The Simulated Engagement

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It's been a few days since it happened to me and in the mean time I've been thinking of sharing this story. So here goes.

Last Friday night I rambled down to Ft William, or Thunder Bay South depending on where your from, to see some friends. Friends who play in touring bands like Misery Signals and Shai Hulud. The show was at the classic venue of club 201, a place with old show posters mostly dating back to the early 90's, bands that I had seen some of my first shows with.

Seeing these guys out on the road and still 'livin the dream' was great, reminding me of the days that I used to spend in the Van and on tour with my last band Fractal Pattern. When hanging out with bands on tour, the conversations usually start and end with tour, and all the stories that go along with it. Living in the van, stinking to no end, and most importantly the undying generosity of so many people across North America who all share the stories and make tour as much fun as it is.

Well since I haven't been on the road this year at all, while being in school, I have used the opportunity to host bands. Basically a place for bands I know to come and sleep, and shower and basically hang out. While being on tour the best thing is always making friends on tour, and hopefully with luck, seeing them again in a few months or next summer or whenever. It's a sad fact that while being on tour connections to home may become stressed and thinned out and the people you meet on tour begin to form a kind of collective family. People you trust and who care about your well being.

Usually after a show if as a band you don't know anyone, you make friends with some kind soul, who will take you over to their house and let you sleep on their couches and floors and let you cook some pasta and use the shitter. Really thats all that matters, and then you get up and do it all over again.

With all these fond memories of tour implanted in my brain, I was in for a shock when I hosted Shai Hulud from New York last Friday night. Now Shai Hulud is a band that I have long been a fan of, being essential pioneers in the hardcore scene, I still can't believe this band made it to Canada, much less Thunder Bay.

So, before we left the venue after the show, all the guys in the band were super stoked that they would have a place to go and chill out and have a shower. The next question, or perhaps obsession was, "do you have wireless," to which I answered, "Yes."

And that was it, that was the last time I really talked to them. Sure they came over to my place and I was honored indeed, but as soon as I showed them the shower and the clean towels I had laid out for them and gave them the internet password and such - they were gone - 5 guys in a room, all pulled out different versions of Mac laptops and started clicking away. Their bodies in that recognizable hunch that people using a lap top actually on their laps acquire. No matter how I attempted to strike up the conversation and bring it back to the days of fun and hanging out and telling stories, I could not. For the allure of the screen seemed to suck them inside and remove their spirit from the room.

I was so disenchanted I wanted to cry, so instead I went and got my laptop and started to work on the photos I had taken at the show.

As each successive shower was taken it would leave one vacant seat in the parlor room and one laptop off. The bodies who were gone had headed out to the van, for the drive to timmins was to begin as soon as the bathing was over.

Needless to say, i felt like I had been ripped off, been jipped. Unable to communicate on the proper level, the digital level. Perhaps we should have all been using MSN messenger to carry on a dialogue, that way our attention could have been given, even if it was fractionally.

And thus I end with the beginning - the story of the simulated engagement - and a dejection that has not lifted with the passing of these last days.