SASAMI

CHAPTER EIGHT: SASAMI/LAZY DAY AT MOTH CLUB, HACKNEY – 24/9/19

I arrive just as LAZY DAY are finishing. “Sasami are great,” says the singer. “You’re going to have a great time. When we get off the stage.” 

  When they’ve finished I get a good position at the front of the stage. There’s one of the Rough Trade tote bag guys. The one who was falling asleep during William Tyler’s set at Café Oto. His companion this evening is young, young enough to be his child. Maybe it is his child. They both have the same haircut; one of those Ian Brown haircuts. There’s something tragic, I think, about that haircut. I don’t know what exactly, but there’s something. 

  There’s a song playing, and I know it really well, but I can’t remember what it is or who it’s by, and it’s kind of driving me mad, and I’m standing here scribbling away in my notebook about how there’s a song playing that I know really well but can’t remember what it is or who it’s by, when I feel someone stirring behind me. 
  “Excuse me,” says a voice, a woman’s voice, “do you mind if I ask what you are writing?”
  I am a little startled. No one has ever asked me if I mind them asking me what I’m writing before. But I manage to retain my composure. 
  “I’m writing a book about the gigs I go to,” I say. 
  The woman looks at me, and nods, like she is expecting me to continue speaking.
  Am I going to say it? I think. Am I? 
  Yes, I am. 
  “It’s kind of like Nine Songs,” I say, “without the sex.”
  “Oh,” says the woman, who looks a little surprised, and might even be sort of backing away a little bit.
  “Do you know the film Nine Songs?” I say.
  “Yeah,” she says. 
  Phew, I think.
  I tell her about my novel getting published last year so she doesn’t think I’m just some weirdo loser writing some weirdo loser shit that no one’s ever going to read, even though that’s more or less exactly what I am doing. 
  “I’ve often thought about getting a little, actual, notepad, to write down little remarks and things,” she says, “but I usually end up just writing on my phone. I guess it would be a pain carrying it around.”
  “I don’t mind,” I say. “It’s doesn’t really bother me. I started doing it because my daughter kept saying things that I wanted to write down, and I found that if I didn’t write them down straight away I’d forget what she said or I wouldn’t get the wording quite right.”
  I worry that I am talking about myself too much, so I start asking her questions. I want to have a good conversation. 
  “Do you write?” I say.
  “No,” she says, “I’m a singer.”
  “Do you have a band?”
  “No, I’ve only just arrived in London, so I don’t have a band yet.”
  “But you write your own songs?”
  “Yeah.” 
  “How long have you lived in London?”
  “About a month.”
  “Where did you live before?” 
  “New York.”
  “Cool. Were you born in America?”
  “No, I was born in Zimbabwe.”
  “When did you move to America?”
  “When I was sixteen.”
  I worry that I am asking too many questions. It is starting to sound like an interrogation. Then her friend returns with some drinks. She – the friend – looks me over but doesn’t seem too impressed. She doesn’t seem keen for an introduction.
  The woman starts talking to her friend, and gradually turns away from me. I look back at my notebook, wait for my eyes to adjust, and begin writing down the conversation we’ve just had.

SASAMI is a lot screamier and a lot sweatier that I had imagined. “I’m sweating like a hot dick,” she says at one point. And then she screams something indecipherable. The first song is quite heavy. “I’ve just realised what that song means,” says Sasami when it’s finished. “I’m not sorry. I’m not sorry. I only recorded it two years ago and I guess I was sorry then, but I’m not now.” And then she screams again. She’s got wonderful gums. I notice things like that these days. People’s gums. I notice whether they have good gums or not. Weird, I know. She thanks her tour manager. “He’s a white guy we like,” she explains. “And he’s straight,” she adds, as if liking a white straight man really is quite an extraordinary thing. Poor straight white men. We really have screwed things up for ourselves by being such arseholes to everyone. 
  It’s a fun set. Even quite wild in places. I work up quite a sweat even though I’m doing nothing more than nodding my head. It’s really hot, like standing next to lava. The bass player tells a story about the last time she played Moth Club a year ago and it was really hot then too and after the gig her t-shirt was completely drenched with sweat, apart from her nipples. She realised that night that she didn’t sweat through her nipples. I wonder if there are any parts of my body that I don’t sweat through, and quickly conclude that it is highly unlikely.
  There is no encore, which is fine because I don’t generally like encores. Things, in my opinion, shouldn’t pretend to end, they should just end.