Trevor Sensor is a singer/songwriter from Illinois. He recently released his debut EP, “Texas Girls and Jesus Christ” via Jagjaguwar and has been touring the US and Europe in support. Every few weeks, Trevor will be documenting his journey here with Sensor’s Tour Stories. Stay tuned!
It’s my second day in Brighton, and I’d just met this girl the previous night at my show—we’d gotten a few beers in us and agreed to meet up the next day as I had a day off and my manager wanted to catch the FA Cup Final and possibly drink himself into a stupor if Manchester United ended up blowing it (which they didn’t). I meet up with her at this park (of which the names of all these places I don’t remember), where there’s a few tents bunched together with bands playing in them. Her friend Greg (who I also met the night before) is with her and we get beers and sit around and ease our way into conversation. I can tell they’re nervous at first because there’s a tension between artist and non-artist (which I find ridiculous because I’m nothing special and a nobody, but they don’t seem to think so and end up asking me all these questions about my music and so on). But this tension breaks eventually as the alcohol loosens everybody up. Both the girl and Greg are PhD’s and study science, but act like total muso’s and belong on the road like me instead of being pent up inside academia, offices, and labs—so the conversation’s good and I’m feeling good as my body is running well on little sleep mixed with tobacco and craft beer.
The girl’s name, by the way, is Marie—and she’s actually a German who moved to England during her college years and is well acquainted with Brighton (though doesn’t live there anymore, but is there for the festival like I am and is staying with Greg who still has place a little ways up town). Blonde with interesting, speckled eyes—from what I know of her she’s wild and digs good music, and is wearing this romper that’s driving my loins mad. Raining is drizzling around us, and my head is swaying back and forth from being empty to over crowded with voices and thoughts and the often anxious feeling I have whenever I’m in a city around too many people. The beer is numbing this though, and eventually we leave to go to this pub by the beach. The beach is colored in sadness with grey, English skies and seagulls flying everywhere searching for something. The pub is nice, though, and Greg actually takes off for a bit to go see a band that Marie and I weren’t interested in—so her and I buy another round and we start chatting about movies and art and what bands were digging etc. I tell her how I’m obsessed with the works of both David Lynch and Woody Allen—and she infers off that that I’m some cynical, anxious guy who gives a big thumb’s down to the world and where its heading in the void of space and time. I tell her that’s exactly how I am, and that the world is something I’m not really keen on participating in—and how I want to travel and someday live on some mountain away from everything because I feel that’s where my destiny lies. Marie tells me how she’s going back to get her second doctorate as where she ended up (doing some form of research, if I remember correctly) left her dissatisfied with her work—she wanted to be an actual doctor and get out of the labs and offices, which I understand completely (as everyone should).
Another round in and we’re moving in to the dreaded conversations about politics and religion, to which I blow off because politics don’t interest me and religion (or lack thereof) is something too personal to be discussed on the public forum or with strangers. So I listen to her opinions on these matters—a sound Leftist, rides the line between atheism and agnosticism, and wishes to shed the shackles of capitalism and contemporary society that droops over our shoulders and pushes us to stay in bed all day and drown in the oceans of our minds.
We leave and go to a venue to see this Norwegian songwriter who does this sort of insane lounge act but wasn’t dressed for the part. His voice cut through the air and his body trembled and shook as he belted each howl about lost love and the usual woes of the singer-songwriter. I stand close to Marie and she nuzzles up to me—we rock back and forth and get blown away by this guy and his band and the crowd is digging it, too. I can feel this connection with her, this sense that we were once lovers in another lifetime or dimension and that we’ve found each other again through pints of expensive beer and good music. I’m simply nuts.
The day goes on like this—going from pub to venue and back to pub again downing more beer and hearing more music…this connection growing (I think) and I also think Greg is noticing it, too. Everything is mad, and my head is spinning now the drunker I get, and with that I lose my mind over thoughts of the future and past and how my life seems to be this continuous experience that’ll end someday. Ah, God. As day turns to night she convinces me to go to this club with her—as typically I wouldn’t go near a club as the people, the noise, the music, and all the social expectations drag me down to the point where I just want to go to bed anyway, or curl up somewhere reading a book and having another pint. But we go—and it turns out to be the exact kind of smoke filled, bumping, raging, basement hull kind of club all Americans romance about when they think of English dance clubs. What madness! We get more beer and we dance—me awkwardly at first, as my buzz has mellowed and I’m kicking it back up with this next beer in order to loosen up and actually have a good time in this club with Marie and Greg. Eventually this happens, and it actually helps that, unlike American bars and clubs, there are no social expectations here to find some girl to grind on in hopes of sleeping with later, but instead just to dance and delve into the music itself. When I realize this, I fall in and close my eyes—kissing Marie every now and again the dark and feeling her body groove in tempo. Ah, life! What madness is this that I’ve landed in England playing these shows and meeting new people like Greg and Marie—somehow ending up at this notable club in the liberal town of Brighton where anything is possible and no one wishes to drown themselves in the sea like in America (ah, God, our emotional depravity). I’m in love with England.
The night ends with cigarettes and a long walk back to Greg’s place where I sleep and find myself hungover the next morning needing a breakfast—which we get, before they take me to the train station to get back to London. I say bye to them, and Greg leaves Marie and I alone to give each other a few pecks and tell each other we’ll try and meet up again at some point while I’m in the country (stay tuned for that). And as I ride the train back to London, still hungover despite my bacon sandwich breakfast with a Coke, I think of all this madness in my life and how I’m on the road (even now as I’m finishing up writing this), and how Kerouac and Neal Cassady would be proud of everything because I’m escaping the chains of American middle-class life and the drudgery of every day work. Hell, I’d rather die by the bottle than deal with all that!
Story by Trevor Sensor. You can follow him on Twitter @trevorsensor.
[Editor’s Note: Check out Trevor’s latest video for “When Tammy Spoke to Martha” that just premiered on CoS!]
