My official job title in Gardanne was editor-in-chief, but as the co-creator of the 7th-dimensional island with Kitty, I also somewhat assumed the role of city manager. And there were innumerable occupations I’d fill behind the scenes to keep the town afloat.
The ostensible dual role the public saw came with a caveat: fame. That meant some people (not everyone) put on a front whenever in direct conversation with me. They’d give me their best, when all that I really wanted was to talk. No bullshit.
I initiated an “undercover boss” protocol. The ability to manifest any identity and assume it for a time allowed me the privilege to become whomever. I’d establish some backstory to substantiate this newcomer, and publish a bogus introduction to town in the Gardanne Register‘s ‘Oi!’ section (aka “Obits and Introductions”).
It was by the newly installed undercover boss protocol that I was able to procure an exclusive interview with the town’s living lodestone, Norm, who manned the corner stool at the bar Old Faithful, Itself a Gardanne tent pole. Norm was so unassuming, I didn’t really even need a backstory. I just pulled up the stool adjacent to him, my back to the fourth wall. From that encounter came this profile piece…
OLD FAITHFUL, Gdnn. — “Norm!” I said, a little too loudly as I sat at the bar next to him.
“Uh, you only need to do that when I enter,” he said, in his calm, unaffected tone.
“Oh, sorry,” I said. “How goes it?”
“Smooth, sudsy, delicious,” said Norm, who then downed half his draught.
“I don’t think I’ve ever been in here and not seen you sitting in that exact spot.”
“I’ve found that all roads lead right here. Why move? If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”
“In such a rapidly changing, vibrant town, it’s honestly nice to know there’s still some consistency. It’s comforting, frankly.”
“Happy to oblige,” and then he gulped the remainder of his beer, and pushed the empty mug foward across the mahogany bar. “Another one, Sammy.”
“There’s a term that emerged down on one of the Earths—FOMO, which means ‘fear of missing out.’ How do you avoid FOMO, spending so much of your time right here, in one place?”
“I’ve been around, ya know? I’ve seen a lot, but nothing compares to right here. This bar is no stranger to action, either. I’ve discovered it’s often best to let this ‘FOMO?’ as you say, come to me.”
“You are a wise man, sir.”
“Keep that between you and me.”
Sorry, Norm, cat’s out of the bag.
One day, Norm and I were sat at Old Faithful, and another Norm sat to his right, Norm Macdonald. I introduced the two.
“Norm, Norm,” I said, looking at Norm Peterson. Then, I looked at Norm Macdonald. “Norm, Norm.”
Norm Mac fit in instantly.
“What are we supposed to do here?” Macdonald said, looking at me dead in the face.
“That’s up to you, Norm,” I said.
“But why would anyone want to work or do anything here? There’s no money.”
“Well, when you spin your long yarns, you don’t expect payment, right?” I said.
Macdonald stroked his chin in contemplation for a moment.
“I suppose you’re right,” he said.
Peterson piped up at this point. “I don’t need to get paid to drink this beer. It’s a reward unto itself.” Then he took a big, satisfying gulp.
“But what about the stakes?” Macdonald could not let the money go. “How would one make a wager, for instance?”
“That would be tough, I’ll admit,” I said. “You may be able to find a casino on the south side of town. Residents let loose down there, indulging in guilty pleasures—air out their Dionysian side, so to speak, so that it doesn’t take over the spirit. If you did discover such an establishment, not sure what you’d wager.”
Macdonald thought for a solid 20 seconds, furrowing his brow. His eyes danced up at the ceiling tiles searching his mind for the perfect representation of value in a place with no legal tender.
Then, he raised a single finger in the air. “Humility!”
“Explain,” said Peterson, and took another huge gulp.
“Say the Gardanne Gnomes win tonight’s ball game,” Macdonald proposed. “Anyone that’s bet against them should have to get up on this bar right here and drop their pants.”
“I think we have stakes,” I said.
The undercover boss technique worked so well at Old Faithful, I elected to test it out on the local comedy scene downtown. I built a bogus backstory and infiltrated the open mic’ers, one night. It was the only way they’d let me into the green room at Gardanne’s Comedy Cellar.
I went with Norm Macdonald. He vouched for me backstage with the other performers to further corroborrate my bogus backstory.
“Hey guys,” he said. “This is ahhh, Bill. He was a comedian like us down on one of the Earths.”
The half dozen or so stand-ups gently nodded in my direction to indicate I was cool. They then continued their conversation that we had just interrupted.
“This place, Gardanne, is definitely not like Earth,” one of them said. I think his name was Mitch. “I’m always hungry.”
“I think that’s the heightened vibration here,” said another comic, Patrice, lounging on one of the leather sofas, smoking a cigarette.
“Anyone get up on center stage at the tabernacle yet?” Mitch said.
“Nah, still fine-tuning my set at the clubs around the Village,” Patrice said. “Gotta build up enough buzz to make it onto the big stage.”
“Bill, you been getting up a lot?” Mitch said, turning to me.
“Not yet,” I said, simultaneously planting memories in the zeitgeist of the green room to build up my own clout in these seasoned comedians’ minds—my appearances on Earth_Letterman, the vague hint of a one-hour special in which they may have seen me—to take me out of their conversation’s spotlight.
Norm helped.
“And what’s with this no money thing, huh?” he said.
“Yeah, I guess we’re all on the honor system up here,” Mitch said.
“If all I gotta do is eat, sleep, do comedy and chase tail, that’s OK with me,” Patrice said.
“We’ve found a workaround for placing wagers,” Norm said, to reassure himself more than any of the other comedians.
“What’s that?” Mitch said.
“Mortifying humiliation!” Norm immediately answered, raising his index finger high in the air.
Even in an economy without currency, there were things we all valued that one could throw into the pot. They added a little juice to the present moment. Joie de vivre didn’t require dollars.
The comedians, one by one, exited the green room to do their spots, and returned to their peers backstage. We hopped to a few clubs in the urban neighborhood, as the comedians worked their material on each stage. Between the bars, I heard a busker performing the “Gardanne Song” on the sidewalk. It had a real folk twang to it…
Welcome to Gardannnnne
The Great City of Gardanne
Expand your mind if you cannn
Drink in the majesty that spans
From the rolling river
To the Heights, to the sea
Sit atop the city’s apex pyramid
And cast spells with the forest magicians
…There were about 11 more verses.
Had the tune taken a punk tone, I would have sensed some angst abrewing. But the song became quite a ballad that the whole city state adopted as their own anthem. That busker, who was new in town, soon found himself performing centerstage at the tabernacle a few weeks later.
In our barhop between comedy clubs we also took in the local street art. On a recent Banksy visit to the city state, he had painted a mural on a giant brick wall, dedicated to Earth_42. The rather large portrait, standing several stories high on the magnificent white brick latticed with vines crawling up the vertical surface, was framed in a blazing circle of fire. The inner, concentric circles of the graffiti piece pacified into a serene nature scene at its focal point.
It echoed the outside chaos one must endure on Earth_42, only to then center oneself achieving the inner, earthly peace that allows one to once again reconvene with Mother Nature.
“Man, that Banksy’s a genius,” Mitch said, appreciating the street art alongside the rest of us. “Good thing there’s no money here. Dude’s anonymous, so he wouldn’t be able to collect anyway.”
Hearing the busker on our city romp inspired me to attend a local music concert in and around the same time I was hobnobbing with the comedians. Gardanne had procured quite a cadre of live musical acts at that point. I found myself in the shadowy crowd of a rock show at the Parabola—an intimate music venue and dive bar, also downtown.
The band had already played a few of their hits upon my arrival into the dark, sweaty space teeming with body heat and high spirits. Any sense of myself assimilated into the hive mind of this moving in unison mass, swaying to the electrical sound waves shaking every cell of our collective.
The band: a three-piece outfit. The lead singer also played guitar. The other two members consisted of a frenetically precise drummer and bass player commanding the beat that moved their hypnotic songs along, the way rhythmic strikes of the barrel drum paced rows of viking ships across oceans. We were all slaves to the band’s symphonic sound and the lead singer’s wails into the mic. He drew rage and angst and melancholy from the pit of his stomach that he then bellowed like a banshee out his throat, enveloping the crowd in every nook and cranny of his complex emotion.
Their musical display built to an apex, peeking at the height of all catharsis, but that was only the penultimate. They closed the show, culminating in a complete stage breakdown, destroying intruments and amplifiers. Mic stands went awry, as band members flung them across the floor. The entire comedy of life portrayed in one live show was the result—building up only to break down to be built once again the next performance. Creation. Destruction. Perfection.
I slipped back stage after the show, hot off the confidence of hobnobbing with comedians. Though, at that point, I only knew the basic chords—C, D, G—I feigned musical prowess to strike up conversation with the band’s frontman.
“That show was transcendent,” I said to him, as he inhaled long, lung-filling drags from his cigarette.
“Thanks,” he said, exhaling.
“Your sonic command took to me to a different time and place without ever leaving the room. I was wondering if you’d join me in exploring that, as it pertains to actual dimensional travel, on my rock podcast, the ‘Rock Pod.'”
My experience with musicians was that they hated articulating how their music works; the tunes should sing for themselves. But I sensed a genuine appreciation in the lead singer at my proposed practical application for his art.
“Sure,” he said, saving his voice for the next night’s performance.
“Up next, we have host of the ‘Rock Pod,’ Bill Thunderbird, coming to us from the live feed in his living room, where he broadcasts his podcast. He’s accompanied by Cymatic frontman, Kal Brasil.” Larry King introduced the next segment in his daily live news show, Larry King Forever.
We sat, Kal and I, side-by-side on swivel stools in my living room, awaiting to appear on King’s Gardannewide broadcast. We each rested Stratocasters in our laps, fiddling with their tuning knobs in zen-inducing prep to maintain presence over the live appearance.
“OK, we’re back,” King said, turning his show’s gaze on the two of us. “Thank you, gentlemen, for joining us. What are we talking about today, Bill?”
“Well, I have Kal here, from the local band Cymatic,” I said. “I attended his band’s show last night and was blown away by the command he and his mates possessed over the sound waves overwhelming the venue space.” I turned to Kal. “From where to do you draw such raw power?”
Kal strummed a few power chords on his Strat before responding.
“My music emanates from deep-seated emotions living in my gut. The symphonic (or cacaphonic) sounds the listener hears become my artistic expression of these complex feelings. It’s the only way I can make sense of them.”
“Yes,” I said, muffling my own Strat strings to not expose my novice at the same instrument. “I feel that. Do you only draw from anger?”
“That does seem to be the prevalent emotion,” he said, nodding his head lightly. “It’s just what comes out.”
“Do you think we could draw from other, perhaps lighter emotions, leveraging a similar musical technique?”
“Sure, I suppose,” Kal said.
“Bill, how does Cymatic’s music apply to dimensional leaping?” King interjected, ever the journalist reminding us of the task at hand.
“Well, Larry,” I said, “I invited Kal here today to demonstrate how his command of sound can influence mood, tone and the very essence of the present moment. I believe we can apply skills like his in dimensional leaping. Tuning to new realities is not unlike the way Cymatic transports their fans at live shows. I went to see them at Parabola last night. And, by no effort of my own, felt as though I had leapt dimensions with each new song’s mood.”
“But the band’s tone tends to slant angry, no?” King said. “Would you want to tune to those types of realities?”
“For the most part, no,” I said. “You’re right. We can’t, however, ignore the technique. Anger, aggression, melancholy are all heavier emotions. To effectively leap out of one’s reality, we would have to adopt tones on the lighter side. But the fact remains—Kal and his Cymatic’s sounds quite literally shift the realities of all those who are within an earshot. The emotions they evoke are more angst than anything, because that’s what inspires Kal. The truth is every moment, every reality, every whole world or planet or even galaxy contains… they embody a signature sound. We tap into those precise notes to instantaneously materialize there by way of leaping from our former dimension. And I’m hoping that practicing my Stratocaster right here can refine our technique of tuning to these specific realities, in all of their complexity.”
“Hmm,” King reacted. “Interesting. Kal? Will you teach Bill how to play the guitar like you?”
“I can’t exactly teach him how I play,” Kal answered. “But, yeah, we can jam.”
My exploits with Kal and the Norms and the rest of the comedians inspired several Arts & Entertainment pieces in the Gardanne Register. There were purported Banksy sightings, on Page 6, after I reported on his latest Earth_42 mural, but we managed to keep his secret identity safe.
If you liked “Bar Hopping,” in the city of Gardanne, these tales live in the same universe as Big Cat, a novel.
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