A Failing Marriage

Who ever knew shopping could be so much fun? Clearly, a trip to the mall is exactly what this couple needs.

-1991 Commercial for the Mall of Memphis

Swingin' Spathipyllums

- "Swingin' Spathipyllums," by Mort Garson from Mother Earth's Plantasia (1976)

Gradations of Blue

The sunshine today is so warm and insistent I can't help but feel like a coddled child. I just want to yell and run and jump and forego any and all schoolwork.

...In case it wasn't obvious, I'm becoming extremely sentimental as the semester progresses.

"Gradations of Blue"

The scent of pig is faint tonight
as the lime trees hang their heads against gradations of blue, 

looking at the lone suitcase in the middle of the farmyard
with a sense of solidarity. Also forgotten. 

Its owner never once looked up at them and exclaimed
I was still soft-fingered when I planted you. 

In the plane, her gaze rests on a flock of cloud-birds,
pinkish purple with elongated necks, rests 

on the plane’s wing-tip colored pink by the sun.
Her head is heavy with this childhood cargo,

like the hawk that usually flies between or above their branches,
found skimming the ground with its catch of mouse or mole,

or the barge that passes every day at four, its metal nose
just out of the water, while empty at eight, its sleek sides 

flash signals to those on shore. Later, on the highway
a row of trucks lit like orange squares in the setting sun— 

a colony of ants each with a piece of chrysanthemum
on their backs—begins to reassemble memories; 

the petals become lining, the shape of the flower is lost,
so that years later, looking at an old photograph, 

she will not remember the names of cousins and uncles
but the exact bend in the river behind them, the pattern of trees.

by Matthea Harvey, from Pity the Bathtub Its Forced Embrace of the Human Form (2000)

Know What I Want

- "Know What I Want," from Por Vida by Kali Uchis (2015)

Famous People and Democracy

Tonight I went to listen to Susan Sarandon talk about why Bernie Sanders is the ideal presidential candidate. I'm very happy to have gone, without a doubt. But I took some beef with the idea that Bernie represents "change" and "acceptance," considering that the whole point of this rally was—like every other rally—to persuade people to vote for him. For instance, his campaign used the social currency of celebrity to convince supposedly intelligent voters of his potential. I respect Susan Sarandon a lot, sure, but I don't know what makes her more of an expert on gun control than, say, any unknown legislative staffer. I would have been way more comfortable had she acknowledged that she was there to use her fame and influence to win votes. There was a lot of Hillary-bashing, too, which was disappointing considering how "positive" a campaign Sanders has been touting. In short, the whole event should have been more honest and transparent about how it functioned.

Maybe more than anything, this event made me realize that it's not necessarily the candidates who are screwed up, but our entire political system. I don't believe that Bernie Sanders can single-handedly fix that. None of the candidates can. People do seem to embrace the idea of a democratic overhaul, which is inspiring. Democracy is an incredible system; we just have to do it better. And that "better" will take a really long time, probably longer than any of us are alive. But consider how much time we dedicate to the (admittedly important) process of scrutinizing our candidates—I spent ten minutes alone just writing the above paragraph, so I'm just as guilty as everyone else. How much better could our country be if we instead spent even half that time looking at the flaws inherent to the democracy within which those candidates function?

Humble proof for the nonbelievers

Celebration

In the last 24 hours, my writing has been accepted by two different publications.

Yay! This is (mostly) exciting.

My only reluctance: one of the publications has asked to publish a single poem from a sequence, and that makes me feel all kinds of funny. I don't really want to isolate that poem from its context, but I'm also a twenty-two year old kid who should be grateful for any and all audience I receive. I have to tell them by tomorrow whether they can have it, but I'm 98% sure I'll say yes. My writing will only get better, I hope, so I might as well take every opportunity I can get. At least for now.

In other news, the job applications are still flying, and I'm somehow writing every day. Sometimes, there's even time to do watercolors and to update this blog. All in all, life is pretty alright.

Tamed

Taken from the website of Alessandro Sanna.

Babies on Parade

This is so wrong, in so many ways.

I wonder where these babies are today.

- Footage of the annual Ladera Park Baby Show, 1950

A Conversation

Taking breaks from this Romantic poetry homework.

"A Conversation"

iraq is the kindling we place
around our feet while mouthing a prayer:

dead aint never been more subtle
than when tucked into the back pages of the paper.

if only we could father our demise
and blend into history as action not feints and dips

instead of watching rumors
of torture and dead bodies grow into common knowledge,

and collateral damage become
what fills the space between death rates and our reaction. 

like dead aint never been more subtle
than when tucked into the back pages of the paper

and the stories of war heroes don’t still gather
like homeless men in the minds of my generation.

and the draft aint no more important
to us than kwame brown shooting his next jumper in italy

cause dead aint never been more subtle
than when tucked into the back pages of the paper

-Reginald Dwayne Betts, 2006

Laid

In belated honor of St. Valentine's Day, I present the satisfyingly awful "Laid," produced by Brian Eno.

When I was younger, I had but a vague idea of what this song was about. Today, I'm amazed that these lyrics were broadcast on mid-nineties American radio.

Other exciting tidbits:

• I did standup for the first time on Friday night at Worcester Polytechnic Institute. The audience was receptive and attentive, especially the generous friends who trekked out to cheer me on. Already I'm itching to perform again.
• Over the course of the weekend, I've spent a solid four hours in front of a piano (two hours of which were under the tutelage of my dear pal Deeks, who patiently taught me all sorts of songs).
• Today I impulsively hopped on the bus and wandered around Cambridge and Boston like a dense little tourist. I got back to Wellesley an hour ago, and I'm still defrosting.

-"Laid" by James, from Laid (1993)

I Try

Speaking of great music...

- "I Try" by Macy Gray, from On How Life Is (1999)

Defining "Great" Music

London Calling by The Clash was one of the first albums I ever loved as a collection of songs. Before the luxury of Internet access and online streaming, I had CDs, cassettes, and the radio, which meant my listening habits were strictly enclosed. I either listened to the albums I loved on repeat or to the broadcast prescriptions of the local radio stations. Which, as you might imagine, meant that I became very familiar with the music that mattered to me.

London Calling was one of those pieces of music. No matter how I'm feeling, this album puts my mind in a very specific, upbeat place. Like riding a bike, I can rely on always falling into this feeling. I'm not sure why. It's not because of the memories connected to the music. It's because they're simply good songs, songs which also happen to work very well together as a greater musical piece.

I guess the beauty of a great album (whatever that might mean to me in this moment) is that it somehow pulls off that magic of a single great song, repeatedly and in different ways, while cohering as a collection that achieves an even rarer magic. Part of that magic is the contained journey that exists within a great album. Sitting down and listening to Nico's Marble Index, for instance, I experience a narrative. The album tells a story, and to sit down and listen to the album in full is to give that story a chance to be heard. A rarer aspect of that magic is persistence through time: I loved London Calling when I was ten, and I love it still at twenty-two. And while I can't predict the future, I'm sure I'll still love it in a decade.

If you're like me, however, you probably don't often sit down to listen to full albums. Like most millennials, I cut-and-paste the songs I like into forms that work for me while I'm running around the lake, or walking to class, or driving to the grocery store. There are probably forty or fifty mix CDs in my car, because they're the songs that meant the most to me over time. And that meaning has, in most cases, overwrought any singular associations or experiences that occurred in conjunction with that music. Those songs have meant frustration, puppy love, fear, exhilaration, hesitation, loss, and growth. They've stuck with me.

I often worry that this inclination toward mixtapes and singles is endangering the album. It seems like, more and more, people are talking about "that new Adele song" or "Macklemore's latest single" instead of the albums from which those songs are released. Like fashion, we've cycled back to the 7" ways of the 1950s, only the vinyl has been replaced by iPhones and Spotify. Given this trend, I'm confident that the album will, within my lifetime, reemerge as the widely-practiced form it was during the 1970s. Until then, I'm content to enjoy catchy singles and standalone songs, because great music is great, regardless of its format.

To conclude this confused celebration, here's a quote from Nick Hornby's Songbook. It's incredible how he can express, in one sentence, the same feeling I can't even define in a page:

"If you love a song, love it enough for it to accompany you throughout the different stages of your life, then any specific memory is rubbed away by use."

- "Wrong 'Em Boyo" by The Clash, from London Calling (1979)

Hot Brushy Country

Richard Brautigan must have had some stories. Among his infinite biographical details, Wikipedia has taught me:

• That he was left in a hotel room unsupervised for two days when he was six
• That he once intentionally broke a police station window to go to jail for "three hots and a cot" because he was starving
• That he was given electroconvulsive therapy twelve times at Oregon State Hospital
• And that he once recorded a spoken-word album for the Beatles' record label, Zapple

If you're genuinely curious to learn more about him, a website about his life and work has been erected by a loose group of admirers, and it seems a decent enough fount of information.

I want that hat.

Now I really, desperately have to write a paper about the short story "A Little Cloud" from James Joyce's Dubliners, so I'll leave you with this poem.

"The Double-Bed Dream Gallows"

Driving through
hot brushy country
the late autumn,
I saw a hawk
crucified on a
barbed-wire fence. 

I guess as a kind
of advertisement
to other hawks,
saying from the pages
of a leading women’s
   magazine, 

“She’s beautiful,
but burn all the maps
to your body.
I’m not here
of my own choosing.”

-from The Pill Versus the Springhill Mine Disaster (1968)

Learning to Bartend

When I first saw this as a seven-year-old, I thought it was the pinnacle of comedy.

Fifteen years later, nothing has changed.

- From Late Night with Conan O'Brien, 9/28/2001

Into Eternity

- "Into Eternity" by Jens Lekman, from Night Falls Over Kortedala (2007)

Down by the Water

Rock Harbor Beach in Orleans, MA; November 2016. The Community of Jesus is based here, and its giant black angel statue is eerie, to say the least. Several former members of the community have come forward and called the group "destructive;" the website created by these former members is here.

Weird photo effects due to a roll of Lomography 400 film and a focus-free Minolta Freedom 50N camera. Or maybe they're due to the black angel. I'm not sure.

Fable of Flesh

after Giacometti’s Palace at 4 AM 

At 4 AM the bells
                             swallow their keys 
              and a spine swings in its cage.

If the woman is a dream 
                             what the spine dreams of
              warm balcony at the top of the tongue,

how many rooms does she bring?
                             Stories hung about her neck
              and waist like the iron weight 

of a dowry. Hair tightly pulled 
                             and a burlap dress, nevertheless 
              toothsome in shadows, statuesque.

The temple pauses on one foot
                             to listen to the deep between 
              breaths. Who knew a world 

of crutches and stilts awaits, 
                             a tilt just above sinking?
              The palace hears branches 

canticle in winter; the palace 
                             longs for Avignon in spring.
              The splintered aftermath—

an abstract of wood, glass, 
                             wire, string, and a pair 
              of wings stretched and pinned 

to the walls. Here we are flightless 
                             but we are not alone here 
              we are so thin.

- by Hadara Bar-Nadav, 2006