In person and online! This is probably my 303rd show EVER in Vancouver, BC. There are two cities I have performed in the most: My hometown of San José and my home-away-from-hometown of East Van. The first time I performed there in April 2002 (20 years ago!) was my first time out of the States and I fell in love immediately. That’s an understatement—I fell in life with Vancouver. I have never felt more consistently understood by audiences than in that great Southwestern Canada Beacon by the Sea.
I’ve heard stories that in 1500s England they buried people prematurely due to a comatose state caused by drinking alcohol from lead and pewter cups
To eradicate these awful mistakes and to prevent many wrongful deaths they hired men to sit in cemeteries with lanterns and shovels to listen for ringing bells
These bells were tied to twine the twine ran underground to the wrist of the deceased If the person awoke inside their coffin and scrambled for escape their bell would sound six feet above and the diggers would start digging Hence, those buried alive were saved by the bell and the diggers worked what became known as the first graveyard shift The only people at that time willing to work in the dark and sleep during the day
So I’m at my new graveyard job at the mall I stock toys for the kiddies I work in the dark, like Quasimodo Because they would never hire me for a daylight position I guess I just don’t appeal to their regular shoppers and I definitely don’t appeal to the kind of people that stop by our store after spending a few grand at Nordstrom
Come see the big hairy guy Come one, come all Come down to the mall See for yourself The big giant elf
I could never dance for a dollar and I won’t give up my dreams for a job I work in the dark to enjoy the sun I plan my life during my ten minute breaks while the nocturnal animals play in the empty parking garage amongst the littered shopping bags, receipts and price tags
As the world sleeps dreaming of their designer clothes their bottled water and their beverly hills lifestyle I debate with myself whether I have time to suck down one more cigarette
If you can see the blue my collar then you must know that I have learned quite well just how to differentiate between the day walkers and those that roam the night
I prefer the light of the moon over your basic fluorescent office fixture The kind of light that assumes a distrust between you and your boss The kind of light that peeks into and around every corner
Those are the lights the stores at malls use to scare away the shoplifters and those are the lights they shut off when the graveyard shift punches in They know that something will be missing in the morning, so what’s the fucking point
The graveyard shift is creative taking what is never rightfully theirs, but obviously no one else’s either
There is always something so missing when the morning crew takes over that the customers can smell it under the hot lights of omniscience
It is the creativity born with nightwalkers
It is how much the day hates the night
You’ll never see a pigeon hanging out with an owl
You’ll never see Beverly Hills hand me her phone number as she leaves the mall with her bags of “Hey, look at me!” while I enter the mall in an air of Hey… look at me…
…We’re all the same, Beverly You look really hot in that outfit, the way it exposes your midriff and your flat, flat stomach…
I just wish you could say to me: “Hey, McGee. You look good in that dictionary, the way it exposes your ideals and manipulations, your faults and your ambitions.”
…We seem to take two different escalators to get to the same place in life I’m kind of like banished royalty and you’re upper class white trash
Day and night can never make love They can only tease each other in a foreplay they call twilight
The only things I regret at three in the morning as I solve the world’s problems and chain smoke outside the mall| are that I have no bell to ring and rainbows never come out at night
@ 1999 Mighty Mike McGee (9 December)
Written between Thanksgiving and Christmas while working at Valley Fair Mall in San José, California, as a seasonal overnight stocker inside the Warner Bros. Studio Store. An earlier version appeared in In Search of Midnight: The Mike McGee Handbook of Awesome published by Write Bloody Publishing.
I have two seats from a minivan A housemate moved out last summer and into said vehicle I had stopped them from chucking them into a dumpster They looked so inviting two perfectly plush porch chairs built for butts on long drives and lives stalled by plagues
During the warmest parts of the pandemic, they sat in my driveway Always a housemate or two with nowhere to be chatting, eating, people watching from a distance
When the rain finally came, I moved them to the covered patio in the backyard
My whole life, I have always put a second chair next to mine Anticipating the unexpected arrival of a friend or a brave stranger looking to chat The clearest visual for hope I have ever produced
As the weather cools and darkens Inside and out I only need one chair No one is coming Time to put the second chair anywhere but here A mere logical move when space is needed
Back in March of this year, about a week after I went into self-isolation from C19, like many, I was feeling pretty low, lost and lethargic, forcing myself into routines so that I didn’t lose my mind in a vast field of worry. But even though I was flying solo on this journey, I knew wasn’t actually alone. While doing mundane tasks like household chores and sorting of things that I’d put on The Wayside, I realized that so many of the people I love (along with those I hardly know, but who are very lovely) were probably doing the exact same things and quite possibly at the exact same time. I often imagine how many people might be laughing while I am laughing, crying while I am crying, eating toast at the precise moment I am eating toast. The great potential for this sort of banal synchronicity fascinates me. So I jotted down a quick poem and called it “Widespread Orchestra,” a phrase I’d had rolling around like a fat marble in my head for the better part of decade. The poem got a good response from folks, especially from my friend Noah Luna, composer and fellow San Joser, who took the poem and gave it a sound I am incapable of formulating or performing. Over the last several months, he’s built a beautiful song out of my words, which renders me speechless every time I see and hear it. Check it out for yourself.
Noah had asked me sometime in late spring if he could play with it. I love poetry over music, so I was emphatic in my affirmation. Noah asked world class cellist Joshua Roman to play the composition he had written for cello. Then they both recruited a number of vocalists from all over (I’d like to say the world, but I don’t actually know where they’re all located) to record themselves singing and to capture it on video. Through the awesome support of Town Hall Seattle, where Joshua is the current Artist in Residence, he and Noah were able to stitch together all of the vocal tracks and footage to make what you see and hear in the video.
We had a video debut of the song over Zoom the other day a good number of the vocalists joined us. Many of them commented on how it was the first time they had to listen to themselves sing solo for a chorus. Noah commented that is was the first time he’d ever heard every voice in a chorus individually as he put the track together. Very fascinating work.
They made a widespread “orchestra” and turned my little poem into a much, much bigger song. My mind is blown and I cannot thank them enough.
Many, many thanks and kudos to Noah Luna and Joshua Roman for their incredible, remarkable work. Huge thanks to the vocalists who participated in this strange and beautiful endeavor. Major thanks and gratitude to the folks at Town Hall Seattle for their part in making this happen.
Wow.
Noah and I are already talking about future projects. Stay tuned.
A Conspiracy of Clocks: An Ode to the Seemingly Useless and Certainly Mundane Biannual Task of Resetting Clocks
It would be so much easier if you got rid of us It’s funny how you only get to change us twice a year running around the house setting us back or forward usually wrong but what’s a few human minutes or seconds off that sub-sub-level of arbitrary we don’t really have time to get into right now yet, we’re always changing you you chase us we change everything We’re there for everything you’re waiting for and YOU ARE ALWAYS
W A I T I N G
even cats and lizards put waiting on pause to soak up the sun and lick their lips you program your phone so it can program you according to a schedule you agree to set by the sun a ball of fire too busy to notice you even exist but we notice, Mike we notice and every time you fall asleep we look at each other across the room and laugh we laugh so much that we lose track of time
Jack McCarthy was very dear to me. He helped me get closer to sobriety, guided me on my stage presence, and was pivotal in helping me develop my stage and page voice, and lured me into streamlining my choices in storytelling.
Jack died January 17, 2013, just 13 days after I moved up to Bellingham, Washington to be nearer to him. I was lucky to see him one last time and say goodbye.
On October 15, 2020, Write Bloody Publishing is releasing his new collection of poems and writings called Allow The Light. It’s a beautiful tribute to a man who was a beacon for many poets of all ages and all walks of life.
I’ll be hosting three online book launch events where a number of special guests will join me in reading selections from Jack’s book.
A picture I took of Jack after performing a set in my Worcester, MA kitchen, 2009.
Jack was the sweetest, yet, most honest person I knew. He was always so patient with his critique, moreso the more one needed constructive criticism. To borrow a phrase from my wise and also-departed friend Lara Ka’apuni, Jack would “issue gentle corrections” to folks who were heading the wrong way. Plus, he only man I ever called with regularity on Father’s Day. 2013 was a doozy for me. It’s gotten easier since, but I often ask myself in times of uncertainty, what would Jack do? Well, a lot of those answers are now in this book.
My hometown of San José, California is accused of only having two or three seasons, warm and less warm. Fine by me as long as snow doesn’t begin to acclimate to warmth. Other than looking at it for its inherent beauty, I despise being in the snow. I’ve heard folks attempt to mention the one time they saw snowfall in San José, but I stop them midst their woeful tales of blasphemy and wash my hands of our friendship. I’ve said it before: San José does actually have four seasons: light summer, summer, autumn and extreme autumn.
Summer has always been the time of the year when I abandon blankets, pants, long sleeves, safety and (especially) organization. Let me be honest with you: I have a thin relationship with pants to begin with. I want to wear shorts all year long. I can get away with it for about 10 1/2 out of 12 months. I am wearing shorts now. I will wear them tomorrow as well. Only, like many of you, I will be indoors for a large part of the day. But I have an even thinner relationship with organization.
When it is not summer, I love to do the thing that I call organizing: the act of stacking up the detritus of my entire life—over two or three years worth—into about three to five piles/boxes/baskets while fantasizing every now and then about what it might be like to, someday, schedule a time to attack the stacks. I have learned over the last few years that all I do is restack everything into temporarily smaller, neater piles. Small piles under my control always grow.
Ugh. I admit, I am a hoarder.
Let me clarify. I am a clean person. I shower once or twice a day. I take out the garbage frequently. I am adept at recycling. I clean out Xena’s litter box regularly. I am not super keen on yard work, but what one can see of my front yard from the street is neighborly. I collect tiny silverware I rarely use, but I never leave dirty dishes anywhere but the kitchen sink. Hoarding must fall on a spectrum. I am a hoarder in the sense that I can’t get rid of a good jar or box or magazine. I will find a use for it someday, or I will finally give a stack of it away. I have hard drives full of files I don’t need. As a self-taught designer of promotional flyers, posters and marketing images, I have nearly every file I’ve ever made that advertises past shows. Part of me wants to post them online as a gallery, but that’s unlikely to happen any time soon. I have a filing cabinet with some semblance of order to the folders of files, but I don’t know why I still have many of them. I have documents online and social media accounts for things I’ve only used once. To me, a hoarder is someone preparing forthe future, armed only with troves of items in triplicate that are certainly useless in the now—even beyond useless—an actual hindrance to the path of time used wisely. My jars and my flyers are in my way. I now feel as though my hoarding of papers and ephemera and sentimental items is an attempt at creating a future: If I have these things to deal with, but no time today to do the dealing, then a tomorrow must exist in order for the clutter to be dealt with. I put most of my life in The Wayside, maybe so that I can tend to the present?
I never have any desire to organize any aspect of my life in the dead of summer. The Urge to burrow, to sort papers and move furniture and donate clothes and books usually hits me like a tornado in the late fall and again in the early spring. Before Friday, 13 March 2020, I was performing, producing events, organizing workshops and hosting shows. I ran around downtown, hobnobbing, planning, detailing, and setting up and attending meeting after meeting with venues and performers alike. Because of my gluttonous schedule, I rarely had time to truly organize my life and the items in it with any real commitment. But here we are coming down the other side of July Mountain and I am in the midst of some of the most serious organizing I’ve ever attempted. According to my now deleted 2020 schedule, by now I should have already hosted five outdoor festivals, dozens of poetry events, four Go Go Gone Shows—all while performing at countless live readings and open mics. Right now, instead of writing this, I should have spent the last four weeks teaching poetry to kids at the School of Arts & Culture Summer Camp. I miss those events and I miss my students.
Admittedly, I also feel fine about not participating in any of them. I didn’t feel fine about it initially, but then I had to ease into something akin to wearing pants in the summer. Now I wake up to a very light schedule and I cuddle with Xena almost as long as she wants.
The moody, but cuddly, Xena: Worrier Princess.
I lay all of this out to say that up until June, I kept thinking about the future. How would I reconnect my pre-pandemic identity and my life actions to a mystery point in the future?—a date I cannot possibly know. For the first month, my brain urged me to keep my life on hold until that mystery date so that I may restart all of those activities and be Mighty Mike McGee again. Someday, we will all be able to select and delete The Quarantine start date, the end date and everything in between them! Right? But there is no date on the horizon. There is no box on a 2020 calendar that I can look forward to until there is a Covid vaccine. I have come to terms with the notion that I need to self-isolate through 2020—and likely until the day a medical professional is injecting a vaccine into my body. Until then, no shows, no gatherings, and no socializing in the ways I was accustomed. What to do? Logically, dig into it. I shall see it for the personal gift of time that it is and I will organize and I will create. Utilize this time to reconsider every aspect of my life and smash my own preconceived notions of identity, dismantle my own patriarchy, double-check my sense of self, reinforce my wavering sense of duty, investigate and unlearn my misogyny, my racism, my prejudices, and any other burdens I put upon my communities. Slow the fuck down. Stop and smell the anything and the everything.
This succulent has no scent, but you get the picture (literally and figuratively!)
Luckily, I write for a local weekly arts paper and it pays the rent and bills for now, plus I get food stamps to cover my groceries. I feel incredibly lucky and all I need is to do is hold on like this for now.
Like many, I’ve had so much time to think and reflect on everything, internally and externally, while seeking the grand connection between me and the world. Because honestly, who I thought I was prior to 13 March is not who I think I’m going to be come 2021. The past few months have really brought a number of very powerful feelings and ideas to my attention. I have spent so much time pushing my name out into the world. The last 20 years have been constant self-promotion. It is a symptom of the desire for fame and my desire for it has faded significantly over the the last year.
I claim to be someone who hosts shows and I can prove that with loads of evidence. I also claim to be someone who writes things, but up until recently, my most consistent period of writing was 1995 through 2003. I was constantly writing while working the graveyard shift at Kinko’s, and while socializing, which included attending open mics and poetry slams. I turned some of that writing into 11 years of touring and performing. In 2014, I came home to San José and began producing variety shows and poetry events, partially out of my need to stay put. Over the last six years, I’ve hosted so many shows and promoted my events so much that I was recognized on a regular basis. Up until March, I wrote the occasional poem, but only if I had a deadline to write it in. I thrive on the pressure; I am forced to take risks when I am running out of time. Now I write because it’s urging me to let it out. Much like it did in 2001 when I was poor, struggling and so curious about me and the world and how the two fit into each other. I have come full circle, but this current version of myself knows a bit more—I have been heart-broken a few times, in love several times, and I’ve seen a few lifetimes worth of human interaction.
I now live an alarmless life. Writing is one of the few aspects of self-isolation that has made me feel alive. I find myself excited to create again. After treating this website like a glorified business card, I am now adding to it more and more. Mostly poems and thoughts, but the frequent output is very welcome. I have put off so much of what I am passionate about, relegating the things that won’t immediately pay the bills to I just don’t have the time for it now. I now have a glut of time to dedicate to causes and creativity (and I am halfway through the sitcom Cheers.)
It feels strange to say that the actions I am taking now are things I want to do considering I, like many of us, have no real choice in the matter. In order to feel safe living in a city, I must spend most of my day at home. I am a homebody again, like in my mid-twenties when I spent so much of my time in my bedroom writing and thinking about everything. This also means I am now spending most of my day in The Wayside. It is a real place now and it is bursting at the seams with the detritus of my entire life. It is actually, and probably subconsciously, my way of saying, I can’t deal with the past today, but maybe future me will. Saying it deserves my attention now is saying I need to pay attention to who I was and truly organize this time if I am going to have a future. This world is a puzzle and I cannot be hindered by jpegs, jars and boxes if I’m going to help figure it out.
“The times are urgent: let’s slow down.”—Bayo Akomolafe
To write about this day
is asinine
to write about this week
is terrifying
to write a poem about this month
is such a bad idea
Poetry is to regale
to relive
to reboot
What the hell
is this day?
Who am I to write it?
All regality is lost
along with touch
but at least there
is punctuation
Today, I dance knowing someone somewhere dances with me Us, cutting two different rugs that would look great together if given the chance to sync
This morning in the shower and the garden I sang off-key, but somehow it was in harmless harmony with someone somewhere else
This afternoon I wept as I did the dishes a tear disappeared into the soapy water but I know it will go to meet others it will add to the upright rivers and oceans weeping with me into their own dirty dishes and dirty laundry so much to clean so much time to do it
Tonight, I write this poem-song-biography by candlelight a group effort of somehow from a widespread orchestra of me and you and someone, everyone somewhere else
Mighty Mike McGee's Web Presents 