Phonogram

I’ve lived out here in the Sunset for over ten years. When you come to know the neighborhood and start to learn its fog shrouded mysteries, it’s really no surprise how easily magic can happen.

But I didn’t know that back then.

Through media and literature, San Francisco had called out to me, a young man living on the outskirts of Glasgow, Scotland. It began in 1989, when a friend's older brother gave the fifteen-year-old-me a copy of The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. I was enchanted with stories of Ken Kesey and The Merry Pranksters, painted and mystical, wired for sound in La Honda. Then there was the writings of Kerouac, specifically The Dharma Bums, with its dexedrine fueled storytelling and midnight road trips; articles in The Face and iD about the burgeoning SF House music and club scene, hanging out on a sunday morning at The End-Up; the crazy tech weird of R. U. Sirius and Mondo 2000. Finally in the spring of 1994, after I swallowed the six Tales Of The City books, swiftly followed by the Channel4 television adaption, I walked, bewitched, into the nearest travel agent and booked myself a flight, my first visit to the City By The Bay. I came back several times over the next few years, staying for extended periods of time, making friends, making art, making magical memories.

Alas, the dot-crash happened, jobs and my visa disappeared, and I had no choice but to leave, my SF life cut too short.

I moved to London in the winter of 2001, a great city in itself, and I fully immersed myself in the music and art scenes, enjoying all it had to offer. I had a good life, a decent job, and a great circle of friends. But I yearned. I couldn't settle. No matter how well things were, I would still find myself dreaming of idyllic bike rides over cascading hills, chimeric shops in the limbic space between North Beach and Chinatown near where Animal Chin went underground. I could picture how the sunlight would make everything shimmer, how the color of the sky changed at dusk, those beautiful reds, pinks and purples. I remembered hitchhiking through Big Sur, gazing out over the vast Pacific ocean.

*Sigh* Best just to move on, accept where I was, no point in looking back or holding regrets. The odds of being able to go back were stacked against me, living 5,351 miles away. And having focused on my record label for most of that time in London meant I was no longer current in the kind of in-demand work that could get me a visa.

But... but.

But Pop music. And Magic.

There was a comic out of the UK back in the ‘00s called Phonogram by Keiron Gillen and Jamie McKelvie. The story was about a group of DJs who used the power of Pop music to cast spells. There was a backup story in one of the issues, in which the lead character, a Phonomancer, explained to a friend how it worked. I paraphrase, "You know that feeling when you're listening to a song and it gives you chills, it makes you feel like you could do anything? That's the key - that energy is Magic. You can channel it and use it".

I mean, of course, Pop Magic is possible. Isn't it? It's all about belief - believe the hype, at least believe your own hype. Magic and Pop - symbolism, the mysticism of romance, rock-n-roll, soda-pop and a late night kiss.

Miles Kurosky knew it.

Miles Kurosky lived in San Francisco and had a band named Beulah. I loved Beulah - still do. Presumably the band is named after Beulah Street, just off Stanyon. I listened to the four Beluah albums on repeat for the whole summer of 2004, perambulating the streets and canals of London's East End, deliberately lost, loving and exploring its psycho-geographic past, yet still dreaming of California.

An idea struck me in early 2010. On Beulah's third album, The Coast Is Never Clear, there is a track by the name of “Gene Autry." The chorus goes like this:



When I get to California,

Gonna write my name in the sand.

I'm gonna lay this body down

and watch the waves roll in.

Well, easy - there's my plan. I use this song in a magical ritual. I fly to California, write my name in the sand while listening to this track, and boom, my spell should be in effect, which would surely provide a path for me to return.

So that's pretty much what I did. I made the arrangements, took a flight, landed, took BART to 16th, walked up 16th, swung right on Guerrero, across Market to Haight, and finally to Fillmore and my hotel. After dropping my luggage, I jumped on the 7 and sat there, head against the window, my mind on fire as it took in the sights and sounds of the City I had been dreaming of for those long years, as the bus lazily weaved its way out to Ocean Beach.

The sun had set by the time I arrived. I climbed up and over the sand dunes at the bottom of Noreiga, my jacket flapping in the wind, the ocean roaring hungrily as it clawed itself up the beach. There wasn't much light when I got away from the orange sodium street lamps, save for the far-off lights of Pacifica. It was a perfect night for Magic. After finding an appropriate stick I could use, I queued up “Gene Autry” on my iPod, took a deep breath, pressed play and got to writing my name in the sand. I wrote it a second time, just for good measure. I yelled into the wind, "I want to live here, I want to come back!".

The wind howled back indifference.

I stayed at the beach a little longer, feeling a little foolish, but at least I had followed through on my plan. I thanked the Ocean and headed back downtown.

But maybe something did happen. A few days later on that trip, I went to visit a friend at his workplace, a music distributor whom I had dealt with for my record label. Just as I was leaving the office I crossed paths with an old boss of mine from the 90s - he was now the engineering manager at this music distributor. We got to catching up. We asked after people we had known together, laughed about some industry stuff, and that was that. I bid my farewell and a few days later I flew back to London, somewhat resigned but content.

When I got back to the UK, however, I kept an eye on job openings with the distributor. A few months later, somewhat incredibly, an opportunity came up under my old manager, which I was totally suitable for. Within a year of that beach “spell” I had successfully made it back to the City, with a visa in hand, and a one bedroom apartment on Taraval and 23rd, less than a mile from where I had scrawled my name on that windy evening.

In retrospect, it doesn't seem so crazy. It just took some intent. One fortuitous event, precariously balanced on another, dependent on a dream inspired by a song and a comic book. I mean, of course it was gonna pan out!

But would it all have happened without that trip to the beach?

Pop music and Magic.

Huh.