Pacific UV
"Static Waves"
self titled
Warm Records

Camping at the Southern tip of the Oregon coast in late August of this year, I woke early to walk along the beach, and I brought a burned copy of the Pacific UV CD with me. The swirling, the fuzz, the echo in my ears was joined by a real-life corollary: a surrounding fog which made it impossible to see more than a few dozen yards in any direction. I walked toward the ocean until I couldn’t see where I’d come from, then picked another direction arbitrarily and set off. It didn’t matter how far I’d gone or if I veered off course; every step took me into territory that was both completely unknown and totally familiar – I knew I would be surrounded by wet, white space, that my feet would meet the hard crust over the soft sand wherever they fell. Sometimes I walked with my eyes closed.

I was on my way to a new city, moving away from friends, from home, from life. Into something totally foreign, to a tiny town I knew nothing of, to attend a school I knew almost as little about. I was venturing into white space.

I walked and got lost; I listened to beautiful waves of guitar and wrote prayers in the sand with sticks. In the middle of all that nothing it was all I could think to do.

Eventually I went back to the tent and woke my wife up and we ate breakfast. Even now, though, I am in the white space. I am still on the beach. This song, though it talks about death, is also content in its ethereal sonic-limbo state, and reminds me that I am, we are all of us, always in the white space, and we must learn to love it. I am trying. Some days I do.

(My dear friend Kevin Davis recently joined Pacific UV, and I hope they go on tour very soon.)