The Rarest Gift
" I decided I really am gonna be moving North. Like I always wanted. Just draw a line and go. A Northline. The further North the better...I figure the further North you go the better it'll be." -Willy Vlautin
It all started with Willy Vlautin's novel Northline.
Damn, how much of my recent life can be traced back to that book?
Well, seemingly everything. There needs to be a new word coined for that kind of impact cause that's miles beyond a seminal book, galaxies past a touchstone and light years past a lifechanger.
It was March. The date is lost to me right now (it can and will be rediscovered) but it was a Friday during Lent. My friend Carrie called to say that Willy's band, Richmond Fontaine, was playing at the Tractor Tavern that night and she was going to go and see if she couldn't thank Willy in person for his participation in my 40th birthday surprise (see "The Greatest Gift" ), for the gift of Northline, for everything. She asked what I would have her say on my behalf. I said that there weren't words enough but that Willy should be told that the book still means everything to me, I still listen to the soundtrack daily and that not a day goes by that I don't shake my Reno snowglobe and think about Allison Johnson. She also requested I send pictures of my 'Willy Wall' in my living room and of the birthday suitcase all spread out, which I did.
Some hours passed-me in a state of low grade excitement-wishing I could be there too but half glad to have a proxy, this proxy, who had marshaled the whole birthday thing in the first place. Then the phone rang, hours too early for the show to be over given the time difference. I was nervous that the next voice I would hear would be Willy's but it wasn't. It was Carrie apologizing (unnessarily so) for not being able to pull it off. She then went on to say that something else had happened that she needed to tell me about.
And then she told me to sit down.
Now the thing to know about Carrie is that, as Stephen King might write, she has a bit of the shine to her. There have been many times in out 20+ year friendship when she has known something she she had no way of knowing. Except somehow she did. And because of our history my mind is way more open to her than almost any other person. Which is good cause what she was calling to say was, "Tonight I met a guy in a bar who is going to be important to you." Which, if anybody else had said..yeah. But because it was her I replied, "Talk about it."
This is how it happened.
Carrie's husband, Thor, was skidding to the end of a spectacularly shitty day and so wasn't up for the whole rock n' roll thing but was game to go see if they couldn't catch the band at loadin or soundcheck just so Carrie could say her piece. They didn't catch them so ducked next door into Hattie's Hat to wait to try again. As they were waiting a group came in, rockabillyed to the nines. Carrie and Thor struck up a conversation with the guy closest to them (amazing what the right band namecheck will do) whose name was Harley (of course it was) hoping they were another act on the bill. They weren't, they were actually playing somewhere else but after a few minutes of chatting Carrie asked, in her never-met-a-stranger way, "Harley, do you like a good story?" and then went on to tell him all about me, the birthday surprise and their night's mission. His response? He asked, "Do you trust me to do a favor for you?" before taking my e-mail, her iPhone with the pics and heading off to the Tractor to work his contacts and try and make the meeting happen.
Now Carrie is mighty persuasive, after 20+ years no one knows that better than me, but the thought of a man I had never met, with a show of his own that night, just setting out on this errand knocked me back. It knocks me back still. Such a kind, big hearted gesture. A gesture that both amplifies and mirrors Northline, though he had never heard of it. How many people would have done the same? Not many, if any at all I think.
Harley, too, was unsuccessful but at that point this other, seperate, story took on such greater significance that I wasn't disappointed at all. Instead I was left marvelling at the world made smaller in the best possible way.
Postscript
Was Carrie right? Hell yeah, she was. I had to write and thank Harley for what he had done (of course I did) which led to a corrospondence and phone calls-lots and lots of phone calls. Finally in July we met (insert YouTube clip here) when I went to Seattle to watch Carrie's boat and child while she went to Japan to make a movie. After months of long distance I thought I knew she was right but when I saw him in the Seattle airport I really knew and when I took his hand in the car it was with the hope of never letting it go.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JOPb4UtUVLE
It all started with Willy Vlautin's novel Northline.
Damn, how much of my recent life can be traced back to that book?
Well, seemingly everything. There needs to be a new word coined for that kind of impact cause that's miles beyond a seminal book, galaxies past a touchstone and light years past a lifechanger.
It was March. The date is lost to me right now (it can and will be rediscovered) but it was a Friday during Lent. My friend Carrie called to say that Willy's band, Richmond Fontaine, was playing at the Tractor Tavern that night and she was going to go and see if she couldn't thank Willy in person for his participation in my 40th birthday surprise (see "The Greatest Gift" ), for the gift of Northline, for everything. She asked what I would have her say on my behalf. I said that there weren't words enough but that Willy should be told that the book still means everything to me, I still listen to the soundtrack daily and that not a day goes by that I don't shake my Reno snowglobe and think about Allison Johnson. She also requested I send pictures of my 'Willy Wall' in my living room and of the birthday suitcase all spread out, which I did.
Some hours passed-me in a state of low grade excitement-wishing I could be there too but half glad to have a proxy, this proxy, who had marshaled the whole birthday thing in the first place. Then the phone rang, hours too early for the show to be over given the time difference. I was nervous that the next voice I would hear would be Willy's but it wasn't. It was Carrie apologizing (unnessarily so) for not being able to pull it off. She then went on to say that something else had happened that she needed to tell me about.
And then she told me to sit down.
Now the thing to know about Carrie is that, as Stephen King might write, she has a bit of the shine to her. There have been many times in out 20+ year friendship when she has known something she she had no way of knowing. Except somehow she did. And because of our history my mind is way more open to her than almost any other person. Which is good cause what she was calling to say was, "Tonight I met a guy in a bar who is going to be important to you." Which, if anybody else had said..yeah. But because it was her I replied, "Talk about it."
This is how it happened.
Carrie's husband, Thor, was skidding to the end of a spectacularly shitty day and so wasn't up for the whole rock n' roll thing but was game to go see if they couldn't catch the band at loadin or soundcheck just so Carrie could say her piece. They didn't catch them so ducked next door into Hattie's Hat to wait to try again. As they were waiting a group came in, rockabillyed to the nines. Carrie and Thor struck up a conversation with the guy closest to them (amazing what the right band namecheck will do) whose name was Harley (of course it was) hoping they were another act on the bill. They weren't, they were actually playing somewhere else but after a few minutes of chatting Carrie asked, in her never-met-a-stranger way, "Harley, do you like a good story?" and then went on to tell him all about me, the birthday surprise and their night's mission. His response? He asked, "Do you trust me to do a favor for you?" before taking my e-mail, her iPhone with the pics and heading off to the Tractor to work his contacts and try and make the meeting happen.
Now Carrie is mighty persuasive, after 20+ years no one knows that better than me, but the thought of a man I had never met, with a show of his own that night, just setting out on this errand knocked me back. It knocks me back still. Such a kind, big hearted gesture. A gesture that both amplifies and mirrors Northline, though he had never heard of it. How many people would have done the same? Not many, if any at all I think.
Harley, too, was unsuccessful but at that point this other, seperate, story took on such greater significance that I wasn't disappointed at all. Instead I was left marvelling at the world made smaller in the best possible way.
Postscript
Was Carrie right? Hell yeah, she was. I had to write and thank Harley for what he had done (of course I did) which led to a corrospondence and phone calls-lots and lots of phone calls. Finally in July we met (insert YouTube clip here) when I went to Seattle to watch Carrie's boat and child while she went to Japan to make a movie. After months of long distance I thought I knew she was right but when I saw him in the Seattle airport I really knew and when I took his hand in the car it was with the hope of never letting it go.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JOPb4UtUVLE
posted by Sam @ 5:19 AM
1 Comments:
That is simply beautiful.
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