---

     Speaking of vegetables, let me get back to the show.  As we return Jason is on stage singing a song about putting things in the ground and digging them up.  And with the song winding down he has begun to use his shovel to dig into a chest full of vegetables and fling them out into the audience.  Radishes, tomatoes, eggplants, and carrots are soaring through the air.

     The song came to an end and in the silence a faint sound of chanting could be heard outside.  There was still a large group of people out there, wanting to get in.  "Stand up!" someone yelled from the back.  Bill was sitting next to me and he stood and took up the cry.  "Stand up!  Everyone stand up so they can get in!"  The audience started to get up and squeeze closer together in the already tightly-filled theatre.  The people who’d been waiting outside filed in and a cheer went up from the crowd as the band started in on a klezmer-ish instrumental.

---  O  ---

     Wait.  Maybe I wasn’t done talking about "Suzanne".  When I got back to Portland at the end of this past summer I stayed for a few days with my friend Bill who lives about a half hour South of the city on the Willamette River.  The first day I was there we were hanging out down on his dock and he started to tell me about this crazy street musician he’d met at a Country Fair a couple weeks past.  I recognized the description and supplied the name.  "You know about Jason Webley?" he asked.  "Yeah, I saw him playing at Bumbershoot a year ago."  "That’s awesome!  I didn’t know anybody else knew about him.  I’m getting him to play at Reed next month."

     Which is how I had my second encounter with Jason Webley.  The Reed show was excellent, although I won’t go into it here so as not to lose focus altogether, except to say that it ended with Jason leading the crowd on a march around the quad and past the amphitheater, where unbeknownst to us the dress rehearsal of a play was going on, (it was The Bacchae that they were rehearsing, though, so our drunken revelry seemed too narratively appropriate to feel that bad about.)  At the end of the march Jason had us all take communion in the form of baby carrots that we were instructed to hold above our heads and stare at while spinning in a circle twenty-five times before eating.  The experience was more than vaguely religious, not least because I was a bit drunk and spinning twenty-five times in a circle while staring straight up at a carrot took a lot of concentration.

     After the show Bill and I stuck around to talk to Jason.  He is a quiet, soft-spoken man when not performing and he looks more clean cut now, no longer sporting his hair long, but it all serves only to make his presence more mysterious, with a haunting intensity to his eyes.  We spoke about the show and his performances.

     "I’ve come to feel more and more that the melancholy stuff is the direction I need to take my shows in right now.  Tonight was sort of cheating, but, you know, there were people passing around jugs of wine and it was just that kind of night."

     I had hoped that he would play "Suzanne" during the show but he had not.  I still hadn’t lost hope, but I was too shy to come out and ask him to play it directly.  I started singing the song under my breath and, as I’d hoped, he turned his head and said, "That’s my favorite song.  Hold on."

     He went and got his guitar out of its case, sat down with us, and played "Suzanne," beautifully, beautifully, just as I imagined it would sound coming from his fingers and lips.  "And Jesus was a sailor, when he walked upon the water, and he spent a long time watching from his lonely wooden tower.  And when he knew for certain only drowning men could see him, he said, ‘All men shall be sailors then, until the sea shall free them.’  But he himself was broken, long before the sky would open, forsaken, almost human, he sank beneath your wisdom like a stone."

---  O  ---

     I have just called her room.  I wanted to talk to her about when we used to sing Leonard Cohen songs to each other over the phone.  She was not in her room.

     I hope she is having a good morning.

---  O  ---

     Where was I?  Oh yes, the Halloween show.  Well, as I said before, I shan’t try to tell you everything that happened that night, describing the concert itself would mostly be meaningless without the music and the people, anyway.  But moments, moments.

     "I’ve been thinking about the Smurfs," Jason said at one point, standing on the stage, "about that song they sang and the way they lived.  How did that song go?"  Someone in the audience offered their rendition.  "Ah yes, that’s it.  So I’ve been asking myself about this singing.  I’ve wondered, ‘Did the Smurfs live in a land free of evil?  Did they not know darkness that they could sing and smile, carefree, all the time?’  But, no, the Smurfs had darkness in their world.  Up there on that hill, Gargamel and his cat waited to capture those little blue creatures and use their magic for evil purposes.  So you see, it’s not that the Smurfs had no darkness in their lives, it’s that they didn’t let that stop them from getting together and singing.  I worry sometimes about death.  I see myself dying and going up to the gates of heaven where God will stand and say, ‘Jason, you did alright.  You didn’t screw too many people over, you tried to find beauty in things and share it with people.  Yeah, you did alright.  But, you could’ve sung the Smurf’s song a little bit more often.’

     "So come on, you know the words."  The crowd, in his hands as always, was all too happy to oblige.  La la lala la la, la lala la la... 

     For two hours he played and near the end the lights were turned off, leaving the room lit only by candles on the stage.  We all knew what was coming, what song he would close with.  At an earlier point in the show plastic bottles filled with little rocks had been handed out as noisemakers to the crowd, and as Jason started in on "The Last Song" we all kept time with the booming drum.  “One day the snow began to fall, and slowly inch by inch, covered up the world, til finally the top of the tallest building, was lost beneath a powdered sea as quiet as a shadow’s grave...”  He stood there in the dark and sang this song of coldness and decay and fear and time and how hard it is to find something to hold on to and have hope in.  Everyone in the audience sang along with the chorus.  “And we say that the world isn’t dying, And we pray that the world isn’t dying, And just maybe this world isn’t dying--“ (writing these words and hearing his voice in my head and being there and here and everywhere in between seen through the lens of this past week: an unexpected urge to cry) “--Maybe she’s heavy with child.” 

     Except that you don’t have the music or the moment or anything to hold on to but these words, so I suppose I have to do better than that.  But picture it, the dark room, expectant, staring up at this man and his haunting eyes who tries to tear himself apart with his accordion and this screaming voice...  “...One night, a woman took my hand, I left my home and followed her into an icy field.  When I wanted to go back I’d lost the way, so she beckoned me to lie beneath the stone that always bore my name...”  He holds a plastic vodka bottle filled with coins and smacks it against himself in time with his stomping feet and the groan of the accordion.  Before singing the last verse he puts down the accordion and finds his trenchcoat and throws it on.  “One morning We woke up in an alley, to the smell of urine, alcohol, trash and gasoline, with a dim sense of a notion we’d held something in our hands that was bigger than us or god and we can never touch again.”  Everyone is clapping to the beat and singing loudly. “...And just maybe this world isn’t dying: I’ve been looking at the symptoms for awhile, Maybe she’s heavy with child.”  And at the end of the song the chant returned with which we’d begun.  Igga-di igga-di igga-digga dup.  Not loud and aggressive now, but pensive and somber.  Jason dons his hat, looks up and says, “Everyone got their coats on?” climbs down from the stage and walks out through the audience.

     The packed theatre slowly filed out onto the street, with the band on stage still playing, and everyone still chanting, softly, loudly, hopefully, with melancholy, in unison the whole time.  Emptying a theatre with that many people is no short process, and the whole time we chanted, voices taking off on their own melodic variations of the theme to create three, four, five, six, eight part harmonies, weaving in and out of each other.  The entire thing was definitely one of the most surreal and communal experiences of my life and the whole time there are these pale-faced figures on drums and bass and cello escorting us out with dark and beautiful sounds.

---  O  ---

     She always made fun of my singing, but I always loved to sing with her anyway.  I can’t recall when the last time we sang together was.  Maybe I will call her tonight and demand a concert, ask that she sing “Suzanne” again with me.  This was always my favorite part: “Suzanne takes your hand and she leads you to the river, she is wearing rags and feathers from Salvation Army counters.  And the sun pours down like honey on Our Lady of the Harbours, and she shows you where to look among the garbage and the flowers.  There are heroes in the seaweed, there are children in the morning, they are leaning out for love and they will lean that way forever while Suzanne holds the mirror.”

---  O  ---

     The last people to come out onto the street bore torches, and a large puppet of a man with a yardstick and a clock face instead of hands.  Jason stood atop a wooden box and declared, “Halloween is about reclaiming the night!  So let’s go.”  He held up a wooden cut out of a line of Smurfs marching and the crowd took up the song, singing slowly and triumphantly.  La la lala la la, la lala la la...

     And we set off.  A tremendous crowd of people, people united for no cause but a love of this man’s music and what it meant.  And we marched making noise and playing instruments and dancing and shouting down blocks and blocks of Seattle streets.  We stretched two blocks long and brought traffic to a stop as we came, walking through red lights and surrounding buses whose drivers had terrified expressions on their faces.  People came out of buildings to stare at us, some cheered, many looked confused, some even joined, swelling our numbers as we made our way down to the Puget Sound waterfront.  No political demonstration I have ever been in had the pure energy and sense of purpose of this march.  At one point a police car appeared, and as people danced around it I was sure that we would soon be dispersed, but miraculously it drove away and did not stop us.

     We paraded down over twenty-five blocks and finally reached the water.  As the crowd quieted down around him Jason stood up on a bench with his accordion and softly began to sing.  A fire was built behind him and at a narratively appropriate moment in the song the giant puppet was sacrificed on the flames sending little bits of burning papier-mache floating into the air.  The ruler and the clockface were the last parts of the puppet to go, and as he reached the climax of his song they had burned away to reveal two large black metal hands underneath, fingers outspread, starkly set against the orange of the fire.  A triumph of some sort of basic substance, and there is Jason singing painfully:  “But it’s not time to go yet, no it’s not time to go yet.”  And I stood, and there were tears in my eyes, yes.

---  O  ---

     “It’s about that time, with Winter coming to close in around us, when I think we all should stop and make a prayer from our hearts: a wish that all will go well and Spring will come again.  Because we'’e never sure that it will.”

Jason has lit a candle set within a paper boat, and he bends down and drops it in the water.  His assistants start handing out paper boats to the crowd and everyone mills about; those who have lighters help others to light their candles, those who are taller assist with the long drop the boats must make into the water.  The crowd that fifteen minutes before was shouting and dancing their way down the streets is now completley pensive and quiet: making prayers and wishes and setting them down to form fiery clusters upon the dark water.

     In the distance a boat began to row toward us.

---  O  ---

     Jason Webley dies at the end of Fall.  he disappears over the Winter, plays no shows, makes no public appearances, (perhaps he travels,) and in the Spring he is resurrected.  If you go to his website right now you will see a picture of him labeled, Jason Webley  b. 5/1/01 - d. 10/27/01, Lost at Sea.

     Like a vegetable himself he disappears for the Winter.  Life, death, and resurrection, is this then the meaning of his obsession with vegetation?  because even though I generally find the vegetable theme to be the most difficult part of Jason’s persona to explain to people, or get them to take seriously, yet I really feel that there is something central, something essential that he is trying to communicate with it.  “The world is an onion, all center, all peel.”  If you go to his website you can find an assortment of interesting facts about vegetables, or quotes from poems and novels where people talk about vegetables.  This is the Jason Webley revolution, it is one of sustenance and roots and cycles.  When he sings the chorus of “Back to the Garden” there is something very serious, I feel, behind the laugh: “We’re going back to the garden and out of the night, I saw a fiery head of broccoli in a dream.  There’ll be artichokes and rutabagas, collard greens and sweet potatoes, reaching from the earth to push us into the light.”

---  O  ---

     The boat was old, with a mast but no sail.  A cowled figure rowed silently toward us and a woman dressed entirely in white stood upon the prow, beckoning with one hand as she held a white parasol above her with the other.  The boat rowed up to the water’s edge and the woman beckoned to Jason.  He looked as if he were considering her proposition, but ended up turning his back on her and the boat began to row away.  All of a sudden Jason changed his mind, he turned and jumped into the cold water, swimming up to the boat.  The woman pulled him in and as they started to row away she could be seen taking off his wet clothes as he curled up against her with his head in her lap.

     “Thank you, Jason!” a voice cries out.  Others follow, “Thank you! Thank you!”  In the silence I can hear someone near me crying.  We all watch the boat as it rows away from us, a trail of fire marking its passage.  Suddenly the crowd, as if of one mind, spontaneously breaks out into one of his songs.  We all know it, because he teaches it to everyone at this shows.  We are the army of trained monkeys he is always talking about.  “Goodbye forever, once again.  Goodbye forever, once again.  I’m standing in the rain, with my lovers and my friends, singing: Goodbye forever, once again.”  We sing until the boat becomes a tiny black dot and eventually turns a corner out of sight.  “We keep singing the refrain, even though the song will end.  Goodbye forever, once again.”

---  O  ---

     It has been a hard week filled with too much thinking, and too many cold breezes working their way beneath the skin.  It is good to have your illusions shattered every so often, but it is still hard.  I will rebuild.  Jason’s May Day resurrection show has just been announced.  It is to take place on a boat, coming in as he went out.  It has been a hard week, but Spring is coming and that lessens my fears.

His voice, full of pain and sickness and caring and strength, fills my room:

            Hold on to these words,

            this night won’t last forever, that’s a promise. 

           This light won’t die. 

           This light won’t die.

           Between the shadows of the leaves

           It dances.

           As the wind goes by.

and I slip unnoticed into sleep.