An Interlude for Lisa’s Philosophical Rambling Concerning Art, the Pressures of the Indie Scene, and Why I Like Stuff

If a person of a writerly disposition takes a long car ride, has traveled for a while, and reads the entirety of C.S. Lewis’s The Screwtape Letters in one day, rambling essays are bound to follow. Here’s mine.

One of the few internal tensions this trip has caused for me is the feeling that I’m not “indie” enough. Although I don’t possess the abject hatred for the indie scene that some of my friends do, I often feel ill at ease when in the company of people who fit the stereotype. Suddenly my t-shirt and jeans don’t seem creative enough, my head seems too undyed and unpierced, and I can forget packing my wallet in the name-brand purse that was handed down to me— God forbid someone think that I bought it new! 

I’ve managed to dress pretty indie on this trip, and most of the time I feel that I can fit in, nodding knowingly about the obscure band that I just found out about yesterday because Tyler played it in the van. No, my body and clothes are safe from the indie attack on this trip. The same cannot be said for my artistic tastes.

The more I hang out with indie kids, the more I realize how terribly mainstream I am. I love Pixar films and watch them devotedly. I could listen to Viva la Vida all day without growing tired of it. Lord of the Rings is my favorite book and Les Miserables is my favorite play (they’re not “lowbrow” by any means, but still terribly common). And yes, I watch Stargate: SG-1 and enjoy it.

Today in the van I was contemplating why I feel so defensive about the art I like. All too often on this trip I find myself quietly fuming because someone has expressed a distaste (or even just a disagreement) for something I like. And almost all the time, I just shut up and let the conversation move on to the next subject. This is for two reasons. First, I have been granted with a measure of good plain hobbit-sense, which makes me realize that, even if I feel like something’s worth arguing, I know it’s not. Second, it’s not something that even can be argued. As much as I would love to give an intense intellectual discourse on why my new favorite band is not simply a Jars of Clay rip-off, why the second half of Wall•E is a work of art and not a festival of stupidity, or why I think Gerard Butler’s singing is superior to Michael Crawford’s— I can’t. Taste is not always a matter of reason. Sometimes, I like things because I like them. They touch me on some level, they reach me, they speak my language, they transcend what I see and hear. I am usually a harsh critic of this kind of emotions aesthetic, but the more I look inward, the more I realize that I do it all the time.

This raises the question, if I can enjoy something simply because it reaches me— not based on anyone else’s standards on what is art and what is not— then why do I feel so incredibly defensive about my choices? I don’t feel such a bitter sense of judgmental attack when someone ridicules Christianity. The truth is, my anger at someone else’s casual comment means that I have wrapped myself up too much in the art I experience. I must make a clear distinction, as I often remind myself in other situations, between what everyone should enjoy and what I do enjoy. 

Taking this one step further, I also had to consider today the judgements that I foist upon other people. If someone tells me she loves Taylor Swift, or his favorite book in the world is Eragon, I immediately feel a sense of, “Oh, you’re one of those people.” That is probably how a fan of high-concept sci-fi would feel about my SG-1 love, or how my friends who watch obscure foreign films view my undying admiration for Pixar. I realized the reason I assume other people are judging me is because I judge others.

The conclusion of it all? First, I need to learn to disentangle myself from the art I enjoy so I can recognize it touches me but it doesn’t define me. Second, I must learn to stop judging other people for their artistic tastes. Third, and most importantly, I must continue to enjoy the art for what it is, without reservation, without worrying about what other people think. Fortunately, this comes the most naturally. Although I fret about my friend’s opinions much of the time, when I experience art that I love, all else falls away. The violin strikes an unexpected chord and I gasp; Jean Valjean shows mercy and I weep. I can be content with my t-shirt bearing the “overused” rosewood font because I like the pattern. I can cheer for Jack and Sam and Daniel as they blow up aliens in a highly-unlikely set of circumstances, because it’s heroic. I can listen to the song that has worn everyone’s ears thin on the radio for the past two months and taste a glimpse of heaven. And yes, I can carry that hand-me-down purse and keep my ears unpierced, just because I want to.

Conformity often presses on us from the outside, but all too often it comes from within. When my soul is free, I can approach all art, and all of life, with the childlike wonder that is a huge part of who I am. After all, to close in the infamous words of Dr. Seuss, “those who mind don’t matter and those who matter don’t mind.”

~Lisa Shafter

Insomniac Folklore Tour: Christians and Anarchy

July 29th

Our show today was at a Christian Anarchist conference, hosted by Jesus Radicals and Missio Dei. When Tyler first mentioned the venue, my first reaction was “What the tuna?!” I hold a grudge against anarchists (if you hate America so much, move the heck out, I’ve always said), but I tried to convince myself I was entered with a clear and open mind. The self-convincing failed, and I decided to admit that I was coming in as a skeptic.

Around 12:30 we wandered into the Mennonite church where the conference was about to get started. A hodgepodge of souls milled about: young and old, rough and clean-cut. A guy with a nest of blonde braids and inch-wide gauged ears sat next to a woman with glasses and a floral-print dress that fell to her knees. A middle-aged man with his dress shirt tucked into his khakis shared the pew with a kid wearing clothes that looked like he had just been pulled out of a wood chipper. Girls with unshaved legs abounded, and I hadn’t seen that much dreadlocked hair since we were in Portland. No matter the age, gender, or race of the people present, they all seemed to share a feeling of excitement and a sense of community. Everyone here had one core idea: down with authority, all praise to God!

I attended three seminars over the course of the day, and each one deserves a lengthy blog entry, but I don’t have time or space for it. For those as clueless about Christian Anarchism as I was when I first stepped through the doors, here is a brief summary: it is a strain of Christianity based on the idea that Jesus came to earth to teach us a new way of living, without leaders or figures of authority. All are of equal value in the power of the Holy Spirit; therefore no one can be set up above anyone else. Conclusion? The government should be dismantled, civilization should spread out more evenly, communities should decide their laws collectively, and everyone should be on equal footing.

The speakers I heard and the people I talked to had a lot of good points and ideas— even when I didn’t agree with them, I could usually understand their conviction in the context of their argument. The main point with which I disagreed was the overarching idea of no one being in authority over anyone else. I’m a strong believer in hierarchy, as long as it is both compassionate and fluid. A strong and godly father in a family is a good example of this: he may turn over a specific section of authority to someone else in the family, and he may concede many or most decisions to the mother, but in the end, his is the final word, the tipping point, based on his own submission to God as the ultimate leader. This is not tyranny; it’s family, and it’s a beautiful structure.

I could go into a long dissertation about my views on gender roles, authority structures, and the nature of leadership, but I’ll demur for now. (Perhaps this will show up in a later blog entry.)

Everyone I talked to had core beliefs that united them— and my lack of these beliefs confused them. One guy I met seemed confident that I would applaud his book choices when he told me, “Oh, I’ve been reading a lot of feminist literature lately.” “Really?” I replied. “I consider myself anti-feminist. What have you been reading?” I got the book title out of him, but not before he stuttered around, baffled that a woman could possibly be anti-feminist. My casual mention that I mostly believe in patriarchy won me some astonished looks as well. Everyone, however, heard me out, and everyone listened with the kind of attention that vehemently disagrees, but tries to see things from a different point of view anyway. Every person I met was open-minded in the best way possible.

The show itself was fun, performed on a wide stage with lights that made me feel that I was in drama class again. We crashed on a kind anarchist’s apartment floor for the night.

As I said, I had fully expected to find a load of complaining hypocrites at the conference. Instead I found a group of people who may or may not be misled, but are earnestly seeking balance, truth, and God’s will in their lives.

~Lisa Shafter

Insomniac Folklore Tour: Snobbery and the Mall of America

July 28th

What is a band to do when they have a check-out time of 11:00am and a load-in time of 9:00pm? Why, go to the mall of course!

The afternoon of July 28th found us walking through the muggy heat of Minneapolis toward the doors of the Mall of America, the second-largest mall on the continent. We spent the day watching people riding the rollercoasters, poking our heads into stores to look at earrings and nail polish, commenting on modern fashion, and buying various edibles such as frozen yogurt, cheese curds, coffee, fries and bourbon chicken. I have always been a mall rat of sorts: when we were kids, my mom took my three siblings and me to the Galleria on rainy days to ride the escalators for hours. Ever since, I’ve enjoyed window shopping, mall-walking, and, for a brief period in my life, bargain-hunting.

However, it has been a few months since I had been to a mall, and the whole experience, while fun, sat wrong with me. My views on consumerism have considerably darkened since last I walked through a maze of retail. I have gotten less understanding of parents who buy designer jeans for their children, and girls who feel that they need to give their wardrobe an overhaul every season. The American Girl Doll hair salon was almost nauseating, and even the Lego store, as I acknowledged the wonder of their twenty-foot sculptures, struck a bitter note in my gut. 

Perhaps this is a reaction to my upbringing of secondhand toys and hand-me-down clothes— maybe some part of me is jealous that I never got new legos and dolls and frilly name-brand skirts. Or perhaps, in addition, this is my own unusual version of materialism surfacing again. Whereas most people (it seems) are tempted to draw worth from what they have, I am always fighting against finding my worth in what I don’t have. It’s a strange brand of snobbery that shows up in indie, hipster and hippie circles, but rarely anywhere else. “I wonder how much that girl spent on those ridiculous shoes. Good thing I’m above that sort of thing!” This point of view feels noble at the time, but it doesn’t stop to consider the joy that the girl finds in those ridiculous shoes. Perhaps it’s the same kind of joy I find in wearing a skirt that has a nice twirl to it. Dressing ugly is not a virtue, and neither is being cheap.

Tyler rescued this pizza; someone was going to pitch it!

And so the inner struggle against yet another form of pride continues. Money should not be an idol in any way, and that means I have no right to judge whether or not someone else is spending money wisely. If I can keep track of myself and my consumerism or lack thereof, that’s more than enough for me to handle.

~Lisa Shafter

Insomniac Folklore Tour: Back in the Midwest

Homemade puppets at the Puppetry Arts Institute

July 27th

The past few days have hurried by in a whirl of steady activity. I’ve felt sick so I’ve spent a lot of time reading and thinking and zoning out. We spent the morning of the 25th at a park, and ended up in Lenexa, Kansas, with a couchsurfing host. The next day, we ran around Kansas City for a while (getting heat exhaustion, eating Subway, and visiting a puppet museum, mostly), then headed up to Ames, Iowa for a show. Along the way we realized our right front tire was flat, and changed to a temporary one. We drove from Des Moines to Ames at 45mph, but still arrived at the Ames Progressive venue on time.

I enjoyed the show a lot: we sounded dynamic, the crowd seemed engaged, and for perhaps the first time, I feel that we got a full sound with just the four of us. Since Ayden left us, I’ve felt that there’s been a huge hole in the music. But that show, we nailed it.

We spent the night at the sound guy’s house without air conditioning, but fortunately the night cooled down and we had fans. I slept like a rock. The next day, this afternoon, we visited the local tire shop to get the tire fixed. Of course it was much more complicated and expensive than we expected. We sat on the tile floor and watched prime-time TV and ridiculed both the shows and the commercials. 

Waiting for the tire to be fixed

At last, the tire was fixed, and off we went, headed north toward Minneapolis. We stopped at a motel surrounded by hoards of seedy-looking men (I haven’t been ogled so much since I was in Spokane) but with a nice interior. We ignored the guy throwing up in front of the lobby and went to our room.

Now here sit I, upon a bed with a tacky, vaguely Victorian design. And there is air conditioning— that is a huge comfort. Tomorrow: Minneapolis!

~Lisa Shafter

Insomniac Folklore Tour: The Vertical Violet

July 24th

I didn’t expect much from a venue in Kansas, even one in the heart of Wichita, a cultural metropolis compared to the miles of flinty plains in every direction. Thus, I was astounded when we reached The Vertical Violet, a large house tucked in a corner of a suburban neighborhood, to find myself overwhelmed with awesomeness. The backyard was decent-sized, packed with people, pavilions misting water onto the lucky recipients, playhouses, and various animals— from chickens to pigs to kittens.

We were scheduled to play as the last band of the Saturday of The Vertical Violet’s Pond Party, a festival featuring live music in the backyard and the living room, as well as copious amounts of food and booze. The place swarmed with people eating, drinking, and making merry. I have rarely seen a more goodnatured garden party.

When we first arrived, we were drenched with sweat and weak with heat exhaustion, so I sleepwalked through our show in the living room and didn’t really appreciate the venue’s magical atmosphere until the next day, after ten hours of sleep. I spent most of the day hanging out by our merch table. Adrienne and Amanda painted faces, including mine. We played a show at 4:00 when another band cancelled, and although everyone in the audience looked utterly befuddled the whole time, they applauded loudly. Otherwise I chatted with people, half-listened to other bands, laughed at the piglet that was running around, and petted innumerable kittens that wandered the grounds. It was good to have a down day after the mad dash across Kansas.

~Lisa Shafter

Insomniac Folklore Tour: Literature in Kansas

July 23rd

I sat in the backseat of the van, holding my water bottle in one hand and my paperback War of the Worlds in the other. Outside the window, an unmoving sea of grass and farmland whizzed by at 75mph, broken only by the borders of the fields and a series of handmade signs advertising a live five-legged steer and the largest prairie dog in the world. Hot wind tore through the one working window on Tyler’s side, ruffling the pages of my book, which were damp from my sweaty fingers. My back brace felt like it was choking me, but I couldn’t take it off because of the pain along my spine I’d felt that morning. Perspiration trickled down my calves, but my mouth felt dry as sand. Welcome back to the Midwest.

We knew that the 23rd was going to be a miserable nine-hour trek across a vast plain of hot nothingness, so knowing that ahead of time, I managed to enjoy myself. I think this is the perfect opportunity for two interludes to discuss my reading material.

First, War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells. I read this sci-fi classic when I was 14, and it blew my mind. Although I’m not an evolutionist, it’s interesting to consider, from that perspective, what would happen if humans became suddenly second on the food chain. Wells pointed out, with biting criticism, the massacres that humans had wrought on each other in the name of evolution— it was a lot for a 14-year old to take in, and one of the first high-concept stories I ever read.

Even eight years ago, I could see that the themes were heavy-handed, using caricatures rather than characters to illustrate different points about human nature. A man fleeing from the aliens drops his bag of sovereigns and is trampled when he tries to recover them. A paperboy sells the news for a shilling as he runs along with the mass of screaming people. The protagonist falls in with a curate, a symbol of organized religion. When the curate wails about why God would allow an alien invasion when he had run such a good Sunday school, the protagonist responds: “Be a man!” said I. “You are scared out of your wits! What good is religion if it collapses under calamity? Think of what earthquakes and floors, wars and volcanoes, have done before to men! Did you think God has exempted Weybridge? He is not an insurance agent.” Although Wells’ disdain for religion is apparent, he also understood a hard truth about God that is important for all of us to remember.

Violence and savagery abound in the story, told through the eyes of the only fully-developed character in the story: the intense, educated and evenhanded protagonist. Wells strikes a perfect balance of mayhem, introspection, random scientific interludes, and heart-stopping terror. Reading the story again gave me more food for thought and reminded me why I love science fiction.

The second bit of literature I read was Tree and Leaf, an essay by J.R.R. Tolkien about the importance of “fairy-stories” (tales that touch upon the world of Faërie, not stories about little fluttery creatures). I could write a huge discourse about it, but I feel that I have to digest it a bit more before I venture to comment on it in detail. Briefly, a few ideas he discussed were the definition of fairy-stories, their purpose, their origins, and why he believes they are more important for grown-ups than they are for children. At this moment I don’t have the resources or the careful thought to give this essay a full review, so I’ll leave you with a quote that struck me.

“Children are meant to grow up, and not to become Peter Pans. Not to lose innocence and wonder, but to proceed on the appointed journey: that journey upon which it is certainly not better to travel hopefully than to arrive, though we must travel hopefully if we are to arrive.” 

I encourage all my readers to find a copy of Tree and Leaf and read it for yourselves. It is an ocean of insight into the “real” world, the world of Faërie, and the true nature of escape.

*  *  *

I ended up getting minor heat stroke by the time we’d reached Wichita. But all in all, considering that I spent the day in a non-air-conditioned van driving across Kansas, I think I had a pretty good time.

~Lisa Shafter

Insomniac Folklore Tour: Fort Collins

July 22nd

We had a free day in Fort Collins today before our show. I used the morning as an opportunity to get work down in the shady park beside the library. In the afternoon, we hiked out to the river that winds through the town and waded in the icy water. We took naps on our friends’ couches and ate burritos for supper at Everyday Joe’s coffeehouse, where we performed. I felt out of it all day, but it was a time of pleasant sensations: a red squirrel keeping me company in the park, salad made of edible weeds, goosebumps on my wet arms in the sunlight, sweat gathering on my face as I played violin. Today was our last day in the west— tomorrow we head to Kansas for the last couple weeks of tour.

Time continues to be distorted. It seems an age ago that we said goodbye to our friends in Olympia. Sleeping on the salt flats must have happened a month ago, and Cornerstone might have even been last year. I’m not used to packing so much intensity into such a short time: my normal form of travel is much more leisurely, spending a minimum of three days in each place. Here we’re on a mad race to the next venue, as tomorrow’s nine-hour drive through Kansas will continue to illustrate.

~Lisa Shafter

Insomniac Folklore Tour: The Rockies

June 21st

Last night we stayed in Spanish Fork, Utah with some friends I’d made when I stayed there earlier this year. With laundry washed, body showered and stomach full of bacon and eggs, I said goodbye to my friends this morning, and we were off to cross the Rockies.

The drive from the Salt Lake area to Denver is roughly eight hours if you don’t stop for anything, and as I write we’re on hour seven. What a menagerie of landscapes we’ve witnessed today! Broken earth heaped into mounds, striped with sediment, shaped by the wind, pinnacles jutting from the rutted ground, faintly pink and blue through the heat distortion. Craggy mountainsides, the western peaks of the Rockies, stained with gray water and bleached to the color of sand. The Colorado River, muddy rapids slicing a vein of mountain life beside the highway. And now, massive mountains swathed in evergreen, the trees packed together, interlocking their needles to hold each other together lest they tumble over and fall. All the while, an alpine sky whisks along its carefree clouds, bumping over the tops of mountains. Communing with the mountains from a sweaty van. It’s good to be in Colorado.

~Lisa Shafter

Insomniac Folklore Tour: Sickness

The past couple days have been a blur. I was an emotional mess the first day, and yesterday I had the flu, so mostly all I remember about the past couple days are crying and wanting to throw up and forgetting everything for a moment when I saw two California quails. We visited Tyler’s “second family” in northeastern Oregon, met some cool people, played a house show in Boise, but I’m afraid I don’t have much to say about it. I’m feeling better today and there’s a chance I’ll be able to stomach some food, so hopefully my next blog will be more coherent.

~Lisa Shafter

Insomniac Folklore Tour: Idaho Family

June 16th and 17th

On the 16th, we arrived in Spokane sans Ayden, Kourtney and Zach. The Baby Bar did not have us on their schedule, but they said we could play anyway and fed us massive burritos for supper. I took a walk and talked to various members of my family. Downtown Spokane had a vaguely historic feel to it, with well-kept buildings, but these were offset by a sense of sheer seediness in the air. I’m used to turning a couple heads when I walk, but I’m not used to being ogled by ever single guy I pass. The burlesque dancers hanging out on the sidewalk unnerved me a bit as well. As the sun began to set I noticed various people prowling the streets, creepiness hanging on them like well-worn coats, sniffing out booze and… other things.

The show itself wasn’t that bad: the crowd in the bar was on our side, clapping loudly after every song. It was weird to play without drums or an accordion— I felt out in the open, with every note much more important than it had been before. After the show, I followed Amanda outside (minors are allowed to perform, then they are kicked to the curb). We sat in the van and pulled out books. I read a George MacDonald short story and tried to ignore the yelling/screaming/cursing/falling-over/making-out people swarming outside. 

Around midnight, Tyler and Adrienne emerged from the bar, threw the merch in the van, and said, “Let’s get out of here.” Off we went to stay at Tyler’s friends’ house just across the border in Idaho. We left the squalor of downtown Spokane behind.

We arrived around 1:00am at the G’s house, and followed handwritten signs to our rooms downstairs. The next day, I got to meet the family— all eleven of them. Leon and Jennifer, and their nine children, aged to sixteen to not-quite-two: Ephraim, Havela, Asaph, Zion, Zuriel, Simeon, Naphtali, Nehemiah, and Elsie, a conglomeration of curly-headed blondes and black-haired kids, sweet and polite enough to make anyone love children. (I hope they will forgive me if I misspelled some of their names.) Jennifer is one of my new heroes: a woman of beauty, grace, patience, and a wonderful sense of authority and love. She’s transparent and strong, a mother in the truest sense. I want to be like her when I grow up.

I got the chance to explore Idaho with my bandmates, Leon, and all the kids except Elsie, running around Farragut State Park and basking in the cool sunlight of northern Idaho. From the green water of Lake Pend Oreille to the fir-clothed mountains, it gloried in solid western beauty.

Before our house show that night, we feasted on Jennifer’s amazing cooking: hearty chili, seasoned to perfection; veggies and homemade dip; sweet cornbread with local honey; jello; and cookies, peanut butter and chocolate chip, which I could not stop eating. A few people showed up to watch us, and we played an unmiked show, which was a nice change. We spent the rest of the night talking to the kids, and then just the older kids and Leon and Jennifer, after the little ones went to bed. It was a joy to see such refreshingly excited kids, who can bake cookies and mow the lawn and raise honeybees and build things out of legos. When parents expect a lot of their children, it’s amazing to see what they can do.

~Lisa Shafter

Insomniac Folklore Tour: Parting Ways

July 16th

Last night we had a show in Olympia— our last show with Ayden. We arrived in Washington’s capital city after sitting in traffic for two hours, met our contact Scott, and unloaded into the Reality Church. Over the course of the night we met the three members of Lower Lights Burning (some of the friendliest people I’ve met on tour), gorged ourselves on free pasta and oreos, napped on couches, watched Tyler and Ayden have an epic wrestling battle, played a fun show to an attentive audience, and saw a great set by Lower Lights Burning. We slept at Scott’s house, most of us sprawling on the floor even though there were beds and couches available.

I surfaced around 11:30am and saw my bandmates scattered around the room, half-asleep. Almost time to say goodbye. When would we meet again, and for how long? We don’t know. It suddenly struck me that every time you say goodbye to someone, you have no idea if you’ll see him again on this side.

We all congregated in the living room and talked. I tried to remember every detail of the moment: my body slumped on the carpet, head propped up on my rolled sleeping bag— my left arm lying on a blanket, my right hand loosely tangled in the sleeping bag strap. Adrienne to my left, curled up on Tyler’s shoulder. Zach to my right, sitting in the lotus position. Amanda, Ayden and Kourtney across from me. Small-talk conversation. Legend of Zelda. Shakespeare’s Macbeth. Marionettes. Tyler and Adrienne began wrestling and the rest of us watched in amusement. One last morning together.

Scott and his son made us breakfast— bacon, sausage, and whole-wheat waffles stuffed with fruit! The generosity of people we stay with continues to bless and surprise me.

Then it was time to say goodbye. It felt like a breaking of the Fellowship. I had tried not to dread it too much, to embrace it, to not let it make me sad, but now I didn’t want it all to come to a close. I hugged Kourtney, Ayden and Zach in turn. I called them losers and said they were lame for not coming back to St. Louis with us. Zach lent me a collection of J.R.R. Tolkien short stories. I cried.

We all stood around, not wanting to say goodbye. We extolled the virtues of St. Louis (namely, City Museum and fireflies). We talked about the difference between Missouri and Missoura. We all said how much we didn’t want to say goodbye. But at last we all climbed into our respective vehicles, and waved farewell, and shut the doors, and pulled out of the driveway. Ayden, Kourtney and Zach started back to Portland. The rest of us headed toward Spokane. 

I’m fairly sure we’re all see each other again— we are indeed bandmates. But I realized today how very much I hate saying goodbye to friends.

~Lisa Shafter

Insomniac Folklore Tour: Hello Seattle

July 14th

Our afternoon in Seattle reminded me how much I love this city. Every line of the landscape calls to mind vibrant memories: nineteen, holding hands with my then-boyfriend as we strolled through the Pike Place Market. Twenty, hopping on top of the bronze pig with my sister to pose for a photo. Twenty-one, walking alone along the waterfront and basking in the wonder of the Cascade Mountains.

It was good to share Seattle with six friends. From wandering the Market to watching the sailboats in the sound, it was a breezy afternoon of quiet delight. Seattle seems straightforward, full of yuppies in designer clothes who look down on outsiders because the visitors don’t have as much money. This is a welcome contrast to Portland, full of pseudo-hipsters who look down on outsiders because the visitors have more money. Seattle seems more honest in its snobbery, and I appreciate that. Seattle used to be full of grunge, the flotsam and jetsam of the river, but that city sunk underground and they built a glassy palace of skyscrapers over it. They never looked back. 

The show at Jewel Box Theatre was fun, comfortably full, with an attentive audience who actually bought merch. It was 1:00am before we loaded out, and we went to a friend’s house and crashed on various couches and beds. Sleep had rarely felt so good.

~Lisa Shafter

Insomniac Folklore Tour: A Magical Day

July 13th

Another day in Oregon— which is synonymous with paradise, if you ask the natives. I spent the afternoon with Adrienne, Amanda, Tyler and Zach, visiting three different waterfalls in the Portland area. The Pacific Northwest feel was overwhelming: massive firs wrapped in moss, ferns splitting into exquisite fractals, mist clothing the air. Dampness in my breath, muddy rocks beneath my feet, sun and shadow mottling the sky. 

The third waterfall was Oregon’s iconic one, Multnomah Falls. It spills in a white stream from the cliff edge 611 feet up, and as soon as Tyler told me that there’s a viewing balcony at the top, I knew I had to make the mile-long hike up to it. Zach joined me while the others demurred, and up we went.

Gritty pavement showed the way, flocked with thinner and thinner crowds as we climbed the switchbacks. Evergreen shaded us except when it cleared to reveal landslides at rest, covered in orange-green moss, with vistas of the Columbia Gorge River, over-swept with fluffy clouds that stretched across the water into Washington. Zach is one of the few people I’ve ever met who walks faster than me, and my blood pressed against my face and I gasped to take in enough air.

The view at the top was worth it all: a babbling creek, not unlike those in the Midwest, meandered its way before diving off the cliff in some sort of suicidal beauty. Round white droplets exploded into the air, shattering into mist, plunging into the valley below. The pictures I took couldn’t even begin to show the height and the wonder of that fall.

Fast-forward several hours. Now it’s nighttime and we’re in downtown Portland, stepping outside of a corner-store called Voodoo Doughnuts with a dozen packed in a baby-pink box. The whole band is here: Tyler, Adrienne, Amanda, Zach, Ayden, Kourtney, and me, plus two other friends. Our show was fun, but long: five hours from beginning to end. We decided that doughnuts were a must-have, and here we are.

The nine of us skip through the chilly night air, plop down on the bricks next to Skidmore Fountain, and tear into the doughnuts. Chocolate-dipped, maple-coated, doughnuts topped with Captain Krunch or sprinkles or sugar, stuffed with lemon cream, rolled in oreos— we devour them, leaving only a few for tomorrow, passing around chunks of the heavenly desserts, sharing each other’s germs beneath the yellow glow of the street lamps. Bums and hippies ask us to buy and sell and share drugs, and we politely refuse each time; the doughnuts are more than enough. Everyone is giddy. My legs are covered in goosebumps, but I don’t feel cold. The air is alive and time is awake and we are in Portland Oregon at 2:00am sharing doughnuts and talking and laughing beside the Skidmore Fountain and life could not be better.

We return home eventually, of course. Before I go to bed, Zach shows me a book of Lord of the Rings poems set to song. I can’t sight-sing that well, but I read a few aloud, curled up in the trailer that I share with Amanda, Ayden, Kourtney and Zach.

In western lands beneath the Sun

the flowers may rise in Spring,

the trees may bud, the waters run,

the merry finches sing.

Or there maybe ‘tis cloudless night

and swaying beeches bear

the Elven-stars as jewels white

amid their branching hair.

Though here at journey’s end I lie

in darkness buried deep,

beyond all towers strong and high,

beyond all mountains steep,

above all shadows rides the Sun

and Stars for ever dwell:

I will not say the Day is done,

nor bid the Stars farewell.

If I had to choose one memory that I could hold onto for the rest of my life, one memory that would cling to my soul even when all else fades away, I just might choose today.

~Lisa Shafter

Insomniac Folklore Tour: Portland

July 12th

I have been to Portland before, but it was only for an afternoon, when I flew in there to catch the train to Washington. I remember thinking it was grungy, and becoming paranoid when I thought a guy was following me, but it had a nice hostel and a pretty rose garden. Thus, I was happy to be returning there with a native who loves it with all his heart, to give the City of Roses a second chance.

Upon another day in Portland, I still hold that it’s grungy. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. People we call hipsters are for-real in this city: they wear thick-framed glasses and flannel and dreadlock their hair and pierce themselves and carry guitar cases on their backs, but they do it as a part of everyday life, not as a badge of (false) anticonformism. 

Tyler first took us to a burrito stand where a man wrapped up our lunches with meaty bare hands. Nearby, a couple homeless guys held up a sign that said, “Hit a punk in the junk for a buck” and yelled, “Help sterilize the homeless and cleanse the human race!” The smell of burritos and marijuana filled my nose, and the “punk’s” conversation mingled with the sound of a concertina as a young woman danced up to the stand next to us, instrument cradled between her hands. 

Portland is a city of cigarette ashes and river-mud and unwashed hair and art and exuberance and a snobbery that hovers over its inhabitants like the clouds on the skyscrapers. They can’t imagine that anywhere could possibly be better, and although this makes me inclined to think to the contrary, I do understand how this city could get in your blood, could go down deep to your core and take your soul prisoner. It’s fascinating, gritty, full of life and art and passion and culture.

If nothing else, I love Portland because it is home to Powell’s Books. This four-story new-and-used store covers a solid city block. We spent an hour in there, and I could have spent all day. Knowing that I didn’t have to carry the books I bought on my back for the rest of the trip, I bought two hardcovers after perusing through thousands upon thousands of volumes stacked up high on floor-to-ceiling shelves.

Another interesting quirk of the city is Voodoo Doughnuts. Although we visited the less popular location, we still got the full effect: a couple had a Voodoo wedding while we stood in line (a man with a staff, a red jacket, and chocolate smeared on his face performed the ceremony), and then I ate the classic maple bar topped with bacon.

We returned to our home base and practiced with the Oregon edition of the band— tomorrow night we have a concert at a bar in downtown. Portland, here we come!

~Lisa Shafter

Insomniac Folklore Tour: The Oregon Coast

July 11th

On this day, we (Tyler, Adrienne, Amanda, Zach, Bob and Laura, Tyler’s sister Alicia and her husband and kids) visited the coast at Bandon, Oregon, before the band headed on to Portland.

I have seen several different coasts in my life, and heaven knows I love the Outer Banks, but the Oregon beach just might be my favorite. The sand stretched out to the ocean, punctuated with pebbles and massive rocks jutting up through the beach, remnants of a volcano. Both water and sky were intensely blue. The waves shot freezing spikes of pain up my legs when I jumped in them, but that didn’t stop me from dashing through the shallows while singing the Chariots of Fire theme. Seagulls wheeled overhead, and creatures of all kinds haunted the rocks: barnacles, tube worms, oysters, mussels, purple starfish, kelp, crabs, and even a pod of seals, fat and gleaming in the sun.

We explored the tidepools and the craggy rock structures, wading through caves, sprinting over open sand, climbing up the rough stone to stand on top of the world. Steam rose from the sand, wisping over the shore in an eerie mist, while the sun blazed through mottled clouds above. I wore shorts and a hoodie, shivering in the wind. Every nook of the shoreline was a new adventure, every new sea creature we discovered was utter fascination. As we walked along the beach, I realized that I had to return— I can’t imagine spending the rest of my life without seeing this coast again.

~Lisa Shafter

Insomniac Folklore Tour: Roseburg

July 9th and 10th

We spent these two days with Tyler’s parents, Bob and Laura. From giving us all ample padded floor space in separate rooms, to making us banana pancakes, to hosting a belated wedding reception for Adrienne and Tyler, his parents made us feel welcome and let the aches and pains of the road wash away.

Bob and Laura live more than halfway up a mountain in Roseburg, Oregon, and while we were there, we got in a lot of hiking. We scrambled through dead leaves and pine boughs and loose earth, making us all gasp for breath and feel out of shape. Tyler’s sister, Alicia, took Zach and me on a hike up the mountain and under a barbed-wire fence to some open cattleland on top of the ridge. The ridge allowed a sprawling view of the countryside around. Gnarly oaks and Pacific madrone shaped the edge of the woods and provided shelter for a scattered herd of cows. It looked like the Midwest on a grander scale— awesome!

Another walk on the same day took us deep into the forest. Oregon woods are, to me, intensely unsettling. The trees were watchful, tense, unhappy with our presence. The sunlight, golden in fading day, wandered uneasily through the open spaces between the firs, touching on dust motes and tiny insects that flurried through the air like snow. Dry leaves rustled from the trees, searching for the ground. The forest is much older than what I’m used to, and it is very awake.

Golden light turned gray shadow as the sun set, and the forest grew ominous and breathless— no birds sang, no insects buzzed. I must return to these woods someday, to meet them on their own terms, to try to understand them better.

The days in Roseburg are a blur of learning to juggle, of wading in the Umpqua River, of meeting new people, of dancing the Virginia Reel to our warm-up band at the show, of giving and receiving backrubs, and of getting to know my bandmates in a relaxed environment. After our insane drive to the west, it was a nice break.

~Lisa Shafter

Insomniac Folklore Tour: Happy Birthday

Excerpts from my diary:

 *  *

We spent the day of the 7th in Elko, Nevada, just reveling in the state of not being in a car. Our show that night was in a wine bar, and although not many people showed up, those who did bought a lot of merch.

At midnight, my bandmates wished me a happy 22nd birthday as we munched on foot-longs at a Subway somewhere in Nevada. Then we hit the road again. Tyler was determined to drive as far as he could tonight. 

I fell asleep without stretching, and woke up in screaming pain with a paralyzed neck. In between quiet sobs, I tried to get it in working order. Adrienne leaned back from the front seat and rubbed feeling back into it, and then I spent the next couple hours trying to stay awake so I wouldn’t fall asleep and hurt my neck again. Tyler began weaving down the road, and finally pulled off onto a gravel byway in the middle of nowhere and announced we were all sleeping in the car. Adrienne graciously gave up shotgun for me, and I collapsed into exhausted sleep around 3:30.

At 5:30am on July 8th, Tyler was up and at ‘em again. I woke up and sat up and watched the Oregon desert slip by, rocky and hilly and spotted with sagebrush. Prairie dogs slipped across the road every once in a while, and huge-eared jackrabbits bounded out of our way. We saw a couple antelope, and even a grey wild horse!

At last, we reached the wooded area of Oregon, and Tyler stopped at a waterfall. It reminded me a bit of the Smokies: jubilant white water gushing from the pores of the earth, tangling through mossy roots and galloping over smooth river-stones. Tyler ran around, and I have never seen a man look more at home in any place in my life.

He took us to a second waterfall, almost as big as the one I’d seen at Zion a few months ago, spilling from the lip of a huge cliff, falling in slow motion. Mist dusted the air, and I watched birds and insects swirl by overhead. I laughed in delight, and I wondered if— minus the mosquitos— this is what Eden will be like.

Our last stop before reaching Tyler’s parents was a set of hot springs. After a rocky hike to the far side of a mountain, we reached the milky-watered pools full of naked people, found one unoccupied, and slipped into the water. The sun was hot, but the springs still felt great on my joints. We just hung out for a couple hours, soaking away the pains of the road.

Around 3:00, we were on our way, and by 4, we had reached Tyler’s parents’ house. I had met them at the wedding, so it was good to see them again. Tyler’s sisters, Alicia and Hannah, as well as their babies and toddler, were there. We all just hung out, then ate lasagna that Laura, Tyler’s mom, made. She even baked me a cake for my birthday and had everybody sing! I crashed on the pads laid out on a bedroom floor for Amanda and me, and fell asleep at once.

~Lisa Shafter

Insomniac Folklore Tour: Rock-Star Accommodations

July 6th/7th

What happens when the coordinator of your show in Salt Lake City doesn’t even remember talking to you? A cancelled show, seven disappointed bandmates stranded on the tar-spotted sidewalk, and finally a mad drive toward Nevada in a search for accommodations fitting for a famous rock-star band.

At 11:30 at night, we found the perfect place: a nearly-treeless rest stop in the middle of Utah’s salt flats, surrounded by a vast darkness broken only by a single twinkling light in the distance. The stop had an overhang and some space to lay out, so we grabbed our blankets and sleeping bags and curled up beside or on the picnic tables. Lying on the concrete with only a sleeping bag for padding was not, admittedly, the most comfortable thing in the world, but it wasn’t as bad as I expected. A cool salty breeze, dry and sweet, ruffled my hair, and the nearby highway provided a comfortable white noise. I was asleep within the hour.

When I woke up, the sky was lit with gold and pastel. Now I could see the salt flats: a vast lake of solid white, with a well of glimmering gold to reflect the rising sun. Jagged blue mountains painted the horizon as sunrise clouds roiled overhead. The breeze, scented with an ancient ocean, fluttered across my hair and bare shoulders as I sat up.

After everyone woke up, I walked out onto the flats. Huge salt crystals, patterned alternately like snowflakes and polyester carpet, stretched out before me, white and perfectly flat until they touched the mountains. The salt crunched beneath my shoes, the air quiet around me. The salt was cracked into patterns like dry white earth, the needle-thin riffs filled with bubbly formations. I have never seen a landscape like it.

Waking up to the sunrise, without so much as a tent flap to separate us, was one of the most beautiful moments of my life. I’d trade a night in a soft bed for a sunrise like that any day.

~Lisa Shafter

Insomniac Folklore Tour: Nebraska and Wyoming

July 5th

So far, our first two days of tour have consisted of the same routine: get up early, drive eight or nine hours across wide landscape to the venue, play the show, then crash on the floor of a kind stranger who we just met. I’m glad I came into this tour knowing that “experiencing the places” was not exactly on the list: in two days we’ve gone from Missouri to Wyoming, and my sightseeing consists of looking out the van window as the scenery slips by.

There are some things that don’t change, no matter how I travel, and one of the biggest things is the sensory aspect. Life feels grittier, more intense, both less and more real, when I travel. Chewing whole wheat bread slathered with jelly and trail mix while squinting in a Wyoming sun. Sitting on a concrete floor with my fingers jammed in my ears trying to endure yet one more song with the same punk rhythm. Sweat running down my calves as a flood-scented wind lashes through the windows. Linking sticky arms with my bandmates in a group hug at a gas station in Nebraska. Feeling my violin playing vibrate in my back teeth and my collar bone as I hit the note spot-on. Cuddling up in a sleeping bag with a silky-furred yorkie under my arm. Sitting on shady grass and watching Tyler’s pet turtles chew dandelions. Gazing as the landscape transforms from flooded cornfields to hills of ragged gray rock. All part of the experience. All part of the memories.

~Lisa Shafter

Cornerstone, Part Two

Here’s a revised entry that I wrote in my diary on the morning of July 1st. I’ve shortened it a bit, edited it for clarity, and taken out a considerable amount of shameless gushing about a certain violinist. The events of June 30th were a major reason I loved Cornerstone so much— it’s a night I’ll hold forever in my heart. 

*  *  *

Last night, after eating s’mores with Josh and Emily [two other good friends at our campsite], I headed over to the Photoside Café show with my friends John, Ryan, and Mrs. Hengst. We arrived at the Chelsea Café tent and looked around for a place to sit. I knew there was a violinist in the band, but I didn’t pay any attention until the sound guy called for a mic check. A tone of pure gold shot through the air, playing the main theme from Pirates of the Caribbean. My head whipped toward the stage as if someone had slapped me, and I saw Photoside’s violinist warming up his instrument. I knew this was going to be a good concert.

I would say there are no words to describe Photoside Café’s live show, but I am a writer so I must try: utterly transcendent. The lead singer/guitarist, happy drummer/pianist, talented bassist and guest guitarist are all excellent, I’m sure. However, I only could hear and see the violinist and his rapturous instrument that he played with the beauty of autumn sent sailing into the air in a heartbreakingly sweet tone. 

I was instantly in love. I wanted to dance among the stars, or run on the ocean waves, or become a leaf in an oak tree lashing in the wind. Every turn, every song, every phrase was a new adventure, a tone or note or sound that spilled deep into my heart and filled it with joy so unspeakable that I could only tremble in my folding chair as tears slipped down my cheeks. 

Photo by Sharon Curry

When the set was drawing to a close, they played so fast and furiously I was afraid the violin would snap in half. They finished in a huge chord, and I leaped to my feet for a standing ovation.

After that, I half-collapsed onto a wooden tent support, gazed up at the stars, and basked in euphoria. Mrs. Hengst and John patiently waited for me to calm my jubilant heart. I realized at that moment, beyond doubt, that I could die right now and feel that I had experienced all the beauty this life has to offer.

At my friends’ urging, I talked to the violinist after the show. I waited my turn, then said, “Hi,” and earnestly gushed for several minutes. We talked about violin, the band, Cornerstone. I didn’t want to keep him long, but on impulse, out of the joy of my heart, I gave him a tight hug. For an instant I held in my arms a young man who God has blessed with the gift of pure Beauty. Then I said goodbye and raced off.

By all the standards of fairness, there should be a limit to how much joy someone is allowed to experience in one day. Reasonably, the night should have ended there and it still would have been an evening to remember forever. But I had committed to see the Flatfoot56 show at the large tent across the grounds, so I wrapped on a back brace, grabbed some earplugs, and scuffed my feet in the dust to the show, feeling that anything would be a comedown after the wonder I had just witnessed. I was wrong.

The huge tent was packed out, but I found a space in the mass of sweaty people, many of them dressed like superheroes, since that was the theme of the show. After a dramatic John-Williams music intro, the band took the stage— wearing masked big-brained batwing-eared supervillain costumes. As the members grabbed guitars, a mandolin, and bagpipes, they announced their plan to take over the world by destroying all the superheroes at once… with music!

For the first two songs, I worked on edging my way closer to the circle pit near the stage (a circle pit occurs when the fans run in a giant ellipse, pushing and shoving and trying not to fall down). Flatfoot is apparently renowned for having friendly circle pits, though I was warned it was not for the faint of heart. I hovered on the edge for a while, watching a couple hundred people mosh-sprint their way around the oval. Then I took a deep breath, put up my fists as if about to punch someone, and dove into the stampede.

Exhilaration! I hurtled forward, slamming my forearms into the people in front of me as people shoved me from behind. Every time we bottlenecked between a support pole and the group near the stage, we became a kicking, wriggling mass of sweaty bodies. I grunted and yelled as I fought through the runners, wild with adrenaline, grinning and whooping as I battled hundreds of other dancing fans.

Once I fell, but seized a guy’s tank top, yanked myself up and kept running. I paused only a couple times. For most of the concert I ran around the pit, nostrils burning with the acrid smell of sweat and the particularly stinky mud that Cornerstone offers, arms throbbing from ramming into people, my skin slick with sweat— both mine and other people’s. A couple kids with mind-control powers kept on reversing the multiple-hundreds-person flow of the pit, which meant that I was hit by a freight train of bodies several times. Between songs, everyone slowed down for a few seconds, heaving breaths, panting for water, almost blacking out in the soggy heat. Then the drums started up again, the exhaustion fell away like shackles, and we were off: athletes in a chaotic flailing race to happiness.

For their final song, Flatfoot had us all link arms and sway as we sang Amazing Grace together. I pulled out my earplugs and was overcome by the noise— not from onstage, but from the people around me, God’s children, belting out the words with more passion (and volume!) than I have ever heard in my life. The beauty of it all made me weep, and I sang all the louder.

As soon as the first verse hit its final chord, the music went double-time and the linked-arm lines exploded into a multi-tiered circle pit. As I bashed my way through the mass of adrenaline-hyped sweat-soaked bodies, I laughed at the thought of John Newton watching, with a dropped jaw, a couple hundred young people pummeling the crap out of each other in time to the song he wrote over two hundred years ago.

On the encore song, I sprinted with all my energy, threw back my head, and screamed. I screamed louder and longer than I have in years, screamed on this rollercoaster of God’s children, screamed because I’m young, and life at this moment was utterly and unfairly beautiful, and God is the author of Love so deep that I could never comprehend it. That night, God showed me His Joy, in blazing multisensory color.

What an evening.

 *  *

~Lisa Shafter