As a product (victim?) of the modern world, I have set a series of alarms to help me awaken every morning. The first alarm is still an actual clock on my headboard. One button is broken, though, so it’s consistently 20 minutes ahead—I can’t fix it. It goes off at 7 (7:20 a.m.).
My brain switches on.
(“I spend my days watching the walls…”)
If just barely.
The second alarm is 7:15.
(“Check my machine, nobody’s called…”)
That one belongs to the bit of ruffled hair sticking up from the blanket-cocooned figure off to my right. The inoffensive series of notes still – three years later – give me exhaustion flashbacks I can feel in my chest. It’s the same one I used to get up in the wee hours to bottle-feed one of our cats when she was a touch-and-go neonate.
Third alarm. 7:30. Polite robo voice reads the current headlines – the equivalent of Captain Picard commanding “Computer – damage report.” Has the news been anything besides a dystopian nightmare in – what? Ten years? I’m usually awake by now and selecting memories on Facebook of all the exciting things I did in years gone by (the pre-dystopian nightmare years.)
(“A symphony keeps pounding in my head endlessly.”)
Throughout all of this, there’s a background track. I have lifelong jealousy of these people who say they hear music in their heads, grow up, and *make* music. It wasn’t until recently that I realized I do have music in my head. Constantly. It’s just someone else’s.
Add to that those rare times when you have a song in your head, get in your car, turn it on and feel-hear that exact song flow out of the speakers. These are times when you reach out. These are special call your mom, buy a scratch off ticket, play hooky from work times.
Unerringly, when I wake up with a particular Dallas-based artist as my head-track for the day, I hear from said artist – usually before lunch. I’m serious. Call it a mental bat signal.
Universe.
Send me Salim Nourallah.
This morning’s song is “It’s Lonely When You’re All Alone.” My mind is trying to help me start an assignment: to write about the show I attended on Saturday. Salim played a retrospective of music made with… and without his brother, Faris.
Universe? My order?
7:40 am – Salim, unbidden, messages me a Dropbox link to a new recording of “It’s Lonely When You’re All Alone.”
I’m not even joking. I don’t question it anymore. It’s been this way for years.
This is my sign to begin.
I look up words before I start writing. I want to make sure things mean what I think they mean.
“Retrospective” also has the words “postmortem” attached to it. Retro. The Ago. Gone. Passed by. No longer inhabiting this particular coil.
Dead.
Dead?
Death is not for anyone but the Brothers Nourallah to declare. And I, and those in attendance with me on Saturday, are only privy to what Salim has chosen to show us.
Galactic is different
Walking through the front door, the “stage” set up is the same as it was five years ago: to my right instead of straight ahead. This makes the rows of audience chairs longer and puts the bathroom (the bane of Salim Nourallah’s listening room existence: imagine heartfelt string plucking and emoting while worrying if the door was left open, if the fan is on, or if someone will provide a declamatory flush while a song rises to an emotional crescendo – All of which I have witnessed here) at the back instead of the prominent front.
When we gathered here years ago, on May 4th, 2019, I barely knew the gentleman in question or the impact he would have on my life. At that time, all I knew was I would be a witness to a birthday party of sorts. Salim’s 52nd year saw him looking back at the career he had made for himself thus far.
The room was set up almost identically—projections on the ceiling then just as tonight (Dec 28th). That time was completely unplugged, though. Salim and his guitar alone and almost haloed in pink and purple-tinged light against the wall. Trust is implicit and earnest. I will show you my soul, but you must stay quiet enough to hear it.
And that night, Salim held thrall over a rapt audience. The bargain was fulfilled.
How would this night compare?
Tonight, Salim is doing something similar, only this time we are gathered to watch a retrospective of the material Salim has made with… and without his brother Faris. 25 years since the Nourallah Brothers – the album and subsequent schism.
I barely get a chance to talk to Salim before people start arriving. Except for two familiar faces, they are all strangers. I spy at least one person with an actual printed-out Prekindle ticket and smile. That is the sign of a true Galactic first-timer. I remember my first time here and my lack of just such printed media. Tween daughter Miette was manning the door our first night here and ready to tell me and my lack of ticketing proof to hit the road, Jack. Dontcha come back. Salim to the rescue: “It’s Liz and Doug!” Like we’ve always been here, will always be here.
“We don’t have ten more years; I don’t think we have-”
Five? my mind automatically fills in while overhearing Salim’s conversation with the people who just arrived.
“Three.” He finishes.
Salim believes his brother Faris is going to drink himself to death.
Presumably Faris is using alcohol as a form of self-medication to cope with his unaddressed mental illness – almost 24% of people with mood disorders do.
Considering how many people are already gone from my high school graduating class for that very reason, I choose not to doubt his statement.
My nervous system defaults to weird, accidental shame.
My entire childhood, my mother and I made excuses and hid my father and his mental illness struggles.
I watched Doug and his family do the same thing until right before his mother passed, and they finally dropped the charade: she doesn’t have the flu, she’s not just out of town… she’s an addict.
Mass exhale of breath we didn’t realize we were all holding.
Oh, honey, we’ve known for years
The whole truth of my step-sister and her substance abuse struggles has yet to truly emerge as we just passed the anniversary of a year since her terminal overdose.
(Why isn’t he at church? Why didn’t she come to the reunion?)
(Why did you leave?)
(It’s Christmas.)
Still, I didn’t know you were allowed to *know* the truth, let alone speak it so plainly.
Salim seems resolute in his decision to make the best of the time he has left with his brother.
The “no contact” line in the sand drawn years ago for Salim’s peace of mind washed away down to tentative reaching out. Cautious, friendly smoke signals sent up from opposing shores. “We can talk about music,” Salim tells me. That’s about it.
Safety.
The music is electric tonight
A keyboard, two seat/mic setups, and various guitars on stands. “The Nourallah Brothers” will be Salim, Paul Averitt, Richard Martin and Chris Holt tonight. Rahim Quazi (one of the aforementioned galactic friendly faces, musician, and Nourallah bosom-friend-in-good standing) tells me later that this is par for the course. The public face of the Nourallah Brothers… never contained both brothers.
Until recently, Faris was only a name to me
I don’t have any siblings, so this connection is mystifying to me. Relegated to quiet pursuits of reading, writing, drawing, staring sadly at game boxes marked “2-4 players,” I always wanted a benevolent older brother to take care of me and protect me from bullies, but (except for my relationship with Salim) I have very little idea of what a sibling relationship might truthfully feel like.
Due to my status as an early loner and a singleton, I apply a very black-or-white style of judgment to the complexities of interpersonal relationships. I don’t know what “sibling” feels like. I can guess. I can imagine. In the case of a coworker who tells me he and his brother spent their childhood seeing who could land the other in the hospital first, it sounds horrible and renders my pie-in-the-sky imaginings naïve to the extreme.
Faris was a paper cutout. It was the name of someone Salim would talk to on the phone, a relationship that sometimes seemed to cause him pain (more often than not). So, applying my black-or-white judgment, he hurts my friend: this relationship must be untenable.
When is it ever that simple?
My homework is an almost 20-year-old article from the Dallas Observer where the author dealt with a very similar idea: Faris as a Boo Radley-esque character living in self-imposed exile.
In reality, Salim and Faris could almost be an interchangeable set of chose-your-own-adventure characters. Salim’s eyes (well, Father Fayez’s if you want to get genetic) look out of a slightly varied face carved by different choices and circumstances – both perceived and external, depending on your locus of control.
Another Galactic family member (hi, Jude!) gifted me with a set of Moon Festival CDs (Moon Festival being the sort of early day non-Nourallah Brothers Nourallah Brothers undertaking). I tried to pick Salim out of the liner material and failed two out of three times. He and Faris look that much alike.
It’s dawning on me now that – except for two years, when Salim too roamed existence as an only child – this person has been closer to Salim than anyone for his whole life. The face in the mirror, family life, experience, love. This is why we are here. This is why we and 28 others have gathered to watch Salim send another psychic, musical smoke signal to his brother, his blood, 600 miles away.
The first Set
…is directly from The Nourallah Brothers‘ 2004 album. Track one, Public Skool is already familiar as a Travoltas song (one of Salim’s other band projects). For the most part, the remaining songs are wistful, with themes of love, love lost, childhood pursuits gone forever, and simplicity never to be recaptured.
“A Morning Cigarette” is my favorite. I can’t explain it. Its imagery is extraordinarily vivid and again: so very sad. These types of songs have always appealed to me. The inevitability of time and nature and choices made – usually the wrong ones.
The Band of Brothers article, almost as an aside, quotes Rolling Stone when they reviewed Salim’s 2004 album, Polaroid. “Rare is the songwriter who can stop time,” but Salim Nourallah does just that.”
A lot of performers could stop right there. Rest on that particular laurel and ride it like an exhausted pony until it drops. I, myself, think this would make an excellent epitaph:
Here Lies Me
Rolling Stone Liked My Album
This also gives me the strangest double-exposure view: Rolling Stone said something nice. About my friend. Now and then, I’ll be poking around at Galactic or Salim’s studio, and I’ll see an award or an accolade and have that exact reality-stutter moment. My friend is… (starry-eye sigh) fancy…
The quote could explain why his music is my chosen soundtrack. And stopping time is just what he’s doing right now as we all sit and listen.
It makes me happy that someone off to my left has stolen my usual lines and continuously declares “Beautiful” and “Gorgeous” as each track marches by and Salim’s voice gets quieter, bordering on husky. Indeed, each tune brings up memory after memory of what it was like to sing songs before, in The Ago, with his brother by his side.
Set Two
… is music made apart but haunted by each other, and the ghost of brotherhood and camaraderie dashed to pieces and bleeding.
During one quiet moment, Salim’s cheek looked wet—just a little. I asked him later if I was seeing the truth or a trick of the light. “I was so caught up in the moment, I honestly don’t know if I teared up.”
I’ve gone back to try and look for a hint of what I saw and I can’t. Vocally? It sounds like it might have been Model Brothers – a song from the aforementioned Rolling Stone-adored Polaroid (Salim, I’m being poetic – just let me have this!)
“Now 34 and 32, can’t think of when I last saw you. The dreams are gone. Don’t smile a lot. Didn’t work out like we thought.”
I’ve heard this line a hundred times, but in this place and at this moment, I want to cry, too, just for the pain and loss of bygone days.
Could have been.
Off a Cliff
This is the last fun song, Salim announces before “Goddamn Life”. Then we drive this thing off a cliff. Remember Toonces? Toonces is taking the wheel.
And where are we driven?
We are driven down “The Road”, a heart-rending song by Faris, and here is where I accidentally take what will surely end up being one of my favorite pictures—a point of pride in a short photographer’s life trying to show my musicians who they truly are.
I place it next to the cover of Salim’s 2007 album “Snowing in My Heart” – the song that very appropriately contains “It’s Lonely When You’re All Alone” – the other song here down ‘the road’ where Salim is laid bare before us – 2007, 2024. A baby-faced 40-year-old, 11 years before I met him. It’s hard not to want to put myself in the narrative, but I guarantee you: everyone Salim knows does the same. When you know Salim Nourallah, your life is neatly separated into the Before Salim and the After.
The 57-year-old Salim inadvertently struck 40-year-old Salim’s pose, and this is where my Photography Fundamentals professor crows in my head, “You’ll take 100 pictures to get the one you want … to get the good one.” This is the one I want: the one placed there just for me to see. Galactic was packed on Saturday, but with very little exception; they were strangers. No one else would feel the tug of gravity while watching Salim put down his guitar and stand exposed and vulnerable, eyes downcast, hands fumbling for a place to go.
Hair is longer; the glasses are missing in the Ago (a concession to rock star vanity?) picture. Salim tells me he is both a practicing clotheshorse and collector (it’s not hoarding if your stuff is *cool*, but I’ve also been to his immaculate house, so I think his version of never throwing anything away and mine are probably very, very… different.) The boots might be the same, and I feel I’ve seen the original jacket recently.
What would that person tell this person? What choices would he urge the younger man to make? Time is running out with everyone you love. Love them. Protect yourself. They are flawed. But love them anyway. In the end, if music is the only language left: speak it. Speak it with all your heart.
“Chris and I used to play this one back in the day when my third album came out; this is just a straight-up message to my brother, I guess.”
You used to be so reckless and brave
Weren’t you?
Now you only cower and say
They broke you
You can’t even open your door
Most days
When were you erased?
Tell me: was it something I said? Salim pleads during his song, “Erased,” also from Snowing in My Heart.
I’m wishing this could all be erased
Hoping for your sadness replaced
I think the world is calling your name
(Faris)
Don’t be afraid
Don’t be afraid
Don’t be afraid
Here his voice almost cracks. Don’t be afraid, he begs.
Come back to the living. Come back to life.
There’s time as long as there is breath.
There is still time.
Watch this Space
So long ago, after a second show was added to the birthday retrospective, I wondered out loud if lightning could strike twice – when Salim is your Master of Ceremonies: I can all but promise it.
Salim assures me you will get a second chance to witness the Nourallah Brothers show sometime in February, pending the resolution of multiple super cool rock star schedule conflicts.
Watch this space.
Update
Saturday, March 1st is the date for show two!!
Get Tickets Here
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From Venus to West Texas Care of Jesse Daniel Edwards
