DAVID LESTER ART

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 25-year run, with text by vocalist Jean Smith. Guy One On our first date, we take his dog for a walk through Cates Park. Guy One tells me of the names of trees and plants, and he describes how rocks and cliffs and islands were formed. Basically, he explains the origin of the universe to me. At the end of the walk, he gives his dog a wash in the creek. I stand on the slippery plank bridge waiting for him. A group of elderly people from a nearby care facility shuffle across the bridge. Guy One spends an extra long time washing the dog's genitals. The old people stop to watch; they see a tall man standing in the creek rubbing a dog's penis. The group leader says, "Who wants to play bingo before dinner?" "Here, Bingo!" an old woman says, crooked fingers extending towards Guy One's dog. The group leader claps her hands twice. "Chop chop," she says and the old people move along. Guy One looks disappointed to be losing his audience. He wanted to explain things to old people: springtime, dogs, penises. We are in bed for the first time. You are lying on your back, eyes closed, after giving up on penetration. I am wondering if you are wondering how I feel about not turning you on. I am on my side, looking at you. You say, "You remind me of a woman I used to have sex with." "How so?" "Not you as a person, but your body." In my mind, my body separates slightly away from me. Legs and hips, shoulders and breasts, are slightly less mine with this assessment. I've never wanted to be anyone else. A song pops into my head in a lonely way. I can see Tobi Vail singing in a San Francisco record store, "I don't always want to be me and not her." West Coast tour with Calvin and Tobi, who was probably still in high school. Your eyes slowly open, you scratch your bare chest and say, "She was the most sexual person I've ever been with. We had our sex at work. She was incredible." My body extends through time and space to the office building where you and the incredible woman worked together. I am watching you have your memories of sex with her, wondering why you're telling me this. I am assessing how it feels to hear about the sexiest woman ever, after failing to turn you on. I don't feel pain because this is too ridiculous. It appears that you say things without considering their impact. Is that a lack of empathy? Can empathy, like an orgasm, be faked? I want to ask you right now, but I'd have to explain the nuances of my surrounding thoughts. Language would turn my thoughts into accusations, disrupting more than it would clarify. I am a body, enough like the body of another woman that you have put me to use to stimulate sexy memories of her. I am free to have my thoughts while you do this. Nothing is required of me while you use me in this way. It appears that you have not made a connection between your words and my thinking. Absolutely fascinating. "Once," you continue, turning onto your side to look at my face, which possibly reminds you of a third woman's face, "she took me to into an unused office and locked the door and pulled open a desk drawer. She put her foot in the drawer, pulled up her skirt for me to fuck her that way." I watch your face as you illuminate your detachment. My body melds into the actions of the sexiest woman you have ever been with. I see my body doing these things: my foot in a drawer. I am attempting to become a person who considers it your problem that you can't get an erection. It has nothing to do with me. I am now the sexiest woman you have ever been with. "Your breasts are almost too big," you say. Bigger than hers, is what you mean. Pieces of me, parts of her. I'm a compilation, a compendium. You appear not to wonder about my thoughts or feelings. I am a connected dot, connected to the incredible woman with one foot in a desk drawer, skirt pulled up to reveal my genitalia. I'm alone next to a man with a soft penis who is using my body to fantasize about the greatest sex he ever had. "Were you both in other relationships?" I ask, intending to get information while you're in the mood to give it. "Yes, I was living with someone and she was married." This is how people are. I must get tougher. I'm not tough enough yet; this is sad and scary and I don't want to be hurt in this way. I look at your face carefully, looking for regret or pain. You told me that this is how you used to be—that was your past and now you are a one-woman-man and you would not cheat on a woman again. Yes, I know, I know. That's right, you explained all this to me in email, before we met. You are a one-woman-man fantasizing about having sex with another woman while you are in bed with me for the first time. Did you want me because you hoped I'd be as sexy as the sexiest woman ever? I get up, grab my royal blue dressing gown and go into the bathroom to run water for a bath. Sitting opposite each other in the tub you say, "We are going to be open and talk about any problems that come up." "OK," I say, encouraged, even though you interrupted me to make this pronouncement. I continue with what I was saying, but your eyes drift around the bathroom in an intentional demonstration of disinterest. I continue talking and you cover your face with the orange washcloth. "You aren't listening to me," I say. "Whoa-whoa-whoa-whoa-whoa," you say, taking the washcloth off your face. "You can't state that I'm not listening to you. You can't make a statement like that. You have to say that you feel I'm not listening to you. Try it again." I stare at you not wanting to say anything, thinking, "I feel you are not listening. I feel you are condescending. I feel you aren't interested in me. I feel you are a fucking asshole." We're sitting on a no-leash and clothing-optional beach—which, I'm thinking, is perhaps not the best combination of concepts. "I'm not a restaurant guy," he says. "It doesn't work on my budget." Dinners have been between $6 and $8 for two people. Pizza slices, salad rolls and a plate of noodles. We take turns paying. He's out about $12 since we met. At Guy One's apartment for day-old bagels, he shows me a book about communism: black-and-white photos of unhappy workers in China and Russia, austere factory walls. I pick up his binoculars and look at the mountains. Guy One says, "I use those to watch the young people across the street having sex." "Nice," I say, continuing to scan the hillside. "The woman is a musician. She has various people come over to play music with her. Once she had awkward sex on the couch with one of them. I could tell they didn't have much experience under their belts. The guy left and never came back." "Really? How do you know he never came back?" I say, setting the binoculars down. "I never saw him again, that's how I know," Guy One says, on the verge of being annoyed with me. I freeze, unable to say anything. Guy One goes to the kitchen; I hear him putting water in the kettle. I step into the bathroom and look at my face in the mirror. Frowning, unhappy, tension around my mouth. "Breathe," I tell my face. "Breathe in. And exhale." In the kitchen I pull a stool up to the counter and look out the window at the apartment building across the street—maybe he's right, maybe the guy never visited the musician again. Maybe they had awful sex once and never spoke again. "Once," I say. "We were heading to Seattle to open for Fugazi and my car died at the border." "Once I was at the border between Mexico and the USA," Guy One says. "I was crossing on foot and the customs guy turned my acoustic guitar upside down and a peyote button fell out, but it rolled under something and wasn't found." I sip my tea, listening to his story. I feel less like finishing my story—it's a good story, I tell it well. It says a lot about me. I want to tell Guy One that I bought a Grand Marquis from the tow-truck driver. How the stick-on tinted window would only go down two inches when we pulled up to talk to the customs guy. That we made it to sound check. I am fiddling with tiny dried gourds in a lop-sided pottery bowl on the counter. Guy One appears to be thinking back to the peyote, Mexico, the guitar. "You know what?" I say, selecting one gourd to inspect. "What?" "I would like to be able to tell you about my experiences." I suppose I appear to be addressing the gourd, but I don't really give a shit. "OK," says Guy One, seeing that I'm upset. "I want to be allowed to tell my stories without you re-processing everything I say or referring to something in your experience." I drop the gourd back into the bowl. It barely makes a sound. Guy One sticks out his chin. "You're trying to change me. This is how I am and I'm not changing. This is who I am." He taps his chest—an empty sound, like the dried gourd. I start to cry. I hate it that I am crying, unable to talk. "Oh," he says gently. "You're having a bit of an emotional time aren't you?" I'm wondering if he wants me to cry so that he can do this comforting thing. He seems quite familiar with this part: this comforting thing. Odd guy. "There there," he says, putting one hand lightly on my shoulder. "I am a very loving and caring man." Deception in this case is a man deceiving himself. Not me.

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 25-year run, with text by vocalist Jean Smith. Encouraging the small cat to go home to cross the hall staid reluctance—why? why should it go anywhere? Standing in the warm clutrification of the high-ceiling kitchen noticing guitar picks under plastic on the floor a warm ice layer artifacts from other times gone all soft—I wasn't there I wasn't here I don't know these people And then the car to the cold dark room to watch nearly unbearable video clunkification of a pixelated past I don't even remember A dozen black beans in a colander ants randomly traipsing in a Plexiglas farm doing what? don't they know they're being studied subjects behaving dragging treasure through circulatory channels up and over other ant bodies going the other fucking way hauling some other shit lugging some other treasure Is this the agreed upon dusk we're placing ourselves near? the end? I'm not done yet Is it time now to sit with the others to recall youth drained out in halls and centers Japanese, Ukrainian, Russian, Indian? The weight of a session like that is cement at my ankles I'm not stopping I'm evading a withering unstrong enough to fray or snap at the touch if the touch was to find its way to finger my fragments unhinged from the past I reject a dragging into relevance that relegates doings to coloured surface components sure, I like museums but I don't want to be one I'm going to sidestep the gloom seeping onto concrete floors do a dosey-do an a la main left the building Now is a constant re-writing of the continuum a conditional compendium unlatched on a city road a wooden lock on a tilted gate moving back and forth at dawn low pickets wearing grooves in the earth making the path hard passing around memories drives me to climb into the aluminum confuselage of resistance to speed inside the dank of an impudent vehicle yelling through plastic covered windows semi-sealed with clear tape balled up in a confusion of red twisted letters spewing vitality against nostalgia I won't be filed under old past done

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 25-year run, with text by vocalist Jean Smith. On the weekend, I went across town to Zulu Records to see political singer/ songwriter Billy Bragg. A free, rainy afternoon in-store. The place was packed. Dave found out about Billy Bragg in 1985 reading the U.K.'s NME. We had been doing Mecca Normal for a year or so, unaware that Bragg was doing a voice-and-abrasive-guitar thing with political lyrics—this was unusual in those days, between the wars, and for many years Mecca Normal was compared to Billy Bragg in reviews and articles. In 1986, just after we released our first LP, we went to play in Montreal. We did an interview at CBC Radio (Canada's national radio network), where we heard that Billy Bragg was part of the Red Wedge in the U.K.: socialist musicians on tour to encourage people to vote for the Labour Party in the U.K.'s 1987 elections, in order to oust the Conservative Party from power. We were inspired by this idea—musicians and poets working together based on similar political beliefs. We formed the Black Wedge that night, there in the basement of the CBC, and toured the U.S., Canada and the U.K. in the following years to illuminate our underground and anti-authoritarian ideas. At the record store, 51-year-old Billy looked and sounded great—he did about a half dozen songs and turned the chorus of his most famous single, "A New England," into a sing-along. "I don't want to change the world/I'm not looking for a new England/I'm just looking for another girl." From my vantage point, beyond Bragg, several young women sang with delight, but I wondered if the protagonist's perspective—the guy in the song—was perhaps lost on them, when, in this era, the idea of being able to change the world has been relegated to unrealistic, while the concept of participating in a re-structuring of society has been set aside for immediate comforts. "I don't want to change the world/I'm not looking for a new England/I'm living with my folks, looking for a cell-phone plan." If it's possible to detect the difference between lower case and capital letters in aural communication, I got the impression people were singing "I'm not looking for New England": the region north of New York state or the white clam chowder as opposed to the Manhattan red. A place on a map and a bowl of soup are easy, tactile associations; a new England is a more complex prospect to grapple with. Please pass the Rand McNally's and the Tabasco. Or maybe it's that thing that happens when the sound of a song becomes synonymous with its purpose. Lyrics turn into agreeable noises to be chanted without connecting them to the words—their actual, undeniable and important meaning. Seems to me that the song's purpose was to foist an average youth, circa 1983, into our awareness, to expose a vignette of apathy within the human condition—not to celebrate the guy's decision to opt out in favor of finding a new girlfriend. I guess the young women were enthralled in the moment, part of this rendition and probably their views click with Bragg's, so I'll focus on my experience, which definitely included a wave of nostalgia, not for the days of overtly political songs, but simply for those days, that time—the thrill of seeing Billy Bragg at the Town Pump in 1986 or so, feeling hopeful and encouraged, part of something. I didn't sing along at the record store, but I noticed that I was one hell of a lot closer to the I-can't-change-the-world-clam-chowder interpretation than I felt comfortable with. My conclusion is that we need new political songs to add to the ones that may become diluted by becoming popular. The friendlification factor has a way of putting intention and meaning on the back burner. In an article online, Bragg explains the song "I Keep The Faith" from his 2008 album, Mr. Love And Justice: "In it I talk about the faith I have in the ability of the audience to change the world," says Bragg. "I recognize that my role is to inspire them. But really, the important thing is what happens when I step down from the stage—empowering the audience to make progressive change in the world. We all feel cynicism from time to time. But when you encourage people to overcome that, telling them you have faith in their ability, it's a powerful message."

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 25-year run, with text by vocalist Jean Smith. As a kid in the '60s, we had a big orange portfolio type-thing—photos from Life magazine. My father was an ad-agency art director, and I think this came to him through his business. The photos were divided into sections related to themes, and I forget the themes other than the photographs of people in concentration camps. Other books in the brightly colored modern cubes that housed both books and LPs, were Future Shock, Marjorie Morningstar and a paperback about Picasso—it had blue pages. I found the photos in this book mildly disturbing. He had a sort of jester's costume on—tights and a funny hat—and goats. My parents were both painters, and I was quite happy that, while they were definitely a couple of weirdoes, at least they didn't wear costumes and keep farm animals. There was a great book called Private View, about painters in Britain, photo essays about studio spaces. The Life Cookbook revealed to me that everyone wasn't having pot roast with boiled onions and mashed potatoes for dinner. Somewhere people were adding anchovies and freshly grated parmesan cheese to much livelier fare than we were being presented. Although I did have more butter clams than probably any other kid in Vancouver at that time. I think we had the same small bottle of Tabasco sauce in the cupboard for my entire 15-year stay in that house. I thought it was a brown sauce until I moved out in 1978. My parents were born in the 1920s. My mother was 19 in 1939, when Canada entered World War II reluctantly, to support Britain. When the war ended in 1945, there were 46,998 Canadian soldiers dead. I believe, but I don't know for sure, that my mother might have had a beau who was killed in the war. I think he was a fellow from her neighborhood—Kerrisdale, the right side of the tracks, in Vancouver. There is a photo somewhere of her standing next to a tall, handsome man; I think my mother was waiting for him to come home from the war. I don't think my brother and I were supposed to know this. While I was a kid, my grandfather lived in the house my mother grew up in. When my mother told me how families on the street were notified of a son's death in the war, I looked at the front steps of a house down the street and imagined soldiers, hearts in their mouths, preparing to knock on the front door. I remember touching the smooth leaves of ivy in that garden, imagining passersby snipping bits to transplant in their own yards. This was a compliment to the gardener, I was told. My father enlisted in the navy and went by train from Vancouver to the east coast. He was an artist, and he did cartoons of the other fellows on the train across the country. In Nova Scotia, they had him carry rocks from one end of the beach to the other and back again. The war ended before he'd finished carrying rocks. I guess he took the train back home. Maybe he sketched landscapes from the train—he's never said, that I remember. He quit the ad agency in the '70s to paint fabulous abstracts in his studio in the backyard. My mother had her own studio in the other half of the building. They had separate doors, side by side, but whoever designed the building thought it would be groovy if they both had access to their art books, so there was a wall with an open section of shelves between them. My father, while being incredibly eloquent and interesting, does have a propensity to talk. Maybe it's even a compulsion. He talked through the bookshelves, and my mother—I can see her exasperated look—would have benefited from solitude in her studio, while she painted. It was not too easy to support a family on painting, and soon my father was doing a lot of freelance work—commercial art jobs—and then there was a period of time when he went in with two brothers—two German guys about his age—Jurgen and Joff. I'm not sure of my father's exact status at their new creative agency, whether he was a full partner or what. I remember that when the brothers, two big guys, started speaking German to each other, my father stood there with a weird look on his face. I thought he thought they were discussing the war, or saying things like, "Look at the silly little runt. He has no idea what we're up to. We will certainly be screwing him over big time, and he won't even know what hit him." That's what I thought my father thought—that's what I thought. Seemed pretty obvious to me; I'd seen Battle Of Britain (accidentally, at the Twin Theaters at Park Royal), and I'd read All Quiet On The Western Front. At one of my parents' parties—loud jazz on the hi-fi and lots of laughing, right outside my bedroom door—I heard my mother sobbing. I got up to look at whatever scene was being played out in the living room. The German brothers and my father were standing. My mother was sitting in a Danish modern chair with orange cushions. I guess she was a bit drunk, making comments that seemed be along the lines of, "How could you?" I was probably ordered back to bed, but I added the sounds and images together and in my mind, my mother was confronting the Germans about killing her boyfriend. I mean, maybe they were talking about the little canned asparagus spears that were wrapped in soft white bread and held together with tooth picks. Maybe my mother was saying, "How could you eat the last one, Joff? Jeannie loves those, and she didn't even get one of them, you bastard." I went back to bed thinking about the possibility that my mother's intended husband had been killed in the war, that my father was her second choice, years later. And yes, I was hoping there would be some bits and pieces left over to nibble while watching Saturday-morning cartoons, including those asparagus thingies.

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 25-year run, with text by vocalist Jean Smith. David's illustration is about the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), currently headquartered in Cincinnati, Ohio—just down the road from Dayton, where Swearing At Motorists played a song-by-song run-through of Number Seven Uptown last night with original drummer Don Thrasher. dave doughman is back in the USA for one show only. We met dave in Toronto, in 2001. He was Unwound's excellent live sound man. Mecca Normal was joining the tour to open shows from there to Atlanta. This was a few days before 9/11—we lost our Boston and Manhattan shows, but play on 9/13 in Hoboken, at Maxwell's, where Unwound's music is profoundly soothing. dave starts doing Mecca Normal's sound, too, because he likes us. He wants us to sound good. In Philly, Mecca Normal stays the night at the huge space dave shares with his drummer Joseph. dave puts on a Swearing At Motorists CD, the incredible Number Seven Uptown. I love this album—the sound of it, the sound dave gets—and I know I want to work with him in some way. Mecca Normal leaves the tour in Atlanta, driving north to Toronto to fly home to Vancouver. dave and I hatch a plan to record at Unwound's studio outside Olympia, Wash. I rent a car and drive four hours south to hear what our voices will sound like together. At Farm No Heat, I am given a room with a mattress on the floor, a room where they put all the stuff they took out of the basement—piled it in, worse than random. Going to sleep is a matter of putting on a jacket, hat and gloves, to lie in my sleeping bag, waiting for warmth. Come on warmth. Just enough to fall asleep. dave sleeps in the living room, where tomatoes are ripening on a blue tarp over the bright green shag carpet. On day two, dave makes a geometric shape with the ripe tomatoes, to see if anyone notices. No one does, because none of the residents stays at Farm No Heat. They have gone to their girlfriends' places in town where there is heat. Tally of furniture in the living room: three big couches, two matching chairs and an oddly stylized painting of Muhammad Ali. One of the chickens in the yard is called Cassius Clay. In the basement, the recording-studio control room eventually gets warm. We stay in there, inventing guitar tracks, passing my 1960-something Martin 0-18 between us, overdubbing vocals, deciding to call our duo Transmarquee because we'd both owned 1980-something Grand Marquees as touring vehicles. On day three, Justin, Vern and Brandt of Unwound come to see how we're doing. Vern asks about the white powder laid out in the control room. It's baby powder. I use it on my hands, for playing guitar. OK, so I made it look like a bunch of coke. Hey, I'm straight edge, man—gotta get my thrills somehow. dave comes to Vancouver to record and produce the next Mecca Normal album—The Family Swan—the songs he mixed night after night on tour. Who better to record them? dave gets great guitar sounds, and we love working with him. Finishing the album in three days, dave gets on a bus to the airport—L.A., Dayton, everywhere—touring until we meet in San Francisco, where Mecca Normal finally sees Swearing At Motorists play at the Bottom Of The Hill. dave's great warmth is matched by giant leaps in the air that look as necessary as barré chords, crucial to guitar playing. Out of all this action and chaos, two gestures stick in my mind, describing dave: 1) Standing outside at Farm No Heat, waiting for Unwound to do something in the studio, waiting to get back in there, dave's cell phone rings. He puts a finger in his ear. It isn't a good connection. A  friend asks dave how to do something, how to set something up to record. dave is incredibly helpful and patient, giving her information and encouragement. 2) After losing the show in Boston, Mecca Normal didn't have a place to stay. dave hands me his Red Roof Inn guide from the window of their van. 9/11 crisis all around us, it's more than a list of motels; he is extending the universal map of help. "Give me 10 minutes and we'll be friends." —"Hex Or No Hex," Transmarquee "I have a plan/I'll draw a map when I get to where I've been/For now, I'm not lost/I just don't know what things mean." —"Don't Be Another Double String Of Fake Pearls," Transmarquee

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 25-year run, with text by vocalist Jean Smith. I was in New Zealand when Mecca Normal's album Sitting On Snaps came out on Matador in 1995. I was working at a record label called IMD, as the EP (Exotic Publicist) while Peter Jefferies was A&R. I didn't know I had a job until I landed in Dunedin and was met by Geoff, the label's owner. I had been talked up big time by Peter, whose specialty is enthusiasm. I set to work faxing letters to labels and media contacts in the U.S., to get IMD into a better position overseas. My one big success was securing U.S. distribution through Matador. (I think I can say I worked out that deal.) Oh, and I had the rubber stamp made that said "disturbed by IMD." Peter was bringing in a lot of great music from the U.S., getting it around N.Z.—into shops and reviewed in magazines. He did an amazing job. I believe Sitting On Snaps sold more in New Zealand than it did in Canada—my own country—based on Peter promoting it. I was merrily stamping everything on the shelves "disturbed by IMD" instead of "distributed by IMD," and Geoff blew a gasket over this. Often businessmen can't understand creative genius—especially when she is in their employ. Some years later they put out an IMD compilation called Disturbed By IMD, so I guess it was OK after all. The IMD office was in a basement pretty much around the corner from the Empire: a pub with a pool table, Mecca Normal on the jukebox and a non-stop lineup of wild shows. The Empire was the place to be. Peter and I met in 1994, in Nijmegen, a small town in Holland, at the Fast Forward Festival, appropriately enough, and from then on, we were definitely fast forward. Peter and Mecca Normal had a mutual tour manager: the incredible Dirk Hugsam. The start of our tour collided with the end of the Peter Jefferies & Alastair Galbraith tour. When we got to Nijmegen with minutes to spare before we went on, Peter came rushing into the street to greet us. He was a Mecca Normal fan. I had successfully pitched an interview with Chris Knox (Tall Dwarfs) to Raygun magazine, but I decided to write an article about Peter instead. "Tape Hiss is A Sign Of Life" was finished on a manual typewriter in the front room of our house south of Dunedin. It was my work room—with a view of the sea. The house was a short walk from a beautiful beach, but this was after a lot of other things happened. After Fast Forward, Peter got on a train and came down to Bavaria, where Mecca Normal was going into the studio, so he played piano on a few songs. At the very beginning of "Vacant Night Sky," you can hear me uncrumpling the lyrics, which didn't start with "This is not what it's supposed to be," but that's what I started singing. Nothing was what it was supposed to be. In a really good way. Mecca Normal and Peter Jefferies toured in the U.S., then I moved to New Zealand. After that, Peter and I moved to Vancouver—in between, Mecca Normal and Peter Jefferies (solo) toured in New Zealand and Europe, and then 2 Foot Flame–the band Peter and I started with Michael Morley (Dead C)—released the first of two albums on Matador, followed by tours in the the U.S., New Zealand and Australia. It was all fairly extreme. Peter was in two bands with me—on drums in Mecca Normal and playing piano and drums in the Flambé, as he used to call us, and he was doing his solo set. On tour, the guy barely had time to smoke. Peter had different skills than David and I, and as it turns out, when partnering up with collaborators, it is important to have different skills. I learned a lot from Peter in terms of sound and recording, listening and enthusiasm, but after three years of intensity—touring, recording, moving—nothing was what it was supposed to be in a more usual way.

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 25-year run, with text by vocalist Jean Smith. Driving south through the Rhône Valley, heading from Paris to the Riviera, I was in a small town thinking about what to make for dinner. I was on a long trip through Europe, travelling and cooking in a Volkswagen van. In France, you couldn't just pick up an orange, you had to ask for trois oranges and hope they didn't give you a three-kilo bag. The shopkeeper and other customers laughed when I wanted a few potatoes; I'd asked for terre du pommes, which was more like earth of the apples, as opposed to pommes du terre—potatoes: apples of the earth. Yes, very funny. Now give me my fucking potatoes. I wanted part of a chicken to cook, but the verbs "cut" and "cook" are similar enough to each other that he presented me with a cooked chicken rather than cut-up chicken. I was also trying to buy a corkscrew using various gestures that you'd think would work, but didn't. Maybe he thought I was hitting on him. Anyway, most campgrounds had red wine available, so one didn't essentially need a corkscrew. And yes, red wine and chicken. That chicken was the best chicken I had ever tasted, and to this day, while perhaps I have eaten better chicken and maybe even made chicken as good, that chicken is the standard I maintain in my mind. The best chicken. The usual procedure for settling into a campground was to drive slowly around looking for a level spot with some shade and no screaming kids. Park the van, turn on the propane, and take an empty jug over to the office to check in and fill up with red wine. Evenings were spent reading, playing hand-painted macaroni checkers, or I'd be adding to one of many 50-page letters I was writing to my parents. I have a chocolate box of these letters sitting on my desk—too many to photocopy, too much to transcribe. Here's me in Greece, 1980, age 20, on page 18. "We drove 90 miles south to Mistra, which is known as the Pompeii of Byzantium. The ancient city is mostly in ruins on the side of a steep hill. We walked through several frescoed churches and a huge 14th century palace overgrown with vines. All the construction was done in blocks of stacked stone. Evidently the tensile strength of stone is very low and the strength comes from the pressure against the next stone in the arch. This explains a lot of the features of this period's architecture—round windows, arched doorways and roofs." Party on, eh? That chicken, being the one that I experienced as the best, is, in a way, like a response to a band or a song. Except that with music, you can retrieve and experience it again and extend it to others in exactly the same form you discovered it in. Talking about chicken is not tasting chicken, like talking turkey about music is not hearing it. Sometimes it is maybe better just to eat the chicken and shut up about it, knowing that everyone else is eating chicken, too.

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 25-year run, with text by vocalist Jean Smith. After coming back from a six-month trip in Europe in a VW van, seeing as many art museums as possible, I started work at the Westender, a community newspaper where I met Dave. After we sent the paper to the printer once a week, we'd go to the Railway Club, where local punk and new-wave bands played, but the local scene was in a lull. It was 1981, and I'd missed the whole thing. Dave started giving me music—the Clash, the Jam, the Sex Pistols—and later, he gave me a book about Judy Chicago's Dinner Party, an elaborate art project of great collaboration and feminist ideas. Around this time, I was playing Flowers Of Romance by PiL very, very loudly—over and over, a lot. I saw PiL at Roseland on a trip I took alone to NYC. Sept. 28, 1982—I'd recently turned 23. Reading a review of that show online doesn't bring back any memories. I remember that it was totally packed and very intense in the crowd. There was some sort of railing that I was sitting on, giving me some extra height, but people coming through couldn't see a railing as they tried to push past me, expecting me to give way and let them by, which I would have if my feet had been on the floor. I must have appeared to be a person about 6'4" tall and they were going to squeeze past me, but I couldn't move and they couldn't get past me because of the railing that they hadn't seen. It was that crowded. This went on for ages. When the band finally started, it was incredible!!! The bass, the drums, the howl of Lydon, the sting of guitar—I couldn't fucking believe it!!! They had white lights that blazed out into the audience. I was just reading online that part of the stage collapsed before the show and the light panels were impacted—they were attached to the stage (the soundcheck is on YouTube)—so maybe the lights weren't even supposed to be blasting out on the audience, but that was one of the amazing things about that show. (Evidently, one of the first punk shows at Roseland, where Mecca Normal played years later, opening for Fugazi.) The intense white light and the sound—drowning in light and sound, me periodically grabbing at people for balance when someone tried to push me off my railing. Judy Chicago's Dinner Party and PiL's "Under The House" contributed to me leaving my husband, moving into a small apartment in a house near 21st and Main. I started painting with food—mustard, soy sauce, jam—and going to a lot of shows—Frightwig, The Spores, NG3, Death Sentence. Hall shows, clubs, illegal venues—City Space, Stalag 13—standing around not really knowing anyone other than Dave and his brother Ken, who had been managing D.O.A. and Jello Biafra.

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 25-year run, with text by vocalist Jean Smith. Looking around on YouTube, finding Crass interviews, songs with static images made by fans, live clips and documentary footage, I saw a comment—"it's so? fuckin awesome how Crass' message can be related today!" In a way, yes, totally awesome, dude, but in another way: It still is today. Technology and culture spin along at remarkable speeds, churning up new products to consume, dumping last week's model for the latest marvel—profit-driven intensity regulated by consumer propensity. Other facets of life don't change as quickly: pollution, poverty, feminism, racism, out-dated political constructs and corruption. There's an interview with Crass drummer Penny Rimbaud where he's saying he was amazed that people—the audience—found their way to a tin hut in a field in Wales for an enjoyable evening that included conversation about ideas and inspiration. He said if they'd been offered a pile of money to go and ponce around on a stage with lights, they wouldn't have taken it. "It wasn't what we were doing." I'm happy their influence is being felt today. I'm inspired by Crass—now, today. Their ideas are worth considering and bringing into new projects. Crass colleagues Poison Girls were fronted by Vi Subversa—she was a middle-aged mother of two when she started a punk band to sing about sexism and gay rights. Mecca Normal's first show in England was on a bill with Vi at Apples & Snakes in London in 1989. We ended up with a show with Poison Girls six months later at an East London hall, and we stayed with them—Poison Girls—for a day or two before the show, during which time Vi was having a birthday party. I thought it was her 60th, but Dave figures it was more like 55; either way, she seemed old to us, and we weren't even all that young—about 30. They lived in a fairly big house with a garden, and evidently, when they needed cash, they sold slices off the back end of the property to their neighbor. This was somewhere near Dial House: the Crass house. Poison Girls had a history with Crass—working together, doing shows, a benefit single—10 years prior. To us, visiting in 1989, that all seemed a long time ago. Time creates distance differently as I get older. As a kid in the '60s, World War II seemed like the distant past. Now, 40 years later, World War II seems remarkably recent. Anyway, we were sort of hanging out, trying not to use all the hot water or finish the last bit of milk, you know, basically just stay out of their hair. We didn't have a car and they weren't really near anything and we didn't really know them; we were just there, waiting to do the show. It was a bit awkward being at Vi's party—people arriving, flowers, booze, food. I think Vi and Richard Famous lived at the house with a little white dog named Mister. Their drummer, Lance d'Boyle, turned up, as well as one of her kids, I think. It was extremely exciting—thrilling—to be playing with Poison Girls. My god!!! Poison Girls!!! Christ. I'm sure we were nervous, wondering if they'd say anything to us. And, indeed, Richard came over after, and we waited for him to say what he thought, wondering what Richard Famous, guitar player of Poison Girls, thought of Mecca Normal—about our songs, our sound. He suggested we get matching outfits.

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 25-year run, with text by vocalist Jean Smith. War Between The Neighbors I suspect I'm part of a war between the neighbors, and soon enough, the doorbell rings. I am a guest, pressed up against the wall, closest to the screen door. A man outside, plaid shirt. The sun is behind him. Light bouncing off him, as if he's in a film. Very smooth. His eyes are adjusting to the light inside. He looks without seeing me. I'm right here in the hall, holding a cup of bad coffee. If I had a split second more time, I could have disappeared around the corner of the living room. I stand still. In this lapse, I observe a man preparing for confrontation. My host is crouched and giggling, in his dressing gown, behind the sofa. The man at the door moves, he shimmers. He's sweating now. Dark eyes flicker, pixelated by the screen. I'm noticing objects relative to other things—I enjoy this example, it's riveting. I watch as his eyes connect to me. Focusing. He's waiting for me to acknowledge him before he speaks. Small courtesy. As if we're acting in a play. God only knows what would happen if we stopped behaving predictably. I'm in a war between the neighbors. I'm a guest, pressed against the wall. Coffee going cold in the silence before we speak. I take a sip, forgetting how bad, how cold, it is. Hey, maybe he knows where I can get a good coffee. "Down below," he says, and points straight down. "I'm Leroy. He hasn't told you about Leroy? Oh boy." He turns, shaking his head, and makes his way back down the concrete steps, soft hand gripping the rail. My host is up off the floor, still giggling, holding his root-beer float. A dry residue of ice cream on the inside of his glass. I'm part of a war with the downstairs neighbor. I'm a guest, pressed up against the wall.

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 25-year run, with text by vocalist Jean Smith. The Politics Of Sleeping My band is a duo. One man and one woman. We are not a couple, but in the beginning, that seemed weird to people. The beginning was 1986 when there weren't many women in bands, and I guess it seemed weird that a man and a woman would be a band and not be a couple. In cities where we didn't have friends, we'd go home with nice strangers from the show and hope there wasn't a party or three flights of stairs or annoying pets or early-morning parking restrictions. We'd arrive at the home of a fan or a friend of a friend or the drummer from the opening band, and there'd be one bed—they assumed we were a couple. There was a lot more assuming going on back then. In the '80s. We assumed people would notice we were a band and not a couple. I do all the driving in our band, and David does all the lifting. Amps, guitars, luggage, merch; it all comes out of the car every night. I do not lift anything at the end of the night because I drive all day, but sometimes the people we stay with watch Dave lug all this stuff in and I've plunked down and picked up a magazine and they'd assume I'm some sort of princess—"Hey, I do all the driving, man." Driver also includes changing tires and minor repairs—removing corrosion from batteries and checking fluid levels and tire pressure on those old cars I used to drive: the '72 Impala and the 80-something Grand Marquis. So the policy began that I got the bed and David took the floor—based on me being the driver. The driver got the bed and controlled the tape deck: simple, practical rules of touring. We listened to a lot of Scrawl. We gravitated to our tasks quite naturally. Naturally, I took the bed, but I get up first and it is my job to find Dave a coffee and bring it to him, setting it down next to him on the floor with a stir stick, creamer and a couple of sugars. After too many awkward conversations in kitchens, we implemented a policy of never saying the person's name we're staying with because we almost always got it wrong. "Good morning, Steve, do you have any coffee around here?" Name's not Steve. We have learned to ask about coffee before the not-Steve-guy goes to sleep: "Where's the sugar, the filters, the beans?" Once, in Philly, we stayed with one of the Strapping Fieldhands with whom we'd been out late eating cheesesteaks after a show. The bathroom floor in his place was coated in shampoo. It was unbelievably slippery: a deathtrap. I kept telling everyone how slippery it was, but no one believed me until they went in there and practically died—crashing around, grabbing the sink, towel rods and shower curtain. In Boston, we stayed with a guy who really wanted us to stay, which I am always wary of; we don't like to stay with people who really want us to stay. It's too scary. He had a dog that we didn't relate to. The dog, after hours of being the focus of attention and hours of me being bored to tears, went and pissed all over my sleeping bag. It came back into the kitchen looking so fucking pleased with itself. There were nights when I slept inside my nicely padded, fold-out guitar case, and once we ended up sleeping in an econo-size rental car in San Diego. There was no other option at the end of the night. I remember the passing residents of San Diego looking at me with disgust as I brushed my teeth on the sidewalk in the morning, pouring bottled water over my toothbrush and spitting extra noisily onto the parched grass of the boulevard.

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 25-year run, with text by vocalist Jean Smith. In the lecture Mecca Normal presents, How Art & Music Can Change The World, I sometimes tell the story of how quilts, hung out to air, were used to assist escaping slaves. Various quilt patterns were code for which way to go, danger ahead and how to dress. Because there is very little written evidence about this practice, historians are reluctant to acknowledge the role codified quilt-making played in the enslavement of Africans in the United States. I am researching the possibility of a psychological pre-disposition in men who gravitate towards history. Do historians lie and obscure the truth more than non-historians? Lying is the intention of one party to disallow the other party from knowing reality. The liar has decided that his objectives are more important than the other party's experience. Lying generates complex and chaotic results, including the unpredictable new reality the party being lied to participates in. If the truth comes out, the existing false alchemy requires a re-writing of history, but what remains to be documented when there were no authentic experiences? Along gender lines, there are more male historians than female historians, which is maybe why many women gravitate toward editing. Men, through history, have impeded women from telling their own histories—in recent times, by labeling art made by women as confessional or victim-oriented. I tell the story of the quilts because it inspires me. It may be folklore, fable or fiction—it is the story of how art was used to change the world.

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 25-year run, with text by vocalist Jean Smith. I asked David to tell me more about this image, which has intrigued me since I first saw it a year ago. It isn't me, but yet, it could be. She isn't looking into or out of the rectangle farther down the wall. The rectangle could be either a window or a mirror. She is facing what she creates: a shadow on the wall. When I asked David about the illustration, he twice called the shadow a reflection. Mecca Normal has, from its inception, been a vehicle for my words and ideas in relation to an equal portion of David's guitar. In our original intensity in the mid-'80s, I was more literal in my lyric content through which I address issues between men and women. As I continue to use writing to both explore and create experiences, I am more frequently aware of my own shadowy reflections on the walls in front of me.

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 25-year run, with text by vocalist Jean Smith. In our lecture How Art & Music Can Change The World, David and I reveal the behind-the-scenes workings of our creative partnership to show that being in a band with intentions other than fame, money and power is infinitely more interesting than participating within the status quo. With that in mind, I want to reveal the unorthodox process for creating this series of illustrations paired with captions. Usually an illustration is of a written concept or story. The text arrives, and the artist does a drawing to provide visual fortification. In this series, in true Mecca Normal fashion, we are working backward. David gives me the illustration, and I write the caption. This one arrived with a title The Importance Of Speaking Out, but me being me, I don't feel compelled to explore that exact idea, and within our partnership, a literal response to stimuli the other generates is not required. The drawing reminds me of its forerunner, a similar image with text about Mordecai Vanunu from David's Inspired Agitators Poster Series. Vanunu went to jail for exposing the Israeli government's secret nuclear-weapons program. I like the poster very much and have put it on various Mecca Normal websites, including one that a guy I was dating looked at. He was a policy analyst for the federal government of Canada, a Jewish guy in his late 50s I met during my online-dating adventures. He wanted me to remove the Vanunu poster from our websites, and I think he wanted me to remove Dave from my life. He said Vanunu was an insane person, which brought up an interesting point in a later discussion with Dave. He explained that his mandate for the poster series wasn't to present portraits of perfect activists, but to generate more awareness around individuals who had stood up to speak out against injustice, to risk persecution, to speak the truth as they knew it. In my short-lived romance with the policy analyst, his irritation with the poster opened avenues of conversation that would have otherwise remained closed. We were sitting on elegant lawn chairs on the back porch of his huge house on an island populated by film stars and overly wealthy recluses when he revealed that he was a Zionist. In a heated defense of his beliefs, he told me that he would happily see all Palestinians dead—or some such statement that felt like that's what he'd just said. I took an extra large chunk of cheese from the hors d'oeuvre plate, recognizing that once off the island I would never see this guy and his fancy cheeses again. Dave's poster served a purpose that wasn't what he'd anticipated or intended, but that often results when ideas are put into the public sphere. Information arrives and debate ensues. After this encounter, I researched Israel and found consumer boycotts in place for a number of companies that I wouldn't have otherwise known were strong supporters of Israeli policy: Starbucks, Home Depot, Motorola and Nestlé. More information is available on the Coalition Against Israeli Apartheid website. My point is that while Dave didn't essentially know what impact his poster would have, he created it and made it public—and it continues to instigate thought in ways that these things do, when people speak out against injustice. At demonstrations, in words and images, songs and films, and within poetry. As images of popular protest and social injustice collide around the world this week, David's drawing honors the courageous voice of Nada Agha Soltani—silenced in Iran. To end my caption for The Importance Of Speaking Out on a positive note (and a reference to Patti Smith, currently on tour in Europe and beyond) ... A tweet out of Iran this week: People have the power.

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 25-year run, with text by vocalist Jean Smith. Questions from the audience ... The recent Mecca Normal tour included "How Art & Music Can Change the World," an art, music and lecture event that intends to inspire audiences to add political ideas to their creative self-expression. The lecture features David's "Inspired Agitators" poster series, which includes Paul Robeson. At a high-school event, David talked about Robeson, outlining his beliefs and actions, telling the students that the U.S. government punished him by revoking his passport. After the lecture, two young Asian women—girls, really—came bounding up to ask, "What's lynching?" At another lecture, a young woman looked bored out of her tree. Hunched in her chair, eyes down—I wondered if we were making an impression at all. Two weeks later she wrote to say that she and her friend had spent the rest of that night talking about things we'd said and that since then she'd been in an extremely creative mode. This is a realistic model of how small actions multiply into waves of inspiration that can change the world.

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 25-year run, with text by vocalist Jean Smith. Was it 1988 before we made it to New York City to play for the first time? I'd been a couple of times as a tourist, but perhaps it was Mecca Normal's first NYC show: an event hosted by Bob Z. Not sure how we heard of Bob Z. In those days, musicians and poets used to mail stuff around—cassettes, booklets, zines—and you'd check with other bands to hear who put on shows, Checking by mail: snail mail. I recall when it came time to book tours—when I actually had to phone people—I bought answering machines with the tiny cassette tape, made my calls, got my  responses and plotted out the tour. On the day we left town, I'd erase the tape, package up the answering machine and take it back to the store for a refund; it was still on its 21-day return policy. When you think about playing in NYC, you think big, maybe too big, when, especially for New York, it is better to think small, very small. And in this case, it was down very steep stairs into the cellar—stairs like the ones you see when grocery stores are loading stuff off a truck into a hole in the sidewalk—down there. That's where we played. At the Anarchist Switchboard. I found a cassette tape of this show that I was thinking about putting online, but it is just so bad. Not us; the recording. I guess it was a sort of disappointment when we saw that the show was in a hole in the sidewalk, that the place was so dank and weird, but I think we were in a strange state of shock, too freaked out to be indignant. It seemed like the place had a history of doing shows, and I recently found a reference to it online. A brief history of this activist center.

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 25-year run, with text by vocalist Jean Smith. August, 1992: During mainstream-media interest in the social movement known as riot grrrl, a producer from NBC's Boston-based The Jane Whitney Show phoned me, inviting me to be on an episode called "Women In Rock." It involved a plane ticket, a hotel room, a limo ride and the general weirdness of tabloid TV. Of course, I agreed. During the blank spots where they would later insert commercials, they powdered our faces and encouraged us to interrupt each other. I think the producers wanted to create a cat fight between the feminist musicians and a rock-video "MTV girl." (The woman, I forget her name, phoned me at the hotel the night before the show and begged me not to rip her to shreds, which I had no intention of doing.) She was pretty wound up about it, but it was her own granny who stood up and said, "My granddaughter does everything for herself," or some other crazy indictment. The real action came from audience members who had been given a lot of sugary items before the show and told that the Women In Rock used foul language incessantly in their lyrics. Finger-wagging lectures from Boston moms ensued. For years after, Calvin Johnson used to mimic the woman who interrupted me when I was talking about K Records to blurt out the name of her label: "I'm on Def Jam." It was all pretty bizarre.

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 25-year run, with text by vocalist Jean Smith. Smith: Auckland: the Gate (Michael Morely), Peter Jefferies, Mecca Normal tour. David, at that time (the 1990s), typically threw his guitar in the air; it twisted around, he caught it and continued playing wildly. On this night, when we reached that point in the set—in the middle of the song—the guitar stopped. I kept singing, staring straight ahead. Sometimes the guitar comes unplugged or a pedal gets bumped. I was waiting for David to resume playing. No sound. I looked to my left, to see the guitar dangling by its tuning pegs, tangled up in netting hung above the stage. David couldn't reach it. A tall guy came out of the audience to free it while David stood waiting. Not the rock godliest of situations. After the show, I think we sold one cassette: total merch sales. We were packing up rather grumpily when the people who bought the cassette walked back into the club to say they'd put it on in their car and it didn't work. They wanted their money back.