William McGirt - Sun Kil Moon, Mark Kozelek

William McGirt

William McGirt

William McGirt

William McGirt

Caroline and I walked into town in back today

On the way I asked her how she’d feel about a road trip to Nevada City,

it’d been years since I had been there

I thought I might provoke a negative reaction, she does all the driving and

we’ve been taking a lot of trips to Walmart and places like that

But she was up for it

Being around the house on a spring day is nice, but it’s more or less been the

same routine every day

Gardening, cooking, weeding, watching movies, which is wonderful

Especially to share the time with somebody that you love, but it’s nice to get

away once in a while

After 28 years of touring, having the year of 2020 off has found me restless

I’m used to crossing the country a few times a year and crossing the ocean

sometimes 3 or 4 times a year

I’ve made peace with this unexpected time off, I’m very much not alone

But I gotta admit, my breathing has been off since mid-March, I get a little

bit panicky at night

Some people have said, «Put your music on Bandcamp, you’re gonna be okay.»

I know that I’ll be okay, but I feel like a shark that’s been swimming through

the ocean for 28 years that’s been yanked out

Thrown onto the shore and told, «Don't worry, you’ll be good, just flip around

in the sand for a while

Then we’ll throw you back in the ocean in a couple years and you’ll be swimming

around again, good as new.»

Some others said, «There's a lot of streaming going on right now.»

Streaming.

When I think of the word 'streaming', I think of exactly that,

streams

Those thin-flowing, overlooked trails of water that dry up in the summer

Those things you see underneath footbridges, that you look down at for a second

and see mosquitoes swarming

And maybe a few rusty beer cans laying next to some mossy rocks,

a few minnows swimming around

You can tell your girlfriend is thinking, «Why are you looking at this stream?

«, and then you keep walking

The reason I always stop to look at streams is because I used to go to one as a

kid to catch crayfish

I got nice memories of those times

The way you crayfish is by putting a paper cup just behind the crayfish with

your left hand

And stick your index finger from your right hand just in front of it

You’d think the crayfish would nip at your finger, but it actually jumps

backwards into the paper cup

And that’s how you’d scoop them up out of the stream

I’d bring them back to my house and put them in an aquarium full of water

And one day my mom got really mad at me because a few of them had gotten out

and died and made the basement stink

My mom made me go back to the stream and let the rest of them go

Later in life I was looking for real estate and the real estate agent told me, «Never buy a house that’s near a stream.»

I said, «What's wrong with streams?»

She said, «They attract rats.»

So yeah, Bandcamp makes me think of camping, which is a fun thing to do until I

could afford hotels

And streaming now makes me think of, because of that real estate agent, rats

But all this is gonna have to do for the time being

Oh my God I want to sing to a crowd

To fist bump everyone in the front row

To hear myself holding a long falsetto note

Reverberating around the room and putting everybody into a spell,

to hear their applause, to hear them laugh at my jokes

To share my words with that little demographic of the world

Whom I love, and I know that they love me back

When the stars align, I know that the purpose on the Earth is right there in

that time

I was recently asked to sing I Left My Heart in San Francisco

For something Will O’Brien related, and I said no

Because I didn’t leave my heart in San Francisco, I left my heart all over the

fuckin' place

Going back and forth between San Francisco and a mountain town has been wearing

thin

Yeah, I love working in the garden and taking walks and seeing the roses and

the redwood trees and the blue morning glories that are short-lived in the

spring

My God my soul needs something more, out here in the mountains I need

destinations besides graveyards and Home Depot, the one place in town that

makes decent iced tea

And in San Francisco I need a little more than walks along the cement and

watching young people whizzing by on their bikes in their jogging clothes,

making me feel like a stalling car about to break down on the side of a road

And some of my favorite places are boarded up with plywood, goddamn,

Pancho’s on Polk Street is closed, it’s empty, that was Nathan’s favorite

place, he ate there two times a day

And American Cleaners is closed, Jenny did my dry-cleaning for 32 years,

saying goodbye to her hurt so much, what a blow to my stomach

Walking away from the corner of Washington High, it hurt so much,

saying goodbye to her

So we got on the 49 and headed to Nevada City, I’ve been on that road so many

times but I was really opening my eyes this time, looking for a story

I saw a sign that said something about equestrian and asked Caroline, «What does equestrian mean?», she said it had something to do with horses

There were beautiful yellow forsythias along the winding road and I saw a lot

of the usual sights: cows, turkeys and canadian geese

And signs for Coleman, Marshall, Lone Star Road, and of course the American

River was flowing to the East

There were the usual signs for river access but most of them had roadblocks so

nobody could park their cars

We stopped in Auburn and the place we liked to eat there was closed

We went to get iced tea and they made me use my card

My cash is no good in San Francisco, and even in downtown Auburn, to my cash,

they said no

By the time we got to Grass Valley we were hungry, so we parked the car

downtown and I pointed out the Holbrooke hotel

Like many hotels now it was under renovation, I told Caroline how it was at

that hotel where I finished unfinished songs for the Sun Kil Moon album April

And how I spent at least a week held up there

She asked me, «Where did you eat around here?», and I told her I couldn’t

remember

I told her I was so busy trying to finish unfinished songs that I didn’t have

much of a memory of what else I did in Grass Valley

Besides sit in the bed, and over third and fourth verses of six-month-old songs,

I was agonizing

And so we found this restaurant that had the word 'conscious' in it to order

take-out, there wasn’t much else open

On the menu, they had the word 'hummus' up there three times, so I told the kid

behind the counter I’d like a plate of hummus with pita bread

He said, «Well, the hummus comes in a bowl, you can have a choice of beef,

chicken, chickpeas…"or some other shit, I don’t remember what it was, «…

on top of the hummus.»

I said, «I'll pay whatever, but I don’t want the hummus covered in anything.»

He said, «But it comes in a bowl.»

I said, «Look, I’ll pay whatever, but man, I just want the hummus,

I like my hummus to just be hummus.»

He looked really confused

The competent person behind him, the only other person working there,

clearly looked like she knew what was going on in the place

But he was too busy being confused to ask her anything

Caroline made the mistake of telling him, «I'll have the exact same thing that

he’s having»

The guy started pecking away at the digital cash register for several minutes,

his index finger was pecking all over the place like a little kid sitting down

at the piano for the first time in their life

I gave Caroline 50 dollars and said, «I'll be outside when this thing is over

And what’s with fucking bowls?

When did the world decide it was a good

marketing plan to put everything in a fucking bowl?

When I was a kid, the only thing you put in a bowl was cereal.

What happened to

hummus plates?»

She said, «Relax, I know, I’ll meet you outside.»

So I go sit down on a bench and she brings me the food, and both bowls of

hummus are covered in greasy fucking chicken

I said, «Goddamnit, that dumb motherfucker, there were only 2 people working in

there, why didn’t he talk to the smart looking one when he was doing the

cooking?

The only thing that kid was conscious of was the fucking cash register!

Why do you have to push that many fucking buttons for hummus and pita bread?

What’s this world coming to when a kid can’t trust a human being over a machine?

Goddamnit!»

So I’m eating, I’m pushing the chicken out of the way with my plastic fork and

hummus is spilling all over my shirt and pants, I said

«Goddamnit!

I’m so tired of eating on benches outside and spilling food all

over my goddamn shirts!»

From there we went to Nevada City

When we got to Nevada City we drove along Broad Street and I pointed at the

National Hotel

The hotel where I once spent a night under some thin blankets on a cold winter

night was also under renovation

We drove around the town and I showed her a house I thought about buying at one

time

The tiniest house in the east side of Broad, near downtown, but it had renters

living in it

If I bought it, I’d have to pay off the renters to move out

And I wouldn’t feel right about doing something like that, I didn’t want to get

on the wrong foot in a town that has a bunch of guys that look like Charles

Manson living in it

When I say Charles Manson, I don’t mean it in a derogatory way, I just mean

that seems to be the look that they’re going for

That’s right, like the other times I visited Nevada City, every guy I saw

looked like Charles Manson

Every girl looked like they’d put a spell on you if you broke up with them

All the houses in the downtown area looked like they were built in the

mid-to-late 1800s, kept up nicely

On this spring day, all the trees were in full bloom with an array of mostly

pink and white flowers

I’ve been to a lot of places, Nevada City is one of the most charming little

towns I’ve ever seen

It was nice to imagine the town during the gold rush before pickup trucks were

invented

Before it became one of the most progressive mountain towns in the Sierras

I saw a payphone in front of a market, took a few photos and said, «Everything in this town is closed and hardly anybody is out

Let’s get out of here."She said, «Okay, yeah, I’m tired.»

Just after we left town we saw a sign for a campground and said, «Let's pull in there.»

Now that I’ve signed up to Bandcamp I want to see what a campground looks like

again

I’ve not been to a campground since the 1990s, and I remember they’d have

payphones with the restrooms

The restrooms were always made of these huge concrete bricks

We pulled in and all of the entrances were gated up but the exit wasn’t

I could see a concrete restroom that might have had a payphone beside it,

if I could just get a better look

Caroline parked in the parking lot, we got out of the car and we were walking

towards the exit to enter

When a car came out of the campground at full speed and stopped us as we were

about to enter through the exit

The driver asked, «Can I help you?»

I said, «Yeah, we’re looking for a payphone.»

She said, «Try the gas station across the way, over there.»

I said, «Okay.»

We got in the car and Caroline said, «That woman was mean.»

I said, «Nah, she’s just doing her job, they probably hired her to patrol the

place so the Manson family looking people don’t take over the campground.»

She said, «No, I don’t think that’s it.

I think they’re doing some kind of

secret experiments back there or something.»

I asked what kind of experiments she was talking about, she said, «I don’t know.

Secret experiments on animals or something.»

On our way back we pulled into a gas station somewhere

There was an old man standing there with a big smile, eyes as big as Paul

Newman’s

He was sunburnt and dry as an old desert lizard, I got out of the passenger

seat and asked him what town we were in

He said, «Auburn.»

I said, «Auburn?

I don’t know this part of Auburn.»

I asked him where he lived and he said in a ragged dehydrated voice like

Papillon by the time he got to Devil’s Island

«Oh, I’m homeless, but I live here, yeah.»

I asked him how he was doing and he said, «I don’t know.

I don’t know what’s

going on.

I don’t know what’s happening

I don’t know where my right side is.

I think I just woke up.

I don’t know where

my right side is.»

He was standing upright but he did seem off-balance somehow, he was kind of

falling forward

I said, «Yeah, the world’s turned upside down right now and things are really

fucked up.»

He said, «I don’t know about that.

All I know is that my hands are dirty and my

arms are dirty

And sometimes I’m holding something and it drops and hits my feet and it

explodes up into my face like .»

And he made an explosion sound like that,

And then he said the same thing again, «My hands and arms are so dry and dirty,

and I’m thirsty.»

I said, «You're what?»

He said, «I'm thirsty.»

I said, «What do you want to drink?»

He said, «Oh, anything.

A soda, some water, anything.»

I got two bottles of water and gave him the blue one

My God, that guy had the bluest eyes, a Cool Hand Luke blue

Before I left, I asked him what his name is

He said, «William.

William McGirt.»

Caroline and I left and she asked what the guy said

I told her and then I asked her, «What do you think happens to a guy like that?

I mean, how is a guy who looks like Steve McQueen and has a movie-star name

like William McGirt end up standing at the side of a gas station like that?»

Caroline said, «It could be anything.

Mental illness maybe.»

I told her that he could have asked me to buy him anything and I would’ve

bought it, but all he said was a soda or some water

He didn’t ask for a bottle of whiskey or a case of beer, that guy was

interesting

We drove along the 49 past all the forsythias again and now the American River

was to our west

I said to Caroline, «I'm so stuffed from all that thick pita bread.

I think I’m gonna skip dinner tonight.»

She said, «Yeah, I’ll probably snack on something, I don’t feel like cooking

tonight.»

Just as we were passing Coloma, she said, «What is it about this land that

caused a bunch of gold to be under it?»

I looked to my right and gazed out the window for about twenty seconds looking

at a market, a gas station, and some little mini-mall and some trees

Then looked straight ahead and said, «I don’t know.»

William McGirt

William McGirt

William McGirt

William McGirt