4 minutes of forever

I’m still doing lots of trips back and forth to Sydney, so not much has changed much over these past few years.  That may be a good thing or a bad thing, depending on how you look at it.  Sometimes it’s not so much, and other times it seems like I’ve got the details of the F1 highway memorized down to the last white line and the shape of every roadside pebble.  Time is, of course, slipping, but taking a tattered page from Dylan Thomas I am doing my best to rage against the eventual and keep up my trips to the library, poking amongst the books and CDs in hopes of finding something new to help me battle brain fade and ennui, to delay that slow descent into jaded middle age and cynical detachment.  Basically just trying to keep up the spirits, if you will.

When it comes to finding joy, I must report that, alas, I did and I didn’t.  I’ll spare you the minutiae of the entire cache I waltzed home with, but on a drive down to Sydney I eagerly cracked open Badly Drawn Boy’s It’s What I’m Thinking (Part One: Photographing Snowflakes).  I had been a fan of his in the past, and although I lost touch with most of his work following Have You Fed The Fish?, that was really because I decided to fall off the earth when it comes to much of music and music journalism.  Badly Drawn Boy doesn’t seem to be spoken of much Down Under, and if he is then it is simply my fault for being oblivious.  It happens.

My hands aren’t exactly shaking as I put the CD in, but darn near close enough, and I was ready for his slightly bored delivery and subtle anti-pop to take me away.  It didn’t.  It was rather underwhelming, with songs that went nowhere and seemed really naff & muddled and I couldn’t find a song or a point or whatever. I was not mad, but I was pretty bummed out.  I gave it about 1 1/2 listens before admitting defeat and moving on.  Radio in Australia is not particularly my cup of tea, but that doesn’t keep me from trying.  I tuned into amongst the white noise of rural NSW and got on with the drive.

It wasn’t until I returned home that I gave album another try, and this had a slightly different result.  I was still pretty underwhelmed, but from the remembered drear came an ascending melodic line of violins that sprang from my speakers and grabbed me for the better part of two weeks.  For the next 12 days or so I had this song blasting on repeat in the car, lulling me away from the cold sunshine and discontent, my slight aches and complaints, and whatever general unpleasant humanness I generally bring to the party.  It is not a perfect song, but “Too Many Miracles” was perfect, for me.

I am not a massive music sleuth, nor do I make any claims nor have any aims at music journalism.  I’d like to think that I’ve remained as much of a fan of music that being a musician will allow, and I think I’ve largely succeeded, (although not entirely, to be sure.) By the time this song had run its course I still did not really know what exactly he is singing, and rather than bother to look up the lyrics I decided I might as well see if any PR had accompanied the song.  Sure enough, there was the music clip (that’s the sucker above), blessed with sound that was much clearer that what is heard on CD.  Besides smiling at the fact that at least someone or some label was still putting money behind him, I noticed that there was a live clip of him performing at a slightly sparsely attended in-store at Rough Trade records.  I post it here just as way of pulling back the curtain, as it were.  Not to say, “Hey look! He’s just a guy with an acoustic guitar! See?!?!  It’s not that hard!” But rather, to see and hear what a song is like in it’s simplest form, performed in the simplest manner, much like a journeyman in any other occupation.  It’s a glimpse of someone getting along with it as best he can, with quiet dignity and not much pomp and fanfare.

And that is the sound of 3 minutes and 46 seconds that filled my life, seemingly without end.  Happy listening, say hi if it’s been a while.  Is it just me, or are we all seeming just a little bit weary?

To close, I’ll leave you with the rich sound of Dylan Thomas, reading his work as no one else can.  We all rage, in our own way.  Keep it up.

peace & love,

M

4 Perfect Songs

I must be getting old. I’m up early in the morning, not because I especially want to, but because that’s the way it is now.  My body knows no different.  I contemplated staying in bed, but then I realized that the AM is also the only time when I can write or be remotely productive.  I wonder if I’ll be getting up at 5 AM in a few more years to write, like truly dedicated, “real” writers.  I’m not sure, but one thing I asked myself this morning was if this was going going to be the end of late night, slightly slurred song writing?  Again, I’m not sure.  I do know that at the end of my teaching day I feel like slipping into a coma.  Despite the mythology, songs very rarely just come to you.  Yes, it happens, and usually more than once, but the rest of the time it’s work.  It might be whimsical, it might be pondering, it might be mildly tedious, or it might be head-bashingly frustrating, but it is work nonetheless.

I’ve found, not a work-around, but at least a slightly helpful method, which is that I am constantly writing in my head, even if it is for the same song or lines for weeks on end.  It’s not a replacement for sitting down with your guitar in front of pen & paper, typewriter (remember those?), or computer keyboard, but it’s a slight help.  It also makes committing the songs to memory rather easy.  But, I digress….

Our aqua green Toyota Tarago recently kicked the bucket after over three years of loyal, untiring service.  We drove the poor bugger hard, and it wasn’t in great shape when I got it, (I got seriously ripped off).  I’ve been waiting for it to go for over 18 months, after we had a severe scare on the road, and I told myself when it was time to say goodbye that I would do so with little fanfare and no regrets or complaints.  A lo, it came to pass that as soon as it shat itself I already had the next van picked out, this one a much finer upgrade.  The only problem is that it has the factory CD player, so no more rocking the iPod on the road, at least until we splurge on a new stereo (read: never).

So….it’s back to our CD collections we go.  On the drive home after opening with Bonjah Matt & I listened to a few of our favourite albums, ones that we had dubbed “perfect”, each in their own way.  Art is great like that.  There is no objective ideal of perfect, but each thing can be its own perfect self.  Ten Silver Drops by the Secret Machines has long been a marvel, along with Elliot Smith’s Either/Or.  After our last jaunt down to Sydney, I did the driving while my co-pilot mostly slept soundly, which meant I was the DJ, for better or worse.  I put on the usual mix of brooding alt-rock throwbacks & throwaways, and by the time I got home I had managed to get to R.E.M.’s Murmur.

Amongst indie rock cognoscenti this LP is a bit of a trophy of sorts, especially amongst the fading denim of Atlanta & Athens where I grew up.  Listening back from such a distance, it is indeed a triumph, but in a way that marks most of their early records.  When they got it right, they really got it right, and the rest of the time it didn’t suck.  That’s not bad actually, considered how many full albums we’ve all probably bought over the years that had one decent song and the rest shyte.

I was reminded of a brief period of my life when I was fascinated by the EP format.  Ignorant of its vinyl origins (EPs were on 10-inch discs, LP were on 12, while singles were 7), I simply thought of an EP as 4-7 tracks of compressed expression, a format that had been sorely underused.  Radiohead’s Airbag/How Am I Driving EP completely floored me, and I soon embarked on a personal quest to turn every great album into an even better EP.  It’s rather reductive reasoning that soon taps itself out, but it tuned and turned my ear on a different slant for a while, and since I don’t have an aversion to the LP format no harms seems to have been done.

I guess all of this is a roundabout introduction to saying that the first 4 tracks on Murmur are perfect in their own way.  I’ll not explain why, but am posting them here in hopes that you’ll enjoy them.  R.E.M. has often been tagged as “Southern Gothic”, mostly because they are a) from the South, and b) writers needed a term to describe them that made both the band and the writer’s seem “arty”.  It doesn’t always fly, but every once in a while it makes sense.  There is a murkiness that pervades much of their work, and the collision of 4-on-the-floor new-wave anglo-jangle with shimmering guitars and brooding lyrics does suggest something darker and more serious than let’s get drunk let’s fuck fuck you.  You can pogo to these tunes, if it moves you, but I can’t say that I’ve ever felt compelled to do the same.  Maybe it’s because I first heard these songs 20 years past their introduction, and my reaction was to go completely still and absorb it all rather than revel in it’s beauty and energy.  That is one of the blessings, and curses, of time and distance.  We can experience things not as they were, but then, we don’t get to experience things as they were.

It’s worth reading the original press that was turned out when this record was released, of only to get a sense of not only how high the odds were stacked against R.E.M., but of how hungry the music press was for a band exactly like them.  When everyone gets all giddy/angry about the 90s revolution, what they’re reaping is the seeds that were sown long before.  Here’s 4 of the finest.

Radio Free Europe: I’ve opted to kick things off with a live version rather than the crappy video.  (It would be a long while until their videos managed to catch up to their sonic output).  I never knew R.E.M. when they were young (mostly because I was in nappies), so it was rather endearing to see them so young and full of zip.  Bassist Mike Mills has long been my secret favourite in the band, and watching him jump around with his baby face puts paid to those who think of R.E.M. and automatically assume that it was all “Shiny Happy People” or “Everybody Hurts”.  Sure, they’d lose in a fight with a tougher band, but they’d go down swinging, with pride intact.  As Anthony Kiedis intoned on Pea: so fucking what?

Pilgrimage: Why doesn’t anyone talk about this song?  Oh yeah, coz they put it right next to all the other great songs.  That’s either brilliant or the absolute pits of tracklisting.

Laughing: This is the gem that gets all the rock nerds in a frenzy, and it’s easy to see why.  Ambiguity, thy name is “Laughing”.  I’ll be honest, I don’t know what Stipey is singing half the time, and I don’t want to know.  I have always rolled around in the sound and melody of this song, and for every word I understand (or think I decipher), I consider it a victory of patience.  This song has never had a meaning for me, up until last week….I was driving and had a literal head-smacking moment.  Whether I’ve gotten it wrong or gotten it right, it only matters to me.

Talk About The Passion: The last of my personal quartet of perfection, “Talk About The Passion” has always been one of their more accessible songs, but one that I never love, love, loved.  I doubt I’ve ever pressed skip over it, but it never gripped my like it has these past two weeks.  For whatever reason, the lines

not everyone/can carry the weight of the world

have never seemed more true than now.  I usually don’t like or hang onto songs for such literal reasons, but having someone say it for you….I needed that. Perhaps this means that I’m moving towards a future where I’ll listen to “Everybody Hurts” when I’m…you know…hurtin’.

And that’s that.  I could say more about the entire album, but I’d rather not.  I’ve said too much already, and you get the drift.  I’ve been listening to these 4 songs in my car for the last 2 weeks and as I pulled in last night I realized that it was over.  It wasn’t too much of a good thing, but the special magic that these 4 songs have held over me has just slightly faded, and that is as good as gone.  I’m not going to burn the CD, mind you, I’m simply going to put something else on.

My tea has gone cold and it’s time for me to put the laundry out to dry.  Give these tracks a spin if you’re bored and in the mood for dreaming.

-M

Looking up

Been rare around these parts lately, but that’s gonna change.  I swear.

Things are looking up.  Like anything they could always be better, but take the fun and good times when it comes and we’ll deal with the comedown and fallout later.  Always later.  We got some very welcome yet unexpected news a few weeks ago:

We’re opening for Bob Mould.

THE Bob Mould.  Of Hüsker Dü fame, along with much, much more.  That raw, fuzzy, earnest yet melodic sound that I keep trying to capture in Royal Chant?  He pretty much created that savage strain of alt-rock, and whether knowingly or unknowingly I’ve been walking in his footsteps for a long while now.

So….in the rare event that you happen to read this and live in Sydney, Australia (or within driving distance), we’ll be opening up for him when he hits town on Saturday night at the Factory Theatre.  Come say hi if you do.  We’ll be the ones looking sheepish next to our dwindling pile of CDs, probably giving them away as well as trying to press a flyer for our next show into your hands.

I’m more excited than I’ve been in a long, long time, and I’m already dreading the moment when it’s over. Still, I guess bracing myself for one heck of an emotional hangover doesn’t mean we can’t enjoy the moment while it lasts, and soak up every minute of adrenaline-fueled anticipation to mix with the stories I’ll no doubt be telling in 17 years to some bored kids who wish I’d get to the point.

I’ve been blasting Zen Arcade and Flip Your Wig non-stop for 3 weeks now, even before we got the gig and it was only just a maybe.  I kept thinking that if there was a chance we could get it, then maybe creating some fuzzy vibes would be a way to move the powers that be to cast their indifferent glance upon us and grant us this favour.  This massive, massive favour.

I’m a geek, and yeah, I’ll probably dork it up if I get the chance to see him.  I found the score of the century on Saturday when I rushed into a Bellingen record store 5 mins before closing and searched through their meager vinyl collection…looking for….FOUND IT! Flip Your Wig on vinyl! Brand new, and only $30.  To give you some sense of perspective on the one-in-a-million chance of this happening, pick any small town with a population of less than 2,000 people, give it a record store (even more rare these days!) and then pick an obscure album by a somewhat fringe band and hope that they have it.  On vinyl.  I did a bit of a dance, I confess.

Unreal.

I’ll get back to work now (sorta), and leave you with my two favourite songs that I’ve been working on this past week.  One is my favourite Hüsker Dü track (and possibly their best known), called “Makes No Sense At All”.  The second is also by Hüsker Dü, but this live version features Dave Grohl guesting on guitar.  I’ll leave a lot to your imagination, but let’s just say that I’ve been working on both of these songs in the rare event that somehow, someway, he needs another guitarist on the night.  Maybe he saunters into the backstage area and says, “Hey…kid.  Yeah, you.  Grab your guitar.”

 

A boy’s gotta dream….

Love for now.  Talk to you all after the show.  Hopefully I’ll manage to get a pic or something, either on stage or off.

In sickness and in hell

I wanted to write about Henry Rollins.  All kinds of wild, half-baked, this-way-and-that-way stuff.  I wanted to write about Bobby Fischer listening to the radio.  I wanted to write a live review of the shitty local metal night.

Instead I came upon a large goanna sitting in the middle of the road, staring out at the world with silent eyes, still alive but definitely not for much longer.  I stopped because I got excited when I saw a large goanna stretched out on the steaming pavement, thinking I might do my good deed for the day by convincing him to stop warming himself and safely to the side.  Instead I stopped and looked at him for a while, and as I slowly realized what had happened I began to wrench by hands in useless despair.  I stopped because I love my reptilian friends.  I don’t want to hold them or try and cuddle them, I just think that they get a bad rap, and somebody has to like the poor little devils.

A kid rode by on his bike and asked what was up.  I told him I didn’t think this guy was going to make it.  By all appearances, it looked like a happy, healthy goanna.  No blood nor ripped flesh, no obvious signs of harm.  But that was the problem.  He was, to use the childish term, “smooshed”.  From the inside.  As a car passed by and he/she/it opened it’s mouth, I could see that this was another casualty of this useless modern world.  Is there any more poignant metaphor about man v  world than roadkill?  With the exception of the few deer than manage to destroy a few cars each year (good on ‘em, I say), mankind and our machines have become exquisite, efficient, and emotionless killers of all walks of life.  We can do it in an instant, and we are always eager to prove, whether deliberate or accidental.  The world is ill-equipped and powerless in our path.  They have fur, teeth, hides, claws, maybe some fangs and some poison to boot.  We’ve got 2 tonnes of metal machine muscle, places to be, and pavement to get us there.  Checkmate.

I guess all this rain has put me in a more brooding, melancholy frame of mind, and all I kept uttering was, “assholes.  Sorry.  Fucking Assholes.  Sorry.” I wasn’t apologizing to the kid for swearing in front of him.  I was apologizing to the goanna. The kid picked it up and rather unlovingly tossed it into the bushes by the side of the road, and we both went on our separate ways.  I have thought of little else today.

As of right now, I do kind of generally hate everything.  Mostly, I hate that smug thought, or rather, that smug forgetfulness that envelops us in the modern world.  Having said that, it’s probably safe to say that the past wasn’t much better.  Maybe for white, slave-owning males it was way better, but I find no evidence that we are any kinder, compassionate, less violent, or less destructive than any previous generation.  We are built to destroy, and rarely are we the ones that pay the price, except when we set ourselves against each other.  When not busy killing each other we have to find substitutes.  Today this goanna got

This isn’t supposed to be all “look at me, I’m a super-sensitive twat!”  I really just wanted to apologize to this poor goanna.  He was neither pretty nor ugly, but he had definitely made it to maturity, and that seemed like the biggest kick in the guts.  These things are pretty big.  Someone did this deliberately.  (Trust me, on this country road I was on it was definitely target practice).  Somebody probably laughed.

What do we take away from this?  Well, pretty much whatever you want.  You can become bitter and disillusioned, but that is a childish cop-out.  You could try and create something good from this by using it as a catalyst for positive change & effort, but that seems a tad fanciful and almost psychotic.  We can laugh madly and become fatalists, shaking the world by it’s dirty collar with our eyes rolling in our heads, screaming like lunatics and pressing onward into the insanity.  It depends.  Whatever you want to do it, it will fit.

I just think we’re assholes.  And I’m not done thinking about that just yet.  We are sick, but some days are better than others.  This was a bad day.

Not him, but you get the idea.

Peace and love,

-M

Going Big. Going Home.

Things were rather dreary for a while.  The band was depressed, I was depressed, etc etc.  When so much of what you perceive to be your existence or success depends on the opinion of someone else, then yeah, you’re basically setting yourself up for misery, and that is exactly what we fell into.  No matter how much I try to be isolated and independent, at some point, sooner or later, getting our music out to the world does, in large part, require some assistance in any number of forms: radio, TV/video, mags, street press, blogs, word-of-mouth, buzz, whatever.  Of course, you can solve most of those problems by being so unbelievably, undeniably good that people will be forced by the absolute power of your art to spread the word for you, but as of yet, we have yet to create that.  As it stands, we create whatever it is we create and toil away at getting the word out in whatever fashion we can.  Sometimes things are good, sometimes they’re bad, and sometimes there is nothing at all.  That’s when it gets dark.

So we were all collectively bummed out for much of the past year, wondering what we were doing and where we were going.  Getting even a sliver of success can do that to you.  It’s not that we all developed raging drug habits and started dating B-list Aussie actresses.  Nothing quite as interesting as that.  Rather, we got used to people paying attention and assumed that they would continue to do so.  After all, if people thought that one of our throwaway songs was good….

….then surely they would like our other, newer, better stuff, right? And after all, aren’t we getting to be a much better live act?

Well, no and yes, and really, in the end none of that matters.  It’s not a science project.  Buzz is buzz and that is that.  You cannot buy it (not for long anyways), and you can’t fake it.  It can only happen when it’s the real deal and it is ON.  When you’ve got it, it gets under your skin and that same electricity you create onstage is with you 24/7….at least, until it wears off.  And then it hurts.  A lot.

So we’re swimming in this state of withdrawal, heavily addicted and starting to fray at the seams, but not quite coming apart.  We kept writing songs and playing shows but kept chasing something bigger and better, all the while suffering from sever highs and lows and confusion and doubt.  All of a sudden I couldn’t tell what was good or not, and my instincts, which had kinda sorta served me well enough in the past flew out the window.  I don’t have any hard data, but I’m pretty sure I didn’t finish a song for 10 months or so, getting lost in false starts and meandering blah that really didn’t go beyond a few opening arcane couplets and some weak chord progressions.  It wasn’t pretty.

So…we decided to go to America.  We’d been wanting to do it for ages and although no one said anything I’m pretty sure we were all thinking that we might want to have a last blast of fun before things completely fell apart.  Surprisingly, we actually managed to get our shit together enough to buy plane tickets, book a run of shows, and step on the plane.  We all left at different times, but we met in New York City and whatever was meant to happen…it happened.

We played in traffic:

We went bowling:

We played some music every once in a while:

Along with a bunch of other headaches and pains that go along with being a band on the road.  We went into a recording studio and recorded our latest single (more on that in the new year), all the while using trains, planes, and automobiles to get from point A (NYC), to point Z (Atlanta), where we all said goodbye and went our separate ways, each person (or group of people, since we actually had more Aussie friends/roadies/groupies with us than actual band members) off to finish their time in America as they saw fit.

As for me, I went to visit my parents & fiancé in Florida.  We drove to New Orleans and along the way stopped to snap this:

And now I’m sitting here in the dregs of Summer, a bit bummed out and staring at a nearly empty glass of beer resting on a cheap-yet-arty fleur de lis coaster that we picked up in the Crescent City.

The net result? A lot of memories, some new friends, some new fans, and most importantly: buzz.

Not from other people, but from within, the kind that turns us back into teenagers who have written their first song and are pretty well convinced that we’re the greatest band ever.  Soppy?  Yeah, probably, but I don’t much care.

And that’s what we got up to and that kind of gave us a new lease on life.  For the first time ever, I could see Australia in a different light regarding its status in the larger world of music.  After all, when one gets amongst it in the beast that is the USA it does make a large island with a small population seem somewhat….provincial?  It is what it is, both good and bad (and oftentimes great), but it is not the center of our existence, and that has made all the difference.

I probably could have saved us all a lot of time and trouble and just called this post “How Sparky got his groove back” and added  the “Humpty Dance” for a backing soundtrack, but nah, you know me.  Why use one word when 1,000 will do?

We made you a souvenir.  Here is us banging away at the Bar East Ale House on September 22, 2012.  It’s not great, but if you’ve ever wondering what Royal Chant is like live this ain’t too shabby.  Consider it the most povo Festivus present we could scrape together, and apologies if you wanted something good, like socks.

Catch you soon in the New Year.  Stay safe, but make it a smashing one.

Love, peace, hugs, & kittens.

-M

Desolation Rolling

Living in small town like Port Macquarie means that just about anywhere is less than 10 minutes away.  It’s not a bad way to live, but I do feel like a bit of a waster for using my van so much.  I guess I have a bit of excuse with so much music equipment, but I’ve yet to completely convince myself. It doesn’t take much imagination to see how I could be a little, probably even a LOT more green in my existence if I really, really wanted to.

So I’m driving somewhere, probably on some banal, pointless errand, or going to teach and slightly zoning out when Bob Dylan’s “Desolation Row” comes on my iPod.  I keep it on shuffle most days, leaving it to fate to see what will cross my ears.  I hadn’t heard the song in ages, nor thought about it in the least for longer than I can remember.  I left it on, and of course I reached my destination before it ended.

The next time I got in the car I started the song from the top, and once again I was done before the song.  I kept that up for 5 days straight, for no reason at all, other than I liked letting my mind drift inside those words I know so well.  In high school I played this on vinyl nearly every morning as I was getting dressed for school, bracing myself and trying to create some ideal version of my 17 year old self.  Honestly, am I any different today?  Do I still “suit up” in my armor and get lost in some sort of fantastic projection?  Perhaps…perhaps.

I never talk about Bob Dylan with any one, nor am I a huge fan of reading other people’s thoughts on him or his songs.  Their explanations always seem so wrong, as I’m sure mine would be if I ever tried.  I never really understood the tie-dyed hippies who dig Dylan, mostly because they tend to talk conspiracy theories or about secret codes hidden in the songs, basically all the reasons that people roll their eyes when they see a hippie getting wound up.  Maybe it’s personal, or maybe there’s nothing to explain, not really.

I once read an interview with a director, (and God forbid, it may have been James Cameron), who said something along the lines of not believing in movies being “too long” as a set quantity, only that they “felt” long, and it’s a sentiment I personally agree with, especially when it comes to music.  If the listener notices the passing of time, or rolls their eyes and thinks “aw hell, another verse?”, then as a songwriter you’ve gotten it wrong, or wrong for that person.  That’s how “Desolation Row” feels to me.  I never notice that over eleven minutes have passed by the time the last harmonica note fades, and it’s like I’m waking up from a dream of sorts.

I’ve never tried to cover “Desolation Row”, (although I must confess that in my early attempts at songwriting I had a song that ripped off the chords, structure, and cadence), and if you asked me to sing the song without the words in front of me I doubt I’d get beyond the first sentence, but when it’s on I can sing along word for word, rather like when I was young and forced to go to church, and would marvel at everyone singing along to the hymns.  No one knows how the songs are supposed to sound, but once the organ got cranking and the choir rang out we’re all on board together and somehow it worked.  Kind of like that, only it’s Bob Dylan, not “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God”, and I’m alone rather than standing amidst adults and wishing to be elsewhere.

I love everything about this song.  The words, his voice, the delivery…everything.  I have no doubt that I’m in the minority here, about Dylan the artist, Dylan the singer, and about this song especially, but that’s no matter.  I’ve always held Dylan close to my heart and I’m not here to convert or convince anyone, since there’s really no need for that.

If this is my last post of 2012, then I wish you all a happy holiday season, wherever you are across the globe, and smashing New Year.  With school out and few shows until January hopefully I can motivate my pen and find some use for the idle hours.

 

[ps--you'll notice that this YouTube clip is named "Desolation Road", not "Desolation Row", and I suspect that was the only way to sneak it past the record label vultures who are ready to tear anything down they can find.  This one is safe, it seems, for now]

Winged Apologies

I’ve been meaning to write a post about depression.  When it hits, how it hits….I’d certainly like to write about why it hits, but who on earth knows that answer to that?

Instead, I hit a bird today on the way to school.  I feel terrible, but in a different way.  Poor little lorikeet.  They are not the brightest, but they are sweet, in their own noisy & chatterbox kind of way.  I’ve always laughed with sadness every time I’ve seen s bird smash into the side of a bus or attempt to fly beneath a car, but today it all seems just a little bit heavier.  I’ve always wanted to send out a memo to all our flying friends, essentially reminding them that they can have pretty much the entire sky to themselves, as long as they give the human race the first 10 or 20 feet so, especially around cars.  But no, sometimes these things just happen and then it hurts for a while and then maybe the karmic scales are adjusted slightly or maybe in the end nothing happens at all.

There’s always time for depression, for better or for worse, but for now here is a song that almost suits.  If you listen to the lyrics it actually doesn’t really relate in any way other than the chorus, but for now that is enough.

Lastly, if you’re on the hunt for a decent read I would highly recommend Iris Murdoch’s The Green Knight.  It’s been quite a few years since I’ve read it, but as soon as I hit the little fellow today I thought of the character Moy, the youngest of three daughters and my quiet favourite.  At one point she apologizes to a lemon peel, and I’ve often thought — ‘Aye, I know what you mean.

I’m sorry.  I hope you didn’t suffer.

Jazz

Some cats are always hanging around
Some cats are always talking, perhaps too much
Some cats are hungry, while others sit quietly and stare
Some cats sleep all day, and most of the night as well.
Some cats are friendly
Some cats are mean
Some cats are viscous

Some cats slink around the corner, off to God knows where.

Some cats you wish would stay
Some cats, not so much
Some cats hang with hungry eyes, bleeding lips, and limbs awry

Some cats are gone

Some cats get lost
Some cats go far
Some cats never go home
Some cats howl for no good reason at all .

Untitled

It’s always 8 AM
always running late
the tea is always cold
always 2^nd place
we are a field of poppies
proud but bent.

A study in the way
we hang our heads in shame
and the sorrows we clutch
tight against our chest
picking up the tempo
in this dance of death.

Waiting once again
night rolls into the next
for real or for pretend
alive or dead
standing like a statue
chipped and cracked.

We lost a few along the way
but what did you expect?
We lost something along the way,
it’s best we just forget.

Not working

Agh, it’s too late and I’m too grumpy to make apologies, but lately I have been ready to pull my hair out from lack of writing…anything at all.  No songs, no scribbles, no bad poetry.  Nothing.  ‘Aye, all our time is both precious and a-wasting, and at long last I am burned out and pissed off.  Just teaching and teaching and teaching and my hands ache and my mind is starting to recede.  Is my hair as well?  I surely hope not.  I am so vain that I’m not sure which one I would barter in order to keep the other.  I like the odds on my vanity.

I few weeks ago I finished Amis & Son: Two Literary Generations, by Neil Powell, which was somewhat of a dual literary biography of Kingsley and Martin.  It was decent enough, in it’s own way, although I must say I was a tad surprised by how hard Powell was in judging the shortcomings of Martin’s work.  There was almost a fatherly tone in his scolding, and given the affinity & affection I detected in Powell towards Kingsley I guess it somewhat makes sense.  He was quite fair and objective in his appraisal of Kingsley’s work, which must have been hard to do given how familiar he was with the man and his work.

I meant to write at greater length of Kingsley’s time at Oxford and the impression it made on me, but for now I wanted to share this poem that I have been continuously reading and returning to over the past few weeks.  Although Kingsley was a published poet in his own right it is not what he is most, or even second or third most usually remembered for. (I’d have to give those distinctions to Lucky Jim, drink, and….being a typical aging Anglo male in the face of a changing England?)  He composed this poem as he was getting on in years, most likely in the 1970s as he was approaching 60, but it wasn’t uncovered until 2004.  It is officially untitled, but it is often known by its first line, “Things tell less and less”.

Untitled

Things tell less and less:
The news impersonal
And from afar; no book
Worth wrenching off the shelf.
Liquor brings dizziness
And food discomfort; all
Music sounds thin and tired,
And what picture could earn a look?
The self drowses in the self
Beyond hope of a visitor.
Desire and those desired
Fade, and no matter:
Memories in decay
Annihilate the day.
There once was an answer:
Up at the stroke of seven,
A turn round the garden
(Breathing deep and slow),
Then work, never mind what,
How small, provided that
It serves another’s good
But once is long ago
And, tell me, how could
Such an answer be less than wrong,
Be right all along?
Vain echoes, desist

-Kingsley Amis
++++++++++++

That is a good one, in my estimation.  Or maybe it was merely the right poem for the right person at the right time.

Write back if it’s been a while.  I’ve got a few more days of teaching and then I am off with the band for a run of shows down the East Coast of the USA.  It should be fun, and if you’re anywhere on the Eastern seaboard give me a holler and perhaps we’ll be playing in your town or near enough.

More to come, and not so many moons between the next post.  Promise.

-M