Once upon a time while on the run and trapped in Belize (too long a story) I ended up at some tourist bar to shakedown cruise ship passengers for funds. I was corned by a chatty lounge singer who I usually woulda cared less about only it turned out he was finishing up his contract and getting off a big cruise ship. So I kept pouring tequila in him until talk turned to getting a little marching powder and maybe some entertainment. With visions of taking a fat bankroll off him, I assured him I was a man who could procure such provisions. To complicate things though was my new friends insistance on staying at the bar to meet his replacement, the new lounge singer. The interesting part was the new lounge singer had just flown in and hadn’t even been on the boat yet. No one knew him. I sat in stunned awe as God revealed the master plan unto me . I listened to two lounge singers talk shop. Not only did it sound like a pretty sweet and easy gig, it would get me back to the states with a new identity, slid past the feds, and into Miami. I’d sang in high school chorus, how hard could it be?
The easy part was getting these two amateurs to snort enough synthesized ayahuasca that they wouldn’t know who they were for several days. You see, when the powder doesn’t come on immediately like coke they did rail after fat rail. More than a gram each. Sure, I had to take a couple lines myself but I just snuck off and threw most of it up.
I barely made it back to the ship on time and lucky for me or unlucky perhaps, was that I scheduled to go on stage in fifteen minutes. The show manager was more than a little pissed at my tardiness but in such a goddamn hurry she didn’t ask many questions.
As I snuck out onto the darkened stage to my mark it dawned on me that I might be in waaaay over my head, but then the ayahuasca began to kick in. All I could see when the stage lights came on was a gigantic roaring Jaguar head. The big band roared back with the Sinatra standard, That Old Black Magic and I had to figure out how I was going to get my shit together, fight this crazed demon cat, and pull this whole thing off.
I was just about to fake a seizure when a curious wild flood of power began to whisper in my heart and P.J. Harvey herself appeared to me. Friends, I don’t know everything about this silly reality we all inhabit, but I do know that if you ever end up having to pretend to be a lounge singer while gacked outta your mind on ayahuasca. You can’t do any better than to be possessed by the sweet wonderful rage that is Polly Jean Harvey.
