Slang Editorial :: Never Underestimate The Value Of A Holla'

Friday, November 24, 2006
A Mother's Home is a Graveyard

The holidays are the American burden. We come together, we drift apart, we come together again. The annual repetition ensures that we continue to move forward (even when we don't). Those without families experience homelessness of a different kind: no tracking, no autoguides, no experiential observations to remind you of the ticking clock of time and the perpetual move forward.

I however, have a family, and I am reminded by them each time I return home of how hard it is to write. The words are always there (I remember this especially now) but my brain cannot put them together. Even now I can only recount the Not Now, unable to form the What Then.

A Mother's Home is a Graveyard

Outside, where there once stood a sandbox, is a black basketball.

A mother's home is a graveyard for the past: inside, outside, on top of, within.

I remember an inclined driveway leveling my jumpshots to eye-level, three-pointers at 180 degrees. I remember the blue and silver swingset, never quite my size even when I was young; the sandbox and preferred nearby sandpile; castles and forts for G.I. Joes, Transformers, He-Men-At-Arms; the at-first obnoxiously constructed fence, but later the line to cross for wiffle-ball heroes [dilapidating even during my youth (too many homers) and now standing at half-mast]. And other the relics of past too: rotting gloves, broken bats, dumptrucks, tennis balls, barrels, buckets, billiards, bushes, beer bottles and burned ground. Surely somewhere too there are hastily planted pear trees and marijuana plants, used condoms, treebranch battling swords, toy soldiers: I see it all now, in saturnine memories from supposed halcyon days. I look around me, ready to settle into a past I never quite knew, only to be cut by the hustling breeze.

Inside a mother's home is different, though still the same. The wear is there, and yes, the tear, but there are more patches, covers, makeovers/move-ons/missteps toward "staying new" or at least "holding on". There is a new bathroom, and a new chair, but there is also disintegrating lineoleum, fraying afghans and flattened pillows. Where the head was once propped up by the ebullience of newness and growth, the powerful vise of time has flattened the prop to leave the head resting only mere inches or centimeters from what it tries to stay above. Blankets are threadbare, cutlery smoothed, knives dulled. Stencils over windows still surprisingly colorful, though obviously fading. My room... my room... what room? Dollhouses and workdesks, palettes and brushes, wire-formed bodies, knitting needles: these are not me, these are the tenets of Moving Forward. The only traces are the bed-to-bed-flip hole-in-the-wall, the empty wall-attached cd rack, the Cincinnati Reds holographic sticker pressed to the doorway in triumph over obtaining my first pack of Upper Deck in 1990.

It doesn't matter, it doesn't hurt. I exist within the walls, between the cracks in the beams supporting the loft that my father never finished building. The clock that was never fixed. The coils of the electric heat that provide no warmth. The hung thermometer/barometer/whatometer I swear I've never used.

He exists too, in all of these and more, and especially in what is new and was never his.

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Some basic "Re-appraisals":

Califone, Roots and Crowns

Phenomenal, in the understated way that is assurely Califone. Many have spoken of the cover of "The Orchids", which is clearly great, but perhaps best is the distinct way that their frames of songs sink into moments of beautiful urgency of the sort typified in Quicksand / Cradlesnakes's "Vampiring Again" - "Black Metal Valentine" and "3 Legged Animals" for sure take me away. I've said this to friends before, but right now, Califone IS the New American Blues; that is, if our time has a "blues" (and i'm not sure it does), then this is it: the pulse of American hunger, as refracted to us through plaintive vocals, acoustic guitars, and studio experimentation.

Download: Califone, "Black Metal Valentine"
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Bonnie 'Prince' Billy, The Letting Go

For a number of reasons related only to sadness, it took me a while to get around to listening to this album. I wish but I have no question that it is the best Bonnie 'Prince' Billy album yet. Until The Letting Go, I have always appreciate BPB but yearned for the return of the off-kilter wobblings of Palace; I See a Darkness was great, sure, and Master of Everyone is at least pretty, but no BPB has ever touched the stones of my heart in the way "Horses" or "West Palm Beach" ever did (though I will confess a great love for the BPB cover of "Brokedown Palace" on the BPB/Brightback Morning Light tour split). On The Letting Go, however, Will Oldham makes clear for the first time why stepping away from the past is a necessary part of his future. While functioning as the obvious heir to 2003's Master of Everyone (with 2005's Superwolf acting as a curious-though-pleasant mid 90s detour), the Letting Go revisits the understated aesthetic beauty of its predecessor but coming with more weighty tunes that imbue those "calming sounds" with depth and power unknown to MoE. I will never listen to this album without remembering the accompanying sadness found in my own life, but I am sure that at the end of a long day, this will be a Will Oldham document to hold onto above the many trivialities that I'm destined to forget.

Download: Bonnie 'Prince' Billy, "Love Comes to Me"
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Joanna Newsom, Ys

Joanna Newsom is the highpoint of today's indie-intellect coterie. She is also literally an elflike creature. Her last album, The Milk-Eyed Mender, took a while to grow on me, but after it did, it became a piece of music I most desperately wanted to share with others (but knew I couldn't) than almost anything. [There are few musics i've LOVED so much but yet felt a need to qualify my feelings to newcomers--at times even attaching the tag of "I will seriously understand if you hate this, and I will do nothing to change your mind". Some people always do this, but I think I rarely do, at least in this way. Regardless, Joanna Newsom is an elfin angel and I love her.] Her new album Ys, which i picked up right before heading upstate, moves away from the precious wintry vignettes of her first effort and instead offers six ambitious numbers that show that she has matured and is not content to repeat the past. There are obvious changes that jump out upon first listen: 1) her voice has filled out and sounds less-childlike and more womanly assured, and 2) her songcraft, while always original, has stretched out to new realms, as evidenced by the fact that the shortest song of the six is over seven minutes long and two songs are over twelve minutes. This is modern composition, and it is magical. Beyond the fact that I admit freely that I need to listen to the album more before casting final judgements, I will say that a part of me is sad that the woodnymph who sang "The Sprout and the Bean" appears to be gone--but in her place appears to be an empowered Earth Queen, and I think I can get down with that. I will at least say Good for her.

Download: Joanna Newsom, "Sawdust & Diamonds"

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I hope to write more again sometime soon. I'm trying to find a voice, as it appears that my swagger has deserted me. It's nearly winter, and I'm just trying to keep warm while i carve out a home for myself.

I'm going to leave you with something short and abnormally schmaltzy to hint at where i've been and where i'm going. Because, well, I'm redefining my terms.

Ryan Adams - "When Will You Come Back Home"

love,
Jeffrey.

posted by Nihilist Loves Hate, Hates Everything at 11/24/2006 04:59:00 PM 3 comments

3 Comments:

elizabeth said...: I feel you should know that I've been listening to Ys obsessively and lately have found myself singing along, rather violently, when alone in my car.; 11/25/2006 01:17:00 PM
Nihilist Loves Hate, Hates Everything said...: the fact that you drive a car seems kind of crazy as it is, so i guess rocking out to Joanna goes along well enough. thanks for sharing.; 11/25/2006 02:01:00 PM
elizabeth said...: yes it is crazy. i drive stick, no less.; 11/25/2006 03:42:00 PM