Onward!
Do Make Say Think: 'The Universe!' + Philly (2006) + Abu Dhabi to Japan (2010) + New Year's (2024 -> 2025)
The drummer was throwing up.
It was October 2006, and I’d gone by myself to a Do Make Say Think concert at Philadelphia’s First Unitarian Church. Someone from the band (I can’t remember who) was on stage explaining that one of their two drummers had started vomiting the night before—food poisoning, a virus, who knew—and hadn’t stopped since. But the two-kit effect was key to their sound, so they’d flown in a drummer friend from Canada that morning. This new drummer didn't know any of the band’s songs. He’d spent the day learning them. “So let’s show him some love. Let’s try to lift him up.”
It felt like this new drummer added an extra intensity to the set. Everyone on stage kept checking in with him—with their eyes, with their eyes, with little head nods, with mouthed words I couldn’t decipher, with fingers held aloft. They were inside the songs together and working hard to keep each other there. Watching them brought me further in, too. I was transfixed.
I remember watching the drummer, drenched in sweat, holding on to “The Universe!” for dear life. Structurally, most Do Make Say Think songs follow that standard post-rock template: quiet start, gradual build, loud climax. “The Universe!” is different. It starts out loud, already sprinting, then does its best to outrun itself, pushing itself to the point of dizzy collapse, then picking itself back up, getting high on its own endurance. Part of me pitied the drummer for the pressure he was under, but a much bigger part felt jealous of his ability to face it.
In 2010, I quit my first real post-college job, at a newspaper in Abu Dhabi. I’d learned a lot there about how to edit and write—but not how to leave. I gave ample notice and tried to plan my exit, but on my last day, I still ended up working late into the evening, almost alone in the deserted office, still editing pieces, filing invoices, writing up notes on the condition of stories I was beginning to accept I would not see to publication. I’d set an alarm for when I knew I had to leave. When it went off, I shut down my computer, called a cab, went to the Dubai airport, and flew to Japan.
As soon as the plane took off, I fell into a deep sleep. Except for meals, I didn’t wake up until Tokyo. In the course of a few hours, most of which I spent unconscious, I went from employed to not, from the Middle East to Asia, from a structured life to a wide-open one. I’d never been to Japan. I didn’t have a smartphone. What I had was printed-out directions from the airport to a guesthouse in Tokyo’s Asakusa neighborhood. It had been nighttime when I left, and it was nighttime now; the streets of the megalopolis were surprisingly quiet. I felt amazingly alive to the reality of my surroundings, but also a strong ambient sense that I was dreaming. I couldn’t quite believe I was there, any more than I could believe, when I got to the guesthouse, that my friend Scott was really going to be there, up in the middle of the night to open the door. And then… he was.
The whole trip was like that: my abrupt life transition finding an almost too-perfect symbol in my abrupt change of scenery. In a sleepy neighborhood in West Tokyo, we went to a jazz bar allegedly frequented by Haruki Murakami, the dream world of his novels blending with the dream world of the trip. For a few days my brother joined us—aren’t family members always showing up like that in dreams? In Kyoto, we fell in with some salarymen who told us Murakami’s novels were well-known to be “pretty gay,” then paid for all our food and drinks. In a little mountain town, we walked uphill to a hot spring, eating matcha ice cream from a vending machine, and saw an old man use a sword to put an injured cat out of its misery. In Tokyo we went to see Do Make Say Think, and they played “The Universe!” extra fast, no substitute drummer this time. The song’s barreling-out-of-the-gate, no-pauses, up-up-up intensity fit my mood perfectly. Onward! I hope I never forget it, and I can’t imagine I ever will.
I thought about doing a New Year’s post reflecting on that special feeling of one year hanging suspended, basically done, just waiting to turn over. But after reading a few well-done Substack reflections on the same subject, I decided I didn’t have much to add, except that my favorite January 1 song has to be The Walkmen’s “In The New Year” (my sisters are married / to all of my friends: so weird, but it always makes me smile).
I can remember, in other phases of life, that year-end sense of suspension lingering well into January. Not this year! Kids, school, respiratory illness, work, vomit: everything’s back again, hurtling forward. I’ve always loved luxurious breaks: breaks between semesters of school, summer breaks, holiday breaks, special trips to mark transitions. These days, I look for much smaller breaks wherever I can find them: a walk, a movie, a song. I’ve been listening to “The Universe!” a lot, trying to hold on as we plunge into 2025, the future, whatever’s next. See you there. ✹