Shaw Island is the smallest of the San Juans. No tourist accommodations. Not many roads. Only one store, plus an outfit that makes fish tags. Only 165 people live there year-round. Mostly nuns, it seems. Until 2004, the island’s only store and ferry terminal were operated by the Franciscan Sisters of the Eucharist.

We had been camping there for three days, playing in the driftwood, when a man stepped out from the woods one morning and sat down with us as if it was any other Tuesday. He sat quietly for two full minutes, while we looked on, astonished, then he finally spoke.

“Pezzner. I see it, you are Pezzner.”

Before he said that, he already seemed like a seriously weird dude. Scruffy, new clothes gone tattered, smelled a little. Didn’t make much eye contact. He cradled a cup of coffee and explained himself, or tried. He used to live in Seattle, doing work that was “technical, very,” but he’d moved to the island some time ago. He doesn’t remember exactly when. The problem, he said, was the voltage. Being around the lights and machinery gave him headaches, it hurt his eyes, he heard voices in the buzz, voices that told him to get away.

Here, he hides out in the Cedar Rock Reserve in the south part of the island. Foraging. Staying away from people, mostly, though in colder months he sleeps under the porches of the low-key millionaires who keep places on the island, but are hardly ever there. He said he was a musician, or “used to be,” or “sort of is maybe.” He brought some equipment, but only uses it two or three times a year. After a while, he says, it makes him tense. The headaches and voices come rushing back and he has to pull the plug.

He finished his coffee, accepted a hot bowl of oatmeal from us, then walked back into the woods without saying another word. Two days later, we were at the ferry dock when he materialized again, with a dirty padded envelope.

“Pezzner. Here, music, and documents. From an old session, a night session. And also, your bowl.”

The envelope contained a pile of hand-drawn ideograms and a single DAT. (I had to borrow a DAT machine.) On the tape was a single three-hour performance, non-stop, intact except for some noise and glitches. The tape was dirty, and had at one point been wet. The songs you hear on “Puerto Toro” are edited excerpts from this performance.

Pezzner
August 2015