The Blank Exchange // Yes-Yes's Close Encounter // Fun and Death

This blog will detail our closest brush with death. Many people have come close to death, but, out of all eight of us, none of us could think of an experience more dangerous and frightening than the one we endured in the middle of the night in Yosemite National Park. 

After San Francisco, we intended on spending the day at Yosemite, where Symptom hoped to relive the ethereal thrill of jumping from a bridge into clear, green water in front of perhaps the most intimidating natural rock formation in the country. This sounded like an important experience to have, so we all agreed that Yosemite was a priority. The show that night was revealed to be located at a strip club with many other bands. Feeling like a burden to those who had booked this show, we decided to drop the show and instead release our tension into a day-long exploration of Yosemite.

The drive was longer than expected. It was relatively free of interesting scenery, so we were eager to enter the isolated, untouched earth of the park. We stopped at a gas station to refuel both our vessel and our biological structures. I was waiting in line with a family of strangers when a leather-skinned, white-mustachioed cowboy angrily and slowly emerged from the doorway of the station. He accused a member of the family of stealing ice cream, or, in other words, taking ice cream without paying for it. The family did not respond. They either did not hear him, comprehend English, or were too scared or shocked to respond. The cowboy and the family stared each other down for a solid five minutes. The tension was high. I watched from a dangerously close distance. I intended to study both parties – the cowboy and the family – in order to develop a hypothesis concerning their intentions for not speaking to each other, but they both looked so blank, empty, dry, and tired, that I, for one of the rare times in my life, was at a complete loss as to why these humans were behaving in this manner. There were no verbal arguments, no physical conflicts, and no police interventions. I would have come to the family’s defense, or even the cowboy’s, if I knew who was right and which was wrong, but it was as if they were all frozen in their own skins, incapable of expressing verbal thought or even slight emotion in their face. It was a phenomenon I can only refer to as “the blank exchange.” They were most certainly human – the cowboy had even spoken initially, their stomachs were moving up and down as to indicate their abilities to breathe properly, and their eyes blinked as often as anyone, but they lacked meaning, emotion, and intention. I reentered Vanzig and advised Symptom to advise Timebomb, who was browsing the candy isle in the gas station, to chalk his hands as to limit their stickiness inside the store.

There is little to say about Yosemite other than it was as vast in scope as Uncle Shoegaze had said: “I don’t want to talk it up too much, but it’s hard not to; it really is a humbling experience.” Symptom was the first to leap from the aforementioned bridge of his dreams, and it was much like watching the baptism of a lifelong Christian into an even more vast, spiritual existence free from petty human confinements like story, parable, and beliefs, like a person leaving the “I” and entering the metaphysical “all.” He emerged from the green depths a new entity with a refreshed interest in everything. His head, tearing against the river’s surface, seemed to grow from a canyon, for the unsizable cliff before us was reflected as clearly by the water as a high definition digital photograph developed by the finest of 23^rd century image-capturing technology. Connor’s mundane human head juxtaposed against the clarity of the cliff was an image too real and too serene to replicate on even the most expensive photo-editing software. Symptom had transcended software and entered a reality beyond reality as a young, eager agent of the unreal.

If Symptom’s dive was not a transcendent enough exchange between man and nature, then Yes-Yes’ descension into the crystalline liquid of Yosemite National Park was an actual paradigm shift of one physical and spiritual dimension to another. The sight of his sun-freckled, imposing figure glide into that clear, shallow depth would be treason against all for which he so silently works; while it remains largely unspoken, Yes-Yes’s primary purpose is to lead us to our most excellent functioning capabilities. I have theorized that this will arise in the form of a Utopia, one that will be eventually and gloriously reached by human society, one utterly under his firm but forgivably unstable control. The river welcomed him. He made himself at home in its icy embrace. He reemerged from the surface with slick blond hair and one big breath, reconnecting himself with our crude earthly dimension. He did not speak for 12 hours afterwards. It was as if the sea had spoken to him, or someone or something had spoken to him in the sea, and he required an enormous time to ponder accordingly. I did not enter the  water for a variety of reasons: 1) I did not wish to convey an attempt to imitate Yes-Yes’ majesty 2) More of an intellectual type, I have a natural and nurtured aversion to full submergence in any liquid, and 3) My purpose at this moment in time was to document, not to potentially alter history.

It was only fitting that after experiencing Heaven we traveled the thin, dark road to Hell. Desiring to leave Yosemite before the sun fell behind the mountain, we entered the following show’s address into our simple human technological device known as a GPS and obeyed its directions like blind slaves. Before we knew it, the mapping device had led us to a fork in the road: both dirt roads, but one was indicated as the proper route on the GPS. We chose this one, despite multiple signs saying “DANGER” and “NO GPS.” The signs looked old, so we decided not to trust them. We entered the road, finding it to be a dark, thin path with just enough room for an inch of road on either side of our van. Creeping trees leaned around us, transforming the road into a tight tunnel of sorts. It wasn’t until we noticed the enormous cliff to our left that we realized we were likely on the literal road to Hell. Panic ensued: Symptom experienced tunnel vision, our heart rates generally increased, our voices quivered, and our sweat glands overcompensated for the stress. Consequently, our van was plagued with the actual scent of terror.

The GPS knew the path well, but there was no pavement, no traffic cone, no flare, no reflector, not a single sign of human civilization. We were edging the side of an enormous mountain. It is nearly impossible to convey the true danger of this situation, but we were so close to the edge of a deep drop-off that the only view to the left of our van was an enormous wall of stars. No sign of Yosemite’s vast wilderness or even rocky pile-ups were visible at this altitude. As panic increased, I continued to guide our vessel with a steady hand, not for lack of fear, but because I was the only one in the van with any sense of control; everyone else had no choice but to trust in my driving. The path was to continue for five miles according to the GPS, but we could only spare a measly 10 miles per hour; any faster would lead to our certain demise. One mile of travel down this sliver of hell had taken us almost one hour. At this point, Yes-Yes made a desperate call for help by calling Yosemite’s emergency hotline (his power was likely weakened during his transdimensional encounter in the river, resulting in limited control over the current situation). They informed us that Yosemite’s guests are advised to never use GPS devices within the park, for they lead visitors to forbidden and unused roads, more often suited for loggers and off-road ATV adventurers; these roads lead to a dead-end at the bottom of the mountain. We were neither; we were simply a gaggle of scared boys. The park ranger advised us to turn around at our earliest convenience and find our way back to the main road.

Turning the van around on a narrow mountain road is a near impossible task, but, due to my heightened dexterity, I was able to accurately calculate the process and successfully returned us back toward the main road. This time we were headed uphill, and the nature of the road was that it slanted toward the mountain at 45 degrees, as if we were almost certainly going to teeter into the mountain’s rocky side. Some portions of the road involved one road not even touching the surface. Some of the rocks on the road were so large that a tire blow-out could happen at almost any time. It did not happen. Instead, our upward trek proved mildly safer, as we were now familiar with this path.

However, this loose knowledge did not prevent the loss of one of our most valuable artifacts: Qrunque Witch (pronounced “Crunch Witch”). Qrunque Witch was an eerie figurine I had purchased at a Goodwill in Milwaukee. Her role was to be placed in the hands of whoever fell asleep in the van. She watched us at all times. Unfortunately, she rattled violently in the dashboard of the van, to the extreme anger of Airick. In a blind combination of stress and rage, he grasped Qrunque Witch’s small figure, unrolled the window, and, ignoring my pleas and screamed, launched her from the side of the mountain. Devastation struck my heart like a Lilliputian’s arrow, but I decided to mourn later. I was responsible for the safety of an entire gaggle of boys (gaggle = more than 6, but less than a dozen). We escaped to safety, and soon found our way to the comfortable arms of a Denny’s in Merced, CA. Here, we played our own version of “Apples to Apples,” wherein we create the playing cards ourselves. We soon reentered the van, drove a few more hours to another Denny’s, where we slept all night in the van. Timebomb, an adventurous sprite, opted to sleep atop the van. 

The next day was to be one of our most interesting shows to date, for it involved performing within an empty underground swimming pool in Sylmar, California called “Poolside.” I would have called it “Pool Inside.” We were welcomed with kind words, glasses of water, and opportunities to shower. (I am shy, so I did not take our host’s offer to let me shower, instead preferring to do it next time we went to a motel, which did not happen again for the rest of our tour. I realized the next morning that I hadn’t showered in a week, and, despite my positive scent, my body seemed to be engulfed in a thin film of unescapable filth.) There is little to say about our show at Poolside other than the guests’ refusal to engage us within the pool. Instead, the many party guests opted to sit in lawn chairs around the top of the pool, while we performed in the hole like enslaved gladiators. This show was packed and diverse: we saw a metal band who announced each song in a spooky voice but demonstrated extreme kindness otherwise, a joke-punk band with ska elements, a deathcore band, and a few Title Fight bands, for lack of a better genre descriptor (our host’s band was Liberty, which was described as “Title Fight with breakdowns”; they also covered a song by Stick to Your Guns). We slept in the van again that night.

We spent much of the next day exploring the internet at Panera Bread and Fordundo Beach (that isn’t the name of an actual beach) before playing a garage in Riverside, California with mycatsteve, Desperate Living, and Zissou, all of which demonstrated competent and entertaining musicianship and creative songwriting skills. I encountered a true Setbacks fan named Kyle, who had tweeted at me earlier in the day, and, that night, asked me to sing him the Setbacks song “Losing Balance.” I chose to instead tell him that I will send him a recording of me singing that very song acapella at a later date. I have yet to do so. Otherwise, the crowd was receptive to Cruelster; they enjoyed engaging Yes-Yes, who is generally harmless, and a seven-person dog pile, to our misfortune, occurred during “Inchworm.” Some also sang along for our cover, which was more refined than it had been in previous nights. We slept at the Dial that night (a venue near Riverside) and enjoyed drifting to sleep as pop-punkers in the other room blared their harmful music from the other room. 

The next day’s drive began our journey to Mesa, Arizona, a hot, dry place of dust and dander, during which we spoke, listened to music, and read things. This was our second show with Adventures, who were kind enough to add us to three of their shows. Cruelster was received well here, and more tapes were sold. A dust storm blew in from an unknown direction, and, after the show, we were advised to load our equipment quickly as to avoid a dramatic climax that would almost directly resemble the wall of sand in “The Mummy 2,” a film I had never seen and never will see. We obliged, and slept and showered at the apartment of a kind young woman by the name of Stumpy. She allowed me to connect to her Wifi network, and we all spent some time charging our phones, configuring our technological devices, and discussing the secrets of Symptom’s past (his true name is James). I discovered, with the help of her full body mirror, that my body, like Yes-Yes’s, was of an overwhelmingly pink hue, likely due to our quick adventure at Rodundo Beach.

We played at the Gas Works in Albequerque, New Mexico last night, which was the best-sounding place we’d played our whole tour thus far, but the crowd was not amused by Cruelster. Adventures, Ages, and Drifter then played, and the show ended abruptly. We visited the house where “Breaking Bad” is filmed, and there was a large “NO TRESPASSING” sign. Yes-Yes and Airick took pictures in front of the house, only to watch a woman in the window dial a phone number, possibly the police. We left quickly. I initiated our 13-hour drive to San Antonio, Texas and only lasted 7 hours before Symptom and then Timebomb took my place. We are driving straight to a movie theater, where we will watch movies until it’s time to go to our show. 

UPDATE: We watched "World War Z" and "This is the End." Both were subpar.

If you would like more immediate details about our tour, follow @tiboonda (me) or the hashtag #LIMMIASOM on Twitter. There is only one tour date left, so I don't know what will happen after that.