By the time of the Living Hell tour I was starting to get used to documentarians as a new fixture of whatever you call it when transportation, performance and audience participation coalesced into whatever the specific thing was. I don’t think I was actually with Friends Forever while their documentary was being filmed but I at least rode along for a social call with the aforementioned documentarian. The most conspicuous example was a pair of German documentarians that had arrived on the Mississippi River Junk Raft project I spent time on the previous summer called The Miss Rockaway Armada – they did the thing where one of them holds a boom mic that visually screams “documentary crew” to anybody that might be looking.
To a certain degree it can probably be said that the best documentarians are outsiders in relation to their subjects. I’d imagine most of my readers would at least be aware of the true crime streaming miniseries called The Staircase that played out as a cautionary tale against documentarians over identifying with the people on the other side of the lens. We expect them to be a little older, a little square and to be dressed in cargo shorts and vests in different shades of khaki. These things are somewhat comforting in that they reinforce boundaries that actually do feel important and we expect to exist.
When I came up with the nickname “the stooge” for our documentarian I wasn’t trying to be especially mean-spirited or exclusionary. It was a riff on the character referred to as the bond company stooge in the then recent Wes Anderson film The Life Aquatic. I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about the relationship between that director’s films, my generation’s tendency to self-mythologize and the steady commodification of anything resembling a hipster trope. In a lot of cases the assignment of a nickname is a harbinger of the outsider’s acceptance into a group as it means they are both seen and referred to in a way that unites it’s subject with the larger group against newcomers.
There isn’t one perfect way for a documentarian to collect footage or interact with their subjects but there is no mistaking the sensation that it is being done wrong. One thing that should certainly be addressed is that throughout the loose organic process of deciding who would be in Living Hell or coming on the tour the prospect of a documentary film wasn’t actually discussed. The bus functioned a lot like a collective punk house in that things were decided by group consensus and there was a tendency to assume nearly anything was fine until somebody expressed that it wasn’t. My point is that there were people among us who wouldn’t have been comfortable with even a near perfect documentarian.
I can empathize with the feeling that cool things are happening in front of you and need to be captured by any means necessary but ultimately I’m here to tell you about what it felt like to be on one side of the camera as opposed to the other one. These were the little things that made us uncomfortable: being asked to repeat an action that was just performed but wouldn’t have naturally been repeated. attracting more negative attention when sneaking behind restaurants and stealing used vegetable oil out of the used vegetable oil trash can. being constantly asked little questions and just generally feeling that the camera was less of a fly on the wall and more of a fly in your ear.
All of this would have been fine and natural steps in the mutual acclimatization process if most of us didn’t feel like we were repeatedly voicing concerns only to feel like nothing was actually changing. We also felt like even if all of us accepted the necessity of the documentation process and everything it entailed the same could not be said for all of the people in the various cities we visited who decided to come to our shows. Insofar as the camera represented an invasive gaze we didn’t want to feel responsible for subjecting friends and strangers to that same invasive gaze.
There was a galvanizing moment when growing reservations shifted decisively to the entire situation being simply untenable. I can’t remember what city or show this was at, which is probably for the best, but as I often do I remember what was said in precise detail. I’m not trying to imply that the following stupid statement defines the person on the other side of that camera. We’ve all said stupid things when trying to fit in. They approached me and Rain:
“Hey, this girl just walked into my shot and took a piss without noticing my camera! She was totally hot too!”
Before this moment we had been discussing the numerous smaller uneasinesses but had been trying to shoulder them for the sake of the resulting document. John Benson had been pouring heroic amounts of energy and material resources into keeping the bus rolling for years at this point and the prospect of a documentary film backed by a major music magazine felt like too big of an opportunity to pass up. The preceding revelation was a deal breaker: the most charitable way of saying it is that it wasn’t a cultural fit.
I can’t remember why this had happened but our paths diverged and then reconnected in Providence, Rhode Island. A conversation was had to the effect that filming and traveling together would not continue. I remember watching the documentarian calmly walking away down the single exit street that the bus had parked on for the show. They seemed to take it well. The short documentary did come out. I’m glad it exists. I imagine if you could peek under the hood of nearly any documentary film in existence you would see some of the same things: discomfort that segues into schism, compromise or some combination of the two.
The show was outside of a venue called Mars Gas Chamber. Jeremy Harris had made a large sign from a stop sign or something to direct people to where the party was that said something along the lines of “Oakland Acid Bus”. I thought that I had met Jeremy for the first time earlier that year at INC but ended up learning in the course of these stories that he was actually playing in USAISAMONSTER when they played Fort Thunder during my 2000 pilgrimage. We share a lot of friends and acquaintances but have settled into a kind of convivial mutual indifference.
I told him that it didn’t feel quite right to have the word “acid” sitting there as descriptor. I’ve been talking about the stuff non-stop for the last three chapters or so but at this particular moment in time it felt incongruous to me, not just for me but for the bus in general. Like it was too reductive when used to describe what we were about. I don’t remember Jeremy’s exact words here but I’ll do my best to paraphrase:
“That makes sense. I used to think that you weren’t that cool of a person and it was because of acid.”
That little exchange didn’t really bother me, I’m used to people thinking I’m an asshole so something like “I used to think you’re an asshole” doesn’t even track. It took me a long time to figure out I was nearsighted and I still don’t wear my glasses as much as I probably should so I constantly look like I’m narrowing my eyes at everyone in disapproval. Anyway I want to get back to not liking how it said the word “acid” on the show sign.
It’s uncomfortable seeing yourself the way that other people see you. The human voice sounds significantly different traveling through air than it does when carried to the inner ear by bone. When someone talks as much as I do people say “they love the sound of their own voice” but I don’t. Nobody does. Those of us who make recordings and frequently speak or sing through amplification have to try to make peace with it but it still sounds wrong almost every single time.
This is all to say of course it was uncomfortable to become part of the subject of a documentary and it will be uncomfortable for the person who made that documentary if they read my descriptions of what it was like to be there when they were making it. I think it can probably feel like I’m just stirring shit or being a sanctimonious prick when I write about this sort of thing and while I don’t think I’m exactly doing either of those things I did make a conscious choice to just stop thinking about how any of this might make anybody feel.
Way back in the Fort Thunder section I referred to USAISAMONSTER’s performance as “amazing” but the reality is I don’t remember much about what they sounded like that night. I remember Colin waking up and brushing his teeth right before they played and how excited they were about the counterfeit greyhound scam and riding with them after the show to the Silver Top Diner with a girl I had a little crush on and accidentally leaving these brown rubber monster gloves with fake fur on the back in their van.
If I feel bad about anything it’s for using a shallow, vapid adjective like “amazing”. There’s really no excuse for it: It was disrespectful to them, it was disrespectful to you my readers and I’m going to make a sincere effort to simply not do that sort of thing again.
Next Part:
https://zerstyrschonheit.home.blog/2023/01/28/boston-2008-the-bus-wheres-my-shoe/
Adventures in the Undiscovered Interior of Underground America 