Time Indefinite Sublime

One of the ways in which we, the cleverest monkeys, are fortified against a totally debilitating and final remorse and woe is that we have been enabled to recognize those to whom is attached the obscure meta-denominativity of charismatic allure. Two of their gambits include the ability to remove us from the present time, and to connote death.
In 1978 my friend Paul and I rode our bicycles from Raleigh to Chapel Hill, some twenty-four miles, to attend what would be the penultimate performance of The Contenders, a talented group of musicians to whom were devoted earnest and mature admirers. The more evident elements of the band’s work included virtuosity, suppleness, and friendship.
Paul and I had dinner (I’m inclined to say it was at Pyewacket, though I may be confusing that evening with another in which I behaved selfishly and miserably with Margaret, an innocent paramour from Romance Languages at the University). There was no opening act at Cat’s Cradle, and Paul and I secured the front row center table, at which we drank pitchers of beer and smoked Wee Willem cigars late into the night.
There were four musicians in the band that night; Walt Hyatt, one of the founders, had gone awandering to look for slightly new sounds; Steve Runkle was a friend of Paul’s, and at halftime, we visited with him for a while and he unwittingly inhaled deeply one of my cigars; the other knights were Jimbeau Walsh; Tommy Goldsmith; and desChamps Hood. The performance was excellent; there was stomping and dancing and shouting of course, but also a forlorning sort of enjoyment from the fans.
At 2AM Paul and I pushed off and began our ride back to Raleigh; it was still very warm, humid, and very dark. In the morning he was taking some kids out to Umstead Park for a nature hike, so he slept for an hour in a chair in my house. That night we saw the band again, in Raleigh, their last performance.
Some years later Jimbeau became seriously ill with a heart affliction, moved to Hawaii, and became a sort of minister. Tommy Goldsmith became a newspaper reporter in Nashville and Raleigh; Steve’s life ended with lung cancer in 2001; Walt boarded the Valujet that crashed into the Everglades in 1996; and Champ became an enormously respected fiddler working with Lyle Lovett and Toni Price in Austin, before dying of cancer in 2001.
The devotion they invoked preceded the melancholic account of their demises, and there are people today who continue to regard The Contenders as magnificent, and as good as any of the bands that achieved a broader sort of fame. Put another way, one may wonder if the future, vivid, dramatic grief accounts for the lyrical force of their compelling presence years ago in North Carolina. Intuitively ad wisely, Lauren Elkin, MAITRESSE, in Paris, appears to be locating the same savor of allure in Charlotte Gainsbourg. I would say, in reverse, but the essence of their charismatic force of appeal exists outside of time, and therefore does not proceed, and does not revert, and is not to be thought of as in the past.