Those were pretty good years, if you didn’t dwell on the hard bits.

“Johnny and Star – Uber Alles!”,
he would shout to the universe, when things got difficult or when things got good – between them – either end of the emotional spectrum.

“Over All! – Babe! – Over all! -We got each other!”

That wasn’t always much comfort to her.

Back in the day, when they were younger – a dream or two, still keeping pace with time, those words could bouy her up, keep her from drowning in the ugliness around them.

They were often like spokes on a wheel – now.

Going round.
Going round.
Going round.

A never breaking circle, cycling itself, an ouroboros – tail in mouth – longing for – a fabled past – a new beginning – anything, anything other.

The couple that was them – then, was strictly survival – now.

Hustle up enough for a few blasts – between them.
Momentary.
Mind always reaching.
Seeking.

Blast away the memories, of who or what he thought this was going to be.

Blast away the residue – which leads to paths that had only wanted to be avoided.

Been working so far, eh?

Been keepin’ them on an,
unmerry-go-round.
Trying not to choke on the bitterness of so much emptiness – all those…… years exhaled into…………………….this?

Claiming this doorway as their own. For this moment, this night,
this never permanency.

tbc.

Under street lights, we got us – outside – outside alright.

Something final, in that – that’s for sure.

Every day – another indignity – another minor trauma. They have been in these streets together for the past couple years. Initially it was summer and it didn’t matter and the drum and the bass would drop all over this provincial town. Providing places to see, people to be.

Derelict warehouses.
Empty slaughterhouses.
Rented sound stages.
Abandoned storefronts.

The city then, was rife with spaces no one cared enough about, where for a few hours it could transform – its own language – customs – rituals.

Most nights there was somewhere to offload a bit of gear, get right fucked up and dance – and dance – and dance – just fucking dance.

Both natural and pharmaceutical chemicals released – indifferently – efficiently – pulsing the body – moving through the music – through time.

Another lifetime ago, another thought of who or what they were then – they are now.

Lights flashed – yellow
Lights flashed – blue
Lights flashed – red

A body undulating

• a techno beat –
  a space in time
• a pulsing vibration –
  a symmetry
  -a breakbeat –
  a dance floor
  -a drum coded –

Those days felt more real in ways, more connected to each moment – each other – an immediacy – which overflowed into everything else.

“We Are One,” she whispered –
her hot breath unfolding each syllable in his ear. And he got it – but he didn’t get it – and that left him feeling vulnerable -awash in new realities.

The peak hit a new high
and he saw his punk rock facade,
fade to dayglo, as the shimmer of ergot – gone wild – went wild, he saw for the first time – that it was all a dream – outcome uncertain – not of concern.

Parts not wanting to be remembered – recalled, not wanting to regurgitate or recreate the feelings locked in

let out,
nightmare just beneath the surface

all part of the inner landscape
hellscape.

This is escape.

Another blast.
Flame, tension burnt.
Last blast for each of them – tonight.

Eyes wide, flickering along the flame line – feels like the best thing ever – feels like it’s all gonna be okay – last blast – tonight – under street lights.

tbc

tbc

The work it takes to maintain all this distance – from self.

Distract – change emotion – distract – ignore – keep going – find ways to dull the continuous ache.

He felt lost – so much effort – so much distract – tweaking his neurons – seeking release – seeking…….solace.

The balm of a hit, the false narrative propped up, the sound of untruths, become normalized, become true.

There was no hindsight. No “It should have been another way.” It was step up and run screaming – from the pain – from the…fear.

Unfounded – not tested – tried – tired.

Still in his twenties, still just a kid seeking ease, bumping into this shit. It’s a deep bath in melancholy – a sadness born from generations of struggle – addiction – mental health issues – poverty – homelessness – trauma.

So many late nights – staring down the abyss – a love found – a deep well.

“….and then I was pregnant, strung out on rock, crack babies were in the news back then, CAS took him right out of the hospital room, handed “the boy” over to his grandmother – left Johnny and I to sort out ourselves – by ourselves.”

“We weren’t even juggling for the money, really, we were just, you know, surviving. We turned people on. We were doing the good work, all that trip.”

“Saw so many people, become ONE with the universe, with themselves, make positive change, switch their shit up. But we were out here, just surviving on the love and the drugs and the working it out tomorrow. That was the part where we got lost. We got to feelin’ so good, that we thought we were, so good and could stick with one more pill, one more line, one more tab. It gave release and relief, whole new meaning.”

“And like that, spat out the narrow opening, from a scene we helped to build, create community, heal, fucking heal.”

“Those with the means, just disappeared, maybe suburban lawns, maybe a pricey rehab, someone had been awaiting their return. We had nobody.”

They just had each other, need, love – open wounds oozing all kinds of toxin. All beliefs are true, until proven otherwise.

The come downs, hit harder, more difficult to find a self that wasn’t so goddamned broken, so held together by string and wire, tied up.

tbc

…and it would take years to come back from that disconnection – from everything they thought they were moving towards, everything that was lost, everything that never happened. Shifts in the fabric, twists in the plot, changes in the pace and different outcomes. New realities engaged, but soon retreated from in the face of what was seen, experienced and juxtaposed by their day to day reality.

A few utopian years of new beliefs, what felt like true understanding, feeling that they had found a tribe of the also wounded and that would help to propel and uplift them all – and everyone – everywhere. Seeking a tipping point that never quite materialized – there was no – Timewave Zero.

Psychedelic techno pioneers before the internet became commonplace – before cellphones became ubiquitous. These were the days of phoning the flyer number at 10pm – from a landline or a pay phone – to find out where the meeting place or the party was and getting there, somehow before midnight, before the price went up. It was really living on the fringe, of a culture lost in its own lack of cohesion – lack of connection. So they found their own on the outskirts – with other lost dreamers – others dying for change.

Jungle
dnb
trance
Hardcore of a different kind

The world was backing grunge at a time but they just moved from:

• punk
• to industrial
• to new beat
• to acid house
• to techno.

Downtown kids – feral, it was the end of the eighties after all. Started underage at The Twilight Zone, Nuts & Bolts, Catch-22, The Comfort Zone.

They both played the game of supplier – received the spoils – the access – the street cred – the ability to quit the seven am to four pm for him and the eight pm to four am for her. From hash to pills to blotters to powder to rock – there were always customers in the clubs – a few years in and it was the raves – the parties.

And that was alright – until it wasn’t.

tbc

Then the rock started to rule. They couldn’t shift them fast enough to catch up to the deficit that disappeared in the glass stem. That feeling of disconnection had faded, for the first time – that feeling good – with self – with life – there were many happy and some truly ecstatic moments.

It was really the switch from the drugs that had opened them up – to the ones that now closed them off – that made them believe, for a while anyway, that they were still – open.

Not all white powders are equal, not all drugs lead to the same outcomes. It was the moments when this truth was forgotten – that things spiralled away from what they thought they were doing, who they knew they had become.

Their love grew – for the other – for the collective, but the love for self – got lost in the brief vapour trail – from the next hit on the stem pipe – created in front of a corner store – made from a small brown glass – bottom broken off – ginseng bottle and a piece of Brillo crammed in the end with a dirty chopstick.

Despite the love they had, they each craved more than the other was capable of giving. The lack that each brought to the scene – grew between them – overwhelmed each, in a dis-understanding – a dis-ease – a longing for that – which was not there and losing sight of that which was.

Having been a team

• accomplices in love
• partners in hurt
• co-conspirators trying desperately to heal from their traumatic beginnings.

They couldn’t keep a grasp on how much they meant to each other, each of them lost sight of how to hold the other.

tbc

One With Everything

They couldn’t keep a grasp on how much they meant to each other, each of them lost sight of how to hold the other.

And they didn’t know where to go with it. A divide had shown up between them – that in some ways was an impenetrable wall – though to others it appeared to be the glue that kept them together.

Having met in high school, all those years ago – two kids – both thinking and acting from places that certainly didn’t adhere to the culture of the time – they clicked, and kept clicking for all the years since. They had been through so many underground scenes together – music – drugs – fetish – body art – but like window shoppers – they took it all in but never committed to anything – but change.

Now the change was between them – uncertain how to navigate as individuals – they kept moving together while falling apart.

It was as if their falling apart – kept them working as one – not the same as it had been before – they had really integrated a new understanding of – we are all one.

tbc

The moments between the pain – are the ones to savour – hold on to – then let go of, for impermanence is the only constant. Like the ebb and flow of an ocean, life bore down on them – continuously tearing at the emotional fabric of individual self – forcing each moment to become a choice – a challenge – an opportunity – to grow or devolve.

History was in front of them – experience strictly in the now.

All the yesterdays – compiled – assimilated – not always brought into the moment – not always – a starting point, as the past, somehow forced them into the future.

Still getting high off their own supply, the daily grind kept interfering with momentum. Stasis crept and wailed – often shadowing and preventing real growth. In this directionless void – they replayed and reran – all the hurt and sorrow of their accumulated years.

Fortunately the connection and love for the friendship, helped the coiled spring of terror and dissociation, bind them in mutual survival.

The party scene had now become dark and paranoid – as Ecstasy was replaced with Crystal and long nights turned into long days and days and daze. The Chill Out Room replaced with a cash bar – after the good City of Toronto decided that kids couldn’t have unsupervised underground experiences – in unlicensed and unsanctioned facilities. No more – warehouses – under bridges – abandoned factories or parking garages.

This mainstreaming turned the music – that originally drew them in, once fresh and innovative – into just more of the same – inauthentic overly commodified and safe from the unnamed harm for the youth, that had originally come together seeking connection – fun – spiritual and emotional elevation -a place to call their own.

The upside to losing that which they loved – was a new market of second wave shopping mall ravers, willing to drop their allowance on any drug that was put before them – it was this byproduct of reactionary over regulation that brought more customers and kept the couples hustle going and lucrative enough to keep them high and mighty on the streets.

tbc

tbc

Queen and king of the night. Doing the only thing they knew how to do – getting through. And you know they sampled all the wares – most nights, watching the scene change and the kids get younger – stupider. Gobbling chemicals – eyes like saucers – some past out in the dark corners of basement fire traps.

The scene had gone further underground – into dangerous spaces, the beat kept on.

kick drum – bass
hi-hat – bass
snare on the backbeat
pulsing keys up front
repeat
repeat
repeat

bodies moved
lights flashed
sweat oozed from the walls

just as the M hit
they each jacked a tab

smiles for miles
riding a wave of warmth
radiating from their cores
merging with the sound
until the body became
indiscernible from space

open
open
open

for self
for the other
for everyone in the room

eyes closed
soaring into the beat
primordial
intrinsic
heart filling
receiving
flowing outward

one with everything
one
one
one

bump of K
the top flew off
this is what it feels like
this
is
it

The music stopped – suddenly

Bodies kept moving

confusion

Head spinning, smiling, standing in a corner while a uniform went through his pockets.

“Fuck? What the fuck is going on?”

“Rahwahrahhaw bblurpering”

came the reply .

He was lost in a different sea, bearings way off course.

“Um….Fuck…s…going on??”

Blurred out his mouth

eyes slurring in the scene.

Shivering in a cold sweat – heart pounding – confused – scarred – eyes searching for understanding.

He was led out in handcuffs and floated towards flashing blue lights – cold air chilling his sweat drenched t-shirt – a full spectrum of colours turning the air in front of him into a geometric matrix – which described all of creation.

Laying on the cold vinyl seat – disembodied voices crackling from an unseen radio – he stared up at the interior dome and knew that none of of it really mattered – he had felt something tonight – more real, than every feeling he ever had combined – more fulfilling than any amount of time in his past – he felt alive for the first time – he saw the whole of everything – the whole fucking ride – he saw who he was – saw who he could be – wasn’t sure how to get there – wasn’t sure where he was or what happened to Star.

tbc

Sensation roused him, crusted eyes aching into a dark tunnel of vision. Blurring in a brightness – feeling the coldness of hard surface.

He became aware of being splayed across a concrete floor – uncertain – confused. There were about half a dozen others scattered around the holding cell, lost in their own decrepitude.

The night before slowly resequenced itself to him – he remembered receiving a download of the ultimate understanding of existence – recalled feeling at one with the universe and then the recollection of how the night ended and of how much gear he had on him. The last point – stood out sharpest in his mind.

“Fuck.”

He had a full sheet of A, a baggie of M, several half g vials of K, a ball of Crystal, a fistful of rocks and a wad of damp cash.

“Fuck.”

He laid his head – back on the dirty concrete floor and lost himself in the bare flickering florescent tube hanging directly above him.

An undistinguishable blur of time later. He lifted his head upon hearing – “O’Brien” – “Johnny O’Brien” – shouted impatiently. He struggled up and leaned himself across the room, meeting the voice at the steel bars.

A jangle of keys, a click of a lock, the creak of a door, his laceless shoes clapping his movements, beyond the confines of the bars – followed by the same sounds in reverse. He swayed in the uncertainty and followed the officer down the featureless, narrow hallway.

“Here’s your belongings, sign here,” a bag of familiar items – plasticized and proffered at eye level- a paper on the desk in front of him – a finger pointing to a line.

He scratched blurry black ink across the line.

“This is your Promise To Appear.
You are charged with Trespassing, Resisting Arrest and Possession of Cannabis, Contrary to the Canadian Criminal Code.”

Johnny just smiled, took bag and the paper – turned and walked towards the desolate sun in Regent Park, exiting – 51 Division.

tbc