English Evergreens

"One of these nights I may just jump down that rainbow way, be with my baby..."  TVC15

I used to keep a picture of David Bowie beneath my bed.  What?, it's true.  Sort of.  My "bed" was the two benches and a table that folded down in the front of a little camper trailer.  The picture was actually a scratchy vinyl copy of Station to Station that my cousin had acquired somehow & couldn't sell.  This was in the mountains North of San Bernardino.  I'd been uprooted & displaced.  I was West Coast without a compass.  Alien.

I used to think David Bowie was my mom's music.  Except, in the radio Eighties he became my music, in a way that the other "classic rock" guys who were still going couldn't manage.  I wasn't a fan of the high-waisted pastel Serious Moonlight look, but it's a miracle I never got a tear tattooed next to my eye.  Such is the power.  He has always been there, the cool Uncle who knows what you're into before you do.  You want to grow up to be just like him.  And marry him, too, somehow.  Marry your cool Uncle twin.

I could never listen to that record, but I still have it.  I wouldn't have been able to appreciate the melodrama & depth of it back then, anyway.  Later years would find me driving dizzy, trying to sing along on lonely trips to Joplin & back.  The road only existing as far as my headlights.  If an asteroid were going to hit the Earth, I wanted to go out listening to this album.  So perhaps it is inevitable that I would link Station to Station to [Blackstar].  Maybe nothing more than my own emotional connection, but they seem similarly structured, "difficult", and then there's David Bowie miming at the end of the "Lazarus" video, wearing the same diagonally-chalkstriped outfit his younger self is wearing on the back of my cd.  Just part of the mystery he has left us.

Speaking of leaving us--I am amazed at how he pulled off such a grand exit.  I can't even manage to scare up the skeleton of a will.  The more I think about it, the more at a loss for words I become.  It's a record I knew he could make, without my being able to imagine what it would sound like.  There is no pop-connection, no effort for one last hit.  It has the surreal energy of later Scott Walker without sounding like a rip off.  Sometimes the music & vocals could be two different songs.  The music just goes.  There's a little pattern the saxophone repeats about three & a half minutes into "’Tis a Pity She Was a Whore", getting a little higher pitched each time, until it breaks free & takes me with it.  Scrutinizing the lyrics, though, can be overwhelming.  In their own way, they end up being as wild as the jazz behind them.  Seriously, an entire song sung in Polari & Nadsat.  I'll still be deciphering it next year.  Anyway, there are numerous reviews & articles that say this better than I can.

A couple days ago, when I had [Blackstar] on repeat & had no idea what news Monday would bring, I kept asking "what is human?", and a lyric that jumped out at me was "endless faith in hopeless deeds".  That answer works for me.  Maybe it's that suspension of disbelief that allows love & art to thrive.

Oh! You Pretty Things

The cold feels like I've moved to Siberia.  Every dark morning last week, I drove to work with Godflesh cranked to 13 (naturally).  There's an unrelenting, funky pulse that often (re)animates the angry sludge of these songs.  One of my favorites is the unfortunately-titled "Circle of Shit".  The dance it makes me do is like a film loop of Grover from Sesame Street having an epileptic fit.

The stew of the week:  Godflesh, David Bowie, The Hateful Eight, Providence, Nameless, my own weird dreams, the "news" of the world, all bubbling in the mix.  Space Oddity through Ziggy, anticipating [Blackstar].  Dialogue & death in a widescreen blizzard.  Madness induced by unpronounceable Lovecraftian demons.  All preferable to another day at the Skin Factory.  My job is turning me into an asshole.

Chai Shai & Alamo Drafthouse with JMC.  An unhurried pakora curry with a mysterious salty, pickled, stemmed lump that I should ask for two of next time.  A 20-something woman to my right baby-talking to her boyfriend throughout their meal.  I took a deep breath & imagined she was a Manga character.  The couple who replaced them held hands & prayed out loud over their food, then commenced an "honest" conversation about their relationship.  They seemed to be new to each other.  I was struck by how beautifully cultish their public praying was to me.  I think I've finally gotten over the childhood trauma of Midwestern cross-wielding psychos, and I can accept Christianity as being just as valid as any other religion.

I enjoyed The Hateful Eight as much as any Tarantino film.  I have a sort of pact with the ghost of a friend, this is what I'd be doing if you were still here.  But amidst all the casual elbows-to-the-face, human beings reduced to splattered gore, and copious use of the word "nigger", I have to ask myself why.  Especially, when a young black man is setting my beer down in front of me at the exact moment the word is eliciting laughter from the audience.  I was mortified & felt like running from the theater, screaming "black lives matter!"  I want art to provoke an emotional response, questioning, reevaluation, etc., so...there you go, am I part of the problem or the solution, or both?  The score is good.  The bit with the door is hilarious.  I like how "pocket universe" it all seems--three hours of these characters isolated by a blizzard in a shack in Wyoming.  The closeness of it makes me think of Sartre's No Exit.

"What is human?"  It's a question that repeats in issue four of Nameless.  As the demon/alien takes away limbs, eyes, sex, dignity;  as it drives people to rape & murder;  as our bodies are digested & become worms' bodies. "What is human?" as I read of a certain "presidential candidate" urging his supporters to strip protesters of their coats before throwing them out in the cold. Seeing his claim that he's a victim of hatred, rather than an instigator, I feel the disgust grow in me, knowing he's going to get away with it.  "What is human?" as North Korea pretends (or not) to have a hydrogen bomb, and daily shootings have made going to a restaurant an act of courage.  The terrorists & Trumpies are a cancer popping up on an overpopulated, polluted Earth where all the resources are being perverted & misappropriated by a handful of people.  Every time I turn on the news, I think "gotta make way for the Homo Superior!"

On the flip side, Berkley Breathed's new Bloom County is a wondrous thing.  Neil Gaiman's baby is super cute.  And a flock of starlings are squabbling on my lawn, sounding like rain when they all take off at once.

Late Summer Scraps

Twice, without trying,
I've passed that burned-out house.  It
will probably end up in my dreams, instead of your red hair.

20. Who do you miss most?
J or myself.  It's hard to say which one.

Driving through cottonwood fluff at not-quite warp speed.
Clouds on the horizon like frozen explosions.

49. What's the furthest you've been from home?
I think 14 years in Lawrence, KS beats Athens.

Every dark tree sounds like a lunar landing.