People sacrifice the present for the future. But life is available only in the present. That is why we should walk in such a way that every step can bring us to the here and the now.
-Thich Nhat Hanh
It would come to me first as a single dead leaf scraping across the sidewalk.
Tchh-Tchh-Tchh-Tchhhhhhhh
On the loose strings of some blustery gust, the leaf would rise in a ghost swirl of trash, joining with a Cool Ranch bag and a Funions bag and a swiss roll wrapper with a dried cream face looking out from the inside of the plastic on the Philadelphia night which I was walking into/ walking though.
In the air the lone leaf would rotate- mid-air- in silhouette as a cop car went by, its low beams taking the twisting dead body and forcing it into the weak spotlight like a criminal up against the wall or a stage actor moving into the next scene alone.
And I would watch this, is what I’m saying.
I’d watch this all go down as I moved up the night street, up through the northern fringes of South Philly, up through Queen Village, up past the old Merlino mob clubhouse with the Greenpeace sign out front, traveling briskly up East Moyamensing (which is an old Lenii-Lenape word that means ‘the place of pigeon droppings’) towards where she slips into Center City, unnoticed, a few last blocks of real South Philly, a few last blocks of 2 Street Creek streaming into the dirty neon South Street River.
That then, would be how I knew it was autumn.
I had a backpack on my back. Back then I always did. Slung over one shoulder, I’d walk swiftly but observantly with my stage clothes gently bouncing against the back side of my ribs. Each step, I could feel them, the steady cadence tapping out bup-bup-bup/ my wool striped vest and my pink button-up Goodwill shirt and my pair of tight black dress pants/ and I would drag deep on my Marlboro Light/ my body pointed towards the club, towards the venue, towards the front door and the people filing in in twos and threes and the people already inside, stood at the mass of antique bar, watching themselves in the old mirror behind the Wild Turkey bottles and the Smirnoff bottles and all that, witnessing their own laughs unfolding before them in real time on a Friday evening in late October, when the air began to smell cool and musky and thin like metal rods.
Inside of my heart then, back then I mean, these walks to gigs, my skin freshly showered, my Rite Guard leaking into the scent of headless horsemen/ of crackling leaves/ of 45 degree autumn chills settling over all of us/ each of us/ the people at the gig/ the people heading to the gig/ the people walking right past the gig/ the guy on the door/ the cops in their cars/ the woman in her kitchen, Queen Village pots and pans hanging from her ceiling, soft, lovely, dim glow/ the shadow of a guy walking a hot dog down Bainbridge/ the Society Hill high rise where they said that Astrid Gilberto still lived in fierce privacy/ the neighborhood bars giving way to the more touristy ones/ the man who cursed at TV football as I walked by/ his words finding me: Fuck the Cowboys!/ making me smile/ making me feel connected through some kind of loose collective spiritish thread that neither exists or doesn’t exist depending on the scent in the air or the words from the bar or the run-in with the street leaf, as chancy as that is, telling you without a doubt that you are present at the scene of a magic night unfolding.
I had guitar picks in my back left pocket. That’s where I always kept them. 3, maybe 4 although I’d only usually use one. They were thick plastic, wide triangles we bought with band money from the indie guitar stores where my brother would do business while I stood off to the side, always uneasy, always feeling aloof and lost in the presence of other people who called themselves musicians.
But on nights like these, alone in my city, I existed differently. All of my insecurities, I could hold them at bay, talk to them quietly at knifepoint just so they understood what was what in the autumn dark, spice and wind. Fathering my own sort of frayed confidence, letting some kind of good feeling get born, up out of my direct loneliness, up out of my jangled nerves/ my shivering anxious liver and spine and finger bones/ all of me trying desperately to talk myself out of bathing so naked in this dark stretch of downtown, on streets where people used to sneer at weird Ben Franklin and stagger drunk past Mike Schmidt with a wool hat pulled down low on his iconic head and pass the Unknown Smoker (Serge Bielanko) as he floated by colonial graveyards and through back alley steak smoke and across streets with the scratching tap-tap-teeeeez of dragging leaves following him from the South to the North like rats on the heels of some long ago soldier arriving back from the mud holes of Petersburg, deep in the night, a bayonet hanging from his chest as he drifted, intently, towards the lively tap rooms down by the creaking night docks/ these rotting wood canopies shielding the ugly river catfish from the spell of the moon as they hang there -suspended- between the shining surface and the hellish bottom/ this cretinous dark river older than time, where the mud smells of sour sucker eggs and righteous brutal murder.
Fucking all of this, of us, everything tonight: old city vomited up from the guts of the Delaware.
My cherry embers: GLOWING then fading: my cigarette partner: my silent street smart torcia. I smoked for a lot of reasons, people smoke for all kinds of reasons, but the taste of tobacco on my lips on those nights, as I wandered towards Marah, towards our intro music (Rocky) and our climbing up onto the tiny stage under the simple colored lights between shitty monitors that had been shitty for so long now and for so many legends/ so many tight beautiful bands from far away lands and cities/ that the sound of the canons firing around you as the first song would kick in/ the driving hammer hits to your head as sounds collided/ bass drum beats piling into bass guitar plops and the electrics hissing like jet planes bashing into your bedroom/ me covered in burning fuel with such an excited heart, such a wild look in my eye because I am so scared and happy and hopeful and self-loathing all at the exact same time: I would drag my cig and bust through a scratchy skirmish line of dead leaves blowing across the sidewalk by where I’d go to see art films on lonely Tuesday afternoons suddenly/ magically/ transformed: from a silent lonely human trying to be found in a city of millions to a smoky-lung’d Titan emerging from my impossible bones to seize upon something that few have ever seized in the history of the entire world.
That’s what happens when you play in a band.
That’s what goes down with you when you are young enough to think that tonight/ TONIGHT/ might be the greatest night of all-fucking-time just because your heart is beating that fast. Your blood is whipping that quick. Your face is twitching behind all that fake collective cool you are trying to hide in as you walk through the city on your way to the gig.
So much of what being in a band was, for me anyway, isn’t what a lot of people probably think.
Being in a band means you have the chance to live a life of shapeshifting and dark magic possibility and artful tightrope walking between burning churches made of the bones of your family, both the living and the dead. But it also means you are entered into an ancient sacred lottery which, against all odds, I happened to win, year after year, in these years that I am telling you about. In these days when I was younger.
I won the universe for spotting the first autumn leaf. I was the very first human being to see it, and that is a big deal with the overlords and the fairies and the spirits in the graveyard treetops, I’m telling you. October after October, walking to the gigs, smoking my cigarettes, my picks and my bag and all of it, I saw a thing and it mattered. I smelled a thing and I heard a thing and that changed my world forever
Up where the twisted night trees drink cat piss, outside the warm private glow of the Friday night kitchens I would never enter, I would hear it first: scratching the concrete behind me: Tchh-Tchh-Tchh.
Rat with sharp nails.
Witch dragging a rake.
Snake made of sidewalk coming up behind me on the street.
The terrifying serenity of seeing everything there ever was and everything there ever will be for just like a second or two is the prize of prizes. The score of scores. So up and alive/ I was always waiting for something that was already happening/ seeking magic though I was surrounded by it everywhere.
Once, on a Friday night, walking to the gig, I won the Octoberish world all by myself.
Once upon a time, I chanced upon the first autumn leaf in Philly/ tied to a pigeon in the starless sky/ thrashing around like a shackled ghost/ doing sorcery in the streetlight glow.
Hello there. How you doin’? Hope you’re hearing those autumn leaves scratching up behind you. And I hope you enjoyed this FREE essay I sent you.
Thunder Pie is my solo album. I write all the tunes and play all the instruments and I dive off the lonesome stage into your bed or your car or wherever you like to devour words.
The money from your Thunder Pie paid subscriptions all goes toward the penultimate American Independent Artist : me, Serge, supporting myself and my family. I use it to pay bills, buy groceries, get my car fixed, pick my kids up some new sneaks, shit like that. And the financial support all comes from people just like you. People who want to be in on what I create/ what I stand for/ who appreciate what I have to say. You are all my lifeblood for creativity, literally keeping me artistically alive in return for the hardcore creating I do you.
Thanks. Have a great week.
Serge
Things I Loved This Week…
So I fell asleep in Charlie’s bed with him the other night. It had been a long time, too long maybe, since we’d done something like that. I’d laid down next to him on a whim after I tuned the YouTube in his room to rain sounds. Piper was already asleep in the next bed over, but Charlie was so into it, so excited by me laying there beside him. Angus hopped up with us and we were all talking quietly about how awesome it was that we had found ourselves together like that/ my body balanced on the edge of the twin/ Charlie’s long hair halfway up my nose. At one point Charlie was petting Angus and he just blurted out loud: “This is the best night ever.” It might have been one of the coolest moments of the last few years for me. In fact, I know it was.
Staying on the Charlie Train, check out this short video I shot of my man playing his Baritone in our living room. It makes me feel real joy.
NRBQ - Crazy Like a Fox + I Want You to Feel Good Too [Live/1988]. On a scale of 1 to 10? I’d say: 500,000.
‘Witchology/ Witches and Witchcraft’ (Podcast episode of Ologies). If you have never listened to Ologies before, you owe it to yourself to try it. Host Alie Ward is a real natural and her deep-dive interviews with an expert in a different scientific ‘ology’ each week are super creative and mega interesting. This month she’s featuring Halloween topics and this first one, all about witches, was outstanding, I think.
Arle ( gnarleART) will be part of a very cool Friday the 13th Freak Out! SpookyPop-Up this Friday from 3-9pm at Tussey Mountain Ski resort in our neck of the woods. There will be tons of brilliant artists and creatives hawking their wares, live music, food, beer, and ….(drumroll)….a car show. So if you are in the area, or looking for a last minute road trip, please come out.
This last thing isn’t something I loved, but rather something I have endured from the ether, from the cosmic wind. And it’s something I have hated, something I passionately hate. Maybe you do too. I’m guessing there are a lot of us. The events that unfolded last Saturday in Israel: I’ve been staring at the sky/ I space out in the middle of my workday/ I try to envision what this fellow named Golan experienced and I can’t do it. I ice up. My guts churn and I see the young people at the rave/ the soft sun rising/ the world pumping with music and laughter and lust and joy and then the turnaround: the fucking silence and then the running and then the true, true fear like no one reading this or writing this knows. I feel sick and hurt and I feel angry and confused. I feel privileged and it pisses me off. I feel helpless, like I’m watching a show on TV. I don’t want to pick a side in a faraway war/ I can barely get my Honda aimed in the right goddamn direction. But here we are. Again.
Thunder Pie is Edited by Arle Bielanko
Artwork by SB
Email: sergebielanko@gmail.com
Please check out gnarleART for unique one-of-a-kind handmade treasures. And subscribe to Letter to You by Arle Bielanko. It’s free.
The thing with October is, I think, it somehow gets in your very blood.
Unapologetically. Almost ruthlessly.
- Anne Sexton
Thanks Serge. Chills. The smells, the sights, the sounds. Having been to so many of your shows, it's very cool to hear what the lead up to them was like for you. I can hear the first crack of the snare after the Rocky theme, after a few moments of tuning, after watching you and Dave interacting, knowing the next couple hours were going to be my best hours of the week (sometimes month, sometimes year). Keep writing brother! Keep sharing your gift!
Autumn. Used to dread when I was a kid because, yanno, school. But I’ve grown to really dig it. Nesting time. Warm glow from strange windows. Orange and umber and yellow and that rich dark brown. Halloween. Universal monsters and the Great Pumpkin with those simple watercolor backgrounds that are the autumniest things I can imagine. Being in a band. Climbing that stage. Slinging that geetar. Just like all your heroes past and present. Best 45 minutes of your life. Hope springs eternal when you’re a twentysomething rocker on a small dingy club stage. Jimmy Miller’s here tonight! Jimmy-fucking-Exile-On-Main-St-Miller! In a shitty ex-strip club in Boston, so… but still…!
What a fucking week. Feels like the world is burning. Ukraine and the Gaza Strip. Things I don’t really understand beyond their disregard for humanity; for life. So much hatred. Hug your kids, hold your love tight.