83: Fake Bladders, Weirdos, God

Comics and music

Today, enjoy an old comic about a true and strange bus station washroom conversation. Then check out two more Holy Text albums, neither from the 80s.

Fake Bladder was a weird conversation Marjan really had in the Toronto bus depot at Bay and Dundas - in the washroom - back in the mid-90s. She scribbled down the story on a napkin right afterward and kept it. I drew it about 10 years ago. (Interestingly, my Mom really did have a fake bladder.)

A Love Supreme and The Empyrean

A Love Supreme was an important musical leap for me: one of the earliest times I really worked to get/comprehend/understand a piece of music. I did not get it when I first heard it, or the second time, but I listened to it many times with an open mind - because I’d heard so often that it was worth the effort, and it was always interesting regardless of my comprehension. At some point it clicked, and I got it. I could sing it, if you know what I mean. It’s in me now, and listening to it is comforting, exciting, rewarding. It was a lesson I took with me, applying it to lots of kinds of music afterwards: make an effort and see what happens. Doing so led me to a lifelong love for all of Coltrane’s work and an openness to experiments.

I had a very similar arc with another album contemplating God, John Frusciante’s Empyrean, almost 30 years later. It is interesting to me that both albums - equally transcendent, complicated mind trips - are by recovered heroin addicts. A Love Supreme has only one refrain of lyrics, which is the title of the album: “A love supreme … a love supreme … a love supreme.” The Empyrean’s tracks mostly have lyrics, but most of them have the same sentiment: What is God? What’s he thinking? Is God different than the universe?

I didn’t know Frusciante until maybe four years ago, and my exploration has only just started to expand to other solo albums and Red Hot Chili Peppers’ music.* I heard The Empyrean playing in Toronto’s Sonic Boom - his voice resembled later-era Vic Chesnutt** so strongly that I wondered if I’d missed a record (impossible). I asked the sales clerks what it was, and bought the CD they handed me. I listened to it a few times and dug it, but didn’t spend enough time to get to know the songs - I found them a little sonically overwhelming, a little exhausting. There’s a lot going on, and it might be a a little hotly engineered, but I don't really know why it bugged me at first.

*I had no idea the Chili Peppers had become an amazing jam band. I stopped paying attention after Mother’s Milk, and thought they’d stayed a funk/rap band with a few soft singles thrown in. I was wrong. I just saw their “From the Basement” show and feel like I might be orbiting a new rabbit hole. Jesus, they can play. (Frusciante is not a member during this show.)

**Another writer described his voice as “very Cat Stevens,” which is also accurate.

Anyway, I kept going back to The Empyrean, intermittently, and became familiar with it, and then fell in total love. Now when I listen to it it feels as much like praying as anything. It is worth the effort.

Check It Out

Hope you’re great.

XO,

jep