There are these chance encounters you have that inevitably will alter the course of your entire life. When they happen they aren’t so apparent; just seemingly accidental occurrences in our otherwise unremarkable days. For me, meeting Kyle Palmer was one of these life-altering events, leading to a friendship that would span over twenty years and lead me on some of the wildest, funniest, and sometimes life-threatening experiences I’ve ever had. There is not a single person on this planet that is or was anything like Kyle. You’ve never truly lived unless you’ve rode as his passenger in a vehicle, flying down the freeway at impossible speeds, possibly seeing your existence flash before you like a super-8 movie as part of your soul leaves your body and is now looking down at you. Something like that. He was simultaneously the Ace of Spades and the Joker in the Pack.

I don’t know how many times this week I’ve sat here in my flat in Berlin and tried to write, delete, and rewrite these words. Part of me doesn’t want to finish this, because in doing so I would be acknowledging some kind of finality to a crucially important part of my life, which I view as infinite. The conclusion I came to is that committing these words to some sort of document is a way to make sure this part of me continues.

Contaminated rehearsing in Kyle’s bedroom at the Tofu Compound, sometime around 1998-1999

Like many people in Seattle’s underground, Kyle was one of the first people I met when I moved to town. He welcomed me into the new city, made an effort to call me and invite me to shows and parties, and we instantly became close friends. In many ways we were kind of perfect foils for one another’s characters, while somehow sharing the same sense of humor and creative spark. We often spoke in code, cracked hair-brained world domination schemes, wrote songs and played in bands together, came up with terrible ideas for products, edited each other’s (at many times) questionable fashion choices, acted out parts of movies, met each other at 3 in the morning to go bowling because neither of us could sleep more than a few hours a night, counsel each other over our relationships, and so on. I’ve seldom met anyone with the same kind of deep intelligence and emotional connectivity as him. He was beloved by just about everyone he met, and for me, represented what made Seattle such an amazing place to live.

“I wish I was the brakeman
On a hurtlin fevered train
Crashin head long into the heartland
Like a cannon in the rain
With the feelin of the sleepers
And the burnin of the coal

Countin the towns flashin by
And a night that’s full of soul
With light in my head
With you in my arms”

— ‘Fisherman’s Blues’ by The Waterboys

Kyle and Brandon in the van on Phalanx US tour 2003

One of his favorite songs was “Fisherman’s Blues” by The Waterboys, a Scottish folk-rock band from the 80s, and one day while I was living with Kyle in an apartment in Seattle, he excitedly came home with a vinyl copy of the LP of the same title. We were both previously familiar with this song, but this record became a bit of a soundtrack to this era, in 2008-2009. He was spinning it constantly, and regardless of what we happened to be doing in the apartment, dishes, phone conversations, cooking, what have you, we would both stop and chime in on the “Whoo-hoo-hoo!” part of the chorus. Living with him was an adventure in itself, and we were constantly pulling juvenile pranks on one another. There was one particular instance where I came home from work and found him on the couch, quietly watching a series, and when I walked over the rug we had in the living room to join him I was met with the unsuspecting sounds of bubble wrap popping under my feet, because he hid it there, as a booby trap, and after which he burst out into laughter and yelled “That’s a wrap!” Absolute genius.

Jack and Kyle dancing like Germans in Dresden, 2001

You can hear a certain song over and over and assume it’s about a particular thing, and come to accept that as a truth, and then over the course of time the world changes, you change, your life is redirected… and these same songs you’ve heard over and over again suddenly begin to have new meaning. When I first heard this song, I always thought it was about traveling. There’s all of these references to trains, and passing through villages, and a sense that the singer is wishing to be anywhere but where he is. I put this song in the same category as “Singapore” by Tom Waits, or “Vagabonds” by New Model Army: travel songs. These songs were actually something Kyle and I shared a very mutual love for, which had for years prior been the soundtracks to our backpacking adventures across Europe and the United States, as well as gigs and tours with our bands Contaminated, and later in Phalanx.

Kyle’s silouhette annihilating a beer in Santa Fe, 2003

Travel to us was the most important thing in our lives; we would watch episodes of Anthony Bourdain’s No Reservations and get inspired, plan future trips… constantly scouring the internet for low fares. He was a person that instilled a sense of adventure in everything, and whenever I spent time with him I felt like living was something more than just mundanely pacing through a work/life balance, but something to be pursued, chased, something that is challenging and thrilling.

Sometimes he could be incredibly frustrating, but hey, who of us isn’t really? Perhaps sometimes I found him frustrating because I could never be as free as he was, always walking the line and cutting things so close to the edge of chaos sometimes… you really never knew what to expect. One day on Phalanx’s European tour in Hamburg he vanished before we were supposed to play, nowhere to be seen. We went on reluctantly as a four-piece only to see him minutes later heckling us from the audience. As mad as you would want to be at him sometimes, you could not help but just love him. Like I mentioned, we were foils for one another, and every comedy pair needs a wildcard to counteract the serious one.

Horsey ride on my 30th birthday, 2009

I haven’t listened to this song in the last years, and in the light of the recent news of Kyle’s passing, I’m revisiting it and seeing new meanings to these lyrics. I’ve changed a great deal in the last decade as well, and this makes me think of the ephemeral nature of music, in that the space you happen to occupy at the moment will shape your interpretation of an experience, and as you change and evolve, so does your experience. So perhaps the song isn’t just about not wanting to be where you are and wishing to be somewhere else, but more about the pain of having to leave someone behind, of leaving a part of yourself behind, of moving forward after the painful act of letting go.

“And I know I will be loosened
From the bonds that hold me fast
And the chains all around me
Will fall away at last
And on that grand and fateful day
I will take thee in my hand
I will ride on a train
I will be the fisherman”

Like your impression of a song, you’ll find new meaning in old experiences, you’ll see different colors in paintings or photographs you’ve never noticed, and hear songs in the backgrounds of your memories you’ve forgotten. The one thing I’m certain of is that my life wouldn’t be anything close to what it is today without my connection to Kyle, and I’m so humbled and thankful to have had the opportunity to have him as a centric part of my life for so long.

With love, [rh] 30.10.2019