the cloud club

the cloud club
The Cloud Club, the home of Amanda of the Dresden Dolls, an organized clutter, a forest of books, posters, ancient spinning wheels, the voices of old ghosts forced out from yuppie developments in the surrounding area, moved in, sleeping in the walls, lending a spiritual warmths, a hidden charge in the sinus like a battery. It was evoked, this house, not so much built but evoked in the 1960s, We sleep around the house. The two art girls spooning in geodesic glass cloud dome, one is spring wire the other a filament of colored tissues, the gay thin gay boy who oozes his english-ness like a good smelling cologne sleeps slinked on a crooked couch that would break the back of most men, It is an ancient awkward piece of furniture bent from years of use, designed for ladies to sip tea on , "I'll sleep fine" He tells me." I am use to sleep on top of a grand piano."

Sarah who was a drunken rose the night before and Benji who always has a sweet parallel song unheard to everyone, says they both can share the closet with a bed in it. I am on the floor waking to stand next to the heater's blaze. In order to get to the geodesic star dome you must climb a knotted trunk bequethed with antlers.

Amanda's bedroom has a full sized grand piano. In the morning I awake to the propietor of the house coming in. I immediately recognize him to be a ships captain with white beard. He is checking the heat in every room to make sure everyone is warm. Buildings are ships that need to be constantlly nurtured and and repaired just to stay still. That is what we want from buildings yes? Their stillness. We trust them to be unchanging. We nurture them into stillness. Still, the building is never finished. In the room below the store dome are organic plaster forms folding into a room, a window in front of the fire place looks down into the kitchen below, there is an ancient piano once owned by a Chinese show girl and objects, chimes, candelabras, and books at every finger teach. "He sees the building as a ship that IS going to take-off someday." Amanda tells me the next day. Out of the corner of my eye a small blue sparks shiver down the wall, I hear all the pianos and electric keyboards settle slightly in all the rooms with a hum.

Pa's Lounge is an empty rumpus room, obviously a working class bar that has found a way to sustain by allowing shows in its adjacent room. Boston is a hard market for venues. The club owner is blunt and a hard kidder, an east coaster, he likes us. There has apparently been only one other band he has left the door open between the bar and club. Baby Dee has played here which is amazing, I only imagine her playing in places with velvet curtains and waiters with white gloves, though I've never seen her play at places like this. Everyone dances for Luminescent Orchestrii an awkward and beautiful hora, Amanda eggs them on dancing. She sings "Sweet Dreams" with us holding the mic out to the audience to sing along. We tear through our our new Macadonian tune and everyone dances dances. Brian and I feed each other beats and find our way in and out of half realized arrangements.

Amanda has a dream about a cult, in which middle class families strip naked and put their feet together in a circle, igniting a flame where they would burn their sins and regrets.

There is an order to this house. There is the smallest bit of gold attached to every object present. I finally notice, it is very tiny, almost too tiny to see, on the lower right hand corner of every object. You might mistake it for for a piece of glitter. On books, on shoes, a towel, a bit of soap, I almost dig it out with my fingernail but, well, it's not my house. It could be pyrite or maybe it is glitter, but it even at these small sizes it has a suggestion of weight, that anchors it and everything down.

"Imagine the house lifting, you'll know it's about to go, for the gold glitter in the air, a sparkling dust releasing the house into the heavens."


"I stole the corner stone of your book collection, took my days to figure it out. Now their is uneasy reading in the library.
I stole a handful of hands, small hands, that could fit into my big hand, they grasped and would not let go, it was much more trouble than it was worth.
I stole reading glasses which, not designed for my eyes made everything impossible to read. Except billboards so I walked along the highway and did just that.
I stole the right to steal a stone then to hide it in my palm like a funny trick. This made the trick trite and so made the trick at first akward then awful to do, but I did it anyway because I had gone to all the trouble."