By Jamie
This blog is a distillation. The posts Sophie and I publish, the things we choose to share, have the virtue of being true, but they don’t tell the story of our daily lives. And we do have lives, both tangled and separate. The work frustrations, the social and entertainment distractions, the death of a beloved pet or the adoption of a new one, the good food we discover around town or cook together, the holiday visits to family – they are not the focus of our writing.
This blog is about sex. It is about the paths of sexual exploration that Sophie and I walked until that moment when our paths intersected. It is about the firework explosion of fulfillment and joy that has blossomed since then. And yes, although it might seem too good to be true in this distilled form, every moment we spend intertwined seems like the first time, feels like we are inventing the sex act, and is better than the glorious time before.
This blog is also about other shared interests. Music is one of those interests. Sophie is the most dedicated and knowledgeable fan of music I have ever met. And my favorite job ever was being a music journalist covering a local scene during a fleeting moment of national acclaim. When we discuss our other interests, we try to tie them to the theme of this blog. Sophie’s post about the BPM of sex is one example. Currently she is sweating out a piece on the music of Peter Gabriel, a shared favorite. She’s been at it for weeks while navigating the demands of daily life during the holidays. Sophie discovered Peter Gabriel when quite young, during the peak of his MTV popularity; to her chagrin, only recently she realized that many of those songs from her youth are blatantly (if metaphorically) sexual. Her post, when it is finally finished, will undoubtedly be half celebration, half embarrassed confessional. I’ll leave the details to her.
This post, like all the others, is about sex. It is also about a song. For Sophie and me, this song bookmarks a memorable high point in our sexual explorations, when barriers came crashing down and a new piece of our endless frontier came into focus. It’s not a Peter Gabriel song, although he’ll be back in a minute. It’s a song titled “Amor Fati” by an ambient chillwave DIY nerd who publishes and tours as Washed Out. This post is also a sort of music review focusing on a completely different band. Let’s start with them.
la truth
When Sophie learned that Washed Out would be in town around New Year’s, she got us tickets immediately. We couldn’t imagine a better way to celebrate. We planned the rest of our holiday commitments around this date.
The Mohawk is one of Austin’s premier concert venues, a no-frills open-air three-story urban amphitheater at the edge of the downtown entertainment district. As we ride-shared our way to the show, she and I tried to remember what it had been called before it was the Mohawk, and what it was before that. It’s a game we locals play. So much has changed, and yet somehow the heart of Austin finds ways to keep beating.
My eyes were drawn to her the moment we entered the main floor. She was tall and classically beautiful, like a Maxfield Parrish model caught between posing sessions. Her long wavy auburn hair cascaded down the shoulders of her woolen overcoat, a necessary garment while running her corner of the merch booth in the winter air. The expression on her face was either boredom or bone-deep fatigue. I figured it had been a long tour. Or maybe she was a local, a service professional already exhausted by Austin’s holiday exuberance. The moment passed and we moved on.
As we waited, Sophie and I got drinks, had a cigarette or two, and tested various vantage points. The more veteran local show-goer, Sophie showed me her preferred spots and recounted her favorite memories. And at the top of the hour, just as the cold began to seep under our layers and demand attention, the opening act took the stage. Ah, the opening act. That moment of frustrated excitement, when the show finally starts but not the part you came to see. At best, the chance to discover new music. At worst, a torturous delay. Sophie and I stayed seated away from the action and kept talking, idly wondering which it would be.
The first notes out of the speakers derailed our conversation. The cold melted away. Our eyes locked.
“Um,” I said, “I think we should…”
“Yeah.” Quickly we found spots by the third-floor railing.
And there she was on stage, that classic beauty, her fatigue forgotten, her merch duty on pause, teasing layered waves of sound out of the equipment bank surrounding her. Her counterpart sang his soulful, soaring lyrics and pushed an occasional button and moved unapologetically to his own rhythm. Sophie and I smiled. Definitely the best-case scenario.
For the record, the band is called Buhu. They are touring in support of their album Tenets. In the liner notes Jeremy Rogers thanks his wife, bandmate Tiffany Paciga, for her love and influence in his life. But you don’t need liner notes or a Facebook blurb to glean this detail about them. Every song Rogers writes (including the notable example “La Truth”), every iota of his performance, every gesture, is an almost desperately happy love poem to Paciga. Their cover of the iconic 1980s Peter Gabriel love song “In Your Eyes” doubles as a road song when they perform it, as if Gabriel wrote it for and about them. Rogers knows, and doesn’t care who sees it, how lucky he is. I don’t know the details and at the moment don’t care to ferret them out, but clearly his wife has saved him in some way and given him the footing from which he has found his voice. These luscious “electronic bedroom pop” songs are the result.
I know how Rogers feels. Sophie has brought something of the same to my life. But in the moment, not yet having words for it, all I knew was that something big had happened. I wanted to get closer to it. And so I found myself at the merch booth after they finished, complimenting Rogers on a fine set, buying a cassette and asking them to sign it, even going so far as to hand Rogers some merch of our own – a sticker Sophie and I use to further our guerrilla marketing efforts for this blog. I stayed until the glaze of road weariness crept back into their eyes, and then I left. I couldn’t stand the idea of being just another clumsy overzealous fan trodding on their post-show high.
the love of one’s fate
Washed Out was everything we hoped it would be. The live versions of the songs we love were at least as good as those we keep on repeat. The songs off his new and relatively unknown album inspired a second cassette purchase. And of course our favorite song, “Amor Fati,” was the show’s pre-encore finale. The quiet exuberance of the sounds and the words brought tears to our eyes. I encourage you, dear reader, to track down the sounds. In the meantime, here are the words, as perfectly suited to Sophie and me as an inspired Peter Gabriel cover.
Don’t try to find words now, you’ll fall
Let go, reach out
The choice is yours to find
Relax, slow down
Let hope decide
Even though he’s hard to forgive
But you can’t help fall in love
If you know your flaws, you know that
You’ll be all right in time
Inside you’ve got the light to guide
Your fate decides the roads you’re going to find
At some point that evening, it hit me. Thanks in large part to Sophie, I am living the best life I could possibly have. The struggles and frustrations of daily life, of which there are quite a few, are not enough to veil the bright full moon of my happiness. I’d be a fool not to appreciate the moment, not to do everything I can to further it. I walk a line between taking my happiness for granted and living in fear that it will end. But that line seems as wide as a superhighway, and I’m grateful.
After the show, Sophie and I returned to my place, awash in our own post-show high. We pulled up our new favorite band and listened to their songs repeatedly. We made love for the second time that day, and it was glorious, another new high-water mark. I don’t know if that road-weary musician will check out the blog. I doubt he felt the same connection that electrified me. He may have trashed that sticker as soon as my back was turned. But it doesn’t matter. His music is now part of my truth, a song on my happiness soundtrack, a bright full moon spotlighting my hopeful fate.
amaranthine border 