“Joie de Vivre”
Mercurial Visions
Joie de Vivre
Directed by C. Eshelman
The abandoned room is shot through with shafts of light from broken windows, casting deep shadows of a solitary bed across the floor and up the wall. The wrought-iron headboard lists to the left. A thin mattress lies across the sagging frame. As the drums and guitar join in, a woman is revealed, lying across the bed, her hand covering her eyes, as if she is afraid of seeing something. A sheer black negligee lies bunched, high upon her thighs, so white they almost don’t look real. It clings to her hip bones and drapes her thin waist. Her full breasts fill the low-cut top, the fabric hardly hiding her nipples. A black velvet choker looks almost like a wound on her pale neck. Her closed lips are bloodred, glistening. Her dark brown hair splays across the dun mattress as if she’d been tossed there.
I dissolve in next to the bed and sing, “Where there’s love / There are ghosts.” I kneel to kiss her as the camera closes in until our wet lips fill the screen.
Her name was Sarah something-or-other. She told me that she enjoyed the kiss—that it lingered after the director said, “Cut.”
She reminded me of Amy so much that when we kissed, I thought I would feel electric again, as if it mattered. There I was, singing of a time with Jennifer, kissing a scantily dressed woman spread across a bed, looking so much like Amy, and—I felt nothing.
It was the same nothing as I feel now, watching my lips press against Sarah’s, remembering when I wrote the song, remembering all the times I’ve sung it, remembering when I could merely think of the lyrics and prickles would rush down my back and arms. Now nada.
Each time I watch the video, I see all three of them—that girl Sarah, Jennifer, and Amy. And I really can’t give a good goddamn.
I loved two of them, was obsessed with both, wrote about them, and sang about them. Shouldn’t I feel a thrill, a titillation, a rise?
A year and a half ago, it was no different.
After shooting her parts, Sarah said she wanted to hang out. But I was angry she didn’t make me feel like anything mattered, and so I said, “I’ll call your agent,” or some asshole thing like that. She looked so pissed. I would’ve smacked me. She should’ve. Perhaps that would have woken me up. Most of the reason I agreed to shoot the video at all was to jolt myself back to feeling that something mattered; I’d been trying to write songs for Second Vision and had been getting nowhere.
In fact, the whole time we were shooting the video, I’d had to force myself to obey the director’s instructions to lip sync more authentically. “You’re singing to your lover. You want her so much it hurts. Remember: she’s the reason you stay alive.”
I can’t remember what it feels like to kiss Amy, Jennifer, or anyone. Love them? Want them? Please mister director sir, there’s nothing left in here.
Still isn’t.
Standing up, I let out a disgusted sound.
How could I think watching myself fake my way through an old song would inspire me? I should know better than to troll the past. It’s so full of broken pieces. Of people leaving, last kisses, and unkept promises. Not exactly motivating.
We’re due in the studio in a couple of weeks, and all I’ve got is a pile of embarrassingly bad lyrics, dead melodies, and, to salvage these, years of regret for inspiration.
Worse: I’m not sure that I care.
“Come on, man,” I say to myself, and then I let out a long breath. You’ve hit slumps before—worse than this one. You’ve always pulled out.
Even in Ohio, when our band Arcade Land floundered, Scott played house husband slash manager, and I lived for 5:00 p.m. When the idea of tying a belt around a chandelier and going out kicking at the smoke-filled air turned itself into lyrics.
Then we risked it all to go the road for the Micherigan tour—including Jennifer. That’s where I finally lost her. We’d been fraying, but after that miserable night at Crazy Mama’s, there was no way back. I lost her completely on the car ride back from Toledo. I was trapped. Scott was relentless, hammering on me about all the problems she caused, swatting away my answers that she helped us stay afloat, battering me with her demand for more control, beating down everything I had to say, ultimately stripping my life down to a simple choice: her or music, sex or performance, her or him, like a diabolic metronome. “What’s it gonna be, boy?”
Over and again he asked, until I stopped responding and turned up the music to drown him out.
Needle in, damage done though.
I started believing he was right, at least in part, and started thinking I could see problems that she created for Mercurial Visions—problems with no other way out than to make the choice: the band or her. I hated him for it. I hated that she’d said what she’d said, done the things she’d done. I hated being trapped in that car. This had been so much harder than with Amy. With Amy I had to move. She refused to. It was an irresistible force meeting an immovable object. The force moved on; the object stayed.
But with Jennifer, I hadn’t moved. The only reason I had to ask her to leave my life was that I’d chosen music over her; there wasn’t room for both. I hadn’t seen this until Scott forced me to.
This killed me inside. I dreaded each minute, every mile that passed, all the way to Chicago. I was able to work up a perfect fury to help me when I got home. But she wasn’t there. I hoped she’d decided to move home on her own. She’d hinted she would. I could avoid having to tell her.
Then she came home. I wasn’t sure I could say it. I hoped she sensed it, and would understand and go.
When I finally forced the words out, I was lost. Do I help? Leave? Sit in a corner and sob?
Watching her pack was emotional leprosy; all I could feel was hurt, as if lesions were breaking out all over me, and then as if bits of my body were falling away: nipples, eyelids, lips, and skin, until I was left a skeleton—inhuman.
When she finally walked out the door, relief swept through me.
That’s the best I’ve felt since. For penance, the angel from “Love Will Tear Us Apart” has judged that I may feel only regret, in one form or other.
I reach for our book of newspaper clippings. It’s grown so much since Columbus. I’m not sure what I’ll find here. Perhaps if I feel remorse intensely enough, the angel will finally take pity and let me go.
I flip through all the pages until I get past the Micherigan tour and to what happened after. I’ve read these articles so many times that I need only glance at the headline to watch my complete decay.
Bucktown Rag, October 23, 1989
[An excerpt from the “Who’s Doing Whom (Behind Whose Back)” column]
The writer insinuates that since Kenny is here all the time, Lynda moved out west, and Jennifer’s gone that we’ve gone queer.
You got it so wrong. Kenny’s no boyfriend. And Jennifer—she had to … I had to …
I sigh.
You never should have met me, Jennifer. You had the chance to get away. I did ask you to leave, remember? The night you massaged my hands. First kissed me.
I flip the page quickly.
Chicago Tribune, January 8, 1990
(excerpt from Style section)
Living in Mercurial Visions
Hate this one. A tour of our loft. It it’s not half what it was supposed to be. We couldn’t afford a contractor so built it out ourselves. And it looks like it: cheap aluminum balustrade, not the wrought iron we’d wanted. Pinewood stairs, not the diamond-plate sheet metal we’d wanted. The only thing that’s actually right is the poster of “Love Will Tear Us Apart.”
Yeah, you, angel. You’re all that got done right here.
I snort in derision.
I didn’t want anyone profiling this place—not the half-assed version we were able to build on our own. But this was a few months before the release of S
econd Vision, and Scott wanted the press. “There’s no such thing as bad publicity,” he kept saying.
Yeah …
The disk didn’t deserve the publicity. Two stars? Isbister was kind. He was right, too, about what was wrong: me. It says so right here.
Chicago Tribune, March 10, 1990
Mark Isbister
Chicago Tribune Electronic Music Critic
Mercurial Visions Second Vision Wax Trax! 10-song CD
Two Stars
Releases are rated on a scale of one to five stars
I move my finger down to the written proof:
It’s easy to pin down what’s wrong. The danceable rhythms are there. So are the guitar and drum hooks. But Jonathan Starks, the heart and voice of the band, seems to have absented himself. The lyrics are standard-issue material—not bad for a lesser talent; a disappointment here.
His singing, his sonorous voice—that’s there. But its guts—the feeling he put into singing—he left behind on the EP.
That is but for one song: “Suffer in Silence.”
This track has heartfelt lyrics and is sung as if he’s right there and means every word. It’s a song that no one would really want to have stuck in his head—a song of being wrong, of making an irreversible mistake, and of wanting to hide from it, to never hear of it again. It’s a song to dance penance to—and the only reason to give this release a try. But prepare yourself; this is the true sound of regret.
I thump the last word with a fingertip.
Yes, angel. Everyone can feel it. Then it only gets worse.
New York Times, May 18, 1990
Mercurial Visions at Irving Place
Review by Ken Johnson
Mercurial Visions, the driving energy on dance floors for over a year, sold out this show, their first in the Big Apple, in a day. This is the Chicago outfit that broke the image of Second City music as merely blues, Al Jourgensen, or ’70s rock ballads. The audience was packed with a mix of club kids in nightclub drag, and hipsters from the LES and Williamsburg. With Brooklyn’s Avatar opening for them, and the audience having been worked up into a fever, the scene was ripe for a legendary show—one that came with bragging rights: “I was there when …”
But front man Jonathan Starks forgot to show up.
The danceable rhythms were there, along with the drums and bass lines—but these are machines, computer sequencers. The human part of the band almost missed the whole show. Mr. Stark’s lackluster vocals and mechanical keyboard playing forced Mr. Marshall’s guitar and Ms. Mauer’s vocals to prop up the whole band for most of the show. Finally even the heroic guitar and sensuous singing succumbed to Stark’s absence until it was like watching a karaoke performance. The audience turned restless; some left.
Only when they played their latest single, “Suffer In Silence,” did Starks finally prove he wasn’t actually a mannequin. This penitent song, a raw admission to a lover of his complete failure, felt so vividly regretful it chilled the audience. They stood in place and watched like sinners in pews; heads and shoulders fell, one after another. In the silence after Starks released the final note, it seemed that everyone knew he had been exposed—that this was their own confession. It was a powerful moment, but it hardly made up for the previous forty-five minutes.
If not for this, there would have been no encore, not even for their über-hit “Joie de Vivre.” Yet as they played it, Starks faded away again, as if he were lip-syncing to a cover of his own song.
I let everyone down.
Chicago Sun-Times, June 2, 1990
[from the “Around the Town” column]
You wonder why I’ve not been in public, guessing that I was sick. No, not HIV. I was sick. Of everything that happened. Come on. How can anyone expect me to show up an a music awards ceremony as an soulless skeleton? I needed to hide and prevent anyone from seeing how far gone I was.
Some writers have speculated I had a monkey on my back; the rare time my name comes up anymore.
Chicago Reader, July 7, 1990
[from the “New Music Beat” column]
Scott Marshall Starts on a New Project
Yeah, Scott. I understood. I was pitiful material to work with. But I needed help, and instead you started a new project, producing Unknown Vices. You ignored Mercurial Visions—our band.
Worse than that—Unknown Vices was a mistake, and you knew it.
Sure, Kenny’s got talent—but not enough to drive a whole band. Not by himself. The rest of Unknown Vices wasn’t there yet. I don’t think they ever will be. They just don’t have the stones. You shouldn’t have forced them onto Wax Trax! Especially not with that single “Should’ve Done It.”
The review’s headline said it all: “Not Sure about Doing It.”
The Reader panned it. The single you guaranteed Wax Trax! was going to be a dance floor hit, like our first EP, flopped. Why did you keep forcing it when you knew it wasn’t all that? You heard it, same as me. Merely trying hard doesn’t make it good. Isn’t that what you’ve said?
And now? Wax Trax! is piling on more pressure. We have to recover from Second Vision and “Should’ve Done It” both, and I’m no better now than I was two years—
“Stop! This isn’t helping,” I say, slamming the scrapbook closed.
Something’s gotta change. Feeling like hell about what happened isn’t cutting it. Not anymore.
I look up at the angel on the poster.
“Haven’t I done my time yet?” I ask it. “What else do you need me to do? I’ve admitted I was wrong. I’ve admitted Jennifer isn’t Amy. No one is. See; I did it again. Now both are gone. Mercurial Visions, all I have left, is on the edge. This single’s my one last chance. But I can’t keep living in this one-dimensional space. Not anymore. Don’t you see that?”
I point to the stack of stillborn songs on my keyboard.
“Give me a hint, won’t you!” I demand.
In disgust, I walk away from the poster, sit down at the keyboard, and grab a sheaf of songs to review. For the fiftieth time.
A matchbook falls from between the pages.
Forgot about that.
Two days back, a girl scribbled her phone number on that matchbook, and I tossed it onto the keyboard when I got home.
This your idea of a hint, angel? The number of a starstruck girl? Struck by a collapsing star.
I scoff.
Number’s probably fake. Or wrong. Or she won’t be home.
But if she does pick up, what? I’m supposed invite her over. Have her wear that same skimpy red dress. And maybe …
“Maybe what, angel? Been so long since I’ve even cared.” I shake my head. “Fine.”
Picking up the phone, I open the matchbook cover: “Marci 555-9651.” The i is dotted with a tiny circle. She’s probably too young to have been in Smart Bar: nineteen, twenty.
I dial her number.
“Hello,” a girl’s voice says.
“This Marci?”
“Yeah,” she says suspiciously.
“It’s Jonathan. Jonathan—”
“Starks?” She squeals and then effuses that she didn’t think I would call, and how excited she is to have met me, and how she had, this morning, listened to Second Vision.
I hate that CD, but I’m supposed to ask her to come over, so I fake appreciation and then ask, “What are you up to right now?”
“Nothing,” she says.
“Perfect. Why don’t you stop by? Hang. I’m working on our next single. I need a break,” I say. “And inspiration.” Did I really say that? Did I have to?
“Okay! Sure!”
“2017 North Ave,” I say. “Just west of Damen.”
“Next to the ‘L,’ right?”
“Yep. Fourth floor.”
“I love your music,” Marci says. “I just broke up. ‘S
uffer In Silence,’ says it all.”
You too, Marci? Coming here to rub it in?
“Do you remember that red dress you wore at Smart Bar when we met?”
“Oh, yeah.”
“Wear it,” I say. She’s giggling when I hang up.
Shouldn’t I be feeling sleazy?
A half hour later, Marci shivers in the light of the open doorway, the fur collar of her black leather jacket pulled up around her soft, round face. Are you like most club girls—a mindless pretty doll? Or are you the one to surprise me? Wake me from this somnambulism I’m pretending is living.
“Hi,” I say. The angel seems to think you are.
“Hi,” she says, biting her lower lip.
Inviting her into the loft, I notice the smooth tautness of the red fabric of her dress from her back and down to her long, firm legs, and I feel a twinge of anticipation.
Been a long while since I felt that. You were right, angel.
But then she starts looking around, up to the huge poster of the angel on Joy Division’s “Love Will Tear Us Apart”, and the high ceilings. And then, seeing the keyboard, guitar, and sound gear sitting in the center of the room, she rushes over and walks through them, running her fingers along the tops of everything, glancing at me, grinning like a child who’s a bit slow—wide-eyed and gape-mouthed.
An ordinary club doll. I can’t stand her. But you did feel something.
I prod myself along.
“Let me show you around,” I say, taking her jacket and laying it on a couch. “You get the best view from up there.” I point to the railed balcony for our bedrooms running the width of the loft. I lead her up the wooden stairs, and we lean against the aluminum balustrade, looking down at the expanse of the loft. I tell her what each piece of equipment is and explain how we set up for rehearsals, where I composed the songs for Second Vision, and that “right now I’m composing new songs.”
Wide-eyed, she’s rapt to every detail. I let our fingers casually touch. Her fingers cross mine and then intertwine, and that’s the cue, as if I’m taking direction for a video. I know the plot; I’m to press my hip to hers. She’ll press her thigh to mine. It’ll be warm and firm. Next, a breath on her neck. My lips will graze her ear. She’ll turn. We’ll kiss. The dress will come off. I’m to latch onto one and then the other of those plump breasts and then lead her to the bed. Her dress comes off. Then my pants.
A Perfect Blindness Page 32