No. 5

I was 29 years old when I wrote Black River Killer, visiting my mother, sitting on a bed on a flowery pink bed spread in the bedroom that had been my bedroom in childhood at our house in Salem, OR. My father had died exactly five years prior in this same room, same bed, surrounded by family, his body like chaff, mind wandering unknown realms. But since then, my old bedroom had become a guest room, looking out over the creek, the sound of water unceasing. It was nighttime and this room held the energetic memory of death, so I wrote a song about compulsive murder, about cycles of violence and the need for liberation in this room. Only recently have I thought about the relationship between compulsion and death, the way that we live out cyclic compulsions every day that bring us nearer the grave but are deeply rooted in the fear of death.

The ascetic Gotama was sitting with his pals and his nephew was like, ‘uncle, what’s death?’ the ascetic Gotama grinned and pulled out a pen and some paper and drew a flat line, and then a wavy line over it.

‘Wherever the wavy line drops and touches the flat line, that’s death. Wherever the wavy line rises again and meets the flat line, that’s birth. As the wave moves upward then descends towards the flat line, that is life. And so, it continues in this pattern as long as the mind craves lines.’ At this, the ascetic Gotama’s nephew pulled a piece of licorice from his robe making his uncle laugh.

Profound darkness surrounded us, desert darkness, as we entered the town of Kanab, UT. An overnight stop on our way to SLC for a show with Belle and Sebastian. Sparse streetlights began to appear, their light muted, tenuous and endangered as we rolled in. I remember picking out the moon in the sky through the Sprinter’s dusty side window.

A soundless beat like a held breath and then we got hit from behind. Hard. Like an angry god flicked us with its fingertip. Throwing us all forward, panicked, shaken. Nate at the wheel tried to keep it steady, pulled us to the side of the road. I watched out the side window as a two-ton truck sped by on our left, cattle grill-guard glinting in the streetlights. Tinted windows held no clue.

In moments, Nate pulled us back on the road and we sped up to make chase.

‘Get his plate.’ ‘Stay on him, he’s swerving around.’ The truck swung back and forth on a gritty straightaway then swerved left onto a gravel road. We pulled after, still trailing. A full-size Sprinter van with cargo hold is not light on its feet, we were fishtailing, the six of us yelling as we drove over gravel into the desert. Leaving the lights of town behind we could see the truck’s taillights bouncing ahead through the dark. It felt like we traversed a space of infinite distance and darkness, a never-ending realm, our headlights illuminating only ten feet out. At a certain point the taillights stopped. We slowed and rolled up behind. No one spoke. We wondered what might happen next. I remember peering out into the desert now completely black save where the moon poured pale light upon sand. The truck revved its Hemi. We waited. We’d come to rest in a desolate place, without landmarks. We’d chased this truck here because it slammed into us, but now we were stuck, what did we think we would do if we caught up with him…

The truck kicked up gravel, turned in a wide arc and gunned it back down the road. We turned to follow but we’d lost our steam. We had the plate number; we were tired and in no mood to bounce at breakneck speed back the way we’d come. Nate let the van creep back to town, the truck long gone. At the hotel we called the cops. A portly officer in flak jacket carrying a shotgun over one arm approached us in the lot. The cargo doors on the Sprinter had been crushed inward so you couldn’t open the back, but you could see our gear in the hold through the top. We described the offending truck. ‘I know him, he lives down by the governor’s trailer.’ A cryptic statement from the cop, but we were in Kanab. He said, ‘Who was in the front seat when it happened? Come with me… We’ll find him…’ The trooper took Nate and Mike with him in his cruiser, the rest of us left standing in the gloom of the hotel lot.

I’ve been asked many times if the Black River is an actual river. I always say it’s not any particular river necessarily. Black is the color of all rivers at night. The nature of water is to take in, and to reflect. Though I will say the idea for the song was initially prompted by the Willamette River, in Portland. The river’s name, Willamette, an unknown quantity, I’ve heard from certain sources that the word was a cipher. Willamette, originally Wallamt, bastardized by whites and if pulled apart into its generative pieces creates a linguistic palliative or what you might call a spell. A village called by this name once existed upstream above the Oregon City Falls. I’ve fished there for salmon over the years, the white rushing waters unwitting in their headlong cavalcade, the sealions like chittering punks tossing fish back and forth among the boats. A town whose name cast a spell… a language unrelated to the Chinuk Wawa, a nomenclature more ancient and orphic, deep rooted like the thousand-year-old stands that run to the river’s edge, Black Cotton Wood, Douglas Fir, the trees’ original names also lost, possible incantations contained in their syllables.

My mother’s ancestors have been on this continent for at least 20,000 years. At times it feels like the rituals and cyclic human compulsions that existed here before are so ingrained that any european claim to the actual mystic substance of these lands is laughable, like a thin cloak cast over a vast sleeping beast. The deva-entities that inhabit these lands are ancient and chthonic, I’m starting to think that Black River Killer is about one of these entities. Inhabiting an unwitting human of course…