Bend, OR – “Kintsugi” – Timber’s Tavern South – June 24, 2000

We climbed up to 3,000 feet on our way to Bend, Oregon. With each winding turn, the chill in my bones worsened, and the pressure in my head made it feel ready to burst. We had to pull over frequently to allow my aching skull to repressurize which it did against the breathtaking backdrop of Hood Mountain. The towering trees bowed along the road, creating a canopy that danced with threads of golden light, weaving intricate batik-like patterns on the pavement below. I gripped the wheel until my vision blurred with pain, then surrendered the driver’s seat to Kyle.

When we finally rolled into Bend, my eyes felt like they might pop out of my head. The world around me was muffled as if wrapped in cotton. During sound check, doubt gnawed at me. “Do I sound terrible, Deluch–?” I shouted past the mic, straining against the congestion in my voice.
“Sal, you are raspy, I won’t sugarcoat it,” came his honest reply, “but you still sound good.” I swallowed an antihistamine at 6 PM that left me dizzy and groggy, forcing me to retreat to the sweltering van until showtime. I felt broken.

The performance was a grueling test of willpower. The audience looked self-conscious under harsh lights that apparently did not dim. Their visibility unintentionally forced them to become part of the show and they looked around at each other, unsure of their role. In my humble opinion, an audience is meant to be shrouded in darkness. It’s their paid privilege to stare from darkness, like a peeping tom, up to a fully lit stage where people perform at their most vulnerable. But though they shifted in their seats and looked unsure of themselves, at the end of our set they called for an encore, and though I felt sick and dazed, their enthusiasm cut through my fog.

Jack Ingram took the stage at ten past ten—a honky tonk troubadour from Tennessee, with charm, good looks, and talent that made for a lethal combination. His voice, a blend of honey and rust, poured through the mic, wrapping the room in soulful melodies. I wished I could linger, but the call of bed—and my aching body—beckoned us back to Portland, a three-hour trek through the night.

The antihistamine, taken in desperation, had finally dragged me into a zombie-like stupor—neither awake nor drowsy. Sleep was just out of reach. As oncoming cars flooded the cabin with intermittent headlights, I traded tales of past injuries with Kyle and Chris. There’s a tradition of mending ancient broken ceramics with gold in Japan. The practice is called Kintsugi and the gold that repairs the cracks renders a new piece that is more exquisite than it was before the break. In the predawn darkness of the van, laughter became the salve, the gold, for our old wounds. Our loving compassion for each other’s cracks bound us together into the perfectly flawed band that we’ve become.