An indeterminate date before the turn of the millennium: we both live on our own by now, but find ourselves together that night (a holiday? a vacation from school?) in the basement of my parents’ last family-sized house: the one down the hill from the church, whose grand oaks shaded the back lot until wilt took every one; across the road from a square mile of meadow and marsh, where we would walk our errant husky, waiting an hour until she was ready to return home; a modern design for the pastor and the nurse, dark brown panels accented beautifully (almost nordically) by three graceful birch near the front door.

My brother Mike was messing around on the guitar in his old basement bedroom – his messing around doesn’t sound very messy – and I came in to listen. His instrumental carried a compelling walking base, and a melodic stairway of chords that began at ground level and then went subterranean. They started back up just as you were buried up to your neck: a little grit, a lot of muscle.

How often do you walk into a river of sound? In our house, it was often enough. Delicious. It filled me up, then it poured down and splashed around in the catacombs, and it when it came back to light my old house on Fillmore Avenue was floating on the current, a time when things were not so light, and… well, when that all washes up and lays there in the sand, there is nothing to it but just sing what you see: “Sundown, behind the church….”

Like most gifts, it arrived almost entire. I could sing it, but never really play it. Then, some years later, I was messily messing around and accidentally landed upon the first three chords of Mike’s instrumental piece (!). A doorway opens. You happily go in. This tune is all Mike’s music, in comparison poorly covered, but gratefully received.

Looking for Angels – Mike and Mark Schultz

Looking for Angels

Sun down behind the church
like a coin dropped from God’s hand
I’m sitting out here on the back porch, baby
with a cigarette burning down
now, why does the evening lay on this city
like a fever shaking in the dark?
and why does the evening lay on my city
like a glove around my heart?

Saw an old friend in the street yesterday
she took one look at my eyes, and shook her head
said, “You’ve been looking for angels again,”
and she was right, I was trying to pin a halo
on everybody’s head.
Now why?
Why?

But she said Wait, just you wait
and I believed her, you know I saw truth
in her eyes, she was living with an angel
out on the strip, in a beat-up house
but it didn’t matter
she saw whatever it was she wanted

Sun down behind the church
like a coin that’s dropped in the sand
I’m sitting out here on my back porch, baby
with nothing but smoke in my hands
now why does the evening lay on this city
like a fever shaking in the dark?
and why does the evening lay on this city
like a glove around my heart?

Shoreview, MN

“Sunset” by Béress Zsuzsanna @ DeviantArt.com

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