All week this week I ran an enormous interview I conducted in May and October of 2003 with Jason Webley, who played his last show of the season at Town Hall in Seattle on November 1st, 2003.

I ran the first four parts of these transcripts in July, just ahead of the Monsters of Accordion shows, which I was unable to attend. They may be seen here, here, here, and here.

Part One of this batch is here, Part Two is here, Part Three is here, Part Four is here, Part Five is here., and Part Six is here. The permanent URL for this entry is here.

This is the last of the long walking interview conducted in May. I ran it after the show because I think there might be stuff in this segment that people would appreciate knowing after the show on November 1 instead of before.

Part Seven

MW: [inaudible] Freeway Park

JW: You don’t say. . .

MW: It’s such a strange park. Are you familiar with it particularly? You may have actually checked it out at some point. . . It’s such a strange park.

JW: I think that cities have, like, centers. Places have hearts. And maybe those hearts are different for different people depending on their experiences. I think that is you asked – Like, I remember when someone first told me that there was a park over the top of I-5, I didn’t believe them, I laughed at them. It became a joke, we joked about it. [laughs]

And um, you can walk right by it – you drive right under it, like, like, you move, you go by it in so many different ways without ever finding it – you can try to get to it, and be right next to it, and completely be unable to get there.

Freeway Park is great.

There’s a lot of like bad talk about Freeway Park. It’s probably totally justified. There’s also a lot of bad talk about Ravenna [the location of the tree-cocoon ritual from the prior year’s winter show].

The valley, Ravenna valley. I love the fact that we were in an urban place. . .

MW: We must have walked for miles. I was amazed. I mean, I had been down there in that park by the stream with Spencer; we played music. . . [inaudible]

But we’d never gone all the way to the end before; not too long ago I looked at a map, and I was like, “Holy fucking shit! We did walk for like a mile and a half!”

JW: Probably a little more, yeah, probably a little more.

The fact that you can be in a completely urban area and then suddenly, without having any kind of grounding thing like telling you where you are, walk for that long – I feel that’s such a beautiful thing to be able to possibly give to people. A moment in this world with so many signs telling you where you are, where you really – don’t. Where your trust and your doubt kind of, have to become married. Where you really have to look at those things.

You’re a part of this thing, you’re moving along with it; and I guess that’s what’s happening. But you’re scared; you don’t totally trust the accordion guy. And he’s no longer even. . .

MW: . . . The accordion guy.

JW: It really interests me.

MW: [inaudible]

JW: I think it was a synagogue.

JW:This is where I wanted to take you on the interview anyway. This was my original idea when I thought we should have a mobile interview. Was that we would come here.

MW: And so we are.

JW: I always get what I want.

MW: [inaudible]

JW: You can think of a freeway as being like water, but it’s hard to feel that on any kind of a deep poetic level almost anywhere in the world but here.

MW: [inaudible] It sure feels like a river up on the hill. [inaudible]

JW: I guess I wanna have an evening – back when there was the guerrilla concert thing, I wanted to have a scavenger hunt or something. The whole guerilla concert thing was a good idea, and maybe it will get revisited. I think you need a bigger base of support. I always think it’s such a pity that giant superstars don’t have more fun.

[inaudible]

It’s easy to not know that that exists. You can walk right past that, without being at all conscious of it, as what it is.

MW: The first time I walked up it. . .

JW: It’s easy to get stuck in the wrong place.

. . .

You don’t find them too often. The feather of truth is white. It’s a white feather.

. . .

Yeah, there might’ve been a lot of murders in here.

. . .

I never found a feather entwined with a worm before.

MW: [inaudible] [the worm belongs to the air force?]