.<\/p>\n
For whatever reasons \u2014 sympathy, or sadness, or the headlines and articles about Thurston\u2019s and my breakup that followed us wherever we went that week \u2014 we had the passionate support of South American audiences. Tonight\u2019s crowd stretched out in front of us and blurred with the dark clouds around the stadium \u2014 thousands of rain-soaked kids, wet hair, naked backs, tank tops, raised hands holding cell phones and girls on dark boys\u2019 shoulders.<\/p>\n
The bad weather had followed us through South America, from Lima to Uruguay to Chile and now to S\u00e3o Paulo \u2014 a corny movie-mirror of the strangeness between Thurston and me. The festival stages were like musical versions of awkward domestic tableaux \u2014 a living room, or a kitchen, or a dining room, where the husband and the wife pass each other in the morning and make themselves separate cups of coffee with neither one acknowledging the other, or any kind of shared history, in the room.<\/p>\n
\u201cHello!\u201d Thurston called out genially to the crowd just before the band launched into \u201cDeath Valley \u201969.\u201d Two nights earlier in Uruguay, Thurston and I had to duet together on another early song, \u201cCotton Crown.\u201d Its lyrics were about love, and mystery, and chemistry, and dreaming, and staying together. It was basically an ode to New York City. I had been too upset to sing it, and Thurston had to finish by himself.<\/p>\n