Every Saturday, we’ll be posting a new illustration by David Lester. The Mecca Normal guitarist is visually documenting people, places and events from his band’s 30-year run, with text by vocalist Jean Smith.
Some years ago, I met a man through online dating who lived in a fancy house on one of the Gulf Islands. I went to visit him there a couple of times. He basically bossed me around, tried to fatten me up on cheese (which I wasn’t opposed to) and acted like an entitled jerk. By the end of it, I’d learned that he was a hate-filled Zionist with a personality disorder who wanted me to sever my connection with Dave because he had created a poster of Mordecai Vanunu for his Inspired Agitators series.
He also wanted me to stop making art. He explained that if my art wasn’t making enough money to live on, then my art was no good, and within the construct of our capitalist system, I would have to stop making it and accept that I was better suited to a menial job. I think he suggested washing floors in the cafeteria we were sitting in. He was convinced that the value of art was in its ability to generate an income.
Which reminds my of another fellow I dated who, while I was unemployed, suggested that I could go door-to-door in the neighborhood asking residents if they needed the ashes swept out of their fireplaces. I didn’t take his advice—or internalize his lowly opinion of me—instead, I wrote a novel and this novel is currently being submitted to major publishers by my literary agent.
While I’m deliriously happy to be single and free of running commentary from jackasses, I find that random philosophies of conventional thinkers return to me when I attempt to evaluate responses to Mecca Normal. And by responses I mean financial returns. It is hopeless, of course. But to me, it doesn’t compute that I need to stop releasing albums because I cannot make a living selling said albums.
I feel very fortunate to have made a life out of emotional and intellectual ephemera—songs and shows and the conversations on the long drives between those shows during which David and I spend a lot of time strategizing. We come up with ideas for new work and for making an impact with our existing work. This scheming is something we consider part of the Mecca Normal oeuvre (if you will). Left to our own devices, we can make a lot of things happen without much in the way of resources. We are very cautious about how we proceed. Trouble tends to arrive when we need other people to follow through on their part. The trajectory of this new album has been extremely arduous in many ways—from flying to Miami to record while my father was lying in a hospital bed suffering from acute delirium, to finding out that the LPs and CDs were not available while we were on tour in September, and that they will not be available until the middle of January—three-and-a-half months after their official release date.
How did this happen, and will it derail sales potential of this album?
“Dead Bird’s Feet” from Water Cuts My Hands (K, 1991; Matador, 1991; Smarten Up!, 2003) (download):
