July 15, 2012
March 20, 2012
{Poems...Because eh....I have nothing to write}
For those of you sick of my personal minutiae and daily trivialities I have good news: I'm going to let someone else write this blog post for me. I also have bad news: you probably should not be looking at blogs. Without further ado here are some poems by Stephen Dunn I really like.
It was supposed to be Arts & Crafts for a week,
but when she came home
with the “Jesus Saves” button, we knew what art
was up, what ancient craft.
She liked her little friends. She liked the songs
they sang when they weren’t
twisting and folding paper into dolls.
What could be so bad?
Jesus had been a good man, and putting faith
in good men was what
we had to do to stay this side of cynicism,
that other sadness.
OK, we said, One week. But when she came home
singing “Jesus loves me,
the Bible tells me so,” it was time to talk.
Could we say Jesus
doesn’t love you? Could I tell her the Bible
is a great book certain people use
to make you feel bad? We sent her back
without a word.
It had been so long since we believed, so long
since we needed Jesus
as our nemesis and friend, that we thought he was
sufficiently dead,
that our children would think of him like Lincoln
or Thomas Jefferson.
Soon it became clear to us: you can’t teach disbelief
to a child,
only wonderful stories, and we hadn’t a story
nearly as good.
On parents’ night there were the Arts & Crafts
all spread out
like appetizers. Then we took our seats
in the church
and the children sang a song about the Ark,
and Hallelujah
and one in which they had to jump up and down
for Jesus.
I can’t remember ever feeling so uncertain
about what’s comic, what’s serious.
Evolution is magical but devoid of heroes.
You can’t say to your child
“Evolution loves you.” The story stinks
of extinction and nothing
exciting happens for centuries. I didn’t have
a wonderful story for my child
and she was beaming. All the way home in the car
she sang the songs,
occasionally standing up for Jesus.
There was nothing to do
but drive, ride it out, sing along
in silence.
Please Understand (A Bachelor’s Valentine)
Stephen Dunn
When, next day, I found one of your earrings,
slightly chipped, on the steps leading up to
but also away from my house,
I couldn’t decide if I should return it to you
or keep it for myself in this copper box.
Then I remembered there’s always another choice
and pushed it with my foot into the begonias.
If you’re the kind who desires fragile mementos
of these perilous journeys we take,
that’s where you’ll find it. But don’t knock
on my door. I’ll probably be sucking the pit
out of an apricot, or speaking long distance
to myself. Best we can hope for on days like this
is that the thunder and dark clouds will veer elsewhere,
and the unsolicited sun will break through
just before it sets, a beautiful dullness to it.
Please understand. I’ve never been able to tell
what’s worth more—what I want or what I have.
Stephen Dunn
When, next day, I found one of your earrings,
slightly chipped, on the steps leading up to
but also away from my house,
I couldn’t decide if I should return it to you
or keep it for myself in this copper box.
Then I remembered there’s always another choice
and pushed it with my foot into the begonias.
If you’re the kind who desires fragile mementos
of these perilous journeys we take,
that’s where you’ll find it. But don’t knock
on my door. I’ll probably be sucking the pit
out of an apricot, or speaking long distance
to myself. Best we can hope for on days like this
is that the thunder and dark clouds will veer elsewhere,
and the unsolicited sun will break through
just before it sets, a beautiful dullness to it.
Please understand. I’ve never been able to tell
what’s worth more—what I want or what I have.
The Vanishings
Stephen Dunn
One day it will vanish,
how you felt when you were overwhelmed
by her, soaping each other in the shower,
or when you heard the news
of his death, there in the T-Bone diner
on Queens Boulevard amid the shouts
of short-order cooks, Armenian, oblivious.
One day one thing and then a dear other
will blur and though they won’t be lost
they won’t mean as much,
that motorcycle ride on the dirt road
to the deserted beach near Cadiz,
the Guardia mistaking you for a drug-runner,
his machine gun in your belly—
already history now, merely your history,
which means everything to you.
You strain to bring back
your mother’s face and full body
before her illness, the arc and tenor
of family dinners, the mysteries
of radio, and Charlie Collins,
eight years old, inviting you
to his house to see the largest turd
that had ever come from him, unflushed.
One day there’ll be almost nothing
except what you’ve written down,
then only what you’ve written down well,
then little of that.
The march on Washington in ’68
where you hoped to change the world
and meet beautiful, sensitive women
is choreography now, cops on horses,
everyone backing off, stepping forward.
The exam you stole and put back unseen
has become one of your stories,
overtold, tainted with charm.
All of it, anyway, will go the way of icebergs
come summer, the small chunks floating
in the Adriatic until they’re only water,
pure, and someone taking sad pride
that he can swim in it, numbly.
For you, though, loss, almost painless,
that Senior Prom at the Latin Quarter—
Count Basie and Sarah Vaughan, and you
just interested in your date’s cleavage
and staying out all night at Jones Beach,
the small dune fires fueled by driftwood.
You can’t remember a riff or a song,
and your date’s a woman now, married,
has had sex as you have
some few thousand times, good sex
and forgettable sex, even boring sex,
oh you never could have imagined
back then with the waves crashing
what the body could erase.
It’s vanishing as you speak, the soul-grit,
the story-fodder,
everything you retrieve is your past,
everything you let go
goes to memory’s out-box, open on all sides,
in cahoots with thin air.
The jobs you didn’t get vanish like scabs.
Her good-bye, causing the phone to slip
from your hand, doesn’t hurt anymore,
too much doesn’t hurt anymore,
not even that hint of your father, ghost-thumping
on your roof in Spain, hurts anymore.
You understand and therefore hate
because you hate the passivity of understanding
that your worst rage and finest
private gesture will flatten and collapse
into history, become invisible
like defeats inside houses. Then something happens
(it is happening) which won’t vanish fast enough,
your voice fails, chokes to silence;
hurt (how could you have forgotten?) hurts.
Every other truth in the world, out of respect,
slides over, makes room for its superior.
how you felt when you were overwhelmed
by her, soaping each other in the shower,
or when you heard the news
of his death, there in the T-Bone diner
on Queens Boulevard amid the shouts
of short-order cooks, Armenian, oblivious.
One day one thing and then a dear other
will blur and though they won’t be lost
they won’t mean as much,
that motorcycle ride on the dirt road
to the deserted beach near Cadiz,
the Guardia mistaking you for a drug-runner,
his machine gun in your belly—
already history now, merely your history,
which means everything to you.
You strain to bring back
your mother’s face and full body
before her illness, the arc and tenor
of family dinners, the mysteries
of radio, and Charlie Collins,
eight years old, inviting you
to his house to see the largest turd
that had ever come from him, unflushed.
One day there’ll be almost nothing
except what you’ve written down,
then only what you’ve written down well,
then little of that.
The march on Washington in ’68
where you hoped to change the world
and meet beautiful, sensitive women
is choreography now, cops on horses,
everyone backing off, stepping forward.
The exam you stole and put back unseen
has become one of your stories,
overtold, tainted with charm.
All of it, anyway, will go the way of icebergs
come summer, the small chunks floating
in the Adriatic until they’re only water,
pure, and someone taking sad pride
that he can swim in it, numbly.
For you, though, loss, almost painless,
that Senior Prom at the Latin Quarter—
Count Basie and Sarah Vaughan, and you
just interested in your date’s cleavage
and staying out all night at Jones Beach,
the small dune fires fueled by driftwood.
You can’t remember a riff or a song,
and your date’s a woman now, married,
has had sex as you have
some few thousand times, good sex
and forgettable sex, even boring sex,
oh you never could have imagined
back then with the waves crashing
what the body could erase.
It’s vanishing as you speak, the soul-grit,
the story-fodder,
everything you retrieve is your past,
everything you let go
goes to memory’s out-box, open on all sides,
in cahoots with thin air.
The jobs you didn’t get vanish like scabs.
Her good-bye, causing the phone to slip
from your hand, doesn’t hurt anymore,
too much doesn’t hurt anymore,
not even that hint of your father, ghost-thumping
on your roof in Spain, hurts anymore.
You understand and therefore hate
because you hate the passivity of understanding
that your worst rage and finest
private gesture will flatten and collapse
into history, become invisible
like defeats inside houses. Then something happens
(it is happening) which won’t vanish fast enough,
your voice fails, chokes to silence;
hurt (how could you have forgotten?) hurts.
Every other truth in the world, out of respect,
slides over, makes room for its superior.
Emptiness
Stephen Dunn
I’ve learned mine can’t be filled,
only alchemized. Many times
it’s become a paragraph or a page.
But usually I’ve hidden it,
not knowing until too late
how enormous it grows in its dark.
Or how obvious it gets
when I’ve donned, say, my good
cordovans and my fine tweed vest
and walked into a room with a smile.
I might as well have been a man
with a fez and a faux silver cane.
Better, I know now, to dress it plain,
to say out loud
to some right person
in some right place
that there’s something not there
in me, something I can’t name.
That some right person
has just lit a fire under the kettle.
She hasn’t said a word
Beneath her blue shawl
she, too, conceals a world.
But she’s been amazed
how much I seem to need my emptiness,
amazed I won’t let it go.
only alchemized. Many times
it’s become a paragraph or a page.
But usually I’ve hidden it,
not knowing until too late
how enormous it grows in its dark.
Or how obvious it gets
when I’ve donned, say, my good
cordovans and my fine tweed vest
and walked into a room with a smile.
I might as well have been a man
with a fez and a faux silver cane.
Better, I know now, to dress it plain,
to say out loud
to some right person
in some right place
that there’s something not there
in me, something I can’t name.
That some right person
has just lit a fire under the kettle.
She hasn’t said a word
Beneath her blue shawl
she, too, conceals a world.
But she’s been amazed
how much I seem to need my emptiness,
amazed I won’t let it go.
At the Smithville Methodist Church
Stephen Dunn
It was supposed to be Arts & Crafts for a week,
but when she came home
with the “Jesus Saves” button, we knew what art
was up, what ancient craft.
She liked her little friends. She liked the songs
they sang when they weren’t
twisting and folding paper into dolls.
What could be so bad?
Jesus had been a good man, and putting faith
in good men was what
we had to do to stay this side of cynicism,
that other sadness.
OK, we said, One week. But when she came home
singing “Jesus loves me,
the Bible tells me so,” it was time to talk.
Could we say Jesus
doesn’t love you? Could I tell her the Bible
is a great book certain people use
to make you feel bad? We sent her back
without a word.
It had been so long since we believed, so long
since we needed Jesus
as our nemesis and friend, that we thought he was
sufficiently dead,
that our children would think of him like Lincoln
or Thomas Jefferson.
Soon it became clear to us: you can’t teach disbelief
to a child,
only wonderful stories, and we hadn’t a story
nearly as good.
On parents’ night there were the Arts & Crafts
all spread out
like appetizers. Then we took our seats
in the church
and the children sang a song about the Ark,
and Hallelujah
and one in which they had to jump up and down
for Jesus.
I can’t remember ever feeling so uncertain
about what’s comic, what’s serious.
Evolution is magical but devoid of heroes.
You can’t say to your child
“Evolution loves you.” The story stinks
of extinction and nothing
exciting happens for centuries. I didn’t have
a wonderful story for my child
and she was beaming. All the way home in the car
she sang the songs,
occasionally standing up for Jesus.
There was nothing to do
but drive, ride it out, sing along
in silence.
January 21, 2012
{Album Pick}
In an early episode of the show 30 Rock, an episode called The Aftermath, Tracey Jordan steals a yacht and invites the cast of the fictional show, The Girlie Show aboard for a party. Jenna begins to belt out a song during the height of the fun. "Some folks like to get away, take a holiday from the neighborhood..." she begins.
Another character interrupts her mid-verse to quip "Is that a real song?"
Yes, it is a real song.
If you Google the phrase "New York State of Mind lyrics" the first two links yielded by the search are a song by Jay-Z called "Empire State of Mind" followed by "N.Y. State of Mind" by Nas. The 3rd link will take you to a lesser-known and less-popular song by Billy Joel, from his 1976 album Turnstiles.
"New York State of Mind" is an important song in Billy Joel's repertoire, off the album Turnstiles, from an early career sometimes unappreciated by the casual Joel fan.
Turnstiles is a soulful Billy Joel album that was quickly overshadowed by the release of the much-acclaimed album The Stranger(1977). Turnstiles is an album full of tracks of reminiscence fueled by geography. Joel matches locations and events of his life in many of the songs and makes the listener connect their own placement in life with the literal placement in their lives.
A few of the tracks on this album like "James" and "Prelude/Angry Young Man" are not fueled by geography, but are reminiscent in their dealings with past relationships and lost ambitions.
Most tracks display the soulful pianist Joel once was, before his talent became awash in his later pop hits.
This is an album worth listening to several times.
I did not like this album the first time I listened to it. The 16-year-old me wanted to believe all of Joel's songs were as easy to like as "She's Got a Way" and "Uptown Girl" (WOW-OH-OH-OH-OHHHHH UPTOWN GIRL!) So, I listened to Turnstiles a bunch of times. Over the course of 8 years I actually wore out the compact disc and it ended up lost somewhere in the black abyss that was my Jeep.
Moments of this album are actually silly; even as I listen to the tracks in solitary I cannot help but feel a bit embarrassed by the dated-70s-synthesizer sound in "James."
And many critics have also deemed Joel's songs "silly."
Joel's outlandish success and undeniable popularity have done nothing to help the musician's credibility. Even his recent designation as "the first non-classical musician to be inducted into Steinway Hall" has not garnered much recognition from serious critics, even if it has won celebration from serious fans.
As Chuck Klosterman famously quipped, in an article for The New York Times, "Joel could smash a piano with a ball-peen hammer for 75 minutes and release it as a live album, and it would still sell remarkably well."
Therein lies the problem with Joel. His early album, Turnstiles, and the talent it represents was overlooked once he began to gain designation as a pop artist.
In the end, to many critics, Joel's career does not deserve credibility or respect.
To me, Turnstiles will always deserve a second look. I do not believe Joel's career can simply be reduced to a handful of witty remarks.
(Below, a video of Joel performing "Prelude/Angry Young Man" in the 1980s. The video is rife with silliness, including a ridiculous synthesizer solo and incredibly strange drummer...But this video also speaks volumes of Joel's talent as a piano player.)
Another character interrupts her mid-verse to quip "Is that a real song?"
Yes, it is a real song.
If you Google the phrase "New York State of Mind lyrics" the first two links yielded by the search are a song by Jay-Z called "Empire State of Mind" followed by "N.Y. State of Mind" by Nas. The 3rd link will take you to a lesser-known and less-popular song by Billy Joel, from his 1976 album Turnstiles.
"New York State of Mind" is an important song in Billy Joel's repertoire, off the album Turnstiles, from an early career sometimes unappreciated by the casual Joel fan.
Turnstiles is a soulful Billy Joel album that was quickly overshadowed by the release of the much-acclaimed album The Stranger(1977). Turnstiles is an album full of tracks of reminiscence fueled by geography. Joel matches locations and events of his life in many of the songs and makes the listener connect their own placement in life with the literal placement in their lives.
A few of the tracks on this album like "James" and "Prelude/Angry Young Man" are not fueled by geography, but are reminiscent in their dealings with past relationships and lost ambitions.
Most tracks display the soulful pianist Joel once was, before his talent became awash in his later pop hits.
This is an album worth listening to several times.
I did not like this album the first time I listened to it. The 16-year-old me wanted to believe all of Joel's songs were as easy to like as "She's Got a Way" and "Uptown Girl" (WOW-OH-OH-OH-OHHHHH UPTOWN GIRL!) So, I listened to Turnstiles a bunch of times. Over the course of 8 years I actually wore out the compact disc and it ended up lost somewhere in the black abyss that was my Jeep.
Moments of this album are actually silly; even as I listen to the tracks in solitary I cannot help but feel a bit embarrassed by the dated-70s-synthesizer sound in "James."
And many critics have also deemed Joel's songs "silly."
Joel's outlandish success and undeniable popularity have done nothing to help the musician's credibility. Even his recent designation as "the first non-classical musician to be inducted into Steinway Hall" has not garnered much recognition from serious critics, even if it has won celebration from serious fans.
As Chuck Klosterman famously quipped, in an article for The New York Times, "Joel could smash a piano with a ball-peen hammer for 75 minutes and release it as a live album, and it would still sell remarkably well."
Therein lies the problem with Joel. His early album, Turnstiles, and the talent it represents was overlooked once he began to gain designation as a pop artist.
In the end, to many critics, Joel's career does not deserve credibility or respect.
To me, Turnstiles will always deserve a second look. I do not believe Joel's career can simply be reduced to a handful of witty remarks.
(Below, a video of Joel performing "Prelude/Angry Young Man" in the 1980s. The video is rife with silliness, including a ridiculous synthesizer solo and incredibly strange drummer...But this video also speaks volumes of Joel's talent as a piano player.)
January 18, 2012
{Album Pick o' the Month}
My album pick of the month is Chet Atkins & Mark Knopfler's Neck and Neck.
Neck and Neck was originally released in 1990, which means my current album pick is not very current.
As a kid, I was always ragging my dad for owning this album. Little did I
know about the talent of Mark Knopfler and Chet Atkins.
I dig Mark Knopfler's pick-free sound. His versatility with a Stratocaster has lent itself to a wide-range of sounds and styles.
I love every track on Neck and Neck from beginning to end, but "Just in Time" and "Poor Boy Blues" are my very favorites.
The below video demonstrates the genius and finesse of Atkins and Knopfler. Keep in mind the video was made in 1990 and, aside from the guitar-playing aspect, it is about on par with what you'd expect from anything made in 1990.
October 24, 2011
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