Ode to the Delaware Scene
(surprising)
The East Coast in dreaded February winter. Wet. Grey. One of the best pleasures remained secret to me for many years: the East Coast road trip, to see more wet, grey, and foggy scenes.
I’ve grown up surrounded by thin barren trees, slushy brown snow, and the highways that stretch among them. I’ve moved to The City, since it's been close enough to call it “The City”. Manhattan has a comforting buzz and a smoky sky during the winter that lulls me into thinking I can’t possibly go stir-crazy. I have a park to visit, I have surrounding buildings to warm me. Then ice creeps in, stagnation, and obsessions with minutia that interrupt the perceived god-given flow of my creativity. I needed to get away. Back a second time to a glorious place called Delaware.
Delaware has become my secret love. The first time I visited my dear friend Joseph, whom I met through a mutual love for music when we were but 16 in the back of a treasured English class. He was doing his last improv comedy show of his college career. The annual senior show that would be dedicated to him was only a week or so from Thanksgiving he told me while we met up in our hometown during winter break.
So I committed myself to going to his show. I was going to get there regardless of any impending personal cost. I booked the cheapest form of travel, the Greyhound bus from the NY Port Authority to Delaware. That was in 2023, a year I held together through a newfound commitment to retaining my personal autonomy. I had already visited my best friend in Berlin, I had violently forced myself out of a loving and long-term relationship and thrust myself into the arms of strangers. I spent the summer like that. As mentioned earlier, the cold wanes this drive, and that November it had begun to set in. Escape was more than necessary, it was impending. The New York Port Authority held no positive memories for me. I was told the wrong gate in an underground stagnant aired hall. Four other women and I waited in line for what ended up being the wrong bus. Finally, after running from one gate to another I picked a comfortable seat on a mostly empty bus. I committed to listening to Carseat Headrest’s Bandcamp-only music, the numbered albums starting with 1. I let Will Toledo’s early and questionable production lull me through the New Jersey Turnpike. Side Note– The Numbered albums are not for the weak or uncommitted Car Seat Headrest Fan. I was getting serious. Carefully listening for samples he would release later, searched for songs I liked best and submitted to the crusted scratchy guitar riffs. All of that was comforting. I sat with my thoughts and the darkening blue sky. I thought about myself, my relationships, and what I was going to do in a general sense. I also went over my own sadness that had recently been boiling. It was good to be alone. I tried to write, but my scribbles overlapped each other in the dark.
Nate and Eli picked me up from the bus station, and we were all running half an hour late. When I first met these people I now consider friends, parts of their faces that now feel familiar to me, ruled their persona upon first meeting. Nate’s glasses. Eli’s general blondeness. Julia’s hair flowed when she jumped a short brick wall running to meet us on the UD lawn.
Once we made it to the show Joe was already on stage, and he saw us and pointed while we rushed in. I felt so much love for him in one room. The whole rest of the evening was like this.
It was a strange energy mix of a birthday party and a funeral. People were coming up to me talking about mich much of an impact he had made on their lives. He had changed their perspective on art, had taught them to dance again, and had made them feel so cared for a valued as a friend. People were so willing and capable of verbally expressing their love for each other. Maybe too many things go unsaid in New York. We danced and sang to Bodies and I thought about how I was worried at 13 that I would live a kind of empty life, and how the week before I had worried I was living a kind of empty life, and how wrong I had been, how wrong I always was.
Only months later I took to journey for a second time. It really was a birthday party this time, and I had never been so flattered to be a surprise guest, I was living the dream. To get there I enlisted Max to drive me. It was there I encountered for the overdue first time a Wawa, and a Wawa sandwich which was possibly the best sandwich I had ever eaten so far this year. I ate in the car on the way there the way it was meant to be eaten. He did too, in a much messier masculine way which confirms aspects of our dynamic I won’t get into here.
I had been fantasizing for months about the kind of peace that going back there could give me. I needed something that reminded me of home, and Delaware has that. I’m not sure if its the suburban landscape, the skinny trees, and the fog, or if it’s as simple of the comfort of a hometown friend. That night had a beautiful embracing kind of energy that has energized me through the rest of this now thick and long winter. I saw a couple of good bands play, but I was more enthralled by the perfect venue space which is Secret Tunnel. It is a classic basement house show kind of experience that I had been craving for the days I spent locked in my room over winter break watching videos of Alex G playing house shows in 2011. When Joe and Neil went outside after being in the pit they were steaming. I have never been so grateful for such a wet sweaty hug.
Traveling up and down the East Coast may be the solution to the winter blues. Now that spring starting to tease us, something I would never complain about, looking back on these trips is growing nostalgic. I am being forcefully propelled yet again into another shape of being; I’m glad I could use the Delaware scene to mark that.