#jerusahahalem

We set off on a road trip heading north – John & RX-FT500, Cyrus & Jeff, Kane & Able and I.

We thought about turning off the A1 and heading to Wakefield to see our favourite neon sign, but that only really works at night. We thought about turning off and heading to Knaresborough to see where Bill Callahan grew up, but we suspected the reality might ruin the mystery. Northbound just beyond Doncaster we read the message on the trailer “Prepare to meet your God. Believe in Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved”. We thought that perhaps in the absence of a war, the motorway was our best chance of a beautiful death. We though, too, that the North was precisely the sort of place Jesus would live. On we went to Jersusalem then – England’s desolate and fracked land.

We thought we might listen to the Hospital Bombers as we drove, but then we realised they never amounted to anything and Cyrus just wanted to forget those days. We thought, instead, we might listen to Oceanfish as we drove, but then we realised we made them up and none of it actually happened. We thought we might listen to The Rider as a last resort, but then RX-FT500 persuaded us we shouldn’t pander to our desire for accessibility and seductive, polished production values.

(We thought about thinking about listening to Neutral Milk Hotel but we couldn’t think of a good enough reason to bring them up and we didn’t want to just make a lazy comparison. On top of that we thought that having two Jeff’s might confuse people and the last thing we wanted to do was confuse anybody)

We ended up in a student attic in Durham. There were traces of mephadrone and empty chrome canisters (whipped cream or something?) on the bedside table, a tattered Morrissey poster curled up in the corner and an old tape recorder on the desk next to elaborate patterns of overlapping coffee mug stains. We pressed play on the recorder – it was an old birthday message and then out of nowhere some guy rambling inexplicably and murmuring vague threats. “Watch out, just watch out”.

The tape played through and then Cyrus, just out of a psychiatric detention facility, told us about a comic he’d been working on whilst trapped there. It was about a superhero called Callahanman who out of penitence for a past writing misanthropic lyrics about girls who wanted to be hit, holding women down on hardwood floors, and leaving them in the snow without their clothes, vowed to spend the remainder of his days singing pretty songs about horses, birds, trees, and how God doesn’t exist.

The sun was just starting to contemplate rising over freshly settled snow as we decided it was time to head home. Jerusahahalem indeed we thought.

Loz