Another 585 Million Miles

A good friend of mine celebrates a birthday today. To honor this milestone, I've created a special birthday playlist. It's a combination of a few songs I listen to on my birthday each year and a few thrown in just for him.

WARNING: My birthday mixes are a bit like a rollercoaster. One song makes you smile and want to dance, the next makes you want to swallow razor blades. What are friends for, aye?

Have some cake and LISTEN!

Flotsam: Scattered to the Seven Seas

[Flotsam is a series of catch-all posts that can include just about anything. If it seems even more random than the rest of the posts, then it'll likely wash ashore here.]

With a new goal to post at least one thing each day, I couldn't fall off the wagon on the second day. I decided to put this in Flotsam, because it's probably going to mirror my state of mind today. Today has seemed somehow...disjointed. It's almost as if the day was a compact disc that has a lot of scratches. It wasn't necessarily bad, just off. 

I didn't get any significant work done on If Travel Is Searching, however, I did get a lot of administrative work done. I organized some writing projects into categories. With the uptick in writing, there has been a downside. Many of the pieces have become big blackholes, eating up my time and energy and not giving anything back in return. I've went through everything I've been working on and took everything that was even questionable and moved them into a lockbox...okay, well it was the closet. It was hard, but I was able to console myself with the fact that they're not being burned by Nazis. They still exist. They'll wait for me. 

Other than that, I got a few other things done and relaxed a bit. Now, I'm getting ready to do the big thing that has gotten me through the day: the first of the final eight episodes of Breaking Bad!

A Little Perspective

E T A Nemo often follows up a complaint with the statement "Oh well. First world problems." Sure that's true, but I'm of the opinion that everything is a matter of perspective. While your car getting a flat tire or coming down with the flu is not seeing your mother stoned to death in Afghanistan for being raped, it nonetheless affects you. You have the right to bitch about things that negatively impact you. Your world is, at some point, just that: your world. Relativity is a law that affects more than just that imaginary rocket ship traveller nearing the speed of light used in a physics thought experiment.

With all that said, I listened to a song today that brought the idea of "first world problems" into perspective. It's sung by Martha Wainwright covering her father's (Louden Wainwright III) original. Here are the lyrics and a link to the song follows.

I slept through the night, I got through to the dawn
I flipped a switch and the light went on
I got out of bed and I put some clothes on
Oh, it's a pretty good day so far

I turned the tap, there was cold, there was hot
I put on my coat to go to the shop
I stepped outside and I didn't get shot
Oh, it's a pretty good day so far

I didn't hear any sirens or explosions
No murders coming in from those heavy guns
No UN tanks and I didn't see one
It's a pretty good day so far

No snipers in windows taking a peak
No people panic, running scared through the streets
I didn't see any bodies without arms, legs or feet
It's a pretty good day

There was plasma bandages and electricity
Food, wood and water and the air was smoke free
No camera crews from my TV

It was all such a strange sight to be home
Nobody was frightened, wounded, hungry or cold
And the children seemed normal, they didn't look old
It's a pretty good day so far

I walked through a park, you would not believe it
There in the park, there were a few trees left
And on some branches, there were a few leaves

I slept through the night, I got through to the dawn
I flipped the switch and the light went on
I wrote down my dream, I made it this song
Oh, it's a pretty good day so far

LISTEN HERE

Way Station

I’ve been walking down The Road for a while now. I think it’s time to sit down, rest my feet for a spell and reflect on the journey so far and The Road in general. This way station might also provide some insight into why this project started. The intent was never about writing for and directly to an audience, but since it is public there will inevitably be a few travelling companions here and there.We expect that and hope this conversation can be enjoyed from an outsider's perspective. That's the reason we made this a public discussion. However, it might be helpful  to have a little back story.

E T A Nemo and I have been friends for several years. (Our road together has been a bit meandering itself.) I’ve been interested in shared creative projects and collaborative writing for a long time, and he was also intrigued by the idea. We discussed doing something, buit as is often the case with creative endeavors, we never sat down and actually started anything.

Two years ago, we embarked on a cross-country road trip. The reason for the adventure was that E T A Nemo was moving to the opposite coast. I took a couple weeks off work to accompany him and to realize my dream of driving across the country, something I never thought I'd have a chance to do. A week into the trip found the two of us staying at a hostel in Minneapolis. Each of the hostel’s rooms was named for historical monarchs. We were given the King David Room.

Both of us are fans of the zombie fiction genre and often joke about the coming zombie apocalypse. While resting up from the drive from Chicago to Minneapolis that first evening in our hostel room, I made a joke about what we’d do once the zombies took over the world. I said that once the plague began, we wouldn’t be able to fight off the ravenous hordes together because of the distance between us. We wouldn’t be able to hole up in a mall and play out our very own “consumerism gone awry” analogistic nightmare. So I said that when it began, we should start heading toward each other and meet at a pre-determined spot around half-way. “When the world ends," I said, "let’s go to Minneapolis. Let’s meet in the King David Room."

The trip continued. We arrived at E T A Nemo’s new abode, and I returned to my life on the opposite coast, thoughts of zombie hordes and moral-less survivors pursuing me across the country all but forgotten. Some time later, and I’m not sure what it was that sparked it, something made me think about that statement. I was trying to think of a vehicle to use in a writing piece to explore some otherwise esoteric concepts. I wanted the piece to be fiction. Its underlying theme would be an existential look at relationships. Damn! Of course! A zombie love story! After a conversation with E T A Nemo over a weeklong visit, we mapped out the details. The story would be a post-apocalyptic yarn involving zombies. The twist was that both of us would be writing one half of the story from our protagonist’s point of view. Each character would be trying to get to Minneapolis to meet the other one. The two of us would not know the details of what the other was writing, what direction their stories might take, or even if the other’s character made it to the final destination. This would free us to explore themes and writing styles separately. We would have a solid framework to work within but not be beholden to the other half of the story. After more discussion, we decided to set up an online system of gathering and sharing all the things that both of us would need to know. These included important things such as the dates that certain things happen in both stories and the cause and nature of the zombie-ism, but also allowed us to put in things like rumors that one character finds out about that may or may not be true. By getting little snippets of the other’s world, both of these worlds could more seamlessly merge into a believable place without knowing the specifics of what the other was writing. One final piece needs to be worked out, but we have some time for that. It  how we will reveal our intentions for the ending to both stories to each other, as it is the only thing that each writes that directly impacts how the other tells the story.

**************************************

This project initially started out as a way to communicate while living thousands of miles apart with the focus being on this shared writing project. We wouldn’t actually share details of the actual writing itself, but for it to be the collaboration we both envisioned, there would need to be a little more involvement with each other’s life than the occasional phone call, text message, or Skype date.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the relationships we have in our lives and the nature of the interactions we have within those relationships. Take a close friend for instance. If this friend lives nearby and you see them often, what form does your conversations take? Most likely, there isn’t a cache of information you build up between each time you see and talk to them. This frees up time and helps to construct intimate space for something else to occur. The conversations now allow the sharing of a portion of your inner monologue, often without you even knowing it. That’s how you really become close to someone and know who they are.

When people are separated by distance, their conversations often take the form of “information dump.” This is understandable and important. To keep the relationship going and remain close, you need to feel that you know what is going on in the other’s life. It’s easy and almost unavoidable that the little bits and pieces of the other person’s world get swept aside and not shared. You only have this one phone call to tell them about the week’s events. You don’t have time nor the created close space to properly convey this other, seemingly unimportant information. This minutiae, however, is the glue that helps bind close relationships together.These things are not told to the other person for the purpose of sharing what’s gone on during the other's absense. It just sort of gets absorbed, and it’s exactly this osmosis that creates a feeling of being in and a part of the other person’s life.

****************************************

In the end, this project was my attempt at mimicking the little things, of perhaps substituting that glue. We will talk about the writing project, of course, but we’ll also post odd thoughts and observations. We will talk about music and politics. We will talk about annoyances and dreams. A lot of the time, like in real conversations, we won't even reply or comment on the other one's previous statement. We'll just read it, sit quietly as we absorb it, and move on. We are separated by a continent, but here we will walk down The Road side by side, chatting as if we were driving a 12- hour stretch across the Dakotas in a Honda Civic named Nigel.

My Kingdom for an Editor

Looking over The Road thus far, I realized that despite my keen eye for details and iron-like grasp of the English language, typos abound and nearly every grammatical rule has been flagrantly broken. My intention was to never go back and touch anything once published. I've reconsidered. All changes made will be strictly cosmetic, and hopefully will not affect the intent.

Detour: Floating in a Moment

[Floating in a Moment is an excerpt taken from Floating in a Song, a piece written on a lazy, mid-August day in Washington Street Park in Eugene, OR. It was the genesis for several other writings and essays]

I'm sitting in a downtown park, shoes kicked off, leaning back into the crook of a massive elm. A Fleet Foxes tune hovers in the air like a cloud, swelling out from my headphones and wrapping me in a coccoon of sound. Two interstate ramps buttress the park to either side. They sweep upward from behind me, rising out and ahead, arching into the distance beyond stands of hundred foot trees. Sometimes the monuments of our attempt to mold and coax nature into something a bit more convenient for our modern existence actually blends into something congruent with nature's haphazard plans. Two seemingly opposing forces merge almost seamlessly into a thing more interesting than the individual parts.

It's a perfect late-summer day. Sun spills languidly across the middle of the park. From the cool, breezy, shaded perimeter, drowsy and content looking figures lie scattered about in pockets. The pale, blue sky is placid and cloudless. My eyes begin to grow heavy as a Shins song starts to swell outward around me like a bubble. I allow it to envelop me as the twin rivers pulse rythmically, hypnotically, cars flowing up...out...to an unseen destination beyond the whispering green curtain of trees.

I Met a Lady on the Train

I started a little project today that is really, really ridiculous…and fun. It’s one of those projects that is meant to give to someone, but they will never get as much enjoyment or see it the same as you do yourself.

I had about an hour or so between running some errands. Yesterday, my friend Mandi who lives in Boston, sent me a funny post card. This made me think of the antique mall we stopped in last year when visiting. A couple of the stalls had hundreds of old photographs and post cards.

Okay, I can’t trace my train of thought that got me from point A to point Z, but I’ll sketch it out and highlight the final product.I decided to go to the mall and look through the photos and cards to find one to send back to Mandi. Suddenly, I had a sentence pop into my brain: “I met a lady on the train.”

So, I thought…how about I get a series of old photos and post cards. On each one, I'll write a seemingly random bit starting with “I met a lady on the train” on the first. I’ll mail them out, in order, one a day to a friend. Once they get all of them, it will tell a story.

There’s an additional pattern to all of the cards' writing. Each day’s card or photo has a set number of lines and words per line. These grow or decrease according to the pattern. The first and last day (there’s eleven total) both have only that original line about the lady and the train. The fun comes when you realize that there are 3 different stories. One is simply reading the cards in order. The second one is reading the cards backward. And third, if you take the first sentence from each piece, another story emerges.

Silly? Yes. A point? Of course not. The hardest part of it is determining who is going to be the lucky recipient of my little 11 days of madness.

Here’s a little snippet from a few of the days' writings:

I met a lady on the train.

She said she had once dreamed of

Attending Bellevue Training School for Nurses

She never made it though

She instead traveled by boat

Down river under marble arches

When she finally landed

She built a house

In the quiet Midwest

And adopted a daughter

Sometimes for fun

She walked downtown

And told strangers

She worked part-time

At the asylum

Emo Day

Yesterday was ostensibly my day off, by which I mean it was the day I tried to tackle eight million longstanding projects.  At about 11AM I headed off to Pittsfield, a city in the middle of Berkshire County, as well as the county seat.  My destination was the Atheneum (aka the Library); specifically the local history room where I hoped to find information about a local distillery that transformed Caribbean slave sugar into rum.  My other blog will provide details about the sinewy threads of research I had to follow.

Suffice to say that it was a day out.  I tried locating exactly where this distillery was; the librarians had given me information as to landmarks.  Either way I was able to get away from the teeming masses currently occupying my parent's house.  I love my family, but there is a distinct lack of privacy and ability to recharge my batteries at the moment between my parents, my in-laws and my nieces and nephews.

I pulled into the driveway at about 6PM, just in time to hear the shrill screams of young children.  I winced, bracing myself for the onslaught of good cheer and attempting to fix my face in a mask of open affability.  Tonight's dinner menu was pizza, and my mother was firmly reminding my father that he had to go pick up a pie for the kids.  I immediately jumped on the opportunity to leave for a bit and have more "me time" (to use an incredibly precious phrase).  I drove up rte 7 towards Vermont to the Cozy Kitchen, a greasy spoon type restaurant and bar attacked to a small Motel.  As I waited to pick up my pie my ears slowly tuned out the conversation and picked up the music rotation.  To my surprise (and slight dismay) I was able to pick out Sigur Ros' "Staralfur," perhaps best known from the jaguar shark scene from Steve Zissou.  Part of me chuckled internally; this song was left out of my list of songs which make me pull my car over but definitely deserves to be on it.

I barely managed to make it out of the restaurant and to my car, pizza burning holes in my arms.  I shut the door and let my body be racked by tearless sobs.  I wish I could say that memories flooded my head but all I saw was blackness and ambivalence.  Flooring it, I headed home to chaos and exhaustion.

Mix Tape Memories: Volume 2

[Mix Tape Memories is a series of posts focusing on and examining music that is so important to me that it seems to have affected my life or outlook on it. Follow the link to read the first part of the series: Volume I.]

“The worst thing you can do is to try to cling to something that's gone, or to recreate it.”

- Johnette Napolitano
Lead Singer, Bass Player, and Co-Founder of Concrete Blonde

1.

“Dominion/ Mother Russia”              The Sisters of Mercy                             Floodland

I bought my first music when I was eight years old. I saw an ad for BMG Music Club in the TV Guide. I chose six albums (Albums mind you. Not tapes. Not CDs), taped a penny to the form, found an envelope and stamp, and mailed it off. I wasn’t quite aware of the concept of “club membership payments.” Or maybe I was. I just wanted those albums. I didn’t even own a record player. Some things haven’t changed since I was eight…I still don’t think things all the way through. I think there were three different clubs I joined before the wrath of my mother finally convinced me that I’d lose a hand if I tried taping another penny to any page out of any magazine in the house.

I was 15 when I bought the first music with money I had earned myself, so it felt like it was “my” first music. I bought it at a music store in Wooster, OH where my older brother was going to school. There was a lot of music I was finding I liked and wanted to explore, so I don't really know why early 80’s Goth, Industrial became that first choice, but it turned out to be a good if not important choice. Floodland. The Sisters of Mercy. I remember going back to the car, leaving my family still shopping inside the mall. I wanted to sit in the car and listen to what I’d bought right then. I remember…a vague sense of something being not what I had expected. It hadn't really happened like this before. This was something I would have to listen to more than once. There wasn’t an instant like/dislike. There was a sense of needing to actually study the music, to explore it. Dominion/Mother Russia was what jumped out at me on that first listen in the hot August sun, baking me in my mother’s mini-van. I was drenched in sweat and probably nearing heat stroke when my family finally opened the doors to the mini-van , but I had never been happier.

LYRICS           

[POP-UP MIX TAPE]

According to songwriter, Andrew Eldritch, the song disguises an anti-American diatribe flavored by the Chernobyl nuclear disaster. The second part of the song "Mother Russia" was a call for the West to give up Berlin to the Soviets, "because in reality they already control the city. It's only stupid to pretend otherwise".

2.

“Song for a Future Generation”                  The B-52’s                Whammy!           

  

In first grade, I narrowed down to three the things I wanted to be when I grew up. One, a surgeon. Two, an appliance salesperson at K-Mart (even I don't know where this one came from). Three, an acrobat in the circus. If I had given it a little more thought, I probably would’ve added a fourth. Four, a B-52.

The B-52’s were perfect role-models for the outcast, the weirdo, the misfit. They didn’t just embrace being odd and different, they had a fucking blast doing it, all while decked out in platform shoes and 3-foot tall bouffants.

“Song for a Future Generation” wasn’t the first B-52s song that grabbed hold and made me want to dance in the hot Athens, Georgia sun, but it was the first one that I felt was for me: a song of outsider-ness, empowerment, and lyrics that combine Frankenstein, George Takei, and a united England and France.

                                       LYRICS                                            

[POP-UP MIX TAPE]

“Song for a Future Generation” is the first of two songs by the B-52's to feature all five band members singing lead vocals, the second being "Theme for a Nude Beach" from the album Bouncing off the Satellites. A ridiculous yet wonderful cover of the song is done by Chicks on Speed. If you haven’t heard it before, check it out: 

LISTEN

3.

“Sympathy for the Devil”               The Rolling Stones                Beggars Banquet

I realized that I was a music geek and had dedicated way too much time obsessing over it when I had a late night conversation with my friend Stephen Moc. Stephen was in a band called Ma Rainey, a blues and rock band he founded with his brother. I first saw Ma Rainey in college and really liked them. I was seeing a lot of live music during that time, and if Ma Rainey was playing, I’d try to catch them. I got to know Stephen, and we became friends over the years, the ubiquitous Short North Tavern being a home away from home for both of us. He did a killer cover of “Sympathy for the Devil.”

Now this was a guy that was a good enough musician to have the balls to name his blues band Ma Rainey…I looked up to him. One night, a bit inebriated, I laid out my “Tapestry of Music” theory. I babbled on about the links from Mozart to Billy Holiday to Modest Mouse. Afterward, he just nodded and either very convincingly humored me (most likely) or was impressed (less likely).

“Sympathy for the Devil” was my Rolling Stones song before I really knew the Rolling Stones. Later I would realize that the band is an amazing and integral part of many decades of pop culture, art, and my “Tapestry of Music.”

LYRICS

[POP-UP MIX TAPE]

In the 2012 BBC documentary, Crossfire Hurricane, Mick Jagger stated that his influence for the song came from Baudelaire and from the Russian author Mikhail Bulgakov's novel The Master and Margarita (which had just appeared in English translation in 1967). The book was given to him by Marianne Faithfull.

4.

 “Faded Flowers”                                Shriekback                               Oil & Gold

“Nemesis” was the song that lassoed me, but it was “Faded Flowers” that made me want to put on eyeliner, don varying shades of black, and generally look moody and feel misunderstood. I can’t even begin to count the number of times I played this song over and over in high school while sitting in my dark bedroom and thinking of all the ways it was “speaking to me.” I even used it as the coup de grace while playing Cupid. I hooked up one of my best friends with the guy I had a crush on. Obviously, I just wanted to play the martyr so I could listen to the song more.

I hadn’t listened to the song in many years until it popped into my head a few months back. I was instantly transported back to those days, and the song was just as sad and inscrutable as ever, just like that 15-year old boy.

LYRICS

Don your leather and lace, pour a glass of red wine and listen here:

LISTEN

[POP-UP MIX TAPE]

The song was featured in the 1980s movie Band of the Hand. I’d like to say I knew this and have seen the movie. I have not. However, upon reading the comments on YouTube, raving about the flick, I feel I need to fill in a gap I never knew existed.

Additionally, the song plays a role in the "If Travel Is Searching." Stay tuned.

5.

“Creep”                                            Radiohead                                 Pablo Honey

It’s not easy to describe what Radiohead means to me. Beyond the fact that it’s a great band with two genius musicians (Thom Yorke and Johnny Greenwood), it’s woven into the memories of different stages of my life tightly.

My first apartment was a shitty little second floor box in a building that looked like a 1960’s cheap motel. It was close to campus though and cheap. One night after moving in, the neighbors had a party. Upon hearing this song blaring in my apartment, a few party go-ers knocked on my door and invited me over. That was a change from most instances of my playing of this song. Most of the time it just involves me sitting in my apartment alone, chain smoking and drinking.

LYRICS

             

[POP-UP MIX TAPE]

It is known that this song, while not being the best from Thom, Johnny, and crew is forbidden by me to be covered. I've been know to rage, curse, and spill beer when the unfortunate sould attempts to sing it at Karaoke. I once went into a lengthy tirade that had actually little to do with the song when I once heard another band cover it (read: butcher it). It seems like a simple song, but the subtle, vulnerable, almost cracking voice of Thom Yorke is impossible to match. One exception: Damien Rice.

One other exception: an epic, legendary night of Rock Band that last 8 hours and involved a bottle of Jack Daniels. Alas, no recording survived the historic night. It will live in the minds of the four of us that experieced it. Rock on my friends. Rock on.

Listen to Damien Rice's cover here:

LISTEN

Songs that Make me Pull my Car over

1) Tears for Fears, "Break it Down Again."

This song takes me back to DC in about 2007.  It was about the height of my "spinning my wheels" phase (a phase I am not quite sure I have yet grown out of).  The lyrics about "sitting on a time bomb" and "the beauty of decay" particularly spoke to me.  I'm not sure why entirely, but if I had to venture a guess it had to do with elements of the Pyrrhic victory or the lost cause.  Either way, after I was fired from my job as a barista that year (and by "fired" I mean "came into work to find a padlock on the front gate") I pretty much wore out "Elemental."

2) The Magnetic Fields, "No one Will Ever Love You."

I think it's pretty self-explanatory why a song titled as such would make one weepy.  For me, however, it's the addition of the final word "honestly."  That is to say, "no one will ever love you honestly."  I guess the reason why that final word feels like the ultimate stake through the heart is that almost every human relationship, at least to me, invariably involves some degree of deception.  This goes double for me; I do not see how anyone could ever love me without at least some corner of my eternally fucked-up personality being concealed from them.  Does this mean I'm just plain un-lovable, or that every human on the planet is plain un-lovable?  Or, does love generally involve some level of deception, self and/or otherwise?

3) Counting Crows, "Round Here."

For some year, ever since the year 2006, the lyric "round here/we roar like lions but sacrifice like lambs" sends me bawling like an infant.  I cannot for the life of myself say why.

4) New Order, "Bizarre Love Triangle."

There are a couple of reasons this song affects me.  First, it involves the intellectual exercise New Order seems to insert into all of their songs and albums.  None of them ever seem to fit with their titles, and there seems to be the additional element of trying to match which titles seems to better fit which song.  Second, there is the fact that the song's chorus seems to involve attempting to invoke a higher power for the benefit of another person, and this song wormed its way into my consciousness at about the same time I began losing my faith in any sort of interactive deity.  Finally, I cannot believe that the most mainstream of New Order songs (and an upbeat dance-able one at that) has such a lachrymose affect on me.

5) Radiohead, "True Love Waits."

Because, quite simply, this song reminds me of all of my failings, past and present.

That is all.