Pinnacle of the Plains

Tour report from Lawrence, Kansas

There’s a Conoco gas station in Lawrence, Kansas, that smells exactly like the memory of my grandparents’ house in Belleville, Illinois.

How does that happen? Why haven’t I smelled that smell anywhere else? Is it a discontinued musk that the clerk has hoarded and doled out in drops since the 80s? Is it a carcinogenic mix of now-banned building materials and black licorice? No scientific instrument could pinpoint the source but my nose is like a bloodhound’s, with a PICC line to my heart, firing as many neurons a sense can fire while I buy Chex Mix and Red Bull.

Flock 4 sale. Includes stands.

Sammy and I walked a few miles from the edge of Lawrence into town and traveled through other rare and sacred scents: the dank of our childhood best friends’ basement (one basement, friends who are siblings). My college dorm. It’s like these psycho-fragrances can only exist in the slightly stagnant, dry, poor Midwest, and Kansas epitomizes that. The pinnacle of the plains.

We loved everything about this place, by the way. Liam had a record release listening party at Love Garden, a great record store in town. I bought seven Japanese and Danish pencils at Wonder Fair. There’s a sculptural stapler store here, for chrissakes.

And the audience on Saturday night was one for the books. Sometimes the lights from the stage shine on everyone’s face no matter what the lighting director does and we could see everyone smiling last night. It was like they all knew each other and they knew us too. Lawrence filled us up.

Moving on from smells to sounds.

The walls in our hotel were so thin I could hear my neighbors arguing about who got to piss first.

Which isn’t as bad as the room Liam and I shared somewhere in Europe ten years ago, on the Tweedy band’s first tour, where the gap beneath the door separating our room from a conjoining one was a full three inches. We were effectively one family unit, Liam, the Euro-strangers, and me. When the strangers decided to have verbose sex, Liam and I sheltered in the twin beds on our half of the apartment, Berenstain Bears-style, with covers pulled up to our necks, our wide eyes blinking in the darkness with an audible plink.

When you’re canoodling in a chalet with poor room isolation, these are the young men you’re hurting. Circa 2014.

I’ve been reading a novel about an anthropologist seductress stationed in Botswana, Mating by Norman Rush. That term sounds sexist but I think the unnamed main character might describe herself that way, since the main purpose of her time in Gabarone so far is to bang and to get information out of bangees (e.g. a pathetic, aging British spy, an eminent professor). I bought the book in Portland, Maine, because the seller’s blurb said something about how hard it is to invent a person who’s smarter than yourself, and that Rush had pulled it off (or was at least as smart as the protagonist). The seller was right. Vocabulary isn’t a good measure of intelligence but still I’ve learned a dozen words from her/him in the first sixty pages:

• Deshabille

• Crise

• Lustral

• Execrable

• Diminuendo

• Musicale

• Imbricated

• Ratissage

• Bathos

• Basso

• Labile

• Bosky

• Echt

• Leonine

• Veld

Brehhhhhh. Great job, Norman Rush.

I also brought Vineland and American Pastoral on this tour but neither has fully grabbed me yet.

But you know what did grab me?

Portnoy’s Complaint. I read it because Kerry mentioned it. I’ve never been more personally soothed by a book. Every page was like a rabbi or an uncle or a Catskills comedian cooing—no, screaming—to me, “You’re not alone, and you’re ok.” Well, maybe you’re not ok, but at least you’re not alone. I’m not young enough to think that any of the thoughts or anxieties I have are really unique, but you still experience them by yourself. Alexander Portnoy (Philip Roth) didn’t just give voice to things I’ve felt since I was a kid; he packaged them together, decorated the box with familiar foods and slang, carried it through the gutter, climbed on to a high horse, threw himself in the gutter again, poured ladle after ladle of warm crazy Jewish familyness on it, and finally delivered it to me. I’ve never been happier to be un-unique. As if some big part of my mind is a stock part, ordered right out of the catalog. That’s why this fits there. Thank you.

Don’t read into that too much, Mom. Or any of you for that matter, please. (Portnoy is unkind to women.)

It’s a funny thing… I wouldn’t say I grew up feeling alienated. Chicago is a big city with community enough for everyone. But I did grow up feeling different than my Christian neighbors. And feeling weird at school because I wasn’t athletic. At the time I chalked it up to being an “art” kid and took pride in calling myself weird. Having rock parents was certainly part of it. But reading Portnoy kinda undid some long-standing self-gaslighting… the idea that none of it at all had to do with being raised by a Jewish mom (and an emotionally intelligent dad) in a Jewish-boy way. Generally speaking we’re just a little different.

And I’ll leave the Freudian couch there for now.

Photo by Sima Cunningham

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Announcements

• Liam’s new album, Pilot Light, is out! I played drums on “Didn’t I.” The whole record is gorgeous and the most honestly Liam thing he’s made to date. It will keep you company.

• Mavis Staples’ new album, Sad and Beautiful World, is out! Mavis sings excellent songs by excellent songwriters, produced by Brad Cook, and my dad and I make an appearance.

• The Twilight Override tour is rolling south!

• Secret police are terrorizing Americans and this website by my friend Zoe can help you figure out something to do about it.

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Onward to Cain’s Ballroom, Tulsa. Who knows what we’ll smell there?

xo,
Spencer

The book links in this letter are Bookshop.org affiliate links.