Trip My Wire

Can I tell you about Portishead? Third came in the mail today. I've just started listening, but I'm hooked. A foregone conclusion. Portishead is one of those groups who register time and place for me. Back in 1996, I bought Dummy at some cramped indie record store off the main street in Saratoga Springs while I was doing the SITI intensive. I bought Portishead the following year. Together they formed the soundtrack for a grueling weekend spent driving through the Sierras crewing for a friend of mine who was running the Western States 100. Beth Gibbons' sultry voice and that wall of sound encompassed the highs and lows of uphill climbs and heat and rain and 24 hours without sleep and hypothermia and torn ligaments and giving up 23 miles from the finish.

Third is a fine fuel: distortion commensurate to a time when my nerves are frayed and my consciousness is split by a year of sleeping in two hour increments and I feel like a snake eating its tail. So much unknown personally, artistically and globally. There are coyotes in my backyard.