“You’re going to have to change the name now…” she grinned as she laced up her Asolos. Fall was coming. I could barely make out Matthes Crest through the brume over the meadow. I reached for my la sportivas but put on rainbow sandals instead. “I’ve got to get down there and check on breakfast.” I hopped onto the cool granite slab that runs towards camp and then stopped and looked at her. “Hey, thanks. It was nice to meet you.” “Peace, dude.” She said.

The mule trail is easily found at the bottom of the dome. From there camp is a few hundred yards away. Gene Michael meets me in the kitchen and offers up a ladel shot of Jim Beam. This is how he wakes up, but not me.  “How’s Lonesome Ridge?” he grinned and took the shot. I frowned at him and double checked the schedule. “Can you wake Romeo up today? I’ve gotta catch up.”

Routines happen as sure as you find a way to make yourself miserable everyday. Gene Michael has spent his summers in the high sierras for eleven years now. We generally just do things his way… it’s just easier.

This is the day that the storm moved in. It was calm when the clouds rolled over the meadows. I had no idea how horrible that night was going to be. This tree, like many others across the valley, was torn apart 12 hours later. Its limbs now lay at its base like tombstones. I lie there with them. And with my friend Ryan, who was crushed that morning while sleeping in his tent. The image of this tree, intact and naive like me, haunts me.

Not too long ago my friend Jeremiah asked me to help him write a simple 500 word bio for the Remo drum heads website. He knew that I had been writing a lot lately and was probably trying to be supportive (and maybe a bit productive). This was simple, Jeremiah has always been one of my favorite people.

“Just take whatever you don’t know off of the Wikipedia website” he said. “And you can make up the rest from memory or whatever.”

In film school an instructor once told me that my friends aren’t interesting. “Nobody wants you to follow your friends around with a movie camera, it just isn’t going to work.” He said, “I don’t care if they’re surfers or DJs or whatever, don’t be lazy kid. Go out into the world and find an actual subject.”

It’s possible that I find my friend more enigmatic than the rest of the world does (could mystery be a common theme in most friendships?), but I’ve had a lens pointed at Jeremiah ever since bringing my first camera home. I still can’t capture him. It’s tough not to get lost in your talented friends, I’m sure it takes a certain talent of your own (which I still do not possess).

While attempting some quick Modest Mouse research on the web, I couldn’t help but notice that accurate Jeremiah information wasn’t readily available… there really haven’t been any interviews and the floating bios all quote the same Wikipedia blurbs he referred me to. Hey, he is enigmatic. It was time for a new bio. Take that Wikipedia, I can go straight to the source:

“Hey, Jeremiah,” I texted,”where did you and Isaac meet?”

“At a renaissance fair.” He sends back.

“Is that true?”

“No, don’t say that. I don’t think that even needs to be in there. It’s not that big of a deal, dude.”

Below you will find my final draft – a mix between memory, Wikipedia, and a few quick emails with his Mother:

.

As a method of keeping constant rhythm, Jeremiah Martin Green has a tendency to surround himself with a wide selection of samplers, drum machines, turntables (rocks, bones, fingernails) whenever possible. Wander alongside of him one day and you might notice an odd cadence directing your feet forward – beats tapped onto dirty jeans, jewelry and coins generating involuntary clatter on computers and steering wheels… Jeremiah’s perpetual swirl of motion, off of the drum set, seems a mystical code, unbreakable and busy. It’s when Jeremiah sits behind the drums that a secret decoding begins, a rolling familiarity sets in and we’re off into his travels… both real and imaginary.

Jeremiah plays drums in a band called Modest Mouse. Born in Oahu, Hawaii in 1977, his family moved to Washington State shortly thereafter. In 1980 Mt. St. Helens erupted. The destruction of the nearby logging roads brought Jeremiah, his older brother Adam and their mother, Carol, directly into the blast zone to help with the rebuilding efforts. It was during these days that Jeremiah’s earliest memories were formed in a small camp trailer nestled among the debris of a melted forest.

By 1989 the Green family had moved to the Eastside suburbs of Seattle. Jeremiah split his time between learning to play the drums and getting his skateboard confiscated by local law enforcement. In 1993 Jeremiah started playing music inside of a shed built by friend Isaac Brock. Eric Judy joined up, they named themselves Modest Mouse and quickly recorded an EP on Olympia’s K Records.

In 1995, while continuing to play with Modest Mouse, Jeremiah helped form two influential NW bands: Red Stars Theory with good friends James Bertram, Jason Talley and Tonie Palmasani and Satisfact, with Matt Steinke, Chad States and Josh Warren.

Modest Mouse recorded with Seattle’s UP Records before signing to Epic just before the turn of the millennium. Since then, they’ve released three studio albums and four EP’s. In the last ten years Modest Mouse has enjoyed commercial success on tour with REM, as a musical guest on Saturday Night Live and earned two grammy nominations (amongst other things).

In 2007, Stylus Magazine ranked Jeremiah 37th among the “50 Greatest Rock Drummers Of All Time” right after John Densmore of The Doors. In the past few years, Jeremiah continues to experiment and record with side projects The Vells, Psychic Emperor and Plastiq Phantom.

Jeremiah currently makes his home on a peninsula, just outside of the Olympic National Forest. Here he continues to experiment and record music all day long in the trees. You can find the trees, soil, water, ash, lichen and logs all in his rhythms if you look for them. But don’t look too hard for surely as soon as he is tapping into the pulse of the Northwest, he will march it elsewhere… and then he’ll march it back again.

Rapture and Friends Dog Pile. Seattle, 1998. Photo by Brandon Harman.

Greetings Sir,

This is a terrible letter… I have no story to turn in. I will not be apologizing to you, however, I will be apologizing to myself. To my future self. My future, midsize SUV owning, strip mall driving, boring, Starbucks shopping self. How many people do you think recognize the Moby Dick reference in between espresso shots? Soon, I will forget. I will inhale their most fragrant blend and exhale all knowledge of literary whales.

I cannot do it. Joseph Campbell’s Gatekeeper has killed me. Picture the laser rays shooting from the eyes of the Sphinxes at Atreyu in The NeverEnding Story, except with a direct hit on me this time. If you truly want to know whose fault it is, blame John Cheever. I have read a lot of short stories throughout my life, and felt I have been affected (if you haven’t taken three minutes to read Saki’s Image Of The Lost Soul, then you haven’t truly wept) but my most recent run in with Cheever has forever changed my life.

Do you remember the moment?

It was in class; I stopped, mid-presentation, and asked you why you thought that he had switched from present to past tense (you briefly hesitated until I heckled you). You then explained that it was an allegory for alcoholism and Ned Merrill was losing track of time. Then you laid it out step by step… and you were correct. I had completely missed it. Previous to this moment I had, naively, believed that this was a tale about a man wronged, with a twist. A man with a zest for life, rottenly treated by jealous, blubbery, party folk. But it was much more beautiful. It was a justification of Cheever’s life. Cheever, whimsically, calling himself out. I could never have written this about myself, nor another man. My brain is not capable of it. I take myself too seriously. I take other men too seriously. If I had attempted it, it might take me a year to perfect. Cheever probably shat it out one morning, hungover and remorseful about blacking out at a dinner party the night before. He then went on to write Falconer, Bullet Park and a hundred short stories.

I could never be this man. I could try and be this man, but we are sick of the imitators aren’t we? It was worth the class to learn this and move on. It was worth the death of my soul to gain the awareness of its never having spoken.

How unfair! To have a soul unable to sing, strum or type… relate. If Cheever was Amadeus, I would not be Salieri. I would be that fumbling emperor on the piano (played by Rooney from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off).

I am Gatsby searching, not for Daisy, but for Nick Carraway. Someone to follow me around and broadcast my thoughts and dreams to the masses with a bullhorn… to take longhand of my silly habits. It is not I who can do it.

Fear not! I am resilient, self centered and shallow. Therefore I get over things quickly (this works out in my favor when it comes to women, as well).

I have already found myself taking solace in an imaginary world where it was I who wrote The Swimmer and John Cheever who took your class. In this world (just sit down you, this is my final attempt at fiction) somebody invents a time machine that Cheever gets ahold of. He hops in with all of my work, travels back before I was born and authors it as his own. This is how I have ended up here, right now, in a world without my work… a world of constant, muted, inspiration.

And I am left with all the world’s emotions and no tool to expel them. Dissect the anatomy of a love song never written, and it’s merely love on its own. Love would never tell you of Walter Benton’s toothpaste kisses, Dominique Francon’s cold shoulder or the cool parts of the bible. Talent must tell you this.

What will become of the fans of the world, destined only to appreciate and never contribute? We shall lose our voices screaming at Elvis! We will assemble for primetime television… I have a lifetime to figure it out now, what we will do… have I, somehow, discovered a purpose within the disgusting text of this letter? I will begin my descent into conventional oblivion tomorrow, after burning my diary.

This is, perhaps, where America’s great mysteries truly lay, paradoxically, because no member has the ambition to pick up a pen and report their findings. Since it has already been decided that it is not I who can do it, maybe you can assign another student to go undercover… there should be a novel there, or at the very least some witty little essay just dripping with style (Suburban literature need not remain underground).

Once on the inside (having completely forgotten about writing), I will obediently get married, have a son and purchase a house. My house will not sit amongst the vagrant weeds of the countryside, nor within the walls of some great city. My home will sit in between. I will have a neighbor whose neatly trimmed grass will inspire me to tuck in my polos. The neutral colors of his synthetic siding will encourage me to whiten my teeth and lock up my liquor.

In memory of a silly ambition I once had, an old Underwood will remain on display in my den (some of my neighbors might have acoustic guitars in theirs). The Franklin Mint will provide fine leather hardback editions of Dickens and Hemingway for my shelves…

My son will grow and move into the basement. I will feel threatened by his anger and philosophies (I must remember to remove Nietzsche from the den). I will then spend the short years of his youth in my loafers – gliding over the glass floor separating his library from mine.

And then he will be gone.

The four bedroom split level my wife and I purchased will become ours again, yet we will have no idea what to do with it. We will spend long breakfasts at local diners without one word passing between us. At night, I will retreat down the stairs and into the windowless TV room in the basement (where I can be heard getting involved with and clapping loudly at my 32 inch Quasar). I will stop reading.

My wife will pass before me (thanks to my less challenging life of leisure), but it doesn’t change things much as it wont occur to me to break any routines. Words like Journal, Beatles and Rum will lose their meaning.

And then one day, I will recline back and experience my first real emotion in fifty years… happiness. For it will dawn on me that I have finally managed to destroy the last piece of creative fiction I had ever written… this very letter. Fatefully, it had turned into autobiography.

Cheever. Fucking bastard.

Sincerely Yours,

Gavin Feek

“Why don’t you walk on down to Spirit Lake? You can walk over there on top of that snow.” Harry pointed out a field through the kitchen window that was buried about four feet deep in snow.

“I will… oh sure… probably never to be seen again.” I smiled meekly at him. Harry grunted then lumbered over to the dim, galley kitchen and fumbled through some old newspapers. There was a system in there… cans and jars stacked inside the cupboards to the right – the overflow stacked directly below on the counter. All knives (butter and steak) live in the drawer to the left of the sink, forks and spoons stick out of mugs and glasses directly above it. The drawer to the right of the sink holds magazine clippings, empty key-rings, paperclips, matches and pencils. Coffee and cocoa on the left counter – dishes stacked above. Every kitchen in the world has its own system. It occurred to me that this particular one is about to be incinerated.

“You can walk right across that field and get a good view of the mountain and the whole lake. You’ll run into a boy down there. He’s just a young kid… you see that kid and you can compare notes. He’s got a lot of stuff. Nobody’s allowed up here for miles, but they let him up because he’s from National Geographic. That’s the only reason I let him around me cause it’s a nationally known magazine. They’ll have my picture all over the page of that magazine and that’s for posterity… for the future. If I die tomorrow that’s going down in history. Well, you go find that kid and I’ll do some chores. When you come back stop in, I’ll be here. I’ll take you down to the restaurant and let you take some pictures of the mountain out the window there. Ok kid.”

As I walk down to the lake, my Dexter hiking boots punch holes through silver layers of ash, dusted across the hard snow. I can’t find the “kid” from National Geographic. His footprints lead across the frozen snow covered lake to the far shore. Due to the constant shimmying of the earth below my feet – walking on water goes just beyond my amateur journalistic devotions. I decide to sit down on the bank and absorb the divine beauty of the last winter at Spirit Lake.

Harry had finished his chores – and was in the bar of the restaurant when I returned. He was watching the mountain through binoculars. It was quiet, so he turned his attention to the lake.

“See those docks down in the outlet? Waves comin’ in three feet high tore the hell out of those docks this winter. The wind blowed everything in my goddam place down. I go through this every goddam winter… have to rebuild every year. ”

“I feel like I’m here to write about those docks and the lodge and lake and mountain because nobody will ever see them again… I don’t want to have to write about you too, won’t you leave”?

“What would I do? I can’t leave this place. If the mountain wants to take me down that hill feet first let her try. I’m not goin’. People say I’m stubborn and bull headed. I’d die down there being away from this place, away from my cats and birds. I’d worry myself sick about my place – I’d die sure in hell. On the other hand, if I go down there and the mountain took my place I wouldn’t last a week – I’d die then. So if it’s gonna take me, let it come and get me. If it takes my goddam mountain, let it take Truman with it. They ain’t gonna get me out of here. Why now I’ll live in spite of them. I’ll live to be 110 just to spite them.”

“I hope you do. I hope the mountain does too.”

“I know every ridge of this mountain. I’ve hunted and fished it. I flew this country for seven or eight years, before the war and after. Hell, I was up around the side of that mountain everyday and over the top of it. Been to all those lakes back in there…”

He went on for a long time, eager to talk. When it got to be late afternoon, I found myself listening less to him and more to my own worries.

“I have to go now, Mr. Truman, I have a long walk back.”

I hugged the old man goodbye and found that I had to hold back some tears. He noticed this and smiled.

“If you ever get back to this country look me up. I’ll be here when the roses bloom.”

- Mr. Truman’s dialogue is taken from an old, out of print article that I found buried under a stack of boxes in a Mt. St Helens gift shop the other day. It was written by Mary Ann Gervais. My own observations and dialogue were time-traveled back for.

Grey skies, soft trees – lay me down in lichen please

Night riders jitterbug around blue shadows