Luke the electrician checking in after 21 years

Hello, Luke the electrician here. I would have responded sooner but I was off traveling to NYC to see a musical (Book of Mormon) and go the the 2024 Nanny Ball with my babe of a wife.

I’m glad so many of you enjoy the little note I left behind a couple decades ago as an optimistic 25 year old about to start making “real money” after getting my 01 Journeyman license. It was not customary for me to leave notes on jobs, but sometimes a little drawing or an encouraging note to the next person in a crawl or confined space (never an F you, it could be difficult enough navigating spaces many people can’t fit into). I loved finding hidden notes from previous generations, especially while working at the old Rainier Brewery when it was sold and then occupied by Tully’s Coffee. Pencilled notes from the 30’s, brushstroke autographs in the old paint shop upstairs, or dirty limericks carved into solid wood walls from the 50s, I certainly thought it would be more than 20 years before someone found a note I left on the back of a junction box cover, but internet stuff would develop and happen and I’d be answering for it to lovers of harmless mysteries, and tradespeople in the PNW who wonder if we’ve crossed paths.

Being a blue collar electrician, I was jealous of the new people and international travel some of my college bound friends had experienced. Within 18 months of writing this note-on-metal, I took off for hitch hiking in Ireland, buying electroclash records in Berlin, getting hit on Boy George in London, and to leave my work a nighttime voicemail letting them know that 6 weeks traveling wasn’t enough and and I’d be back home in a couple more, and if they didn’t like it oh well. That trip I met and befriended guys in the London-area band Armitage Shanks, and a couple years later was asked, despite not knowing how at the time, to play guitar on their upcoming US tour. So I learned how. World travel became US travel with my pal Stacy in garage-punk-whatever band Pony Time. My Seattle musical career perhaps peaked with the infamous Stallion show with brutal attack on me at the Rock ’n’ Wrestling Rager in 2017, which sent me to the hospital, and the band broke up before we could finish our record deal (for those wondering it was not Sub Pop, they were too small). Only a few rare copies of the double-cassingle are out there, don’t even look to buy one unless you have real folding money.

I travel now still, but not as hard as I did before. I don’t hitch hike to Canada anymore or sleep outside if I don’t have a place to stay, I guess I travel less dangerously. These days, I probably would get all the suggested shots and anti-malaria stuff before going back to India again instead of just saying forget about it like I did in my 20s. The part of traveling I used to do more was the “show up and figure it out maybe without a place to stay, no map, and take if from there.” That kind of travel is almost obsolete what with computers in phones, but it was exciting and thrilling at times being chased by muggers outside Battersea, or stopping a break in at a hostel, getting free classical music performances at churches in the day and clubbing at night in Europe.

In 2002 I also set a little time project in motion, inspired by the band Negativland. They had made albums as part of their high school senior project, all with hand made covers, and 15-20 years later is was worth money. So I made a record with a 4 track tape, not knowing how to play any instruments, and released it by mailing 3-5 copies to select dance record stores around the country, and a few around town. I sold exactly one copy at the time of its release, and never collected any consignment. Tube Alloy: The Detection of Sub-Atomic Particles started to get interest from underground dance and lofi people, and 12 years after its release I was shipping cases of the record to Canada and Germany for distribution.

I’m rambling here, but I just wanted to share some details of what I was cooking with at the time, where travel led me, what it brought me, and the trajectory it set me on. It’s not been easy but it’s led to a more fulfilling life, better understanding, and a way to connect with people when I may have so many other difficulties connecting. It’s also easier when you’re younger, at 26 I was way more willing to sleep on the floor under a dining table because that was the only spot available.

For by IBEW brothers, hello! I’m no longer a member, I’ve given up construction in 2022. I was in Local 76 last, but started in 46 before getting booted out in my 2nd year, which is why you may not find me on a list there. In my 2nd year I had drawn some cartoons of my foreman, which I thought was somewhat justified considering he used some racialist and homophobic language. The cartoons were so funny and rude that some management got ahold of them and they got faxed around the company’s job sites all over Washington, and yeah that kind of thing will get you fired and banned from some certain Seattle-area apprenticeships around 1999/2000, before they made foremen take mandatory classes on how to not call people f*gs.

I hope it’s been a mildly interesting read for you, it’s been fun for me dipping down the road of rocky memories, and thinking back on my rush to see some of the world before it was all catalogued and digitized by someone else. I still want to travel to former eastern-bloc countries and see some of the brutalist and modern USSR architecture before it disappears or becomes inaccessible. I miss a lot of my Seattle friends, but maybe I’ll see you around when I’m not living in the hills of North Carolina.