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Our Viking friends, Morten & Agnete made a donation to Trike, so we made them a personal Thank You video!!!
It’s made with lots of Trikey love, Viking Powers, and sweaty armpit sauce!!! (okay, maybe not the last one…)
Thank you Morten & Agnete for wearing purple, being awesome, and liking our crazy music.
Here’s the video:
I like feeling smooth cobble-stones massage my feet while I walk on top of them. It makes me feel European.
I was trying to ignore the warm sun as I repeated to myself I am here to find a coat. I lost mine somewhere on tour.
There was a big pile of colourful sweaters in the middle of the flea market that I was drawn to.
I pictured diving into the pile and putting on every sweater one by one, layering them until I became a big, woolen ball that could roll away.
It was Dominique’s day off and she took us to the market just before it closed because, “That’s when you find all the bargains, when vendors would rather get rid of stuff instead of packing it away in their trucks.”
Dominique is a timid metal-head who as been amazingly generous and kind to us (and I’m not just saying that because I feel bad about Stephen accidentally breaking her collector dish yesterday when he was dancing spastically in her kitchen.)
Stephen was the first one to find a bargain: a flashy, gold sequence vest, perfect for the stage for only three euros!
I got on my knees and started tossing knitted dashes of colour aside, but my eyes kept landing on one particular sweater. I don’t know why it attracted me so much. Maybe it was whoever-owned-it-last’s favourite piece of clothing and some residue love had woven itself into its warm sleeves.
I tried it on. It was blue and white with elastics around the cuffs and waist that made me look fat and boobless.
The Algerian vendor wanted three euros for it, but I talked him down to two. I knew he was Algerian because after I paid him he said: “Algeria is better than Belgium.”
I laughed and nodded eventhough I don’t know much about either country. (I think he mistook my laughter for mockery because he then looked at me sternly and said “IT’S TRUE!”)
I also knew that the two Turkish guys who grabbed my ass last week were Turkish because they were holding a giant Turkish flag.
I stuffed the sweater into a bag and Dominique took us to a moustache-friendly bar across the street. (I knew it was moustache-friendly because it had a picture of a moustache on the door, and the bar-tender is known to participate in Moustache Competitions in Antwerp.)
It started to get dark and Stephen and I stumbled to a local fast food restaurant that was (sometimes) the perfect place to catch free internet waves. Stephen opened his laptop and an olive-skinned boy with black hair walked up to us, apparantly curious about the computer. He smiled at me, I smiled at him and he went back to his deep-fried meal.
We began having a Skype conversation with Brock, a Vancouverite who works for NOISE (an ad agency) and who helped us with a big opportunity. We sent Brock a Tic-Tac video idea that went like this:
We’re busking in the street, I’m tap-dancing on a mini-stage made of Tic Tac boxes, the public is giving us Tic Tacs instead of money and, as a grande finale, Tic Tacs would rain from the sky causing pedestrians to slip and fall. Brock wasn’t too sure about the slipping and falling part, but he pitched the rest of the idea to Tic Tac and they went for it!!!
This could be HUGE for Trike.
When we wrote the proposal, we already had shows booked in Canada and we were planning on living in Vancouver, where we could shoot the Tic Tac vid.
This helped Tic Tac choose our proposal, because they want the video to be distinctively Canadian.
But, after we wrote the proposal, Vincent offered us real professional studio time in Brussels that we couldn’t turn down because we’ve been trying to make an album we’re happy with for over a year, and have not succeeded yet.
On the phone, Brock seemed worried that Tic Tac might not be interested in working with us anymore, because we’re planning on staying Europe for the next little while.
We got off the phone a little stressed and worried that we could lose the Tic Tac gig.
It’s stressful moments like these when Stephen and I usually get into arguments.
The restaurant disappeared around us as we decended deeper and deeper into a vague and frivilous argument about an email. Stephen got up and threatened to leave before sitting down again. Swear words were exchanged, and I slapped a five-euro bill on the table, and then a Get-Your-10th-Purchase-FREE card with the restaurant’s name written across the top in yellow letters.
I noticed the olive-skinned boy again and tried to catch his eye. I forced a kicking-and-screaming smile onto my face, but the boy didn’t want to look at me, and instead looked straight ahead with a worried, scared and slightly disturbed look on his face.
I turned quickly and walked home.
I climbed up to my room and lay on my bed. Jean-Claude, a cheeky kitten who usually only likes me when I’m holding cheese, seemed to sense my sadness; curled up on my stomach and started purring loudly.
After a few moments I got up, reached into my bag, pulled out my new sweater and put it on. I didn’t want to wear it until it had been washed, but I felt like I needed a change, a fresh start, a new persona. The sweater smelled like a second-hand store mixed with mold, but I didn’t mind.
I started thinking of what expression I should be wearing when Stephen came back. Should my cheeks be wet with tears? Should I look happy to see him? Would it be best if I looked apathetic? Should I see what expression he had and adjust mine accordingly?
Maybe I could go to sleep and wake up with him tickling me and all would be happy again. But that would be impossible, because I had the only key to the house, so he would have to ring the doorbell and I would have to open the door for him. Maybe I wouldn’t open the door when he rang and let him walk around the block a few times until I felt like opening the door. But that would only make things worse.
I imagined a giant clock tic-toc-ing loudly even though I had no idea what time it was or how much time had passed. (I once had a watch, until I fell asleep in a taxi and woke up without it. Maybe the taxi driver had a strange habit of collecting mementos from every person who rode in his cab.)
I wanted to fast-forward my life until the instant Stephen came home, when time could continue normally and we could resolve our issues.
Suddenly, the doorbell rang and I bolted downstairs with Jean-Claude and opened the door for Stephen. He looked at me and sincerely said, “You look beautiful in that sweater.”
Stephen in his new gold vest
The other day we were interviewed by a Belgian journalist who asked us:
“Can you recount a funny story from your tour?”
The question stumped Stephen and I. Part of me was angry that he would catch us off guard with such a general question. Part of me was angry at myself for not being able to come up with an answer.
“I was thrown into a Hungarian prison cell,” Stephen said.
“That’s not funny,” said the journalist.
His pen and notebook were awaiting hilarity. Surely there must be funny stories that Trike could muster up.
I remembered being robbed in Prague, Berlin and Amsterdam.
But of course that wasn’t funny.
I remembered partying with Serbians for days until, one by one, they dozed off; sleeping in chairs with sunglass-covered eyes and white, amphetamine-rimmed nostrils.
But that wasn’t funny either.
Then I thought of the time Stephen broke a window of the house we were staying at after an 18 year old girl tried to rape me.
Of course that wasn’t funny either.
After touring for a year-and-a-half, could I really think of no funny stories?
There must be some.
I like to romanticize our first 7 month tour, but it really wasn’t a Rock Star Fairy Tale. I’ve already blocked out most of the stressful memories of sleeping in train stations to catch cheap train rides & feeling sore bones froms carrying heavy bags and instruments. Days of dirty socks, cigarette-smelling hair and cheap, bad food.
But in some (perhaps masichistic) way, a musician’s life is addictive.
I feel a drive to inch forward because I’m working for myself, I can see growth in our number of fans and that excites me. I enjoy being an artist.
A few years ago I read a text written by a psychologist (I think it was Carl Jung) that said something like:
“Most patients first come into my office saying they’re worried because they don’t know who they really are. They feel like they put on different masks for different social situations and don’t know the person under all the different façades.”
I feel that way sometimes.
Sometimes I get a glimpse of myself, but I have to concentrate on it, hold onto it & not get too comfortable with it because it will shift with experience. But other times I let go of the glimpse or ignore it.
I’ve been moving around 16 coutries, countless cities, meeting hundreds of new people, making shorts roots everywhere and deep roots nowhere. I find myself repeating the same stories to different people after they ask ‘getting to know you’ questions like: “Where you from? Where you’ve been? Where you going?”
The one constant person in my life has been Stephen.
Stephen and I have been having big discussions about human relationships lately. A fellow duo from Vancouver recently split up after a long tour. They were once inseperable, having one Facebook account for the both of them & they told us things like “We’re the same person.” Maybe their over-closeness wasn’t the reason for their band’s demise, but I think it’s important to remind myself that I cannot be more than an individual. I mean, it’s possible share love, that’s why I’m an artist. But I have to flex my individuality sometimes to reassure my un-masked self that it exists.
I watched an interview with Lady Gaga where she said that her stage persona and her ‘real life’ persona are the same thing. That’s why she doesn’t want to be called by her original name, because she IS Lady Gaga. Sometimes I feel the same. Sometimes I don’t.
Sometimes I feel like I can reveal my true self on stage. Trike is a joyous, care-free, dancing and bitter-sweet character. When I’m on stage, I feel a little untouchable, like because I’m louder and higher-up (if the stage is elevated) than everyone else, then I can voice something that cannot be argued or rebuttled. If I don’t feel in Trike Character, the audience can usually tell & I can’t ask them to come along for the ride if it’s false.
A few months ago we performed at an electro-trash party. Right before the show, I received news that my grandmother had died. We were backlit for the show & I cried on stage without anyone seeing my face. The neon-clad German crowd pogo-ed & smiled & danced to our performance. I don’t think they could tell how sad I was & it made me notice the ‘Trike Mask’ more than ever before.
As a very young girl, maybe even before I could speak, I knew that if I smiled coyly (even if I didn’t feel like smiling) I would get a warm reaction or even a compliment. Because I knew how to falsely get a warm reaction at such a young age, I don’t believe many are free from some form of psychological manipulation.
When Stephen and I spend all day everyday together, focussed on Trike, brainstorming, writing, practising, waking up & going to bed at the same time (our hearts practically beat simultaneously); I’m sometimes afraid of losing my individual self. On the other-hand, when I honestly play the Trike Character and can take people with me for the ride, I feel ecstatic & lucky.
Recording our new album has given us a break from touring. Now my feet are cleaner than ever from long, hot baths at Dominique’s that make me think If I could purr I would. I’m gonna continue thinking of funny tour-stories. I can’t think of any right now. At least I can say that I haven’t been bored for two years. Being a touring musician has been exciting, stressful, wonderful, frustrating and always interesting.
Trike in the Studio #3. This time it gets kinky!
Trike in the Studio #2
This time we’re not “actually” in the studio, but we hang out with cats, make music videos with cats, take bubble baths, read iris murdoch and oscar wilde and other fun shit. Take a gander.
Here is our first vlog of us in the studio. We are in Brussels for an indefinite period of time, working on vocals, basslines, percussion and violin for our album, tentatively titled “Trike and the Vikings”.
Take a look:
- I stole chocolate every day for a year when I was in high school.
- I broke my brother’s nose
- I swore at my mom
- I pissed off many employers by being neglectful and absent-minded and lost many jobs
- I slept through Math 11, failed and had to do it over again.
- When I was eight I tried to make a five year old eat twigs and dirt
- I let my brother almost get beat up by George Guru when I was 12
- I have sworn countless times in my short life
- I eat meat
_ I moshed so hard when I was nineteen that my neck was sore for a week.
- I chased my brother with an axe when I was a pre-teen
- I used to pretend I was going to spank my dog when I was 12, just to get a reaction…
- I threw a can of paint at my brother’s head… and missed
- I pulled my brother’s hair when he was in his crib
- My brother and I threw butter knives at each other
- I convinced a girl friend to phone my dad and talk dirty. She did. He was even dirtier back;
- I shoplifted a few times in my early twenties… I got caught. Now I can’t get into the States. Wait, is that good or bad?
- I snuck into a Smuggler’s concert… altho in truth, they snuck me in through the back door.
- I wrote a mean song about hipsters who do coke…
- I started reading Homer’s Odyssey but I never finished it.
- I started reading Ulysses and never finished it.
- I started reading your mom’s diary naked and finished it. It was fascinating.
I mean, the list goes on… and on…
And the latest scumbaggy thing is that I haven’t posted a vlog in awhile… although in our defense, we RARELY have access to wifi these days. I have a vlog I desperately want to post, but as luck would have it; I can’t.
Love
A big scumbag
ps. tell me scumbaggy things you have done below…
Sometimes I see movies that just make me really depressed.
Last night I watched Basquiat with Anna and Xboxx and it made me kinda depressed afterwards. It’s the story of Jean-Michel Basquiat, the black painter from the eighties who dies at 27.
He became famous at 19, after sleeping in a cardboard box and leaving memorable tags all over New York. He was discovered quite young and became an art star and protegé of Andy Warhol.
I first saw the movie a few years ago but as usual, I forgot most of it. I have seen his art in Montreal at the Musée des Beaux Arts and I have always been a huge fan. I love his style; playful, colourful, crazy and very original.
The movie made me sad because you see his rise and fall from a struggling artist to achieving world fame, but in the end, he’s basically sad and alone and had lost everyone close to him. His mother was in an insane asylum, his only friend, Andy Warhol, died, and he had lost his passion for painting. He had lost focus, stopped painting and (I guess) started indulging more and more in heroin and eventually joined the ranks of famous people who died at 27: Joplin, Hendrix, Cobain, Morisson…
I can’t help but wonder if when people die of heroin overdose, it’s a kind of suicide. It’s usually accidental, of course, but in the movie, he became so depressed at the end and he had lost all his passion for making art and none of the fame, notoriety or appreciation really meant anything to him. He had nobody. Almost as if heroin was his best friend. The only person he was close to; really close to, died. And to make matters worse, he had stopped speaking to Warhol because he had read an article where Warhol referred to him as his “sidekick”, so he stopped talking to him.
And of course we always read stories about the trappings of fame and how it causes so many downfalls. For those of us who aren’t famous, it can seem so glamourous: the adoration, the money, the notoriety, the autographs, the groupies etc. etc… but while watching the movie, at one point it just seemed like there was nothing else for Basquiat… almost as though he was ready to die. He was wandering the streets in his pygamas, miserable and strung out; appearing homeless just like in the beginning of the movie, before he got famous. He lost his friends, his mother (in the asylum), his passion for art (which was his life) and it just makes you wonder what else would there be for him? There was also a suggestion that he was no longer the toast of the art world: all that at 27, which is so so young! I can’t imagine being 27 and feeling washed up.
In the end, I was definitely feeling like he had chosen to die. Of course, heroin overdose is accidental, but when your life has lost all meaning, how accidental can it be? How can part of you not be aware that what you’re putting in your vein not be dangerous and deadly? You’re choosing to escape and it’s possible that if you’re not careful, it’s the final escape… and, sadly, in Basquiat’s case, it was.
So, in the end, I just felt sad. The downfall to watching a biopic is that you know that it’s real and actually happened. Much like when I watched “Control” and Ian Curtis hung himself at the ripe old age of 23, it left me wondering how much more life they could have lived, YET, at the same time, how much they had done in their few years on this little planet. Basquiat’s work has brought so much joy to this world yet, in the end, he was too sad and alone to really continue living.
I also feel the same about Michael Jackson’s life. He had everything one could possibly imagine but he also had incredibly low self esteem, he felt so alone despite all the love, adoration and fame and died at a relatively young age. He was famous, yes, but he also described it as a “nightmare”; the paparazzi constantly hounding him, the inability to be free, to the point where he glamourized normal people’s lives. He wanted so badly to shop like a normal person (for example) that he arranged to have a mall emptied and filled with friends and friends of friends who would pretend to be normal people so he could shop like a “normal” person. Isn’t that fucked up? Most people would love to be famous, but look at what it possibly brings, especially if the famous person isn’t “self-actualized”.
If there is a message in all of this, of course, it seems to be that fame is an illusion and doesn’t actually bring happiness. Of course we all, on some level, know that, but movies like Basquiat really drive the point home. You absolutely have to find happiness, self-actualization and self-satisfaction within yourself. He had everything. He was so talented, his work was so wonderful and he had so much potential but in the end, it wasn’t enough.
Watch it. It’s powerful. I know I gave away the ending, but the most cursory research into Basquiat’s life will tell you what I already shared here.
Peace out, homeslices.
