At a certain point in your life, the corrosion of your memories meets the current of dreams and the two become more or less indistinguishable. Older impressions melt away in the psychic wash, only to reappear as patchwork colors on the uninvited night coat of sleep. After all, the mind has its own efficiencies, too, however mysterious the process might be that cannibalizes the stored fats of experience into newly rendered projections. If we are lucky enough to have a functioning system, we must acknowledge that we are constantly recording the external while producing the internal, and all the while — at the risk of sounding simple — processing the eternal. That is not to say that the mind works solely as a filter between the conscious world and the unconscious pulse of expression, but that is certainly one of its functions. What goes on beyond our private shoals of sleep-armored filter feeders all happens far past the time-bleached reefs of human language, in the impossible submarine depths where the mysteries of prehistory boil against the forge of creation. The spawn-waters of the countless variations of life more alien than the stars and more intimate than the atomic structure of each and every one of our living selves.
This is a rough blueprint of my thoughts last week as I stared at the men’s underwear section during one of my super-rare trips to a big box store in Eureka. I was staring because everything was behind a locked case now, a novel situation for me in this particular store, but not new in the flux of my experience. Things fall apart often in this era.
I live very simply, and on this trip, I bought socks, a large box of canned cat food, some razors and a Snoopy hat from the clearance rack. I spent more on the cat food than anything else for reasons regular readers will have no trouble discerning. The few times I go shopping for new clothing, it’s strictly for garments covering my intimate parts: feet, crotch and head. Everything else comes secondhand or from the hardware store.
Previous recessions and disasters all left me in the depths of the invisible class I am most familiar with. Not much has changed there, though the harbingers of another one of these looming capitalist “whoopsies” just keep getting dumber and grosser. A good society with competent administrators doesn’t have people resorting to stealing necessities. Nor does it have cheap security theater to fire up the hapless dipshits out there stupid enough to blame the decay on the people suffering around them, rather than the audacious perverts who are running things into the ground.
That stuff’s not for us, though. We’re lucky; our processes function just fine and the re-cut colors of our memories look simply fabulous on the evergreen wardrobe of our dreams. We are all so much more than the humility of our circumstances. Welcome to fall.
Thursday
The Creative Sanctuary presents the latest in an ongoing series honoring the musical alumni of the rotating, midcentury supergroup the Jazz Messengers. Tonight’s star attraction is the recently late Wayne Shorter, whose saxophonic splendor lit up the world in a career that spanned from bebop to hip hop and beyond. Join hosts James Zeller, Ramsey Isaacs and company for this special celebration of a truly stellar being. It all goes down at the Arcata Playhouse at 7 p.m., where a $10-$30 sliding scale cover will get you inside.
Friday
Come out to the last Friday Night Market in Arcata — for now — and swing by the Outer Space at 7:30 p.m. for a very special local showcase in the intimate, all-ages, sober joint. We’re talking boogying with The Cowtown Sound, Jellyworks playing some instrumental space-synth, and the debut full-band show of both folk punk act Halfwing and The Dynamites. It’s only a negotiable $5 to get in the door, so there is little at stake for a lot of fun.
Saturday
Because things get quiet in the early part of next week, I’m double-stacking tonight’s fun as a sayonara to September. First up at the Logger Bar, there’s a Drag Lotería at 8 p.m., featuring hosts Val de Flores and Komboujia and with music by Hispanic! at the Disco. The price for participation is $10.
Meanwhile, across the Mad River, Redwood Raks Dance Studio is celebrating its ongoing Latin Music and Dance Festival with some tunes tonight courtesy of DJ Bongo at 8 p.m., and local cumbia all-stars
Makenu at 10. La Barca food truck will be outside all night, and $20 lets you dance the night away.
Sunday
It’s the final day of the Camp Rosewater music and camping festival outside of Miranda, where the music will be playing from noon to 8 p.m. Today’s bands include the Magnificent Sanctuary Band, Down ‘N Dirty, an unplugged set by Rosewater and Blackened Sabbath,a funky Black Sabbath tribute act featuring Norwood Fisher from Fishbone. The entire three-day event costs $100, or $90 if tickets are purchased in advance, and you can get a more thorough breakdown of pricing and location at camprosewater.com.
Monday and Tuesday
Go ahead and skip to Wednesday, the dust from the summer lull is still settling on the early end of the week.
Wednesday
TopHouse is a hybrid band of folk rock, roots and bluegrass music that started a decade ago in Missoula, Montana, before setting up its homebase in Nashville in the year before COVID hit. Since then, the group has extended itself into a quartet and toured and recorded in the fashion of an act working to breakthrough to ever-bigger stages. Tonight’s port of call is Humbrews, where New Orleans-based folk and country playing brothers Crowe Boys will be providing opening support. The doors open at 8 p.m., and the tickets will be going for $30, or $5 less if you buy them in advance.
Collin Yeo (he/him) has not helped immanentize the eschaton or managed to monetize the rot. But he does appreciate the changing leaves.
This article appears in Red-Light Women, Part I.