The Bold Year

writer, blogger, and actor, meg fee, shares her own story of discovery, newfound passion for live music, and the impact a song has on the human heart.

text: meg fee illustration: faye west

I went to my first concert just over a year ago.

On a whim, I had gotten tickets and with no boyfriend in sight, I gave them to my brother. I would take the bus to Boston and we’d go together.

I remember that Saturday night: our late dinner ordered in, the cold air blanketing the city, the feeling that I had not a single thing to wear, what does one wear to concerts? I finally settled on a black shift dress and my Frye motorbike boots. We entered the small venue – standing room only – and found a spot close to the stage, but not too close. Connor got us drinks and then we waited, remarking mostly on how lucky we were to be tall (tall is good where no seats are concerned) and how we were not the usual hipster crowd (in a sea of beanies our heads were hatless).

We were there to see The Head and the Heart.

Now, I can just imagine readers all over, nodding their heads, of course, of course, The Head and the Heart. But just over a year ago they were virtually unknown. Just over a year ago they were the opening band for someone else. And when we saw them, just over a year ago, no one knew the words to sing along – almost no one had heard of them. But their music was heaven. And so Connor and I stood there, drinks in hand, bobbing and swaying, as the music moved through and up, as the air was charged with the sound and the guttural need of those voices.

And that

was it. I was sold. Hook line

and

sinker.

The next day we went skiing and had dinner at Outback Steakhouse. That weekend was one of the best of my life.

When I returned to New York I began buying up cheap tickets for fringe (I use that word loosely) bands playing smaller venues. The tickets would arrive in the mail and then sit in a little white box atop my dresser. Tickets, the promise of a concert, something to look forward to.

I saw Noah and the Whale at the Bowery Ballroom. Beirut at the Wellmont. The Lumineers at the Mercury Lounge. Slowly but surely over the course of the year I refined my taste in music and began to chart the city as I did so – venturing into downtown neighborhoods and once unfamiliar boroughs. Mapping city and self, unfurling New York and my place in it. interview: katie michels whitney johnson and dave tuttle fell in love over a mutual passion for instant photography. combining that passion to create unique his & hers polaroid collages was only a natural result. see for yourself why this couple is one to know:

At some point it became very clear: I became bold by a year of listening to live music.

It was just about a week ago that I went out with some girlfriends I hadn’t seen in quite a while and I was explaining all of this and what bands I loved and why and what about their music made my weary heart thrum when my friend Vivienne took a deep breath, all of the music in my library was given to me by friends and ex-boyfriends –mostly ex-boyfriends.

Ah, ex-boyfriends. I’ve come to realize that in every relationship I’ve ever had – first loves, half-loves, reluctant flirtations – music plays a part. I tell you, the passing of the mix-tape might as well be a relationship marker. Music and men. To this day I can’t listen to Nick Drake without feeling a sadness and longing for one Sunday in December many years ago in which I both lost and found the very best parts of myself on the couch of my first love.

I’ll never forget sitting on the floor of my first boyfriend’s apartment. I was just out of high school, new to New York and terrified by nearly everything. I sat on his floor surrounded by record sleeves and pictures of him as a child and I was sure that I wasn’t actually that keen on him, but I had yet to really wake to that thought. He picked up an Ella Fitzgerald album: Ella, she’s the one, you know? She’s my one. She’s my music. She sings and it stirs something low in me. Something I hardly know how to place.

Who’s your Ella? He looked right at me and asked.

Who is your Ella?

Who is my Ella?

I hardly knew what he was talking about. I don’t know. I don’t think I have an Ella.

Oh man, I can’t wait for the day you find yours. Finding it is the best part.

Sometimes I wonder how often his question hung over me. A wet, pregnant cloud, eclipsing the landscape.

It took six years, but I know now.

I figured it out this last year in dark and crowded concert halls among nearly perfect strangers.

I found my Ella in the sounds of the folk movement coming out of London and the Pacific Northwest. I found my Ella in the broken voices of Charlie Fink and Kristian Matsson. I found my Ella in the sublime dissonance – that perfect space between the Avett Brothers’ voices. In the ferocity and haunting vulnerability with which Laura Marling sings and Johnny Flynn plays the fiddle. I found my Ella in the lyrics which call upon Bukowski and Shakespeare and Hemmingway for their piercing (and humblingly simple) wisdom.

I found my Ella. And in finding my Ella I found myself.

And I did it all without a man.

My music library is made up of those songs that I love. Those songs that stir that low, unknowable, unnamable part of myself. The songs that upon listening to I can’t help but move and laugh and sway my hips, putting socks to wood floor and shimmying this-a-way and that. Those songs that grant, when I least expect it, a perfect, quiet moment, in which I stand just as still as I possibly can and cry – because someone else has given voice and melody to my great triumphs and deep tragedies – because someone else has unwrapped what I thought singular and secret.

And in those moments I am not alone. I am never lonely. I stand listening to the chant of the human experience. Music is tangible...don’t ever let anyone tell you different.

It’s that knowing I’m not alone bit – that knowing that others have gone before and others will follow after – that vulnerability is what makes for this human experience – that’s what made me bold.

That and the music.

Word on the street is you two met through the photo-sharing website, Flickr. Share with us how and when that happened.

Whitney Johnson: We did. To explain exactly how we met requires a bit of back history. All over Portland you can find iron “horse rings” that are embedded into the sidewalks. They were used to tie horses up prior to the use of cars in the 1800s. Over five years ago, an artist named Scott Wayne Indiana started zip tying tiny toy horses to these old rings as a conceptual art project. The idea was to get people to start noticing their surroundings. In March of 2008, Dave posted a Polaroid he had taken of one of these horses in NW Portland. While pursuing Flickr one day, I discovered the Polaroid. I recognized it immediately, as I had taken a Polaroid of the very same horse. I left a comment on the shot, a friendship developed and the rest, as they say, is history.

Dave Tuttle: It’s true, she internet stalked me.

W: Yeah right! We didn’t even meet in real life until a year and a half later.

What do you love most about Polaroid instant cameras and the imperfect photos they create?

W: I love the anticipation of waiting for a shot to develop. Each photo is unpredictable and unique. I love those wonderful distorted colors, the tiny imperfections that form and the fact that there is no deleting and retaking – every shot is one of a kind. It makes each photograph more meditated and important.

D: I think it’s precisely that imperfection that I love so much. Sometimes a digital shot can be perfect. Often times it’s too perfect. A Polaroid (or Impossible Project) image can be rife with picky imperfections. That makes the image a one of a kind. An original. I find that refreshing.

Your “Polaroid Wall” is amazing! How many pictures did you have to sort through to create it? I’m sure you have quite a collection by now. D: We literally dumped tens of thousands of Polas on our floor and sorted through them for days and days!

W: Dave’s exaggerating a bit, but we definitely did sort through over a thousand shots. Our living room looked like a bomb had gone off; there were Polaroids everywhere! We’ve both been shooting instant film for over five years now, so it was fun finding Polaroids we forgot we had taken and telling each other the stories behind them.

Polaroid stopped making film for their instant cameras a few years ago. How are you able to continue shooting with yours?

D: The death of Polaroid and their decision to discontinue instant film is a sad commentary on corporate greed and malfeasance. But thanks to The Impossible Project and all of their hard work, we are shooting instant film again. And couldn’t be more excited to do so.

W: When Polaroid announced they were discontinuing film, I literally went to every Costco, Walgreens and Rite-Aid in the area and bought all the film they had. We’re talk- www.hisampersandhers.com ing 150+ packs. So luckily, I still have a bit of a stockpile of film in a mini fridge. For new film, The Impossible Project is amazing! They have made great strides in their film development over the last couple years and their film just keeps getting better and better.

It’s clear you are a fun-loving and adventuresome couple! What is your favorite way to spend your free time?

D: Food. We love food.

W: We do love cooking. I think more than anything we like trying new things. Whether that be a new recipe, a new hiking spot, or a photography idea we have in our head.

Whose idea was it to make these fantastic “His and Hers” Polaroid collages? Do any of them not work out the first time around?

D: It was my idea. Totally all mine!

W: It kind of was Dave’s idea. It took a few months to develop, as we couldn’t think of an appropriate name.

D: We bounce ideas off one another all the time. The hardest thing is putting ideas to paper, or film that is.

W: There are definitely ideas we try that don’t work out.

If you were left with only one camera and one destination to photograph, what would you choose?

D: My Polaroid sx-70 camera with original Polaroid Time Zero film and Impossible Project px 70 film. Italy. And Croatia. I think Croatia would be great. Oh, and the Basque region.

W: My Polaroid SLR 680 with Impossible Project px 600 UV+ film and original 600 film. I would also love to go to Croatia and Italy (can you say best honeymoon ever?!). Or maybe the Faroe Islands.

D: Whitney loves to drop wedding hints. Hints like bombs. It’s kind of endearing.