Final Wave Goodbye

Goodbye, Bane.

The Massachusetts hardcore band plays their last two shows Friday and Saturday. Their influence on my life is too big to calculate right now.

There are so many stories. Most of them are variations on a theme: I am scared or low and listening to Bane makes me more confident and more kind. This happened in Chicago, in Pittsburgh, in Washington D.C. and in Rome. I saw them in two Bottom Lounges at two very different parts of my life.

Obviously, this is only the end until a good friend of the band has horrible medical bills and Bane does a benefit show. Then maybe eight people on the internet will complain how dare a band reunite after they break up. As for Bane's legacy, like every band, it's in how they made the audiences feel and how they treated their fans.

What matters is that Bane's last two Chicago shows were the best I remember seeing them. They looked like a band rejuvenated and played with obvious joy. The crowd for both shows yelled at them for multiple encores. What matters is that I sobbed through my cries for one more song. What matters is that I'm crying as I type this.

What matters is that Bane wants me to know it's okay to cry. What matters is that when I wasn't equipped to handle my life and couldn't find a way out of it, Bane helped me navigate.

And now that I'm beginning to equip myself for my journey, Bane says goodbye.

After night two, Bedard and I talked about comics and counseling. We talked about facing our fears as adults. I'll regret running away from Dalbec to catch a bus for the rest of my life. I'm sorry about that, Aaron.

So, to Bedard, to Dalbec, and to everyone who's ever been in Bane: Goodbye, thank you, and I can't wait for what you're doing next.

I think I can type this part without crying. I think I can. Ciao y arrivederci.

What Have You Ever Risked?

Dear Esther, a well-recieved Half-Life 2 mod got so well recieved, Valve (the makers of Half-Life 2) included, that the modder and Valve came up with a deal to add to the mod, include better music and then sell that for money. Unsurprisingly, the mod community feels betrayed, because they're a bunch of insecure kids who don't understand the concept of making something, thinking its awesome and then a certifiably awesome company says "hey, we want to sell this with you" and going through with it. As Dave Eggers once put it: No is for wimps.

But beyond that, the community is spouting the insane theory that the plan was always to make a game for sale, that Dear Esther going in the mod community was just a way for him to seed it for its eventual release with the free release of the full game. Which, I guess, if you take two Ambien and mix it with a couple shots of tequila and a handful of horse tranquilizers, makes sense.

(Wait: It doesn't.)

It presumes that the guy knew, when he started the project, that he would have a venue to sell it in and something worth selling. Which is ridiculous. But even then: What if that was the plan? That all the time spent on ModDB in 2008 and 2009 was just an investment in a later return on a 2011 release for this project?

Then it still means the mod community wins. What I mean is that the mod community has the kind of talent within itself, to release games that Valve Software (nobody's idea of a bad game company) thinks is worth cleaning up and charging money for, which means that more people should be paying attention to the mod community, because that's where the new shit is and will always be.

What remains, whether the mod community likes it or not, is that there will be a game that one of the best videogame companies ever believes is worth paying for that has its origins, its growth and its full bloom in the mod scene. More to the point, it's still available today, for free and will likely remain so for the rest of its existence. If that's not a victory for even the most anti-commercial people in the mod scene, I'm not sure that they like winning.





One of my favorite Bane b-sides, You Wrote This Song For Me. Relevant lyrics: "This has nothing repeat nothing, to do with your ignorant arrogant ass. Or some preset image of some preset scene..."

Oh, Look, An Adventure.

I don't want to talk directly about the whole adventure I was on. Hopefully, by hyperfocusing on moments, it'll give you an idea of the intensity of the experience, positive and negative.

The adventure I teased ended up being more than I could have imagined, not all of it good. There were moments when I questioned the choices I had made up till a point and moments when I simply ran like hell. I can't talk about all of it. What I can say is that I ran through the streets of Leeds terrified. I strolled through the streets of Leeds, full and satisfied. I walked through the streets of Leeds confused and pointing at a map.

(Also, and most importantly, the truth is so much less satisfying than whatever your mind is filling in. I was there, I'd know.)

I never had a shot of espresso before. I had two in 45 minutes in Leeds. I hardly ever dance. I danced for hours. I had a plan for getting into Leeds that I thought was pretty bulletproof. I arrived at the first hotel, beleaguered, roughly 2:45 a.m., after landing in a completely different city an hour after I was supposed to arrive. I thought on the plane that the entire trip was an opulent indulgence, likely to end in brooding failure. I woke up the day I was leaving, still questioning how I had gotten so lucky and feeling like I'd made a few good decisions in my life.

I got confused, twisted around and lost my bearings for an hour in an industrial park at midnight and only regained any sense of composure was when I realized I was in a Bane song, running (with my mind screaming at me) through an Audi dealership. I asked a question worth asking of writers. I looked through a supermarket in wonder and looked at my bank receipts in shock.

I saw a friend I hadn't seen since 2005 and saw friends I never met before. I had the bus taking me to the Leeds airport get a flat tire and still arrived with hours to spare. I had some of the best luck I've ever had with some of my worst decisions. There are highs, there are lows and in Leeds, the inbetween was irrelevant. It existed, but it doesn't really tell anything about the experience of adventuring, of wandering through for real arcades to find places I was told about on the internet, plopping down at a coffeehouse with no idea what I was going to order or being terrified the cabbie would let me off miles from where my hotel was.

(He didn't, and was kind enough to go out of his way to take me directly to the hotel. Arrow cab company, fyi.)

The epic adventures aren't about the destination, but the journey. Lord of the Rings wouldn't be half as sweet without the huge spider or the Naz'Gul (illegal in 42 states, stolen shamelessly from Telltales' poker game) or the talking trees. I live in the real world, so spider queens, Ents and zombified humans riding dragons are right out, but the thrill of being somewhere new, with someone you only kind of know for an experience you have few parallels for, I think, crosses over nicely.




This is the song that saved me, eight years later. This is Bane's Sunflowers and Sunsets.