Seawater

I haven’t got around to blogging much lately, but there was just no way I could not tell you all this one.

I’ll set the scene: I was playing a solo show on a hot and humid Hobart night just a few days back. It had been a long day; I had already played an afternoon gig in the sun and I was pretty ruined, but I pulled myself up and on to the stage where two other punks had just finished playing a couple of acoustic sets.

The weird thing is that no matter how shit I feel, it disappears when I start playing a good show, and this one had started well. Halfway through the first track — a cover of Uncle Tupelo’s ‘Still be around’ — I take a quick breath between words and suck out of the microphone a mouthful of what I could only distinguish as seawater. I was more surprised than anything else, not only by the fact that I had a gob full of juice, but that there could be seawater in the microphone.

Before I had time to think about it more, I started to get ready to sing the next line and instinctively swallowed. The instant it went down I thought of Kenny and Pat, the two preceeding sweaty punk rock singers, and realised I had just drank two hours’ worth of their fruitiest spit and sweat.

I drank fucking sweat.