I met Rika Ohara when she came to San Francisco to do some performances of "Shelter".  She stayed at my apartment over the Holy Bagel on 24th Street in Noe Valley.  I treated her as if she were royalty.  I must have made a favorable impression.  It was now about a two years later and I had moved to a house in Culver City.  A friend next door had a 24 track studio in his garage, and I had a huge practice room and studio in mine.  The neighbors avoided us by letting the police handle the noise problems.

Rikka sounded calm enough.  But a friend of hers was in trouble.

"Are you still doing music?"  she asked.

"Of course.  What's up?"

"I have a friend you might really like.  She has a show in two weeks and her band has just broken up.  She's desperate and freaking out.  I thought of you and how quickly you can improvise.  Plus your music is right up her alley.  Want to give her a call?"

The performance art world is filled with  scenarios like this.  Artists are quirky, funds are spotty, audiences don't come out in droves, and some of the material can cause temporary insanity.  Sounded good to me.

"Who is she?" I blurted out.

"Linda Sibio.  She's a well known performance artist.  She works hard, and her pieces are intense.  She once did a performance at Highways that lasted all night.  No one seems to want to work with her, and if they do they don't last long.  She's crazy, Richie.  I have to tell you up front that she's schizophrenic."

"Oh.  Is that all?  It sounds the perfect match to me."

"I kinda thought you would say that.  Here's her number."

She lived in Echo Park.  The first three digits of her phone number were "666".

I should have just hung up right then and there.  But the more bizarre the better for me back then.  As the scotch rose to my head I jotted down the number, thanked her, and told her I would let her know what happened.

It was many months and a world later when I finally spoke to her again.

***

I did my usual prep for the audition.  I got out tapes of my more experimental music.  I straightened up the house a bit, turned the stereo and tape deck on, filled up a wineglass with scotch and a couple of cubes..   I was halfway through the second glass when there was a knock at the door.

"Come in." I shouted.

And there she was.

Linda was beautiful.  She had long brown hair and gentle, far-off gazing eyes.  She gave off an air of shyness.  She said nothing and walked into the living room as if she had just arrived in some foreign country.  She was thin.  From the look of her I thought she was as harmless as a piece of buttered toast.  I tore myself away from my drink long enough to help her put her things down and offer her something to drink.

She asked for a glass of water.

Later that night she told me she hadn't eaten in two days.

We got right down to it.  She put into the tape deck a sample of what she had up to that point.  The show was a little more than an hour long and required music for every second of it.  What she had wasn't bad, but I realized I would have to start from scratch and I told her so.  She didn't seem to mind.  The music she had didn't seem to go well with her vocals either.  But I knew what she was trying to accomplish and had worked in that style before.  It was a freeform, glottal type of vocal styling that I first learned about from Joan La Barbara at Cal Arts 8 years earlier.  Writing for it takes some serious thought, and a little luck.  Writing for Linda's pieces in the allotted time frame would be a challenge: she seemed to ignore or be oblivious to any sense of key or tempo.  I would have to follow her, and she would not be able to make any adjustments to the music.  No musician likes this kind of selfishness on the part of another band member.

The scotch, however, convinced me it was doable.  And that it would be fun to boot...

After a couple of swipes at what she had it was my turn.  I played her a piece I had recorded in my dorm room at Cal Arts called "Music For Spheres", and before it was halfway finished she said I was hired.  And the pay was good.  $300 for a single performance.  Ralph, the bass player, who we brought in a week later when the music was finished, was to be paid $200.

Linda, who hadn't eaten for two days, was to receive nothing. 

Except the exposure.

It didn't seem to phase me that I also had to write an hours' worth of music for that single, $300 performance. 

I immediately invited her into the illegally converted garage/studio so we could feel each other out.  I immediately had ideas and she seemed to like them.  Her vocals and themes/subject matter were out there.  Agony, suicide, trauma, hatred, loneliness, confusion.  The onslaught was relentless.  Not a moment of relief from her painful images ever came into view, or ear.  Here and there, when I glimpsed a hoped for oasis  like humor, she would suddenly give way to screaming spells from hell.  I could only imagine my neighbors' opinion of this disturbing new musical detour coming from "that dreaded house of irresponsible misfits".  If they entertained such thoughts they certainly never told me about them.

Since it was late and my wine glass was empty I broke off the adventure way before she was ready.  She was getting a taste of my work habits, and didn't find them too compatible with hers I imagine.  But hell, what did she expect from this unknown, last minute knight in shinning armor?  I wasn't about to match her obvious obsession with working.  Ever.  Then something happened that made me swallow hard.

We went into the house and it was then that I asked her if she was hungry.  And she told me how long it had been since she had eaten.  I told her to wait right there and I would bring her something.  I heated up a big plate of spaghetti or something in the microwave and in a minute presented it to her as if she were the most important person in the world.  And at that moment she was.  She brought me a project to work on, and I brought her a plate of food.

As she took it she began to cry.  She cried hard.  Slowly the reality of this strange new person was coming into view.  Her tears were those of happiness.

It soon dawned on me why.  Here was somebody that hadn't been given anything in a long time.  I didn't know this pitiful person's history, but it didn't look good.  She must have been desperate for some time.  Most people complain when you give them something to eat.  It's either not enough, too bland, too spicy, or some such rot.  But this was the first time my food had made someone cry.  Out of gratitude.  Right then I made up my mind to help her in any way that I could.   After several more scotches, a trip to the local bar, and drunken pleadings that she spend the night, she tore herself away and went home.  Desperate people can at times be stubbornly reasonable.

Two weeks later "Suicidal Particles" had its debut performance (at Cal State Fullerton) and it was very well attended and received.  I was riding a high that I thought would last forever.  Somehow I hadn't had a drink since the night I met Linda.

By then Linda was spending some of her days and many of her nights at my house.  This was to prove disastrous to my lifestyle as I had known it up till then, namely, that wineglass full of spirit, on the rocks.
 

Back    Next