"...that mythopoeic faculty which is so essential for the imagination."

Since being first introduced to Mary Renault with The Persian Boy years ago (oddly enough by my then girlfriend), I've been a fan. I hadn't read any of her books in years when I stumbled upon The King Must Die in a used book store, so I decided to dive back in. If you don't know her, Ms. Renault's specialty is rendering classic historic tales into lively stories often ripe with rich homoerotic content. The King Must Die is sort of retelling of the legend of Theseus and didn't have any of the homo stuff of the Alexander novels, but was a fun read none the less.

Part of her charm and talent is in taking legendary tales and re-imagining them as more or less plausible historical events. There is of course going to be a certain level of artistic freedom required in any such undertaking, but her final products are usually fairly compelling. I'm of course not a classics scholar, but as you move through these stories you get a sense that she has worked hard to populate her landscape with plausible inhabitants not just transplanted contemporaries. This novel had all of that on display, but it was her treatment of the supernatural that struck me.

Greece mythology is filled with supernatural creatures and super-human acts and part of retelling these tales in a believable historical context is figuring out how to render these supernatural elements as believable without losing the magic of the tale. She takes the more unlikely creatures, like the Minotaur in this story, and works with them, turning them into fully human elements or showing them in the context of natural phenomena. But what she notably does leave intact are the religious supernatural bits. I haven't really decided how I feel about this.

On the one hand, I like that she strays from the obvious fantastical elements of the traditional legends. In a way she gives them new life and makes the characters more three dimensional and relatable. And I like that her attempts at realism didn't drive her scrub the religious elements from it. There is still this muted religious dialogue going on, and by dialogue, I mean a dialogue between the protagonist Theseus and the gods. She doesn't have them appear directly before him performing miracles and the story could possibly function with the gods existing in it only as figments of the characters' imagination, but they function as silent partners enough to argue that she intentionally left them in. At some point in reading the novel, a question formed in my head, "Why include some supernatural elements and exclude others?"

The simplest argument would of course be that it is a matter of style. This is her style of rendering historical fiction and apparently an effective one. Perhaps she eliminates the greater external supernatural bits which would intuitively set off bells in the readers head that this is a fictional rendering. It is, of course, a fictional rendering, but a successful one precisely because an argument could be made that it could have happened that way. If he had faced a truly half-bull/half-man monster, you wouldn't really get to make that argument. By leaving all the potentially supernatural elements as the works of unsee players who just happen to sound like and have effects like natural occurrences, you can still argue for its plausibility. The characters can believe the gods caused an earthquake and you can read it as something that could resemble a historical event. The story is narrated by one of those characters so he is naturally seeing the hand of the gods in events around him.

But its inclusion doesn't seem as incidental as all that. I came away with the feeling that she left these gods working in the background as purposely included players in the story. She leaves room for the modern cynic to explain them away, but she breaths into them a certain life of their own.

I know I'm swimming in circles here, but I'm trying to get at something. I'd argue that her stories are richer for the inclusion of this religious element as not just background but as an actual mover in the plot, so I have no complaint with that.

It is interesting to me that in a way, inclusion of a supernatural element renders landscapes more believable. Of course it must be well done; nothing is believable without style. Marquez or Kundera are so believable partly because elements of their stories are so fantastic and impossible. In a way it makes the realism of the story stand out in stark contrast, but they are extreme examples. I'm partly just getting at the importance of exercising the capacity for belief in the unbelievable.

I made a comment over the holidays about "Christians" in third person which shocked someone who I wouldn't think I could shock with any statements about myself considering how intimately he knows me. He asked me if I no longer considered myself a Christian, which seemed an inscrutable question. "Huh?" was kind of all I could think to say. On the one hand, considering the state of modern Christianity, do I consider myself one of 'them'? Hell no. I've said before that most people who call themselves Christian these days are idiots and assholes and aspire to be more of both far more than they make any aspiration to follow the teachings of Jesus. And then there are those who are more truly Christian in the sense of having some code which they follow based primarily on New Testament teachings. Those folks I can relate to. And in plenty of ways I'm still one of them. It was how I was raised, and when push comes to shove with the world, there is a mentality modeled on Christian teachings which is what I resort to.

On the other hand, I think there is something to say simply for the capacity for faith and belief in the supernatural. I read plenty of writers, particularly fellow bloggers, where I perceive an almost total rejection of anything not firmly rooted in the cause and effect world. And I don't mind someone else approaching the world that way, but I like my fantastical bits. I don't try to put them at odds with concrete reality, but neither do I care to try to 'prove' that they are based in concrete reality. They are the magical bits, I don't want them explained to death. The creationists are a bunch of fucking idiots who are just torturing both worlds by trying to have this cake and shit on it too. You want to believe that the earth is young and people lived with dinosaurs? Fine, I don't care if you do believe that, but keep it the hell out of science. They don't fit together and won't.

But when my friend asked me if I was no longer a Christian, I think his question was about faith more than identity politics. In effect his implied question was, "You've lost your faith?" The answer to that would be no. My crisis of faith came years ago and nearly splintered my head (you think I exaggerate, but in this instance, not in the least), but I walked away from it with my faith and mind intact, if perhaps a little less dogmatic. I felt like I stepped up to a precipice and looked over into the shrieking vastness, all existential turmoil and angst hurling me over the edge... and then I quit trying to make it all fit. The expanses quit howling and I could again smile at the music of the spheres and get out of some of my self-righteous importance and desire to have all the answers and be RIGHT, and so learned to just relax. It is an amazing world we live in, a spectacular universe we inhabit. I felt somehow put in my place, which was both the center of it all, most important of all things ever and at the same time the least important, most insignificant speck. I backed off the demands and more properly positioned myself and decided that the only prayers that I'm really qualified to make amount to "Wow," and "Thank you," (though to tell you the truth in my more centered moments, even the simple "Thank you," feels a little indulgent and self important).

This isn't to say that I don't still argue with the cosmos and beg and plea with God. I do. I'm writing this in the middle of the ocean. If nothing else will at the same time bolster and shatter your faith, the ocean will. But the point of all this, the faith that came out on the other side has its deepest roots in Christianity and that remains central to the way I approach the supernatural, but on the other hand, after feeling like my spiritual ego was so broken and freed by all that, referring to myself as Christian feels a little constricting. The identity of someone as 'Christian' has more to do with how they align themselves historically than anything to do with faith. My older sister made this very clear to me when she told me before the last election that she was voting for bush because he was the 'christian' candidate. Kerry was a Christian candidate too just like every other damn candidate we've ever had, but bush's invocation of belonging to the same social demographic as my sister was more important as an indication of faith that his actions.

Perhaps that frustration has made me particularly reluctant to refer to myself as a Christian these days. There has been a loud claim staked on the American Christian identity, and to put it plainly, I don't want to be counted in that number. The jackasses and idiots have claimed that title for their cultural touchstone. But as far as my faith, it remains. I'm still uncertain about plenty, but also in the context of having to deal with all these fucking pharisaical idiots parading their cultural identity around as faith, I've perhaps become a little bit more grumpy and easy to rouse. It gets confusing with people like my sister, who in terms of actual faith and having this core set of beliefs which governs how I interact with other people, we aren't very different. We are amazingly similar. Though it pisses me off when she identifies her faith with warmongers like the president, I know that the creed she follows personally leads her to first treat others with respect and kindness.

I've gotten off track. Simply trying to write down my original question born of reading The King Must Die, "Why include some supernatural elements and not others?" brought out the explanation without even trying and let the nagging questions presented to me earlier about my beliefs come bubbling up. We live in an absurd world. This isn't a complaint. I guess in the end for me the inclusion of the supernatural in a view of the world, be it a novel or personal faith, ends up being a choice of style. Do the supernatural elements render the whole more spectacular or do they detract?

Mary Renault uses the invisible supernatural elements in her stories to connect the characters to the events of the natural world around them and the emergent properties of the civilization they live in, or perhaps more accurately she uses these elements to show how her characters make these connections. In the end this is what all supernatural elements are, a way of connecting things which may not otherwise be connected or for understanding connections which aren't otherwise clear.

While home over the holidays, I dug through damn near everything I've ever owned (you could call me something of a pack rat; I like to think of myself as an archivist) in a vain attempt to find my dive card, but I did manage to find some books I'd been looking for. Among those, perhaps the smallest and easiest to lose is The Decay of Lying by Oscar Wilde. It is ostensibly a play, though I can't imagine it ever put to stage, but is more or less a soliloquy split into a dialogue about art and life and the cult of Truth. It deserves its own consideration and will perhaps get it in a future essay, but there is a line which I quite liked about religion: "As for the Church, I cannot conceive anything better for the culture of a country than the presence in it of a body of men whose duty it is to believe in the supernatural, to perform daily miracles, and to keep alive that mythopoeic faculty which is so essential for the imagination." What a wonderful description! If only that were what the church concerned itself with these days...

Who needs sad songs when you have sad movies?

Today is the third day in a row we've had nothing to do because we are waiting for the moon to come back before fishing again (you don't catch many swordfish during a new moon), and my roommate has been tearing through his formidable movie collection. He is watching a movie when I get up in the morning, and pretty much watches one after another til on into the night. Some days I like his selection and watch along, other days... not so much. This afternoon, he put in Saw II. I hate hack 'em up flicks. I can do scary and don't mind some gore if the story comes first and the gore is secondary, but... whatev'. Saw II was about as far from anything I would chose to watch as you can possibly get.

I've said before that the movie libraries on these boats are completely without rhyme or reason, but perhaps nothing better illustrates this than his choice of movie to follow-up Saw II, which would be Steel Magnolias.

At then end when all the sad shit is happening, I'm up in my bunk trying to not sniffle loudly enough for my roommate to hear me. This is a fishing boat. You can't be all weepy in an ultra-macho male work environment, right? Well, actually I suppose you can if you are watching Steel Magnolias because after he turned off the movie and there was no longer the noise from the movie to hide it, I could hear him sniffling in his bunk.

This is one of those great movies for playing if-we-were-who-would-we-be? I've always supposed that if we were characters from Steel Magnolias that I would want to be Truvy, mostly just because I like Dolly Parton, but I've always been sure that I would instead be Clairee. One, she is a likeable character, but more than that, amongst my friends from college who I usually play this with, there was always a dichotomy between my friend John and I, so that whenever there was a diametrically opposed pair of friends amongst the characters we each had to be one of them. And in this cast, John would be Ouiser so I would be Clairee. This was mostly fun to say because John would then huff and argue and make everyone agree that he was in fact Ouiser.

Watching it this time, I've changed my mind. I want to be Ouiser. She is the best ever. I can't wait to be cranky and old and grumpy like that. Actually, I guess I already am. I was realizing while I was home at Christmas, I'm already the grumpy guy in the family. Amongst my friends, I might be Claire, but at home I am totally and completely Ouiser. I'm the one that storms in and bluntly asks questions that no one else does and the one who voices complaints that no one else will say and the one who gripes about being dragged along to things that everyone else is being cheerful about. And I like it that way. Someone has to be grumpy and why not me?

Maybe I should start wearing funny hats, too.

Sad Song Mix continued: the final cut

I could probably spend the entire damn trip writing about the songs that should be included and why I won't include them, so I'll just cut to the chase (this of course is no guarantee that I won't change my mind several times before hitting land again and give you more boring play by play the whole time) and share the final line up with a few comments on the selections:

1) the longest drive - the Capricorns (for the duration of this commentary, I'm not capitalizing most titles of songs and mean nothing by it other than I'm feeling lazy. )
So maybe in the greater universe this isn't one of the saddest songs of all time, but I've been Capricorning myself to death and obsessed with them since the last trip. In listening to them over and over and over and over again on that trip, it struck me how truly sad this song is, which you would never notice if you just went by the frantic electro beat, but when you give it a good listen that frantic pace only seems to reinforce the desperation and loss this song is a record of.

2) the grand tour - George Jones.
As I said before, the man has a voice made for breaking your heart. This isn't his most desperate song but it packs a wallop. "A Good Year for the Rose" might have edged this one out if I had it in my library.

3) golden ring - Tammy Wynette and George Jones.
Again, I've already discussed why this song is so pointed. You are probably thinking to yourself that I'm not really going to break anyone's heart with my song selection so far, and that might be true, particularly since I imagine my main audience to be comprised of cold hearted bastards (which you must all be since no one ever leaves comments. Of course this assumes an audience...).

4) miss being mrs. - Loretta Lynn.
Too damn beautiful for words. So simple and to the point, just laying out flat how she is missing her husband. No embellishment, just direct and lovely phrasing.

5) letter to mom - Iris Dement.
Enough of just sad, let the soul crushing begin. If she wanted to sing it sad, Iris Dement could make you cry with "Jingle Bells"; there is just something in that voice. If she, Nanci Griffith, Emmylou Harris, and Gillian Welch brought their voices together, what hell they could cause. Throw in Lucinda Williams and the vocal combination could destroy us all if they decided it was time for us to cry. They each have a different kind of gorgeous warble that can either make you think of angels or just rip your fucking heart out. Iris is kind of the most punk of them all, with the most unruly voice which can sound so childishly innocent but always barely holding back this ethereal growl. She (particularly with any combination of the above women) could make the most amazing Southern gothic rock opera album. Let's imagine it with all of them...

I'm getting off track. I'll plan out my fictional world where I decide who sings what songs later. Back to sad songs and Iris crushing our souls. "Our Town" might be sadder in a way; it is certainly more defeated, but this song is so wrenching it is hard to believe it was even written much less sung and, having been sung, that it was sung by this voice. It starts so friendly but the subject matter... holy shit. (note: in the liner notes from this album, Ms. Dement points out that this is not autobiographical, but she did write it to help her process a story told her by a friend.)

You could argue that this song is too upbeat sounding or too defiant or...no, listen to it again and cry some tears.

6) six o'clock in the morning - ?
I don't know who the artist is. I can't remember for the life of me and have lost all the other songs I had by him, but I remember all the ones that I had were somehow in this same vein of wow-life-is-miserable-but-you-have-to-trudge-on. It is just sort of plodding misery and the weight of life's futility piling on instead of any one tragedy. Instead it focuses on that horrible moment of any routine day -getting out of bed- and treats it as the Sisiphean task that it is.

7) one more dollar - Gillian Welch.
One more soul-crushed-by-daily-life, there-but-for-the-grace-of song. Something in this song is so sad to me. I listen to it and cringe (and then listen to it again).

8) cold missouri waters - Richard Shindell with Dar Williams and Lucy Kaplanski.
This is cheating. This is from the album Cry Cry Cry which was made by these three sadists for the express purpose of collecting tear jerking tunes. But I don't care. The atmosphere in the song, the way the story is shared, the death bed confessional of it all. So damn amazing. Just a good plain sad song.

9) lonlier than this - Steve Earle.
Steve Earle can write a fucking song. And though he does great rebel songs and love songs, his sad songs are pretty hard to beat. I love this song. From the first time I heard it, I was mesmerized by the direct wallowing of it all. "It doesn't get any lonlier than this," is a pretty bold statement but he catches that emotion that makes that statement seem truly pained and sincere rather than hokey. I love singing this song, but Mason blatantly refuses to play it ever on account of it being too sad (this is from someone whose favorite song to sing in "Long Black Veil").

10) travelling soldier - Dixie Chicks.
I wanted to include "Am I the Only One", which is one of my all-time faves, but somehow in all these other songs its existential howl seemed too far away. "When You Were Mine" was a close second, but for just sheer complete and utter sad-songness this one can't really be beat. Natalie Maines has the voice to deliver it, and the story is so sweet then so lonely and hurt. It starts so pretty and you kind of have a moment when you know it is going to turn bad, but really, the image of the lonely girl in her band uniform crying under the bleachers while no one else cares is so insanely heart breaking.

11) ruby, don't take your love to town - Kenny Rogers and The First Edition.
The groovy back beat and finger picking makes the song sound amazing in a way that it is easy to forget some old country songs used to sound. But Kenny's quiet pleading in the song contrasts that so perfectly. It can't be just a man wishing his woman would do right by him; it has to be a song about a crippled vet watching his woman slip away from him because of his war injury as he lies there slowly dying. Don't hold back now. Of course, the song most likely to make anyone anywhere cry is Rogers' "The Coward of the County" and I haven't forgotten this, but I figured one rape song is enough for any list and anyway in the end of that song, you get revenge and get to feel an explosive surge of everything-is-right-in-the-world that kind of nullifies the pure sad-songness of it all. (Note to Kenny on the off chance that he ever reads this: drop the 'touching' mellow adult contemporary stuff for a while and make a kick-ass rough-around-the-edges album. And do a duet with Dolly on it. In a perfect world, the duet would be a cover of the Mountain Goats' "No Children" a la Kiki and Herb).

12) if we make it through december - Merle Haggard.
Just one of the most heart breaking songs ever. Not woe-is-me-my-baby-left-me or any crap like that, but a poor man being crushed by not being able to provide for his family at Christmas time.

13) martha - Tom Waits.
I've already written extensively about this song, so I won't beat a dead horse. Just so beautiful and sweetly sad. Tear-jerkers don't have to all be soul crushing.

14) getting over you - Janice Ian.
The way this woman writes and the way she sings... damn! "At Seventeen" could have been here, but teenage misery only deserves so much sympathy, even when it is captured so perfectly. And this is just so sad. From the first moment you hear the voice in the song, there is this tension of "I'm fine, no problem" and just-about-to-lose-it. There is that moment when she sings "You want answers that I can't give; you want words I don't know!" where her voice explodes at "know" and does something that gives me chills. The phrase is powerful enough and then she has to do that thing with her voice and it blows my mind every time.

15) red dirt girl - Emmylou Harris.
Again, one of these warbly angel voices that can kill. Of all my beautiful tremulous ladies, Ms. Harris's voice is completely other-worldly. Almost too hypnotic to break your heart at times, because you can get so lost in it, but this song kills me. Maybe it hits me all the harder since it is set in my landscape. Red-clay Alabama is my homeland, and there is something about that dirt that gets to you. That may seem like a dumb thing to say, but... I don't feel like discussing the affect of the soil on the mood of the landscape from my childhood. Let's just say when she sings about a red-dirt girl, it has immediate impact for me and there is built in tragedy in that landscape and the story in the songs fits perfectly. I wonder if I'd feel the same about the song if I were from somewhere else.

16) billy grey - Robert Earl Keen, Jr.
Just a plain beautiful tragic love song. This man doesn't get near enough credit as either a song writer or singer. Something in this song always gets me.

17) ruby's arms - Nanci Griffiths.
So Iris can growl and Emmylou can make you feel like you are in a legend, but for just breaking your heart straight out, nobody's got nothing on Nanci. Something in her voice cuts like a knife. This song is kind of pleasant and billowy, but the sadness is so overwhelming. It is one of those songs where I start wanting to pick it apart as I listen and scream at the protagonist not to leave, to question motives and all that crap, but her voice pushes that away and I'm just left with no doubt that he has to leave, that he truly loves her, that he can never turn back and I accept it all kind of soothingly, but then Nanci sings "Jesus Christ, this cold hard rain; won't someone put him on his train?" And my heart breaks right down the middle.

18) sweet loraine - Patty Griffin.
This is the first song by Patty Griffin that caught my attention. When I was in college in Charleston, the local music store had listening stations and I used to go between classes sometimes and just bury myself in songs. This album was up for a while and I listened to this song over and over and over again. It blew my mind everytime. It still does. The little phrases in the song are the ones that kill you. "Her mother threw stones at her on the day she moved. Now isn't that a funny thing to do, from someone who never really wanted you?" and "Her daddy calls her a slut and a whore on night before her wedding day; the very next morning, at the church, her daddy gave Lorraine away." would be gut wrenching by themselves, but again we've got a singer here who makes you feel it.

19) anymore - Travis Tritt.
This almost feels cheesy next to "Sweet Lorraine" but Mr. Tritt can deliver sad and be believable in a way that too many of "Today's Hottest Country" artists can't. I would just consider this a nice sad song, but I've got the indelible memory of the video attached to it. He had this series of relentlessly heartbreaking videos to go along with his songs and this was the clincher (if I'm remembering correctly). In this one, he is a wheel-chair bound vet whose best friend is an old black man who walks with a cane, who is working on his boat when his very pregnant wife brings him a snack, slips on the boat, hitting her head as she falls into the water. He crawls out of his wheelchair and sprawls helplessly on the dock reaching for her in the water as his old friend wades into the water to pull her to safety. She dies, but the baby lives for him to raise alone. The song is being sung as he his preparing to explain to his now adolescent daughter how her mother died. The video ends with them pulling up in their boat to the place where the mother is buried and his daughter turning to him and saying "Why do we always come here on my birthday, Daddy?" It sounds too schlocky to stand, but somehow they pulled it off without making seem like a farce and basically just pile as much tear-jerk as can fit in one video. The song by itself is sad and beautiful, but the memory of that video won its place in my mix.

(update: note that in the comments, some kind person corrects my memory, pointing out that the video I described remembering above was "Tell Me I Was Dreaming". This was actually a video trilogy, with "Anymore" showing him in the VA hospital, becoming friends with the black guy, trying to push his wife away and finally breaking down and returning her call and finding her still in love with him. She takes him home and every -including you- cries and smiles. The end of the trilogy with him taking the little girl to her mother's grave is chronicled in "If I Lost You". To make sure I got it straight this time, I just re-watched all three videos and had my heart smashed to bits again. Do not watch these unless you really want to cry.)

20) sometimes i still feel the bruise - The Mountain Goats.
Again, I've already covered this song ad nauseum so I won't recap here. Go read the other post.

21) You'll Never Leave Harlan Alive - Patty Loveless.
It isn't a warble that makes Patty Loveless's voice so deadly, but there is such unbelievable power in her voice. And few people can sing sad like she can. There are a couple of other songs from the same album which are heart breakers, but this song still stands out. The story is beautiful and tragic, but the whole sound of it kills you. If it didn't have words and she were just singing the sounds you would still get your heart destroyed by this song. You don't need the words. More than any other song on this list, it just sounds tragic. Brad Paisly also recorded this song, and I can't imagine what he was thinking. Actually, I can. It is a beautiful song and who wouldn't want to sing it? But damn, the list of people who could do it justice after this version is a very, very short list and Paisly is a great entertainer but only a good singer. Raul Malo or Toby Keith or Dwight Yoakam might be able to make a passable swipe at it, but still...

22) he was a friend of mine - Willie Nelson.
It is no secret that I love Willie Nelson. Obsessively. But all that aside, this song is a killer. So quietly sad. And this isn't a song that is easy to sing (try sing along for a minute. I'll wait), but Willie's voice captures something so perfectly here. The song has this tremendous potential, but without the right voice it would be nothing special. The lyrics are kind of repetitious and bland, which are strengths the way it is sung here, but in different hands you would just have a plodding, pleading yelp. Oddly enough, I have three versions of the song on my computer. Cat Power does ok with it. Nothing special. And I've got Mercury Rev doing it. They do a suprisingly good job with it, but the song just doesn't break your heart without Willie wielding it.

Anyway, that's gone on long enough. If anyone has good sad song suggestions, I'm always looking for some tear-inducing heartbreakers.

Sad Song Mix is totally back on!

So I still don't have "There Were Roses" (hint hint Mason, email it to me), but I found that I do have "Billy Grey" and "You'll Never Leave Harlan Alive". Besides, "There Were Roses" skates the fine line into activism songs. Don't worry, I'd still include it happily (or sadly, I guess), but I'm trying to talk myself out of including "Black Boys on Mopeds" which is totally an angry at the world issue song, but so damn spot on in sad-songness with the emotion in O'Connor's voice; and also Johnny Cash's "Ballad of Ira Hayes" which is also super issue-y and sung with more growling defiance than sadness and is sing-songy, but it is so damn sad and wretched that you can't really help having your heart broken. But if I include it, I feel like it is a small step to suddenly including "Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee" which is totally moving but all issue and completely not what I am going for with this time-wasting exercise.

I know that having mentioned Sinead O'connor that the obvious song for a sad mix is "Nothing Compares 2 U", but it was so popular and is so connected in my memory with images of the video that it takes a moment of active dissociation before I can just lose myself in the song, so it is out.

As long as we are talking issue-y but moving sad songs, "Tomorrow, Wendy" was a contender but is also out. The sound of the song is too pleasant and the voice too defiant. Of course this combination juxtaposed with the subject matter and lyrics is what makes it such a moving song, but still, out. I am tempted to let "Joey" in, though. Its melody might be a little too upbeat too, but damn that voice. Knife straight in the heart. If they hadn't backed her with pleasant upbeat tempos we'd have all killed ourselves or been scarred for life listening to Concrete Blonde. But the song is kind of a make up song, not the completely heart stomped tragedy we are going for here. If we were going to let "Joey" on board, then I feel like I'd have to also include "Jesse". "Jesse come home, there's a hole in the bed where we slept now it's growing cold," is about as pleading a line as you could ask for, but still it is a reconciliation song that only might be hopeless and besides, if I wanted my heart ripped out and stomped on by Joan Baez (which is exactly the kind of thing I am sucker for), I would include "Prison Trilogy", which I don't have and which brings us back full circle to issue songs.

Sad Song Mix: ain't gonna happen

Like I've said before, I love sad songs. Really, really, really love sad songs. And a favorite time waster on the the boat is compiling playlists. Some of these actually materialize as mix cd's for friends, but sometimes I just pick a loose theme and run with it. Tonight I decided to, you guessed it, make a sad song mix. I've told myself that I am going to make the ultimate cry your eyes out mix cd, but this aim is going miserably. First there is the issue with suddenly remembering songs which have to be on it that I know I don't have. You can't make the saddest cd ever without Kathy Matthea singing "There Were Roses" or Patty Loveless's "You'll Never Leave Harlan Alive", both of which I should have, but don't have with me.

And then there is the issue of whether or not picking songs that make you cry because they are so touching is allowed. I don't mean horrid shit like "Butterfly Kisses" or "Holes in the Floor of Heaven" (which, being honest here, both of which I found touching-ish when I first heard them -I totally have a soft spot for cheesy sappy stuff like that- but they were beat to fucking hell on the radio and only sort of tolerable from the start), but stuff like Red Sovine's spoken word tear-jerk trucking tales like "Giddyup Go". Yes, just as patently cheesy and intentionally schlocky but the sincerity is sweetly subtle and doesn't feel quite so fakey-fake to me (maybe just because I grew up listening to it) and really, if you can listen to "Giddyup Go" or "Teddybear's Last Ride" without tearing up, you should be institutionalized. Same goes for "Christmas Carol", which oddly enough I would totally include on this mix if I had it, even though I wouldn't allow the other aforementioned touching tear-jerkers. It is kind of in its own league of make you cry retardedly songs, and strangely the first Christmas song I heard on the radio this year, after several years of not hearing it (and it is one of those songs that is only effective if you hear it randomly on the radio).

Anyway, I kind of decided that I was trying to find actual sad songs, not just weepy things (though again, "Christmas Carol" still counts. If you know what song I'm talking about, you know why). Things were going ok until I decided that I would peruse some George and Tammy. Now, when you want to break a heart with voices, those two have criminal talent. This only makes it more difficult. Sometimes they both get a little too goofy with their phrasing. Now George Jones totally clowns intentionally, and you can tell he knows he being cute with his words even when he's singing tragedy, but Tammy Wynette does not. She may know it is a gimmick, but damn if she doesn't sing those songs even more sincerely and deadpan, and faced with this delivery and these horrific messages in cute packages I can't decide whether to bawl or crack up.

I told myself that "He Stopped Loving Her Today" may in fact be one of the truly saddest songs ever written, but it is so omnipresent that it feels like cheating and doesn't have some of the oomph for me that other songs might, so I settled on "The Grand Tour" for Mr. Jones. Mrs. Wynette on the other hand, she is killing me. Seriously.

It is her cheeseball songs which kill you. "D-I-V-O-R-C-E" might be the most ridiculed song on earth because of how silly the concept of the song is, but on the other hand, it kind of rips your damn heart out exactly because of this goofiness letting the heartbreak story sneak up on you.
But you can only hear so many of these songs before you kind of just have to bust out laughing. "Kids Say the Darndest Things" and "She Didn't Color Daddy" and "I Don't Want to Play House" are each heartrending in their own right, but with her whole resume of songs in this vein, at a certain point you lose it.

But being country's power couple of heartbreak, their best stuff is together. "Two Story House" and "Golden Ring" both made the cut. Maybe they aren't exactly what I had in mind when I first started this mix, because either of them if you listen in passing sound cheerful. I remember having listened to them for years and then one day had them both on an album and really listened to them for the first time. I had to listen to them on repeat to just wallow in the horror of this quiet tragedy that slips up on you. "Golden Ring" might really be the true winner, though both are so wretched and effective because they are being sung by both sides at the same time, with no one party singled out as the offending party, instead the breakdown is presented as almost inevitable and unnecessary at the same time. Maybe this is what makes these songs so effective: we know the narrators have personal knowledge of this kind of tragedy, but they sing it from a neutral if sympathetic distance which make the wrong turns and misunderstanding seem so misguided and avoidable.

The whole project is unworkable though. I just remembered that I don't have Robert Earl Keen, Jr.'s "Billy Grey" which is pretty much unmatched as outlaw tragedy love song. Ok, that isn't true, Richard Thompson's "1952 Vincent Black Lightning" is right there neck and neck, though for some reason though I find it harder to imagine it inspiring tears.

There are...

...things in this world that I don't understand.

There is a man that looks slightly like Bono, yellow sunglasses and all, in a denim shirt and badly fitting jeans who sounds like someone's Jewish grandmother interviewing monster truck drivers on the television in my room. Even back home in Alabama this wouldn't make sense. But I'm not in Alabama; I'm in the middle of the North Pacific sharing a bunk-room on a fishing boat with a middle-aged Filipino man who apparently likes monster trucks. Or more accurately, is willing to watch anything on DVD or video because we are way the hell out at sea and our choices for entertainment are severely limited.

Now I have nothing against monster trucks. Really, I love that Kelis video where she drives around in the giant pink monster truck and I might even admit if pressed that I remember as a kid in the eighties seeing clips of Big Foot driving over a bunch of cars and having heated philosophical discussions with my brother and cousins about why one would build a monster truck, where you could get one, who would buy it, what response a car owner might have when they find their car crushed, and whether it was legal to drive one on the highway and if it wasn't, how could they stop you? All important questions, but exactly what kids in the eighties should have been discussing so leave me alone, besides these cousins lived in the big city (Huntsville) and therefore were expert sources for knowledge about the outside world that we otherwise wouldn't have known about. I remember clearly as a very young child being told by them that Dolly Parton had the largest breasts in the world and that she had to wear a solid steel bra to keep them from dragging the ground. I don't think I actually really believed them most of the time, but it is amazing the lengths kids will go to discussing why something is or isn't true when there is no actual authority to appeal to. I hope this isn't completely lost now that the internet is easily available to debunk the controversial misunderstanding that children would never dream of going to an adult for an authoritative opinion on.

Anyway, point being I have to admit to a slight fascination with monster trucks. I even went to a monster truck rally in high school and it was the dumbest, campiest thing I have ever been to. Which is exactly why it was fun. With a group of friends who can laugh with you at the 'transformer' battle and the supreme anticlimaticism of some junk cars getting crushed by a big truck, it is fun. Mostly fun to make fun of after the fact. The 'races' last about two seconds. If they make it even one lap without a truck flipping over on its side, you cheer. Honestly, zamboni racing would be more riveting.

So thank you ESPN2 for finding the only thing less exciting than a monster truck race (which would be interviews with the drivers and fans and random employees at monster truck rallies) and making a show about it. And of course this would find its way into the roulette wheel of offshore video collections. Last night we had a Pierce Brosnon film festival with whichever of the James Bond movies he did with Denise Richards and then The Thomas Crown Affair. Tonight it was Mark Walburg as a hitman in The Big Hit and then Inside Monster Truck Jam. Throw in a a few kung fu flicks; a Filipino, young adult suicide drama with the hottest man I've ever seen in a film and the worst portrayal of the gay side-kick girl's-best-friend (not the same person); innumerable Steven Segal and Jean Claude Van Damn flicks (in my mind they are in constant competition with each other and sadly I've seen enough to have an opinion: Van Damn kick's Segal's ass all over the place); too many kareoke videos in assorted languages; Rush Hour II; and The Blues Brothers and you have either the most schizophrenic cable movie channel imaginable... or your typical offshore video experience. That is just this trip and just the one's that I remember off the top of my head from the last few days.

And you wonder why I play so much spider solitaire.

"You complete me.": a few thoughts on Lego Love (the treatment of individuals as building material rather than autonomous beings)

I wouldn't never choose to watch a sports movie. I just don't. Same as I normally would never choose to sit down and watch sports on tv. This isn't to say that I don't sometimes enjoy both. I remember loving The Natural and Rudy (though I couldn't now tell you anything about either except which sport each involved) and the Boise State/Oklahoma game at last year's Fiesta Bowl was one of the most exciting things I've ever seen. But still, most of the time I just don't get into them, so I stuck in my headphones and started playing spider solitaire when my bunkmate put in Jerry McGuire. If anything sounds more boring to me than a sports movie, it is a movie about a sports agent.

I remember when it came out and everyone was talking about it and how great it was and all these irritating lines from the movie were being quoted. It annoyed the hell out of me and while I never doubted that it was actually probably a good movie, I never really wanted to see it. Oddly enough, the one cheesy line which was quoted over and over again which didn't get on my nerves was, "You had me from 'hello'." Ok, I know that is one of the the sappiest lines in all movie history and easily the most obnoxious from a movie full of obnoxious sound bites. How do I like that one and still grump at all the rest? Well, I'm just like that. Kenny Chesney irritates the holy hell out of me, but I still like the song titled after and based on that line. (Honestly, I do like that song, and reflecting on that I kind of feel bad about some of the rougher opinions I've expressed about K-Che.)

Why am I writing about this now, since I've just declared that I chose headphones and spider solitaire to spare me from this movie? Because spider solitaire only lasts so long and I ended up watching bits of the movie, most importantly the last chunk. The movie is engaging enough and I probably would have just stored that in the back of my head and not really thought about it again except there is the moment which is supposed to be touching when Jerry McGuire comes running back to find his wife and win her back. He comes in to the house to find her in what appears to be a divorce support group and... I started to type 'declares his love for her' but that isn't what he does. He tells her how incomplete the victory was without her to share it with, how much he missed what he shared with her, and all this built up to his big line: "You complete me."

Which made me throw up just a little bit in my mouth. "You complete me," may be the most repellent line I have ever heard. Why? Because he didn't come back and declare his love for her at all, he came back and told her he wasn't letting her get rid of him and declared how much he had missed the role she performed in his life. He didn't say a damn thing about loving her or missing her; he listed out what was missing when someone, who seemingly just happened to be her, wasn't there to perform that role. He didn't miss her, he missed his Wife.

It really fucking got under my skin. I was actually kind of letting myself get into the emotion of the movie and was looking forward to their reconciliation and hearing her say, "You had me from hello." I still like that line, perhaps all the more for how it stands in such stark contrast to this "You complete me," bullshit. One speaks to a spark between two people, being instantly taken by this new person and completely swept away by them; the other speaks to ownership and the sublimation of one individual by another.

The scene was all the creepier given Tom Cruise's recent interactions with the media. He's seemed more and more calculated as time goes on, with his marriage coming across as calculated to look perfect. It may in fact be truly perfect and they may be happy as clams, but it sure as hell looked like he was getting married and having a child for the sake of achieving these appropriate milestones and filling out a fairytale life. Which is exactly what Jerry was doing in the movie and the reason that his wife initially intends on them separating: he is using her to fill a family shaped void in his life but doesn't truly love her. When he comes back, it isn't because he has had an epiphany and found that he did truly love her, he just doesn't want this formulaic facsimile to break up and leave his perfect world with unfulfilled roles. Maybe I'm just being cynical, but there wasn't really anything in his speech to her to suggest otherwise. He said it more emphatically, but emphasis does not change the meaning here and to my mind at least made it even more offensive.

(Bunkmate is now watching some whitewater rafting movie with Alan Alda, Peter Gallagher, and the dad from Alf.)

I'm certainly showing personal prejudice here (isn't that what a blog is for?); I don't like the idea of people looking to other people as solutions to problems or to fill the empty spaces. I'm not a fixer-upper and don't care to date one either. I want a partnership not a supporting role in someone else's life (or someone else taking a supporting role in mine). There is nothing more depressing that realizing that someone isn't actually in love with you so much as in love with the function you fulfill in their life. I've always had a sharp aversion to titles like 'boyfriend' and 'girlfriend', not so much because being one or having someone who I consider as such bothers me, but much of the time I feel like the title is meant to stake a claim of ownership rather than to confer affection. I'll happily claim a boyfriend as an indication of how I feel about him, but in situations where it could be taken as my staking a claim of ownership, I cringe, not at the thought of claiming him, but at the idea of introducing this person not as their own person but as their role in my life. This is coming across poorly (granted, these days I feel that coming across poorly just might be my superhero power), and there is a fine line in it all and more than a few times I have certainly raised the ire of a significant other for not wanting to 'claim' them the way they expected me to claim them.

But this moment in Jerry McGuire perfectly illustrated the worst of this kind of instinct to eclipse the individual with the role: when he returns, he addresses the room of women with a demand for his Wife and as he lists off what he missed and who he missed, it was his Wife and the role she fulfilled for him which he cites, not the woman who is his wife.

I can understand missing the role a loved one plays in your life; that is only human and practically, we do play roles in each other's lives. But missing the fulfillment of that roll and missing how that particular individual makes you feel when they are there to fulfill that role are two very different things. He didn't want to share it with (name I can't remember), he wanted to share it with his Wife. A Wife was an integral part of a perfect life and he didn't want to lose that formulaic perfection he was so close to completing. She was just one more shiny plastic piece that he had to have to to complete his perfect Lego marriage as the crowning component for his perfect, shiny Lego life. He didn't love her, he loved how she fit in the appropriate space.

A few thoughts on the election...

I'm writing this on Tuesday, March 4, 2008. They are having primaries for the presidential race somewhere. I don't know what states and don't really care. I've been enjoying the horse-raceness of it all, but I'm also kind of glad to be out at sea and not have to think about it.

Then again, here I am writing about it, so I guess thinking about it is exactly what I'm doing, but at least I don't have to listen to anyone else going on about it. I imagine this primary won't actually make any more real difference. I'll come off the boat and find out that Hillary and Obama are still at it and McCain is still being annoyed by Huckabee.

As long as I've started, a few thoughts about the election. Let's start with the republicans. It has come down to McCain as the only real contender, but it started out that way. Mitt Romney never had a chance in hell. I'm still flabbergasted that he got any votes at all, but the republican party is the party for morons who do whatever the talking heads tell them to. I'm divided about why I think rush limbaugh and ann coulter and the asshats at fox rallied behind him. One possibility is that he paid them to. They are in it for the money and he certainly had money and liked to spend it. The other is that they know he'd have no chance against Hillary or Obama and if a democrat takes the office then their money train keeps on rolling. A second Clinton presidency is a wet dream for them and make it the lady Clinton and they've can just recycle old material over and over again until they find something new to scream bloody murder about. A black man with a funny name? Also a conservative talk radio dipshit's dream president. Their bread and butter is voicing the indignation of jackasses and either scenario is perfect for them. Either wins and they get to roll around in money the next 8 years while they whip either misogynists or bigots into frenzies.

I've listened to rush and hannity railing against McCain, and honestly their dislike of him is probably his strongest selling point and the only reason he might still have some cross-over appeal. I voted for him in the 2000 primary (in SC, anyone can vote in both primaries) and liked him reasonably well until he became bush's do-boy for the last eight years and started screaming like a banshee for more and more war. There are things to like about him and he at least seems to take his cues from the real world and the affect of all this animosity from the loony fringe of the right wing is that they are going to have less influence in his Whitehouse than they had in the last.

But McCain won the South Carolina primary this year with fewer votes than he had when he lost it last time, and this without any other serious contender. The only other person who ever should have had a chance was Fred Thompson and that is only because he looks the part and we all love our actor politicians. But he puttered flat pretty quickly. Strangely enough the last man standing when I went to sea this last time was Mike Huckabee, whose only reason for being famous nationally is losing weight while in office.

I'll come back to him another time, but right now I only want to consider real contenders, and even discussing the republicans is something of a concession. There is a slim chance that McCain might get it, but let's get real. bush kicked his ass back when he was still likeable and the only reason bush was able to take the office the first time was that lieberman made an already boring Al Gore completely unpalatable while all the raging loonies bum rushed behind georgie porgie. And he still couldn't win the popular vote and had to rely on dirty tricks and pulled strings to make up the difference.

I know, I know: we can't assume anything and the repubs might stay in control, but anyway the only real race right now is between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. It has been the only race all along.

So what do I think about them? Thanks for asking, I'd love to tell you.

Either of them would make a great president in comparison to any of the presidents we've had in the last twenty years. The country would run ok with either at the helm, but I don't know that just running ok is enough right now. I think we really have more pressing issues than we want to admit and they are all the more pressing after the last eight years of complete fuckery from that office.

I used to listen to Randi Rhodes talk radio show while I worked back in New York. She's all fire and fight when it comes to politics, but I remember her once telling a caller to never, NEVER discuss politics while drinking. I liked that and have tried to make it a rule to live by for myself. I get fired up about politics and once the ball gets rolling I don't pull punches no matter who I am talking to. Sober, I know how to keep it from accelerating out of control downhill but drinking...I'm like everyone else so I try to back avoid politics. Certainly with republicans this is a hard and fast rule. Anyway, the point is that I kind of let myself loosen up a little with this rule. Discussing Clinton vs. Obama should not be the same volatile equivalent to discussing the Iraq War. Most of the time I'm drinking I'm surrounded by similarly minded folks and good chunk of my drinking is done in gay bars. Maybe there will be a time again when gay people can in good conscience consider voting for a republican president, but that time ain't now. You've got to be a self-hating fucktard to be gay and support these guys right now (of course, like everybody else, we've got our fucktards in spades), so I let my guard down and started letting myself get drawn into primary discussions.

I've said I like both contenders, but I do lean more heavily for Barack Obama. I really like him for a variety of reasons, but largely the scales tip in his favor because I do have some apprehensions with Hillary Clinton. She is brilliant and would easily be the wonkiest and perhaps most intelligent president that has ever sat in the Whitehouse. When it comes to straight policy on lots of issues, I really like her. But being a politician isn't just being smart and getting the details right and when she gets to realpolitiking, it all gets twisted. I can't and won't forgive her vote on the Iraq war. It was wrong and either I'm wrong and she's dumb (and ever other fucker who voted for it) as a damn brick, or it was craven and calculated. Either way is unacceptable, but I'll grant that she was being tugged from all sides and having to make difficult decisions and was getting advice that told her this was the thing to do.

Which brings me to my real beef with her: her advisors. She is flush with old washington lobbiest cronies. They've got her ear. She may have brilliant ideas, but she got pipers to pay in every direction. She way too corporate for my taste. I think she'll do right by lot's of public policy issues, but in general the things that we need most to really allow us to go in a good direction deal with reigning in corporate influence in DC. She'd be just as good as Bill was in office, and it would be a breath of fresh air to again have someone who was coherent and eloquent dealing with foreign leaders, but Bill also signed that damn communications bill that let clear channel expand and pushed NAFTA through. She might be different, but all clues point to her not.
Barack Obama might not do any better, but there is every suggestion that he might. And I like that he is relatively unentrenched. His lack of experience translates to a lack of cronies, and lacking experience he is going to have to surround himself with experts. I think he is savy enough to figure out who to listen to and to really take in good information and process it well. And he comes into it without the Clinton baggage. And he isn't part of a dynasty. I want new names in the Whitehouse after 25 years of two families running things.

I don't think any of those would be considered controversial ideas. Most people I talk to don't think they are. Not everyone agrees or we just have different ways of judging them or whatever, but I seem to have an uncanny talent for finding that one person who is crazy and will flip the fuck out over any criticism of Clinton. I've on at least three occasions in different cities managed to sit with someone who asked my opinion of Obama vs. Clinton only to have them end up spitting venom at me and informing me that they are working in some significant capacity for the Clinton campaign in that city. It will all start off nice, and they will ask me what I think about Obama, and I'll say I like him. They say something nice about him and then they would ask about Clinton and I say I like her and will vote for her if it comes down to it but prefer Obama (or, at the time when these conversations were taking place, Edwards). Then they would tell me why they liked Hillary which usually just ended up being cult of personality reasons and try and get me to agree with them, which I didn't so I wouldn't. Then it would turn into the sort of Jedi mind trick section of the conversation where some comment would be made along the lines of, "When Hillary is elected..." I have never been able to leave well enough alone, so I'd of course say, "If she gets the nomination..." which was received like I just shat on their mother's grave. "WHEN she is president, because she will get the nomination..." and then it turns against Obama, "He would be a horrible president and shouldn't even be running..."

That whole sequence keeps playing itself out with me, and that was before the primaries really even got rolling, so I've gone back to just not discussing the race with strangers (which I'm sure I'll forget as soon as I'm back on land and around people talking about the election).

Monsters, real and imagined (no, this is not about politics)

Steven Segal is playing guitar with Marty Stewart. He is an EPA agent trying to stop evil casino tycoon Kris Kristofferson from polluting the river and killing a bunch of hicks, all the while charming and falling in love with the sassy redhead from CSI. She is not sassy in this movie. Apparently all of Nashville has decided to cameo in this movie as well, so in addition to Marty and Kris, we've got Randy Travis (who is a bad guy and gets shot by Segal in a truckstop diner) and Travis Tritt, who just performs at the casino. The one thing Marty Stuart and Steven Segal and Travis Tritt have in common is having improbably horrible haircuts and they've all sported these same damn horrible haircuts for more than twenty years in public life now. Maybe they could at least trade bad hair cuts with each other (if I had access to the internet right now, I would so spend the rest of the night photoshopping their hairdo's on each other and any of my friends I could find old photos of).

Everyday I tell myself I am not going to comment on the things my roommate chooses to watch on his tv and then day after day I am confronted with something out of the darkest depths of videotaped hell. How many thousand movies has Steven Segal made? Seriously. He and Jean Claude Van Damn could completely fill the rotation of a cable network and never show the same film twice in two years. I thought taking a job out at sea would bring me adventure and excitement and leave me with a greater appreciation for the wonders of our planet. Instead it has left me with informed opinions about the filmography of Segal and Van Damn. One day (probably later tonight) I'm going to break down and do a side by side comparison of these two ass-kicking fools, but first I have more important things to comment on: aliens and squids.

There is no better place to watch space flicks than lying in your bunk on a boat in the middle of the ocean. You are kind of lurching around and the feeling of being isolated inside a ship is real for you so it makes the flick all the more believable. I'm about to admit something which a person of my age shouldn't be able to admit: prior to tonight, I'd never watched the original Alien. Now I've seen bits and pieces on cable, and I remember when it first came out I read the spoof of it in Mad Magazine, but I never saw it. But this just made it more awesome to watch it this time in this isolated ship-bound seclusion.

Of course when you aren't in a movie theater, there always seems to be some kind of interruption right at a crucial moment. This is usually unwelcome and totally ruins it for you, but sometimes it is perfect. So tonight, at the end during the self-destruct sequence when Ripley is running for the shuttle and rounds the corner to face the critter, my roommate opens the door and asks me if I have seen one of the big squids yet. He had just caught a really big one, so I paused the movie and jumped out of bed and ran out on deck to see this beast. The bastard was a fucking Humboldt (I think) squid that was damn near three feet long! There is this monstrous thing sitting there, flashing angry colors and staring at me. I was down close taking pictures and it moved unexpectedly and I had a sudden flashing image of the Alien attacking me.




I've heard these are pretty mean little monsters. All squid have little mean hooked beaks, as I have on occasion been reminded when trying to get photos of the beautiful little flying squid that sometimes land on deck. Three inches long, but they will twist themselves into a knot to bite your fingers. Now there was no way in hell that I was going to get anywhere near the beak in this giant thing, but in addition to having the big version of the terrifying mouth all cephalopods have, I'd heard that these guys also have claws on their suckers. Of course the scientist in me conspired with the idiot in me to reach out and touch a sucker and see if it is true.

It is true, and they can move surprisingly quickly and are pretty strong. Thankfully he didn't get a good grip on me. Those are some serious fucking claws.

While inspecting this one, my friend got another on his hook and I got to help him pull it in. I could see other squids swimming about it, glowing white in the light like they do most of the time at night, while the one on the hook flashed all manner of angry colors. As it broke the surface it blasted this rich brown ink everywhere and tried blasting us with water from its siphons. My pal gaffed it and we brought it on board. I got some more pictures and another of the crew came out and chopped the two long tentacles off to microwave as a snack (they were delicious). I'm generally more of a take-em-alive kind of guy, but I work on a fishing boat and I'd never get to inspect these things up close if someone wasn't catching them for food so I again made peace with my pangs of guilt and went back to geeking out about how cool they are (and snacking on their tentacles).



A few more pictures and I traded one slimy monster for another and went back to my movie. Which of course was awesome and the perfect way to round out my night. This would actually be the perfect night at sea, exactly the kind of thing I came out here for. I say 'would' because the creepy fake monster/creepy real monster synergy was book-ended by a Lifetime original movie starring Melissa Gilbert and the aforementioned Steven Segal movie, which would make it instead a typical night at sea.

(It is worth noting that during the Segal movie that had apparently been taped off TV, they kept showing commercials for Aliens III and one of the hillbilly characters in the movie was the same actor who had played Brett in Alien.)

Cary Ann Hearst

I've been negligent lately. I've been at sea, but I've written copiously and just haven't posted it yet.

With this lifestyle, working like a dog at sea for weeks at a time, you have to treat yourself when you hit land and try to periodically convince yourself that it is all worth it. Most recently, I've staved off my imbicilic urge to buy new shoes (I live in fucking Hawaii and wear flip flops every day; why to I need new day-glo Pumas or one more pair of high tops or cowboy boots?) and have instead indulged in consuming music via Itunes. I have a hundred complaints with Itunes, but none serious enough to counter the seductive ease with which one can indulge their musical whims, so here I am with all these tunes.

Oddly enough, I've repurchased multiple Indigo Girls albums, which I'm not in the least ashamed of, even though every album I purchased I had already bought at some point as a cd or cassette. And I bought the new Jason Mraz song which I unappologetically love. And plenty of other things (expect to hear me talk ad nauseum about Leslie Hall soon).

Point being, I spent a pretty signifigant chunk of change on music recently. The most recent purchase is Cary Ann Hearst's album, Dust and Bones. I already had a couple of songs off this, so in all honesty, this purchase is not my first experience with her song "Dresden Snow", but regardless, that one song, if it was the only thing I had gotten out of spending the hundred or so dollars that I've recently spent on music, would be worth every penny. It is impossible for me to relate here how beautiful it is. Her voice, the lyrics, every damn thing about it hurts my feelings by being so beautiful. So I finally bought the whole album.

It was a bizarre experience having been given this song by a friend only to realize later that this Cary Ann was the same Cary Ann who used to play guitar and sing sitting on the stoop beneath my old apartment on King Street in Charleston back when she was still trying to get a gig singing at the Horse and Cart (may it rest in peace). So I'd be inclined to dismiss my enthusiasm as just so much nostalgia, but screw that, the girl can fucking sing. Go buy her album and if you get a chance to see her live, jump on it and write me about it. I'll be jealous and you'll be lucky.

uh.... Walnuts!

just go to Wonkette and watch the video:

Walnuts!: Raining Fury On John McCain

The whole thing is a work of art, but the perfect moment that tips it over that edge into full on Cobra-La is when the lead singer splashes her face with little McCains that are falling from the sky (about 2 minutes in). Enjoy!

"you learned something today, man..."

"You learned something today, man," said the cab driver as we raced towards the train station. I hadn't over-slept, as used to be the main reason for me sprinting at the last minute for mass transit and I had waited until the last second to pack, which is a perennial close-second. I'd ignored the red-lights going off in the back of my mind and went with my unintentional boldness that creeps out because I've always managed to survive ridiculous situations and so never learned to run at the first sign of off-color. My adventures have been richer because I've too many times stayed put when anyone else would have headed for the hills, but generally these situations are only socially awkward, not dangerous. I'm not the daredevil type. I'm the slow plodding kind. I put one foot in front of the other, and don't lift the back foot until I'm certain that the first foot is resting on something stable enough to support it. I favor circuitous routes so it sometimes looks like I'm taking risks, but really, I'm the most cautious of gamblers.

So I laughed when Kearney said "Those are your people," when I related to him the stories told to me by an aging hustler who emoted his convoluted life story to me, punctuated with bullet wounds and mistaken love. I like talking to strangers and seemingly, they like talking to me. And the junkies and the hustlers and hitchhikers and whatever tend to find me and talk to me. And when I say talk to, I mean converse (or monologue), not try to hustle me. They never really have. I present an open but guarded face to the world, and seeming these folks tend to sit beside me at bars or trains or wherever and tell me their tales. Sometimes they make sense, sometimes they don't, but up until I'm ready to leave, I'm happy to listen. The people who can't escape or control their stories are the ones with tales to tell.

"My name is Stevie; my momma called me that." So I listened to an aging hustler's stories about first visiting New Orleans with his parents at age 13, in 1984. He had found the bar that we were then sitting in having a beer at 3 in the aftenoon, and from their swept on to another bar under the wing of some drag queen whose name I couldn't quite make out though he obviously assumed I would recognize her. He dissappeared for 4 days, and when he emerged from his whirlwind introduction to gay life and the festive underworld in the Cresent City, he didn't want to return to North Carolina and "all those fucking ignorant rednecks who treated [him] like shit!" Which without rhyme or reason jumped into the story of the latest man who had taken care of him, who he cavorted with for a week, then moved to Ohio for after realizing he was willing to wire him a thousand dollars when asked out of nowhere and had recently found his way back to New Orleans and was sporting a fresh black eye having already been jumped and mugged. I won't relate the whole silly story, suffice to say this is who always sits down to talk to me. As K. asserts, these are my people. They find me, they talk to me, I listen, and though I get asked for cigarettes and the occasional dollar, I'm not usually triangulated as a potential victim.

"Not usually" has never counted as any assurance, and I know this. But sometimes I forget.

Since my last boat, I've had trouble sleeping. I just don't sleep very long. Many nights I don't sleep more than four hours, and even to do that I have to will myself to fall back to sleep multiple times, so despite having stayed up late drinking, I woke up early Weds. morning. My train wasn't until 1:30, so I showered and read and checked my email and relaxed, but felt that I still had enough time to wander a little before my train and needed to find food anyway. So I wandered back into the French Quarter, grabbed a bite and sat to have a beer at the Bourbon Street Pub. I was the only person there until a couple of hustlers came in. (Note on terminology: if I were in New York and refered to someone as a 'hustler', I would mean a guy who had sex for money, but in New Orleans, while it can mean that too, it takes on the wider meaning of someone who is trying to hustle anyone for money, be it through sex, distracting them so they can steal from them, cheating them, whatever. It is that kind of town and if you've been there, you probably know what I am talking about.) We were the only people there, so we started talking.

Now, this is so far par for the course. I knew what kind of guys these guys were and as I've said, they tend to sit and talk to me and usually confess a litany of crimes and woes as casually as discussing the weather. One of the guys drifts off when one of his friends comes in, the other one starts talking more directly to me. Nothing terribly exciting, but I shouldn't have let my guard down or underestimated how wrong things can go. I know to always assume that in any given situation that they will tend to accelerate straight to the furthest reaches of insanity possible, not stop at what we convince ourselves is the more realistic point. So when he discovered that I was heading to the train station and offered me a ride, telling me that he lived near there and was headed there shortly, I should have instantly declined. I've got no illusions about the gentleness of humankind or how people treat each other. I've heard too many stories from hitchhikers about the dangers of getting in anyone's car to not know how dangerous it is. When you aren't in control of that car, you are at the mercy of whoever is driving. People scold me for picking up hitch-hikers (though, notably not my parents, who taught me to give rides to those who need them), babbling about apocryphal tales of murder and intrigue, but it is the passenger who is in the weak position.

But it was a bright day, and I was letting myself forget these long-taught lessons. So we went to his car, and I ignored the phone call from his 'brother' and him saying he needed to pick him up on the way. And I ignored him asking me if I used a laptop for my job, even as I processed that he was digging to find out if I had one on me and made clear that I didn't. I should have gotten out at this point, walked away, disappeared into the crowd.

But I didn't, and instead found myself in a car turning the wrong direction and taken towards Slidell. I'll spare the ensuing details and opt for the short synopsis: his story getting barer and barer, threats being slowly veiled into the conversation, the change of plans as he tries to extort increasing amounts of money out of me so he can "pay my momma what I owe her" or more truthfully, when he realizes that sympathy isn't what he is elliciting out of me, go buy the pain pills he is addicted to and disastrously coming down from as we drive. Having given him the thirty bucks he originally asked for (once he had me on the interstate going in the wrong direction), since he was doing me a "favor", he demanded another 20. I bristled at giving it up, but ya know what, it is cheaper than time in the hospital and more recoverable than my teeth or my life, so he got it. Then it turned into 30 more dollars and it was clear that the amount was going to keep increasing and I didn't have enough to satisfy, which meant things were going to turn uglier. They hadn't gotten physical yet (beyond being held hostage in a speeding car). I gathered everything in my arms and tried to get out at a red-light. Damn automatic locks and a lack of crossing traffic to prevent running the light. As we are screaming at each other, and he is running what lights he can, I just looked for any opening and tried to make it clear to him that I wasn't worth more money or the trouble. And thankfully at one stop the crossing traffic slowed us enough and I had snuck the lock open and was poised hand on door and lept out, and he only cussed after me and sped off.

Unfortunately before I could get his license number.

And far from the train and with just 15 minutes left before I missed it. I had been trapped in that car for a whole stinking hour. Luckily, I finally got a cab and he was a kind fellow who drove like he meant it and seeing that I was flustered, asked why I hadn't called one earlier? I told him that someone had offered me a ride and I had accepted. He seemed to understand and could certainly read in my face how badly it had gone, and when I commented that I should have known better, he soothingly replied, "That's alright, you learned something today, man. You know now. You'll make your train."

I do know now.

I did make my train.

the written word

I like to think that I'm well-spoken. I know that I can be. I'm aware of my voice and tone and attempt(and often fail) to be careful with my words. But more and more I feel like I can't truely get points across until I can write it down. Not just that I can't say it, but that I almost can't fully form thoughts without the written component to hammer them out.

I wonder what my mind would be like without the gift of computers and word processers. My handwriting is miserable. I've made peace with this, and thank you very much, no, trying harder won't won't make it any better. And besides being hard to read, I write slowly. I want to believe I write quickly, but I don't. And the faster my mind moves, the slower that pencil moves. The only things that I can really enjoy composing by hand are songs and poems, with their shorter stretches and the mental exercises which make their construction slower, at a pace my pen can manage (yes, I write poems and songs. The songs might see the light of day; the poems rarely do.). I enjoy these mediums, but they aren't the main ways I sort my thoughts, though I think they might be if I was unable to type. If I didn't have this way to write, I'd most likely be a very different person and I'm not inclined to think it would be an improvement.

I'm thinking about this as I'm arguing with myself about whether or not to write about my trip to New Orleans. Whether to dig into trauma or bury it. Ultimately, we all know that buring things often encourages them to grow, while putting them through a written harvest let's you glean something from even the most uncomfortable of crops...

I'm trying not to, but I'm getting sucked back in...

I left New York at the beginning of last year. I love New York. I mean, I really, really, really love the City. But I needed to get out of the office. I'm not really an office person and I needed to be wandering about, geeking out over science stuff in the wild.

So I went. And it has been up and down, with pluses and minuses, but one thing that has been lovely has been getting away from all the stupid politics. I've been stuck out on a boat and got to go through last year without having to listen to any of the pre-election crap. I hate seeing Christmas decorations and whatnot before Thanksgiving, and I don't like like campaining a whole stinking year before an election.

I want to be a head-in-the-sand kind of fellow. I really do. I want to hide and leave the world behind. I want a little house on stilts in a remote swamp, and I'll paddle around carrying a shotgun and have a parrot(or macaw or cockatoo) which sits on my shoulder. I'll point the gun silently at anyone I find in the swamp until they cry or start confessing their sins and the parrot will speak only cuss words and scream them loudly whenever it is in the presence of children.

But I don't have a parrot or a swamp to myself(the gun... that I can get my hands on), and if I can't ignore the world with style, I'm going to scream at the top of my lungs put in my two cents.

I'm not ready. All the stupid fucking campaign crap is mind numbing. They turned on the debate tonight and I stupidly am still sitting here listening to this crud. The republican part was painful. Straight stupidly painful. They way they talk about immigration has is all about fucking bigotry. They just kept talking about building fences and sending THEM back to where they came from. Get rid of them damn Mexicans. Blah fucking blah blah blah.

The Democratic stuff is a bit better, but I'm still going to leave now and go to the bar and drink and know that I'm making the right choice.

I'm tentatively going to start railing about politics again, but I can't do it now. Not yet. I need a drink first.

"Twin high-maintenance machines"

Again, I'm back to the Mountain Goats. When there is no one to talk to you can always write...

Anyway, I'm listening to "This Year" now. I've heard it before and knew I liked it, but the perfection of the phrasing is blowing me away this time. "Twin high-maintenance machines"? So simple, so perfect describing... actually everyone in every relationship ever. I was going to say teen love or some shit like that, but let's get a grip: we are all high-maintenance machines on some level when we get in a relationship. I kind of like to pretend that I am low-maintenance as far as dating goes but that is a complete lie. I am patient and calm and don't like drama, but just because the engine don't whine and blow smoke doesn't mean it don't need to be checked from time to time. (I know I misused 'don't' in that sentence and just couldn't care less right now)

I was asked once by someone I was dating if I thought they were high-maintenance, so of course I said yes, because they were and I figured that anyone asking that question had to know that simply asking it makes them so. As I've said before, I often don't understand people so I missed the mark by a mile, since anyone besides me would know that anyone asking that wants to be told that they aren't, even if -especially if- they are (which I've already said we all are). I always say just the wrong thing with people I love and usually at just the wrong time, so I'm in a constant state of trying to figure out how to not sound like an ass the next time a friend or family member or bf asks some seemingly innocent question. I usually fail, but at least I know that if I can't run them off with my normal idiotic responses then they must be tough enough to enjoy having around.

This is off course, not what I originally was planning on writing about when I started this. I really did just need to share how much I'm loving this song and that line in particular (again, wow!), but I've just gotten back to sea after going and visiting my friends and basically spending three months on the move with my foot firmly in my mouth.

Not really that I said anything terribly horrible. I just always managed to just not quite hit the right tone and felt seriously disconnected around people. Of course, I've kind of always felt this way around people; that's part of why I hang out with fish. But this time was remarkable in how on the move I was and how many different people from how many different places and times I was around and seeing. I guess it is more remarkable how connected I still felt with so many of these people who I haven't seen in so long.

Particularly in New York, I really felt a disconnect. The time flew by faster than I expected and it was harder to find time with people like I wanted. I spun around like a top on fire (not that kind of top, you perv) and found it hard to slow down. And I was so excited to see everyone that I just talked non-stop or couldn't find anything to say, and with some of my closest friends I didn't get to just sit and hang out or spend time like I wanted to outside of bars and parties.

I did get to see perhaps the one person who knows exactly what I am talking about as far as saying the exact wrong thing at the exact wrong time: Brock. We met at a time when both of us were kind of in a limbo and soon realized that we complemented each other well, partially because we both had a bluntness that often got us into trouble. He was the king of answering honestly questions that weren't asked because the person (usually a girl) asking wanted an honest answer. I would coach him on things not to say or things that needed to be said, and he would coach me on the same. We couldn't see our own blind spots but were pretty good at catching each other, either pointing out and laughing after the fact or, as time went on, warning the other ahead of time that the other was about to say something stupid.

I guess most of my problem is that when I ask a question, I usually don't have an answer that I want to hear ahead of time or I at least don't expect to get the answer I want. If I don't think I would want to hear the wrong answer, then I don't think a question should be asked. Granted, half of my problem comes from me volunteering random information that no one else in the world remembers. I can't remember names to save my life, but I have this uncanny talent for remembering sorid and amusing details from my and all my friends' dating/social/family histories, which I have a tendency to blurt out when something reminds me of it. I, of course, love it when people blurt stuff like this out. I'm always interested in who slept with who and what weird habit drove someone mad or what kind of weird quirk you'd never guess so-and-so has. Unless someone is saying it maliciously, I'm all ears. I figure we all have our excentricities that someone somewhere remembers and still laughs at (with me, it is usually my friends laughing at mine, usually somewhere in the vicinity of right in my face), so I don't find it exceptional or cruel to discuss other folks weirdnesses and histories. Other people do, and this I always forget. It is part of my charm.

Maybe this is why I like this line in this song, the acknowledgement of being a needy, difficult thing right in tandem with the one beside you doesn't happen near often enough or sincerely enough.

"I felt free and I felt lonely and I felt scared."

Ok, so maybe I shouldn't dwell on one thing, but I'm in the ocean and on a boat where I am pretty much working around the clock (seriously, writing this now means that if I sleep today at all before the sun comes up tomorrow it will be one or two hour) so I'll dwell if I feel like it. So I'm back to the Mountain Goats.

I'm listening to "Woke Up New" for the first time (ok, now I'm listening to it for the third time on repeat, but you know what I mean). This one I don't want to talk about because of the poetry of it, because he makes you understand how he feels. This one makes you feel like he understands how you've felt.

Perhaps no one who has ever dated me believes that I know how to sing this song. My heart is made of bricks, built for storms and anticipating them, not so moved except by earthquakes or sometimes hurricanes that really mean it, so I can't blame them for thinking that. But there is life inside the damn thing, and if ever there was a song that I know how to sing, this is it.

Sometimes hearing something put into words like this is too much. It isn't just sad. It isn't weepy. "I felt free and I felt lonely and I felt scared," says it. There isn't this wild sadness or woe is me about it, just this honest terror and emptiness and loss tinged with openness and newness. It is too soon for the openness and newness to not hurt, to not scream, but there is this blank hope in the song, in that moment, in those feelings. This song isn't about that hope though. This is all what-now? howling into the vacuum. You know the hope is there, is going to matter one day, but right at the moment this is sing, it is all "What do I do?"

Ok, I promise I'll listen to something less melencholic (it is fall, so this is probably a lie).

I'm an idiot

(I didn't realize that "I Was Meant for the Stage" was originally written by the Decemberists. and so I sounded like an ass. Thank you to the kind commentor who so politely pointed out my error. I still think the song sounds flat, but do love it. I'll have to think about who I'd like to cover it most...)

Seems to be all songs all the time right now. I'm sick of writing about politics and can't keep up with them anyway being cut off from everything like this, so songs and books and fish and the weather are all that I've got an opinion about these days.

Anyway, I was excited to see that The Decemberists had covered "I Was Meant For the Stage", thinking that since I liked the song and the band that I would like them combined and we all know how I like my covers. Wrong wrong wrong.

I am only just hearing this for the first time these last couple of times and I keep trying to tell myself that I am going to like it, that I just need to listen to it one more time. Nope, it just isn't good. Dull, flat, boring. They fall for the silly indie trap that if you just slow a song down and try to make it sound dramatic it will be something special. It takes more than that for it to be an interesting cover.

I've tried telling myself that I am being unfair because the only other version of this song that I have at my disposal now is the Kiki & Herb version, which is heavy company to compete against. It isn't just in contrast though; the Decemberist version straight up sucks.

Sparkle and Shine

Sparkle and Shine is the most beautiful love song ever. No one can write them like Steve Earle. Really, this man may be one of outlaw country's grumpiest rebel children, but when the man decides to write a love song, holy fucking shit! Simple and pretty, but oh boy what he says when he says it.

I'm a grumpy fuddy-duddy when it comes to love and romance; most sappy shit makes me kind of want to puke. Most of it is obnoxious and more manufactured and fakey-flakey undigestable than Peeps, and I feel like it is sort of fanciful showboating. All the saccarine sentiment is theatrical: acting out and pantomiming love or some facsimile thereof for the sake of having that thing we are all supposed to want. All the supposed-to-be's and crap like that which people check off in a little notebook to see if they are lovey-dovey enough is enough to make you want to shit on a wedding cake.

Point being, sappy though I may be, I'm selective about my sappiness. The curmudgeon in me wants to just hate all love songs and such, but there is that certain tone that can be hit just right that is the only kind of love to ever tolerate being around for even a moment; it is that kind of love where no matter how you fight it or how grumpy you may be there is this other person that turns things upside down. I don't think every love story should follow a happily ever after trajectory, I just want that sentiment of helpless disarm caused by this other person who for whatever reason, in whatever way sends you haywire. I like sloppy love and the ridiculous and of course the tragic when the love is so there that the tragedy is completely lost in the love part (think Richard Thompson's "1952 Vincent Black Lightning" or Robert Earl Keen, Jr.'s "Billy Grey") or the fleeting but indelible ( Steve Earle's "Galway Gal").

"Sparkle and Shine" isn't so complicated. It is such simple enthusiasm and such a magnificent celebration of another person. It just describes the way this person makes him feel and looking out of his eyes at this vision, at this illumination brightening up his life, you can't help but feel this little swell of joy and peace, the quiet simmering ecstacy that you can only feel in those moments when you can still viscerally remember and feel that dizzy way another person can make you feel. That wasn't meant to mean just post coital feelings. The song does enough to explain it. "My baby sparkle and shine..." Ok, a little goofy, but if ever there was something I wanted someone to think about me or a way I want someone to make me feel, this song describes it.

"I am under no illusion..."

(warning: I've been obsessed with the Mountain Goats lately; this is only going to get worse.)

I like sad songs. I generally don't like horror flick or scary movies. I can appreciate them in their place, but I love sad, sad, sad songs and stories (not that horror and sad stuff are really naturally comparable things, but it somehow made sense to me in the middle of the night in the middle of the ocean). Believe me, I love a happy ending, but I can really get into those rip your heart out kind of stories and songs. This is not the same as the stomp-on-your-soul stories like Faulkner's _Sanctuary_ (this is not one of those dont'-read-it warnings that is meant as a challenge to your honor anticipating that you would pick it up, this is a warning against something no one should ever go through, trust me), but the tragic beautiful. _Giovanni's Room_ by James Baldwin is perhaps my single favorite piece of fiction ever. Tragic books and tragic songs have one big difference: the scope of the story they can share. A book can end tragic or have little tragic bits all along and still give you enough to buoy you up, which is generally how I feel about most sad stories. They only get to be tragic because the other parts are so beautiful. If anyone ever described _Giovanni's Room_ as a story about an execution, I'd be torn between punching them and having them committed and probably settle on giving them a look piled with so much indignation that I wouldn't have any room left for the scorn they deserved. Point being, the tragic in them is contrasted. In so much space, you've got to tell of more than just the pain.

Songs are different. They are shorter; only so much can fit in there. A sad song has to reflect enough of what ever it was that was so beautiful that you can relate to the sadness. The lyrics have to make you care and the music has to hit you just right to take you there. But they have to do it while usually really only telling you the tragedy. The beauty is hinted at, alluded to, mentioned but you only know how bright it was by how dark the song is without it.

I don't know why I love sad songs so much, but I do. I guess my whole thing is that for something to really be sad, you've got to really care about it, someone has to care about it and if someone can really communicate that caring and that pain, then I've got to be able to celebrate it. Often times, it is the sad songs which communicate more love and caring and hope (even if it has already been crushed) than the flat out love songs. "Some one loves me and I'm so happy," well, whoopty friggin' do. Lucky you (this isn't fair at all since I've been writing about how much I love some love songs, but whatev). "Somebody left me but I still love them," whoa, they mean it.

This of course is in stark contrast with my general view of the world and romance, but not really. As a general rule, whenever someone gives me crap about being lost without someone else, my response is only slightly more sympathetic than, "Oh, get a grip. You are better off without them." If I'm close friends with them, I know that if they were expecting sympathy they would have called Mason or Lisa, so I can be even more blunt. This isn't because I am down on love, just I'm don't care to call other things love and have no sympathy for codependence or fear of being alone or whatever other wretched, but oh so human, response to break-ups and such people so commonly have and call love. My curmudgeonliness comes from a tender place, though, so when I listen to sad songs, I let them totally get to me. Of course, this is only if they are well written and well played/sung. If they are just stupid and cheesy (how did we get back to Kenny Chesney again?), they get the same sympathy that most real life break-ups get. Ok, I'll leave K-Che alone for a minute (not because I've suddenly stumbled upon some sympathetic kindness, I just only have a few of his upbeat songs on my computer and figure that if I am going to write about how lame someone's sad song is, then I should at least be listening to it at the time). Luckily, there is always Brad Paisley pick on.

All my music is still in Alabama, so I'm slowly piecing together a music collection from what friends have so i have some random shit on here, including a fairly eclectic country mix. I've got nothing in particular against Bran Paisley, just normally wouldn't include him in my collection, but since he is here, let's talk for a minute about "Who needs pictures?" It is decently written, even if a little to kitschy, but only decently written. With just the right voice, it could be a sad song. When George Jones is in the right mood, he has a voice that was meant to rip your heart out and he isn't afraid to do it. Patty Loveless can do it with her hands tied behind her back and blindfolded. Bran Paisley can't. With a sad enough song, his voice might not pull down the lyrics, but with decent lyrics that need someone to make them sympathetic, no way. I know he has won a hundred thousand awards in country music and I know that he seems to be a likeable new country guy who actually loves and appreciates old country and cares about respecting those that made country something special. And sometimes he picks some good music and is a good singer and a good guitar player and... flat as a pancake. The man can feel the music, you can see it when he sings, but damn if he doesn't sing like a kareoke star. His voice has no soul. It is the soul of a cardboard cut out, not a soul musician. And his musicians are technically great, I am sure they are the best of the current "Nashville sound" session musicians, but the end effect is boring as dirt. Blank music doing exactly what it is supposed to do, blank singer doing exactly what he is supposed to do, decent lyrics having to carry it all and you feel exactly the sympathy you would feel for any other whiney-ass bachelor who wanted to tell you about how a camera reminded him about the girl who dumped him. In some people that might rustle up some sympathy; I just change the station.

This wasn't originally about how sad songs can suck. Griping gets as boring as Brad Paisley's music. I was inspired to write because I listened to The Mountain Goats' "I Still Feel The Bruise".

Holy shit.

As sad songs go, this is a whole 'nother ball-game. Right from the start, the music gets you. There is enough placid kindness in the notes to not just sound miserable, but before you hear the first word you feel the pain. Then he starts singing.

The same thing that was in the music is in his voice, in spades. He doesn't have to push it; these aren't lyrics that could be pushed. And what fucking lyrics they are! The first verse is sad enough; there is plenty of plainly stated sadness for you to know how he feels. Then the chorus slips in and knocks the breath out of you and leaves you sitting there with chills wondering if there is any way you could turn the song off now, knowing that you are going to play it on repeat. "I'm under no illusion, as to what I meant to you. But you made an impression, sometimes I still feel the bruise, sometimes I still feel the bruise..."

I can't remember the guy's name who is The Mountain Goats. I should, but I can't and I'm in the middle of the ocean and don't have the benefit of Google so you will have to google it yourself (which you have to have if you are reading this at this moment). Anyway, my first introduction to him was listening to "Korean Bird Paintings" on some music blog (maybe Thus Spake the Grammophone or Fluxblog). Of course this was right at the moment that he was appearing on the radar of everyone I knew, so I wasn't any ahead of the curve but I wasn't behind it (keep in mind this was in music nerd Brooklyn land, so not being the last to know about a musician like this took some doing). KBP was upbeat and cheerful, this pleasant love song rolls in and sounds so wonderful and you listen to the lyrics and this joy and wonder isn't just happy inloveness, it is past the breaking point desperation/ idon'tgiveafuckness. I had to listen to it a few times over and over again. Here is this crisp little cut-out from this bigger picture, so detailed in its description telling so much about the story surrounding it while kind of telling you nothing about it except that this is where the story has gotten to, leaving you to wonder how it got there and where can it go from here.

Then I got home and as with all new music I ran it past Mason. Suddenly I'm listening to "Going to Georgia", which quickly became a home hootenany staple. Mr. Mountain Goat can write like a motherfucker. He can sing like one too, and plays like he sings, but his lyrics are poetry. Phrased slightly differently, sung/played slightly differently and these songs would be straight up obnoxious, but they aren't phrased differently or sung/played differently: they blow the top off your head. I'm sure there are times he doesn't hit it just right, but damn when he does.

He followed this with "The Best Ever Death Metal Band Out of Denton". That is one of those titles that you want to both hate and love so you wait for the song to see which it is going to be. And it starts as just silly enough to laugh and like, it is just a song about some kids putting together what was probably a wretched obnoxious band and adults reacting the stupid way they so often do to such things. But it takes a turn. There is this dark moment calling this parental/authority reaction for exactly what it is and it makes you love all sincere punk forever. I can't remember the line verbatim so rather than sharing a butchered remembrance, I'll leave it to you find it and listen to it.

I saw him play live once. He played a sort of coffee house tour and played at Fix in Williamsburg. It was insanely crowded and way too hot, but he sang like a manic angel. Don't go hear him hoping to hear some song of his you want to hear live. He informed us that he hates playing old stuff so he only plays things live that aren't on any album yet. At first this made me cringe and fear for what I was in for; my fears were quickly assuaged. Given the chance, go see him live, especially if you are somewhere out of the way enough that he will be in a small uncrowded venue. I'd kill to see him in the coffee shop/bar at the Princess theater in Columbus, MS.

"Sometimes I Still Feel the Bruise", like all the best Mountain Goats songs, takes you to exactly where the narrator in the song is. In my mind, this song is exactly the message. I imagine it not as the song version of some conversation, but as written to be a song, to be heard or not by someone who may be or not be in the audience. Sort of hopeful that they are, but assuming that they wouldn't be and that even if they are, not singing in hopes that it would bring them back, just singing it because it had to be let out.

This is the kind of song writing that makes me want to hole away and just pour everything into writing songs. Not because I think I could write like that, although he is the kind of writer who makes you wish you could, but because he is the kind of prolific writer pouring so much in to it that it makes the action of it, the effort itself into a work of art. The lifestyle when well done makes it seem like something worth doing; the few people who do it so well forgives all those who do it poorly by showing the world why they are trying and asks the rest of us why we aren't.

Kenny Chesney is annoying

I like country music. I really like country music and always have. And I can even like some of the awful new country crap that they play on the radio now. This isn't to say that the powers that be in country radio programming don't have their heads up their ass and that they've outdone themselves in shoving horrid tripe down our throats while ignoring most of the good stuff going on all around us. They have, in spades.

But, I like the occasional bad country kitsch. I like silly hooks and punny songs and clever, silly word games. I like fun songs and sometimes even over-sincere, over-melodramatic songs. I totally own that. But can we at least ask that it be done well and can it not be the only thing they put on the damn radio? Travis Tritt and Toby Keith do both extremes well. Melodrama or fun puns, they both excel and can sing and write a fucking song, and do them well enough that we can forgive the way they dress and, if in a generous mood, perhaps even their haircuts.

Kenny Chesney I can't forgive.

Had he been a one hit wonder, then you could not hate him and wouldn't have to be baffled at his inexplicable celebrity, but really, who buys his albums and why? Ok, we know it is marketing and music execs who want the blandest most broadly sellable moron with the greatest minimum of talent to tell adolescents they should listen to and purchase, and someone sold on something bland at twelve often continues into adulthood on such whitebread diets that these stale toast 'talents' can continue on into something one might call a career (I call it a plague). But come on people, he looks like a twelve year-old tomboy in unimaginative JC Penny's cowboy drag and sings like a youth pastor. If he had pigtails and more testosterone, freckles, and attitude, he'd be Pippy Longstockings. He started off interesting enough and had a few likable songs, but instead of progressing into something of a mature artist, his songs have become more innane and vapid as he has gone and his image has taken a similar trajectory. When your fashion has progressed from dressed up for a 4-H dance to metrosexual lesbian cowboy, how far have you gone really?

Ok, so maybe I am being mean here. Kenny Chesney has had a few ok songs and deserves a level of fame, but not as much as exposure as he has been given. I had to listen to mostly crappy new country junk played off scratched cd's for twelve hours straight while working, so I got a little grumpy.

what was I thinking...

(originally written back in the summer)


...when I picked up Joan Didion's The Year of Magical Thinking? I know I liked the title, had vague remonitions of having read reviews that made me want to read it, had seen it praised in every publication I had seen mention it. But I also knew it is about grief and her experiences following her husband's death. This is certainly a worthy subject for a book and something to be read sometime, but why would I choose now to read it? Why was it in paperback and on sale at Borders? These days I do most of my reading on a small boat as far from anything as you can get in the middle of the Pacific, completely cut off from friends and family for weeks at a time, so books about loss and separation aren't exactly at the top of the list of things that one would prescribe for keeping my head on straight. I'm surrounded by people who don't speak English (or speak it poorly) and live inside my head like I haven't done since high school.

But perhaps there is something soothing in Ms. Didion's book. That she is an excellent writer doesn't need to be said, and that this is an excellent book has already been said (and said better) by so many others that I won't bother. The horrible truth upon reading about her loss is that it in a way reminds me that those people I feel ripped away from right now will be there when I get back. Of course that is only comforting so far as it also reminds that this won't always be true.

I'm only about 80 pages in right now, but the portrait of her and her husband and their life and their friends is compelling and challenging. In someways, the depth at which they comingle, inhabit the same space, so deeply intertwine with one another is something that I have always been both drawn to and repulsed by. The repulsion, by the way, comes from a place of being resistant to not being fully self-reliant and an aversion to attachments to things or people which I can't let go of, not from finding it repulsive. This is an aside, but the inevitable irony is that I attach to people and places and things deeply and intensely and faster than anything you have ever seen. If I'm going to go there at all, I'm already there before you blink. A head full of wanderlust and a heart full of homebody; God was laughing when he made me.

I should be reading the new Harry Potter, but wasn't able to get it before I got on the boat. And maybe in the middle of the ocean, away from a reality where people exist and live, instead in a place where we just work and look at the horizon, is exactly the place to read such an intimate book. As I actually read through the book, the fact of the loss and the time spent struggling with the grief get lost in the beauty of the life they lived together and the people who surrounded them. The last few years have been a whirlwind for me, trying to get my bearing and start moving in directions which can sustain me, and reading someone's reflections looking back on a life lived as well as anyone could set out to live one is comforting. The book isn't so spectacular because Ms. Didion shares how she handled the death, but rather because through speaking to all the details surrounding her experience with grief, her voice comes through saying, "I have lost this much."