almost in tandem with this starry winter eve, while my band the autumn-waking was unraveling, a project to which i had devoted my heart entirely, a friend, Mark Booth, had suggested to one of his students that i was perhaps someone to play music with… A, the student, took it upon herself to contact me out of the clear. it was a crackling series of weeks. there was a lot of stumbling then. numb feet and clubby knees hinged people around the snowbanks, and me to my home every night. we got together on a night crackling of air shattering static, the kind of night where no matter what you do you are chilled and your hair is sticking to your face. we played some january cymbal washy fashion type pop that even so through a convincing headcold i really appreciated. maybe youre familiar with this kind of thing, the first time you meet and get together with someone to play music, or create something together, its nature is inherently awkward and charming. eyes usually move around a bit more rapidly than normal, space assumes a momentary context that seems in cahoots with eventuality, walls appear a shade brighter than before. so after a couple of months, on and encompassing her graduation day from saic, A and i played a series of performances for est fest. it was a pleasant two piece within which we both sang.

a few rather nondescript, seasonally banal months, thoughts, and photographs had passed since the edgewater enlightenment. some friends had left town. coherency dwindled. blank hands wrote from here to there. one thought seemed to equal several feelings. the curbs had become saturated. a seasons worth of cigarette butts had begun to sog out of the retreating snowlines like time lapse photography, and my favorite, the birds were moving back and gathering in their party bushes. in that meantime i met S. the thought of what we could make together was a tiny light that shed within a head of twilight. our first conversation was sponsored by the telephone during which i saw the fattest squirrel i had ever seen. by springtime S and i were cultivating a guitar drums two piece, a type of something i eventually began calling plaid rock. S makes his own paper in his kitchen. several years previous we played a show together at the nervous center, but it took until the day of these photos to sew together our knowledge of this. then and far previous to then, there is D. he came from a band called the treatment. we, too, were getting together, and talking, intermittently punctuating our voices with a sprinkle of notes here and there. he never seemed to mind how loud i played the cymbals no matter how much toilet paper he had coming out of his ears. i liked that. we offhandedly came up with ‘emotional hairdo’ between conversations, probably about Being, or be-ing, or Thurston Moore, or something.

after i finished hesitating, after i finally started to come to terms with having invested in many things deeper than i was prepared to recover from, those things had deteriorated. by now the sun consistently exposed a streak across the sky. chicago had furied itself into a spell of sweat, beer cans and humidity. shadows burned themselves on every street corner. it seemed like the moon was always out, whispering its way through the day. paper wilted into wash cloths. the apartment door stuck stubbornly causing us to lock, unlock, several times in a row not knowing which was which. the heat index at the practice space was mind altering. in the elixir of these various descriptions the scattered two pieces were collected and puzzled together. despite the fact both A and D were to embark on extensive travels throughout europe, we were looking ahead to a show and began to scribble in others, at the eb with black giraffe, or a radio recording. a lovely lady by the name of Kate was playing violin with us. we were just doing it. the name the archivists seemed so appropriate drawing upon our art forms, or jobs we did. we borrowed an 8 track through CK for a weekend. the music was there more than ever, but i didnt have my deal wired tight with this rather humango mackie board that was given to me by a very good friend. we resorted to the four track, i bit my lip. the tape reel D bought had the words misery shoe written on it, from which evolved mystery shoe,
alien shoe and into paper shoe. so there it is.