Just when I need it
Jan 31, 2009
Last night was rough. I've been sailing along, ecstatic about the progress of my book, but a few events this week forced me to confront something that's been looming: the brutality in my book. There's some pretty searing stuff in there.
So the past few days, I've been thinking about the parents reading it: parents of the victims and the killers. I wrote someone an email about it last night, after midnight, before I went to bed, and I thought that would help a little, but it tore me up and I was here on the couch all alone and needed a hug or something. Or just to say it out loud, because sometimes I can't get to the sadness and let it out unless I say it to someone first. It wells up, but I can't get it to the surface.
I couldn't figure out who was up--most of my best friends are on the east coast, or central, so I texted a few people to see if they were without waking them (what a great invention that is), but nobody was, so I went to sleep.
I woke up numb, which is worse. I know it's still in there, but couldn't feel sad, or anything. That just means it's lying in wait.
And then I turned on Craig Ferguson on the tivo to share breakfast, and I have it set to catch the last four minutes of Letterman to play the musical guest.
I checked the group out but was not hopeful. The album cover, the title and the group name--The Gaslight Anthem singing "The '59 Sound"--all screamed rockabilly:
I used to enjoy rockabilly, but it's a thin vein and been mined pre tty deep. Can't remember the last rockabilly sound that felt fresh.
Then this guy (Brian Fallon) started wailing on his guitar, and I thought, "Great, a noise-band, shitty garage band. Blech."
But the band kicked in and they hit a rhythm and it was glorious. Their faces were so expressive, but that was nothing compared to their bodies. They really meant it. They were playing for dear life. You could hear it, you could feel it, that's everything. (And only vaguely rockabilly, btw. Fresh. They made it fresh.)
And the opening lines, which Brian kinda shouted:
Well I wonder which song they’re gonna play when we go
I hope it’s something quiet and minor and peaceful and slow
Minor? Peaceful? Nothing like what was coming out of him. This guy had a heart. And a brain.
Then he sang about chains, Marley's chain's that he'd been carrying around his whole life. (Apparently the ghost from Dickens' A Christmas Carol, who carried one rung on his chain for each bad thing he'd done.)
There's a car crash, she didn't make it, he wonders if she was scared when the metal hit the glass, and most of all, he wonders if she heard one last beautiful song:
Did you hear the ’59 sound coming through on Grandmama’s radio?
Did you hear the rattling chains in the hospital walls?
Did you hear the old gospel choir when they came to carry you over?
Did you hear your favorite song one last time?
He sang it exhuberantly. Painful, but joyous. Life is exhilarating. Every brilliant song that revs up your bloodstream and makes you feel alive.
I felt a little guilty enjoying it. Romanticizing death, maybe, doesn't seem appropriate--ever, but particularly for me right now. But Brian was romanticizing life, I think, all those joyous moments that the victim radiated life. This guy is radiating one on my teevee right now. I'm absorbing it and maybe some will reflect back.
The guilt helped, made me sob. The sadness in the lyric is understated, but it's everywhere, that got them rolling, too. It all boiled up to the surface and spilled out. Thank you. I got it all out, or crap, I guess the first wad of it out. There will be more, but I got the big chunks up. And I got hope with it. I feel alive. And I've got a wonderful new band who feel life and know how to write it and sing it and play it and explode with it to explore and enjoy. Who knows how much I might learn from them. They might comfort me and enliven me for years and years. Maybe they'll unlock nothing. This could be their one good song. It happens, sometimes. But I'll wager against it.
This is the thought that is really healing me right now: Each one of the victims in my book felt moments like this--I'll take that on faith; everybody does sometimes--even a baby, first time she notices her toes and latches onto them, you can see a delerious little smile. They had thousands of these moments, hundreds of thousands. Me too. Hopefully their parents still do, from time to time. I wish them more.
It may piss their parents off to hear me say that--I hope not. I started off worrying about the parents, but maybe it was the kids and the teacher I was hurting for, too. I never met any of the murdered victims. I met a lot of parents, and so freaking many survivors in the school. I got a feeling for them. They were all different, but I got to know them. The victims that were killed--I have no way to reach them, to grasp who they were.
I think this song helped. He made me feel closer to the victim of this car crash because he knew her and he makes her real for me in this song.
My little sister Missez Che (that's what we call her) wrote me years ago and asked me to make sure they play Prince's "Sometimes It Snows In April" at her funeral, and to put a baseball in her hands, so that somebody will know how much she loved watching the Cubs. (We've from Chicago.) Wow, some weird paralells in that song. But this line leaps out at me right now: "Always cry 4 love, never cry 4 pain." I always thought that was niave, especially in light of the song, which is SO painful. I don't think Prince was suggesting we make it true very often, just that we're better off when we try.
I asked my sister to play Rickie Lee Jones' "Company" for mine. I heard it first in 1979 and t's still the sweetest song I've ever heard. Sweetest sentiment: not I loved you madly and I'll miss the passion, she says, "I will miss your company."
I hope someone misses mine. I hope somebody remembers which song. I better write it down somewhere.
Hmmmmmm. Come to think of it that's a minor sentiment, like Brian was asking for in The '59 Sound. Nothing grand, just missing my company. It's also peaceful and slow. I think I get this guy.
I'm so grateful for pop music--and films, and books and sometimes even TV shows. Painting rarely does it for me, or live theater, opera, sculpture . . . most of classic arts, sorry. I don't feel the passion--or it's a passion I can't internalize. I may be a dimwit, but pop culture speaks to me. The good stuff zaps right through me: I feel what he felt when he wrote it, when they played it like their life depended on it.
It's a gift. How how does it know to arrive just when I need it?
Thank you, The Gaslight Anthem. I've replayed the song at least eight times already--I'm afraid my neighbor below is going to walk up the stairway and complain--and it's not wearing out, not fading a bit.
I'm going to grab a Kleenex and then plug you into itunes, but youtube first, because I want to see more of that torutured smile. (Update: tons of free downloads at their myspace page.) Looking forward to plunging into your backlist. And hoping for many great moments to come.
---
As heard by his wild young heart
Feb 19, 2009
How did I miss The Gaslight Anthem this long?
After that wrenching but wonderful experience with "The '59 Sound," I downloaded a bunch of their stuff and it's been glorious. I listen to it at the gym, and nothing pumps me like they do. It makes me smile, too.
At first, I thought a lot of it sounded too much alike, but oddly, it's gotten better with repeats. They are clever lyricists, they have a ball--check out the video--and most importantly, they mean it.
Somehow, I continued to overlook "Ida Called You Woody, Joe," my new almost-favorite. (Video below. Lyrics and great insights about them here.)
I paid no attention to the clunky title, hit play and they blast right into it, with the singer taken by another song:
I felt my fingertips tingle, and it started to rain
When the walls of my bedroom were tremblin' around me . . .
. . . and then there's this really familiar chord progression and Brian Fallon sings, "
And this was the sound, of the very last gang in town.
Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. He's listening to Joe Strummer. "Last Gang in Town" was a great Clash song. My favorite group ever. Joe was singer, songwriter, and rhythm guitarist. (I had to look this up, but he loved Woody Guthrie so much he called himself Woody, for awhile--while he was a young pretentious dork, I guess. Hahaha. That didn't last. He was wonderful.)
The next line, how freaking wonderful:
As heard by my wild young heart,
Like directions on a cold, dark night,
Sayin', "Let it out, let it out, let it out, you're doing all right."
Nice. That's how I heard Joe, too. How many punkers write lyrics that tender?
And how cool for the Gaslight guys to still have wild young hearts, but the wisdom, too, already to see that's how they're absorbing it. How do he know?
One of my favorite Clash-kinda images was actually from the other guy, Mick Jones, in his followup band, Big Audio Dynamite:
I`d wish I could`ve seen you
When you could run wild
I would`ve liked to know you
As an innocent child
I think about so many people when I hear that, including Mick himself, and Joe Strummer. I never saw them play together. They never toured the Midwest once I discovered them in 1979. I saw Mick with Big Audio Dynamite, but the show was lame. I don't care. I still love them.
And I love that The Gaslight Anthem wrote this song for Joe, who died in 2002, unexpectedly of an undiagnosed heart ailment.
This part is sweet:
And I carried these songs as a comfort wherever I'd go.
. . . And I never got to tell him, so I just wrote it down.
I wrapped a couple chords around it and I let it come out . . .
Punkers with heart. Just like Joe.
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