Undesirable passions pass, but anchor time.
Like accumulating cumulus clouds they lurk
past shallow horizons and an unspun sublime.
The mind's gears wind slowly, then jump and jerk.
Apart from second hand hearts, what's here isn't there?
An older tongue and patient imagination
are just minute solutions buried in blind air.
This nose still grows through its dirty circulation.
In the panicked magic of whatever makes sense,
somehow our foundering hours dance and condense
until midnight love's flying light breaks apart.
Reality's debris free floats like confetti
over this riot turned parade, fucked from the start.
Who will win these ruins
the wind's picked up already?
Saturday, December 9, 2017
Monday, April 18, 2016
Full Tanks, Empty Tanks
I
watched a dude pee in the bushes last night. Staggered precariously
between the routinely ignored one way sign and the easternmost shop
of the strip mall (a candle store, regrettably named “Scentsational
Scents” (is there anything worse than a stupid pun or a dumb
misspelling of a word used in the name of a store? Kwik Stop makes my
skin crawl. I once worked in and got fired from a short-lived coffee
shop named “Drink a Latte”)), the man looked back and saw me
standing on my second floor balcony and quickly went back to it. Nothing else happened. I couldn't have been happier.
 |
| Siji from a distance |
For
the past several years I've been surrounded by life. The kind of life
that takes care of its business wherever it needs to take care of it.
It wasn't uncommon to find myself sidestepping well-warmed puke
puddles on my afternoon walk through the park to school in Siji, a sort of suburb on the outskirts of Daegu. There always seemed to be chunks of instant ramen stuck in the
cracks of the brick sidewalk while the rest tried its best to
evaporate.
Suburbs
might be a misnomer, to be honest, at least if you were to apply the
American idea to its Korean counterpart. In a country where space
only exists on a mountain or a farm, the outer districts of cities,
while residential, tend to be just row after row of identical
apartment buildings with a few pockets of schools, restaurants, bars, and hagwons*. Good luck finding a house there. Shit tons of kids,
though.
I never did understand what it was that inspired people to drink enough to vomit it all back up, although I did understand the desire to drink in that overly organized part of town. It seemed there was no shortage of young men in their early 20s (which I guess I was then, come to think of it) still living there with their parents. It was a comfortable place.
I never did understand what it was that inspired people to drink enough to vomit it all back up, although I did understand the desire to drink in that overly organized part of town. It seemed there was no shortage of young men in their early 20s (which I guess I was then, come to think of it) still living there with their parents. It was a comfortable place.
One
afternoon I saw an ancient man take a piss through a fence on a well
trafficked sidewalk in the square there. I didn't know what to think.
-----
I
chose my apartment in Kansas City after seeing two cardinals flitting
around some birch trees out front. I'd
also always wanted to live in one of Kansas City's signature
colonnaded apartments, and this one was just shitty enough to be
within my price range. Kind of. It has a layout I don't know what to do with
yet, and a beat up balcony, but the pigeons perch on a pillar on the
other side of the partition, where they've dropped a literal pile's
worth of shit my poor neighbor hasn't done anything about yet.
It's
in the soup of the city though. Whenever I tried to explain my
hometown to people who had no conception of it (non-Europeans would
go for the Wizard of Oz, Europeans would go for Superman), I would
find myself having to reinforce the point that it was, in fact, a
proper city. The mental image of Kansas might be wheat fields, but
Kansas City was one of the biggest urban centers of the mid-19th
to mid 20th
centuries, situated at the intersection of the Santa Fe, California,
and Oregon trails and later a major railway hub. It's grown less
important in the age of modern transportation, but the social and
geographic makeup of the city contains many of the trademarks of its
history.
One
example, which is a stark contrast to what I encountered in the
largely homogeneous and cookie cutter layout of most Korean
neighborhoods (or Kansas City's surrounding suburbs-- in which I
currently spend more time than I'd like-- for that matter), is the
often strained diversity one finds in Kansas City. Urban segregation
has outlived the railroads and much of the industry that brought
Blacks and Hispanics here in the first place. If one were to zigzag
their way through the city, they would be able to tell pretty quickly
which part of town they were in. The Hispanic community lies, mostly,
on the west side of the city and into Kansas, while anywhere east of
Troost is largely Black. These are rough borders, but ones that
exist for very specific reasons I recommend everyone look into. Meanwhile, between the two, is a melting pot that I would say
is mostly white folks until the very center, between Broadway and
Main, which is apparently where I've ended up.
------
I
woke up to a nightmare in Hyderabad. The shitty hotel's shitty clerk
came to knock on my door an hour before checkout to tell me it was
okay for me to check out an hour later at 9. I had lent him 100
rupees the night before, not bothering to ask why he needed it. When
I went to check out, he insisted that I had to pay for an extra day,
since I was checking out an hour late. I had left the equivalent of
an extra night's stay as a deposit when I first checked in, so I was
in a fairly weak negotiating position, and appeals to human kindness
didn't work the opposite direction apparently. I finally got half of
my money back and said something along the lines of “if that's the
way you're going to live, remember me when it all goes wrong for
you”, which is pretty much the toughest thing I could think of to
say at the moment.
So
I fumed off into the hot ass Hyderabad morning and into the train
station, where I was catching a local across town to Secunderabad,
from which I'd be on another train to the coastal city of
Visakhapatnam, where the Communist Party's national conference just
so happened to be going down. That's another story. The local was all
second class seating. The scrum to get onto the car was humorous from
a distance, although it meant I'd be standing thirty minutes. It's a
bit of an Indian cliche, but seriously... the amount of people they
cram into these fucking trains is ridiculous.
As
we approached the station, I began to shimmy toward the exit to
disembark. People started jumping off while we were still going a
reasonable speed, which I again watched bemusedly, until I realized
people were jumping on the train while going the same speed. By the
time I made my own attempt to disembark, the crowd around the door
had grown to such a size that I was fighting against human waves to
even get to the door (something like this, maybe, but I would never hit a doggy). When I finally got about halfway out the door,
my giant backpack became an obstacle to both people entering and
myself trying to exit. I pushed and struggled and sweated my way with
what I'm sure was panic on my face, only to find an unsympathetic
crowd outside who all shouted at me to let them on. I saw no choice--
I stood to the side and let them on. Every sardine managed to squirm
its way past me and the train started to leave the station again, I
managed to leap off and into the skinny body of a teenage boy, who
said something to me I didn't understand and kept walking.
There
wasn't space for me on that afternoon's train.
 |
| Across the street from Secunderabad Station |
I
found myself in one of the shittier parts of the city whose nice bits
had already seemed inaccessible to me the past several days. I had a
weird piece of bread and a juice and talked with a friendly high
school kid in the city to take an exam. We chatted on the Facebook
randomly over the next few months. His profile picture was and is
some Tollywood star. I may or may not have persuaded him not to join
the military a few months later. Time will tell.
Then
I... walked around. I found a PC room where dudes had apparently been
watching Sunny Leone uhhh films. The kid next to me was playing Grand
Theft Auto: Vice City and loving it. I saw this a few times. I
managed to get a vague idea of how I could catch a bus later that
night and set about finding a travel agent where I could purchase my
ticket for a few hours later in the evening.
And
I had to piss. I asked the guy if there was one nearby-- nope. I walked back out
into the overwhelming street I had managed to escape from in the
seedy PC room and tried a few restaurants-- nothin. I walked down one
of the main roads perpendicular from the busy station and found
myself in dust. On the side of the road I was on was a real busy bus
station and a man selling fancy bags. I knew they were fancy because
he kept yelling it at steady intervals with the insistent tone of a
hungry parrot. “FANCY BAG!” then 30 seconds later, “FANCY BAG!” Over and over. The road looked like it went on forever, but I needed
to stay in this part of town. I also needed to go. Like, to the
bathroom. Behind the rightmost of the three bus shelters was a
concrete wall that was being used by dozens of men as a urinal. It
reeked. I had to go. The parrot man and a steady stream of air brakes soundtracked the event.
I had to go figure out how to get the hell out of Dodge. It went
smoothly enough actually. I found a travel agent across the street
from the train station and paid 700 rupees (12 dollars) or so for my
ticket. Now I had to kill time, which wasn't too hard because there
was a dark, dingy bar above a sweet shop where I knocked back a
couple big bottles of Kingfisher and waited out my two hours.
It
was my first private bus ride there, so I had little idea what to
expect. The guys at the travel agency just told me it was coming, but
it didn't for another hour. When it did arrive, it was a full size
van and I had to piss again. I had broken the seal.
My
seat on the bus was in permanent recline, and I had no idea when they
would stop again, if ever, on what I assumed would be a 10+ hour
journey. We stopped by and picked a few more people up at other
travel agencies along the way, but never stopped long enough for me
to get out. It was agony. I felt like urine was coming out of my
pores. I started getting sick to my stomach. I couldn't sit
comfortably, and I kept crossing and uncrossing my legs hoping to
find a comfortable enough position to ignore it for a while. I
meditated. I thought of my girlfriend. It started raining outside.
The raindrops on the window seal made it worse. I was going to die.
The
van stopped again on a crowded street. Some people departed and some
stayed on. The driver stopped again a little way down the road and a
few more got out. I closed my eyes and held my bladder tight. The
driver started yelling at someone. He sounded angry. I opened my eyes
and realized the bus was empty and he was yelling at me in Telugu,
gesturing out the front door. I rushed out the door and into the
first dark alley I could find and pissed next to some empty gas
canisters for what seemed like an hour. Finally, relief. When I
snapped back to, I remembered I had to figure out what bus I was
supposed to get on. And then I realized I left my satchel on the van.
As I ran back out into the busy street to see if I could see it, I
noticed a man lying motionless in a puddle situated in a row of
parked motorcycles, he might have been dead. The van and my bag were
gone. I sat on the street for a while, hoping it would return. The
rain stopped, the traffic cleared, the man in the puddle was carried
off by a couple other men. I spent my last 700 rupees on a pack of
Gold Flakes and an air conditioned hotel room. I felt sick to my
stomach again.
-----
What
do you do, huh? I just moved into an apartment with cardinals in its
trees. They've only reappeared once, which I chalk up to Kansas City
weather being as annoying for the rest of the animal kingdom as it is
for us bipeds. Then you get a guy pissing in the bushes.
 |
| Home? |
If
you're going to live anywhere, make sure it's in the guts of society.
There's plenty of pleasure everywhere on the modern landscape, but
when you think of all the emptiness that space between yourself and
your neighbor contains, the air can get a bit heavy.
When
I woke up in America for the first time and went to smoke a forbidden
cigarette on my mother's deck I was overcome with the blankness of
what should have been most familiar to me. The same houses still sat
there. A car or two had survived. But it was quiet at 10 a.m. on a
Friday morning. The only thing in motion were branches and the dead
leaves that were falling from them. The breeze animated what was
otherwise an uncomfortably lifeless setting to find myself in.
-----
In
the week leading up to this gentleman (I assume anyway) using the
bushes as his bathroom I'd finally begun to understand my
surroundings. They weren't conventionally pretty, although the nearly
a century old columns supporting the roof over my head had a certain
charm to them. What does new and shiny have to do with 2016?
Some
street kids heard me singing on my balcony. The Walkmen, I think.
They had a grown dog and a pup tagging along with them and they had
managed to grab my ear from behind the headphones. They were nice. They were waiting for the morning train. Nobody takes trains here... I wondered if their ride would be more comfortable than mine was crossing Hyderabad. I
came down to talk to them and handed off a beer and some cigarettes.
It was a couple American Indians and a kid who exorcised demons
through portrait. We got into a bunch of nonsense sitting on my
front stairs like a group of vagabonds. This time I was the outsider.
And
I guess that's a bit of the issue. I've been the guy pissing in the
bushes. I've been the guy getting off a train with nowhere to sleep
but next to everyone else on the train station floor. I've been the
girl at the gas station asking for a dollar to buy a gallon of gas to fill an empty tank. I've never been the guy at the gas station asking
me to buy him beer on his 53rd
birthday, or the same guy a week later when it's still his birthday, but I wonder if I will be in 25 years. I wonder if he's as
bewildered by his surroundings as I continue to be.
-----
I'm
back in the guts. I don't know what I'm doing in them, exactly, but I'm being jostled. I'll never pass through them naturally, it seems. I'm trying to make a home here, but I realize that's never been up to me. The struggle's back in an unfamiliar way, and I'm
beginning to think it's elemental. I'm inadequate in a lot of ways I keep learning about, but
I'm fine being reminded. If things get too clear we need to
get our eyes checked.
*private schools where business owners and parents conspire to torture their children with hours more education after public school finishes.
Tuesday, January 21, 2014
My Top Ten Albums of 2013
I'm not even going to pretend like this is an objective list of the best albums of the last year. I'm no musician and certainly no music critic. We're all critics in our way, obviously, but I feel like listening to music is more of a personal experience than anything. Sure, everyone hears the same sounds through their speakers or headphones, but the way the music and lyrics are felt by the listener is always going to be different. The very best albums are the ones we develop relationships with-- the ones whose lyrics carry meaning, or whose sounds either create or bring back memories.
So, through this top ten list I'm not only going to try my best to explain why the music is good on its own, but also explain why it meant something to me specifically. The music I love the most is the kind that stirs the emotions, the kind that connects the personal to the universal, the kind that makes me sure that, even if I'm all alone, there's always someone else somewhere writing a song about something familiar.
If you couldn't give a fuck less about the musings, feel free to just look at the numbers or just listen to the songs or whatever you want to do. If you notice any typos, I apologize. I'm by myself in an office where I can't feel my nose but can see my breath. Here goes:
10. The Flaming Lips -
The Terror
So, through this top ten list I'm not only going to try my best to explain why the music is good on its own, but also explain why it meant something to me specifically. The music I love the most is the kind that stirs the emotions, the kind that connects the personal to the universal, the kind that makes me sure that, even if I'm all alone, there's always someone else somewhere writing a song about something familiar.
If you couldn't give a fuck less about the musings, feel free to just look at the numbers or just listen to the songs or whatever you want to do. If you notice any typos, I apologize. I'm by myself in an office where I can't feel my nose but can see my breath. Here goes:
10. The Flaming Lips - The Terror
Usually the Flaming Lips make music that sounds like it's coming from somewhere in the cosmos. Somewhere far away, where love is a tangible thing and impressively beautiful. Their last album, Embyronic introduced a little bit of the void to their outer space, but kept it from being weighed down with moments of transcendence (see "Silver Trembling Hands" and, you know, the existence of hooks). There are ways to forget about the fear, they said.
The Terror is an album that forgets that, something we're all prone to doing once and a while. The Lips were actually the only band on this list I saw live this year, and even having listened to this album a handful of times (why they released this in the summer, I will never know), I still expected the party that I've always been told a Flaming Lips show was supposed to be. Not so much. The light setup seemed designed not only to thrill, but also to unsettle. Most of this album serves the same purpose, abandoning melody and the pleasure that comes with it for a kind of oppressive drone. Rather than relief, all we get are the occasional end of track respite.
For a band whose tried to make love seem less alien to us humans, it seems they're at a loss here, repeating phrases like we do when our head gets stuck, or gasping them out two or three syllables at a time. It's the expression of a consciousness suddenly less sure of itself, but trying to put the pieces back together. It's a little scary to hear a band who has spent a large part of their career claiming love is the answer suddenly wondering if it's that easy. Now they're asking us "is love a god/ that we control/ to try to trust/ the pain?" Scary prospects.
Flaming Lips- Try to Explain
9. Phosphorescent -
Muchacho
If the Flaming Lips have tended to sound like they came from somewhere far, far away, then Phosphorescent's music has always embodied the opposite. Everyone of his songs has always been connected to the earth and the trials and joys of being forced to live on it.
Although normally a band with its sound in the roots, this album finds itself reaching for the heavens. The new found depth in sound adds an almost religious quality. Almost every song is an attempt at making a paean for love, but never seems quite capable of escaping the ground. Love isn't always beautiful, but he is well aware of how powerful it is. On "Quotidian Beasts" he makes it very clear. There isn't much use in trying to control love, because it's a wild thing, and it pretty much does what it wants... and it never really goes away, even if the person it's meant for does.
The repetition of animal and religious imagery are themes throughout, proving the point that love is not something which exists high above us in an idyllic form, but something present in everything from the beautiful to the banal, the body to the bathtub. Any attempt to elevate it, ends up being little more than a prayer in the wind.
Phosphorescent- Quotidian Beasts
8. Deerhunter -
Monomania
This album probably gets the award for most spins this last calendar year. Deerhunter just makes music that's good anytime of the year: at home, on the commute, with friends, whatever. After their most carefully polished album Halcyon Digest, they roughed their sound back up a little bit for this one. They've always sounded a bit anxious, and the return to making rawer songs makes them sound a bit like they didn't quite have the focus or desire to clean them up.
At the same time, they've learned how to craft proper melodies over the last few albums that crawl through the ear pretty much on first listen. Early albums probably took a few more listens before I really got them, albeit the reward was worth it. Monomania might actually be their most immediately gratifying, but no less worse for it. Songs like "THM" and "Dream Captain" pretty much grab you right away.
They still sing about some of the same themes, anxiety and maladjustment, but the way they've developed their sound as a band sound not so much like they see the light at the end of the tunnel, but as if they've already come out on the other side and are looking back into the darkness for inspiration. I'm curious to see how they look to find a compromise between the two in the future.
Deerhunter- Sleepwalking
7. Kurt Vile -
Wakin on a Pretty Daze
This album sounds how I wish I always felt-- laid back, with nothing that needs to be done immediately, with time to let my mind fold in and out of itself. Being in Korea, for me, has meant the end of being alright with taking it easy. The absence of private space outdoors, the all out work or all out party lifestyle of Seoul, and just the density of people in this city make it hard to imagine there were days when waking up to enjoy a daze was something that existed. Maybe I have to work in the evening, but that's a whole afternoon of nothing to do. Maybe I have class, but I don't have to go today.
Most of the album embodies a sort of mental quiet. Kurt does the kind of navel gazing that would make Bertrand Russell proud. Most of the songs are relatively straight forward guitar tracks, something which isn't as common in these days as you would think. The words kind of form on top of them in a sort of wordless mush that makes sense if you have the time to do the same meditations he does.
Everything he sees is worthy of contemplation (not unlike myself, something which I know some friends get sick of when I ask them questions they surely have no answers for either), but he just as often likes to pick his own brain. One song is devoted entirely to a girl named Alex, who may or may not be real and may or may not be faithfully wed to a fellow named Mark. Other times he likes to think on his love for his wife. Luckily for us, if he runs out of words to describe the things in his head or is overcome with feeling, he can just bust on that guitar. What a way to do it.
Kurt Vile- Girl Called Alex
6. The National -
Trouble Will Find Me
You pretty much know what you're getting when you put on an album by the National: plenty of misery, with a few dashes of clarity. They haven't really changed their sound or shifted their emotional range since their debut, and by now lead singer Matt Berninger is well aware that, as he sings on the track "Sea of Love", "If I stay here/ trouble will find me", but he also knows that if he goes anywhere he's not going to have much material for his music. His pleasure is in his frustration.
The National sound like the kind of guys who are constantly wandering around the city looking for someone to meet or something to do or somewhere to sleep, but only finding the ghosts of the past around every corner. We always try to go back in time to grab all the things we forgot carry with us to where we are currently, but we can never come up with anything tangible. But memories and conjecture come with their own (often bleak) satisfaction.
I used to believe that someday I would grow up and get too old to keep doing and feeling the same old shit, and these guys used to give voice to the same idea. This far in, though, and it seems they're pretty much consigned to the fact that some things just aren't that easy to change.
The National- This is the Last Time
5. Vampire Weekend -
Modern Vampires of the City
This album got love from pretty much anyone who gave it a listen. Although it is instantly recognizable as a Vampire Weekend album, it is in pretty stark contrast to their previous albums. The change here is something they probably needed to do after ploughing the same sonic territory since their debut.
The youthful energy and the careful confidence that comes with making a sound that no one has made before carried the band on that first, very fun record. On Modern Vampire of the City they've put up for display their talent at making some of the most tightly orchestrated pop songs of the last decade. They show on a few tracks that they are still capable of turning up the tempo (see "Finger Back"), but most songs find them putting a little more emphasis on the ideas they're trying to express. These include ruminations on mortality, hanging on to love after it's passed, and all the other things they didn't have time for when they were too busy having fun.
They strike the right balance here though. They manage the difficult job of sharing something earnest while making it sound casual. This album is bound to stick around for a while since, unlike the band themselves, the message they put across just doesn't get old.
Vampire Weekend- Diane Young
4. Moonface
Julia with Blue Jeans On
This is surely the most personal album on the list, both in terms of the lyrics sung and how the album connected to me. It might be a little bit difficult to explain properly, and it might not even be one that I would recommend unless you are in a particular mood or are trying do develop your ability to empathize. It's pretty bare bones musically, Spencer Krug's voice and piano (AllMusic calls him an ivory tickler, yuck). For most of the album he sounds like a man who's been hiding out alone in a room for months can be uncomfortable.
But listening to music, not to mention making it, is kind of like performing a self surgery. Sometimes it's necessary to let music get in there and fix (or jiggle) the parts that it thinks it needs to. Then it's over and you're supposed to feel better. Either way, the first time I had the chance to listen to this album I was taking one of the many long walks I had been embarking on toward the end of fall. I had been in a lousy mood for the better part of the year and trying to figure out ways I could make a relationship with an absent girl work the next time I would see her, simultaneously trying to forget all the ways it never would. Lucky for me this guy released an album where he basically runs himself through the same emotional obstacle course.
Anyway, of course it didn't work out between the girl and me. Maybe it was bad luck to go in and break my own heart before giving her the opportunity do it herself. Maybe listening to songs like this softened the blow? Krug himself asks, "is there anything more famous? anything more grand? anything more noble, than a folded hand?" I'll probably cringe at this album in the future, not because it's a bad album, but because of how serious and beautiful it is. I hope I don't, it's beautiful music, and sometimes letting our sanity slip feels like a necessary step towards getting a better grasp on it.
3. Jai Paul -
Jai Paul
"Well come on then, let's go." Don't know if I've heard an album start with such an immediacy, because as that sentence gets said the beat drops and it's right into the party. I don't know my electronic music well enough to describe why this gets so high up on the list except to say that it was almost undoubtedly the album most full of musical ideas and the most fun. Whether he's going maximum sound with tracks like "Str8 Out of Mumbai" with its hints of Bollywood, or quiet as his second single "Jasmine" which contains plenty of different sounds but only unfolding them slowly, and only showcasing two or three at a time.
Interestingly, this album wasn't actually released this year. It apparently showed up on a Bandcamp alleging to be Jai Paul's, but was quickly taken down. No real statement or details about a future plans have been released, so no one is really sure whether this was a final version of an LP or just a random collection of tracks. Either way, what we find ourselves with is an album that manages to be interesting, easy to listen to, and sexy all at the same time-- something this list really needed.
Jai Paul- Jasmine (single version)
"Forget about it," we hear on the very first track of the Parquet Courts debut LP. They're dismissing the notion of giving someone they don't care a minute about that much of their time, but somehow the singer sounds like Jonathan Richman at his most hammy. This album moves super quickly, it lasts just over half an hour, but it's a rush from beginning to end. The mix of slacker observations and lo-fi guitar makes them sound like dudes I've (for better or worse) hung out with before.
The first few songs just fly by in a blur and don't ask much but a tap of the toes, but it all just sounds so good. They capture the listless lethargy of being young and unimportant so well, it's hard not to identify with. I feel a bit like I've joined the establishment lately, but listening to these dudes at least helps me keep some of my memories of America fresh. But they also just make me want to go back.
I guess the thing is, and this goes for both being here and the years I spent in Kansas City dicking around, even if we know that we don't have to do anything there's always the nagging feeling that we should be doing something. Even if it's just to wander down the street and find the right thing to cure our hunger when we're high. A lot of the album goes circular with these notions, never really getting anywhere special, but seeing a hell of a lot on the way.
Parquet Courts- Master of My Craft
1. Waxahatchee
Cerulean Salt
Yeah, so my favorite album really didn't change since this one came out back in March. It wasn't so much one that clicked immediately, instead it was the kind of album that justifies you listening to it the first time, then makes you want to listen it again, and then again until you realize you've come to understand the inner workings intimately without ever understanding how exactly it got to be that way. I guess that's how most people fall in love. Of course, the relationship I have with music is more complicated and in some ways darker than those that I have with other people, but one which is just as necessary for those very reasons.
To be honest, I can't really pin down what Katie Crutchfield is singing about here. One can't tell if she's telling us about herself now, retelling stories from her past, or just recounting her nightmares from the night before. There's not a whole lot of happiness in the majority of these songs, though there are traces of contentment which are feelings we can produce both naturally and otherwise. But each song taken in succession sounds like a sort of first person emotional vignette from a particular moment in time; feelings of doubt, hopefulness, intoxication, longing, regret all find the right part of the album and thus the listener to settle into. She rarely leaves the first person while singing, and when she talks about the future it's almost always to tell the kind of promise we mean to tell to other people but usually just keep to ourselves.
Nostalgia's a bit of a curse, but it's my favorite itch to scratch. I pondered out loud (uhh, on the page) about what exactly she was singing about at the beginning of this, because, if she's like me she revisits these things. Each remembrance re-frames the feelings attached to the events, at the same time determining how they'll live on to the next time they pop into our minds. I'm not even sure if I've got many personal connections to the words she sings here, but it still brings me back to being young, fucked up, and in whatever I thought love was back then.
There's something beautiful about honesty in music too. Artists who share the emotions most people refuse to give voice to are just as important as therapists. We all spend the majority of our lives trying to keep our flaws as hidden as possible, so being able to listen to albums like this-- where she sings about them with something bordering on confidence-- is refreshing. I wouldn't say this album necessarily does anything that hasn't been done before, but the simplicity with which she pulls off honesty without tedium and melodrama made it one that I connected very strongly with over the course of a difficult 2013. It's tops for me.
Waxahatchee- Swan Dive
The Terror is an album that forgets that, something we're all prone to doing once and a while. The Lips were actually the only band on this list I saw live this year, and even having listened to this album a handful of times (why they released this in the summer, I will never know), I still expected the party that I've always been told a Flaming Lips show was supposed to be. Not so much. The light setup seemed designed not only to thrill, but also to unsettle. Most of this album serves the same purpose, abandoning melody and the pleasure that comes with it for a kind of oppressive drone. Rather than relief, all we get are the occasional end of track respite.
For a band whose tried to make love seem less alien to us humans, it seems they're at a loss here, repeating phrases like we do when our head gets stuck, or gasping them out two or three syllables at a time. It's the expression of a consciousness suddenly less sure of itself, but trying to put the pieces back together. It's a little scary to hear a band who has spent a large part of their career claiming love is the answer suddenly wondering if it's that easy. Now they're asking us "is love a god/ that we control/ to try to trust/ the pain?" Scary prospects.
Flaming Lips- Try to Explain
9. Phosphorescent - Muchacho
If the Flaming Lips have tended to sound like they came from somewhere far, far away, then Phosphorescent's music has always embodied the opposite. Everyone of his songs has always been connected to the earth and the trials and joys of being forced to live on it.
Although normally a band with its sound in the roots, this album finds itself reaching for the heavens. The new found depth in sound adds an almost religious quality. Almost every song is an attempt at making a paean for love, but never seems quite capable of escaping the ground. Love isn't always beautiful, but he is well aware of how powerful it is. On "Quotidian Beasts" he makes it very clear. There isn't much use in trying to control love, because it's a wild thing, and it pretty much does what it wants... and it never really goes away, even if the person it's meant for does.
The repetition of animal and religious imagery are themes throughout, proving the point that love is not something which exists high above us in an idyllic form, but something present in everything from the beautiful to the banal, the body to the bathtub. Any attempt to elevate it, ends up being little more than a prayer in the wind.
Phosphorescent- Quotidian Beasts
Monomania
This album probably gets the award for most spins this last calendar year. Deerhunter just makes music that's good anytime of the year: at home, on the commute, with friends, whatever. After their most carefully polished album Halcyon Digest, they roughed their sound back up a little bit for this one. They've always sounded a bit anxious, and the return to making rawer songs makes them sound a bit like they didn't quite have the focus or desire to clean them up.
At the same time, they've learned how to craft proper melodies over the last few albums that crawl through the ear pretty much on first listen. Early albums probably took a few more listens before I really got them, albeit the reward was worth it. Monomania might actually be their most immediately gratifying, but no less worse for it. Songs like "THM" and "Dream Captain" pretty much grab you right away.
They still sing about some of the same themes, anxiety and maladjustment, but the way they've developed their sound as a band sound not so much like they see the light at the end of the tunnel, but as if they've already come out on the other side and are looking back into the darkness for inspiration. I'm curious to see how they look to find a compromise between the two in the future.
Deerhunter- Sleepwalking
Wakin on a Pretty Daze
This album sounds how I wish I always felt-- laid back, with nothing that needs to be done immediately, with time to let my mind fold in and out of itself. Being in Korea, for me, has meant the end of being alright with taking it easy. The absence of private space outdoors, the all out work or all out party lifestyle of Seoul, and just the density of people in this city make it hard to imagine there were days when waking up to enjoy a daze was something that existed. Maybe I have to work in the evening, but that's a whole afternoon of nothing to do. Maybe I have class, but I don't have to go today.
Most of the album embodies a sort of mental quiet. Kurt does the kind of navel gazing that would make Bertrand Russell proud. Most of the songs are relatively straight forward guitar tracks, something which isn't as common in these days as you would think. The words kind of form on top of them in a sort of wordless mush that makes sense if you have the time to do the same meditations he does.
Everything he sees is worthy of contemplation (not unlike myself, something which I know some friends get sick of when I ask them questions they surely have no answers for either), but he just as often likes to pick his own brain. One song is devoted entirely to a girl named Alex, who may or may not be real and may or may not be faithfully wed to a fellow named Mark. Other times he likes to think on his love for his wife. Luckily for us, if he runs out of words to describe the things in his head or is overcome with feeling, he can just bust on that guitar. What a way to do it.
Kurt Vile- Girl Called Alex
Trouble Will Find Me
You pretty much know what you're getting when you put on an album by the National: plenty of misery, with a few dashes of clarity. They haven't really changed their sound or shifted their emotional range since their debut, and by now lead singer Matt Berninger is well aware that, as he sings on the track "Sea of Love", "If I stay here/ trouble will find me", but he also knows that if he goes anywhere he's not going to have much material for his music. His pleasure is in his frustration.
The National sound like the kind of guys who are constantly wandering around the city looking for someone to meet or something to do or somewhere to sleep, but only finding the ghosts of the past around every corner. We always try to go back in time to grab all the things we forgot carry with us to where we are currently, but we can never come up with anything tangible. But memories and conjecture come with their own (often bleak) satisfaction.
I used to believe that someday I would grow up and get too old to keep doing and feeling the same old shit, and these guys used to give voice to the same idea. This far in, though, and it seems they're pretty much consigned to the fact that some things just aren't that easy to change.
The National- This is the Last Time
Modern Vampires of the City
This album got love from pretty much anyone who gave it a listen. Although it is instantly recognizable as a Vampire Weekend album, it is in pretty stark contrast to their previous albums. The change here is something they probably needed to do after ploughing the same sonic territory since their debut.
The youthful energy and the careful confidence that comes with making a sound that no one has made before carried the band on that first, very fun record. On Modern Vampire of the City they've put up for display their talent at making some of the most tightly orchestrated pop songs of the last decade. They show on a few tracks that they are still capable of turning up the tempo (see "Finger Back"), but most songs find them putting a little more emphasis on the ideas they're trying to express. These include ruminations on mortality, hanging on to love after it's passed, and all the other things they didn't have time for when they were too busy having fun.
They strike the right balance here though. They manage the difficult job of sharing something earnest while making it sound casual. This album is bound to stick around for a while since, unlike the band themselves, the message they put across just doesn't get old.
Vampire Weekend- Diane Young
4. Moonface
Julia with Blue Jeans On
This is surely the most personal album on the list, both in terms of the lyrics sung and how the album connected to me. It might be a little bit difficult to explain properly, and it might not even be one that I would recommend unless you are in a particular mood or are trying do develop your ability to empathize. It's pretty bare bones musically, Spencer Krug's voice and piano (AllMusic calls him an ivory tickler, yuck). For most of the album he sounds like a man who's been hiding out alone in a room for months can be uncomfortable.
But listening to music, not to mention making it, is kind of like performing a self surgery. Sometimes it's necessary to let music get in there and fix (or jiggle) the parts that it thinks it needs to. Then it's over and you're supposed to feel better. Either way, the first time I had the chance to listen to this album I was taking one of the many long walks I had been embarking on toward the end of fall. I had been in a lousy mood for the better part of the year and trying to figure out ways I could make a relationship with an absent girl work the next time I would see her, simultaneously trying to forget all the ways it never would. Lucky for me this guy released an album where he basically runs himself through the same emotional obstacle course.
Anyway, of course it didn't work out between the girl and me. Maybe it was bad luck to go in and break my own heart before giving her the opportunity do it herself. Maybe listening to songs like this softened the blow? Krug himself asks, "is there anything more famous? anything more grand? anything more noble, than a folded hand?" I'll probably cringe at this album in the future, not because it's a bad album, but because of how serious and beautiful it is. I hope I don't, it's beautiful music, and sometimes letting our sanity slip feels like a necessary step towards getting a better grasp on it.
Jai Paul
"Well come on then, let's go." Don't know if I've heard an album start with such an immediacy, because as that sentence gets said the beat drops and it's right into the party. I don't know my electronic music well enough to describe why this gets so high up on the list except to say that it was almost undoubtedly the album most full of musical ideas and the most fun. Whether he's going maximum sound with tracks like "Str8 Out of Mumbai" with its hints of Bollywood, or quiet as his second single "Jasmine" which contains plenty of different sounds but only unfolding them slowly, and only showcasing two or three at a time.
Interestingly, this album wasn't actually released this year. It apparently showed up on a Bandcamp alleging to be Jai Paul's, but was quickly taken down. No real statement or details about a future plans have been released, so no one is really sure whether this was a final version of an LP or just a random collection of tracks. Either way, what we find ourselves with is an album that manages to be interesting, easy to listen to, and sexy all at the same time-- something this list really needed.
Jai Paul- Jasmine (single version)
2. Parquet Courts -
Light Up Gold
Light Up Gold
"Forget about it," we hear on the very first track of the Parquet Courts debut LP. They're dismissing the notion of giving someone they don't care a minute about that much of their time, but somehow the singer sounds like Jonathan Richman at his most hammy. This album moves super quickly, it lasts just over half an hour, but it's a rush from beginning to end. The mix of slacker observations and lo-fi guitar makes them sound like dudes I've (for better or worse) hung out with before.
The first few songs just fly by in a blur and don't ask much but a tap of the toes, but it all just sounds so good. They capture the listless lethargy of being young and unimportant so well, it's hard not to identify with. I feel a bit like I've joined the establishment lately, but listening to these dudes at least helps me keep some of my memories of America fresh. But they also just make me want to go back.
I guess the thing is, and this goes for both being here and the years I spent in Kansas City dicking around, even if we know that we don't have to do anything there's always the nagging feeling that we should be doing something. Even if it's just to wander down the street and find the right thing to cure our hunger when we're high. A lot of the album goes circular with these notions, never really getting anywhere special, but seeing a hell of a lot on the way.
Parquet Courts- Master of My Craft
1. Waxahatchee
Cerulean Salt
Yeah, so my favorite album really didn't change since this one came out back in March. It wasn't so much one that clicked immediately, instead it was the kind of album that justifies you listening to it the first time, then makes you want to listen it again, and then again until you realize you've come to understand the inner workings intimately without ever understanding how exactly it got to be that way. I guess that's how most people fall in love. Of course, the relationship I have with music is more complicated and in some ways darker than those that I have with other people, but one which is just as necessary for those very reasons.
To be honest, I can't really pin down what Katie Crutchfield is singing about here. One can't tell if she's telling us about herself now, retelling stories from her past, or just recounting her nightmares from the night before. There's not a whole lot of happiness in the majority of these songs, though there are traces of contentment which are feelings we can produce both naturally and otherwise. But each song taken in succession sounds like a sort of first person emotional vignette from a particular moment in time; feelings of doubt, hopefulness, intoxication, longing, regret all find the right part of the album and thus the listener to settle into. She rarely leaves the first person while singing, and when she talks about the future it's almost always to tell the kind of promise we mean to tell to other people but usually just keep to ourselves.
Nostalgia's a bit of a curse, but it's my favorite itch to scratch. I pondered out loud (uhh, on the page) about what exactly she was singing about at the beginning of this, because, if she's like me she revisits these things. Each remembrance re-frames the feelings attached to the events, at the same time determining how they'll live on to the next time they pop into our minds. I'm not even sure if I've got many personal connections to the words she sings here, but it still brings me back to being young, fucked up, and in whatever I thought love was back then.
There's something beautiful about honesty in music too. Artists who share the emotions most people refuse to give voice to are just as important as therapists. We all spend the majority of our lives trying to keep our flaws as hidden as possible, so being able to listen to albums like this-- where she sings about them with something bordering on confidence-- is refreshing. I wouldn't say this album necessarily does anything that hasn't been done before, but the simplicity with which she pulls off honesty without tedium and melodrama made it one that I connected very strongly with over the course of a difficult 2013. It's tops for me.
Waxahatchee- Swan Dive
Sunday, January 5, 2014
Tuesday, May 24, 2011
Jacob and Brandon (The Best Friend Song)
Dug up another old one, circa 2009. Damn Summer makes me miss those kids--
The boys next door are digging a hole in their back yard.
"What are you guys doing?" I ask.
"We're digging for treasure!" says the older brother as the younger one holds a dirty rock above his head in like a trophy.
Awesome.
I want to grab a shovel and join in.
I want to hop the fence in the middle of the night and bury something for them to find.
I want to stop their dad from yelling at them when he steps out for a smoke at halftime.
But sometimes you dig for treasure and don't find anything at all.
Or at least those dirty rocks aren't as interesting as they used to be.
Then sometimes you find yourself brushing the dirt off just to see what's really underneath.
A lot of things are like that.
The boys next door are digging a hole in their back yard.
"What are you guys doing?" I ask.
"We're digging for treasure!" says the older brother as the younger one holds a dirty rock above his head in like a trophy.
Awesome.
I want to grab a shovel and join in.
I want to hop the fence in the middle of the night and bury something for them to find.
I want to stop their dad from yelling at them when he steps out for a smoke at halftime.
But sometimes you dig for treasure and don't find anything at all.
Or at least those dirty rocks aren't as interesting as they used to be.
Then sometimes you find yourself brushing the dirt off just to see what's really underneath.
A lot of things are like that.
Sunday, April 24, 2011
I am another
I am another.
I am
a sucker in a candy store
a color on a palette
a note in a symphony
a star in the sky
a tree in yr neighborhood
a joy
a knife in a kitchen
a memory in yr head.
I am
this sucker in the candy store
this color on the palette
this note in the symphony
this star in the sky
this tree in your neighborhood
this joy
this knife in the kitchen
this memory in yr head.
I am a dark forest.
I am burning quietly.
I am
a sucker in a candy store
a color on a palette
a note in a symphony
a star in the sky
a tree in yr neighborhood
a joy
a knife in a kitchen
a memory in yr head.
I am
this sucker in the candy store
this color on the palette
this note in the symphony
this star in the sky
this tree in your neighborhood
this joy
this knife in the kitchen
this memory in yr head.
I am a dark forest.
I am burning quietly.
Tuesday, April 12, 2011
Luke O'Dell
William O’Dell is waiting for the bus on the corner of 39th and Troost with his wife of fifteen years. William O’Dell is, arguably, on the wrong side of town, but nobody around him could possibly know that he’s hardly ever been on the right side of one. He’s smoking a cigarette, watching the cars pull up to the stoplight, shiny cars and beaters, nearly everyone blasting loud music, everything vibrating and squealing and honking. His wife is chewing her cheek.
“Damn find of the sun to be coming out this late in the afternoon,” he says to his wife but really just to hear his own voice. It’s February and he’s sweating beneath his leather jacket. He thinks today would be the damnedest day of his life if he had twenty dollars and nowhere to be. As it is, the old lady needs a few tests done down at the hospital. He drops his cigarette on the sidewalk and grinds it with his heel. Everything should be alright, they both think. But still.
People keep piling onto the corner. There’s an older, bigger black lady and her daughter to the right of him on the ledge, both holding several bags from the drug store in their hands, there’s a few high school kids fooling around up front by the curb, yelling at the cars as they roll past. Everything is a little less heavy in the city, William thinks, when the sun is out in February. To his left there’s a boy and a girl talking about something. Movies or work or school or something. William turns to his wife.
“What are you thinking about?” he asks.
She looks at him for a second as if she’s just woken up. She stops chewing her cheek. “Oh. Just Harris. The moving company’s been gettin’ less jobs. He says he had to let one of his boys go last week. You remember Freddy? No? Well, I guess nobody’s moving into or out of town lately. Least nobody who needs movers.”
“Times are tough, mama. Can’t worry about everyone and everyone’s children.”
“Just wish I could help it.”
William leans back and contemplates, squinting into the sun. Not much to be done these days, he thinks. There was a time and a place when there was, maybe, but it wasn’t 2011 and it wasn’t at the bus stop. He wonders if he’ll ever get used to it.
Somewhere to his left there’s a baby crying. The high school kids by the curb are shoving each other a little bit. One of the smaller ones falls over and the others laugh at him. He laughs too, but not the same. Fucking kids, William thinks.
The boy and the girl next to him have edged a little closer. They are talking about a friend of theirs.
“—sure, he’s great. We were rough housing a like bit while Mary was making the drinks and he had my entire forearm in his jaws. He wasn’t clamped down hard, but you could really tell he could tear the thing off if he wanted to,” the boy, somewhere in his early 20s, said.
“Oh, I love Brusier!” the girl says.
“Yeah, yeah. He’s a beautiful dog. Pits get a bad rep for a lot of reasons, but Mary’s really got that dog wrapped around her finger. It’s funny watching her walk the guy. It’s just this huge dog almost dragging her up and down the street. She’s so small, you know?”
“I know, right? I--”
“I had a pitbull once,” William says, interrupting. The two kind of look at him half confused. He doesn’t notice, “by the name of Luke. He’s like you said, real nice, real good around kids. Good around anyone actually, ‘slong as they weren’t givin’ him too much shit, he’s playful as could be.”
“Oh. Yeah?” the girl says.
“Oh yeah. He’s beautiful too, little baby brown brindle. Raised him from a pup and we’d jump around in the fields behind my house and chase squirrels and shit. This was down in Joplin ‘bout 18 years ago. Boy, he was a good dog.”
“Sounds like it,” the girl says, ready to change the subject, “what are you out doing today?”
“Oh just headin’ up to the hospital with ma here.” He squints into the sun for a second. “But Luke was a good dog. He’s the most beautiful pit you’d’ve ever saw. People just don’t know what to do with pitbulls. Some of ‘em just think cause they’re kinda ugly and tough they can treat ‘em like it. Luke was a good one though, he died too young.”
“Oh! What happened?”
“Oh, I don’t know... Well, my wife—not ma here, but my wife at the time, down in Joplin—she, well she kicked me out of our house down there, it was her family’s you see.” William’s face tenses up a little bit as he begins and his voice is a little quieter. “Well, she kicked my ass out real fast and I had to leave my truck since it wasn’t runnin’ at the time and I had to leave Luke too, she kicked me out so fast. So I went into town and stayed there for a bit, had to work you know? Well, a week later I come back and figure I’ll run up to the old lady’s house—she was a firecracker, far too young for the younger old man I was back then. But I call ‘er up before and tell ‘er what I’m thinkin’ and she says alright, come on up you son of a bitch. So I run up there with some tools to fix the truck and when I get there I see that the truck ain’t where it was when I left. My blood was boilin’ when I saw that so I storm up to the front porch and see her brothers and her pa settin’ there waitin’ on me. Well, she’s still pissed as shit and her folks are settin’ there all ugly lookin’ and I ask what the hell she’s done with my truck. She says she sold it for 250 bucks.”
“Damn,” the boy says.
“Yeah. Now that was a thousand dollar truck, and she went and sold it for 250. Well, she gives me the check, some name I don’t recognize, some guy in Webb City. Now I’m not about to argue too much with a crazy woman, that’s one thing I knew then and somethin’ I still know, and I’m ‘specially not about to argue with a crazy woman whose got her ugly family settin’ all around her ‘specially when they all look sober and probably armed at that. So I say ‘well, okay, where’s Luke?’ and she just stares at me, the closest thing I’ve ever seen to the devil I swear, and says, ‘why don’t you just go out back?’ So I go out back and, sure enough, there’s my baby boy, raised from a pup, and—well, he’s just lying on his side in the grass with a bullet in his head.”
“Oh my god.”
“Fuck.”
“Yeah... Now I don’t know this, but I think they had just shot ‘im. Probably right after I called up there. But he’s just lying there, still chained to his post, flies just startin’ to buzz all round ‘im. I about started cryin’ right there. I ran back into the house mad as a bull but when I get in there, there’s her folks again. So I just walk out that front door and went back on down the road.”
“Oh my god.”
“Did you take her to court?” the boy asks.
“Nah. No. Wasn’t about to do that. Just moved south for a little bit. Down to Texarkana in with my sister for a bit. He’s a good boy too... had a couple dogs since, but none of ‘em were quite like ol’ Luke.”
Everything gets quiet. Everything feels heavier for a second. The wind picks up a little, but it’s not cold today. The sun is shining even brighter and the clouds have drifted east for the night. The bus comes up on the corner. As its air brakes squeal through the wind, William’s wife leans over and mumbles something into his ear that he barely hears.
The boy looks back at William and asks, “What did she say?”
William looks up, “what’s that?” He squints for a second before finding a little smile and says, “oh, ma’s just tryin’ to make me feel better about my dog.”
He did.
“Damn find of the sun to be coming out this late in the afternoon,” he says to his wife but really just to hear his own voice. It’s February and he’s sweating beneath his leather jacket. He thinks today would be the damnedest day of his life if he had twenty dollars and nowhere to be. As it is, the old lady needs a few tests done down at the hospital. He drops his cigarette on the sidewalk and grinds it with his heel. Everything should be alright, they both think. But still.
People keep piling onto the corner. There’s an older, bigger black lady and her daughter to the right of him on the ledge, both holding several bags from the drug store in their hands, there’s a few high school kids fooling around up front by the curb, yelling at the cars as they roll past. Everything is a little less heavy in the city, William thinks, when the sun is out in February. To his left there’s a boy and a girl talking about something. Movies or work or school or something. William turns to his wife.
“What are you thinking about?” he asks.
She looks at him for a second as if she’s just woken up. She stops chewing her cheek. “Oh. Just Harris. The moving company’s been gettin’ less jobs. He says he had to let one of his boys go last week. You remember Freddy? No? Well, I guess nobody’s moving into or out of town lately. Least nobody who needs movers.”
“Times are tough, mama. Can’t worry about everyone and everyone’s children.”
“Just wish I could help it.”
William leans back and contemplates, squinting into the sun. Not much to be done these days, he thinks. There was a time and a place when there was, maybe, but it wasn’t 2011 and it wasn’t at the bus stop. He wonders if he’ll ever get used to it.
Somewhere to his left there’s a baby crying. The high school kids by the curb are shoving each other a little bit. One of the smaller ones falls over and the others laugh at him. He laughs too, but not the same. Fucking kids, William thinks.
The boy and the girl next to him have edged a little closer. They are talking about a friend of theirs.
“—sure, he’s great. We were rough housing a like bit while Mary was making the drinks and he had my entire forearm in his jaws. He wasn’t clamped down hard, but you could really tell he could tear the thing off if he wanted to,” the boy, somewhere in his early 20s, said.
“Oh, I love Brusier!” the girl says.
“Yeah, yeah. He’s a beautiful dog. Pits get a bad rep for a lot of reasons, but Mary’s really got that dog wrapped around her finger. It’s funny watching her walk the guy. It’s just this huge dog almost dragging her up and down the street. She’s so small, you know?”
“I know, right? I--”
“I had a pitbull once,” William says, interrupting. The two kind of look at him half confused. He doesn’t notice, “by the name of Luke. He’s like you said, real nice, real good around kids. Good around anyone actually, ‘slong as they weren’t givin’ him too much shit, he’s playful as could be.”
“Oh. Yeah?” the girl says.
“Oh yeah. He’s beautiful too, little baby brown brindle. Raised him from a pup and we’d jump around in the fields behind my house and chase squirrels and shit. This was down in Joplin ‘bout 18 years ago. Boy, he was a good dog.”
“Sounds like it,” the girl says, ready to change the subject, “what are you out doing today?”
“Oh just headin’ up to the hospital with ma here.” He squints into the sun for a second. “But Luke was a good dog. He’s the most beautiful pit you’d’ve ever saw. People just don’t know what to do with pitbulls. Some of ‘em just think cause they’re kinda ugly and tough they can treat ‘em like it. Luke was a good one though, he died too young.”
“Oh! What happened?”
“Oh, I don’t know... Well, my wife—not ma here, but my wife at the time, down in Joplin—she, well she kicked me out of our house down there, it was her family’s you see.” William’s face tenses up a little bit as he begins and his voice is a little quieter. “Well, she kicked my ass out real fast and I had to leave my truck since it wasn’t runnin’ at the time and I had to leave Luke too, she kicked me out so fast. So I went into town and stayed there for a bit, had to work you know? Well, a week later I come back and figure I’ll run up to the old lady’s house—she was a firecracker, far too young for the younger old man I was back then. But I call ‘er up before and tell ‘er what I’m thinkin’ and she says alright, come on up you son of a bitch. So I run up there with some tools to fix the truck and when I get there I see that the truck ain’t where it was when I left. My blood was boilin’ when I saw that so I storm up to the front porch and see her brothers and her pa settin’ there waitin’ on me. Well, she’s still pissed as shit and her folks are settin’ there all ugly lookin’ and I ask what the hell she’s done with my truck. She says she sold it for 250 bucks.”
“Damn,” the boy says.
“Yeah. Now that was a thousand dollar truck, and she went and sold it for 250. Well, she gives me the check, some name I don’t recognize, some guy in Webb City. Now I’m not about to argue too much with a crazy woman, that’s one thing I knew then and somethin’ I still know, and I’m ‘specially not about to argue with a crazy woman whose got her ugly family settin’ all around her ‘specially when they all look sober and probably armed at that. So I say ‘well, okay, where’s Luke?’ and she just stares at me, the closest thing I’ve ever seen to the devil I swear, and says, ‘why don’t you just go out back?’ So I go out back and, sure enough, there’s my baby boy, raised from a pup, and—well, he’s just lying on his side in the grass with a bullet in his head.”
“Oh my god.”
“Fuck.”
“Yeah... Now I don’t know this, but I think they had just shot ‘im. Probably right after I called up there. But he’s just lying there, still chained to his post, flies just startin’ to buzz all round ‘im. I about started cryin’ right there. I ran back into the house mad as a bull but when I get in there, there’s her folks again. So I just walk out that front door and went back on down the road.”
“Oh my god.”
“Did you take her to court?” the boy asks.
“Nah. No. Wasn’t about to do that. Just moved south for a little bit. Down to Texarkana in with my sister for a bit. He’s a good boy too... had a couple dogs since, but none of ‘em were quite like ol’ Luke.”
Everything gets quiet. Everything feels heavier for a second. The wind picks up a little, but it’s not cold today. The sun is shining even brighter and the clouds have drifted east for the night. The bus comes up on the corner. As its air brakes squeal through the wind, William’s wife leans over and mumbles something into his ear that he barely hears.
The boy looks back at William and asks, “What did she say?”
William looks up, “what’s that?” He squints for a second before finding a little smile and says, “oh, ma’s just tryin’ to make me feel better about my dog.”
He did.
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