Morgan Wallace continues her contemplative tour diary, on and off the road as saxophonist in Fat Dog.
The Great American Gap (13.09 – 19.09)
December
I’m at a Christmas party and I get a bum dial from someone I haven’t spoken to in years. We chat a bit. He’s having a baby in a few months. “What have you been up to, travelling ?” Yes, I guess. It’s strange to compare the different ways we’ve filled up the time in between.
I always let the writing slide around the end of the year, not noting down anything that happens and just letting it pass unnoticed. The year is drawing to a close anyway. Last year I stopped writing around America and I missed America, Asia, all of that.
But, I think at the Christmas party during my strange bum dial conversation, this year I would like to write it down.
September : The great american gap
The gap. A ten day hole between Las Vegas and Atlanta in the centre of the North American tour. After the wedding in Vegas we all went our separate ways, flying away in different planes and at different times. 10 days off to spend how we chose, for 6 of my days I went to New York City by myself.
This is my first time in America out of the tour van, out of the London time capsule that has been shuffling around California. It feels different. In the Deli Josh shows me the British section, a novelty joke shelf with table water crackers and McVities. But I don’t buy the hobnobs, I am trying to immerse myself.
A few days in, I am the top of the city in a French Chapel from the 12th Century. Eleanor told me about the Cloisters. They are different walls from different European churches imported and stitched together. Sat high up like a castle above the city, I didn’t expect it to feel like this. I didn’t expect to feel it in my gut.
There’s something about the stones. It’s the same feeling as looking up from a TV screen after a really long time and finally seeing the room that you’re sat in, looking around and seeing walls that are the colour of reality. Everything is a slightly different, greyer tint than the pixels. With my hand on the stone it feels as if I have finally looked away from the TV. Finally somewhere normal. I didn’t realise I felt so European.
These stones are the same as the stones in my church in Devon. My hand rests flat on the rock and while I’m touching them, they are the densest stones in North America. Behind me an American plug socket is set into the wall. It looks suitably weathered to fit into the 12th century. I wonder if the weathering is artificial.
The line between props and reality got blurred in Vegas where everything is made to be documented.
I saw a gig last night with a bad bassist, but you would never have guessed looking in. She was perfect. She was dressed in the same style of clothes as everyone else. She looked up at the other musicians in exactly the right moments, making eye contact and smiling when a section changed. She tilted her head towards a soloist and she played an ascending line in the crux of their solo. Everything perfectly choreographed. But she wasn’t in time and she sounded bad. If it was a silent film she would’ve been the best musician in the room.
In the Cloisters I overhear an american tour guide. He says that some of the stone engravings are stupid because the artist knew there were too many of them for them all to be looked at. ‘That’s why you get some stupid ones of some guy sticking his fingers up his butthole’. I let the tour move away from me and wonder if that’s true.
Daisy and the cats
I stay with different people on different sofas. One night my plans slightly fall through and I realise I am in Hell’s Kitchen at 10:30pm with no real idea of where to go next. My friend Daisy has landed in New York this evening and she is walking nearby. At this moment I appreciate the grid system, the ascending lines of lights rising either side of the street, further and further away from me in a perfect straight line. And in the centre, a friend from London skipping towards me slowly getting closer and coming into focus. I like the drama of the framing.
I stay on Daisy’s sofa for two nights. At Daisy’s, the daylight is already there and it makes so much difference. I wake up with the light streaming through the long curtain-less windows, and the cats are jumping around and she is walking into the room talking and filling up a bag. I do not have to insert myself into the day, I wake up to the day happening around me.
I keep heading back to Central Park. I go to buy a ginger cake at the kiosk. The woman hands it to me; ‘It’s on me babe’, she turns back to the side and keeps laughing. I think that I am in love with her and that I am never going to see her again.
I keep moving around google maps. I go to the aquarium because it’s free on Wednesdays but in hindsight maybe not worth it. I am walking through a tunnel where the fish can swim above your head and across the ceiling. There’s a shark holding another shark’s fin in its mouth. I nudge the woman next to me and point, the front one seems to be wiggling to try and shake it off. ‘No, it’s courtship’ the woman says, ‘They are wooing each other’. The shark in front keeps periodically shaking, like when a human gets a shiver down their spine and blames it on someone walking over their grave.
Back in central park again and I’m sat by the fountain. A man in baggy clothes is periodically convulsing. He slowly walks in a circle, pauses and looks at his surroundings before taking his next step, holding his foot in mid air as a current ripples through his body. He is exactly on the line between a contemporary dancer and a drug addict. The baggy clothes could go either way, and I genuinely cannot tell which way it will go. It’s sunny and he continues pacing, potentially warming up to start dancing. He looks into the waters of the fountain and seems to stretch his body out. I wait a bit too long just incase he breaks into breakdance.
the sound
In MoMA there is a constant high pitched noise needling into my head. I am trying to focus on the art but I can’t stop noticing the sound. I want to pull these fibres out, I can feel them, knowing exactly where the frequencies hit my skull. Last night a friend had a headache and I told her to pull her hair on the spot where it hurts. It always works for a moment, pulling the headache out.
And something else; all the subways in New York sing the same 6 high pitched notes when they pull out of a station:
It’s not a jingle, it’s the squeaking of the wheels. The sound of the metal scraping. I hear it one hundred times a day. Solo travelling through the city, there is a lack of conversation and this is filled by the repeating screech that I now can’t stop noticing. When I meet up with Charlotte I start humming it subconsciously, turning it into the song ‘Let Me Know’ by Tamar Braxton / Future. The screech and the song both start with the same three notes. She knows the song and laughs ‘I never would’ve noticed that’, I wonder if I am slightly losing it.
Maybe that’s why they put the ambient noise in. On my first night in the city I found it; the chamber hum. In all my sightseeing I might return to that station just to sit. I remember walking up and down the platform looking for a busker but there was no one there. It’s a sound instillation at Chamber Street, an ever present hum harmonising with the noises passing through. I didn’t want to get on my train.
I wonder if sightseeing can be just one sense at a time, I can manage to tune out the frequencies in MoMA and I can manage to tune out the piss and rats in front of me on the platform to hear the hum.
a night to close
In Central Park the sky is lit with an open darkness. An exhale not a vacuum, sighing out into navy blue. I have been all across New York but central park is the best. When I am alone on a boulder watching the paddle boats, or right now, watching Clari try and catch grapes in her mouth.
My time in New York overlapped with some friends passing through for one day.
We are walking out of the park after a gig, and being with people I know feels relaxed. Perhaps I am a failed solo traveller to enjoy this moment so. And perhaps I am a failed city dweller to plan a holiday to a city and just keep returning to the park. But during the gig you could see the skyscrapers above the trees and that made it better, so it’s something in the middle. Walking behind this crowd and watching the soft silhouettes against the scenery, somewhere in the middle too. I want to stay in the park all night because the darkness is not even dark. “This is your back yard” the sign says and I want to believe it’s true.