No blood in any of this

I remember green feeling different. Green that was more than just a shade reserved for grass slowly emerging through the melting snow in the not-winter seasons of my youth. Green that hummed on a monitor, green with sharp corners and dull edges. Pixelated and cold, but teeming with life and possibility. Green that promised the future.

We went to see Kraftwerk last Saturday, here in Toronto. I say we, I mean myself, Lysh and her By Divine Right bandmates José and Colin. Truth be told, I’ve never been much of a Kraftwerk fan, and that is on me. I had this misguided notion of the band as a bit of a joke. Four men, standing still and stoic on a stage, playing songs about computers, calculators, and autobahns. I was wrong. I often am. As I get older, I find myself getting more used to the idea that I am often wrong about the things I held as truths, and being delighted in learning the truth hiding around the corner. A gift of the aging process, growing old enough to challenge obstinate truths.

We were just barely on time, which is to say we were late as far as Kraftwerk was concerned. Showtime was 8:00 PM, we searched for our seats at 8:01, 1 minute exactly into “Numbers”, from 1981’s Computer World. The band, unaware of our tardiness, moved effortlessly through “Numbers”, which melded into “Computer World”, then “Computer World 2”. The four members on stage (from left to right on stage) Ralf Hütter, Henning Schmitz, Falk Grieffenhagen, and Georg Bongartz wearing suits lined with strips of light, that synced with the stage and the podiums that held synths, patch cables and whatever mysterious miracles of science they use to conjure their creations. Behind them, an LED screen flashed with light, a digital tapestry in motion that felt like a piece of living art, as if one of the men on stage was building it in real time, an extension of the music they built from their podiums.

In the backdrop of “Numbers”, the screen fills with perfect digits. A perfectly kerned sequence of number's burned neon green into the screen, and I thought about how the future used to be something to believe in. There was a time the computer was in its own room in our house. My dad brought home an IBM PS/2 that lived at the end of the counter in our living room for a day and a half, before its incessant hum and distracting clicks were too much for a common space. My sister had recently moved into a new bedroom in the basement, and with that, a closed door became the entryway of the Computer Room, an interior design concept that feels locked in time, like conversation pits lowered into the living room, and carpeted walls. I’ve only ever been in one house with carpet on the walls, and it smelled exactly as bad as your imagination tells you it will.

The computer was distracting, partially because it was exciting. It was new, and it was unknown, and it was built of secrets. It lived only by command, sitting still and lifeless, 60 Hz of humming and anxious nothing, until eager fingers gave it something to live for. C:/dir. Then life began, then it had only the truth of all it knew. Always with the promise of something more. Always with the whisper that this was only just the start.

Kraftwerk had been a mystery to me, but they have been Lysh’s favourite band for a long time. While we waited in line to pay for tickets on a laptop covered in stickers teetering on the edge of the coffee table in the living room, Lysh moved through the bands' catalogue on her phone. Streaming lossless audio over bluetooth to the HomePod we have sitting on top of our record shelves. We only have Autobahn on vinyl, and to give me a proper overview we had to resort to streaming. Who Kraftwerk were shifted away from misconceptions in my mind as she moved through tracks, moved into something that felt new and old all at the same time. Like buying a brand new, refurbished MiniDisc player. Familiar and built for dates on an old calendar, but still new and thrilling.

Lysh played her favourites, select hits and with each new turn, I became a fan. A gift in getting older, challenging old misconceptions, and walking away with something new to love. I said that it made me think of “Temporary Secretary”, Paul McCartney’s electro-pop single he swears wasn’t inspired by Kraftwerk from McCartney II. We watched a video on YouTube of the earliest footage of the band, in a club in Soest in 1970. The band looking very different from the well choreographed automatons they would come to embody. Playing keytars and making digital rhythms in an analog world. The crowd sits largely confused, some bordering on irritated, save for the select few who thrill at the changing tides. Something new, a taste of the future, a vision for what lay ahead. As the concert goes on, more of the gathered masses hear the future from the stage and find their own joy within it, clapping and nodding and finding the beat.

When our IBM PS/2 died, we got a new computer, a refurbished unit discarded by the Government and bought at auction for a fair price. A 386 processor, more ram, more hard drive. I could install Sim City 2000, DOOM, and Space Quest. I could tune the SoundBlaster 16 just right. I learned how to diagnose problems, how to code, dialed into a BBS. Typed onto a mechanical keyboard the clicked and clacked with each strike. Every day, the computer felt like it was offering something more, something new, and every day it felt like there was more to come. I read magazines about gaming, about tech, about computers and the future. It felt alive, it felt tactile, as if you could see the hands building and guiding it towards something, always eager to see what came next and how we might build it together.

Lysh and José wrote Kraftwerk 2017 in aspiration of seeing the band on the walls of a venue in Dawson City where her and I first met for the second time (It’s a long story, read my upcoming book The Dad Rock That Made Me a Woman, it’s all in there). This show, to them, had been a longtime coming. There are few pleasures in this world greater than being out a show with your partner and watching them love every single second of it, a show she had been waiting for so long. She took videos, photos, pointed out moments she loved and the parts she was waiting for. Talked about how their band used to cover “The Model”, just like Big Black. I watched the screen behind the band, ensorcelled by the visions that shifted and danced on stage. Words emblazoned on the screen, geometric shapes presented in flashing abstracts, or a satellite hovering above the earth that zeroes in on a spot on the map that is slowly revealed to be Toronto. Applause. During “Autobahn”, a video of a car driving on a road that looks like a Windows 95 screen saver left on a little too long given sentience. All of this old, but all of it exciting and alive and built by the hands expertly moving in time on stage. Digital art designed and produced by analog desires.

This is what the future used to feel like, analog, alive. As if the hum of the computer was a heartbeat, pumping blood through processors into surge-protected powerboats. The future used to be exciting, just there on the horizon, turn the corner in the Windows 95 screensaver burned into the screen, and you’ll see it. And instead, now, it feels lifeless. Destroyed by greed, the death grip of capitalism, artifice masquerading as intelligence. Machine-learning. Machines dead and cold and lifeless, stripping bark from the trees in effort to pass it off as their own solid timber. The void at the end of an idea.

Kraftwerk ended their main set, turned and walked offstage in time, then returned after a well-timed break to play a three-song encore, starting with “The Robots”, and the screen came alive with robots that looked like puppets, like Thunderbirds, like how we used to create our visions of the future. The future made by hand, the future we could see and name. Robots that moved like machines, digital art made by expert hands. Machines that don’t learn, but act. I watched the robots on the screen turn, pose, pivot. Lifeless but alive. The hum of computer, the rhythm in their blood. And then it was over, the band said farewell and the lights went up exactly at 10 PM and the perfect idea of the future was put to rest. My phone reminded me of meetings and schedules and comments on the Instagram stories I had posted. Another news alert about a book written by AI. No blood in any of this, just glass and aluminum, cold and silent. The green faded to black, and then gone.