Am I the only one who doesn’t like restaurants whose lighting is so “moody” or “romantic” — so dim/low — that you can barely read the menu or see what you are eating? What’s the fun in eating, I ask, if you can’t see the food? The experience of dining is partly a visual one, I think. Similarly, when I smoked cigarettes I got no enjoyment or satisfaction out of lighting up a fag in the dark. It wasn’t just about the inhalation for me, or the nicotine. If I couldn’t see the smoke and the ash and the cig getting smaller between my fingers as I made progress sucking it in, it was absolutely no fun.
I like light.
I like to see, very clearly, what I’m doing.
Have you ever experienced the phenomenon of chomping down hard on a wint-o-green Lifesaver while enclosed in a dark windowless space like a closet with the door closed and seeing sparks in your mouth (or in the mouth of the friend you are watching chomp down on the mint)? I remember doing this as a kid. But I just now tried it, in the bathroom with all the lights out, looking in the mirror, and there was nothing happening in my mouth. Have they changed the Lifesavers recipe so that this trick doesn’t work anymore?
In “The Lights” I was feeling really really down so I went to the little beach at the bay, late at night, to look out over the water and up into the sky to try to find some solace. There was a bright moon glowing, shining on the water. It was a mostly clear night with a few slowly drifting clouds backlit by the moon.
There were lights in houses off in the distance across the bay. There were stars. There was the occasional silent blast of heat lightning far away. I don’t remember if the “roman candle” really happened, somewhere off across the bay on the other beach over there, or if I made it up to add to my list of “light” things in the song.
The night seemed, suddenly, so alive. There was so much light, so many kinds of light, such illumination in the dark, such brightness, coming from so many places. I imagine that if I had walked into the water there would have been phosphorescence making ghostly neon white trails swirl around my feet. It was like a secret world, with a special kind of vibrating, metaphysical more-awake-than-daytime energy that apparently came to life only when people were tucked away sleeping in their houses, and so I was a privileged witness to it. All the lights made me feel protected and warm and comforted, like I wasn’t alone, surrounded by them. Like the beach and everything within my sight and the land off across the water, curving around the bay, was my home, and the sky was the protective ceiling. Like this world loved me. I was overwhelmed by the beautiful heartbreakingness of it.
I was distraught, still. Because I was alone, still. And I couldn’t share this wonderful secret world with anyone. I yearned for understanding (why did I have to be alone?) and peace and so I looked as hard as I could, with my eyes open as wide as I could make them — out, up, around, wanting to know why it couldn’t be like this and stay like this — this peaceful quiet nighttime dreamworld — all the time; wondering how I could get out of my normal everyday hole for good and feel better, and strong, and illuminated, instead of often feeling so dark and heavy and weighted with lethargy/sadness/confusion/agony.
I had a terrible, adolescent, monster crush on a guy (which now, years later, seems so silly) and that was part of my problem — my problem wasn’t 100% existential. I wanted this crush-pain to go away. Though being with him — and I was, sometimes, with him — was heaven, like living out a fantasy, that feeling never lasted. The lowest low would invariably take the place of my highest high. There were moments of pure bliss, when he was giving me his full attention and affection, and the world was glittering and magical, but then these moments would come to their inevitable ends. He would leave and it was like he “put out all of the lights.”
I could never hold on to happiness for any extended length of time. (Cyclothymia?) Happiness always seemed like a freak accident. I was always at least semi-consciously aware of the seeming impossibility of true, easeful, lasting connection between people, or at least between me and other people. And it kind of took the fun out of the fun. Like it says in the Some Girls song ”Feel It” — “I can feel it just for a minute and then it’s gone” — there were glimpses, but only glimpses, of enlightenment and peace.
Being with the guy was like being electrified. He was incredibly charming and charismatic and fun and funny and intelligent. And beautiful to look at. Just being near him, watching him, listening to him, absorbing some of his energy lit me up. But it wasn’t enough to passively absorb, or even to experience, firsthand, one-on-one, face-to-face, his wonderfulness, once in a while. I wanted more. I wanted the vibrancy that he possessed, and I wanted the wholeness of real union with another person — with a great, exciting person. But at the same time I knew that stuff was a fantasy. I never believed in love, even back then when I was young and dumb(er), and under the spell of a dreamguy who seemed to kind of like me, too.
“A better life is in plain sight.” I wanted to believe it and sometimes — during fleeting moments, like when we were cuddling or walking down the street holding hands, going nowhere in particular (or when I looked out over the bay at the moon’s pretty reflection on the water) — I almost did, against my better judgment. But I couldn’t hold on to the hope. Being “in love” with the guy made me feel so bad sometimes (like when he would fool around with other girls) and it seemed to me that love shouldn’t be so painful, or what was the point of it? Why bother?
I knew love wasn’t the answer to my existential crisis. (How could love be the answer when I’d seen it cause so much pain in peoples’ lives, and when I knew it was only simple and perfect in stupid Hollywood movies, and when I was too young and immature and inexperienced, anyway, to navigate myself through it with any kind of skill or success?) I was searching — for some other solution, for relief — that night, sitting alone under the stars, crying my eyes out on the little empty dark beach with my feet in the cold sand.
And then I saw a big cloud, high in the sky above me, form itself into the shape of a cross. A Christian Jesus cross. I couldn’t believe it. It was so bizarre and unlikely that a cloud could do this. I thought I might be hallucinating — my distraught, addled mind/soul conjuring up the most obvious, accessible, cliché’d symbol for the spiritual yearner who seeks comfort or a sign — that all is not lost, that all is forgiven — in her hour of spiritual need.
It is true that though I wasn’t a religious person and wouldn’t have — and never have — called myself a Christian, I did sometimes dig out of the back of a drawer in my kitchen a tiny pocket-sized New Testament that Jeremy Enigk had given me way back when Sunny Day Real Estate’s Diary was on my most-played, most-loved list of then-current albums. When I was at my lowest, my darkest, my miserablest, I would grab for the little Xian bible as a last resort — a desperate grasping measure — hoping for something, anything; any combination of words that might calm me down or comfort me or put horrible-seeming, hopeless-seeming, wrecked-seeming things in some kind of perspective so that I could see that everything really wasn’t all that bad and that I was being overly dramatic or self-pitying or that I was just temporarily depressed. I could open to any page and usually I’d land upon something soothing that would mellow me out and warm my heart and make me feel grateful for all the good that I did have. I’d read a couple of random paragraphs or a page, and then I’d put the bible back in the drawer and not look at it again for another six months or so.
These days I am more liable to reach for Buddhist writings or the I-Ching or the Runes (or the Jameson) and not the Xian bible when I need a calming influence to help guide my head out of some self-defeating, self-destructive funk/rut. (I think I lost the little bible in a move to a new apartment, anyway.)
Was God, that night, sending me a message (“I am here. You are not alone. I hear you. I am listening. I will protect you/guide you. Everything is going to be alright. Everything is as it should be.”) or was I hallucinating or was it just a weird random accident-coincidence of cloud-drifting when I saw that cross in the sky? All I know is that I suddenly felt, then, that everything was okay and that I was on the right path and that suffering was just part of it, part of a life’s destiny, and that if I felt things in a certain way and hurt in a certain way and was challenged in certain ways (that maybe some other people weren’t) that it was fated, and that I was going to have to learn to live with it and to love it and to learn from it.
I knew for sure that no guy held the answer. The answer was in the sky, that night.
Isn’t Evan’s guitar interlude beautiful? It’s perfectly moody and mournful and pretty and dreamy and dark and shimmery, all at the same time.
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June 30th, 2008
7287pwkr
“Congratulations” is a song about temptation, and not giving in to it.
I found a way to throw in the word “jellyroll” because I wanted to — was always trying to — vie for inclusion into the rock and roll continuum, which started back with all the blues guys who sang about “jellyroll.” And then there was Lou Reed. I wanted to be included in that club. The rock and roll boys club. For the same reason, I named my first album “Hey Babe.” Like Lou Reed sang. It all comes back to Lou Reed, doesn’t it?
You can learn by trial and error to exercise restraint, and self-control, and to be always conscious of the fact that actions have consequences, and that it is a choice to act. If you ignore this it can lead to trouble, complications, problems, hangovers, hangers-on, stomachaches. It really is better sometimes to just say no.
The two people in the song realize this. Though he doesn’t say much, and only shows up in the chorus and at the end, the guy is important because he isn’t just at the receiving end of “my” (let’s just say the “I” in the song is me) rejection — he feels the same way I do. Doubtful. Skeptical. “I know the fire but none of the afterglow.” When verbally contemplating our mutual attraction, the guy says, in the chorus, “I am equally wary,” (“’I am,’ he said to me, ‘equally wary’” is how the chorus goes), mirroring my own hesitancy. We are wary of jumping in and acting upon our mutual desire for one another. We are looking ahead to the future negative repercussions of our actions/attraction to each other by looking back to what has happened in the past when we have acted impulsively and indulged other desires.
We have acquired maturity. (Or maybe just pessimism and dread.) And so we don’t do it. We don’t pursue it. We walk away.
And so congratulations are due as the guy shuts the door behind him and leaves my house, nothing having happened between us. We deserve pats on the back for showing restraint, for not being stupid and blasting forward in the heat of the moment. For nipping this thing in the bud. For rejecting intense ravenous feelings as selfish and gross and irrational and untrustworthy. For saying No. For knowing that anything of any value and truth and meaning will endure even if you don’t grab onto it, desperately, and try to own it or consume it. Especially if you don’t.
The guy and I are in agreement that hooking up wouldn’t ultimately benefit us. It would maybe satisfy a momentary urge, but we both have enough foresight to realize that it would behoove us to think of the future and not act upon this shallow momentary urge.
“I ain’t an animal” I say, making a stand for Free Will. I’m not a monkey. I can make informed decisions — I am not biologically destined to screw indiscriminately like a bonobo. I have a brain. I can use it. I can be smart. I can say “No.” I can choose to be alone, and a virgin (well, I could, back in the day).
“Desire, not anything more.” Just let it be. Let it fade away. Don’t be a slave to it. It doesn’t have to lead to anything. Be strong. Be smart.
I made up the guy in the song. He didn’t exist. I have since encountered guys like this — guys with good heads on their shoulders, who were so supercool that they could make the rational decision to pull themselves away, while in the throes of a strong desire.
My father gave me some unsolicited advice when I was a young girl. He said, “You want to know the three best ways to get to know someone? The three best ways to get to know someone are to get drunk with him, play poker with him, or sleep with him.” I think my dad was right on about the poker, but I think he was completely wrong about the sleeping with someone. A person doesn’t have to disclose anything about himself during sex. It’s how come prostitutes are able to be bad at or afraid of intimacy, and good at protecting/hiding their vulnerable selves.
And that is why, at the end of the song, I sing, “I am he/He is me.” It is only by deliberately not giving in to our base animal instincts that we are able to really connect on a higher, better level and to understand each other intellectually and to feel satisfied that we have done the right thing. Or maybe I meant that as soon as he was gone, he disappeared from my consciousness like the smoke from a cigarette, as if he never existed.
Lust is a roadblock that keeps us from really being intimate with the deepest realest parts of ourselves. It’s a primitive animal instinct left over from when we were apes and needed to produce offspring in order to stay alive. Humans should have evolved past lust by this point. That’s why we have to use our brains to veto it when it doesn’t make practical sense.
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June 23rd, 2008
7287pwkr
I sometimes try to justify my laziness by saying, “An artist needs to be idle so that when an idea alights upon her, she will be receptive, and available — body and soul — to write it down, sketch it, hash it out; capture it.” ”It’s my duty,” I say, “to spend a lot of time lying on my couch, doing nothing; looking out the window, up at the sky, at the birds, at the sunset.” If I were caught up in anything that demanded my attention; demanded that I really participate or engage or care, much, a great idea might pass me by, fluttering away to some other writer who is lying on her couch, waiting for ideas to come to her.
Though my lifestyle includes a lot of couchlying, the idleness doesn’t sit quite right with me. That’s why I feel I have to defend it. I always feel like I should be working harder. I feel like I should always be working. Like, why don’t I push myself, force myself to write a song every day, rather than waiting to feel inspired? I feel guilty not working a straight eight hours in a row every day like the majority of people, like “normal” people.
I’ve often felt like an out-of-work workaholic. I just don’t know what to do other than what I do, the way I do it. You can’t force songs. The desire to write a song hits only sporadically, you see. (That is not to say that I don’t spend hour upon hour, late into the night and into the dawn, toiling away at a particular tune, or that I don’t dedicate whole week-long or even months-long chunks to bursts of creativity, but that’s when I am working, when I am on a roll. Not every day, 9-5, all year long.)
So why don’t I get a real job to fill in the rest of my schedule? Because like I said I need to be there, available to the muses, relaxed, sort of waiting, like I’m on call, ready to write the ideas down when they come.
I am aware that I am in a sense lucky to be able to live like this (without a day job, without a boss, without a quota, without rules). Or, rather, I have been lucky to be able to live like this. I’m not sure how much longer I can sustain this not-working-a-real-job-with-a- steady-paycheck-and-opportunity-for-advancement/promotion lifestyle. Things are getting tight, like they are for so many people. And hardly anyone buys records (okay, CD’s) anymore.
I liked writing my book because it was like having a real job, a job I couldn’t escape. I felt I was being very productive and that my ass was being kicked every day — day after day — by the demanding boss who was my own inner ambition to finish the book. It was a ton of work, sustained over a period of years. Maybe the hardest work I’ve ever done. Much harder than writing a song.
“Outsider” is a song about being an artist. Or in my case, a songwriter. Along with the necessary free time — lots of it — for reflection and spacey thought, being an artist requires a certain amount of solitude. I, for one, need to be all by myself in order to write; I’ve never had any success or ease when I’ve tried to write alongside any other songwriter. (All my song collaborations were carried out with each writer situated in a different place — a different state, sometimes — than the other. Freda would, say, give me a chord progression on tape and I’d take it home and mess around with it and develop it into something more complete.) The ideas don’t flow with another person in my space. I need to be alone to think clearly, to feel freely.
Loneliness is a price that artists pay for the art (songs, books, paintings, whatever) that we create. Or maybe I should say “I” and not “we.” I guess I shouldn’t assume other artists and writers need as much alone time as I do, or need to work strictly on their own. Didn’t Andy Warhol work surrounded by people and noises/music and stimulation, at the Factory? And it always amazes me when I watch “Don’t Look Back” and see Dylan working at his typewriter in a hotel room while people hang out and talk around him. I’m in awe of Dylan’s apparent ability, in that scene, to block out what is going on around him. Or his ability to let it all be. And it just blows my mind that so many people like to go to coffee shops to write. I wish I could do that. I wish I could concentrate on something in front of me without being totally distracted by what’s around me.
And I can only focus on one sense at a time. I need to block out all the others in order to experience any one. Often, when I’m in the studio, sitting in front of the speakers and listening back to a take or a mix, I will instinctively cover my eyes with my hands, so I can hear better. And when I am reading — even alone, in my apartment — I might put earplugs in my ears, even if there is not much noise in the building or the neighborhood, so I can concentrate better on what I am reading.
I close my eyes on stage and I try to avoid making eye contact with people in the audience because if I look at the crowd too closely — if my eyes focus on any part of it — it can throw me off. (Just as if I look an interlocutor in the eyes when I’m in the middle of explaining or expressing something, verbally, I am liable to lose my train of thought or to forget what I started out trying to say.) There’s so much intense energy in each face, each pair of eyes, that it is potentially dangerous (to the song, to the performance) to look. I love big stages that are lit in such a way that I am blinded and I can’t see the crowd at all. I don’t need to see you. I can feel your energy. If I play a wrong chord or screw up a solo or forget some lyrics it’s usually because I’ve been distracted by someone or something in the crowd. (I assure you that all of my playing and singing is flawless when I’m practicing at home, and in rehearsals.)
I suspect I am mildly autistic. Or maybe not so mildly. Of course I don’t fault the crowd for throwing me off, or for being there, or for being enthusiastic. I’m just telling you what I experience and how weird it all is for me, sometimes; just saying it’s a fine line for me to walk between concentrating on what I’m doing and being distracted by what is around me.
I’m a unitasker. I can only do one thing at a time. Have a conversation or listen to music. Not both. So parties are out.
I can’t walk and talk on a cell phone at the same time, or I’ll walk into traffic. I can’t talk on a cell phone and drive at the same time. Only one or the other.
If I’m struck with a brilliant or even a not-so-brilliant (potentially brilliant) idea while driving I have to pull over or, while at a stop light, find a pen (I always have at least one in my car) and a scrap of paper and write it down, before it disappears from my consciousness; gotta capture those elusive bits of creative dust/wind/ephemera. I am surrounded by scraps — phrases, titles, concepts, thoughts, images, reminders — in my purses/bags, in my pockets, in various notebooks, on envelopes — opened and unopened mail — scattered around my car, my apartment.
I used to stay at a place called the Roger Smith hotel whenever I went to New York City. I was in New York a lot in the ‘90’s when I was on Atlantic Records and involved in a lot of promotional stuff, and touring all the time. My band and crew and manager would stay there, too. We booked so many rooms so often that the management knew us all by name and gave us really good rates. I was either in the Roger Smith or thinking of it when I put together the words to “Outsider.”
“This hotel has a thirteenth floor.”
I liked the Roger Smith not only because of its friendliness and the low room rates but because it had a 13th floor. In the elevator, the buttons went in correct sequence from floor 12 to 13 to 14, etc. Many hotels don’t. Many hotels, to assuage their guests’ supposed superstitions and irrational phobias about bad luck and the number 13, “don’t have a 13th floor. They leave the 13th floor completely off the elevator floor list. They skip from the 12th to the 14th. (Have you not noticed? Take a look next time you are in a hotel elevator.) But is this not the stupidest most ridiculous farce? Do these hotels think that their guests are idiots? Any fool can see that since the floors go up one by one, it follows that the 14th floor is the 13th floor. If the buttons go from the “12th”to the “14th,” the 14th is in actuality the 13th. The 13th floor still exists, though you are calling it the 14th. Just because you say something is true doesn’t mean it’s true.
Bill Clinton can say, “I did not have sexual relations with that woman,” but that doesn’t change the fact that he did have sexual relations with that woman. (And his wife can claim she “dodged sniper fire.”). George W. Bush can say “Mission accomplished,” though the mission isn’t (accomplished). And you can say the 14th floor isn’t the 13th.
I liked the Roger Smith for not insulting my intelligence (when I rode up in the elevator) by pretending there was no 13th floor.
The only way a hotel can truthfully claim to not have a 13th floor, and to (rightfully) leave the “13” off the elevator buttons, is if there is a 13th floor, but it is closed off or uninhabitable, and the elevator can’t stop there — never opens there. Only if the elevator is programmed to skip the real 13th floor can the elevator buttons claim to go from ”12”to “14.”
So in my hotel room I’m working on a song, my head all filled with chords and emotions and visions and melodies, partially formed, all swirling in my head, and I take a break to go to the window and take a breath of the air outside my room and while doing this maybe I see someone down there who looks interesting or friendly — someone I could conceivably get to know — but I know that I can’t go down and out and say hi because I am writing. I am on to something — the ideas are flowing — so I have to turn away from the window and go back to my work, to keep going with it, to see where it takes me. And when it’s done, and recorded and performed, it will take the listeners who like it someplace, too. I will substitute taking them — a bunch of strangers I will never know — somewhere for really going somewhere myself. I forego hanging out and “watching a video” (a movie) — metaphorically or not — with someone I like, or am interested in, to concentrate on my song-in-progress. When I say “I’m dreaming out the window,” I mean to say that my issuing an invitation like “Come up and watch a video” to anybody is just a fantasy.
I’m not saying I’m a martyr and that I suffer for my art any more than anybody else suffers for anything. I don’t think I’m that special. I just think that I have my place in the world, and my job, and other people have theirs. And my job in a way kind of involves my staying away from them. But without them, the end result of my job (songs, recordings, concerts) is pointless. It’s paradoxical.
Some nights, when I would sing “Outsider” live, I would say “underneath this guy” instead of “underneath the sky,” but I don’t know if anyone ever noticed the difference. They sound a lot alike. It sure cracked me up every time I did it.
The percussion is multiple tracks of my two hands tapping/pounding on the wood on the side of the studio control room console at the Magic Shop in NYC where we did some overdubs and mixing. We set up a microphone next to my hands and I tapped/pounded all the way through. (There was none of this “record a little bit and then we’ll quantize it and sample it and dump it onto the track” crap; if you listen carefully, you can hear me do a few fills.) This was tons of fun. It felt so good, hands beating rhythmically on wood. Totally acoustic. I had an epiphany while beating in time to my song — I suddenly understood the appeal of drum circles (and of bongos). It opened up my mind. Before that, I saw drum circles, and jamming on bongos, as annoying hippie activities. Not anymore! Now I want to join in with the hippies!
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June 16th, 2008
7287pwkr
Or “little pizzas,” as I used to call it.
The first line: “You left the state without me” was taken straight from the mouth of George Hurley (drummer for Firehose and before that the Minutemen). The story goes something like this: The Blake Babies were touring with Firehose. Ed Crawford (Firehose singer/guitarist) had accidentally dropped and broken John Strohm’s guitar the night before, and he insisted on buying John a new one. So the next day, Ed and Strohm, along with Mike Watt (Firehose, and Minutemen, bass player) went guitar shopping. This was in New York, I think. Ed and Watt were supposed to meet George and the Firehose crew guy at a certain time at a certain corner and then drive down to the next gig in Richmond, Virginia, in the Firehose van, but one of the two parties got their plan screwed up and so when Ed and Watt went to the corner they thought was the meeting place, George and the crew guy weren’t there. And this was before cell phones, so neither party could call to find out where the other was. So Strohm suggested that Ed and Watt ride along with us, the Blake Babies, in our van, to Richmond. Watt was uneasy about leaving without half of his posse but he had no choice, really. He didn’t know where they were. So Watt and Ed rode with us. When we arrived at the club in Richmond, and Hurley saw Watt emerge from the Blake Babies van, he ran up to Watt and jumped on him, punching, shouting, “You fucking left the state without me.” A band is tight, a unit, like a gang, or a marriage, or a family, and shouldn’t be split up. George was pretty pissed off. Hurt.
I have heard of this happening — bands getting split up, accidentally — before. The Volcano Suns, the great Boston band of the late ‘80’s, once left their bass player (Jon Williams) at the Sturbridge, MA rest stop on the Massachusetts Turnpike on the way back to Boston from points west, and then continued all the way home (about 80 miles) before they realized that Jon wasn’t in the van. What happened was this: Jon was sleeping in the back of the van, under a blanket. Peter Prescott (Volcano Suns’ drummer/singer), who was driving, stopped to get a snack at the Sturbridge rest stop on the Pike. He parked the van, went in to get his candy, and while he was inside, Jon woke up and went in to the rest room to pee. While Jon was in the bathroom, Peter returned to the van and, thinking Jon was still asleep in the back under the blanket, he took off for Boston. And didn’t realize Jon wasn’t in the van until he got home. And had to go back to Sturbridge to get Jon.
If you are in a band, on tour, it’s a good idea to get in the habit of doing a head count, or roll call, every time you hit the road after a pit stop. And to do it in the morning when you check out of a hotel. And when you get in the van after each gig.
So I had a line from which to push off. “You left the state without me.” Often one line, or a title, will get me going on a larger idea.
The idea in this song was the push/pull of ambivalence — my simultaneous attraction and repulsion toward potential love objects. Feeling a longing for a connection to someone but pulling away before getting too close. Or not being able to get close. Being more than just afraid.
“Dexter” is one of my favorite new TV shows. As I watch I find myself really relating to the Dexter character (which is frightening, considering he is a serial killer). When his drippy girlfriend starts to put pressure on him to get serious with her, we hear Dexter’s thoughts in voiceover (his words are paraphrased here to represent how I remember them): “She wants to take it to the next level. She doesn’t realize that with me, there is no next level.” That’s me. When I want to go deeper with someone, and really bond, I just…can’t. Or won’t. But won’t or can’t, it amounts to the same thing: isolation. And an uneasiness and a confusion and even a kind of muted terror at my inability to blast through this supposed blockage and satisfy some primal urge for real communion (or at least the kind you hear about). “My heart’s on fire but my blood is frozen.”
I’ve only ever been truly at ease when I am all by myself. For the longest time I thought this meant there was something really seriously fundamentally wrong with me, but now I have begun to accept this truth about myself: I am most comfortable (most myself) when I am alone. And I am fine being alone. Happy, even. When I tell people this, they usually think I’m fronting or being defensive, and they say, “Oh, you just haven’t found the right guy yet.”
Maybe that’s true. Maybe. But if I am willing to concede that, okay, maybe I have never met anyone with whom I am compatible, then you who say I haven’t met the right guy yet must be willing to entertain the thought that maybe what I claim to be true is true, and that maybe I really want to be alone. And maybe I like being alone more than I’ve ever liked being with anybody.
I know that when I am writing I am content. And sometimes, when the writing is going well, I am ecstatic. When I was working on my book (which will be published in the fall) I was calmer, more at peace than I’ve been in a long time — than maybe I have ever been. I also know that when I last had a boyfriend a few years ago, I wasn’t able to get any serious concentrated work done on my book the whole year and a half we were together. The bulk of the writing and re-writing was done before and after the boyfriend. He was a real, serious impediment to my book-writing, which was a shame because the book-writing made me feel so much better than being with the guy (or any guy) ever did. So many times when I was with the guy — like, say, if we were fighting — I felt more alone being with him, then, than I ever did when I was actually single and by myself.
When there are troubles/tears between you and your boyfriend/spouse/baby mama/whatever, it feels more lonely than being alone, I think.
When I would tell the boyfriend, “Look, I need to go and work on my book,” he would whine and get all mopey. He would take it personally when I wanted — needed — to go off and be alone for a few days.
Partly it was his age, I think. He was probably too young for me. I am different now. Now I think: if I ever get involved again, I want it to be an older guy. In his 40’s, minimum. Preferably 50’s or maybe even 60’s. Someone like Larry David or Bill Murray (both of whom are newly single, I think): old, funny, good at what he does, financially solvent, and not too good-looking (so he’s not full of himself. The really good-looking ones know they can get away with more bad behavior. Know they can get away with badder behavior.) He doesn’t have to be rich; I just don’t want to have to pick up the tab every time we go out to dinner.
I don’t want to have to say “I love you” to someone every day, like we’re a broken record, wearing the phrase out until it is shabby and scuffed and means nothing. Saying “I love you” to your girl/guy every day can be kind of manipulative, intentionally or not. It puts pressure on the other person to deliver an answer in kind, even if he/she doesn’t feel like saying it, even if he/she feels the words are too important to be thrown around like “hello”s or “good morning”s and so doesn’t feel up to saying it frequently. Even if she/he does love you. (Repeat anything enough times and it will lose all its meaning and start to feel like gibberish in your mouth/mind.)
In “Little Pieces” I am feeling an emotional connection or what I would call “new love” with someone, but I have no claim on him because I haven’t really given or invested anything, because I don’t want to give up my freedom by becoming his girlfriend, and yet, still, it hurts to see him with other girls, because I have strong feelings for him. “I don’t want to talk it over” and “I never cried on anyone’s shoulder” means I want to remain free and independent and I want to be strong. But I am aware that there is a price to be paid for my freedom and independence: loneliness, isolation, feeling like an antisocial freak (in a world full of very sociable, verbal creatures) in perpetual exile from the human race and from what we are all conditioned and pushed to believe is normal; what society pretty much imposes on us, even when it is not necessary in terms of money/safety/procreation: coupledom/marriage/community, etc.
I feel this pressure, especially as a woman — we women are made to feel that we must find a mate, a guy, a husband, a protector, a father to our future children. There is no historical or filmic archetype of the female lone wolf. (Maybe there is in mythology. Artemis?) But why? Why is someone like me — alone by choice — pitied if I don’t have a ball and chain? Why am I seen as abnormal, bereft?
I’ve always felt less than 100% myself whenever I’ve been half of a couple. It makes sense, doesn’t it? To be one part of a couple means — by definition — that you are literally one half. Is it any wonder I haven’t ever figured out how to feel whole as a girlfriend/wife?
Though it is a choice to be alone, it is also a cross to bear. It is a kind of a curse. An exile imposed by destiny/nature/genetics. It is a conundrum.
Am I defective, needing so much solitude? Is there something wrong with me, pushing away from contact with other humans? Or is it society’s — or the powerful ruling patriarchy’s — ubiquitous relentless pressure making me feel that it’s not okay to be alone?
Buddhism, the most sensible, applicable religion (in my opinion) advocates the abolition or rather the dissipation of desire. Well, doesn’t it follow that curing yourself of desire for other humans — for love/affection/reassurance/comfort — is a positive, necessary stepping stone on the path to nirvana, to peace, to individuation (in Jungian terms), to enlightenment? I aspire to need/want no one. That is my dream. To never need/want anyone, or anything. Then I will be like Buddha.
And, yet, when I’m alone, something sometimes isn’t right. Is this because something is missing or lost, being alone, or is it simply that unless you are Buddha, Buddha’s enlightenment is impossible and that man’s condition — being alive — necessitates that existence is not fully satisfying and is fraught with periodic, palpable emptinesses, no matter what your situation (alone or not)?
“You’re on earth. There’s no cure for that.” says one of Samuel Beckett’s characters.
“That’s how it is on this bitch of an earth.”
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June 10th, 2008
7287pwkr
I was a fan of Silverchair’s Neon Ballroom album. I really identified with Daniel Johns’ music at that time and I wanted to give him a shout-out. Plus, I thought, If Elton John can write a song called “Daniel,” why can’t I? After all, you can’t copyright a title (I could call my next album Chinese Democracy or Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band if I wanted to). So, in a way, the song is a “hello” to Elton, too.
I don’t think anyone ever suspected that the song had anything to do with the kid from Silverchair. I don’t think I ever told anyone. Did I just ruin it for you? Am I oversharing?
There was something in the sound of Johns’ voice (and in some of the subject matter) that grabbed on to me. Something trapped. You can hear the pain. And in the video of “Ana’s Song” you can see the pain — in his anorexic frame.
And I love the guitar solo in “Do You Feel The Same.”
And that snaky thing Johns does with the melody in the second verse of “Point of View,” on the word “mind,” at about 1:14 in the song, just tickles me every time.
I don’t know. Some of the songs just struck a loud chord with me at a weird, lonely time in my life. I feel like I am defending myself for liking Silverchair — I mean for having liked Silverchair — but I don’t know why. What’s wrong with having liked — or with liking — Silverchair? I think that the guy had/has a lot of talent and charisma. I still think that “Ana’s Song” is a really pretty song, regardless of the subject matter.
When I wrote “Daniel” I had just moved back to Massachusetts from Los Angeles, with my tail between my legs. I had tried making a go of it on the left coast, but it hadn’t really worked out. I hated living in L.A., for lots of reasons. For one, it was too sunny all the time. I missed the rain and the cold.
Back in MA I was living temporarily in a room in an old converted garage and I spent a lot of time sitting and looking out the window, watching the birds and rabbits in the yard and worrying about my future and my career, which wasn’t going very well (“This is the sound of no money”).
Some of the stuff about the water and the “water’s edge” was referencing the end part of the “Ana’s Song” video as well as my own life. I’d grown up right down the street from the ocean and I’d spent a lot of time sitting by myself, looking out at the water, hoping/waiting/searching for answers (that usually didn’t come.) In my mind, there was a connection to be made between me and the emaciated figure crouching by the water in the “Ana’s Song” video, if only in a song.
I’m pretty proud of my work as producer and player on this song. I played all the instruments but drums. Using a clean/twangy sound on the guitar solo after the heavy distorted chorus chords was a little trick I tried, to switch it around and be unconventional (I did the same thing on my recording of “Raisins”). Sometimes I like to do things wrong or backwards.
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June 2nd, 2008
7287pwkr
I’m referring simultaneously to the void left by the downing of the Twin Towers on September 11, 2001, and the hole in the ozone layer. The two are related, in my mind; in both cases, man is the destructive force.
The title of the song came from my mother. She had been to visit the scene of the former World Trade Center in NYC — what they were calling “Ground Zero” — some months after the attacks. I myself had not been to see the site since it had happened. (I still haven’t.) I asked my mother, “What was it like, being there?” and she answered, “There was just this big hole in the sky.” Wow, I thought. What an image. What a perfect, poetic description. And I took it from there.
I’ve written a bunch of anti-pollution songs, starting with “Cesspool,” from the Blake Babies’ Earwig album.
I’m not trying to save the world, because I don’t think the world is save-able. And I don’t think music can change anything. I just want the worst offenders to be taken down, taken off the streets, taken out of commission. I want them to pay for their crimes and to repent and reform.
New villains will keep cropping up, I know, because a certain number of people are always going to be greedy/corrupt/totally self-serving/dangerously fanatical, above all else. But maybe if the really bad ones are taken to task as they commit their crimes, we can maybe at least push back the date of the inevitable apocalypse and buy ourselves a few more years in which to enjoy and appreciate our lives and our loved ones and our freedoms and the rare fruits and vegetables and grains — the staff(s) of life — that aren’t tainted with pesticides or genetically modified materials (I’d rather eat an occasional little bug than cancer-causing, brain- and endocrine system-damaging chemicals, wouldn’t you, if you had the choice?) and the ocean, while it is still marginally swimmable, in certain areas.
They’ve shut down the little beach in my hometown for a few days during each of the past few summers, because of a high bacteria count in the water. That never happened in all the years I lived in that town (grades K-12).
And the sun has definitely gotten hotter than it was before — I can feel it. Does this not disturb/sadden/frighten you? It does me.
At this point I just want to be left alone in my little corner of the planet. But then Monsanto’s (et al’s) tainted, robot seed will probably drift onto my land (when I have land, and a big vegetable garden, someday), and the toxic pollution they dump from their factories into the rivers will make its way down to my stream and my water supply and I will end up contaminated and poisoned, anyway, despite my best intentions.
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May 26th, 2008
7287pwkr
I took a My Bloody Valentine song — “Only Shallow” (one of the most gorgeous, hypnotic songs ever recorded) — and its four intro chords, with their rhythm, and switched them around so that the last two chords were in reverse order to what was on the MBV recording.
Lots of people are inspired to borrow like this — taking a snippet of someone else’s something and going from there to create something new. Madonna, for example, has made a career of appropriating other peoples’ ideas into her own — she was always a genius at creating something fresh and original-seeming by using pieces of other peoples’ things — not only with her music, but with her look and her style.
When I was recording my album Become What You Are — my major label debut — in Los Angeles, I used to go home at night after a day of recording to the rented furnished apartment in Burbank that my record company had set me and my band up in and I’d put on MBV’s Loveless album (the one on which “Only Shallow” appears). I’d turn the volume up really loud and lie down on the floor on my back with my head between the two big speakers of the apartment’s stereo and just bliss out. Loveless calmed me, but also pumped me up, and so was the perfect soundtrack to my life at the time because I was both nervous and excited to be making my first major label album, in the big bad glittering city of lights. I would close my eyes and be sucked into the music so that I felt that I was part of it, or it was part of me — Loveless has a strange entrancing power. It was like meditation. It was like listening to the sounds of angels.
I started studying the French language in the seventh grade. I continued studying it all through my first semester in college. From a young age I had a desire to travel, to see other countries. France was on the top of my list. And I wanted to become fluent in at least one language other than my native English because, well, why go through life only knowing one, when there are so many languages and so many countries in the world? I thought that knowing more than one language would open up doors — to cultures, to music, to people, to ways of thinking/seeing/living/experiencing — that would be closed to me if I knew only English.
I went skiing in France when I was in college and I was shocked and appalled by the Frenchpeoples’ terrible behavior in the lift lines. They would get all up on the people in front of them, their skis literally on top of the backs of the skis of the people in front of them, and shout, “Poussez! Poussez!” (“Push!”) as if their saying that, and their pushing, would have any effect on the speed of the chairlift. I thought, Aren’t Americans supposed to be the rude and obnoxious ones? But in the States, touching the person’s skis in front of you in the line is considered bad form, or a mistake, and you must apologize if it happens (always by accident).
But I love France and the French. I love their intellectualism and their political engagement and their bread and their fries and their wine and cheese and their Godard and their Celine, Sartre, Camus, Rousseau and Balzac, and their beautiful women (Brigitte Bardot, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Jeanne Moreau, Francoise Hardy, Catherine Deneuve). But I don’t love French rock and roll, only because I don’t think such a thing really exists. The French have never really been known for their rock and roll music. (“Ca plain pour moi” is probably the best — or only — known rock song in French.) Something about the language doesn’t translate well into the rock genre. I think French is too pretty, delicate, and mellifluous a language to fit alongside gnarly, loud, attitudinous guitars. I wanted to fill that void — I wanted to write a French rock song, and “Fleur De Lys” was my attempt to do so.
I wanted “Fleur De Lys” to rhyme, in French, partly just because I thought it would be funny. The awkwardness/retardedness of the words, translated to English, is due to the fact that I was bending and shaping the phrases (with my limited knowledge of spoken/sung French) to try and make them fit into rhyming patterns. In my effort to make it rhyme I sacrificed some coherence in both the English and the French (though I tried to be as grammatically correct as I could) and that makes the song funnier. Keep in mind that I wasn’t fluent in French and that this song was a goofy (but sincere, sort of) throwaway, in terms of content, utilizing a classic “I want you/I want you to want me/Why don’t you want me?” type of scenario. This is, I think, how my bad, sort-of French translates:
I had two orange juices.
I was thirsty.Help me. I need a man.
Where do you live — at whose house?
Maybe at the end of the century you will love me.
I want to play.I had three “pain au chocolat”s.
I wasn’t hungry.
How much for your body?
Let’s go. Push!
When I was sixteen I had the opportunity to be an exchange student for a summer with an intercultural study program called AFS. I would go to live with a family in a foreign country. Part of the application process involved specifying which country or countries or general area I wanted to be sent to live; I wasn’t guaranteed I would be placed in the country of my choice, but every effort would be made to get me as close to where I wanted to be as was possible. I told them that I wanted to go to France or, if France wasn’t available to me at that time, I would like to be in any French-speaking country. (I figured that immersion in a foreign country is the best, fastest way to become fluent. Like when I wanted to learn how to drive a stick shift, I bought a car with a stick shift; I was forced to learn quickly [how to drive a stick] because I couldn’t drive my car until I knew how to drive it.)
When the envelope came from AFS I opened it excitedly, in anticipation of the news of my assigned host country. Would I be going to France, my first, hoped-for choice? Belgium? Martinique? Haiti?
Bolivia.
I was going to Bolivia.
They were sending me to live in Bolivia.
And that is how I came to spend the summer I turned seventeen in a town named Tarija in southern Bolivia, where people speak Spanish. I knew hardly any Spanish. I hadn’t ever taken Spanish lessons.
But I’m glad fate sent me to Bolivia. Otherwise I would probably have never thought to go there. And I loved it. And I’d picked up a lot of Spanish by the end of my stay in Tarija.
The first time I ever played electric guitar was at the first Blake Babies rehearsal/jam. Same with bass — I picked it up when we Blakes couldn’t find a suitable bass player. I had never touched that four-stringed instrument until the day I became the Blake Babies bassist. I didn’t really know exactly what I was doing but I figured it out because I had to.
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May 19th, 2008
7287pwkr
My older brother and I were once held up as we were walking across an outdoor parking lot at night. There were about six young guys — teenagers, I think — in sweatshirts, baggy jeans, and baseball caps. My brother and I thought they were just going to amble past us, but then one of them pulled out a little silver handgun and pointed it at my brother’s head. I was standing right next to him. I don’t remember anyone saying anything. We were all relatively calm and no one panicked or yelled or made any sudden movements. My hand went automatically to my pocket where there was a little wad of cash — $80, I think — and I immediately handed it over to the kid closest to me. My brother gave him his wallet. Then the kids took off running down the bike path next to the parking lot. My brother called the cops and filed a police report.
The perpetrators were never caught, but I didn’t care. I was just glad to be alive. The feeling I had, directly following the incident, was one of intense gratitude. I wanted to thank those little punks, for not shooting/killing me (or my brother).
The whole one-minute robbery was like an impressively well-executed business transaction. It couldn’t have gone more smoothly. Everyone did what they were supposed to do: The boys demanded something from us, clearly and forcefully, without giving us any opportunity to negotiate, and so we gave them what they wanted without resisting or questioning (which would have been stupid, since they had a gun). Then they left, and no one got hurt. End of story.
I had my dog with me, without a leash, and even she knew to play it cool and not aggravate the situation — she just stood there, next to me, calm, and didn’t bark or try to attack. Which was kind of incredible because normally she barks or lunges at people she senses are potentially threatening. She knew what was up. She knew not to resist six young guys with at least one gun (that we knew of). We were outnumbered.
I thought that $80 was a very reasonable price to pay for my life. I was actually glad I had that much — a good amount — of cash on me, because any less might have pissed the guys off.
I don’t think I was angry at all at the time. I was just so relieved not to have been shot, and for my brother not to have been shot, that I felt lucky more than anything else. I could tell myself that they were just misguided kids and that maybe they would grow out of their junior thuggery into something kinder and gentler. But of course, if I or my brother or my dog had been shot, I probably would have felt differently about the whole thing.
Sometimes when I think about guns and how easy it is for people to get them I am completely incredulous. Those kids were really young and they had a gun. Youth plus guns cannot ever add up to anything good. (It’s not that I have anything against the youth of today; it’s just that the young brain, still developing, can’t always be trusted to do the right/smart/sensible thing; it often has poor impulse control and it can’t always see ahead to the consequences of actions and also it often doesn’t understand, yet, the concept of mortality.) Stupidity plus guns is an even worse combination. Anger plus guns is a recipe for disaster. Certain types of serious unmedicated mental illness plus guns is…a very scary thought.
It horrifies me that I or just about anyone else can go and buy a gun today, at the Wal Mart. (You can buy guns at Wal Mart, yes? I’ve never actually been in a Wal Mart, but I have heard they have guns, and everything else, for sale in there.)
It’s obscene, the amount of gun violence in the USA. The disrespect for life of all kinds. That’s why I wanted to thank those kids — they spared my life, and my brother’s, too.
One part of me thinks that it is absolutely absurd that we Americans can get our hands on portable killing machines so easily and cheaply. But another part of me — the part that is vulnerable to attack; the part that doesn’t ever want to feel helpless or powerless again — wants to be able to defend herself.
I’m willing to bet that many gun control advocates become pro-gun choice once they’ve been victimized, or once any of their loved ones has been a victim of a violent crime. Once you’ve been abused and made to feel helpless/powerless, wanting vengeance — wanting to dole out some justice — becomes understandable. Also wanting to be able to pre-emptively slay any would-be bad guys as they approach aggressively into your personal space or private property.
That mugging was not the only time I have been put in an unpleasant position by someone wielding some temporary authority over my peace of mind. I have since been the victim of serious crimes against my peace of mind. But it’s better for me and for them and for the world if I don’t take it personally, and I maintain my composure and I forgive every time it happens.
You have to think of injustice and violence and societal ugliness like a disease. A chronic incurable disease. It’s not your fault, and you can’t make it go completely away, but you can try to manage it and live with it. Yes, it’s a constant struggle to remain peaceful and loving and calm and compassionate and patient and forgiving, but it’s a fight worth fighting. Because the world would — will — be better without so much hatred and anger and violence.
I am not a bad person and God doesn’t hate you — that’s not why we were stricken with this disease; it’s just random tough luck. I am like you. You are like me. We are both like everybody else. You are as vulnerable to ugliness and darkness as everyone else. It’s good to know this so when the sickness flares up you won’t take it personally and think God is trying to punish you.
If I or my brother had had a gun that night, what good would it have done? How would it have helped us, when we didn’t see the crime coming until it was right there in front of our faces, mere feet from us? With guns on both sides, someone would have been shot. My having a gun would not have been a deterrent to violence. Resistance from us would have fired up the six boys and all but assured a much less favorable outcome than that which happened.
I want only good, responsible, smart, kind, generous people to be allowed to have guns. But since I live in a “free” society, I guess I have to take it as it is — I have to accept that any jerk can get his hands on one or many of these deadly weapons or else I have to leave this country and go live in a more peaceable, evolved, less overall bloodthirsty place, where people look out for each other and take responsibility for their actions and abhor violence and killing. Maybe Bhutan. Or Sweden.
I obviously have mixed feelings about guns. And people.
With ”Bad Day” I was relating my mugging to my life at the time. I had trouble with relationships. I went for guys who didn’t treat me right and in the song I equate the bad boyfriend archetype to the mugger (“I screwed it up again. I made another friend, a desperado named ’Trouble.’ He showed his gun to me. He took my money,” etc…). I’m basically blaming myself for getting hurt. And the mugging is a metaphor for the trouble I seemed to keep getting myself into. (“I made my bed and now I don’t sleep in it so well.”)
I made bad choices back then. I was either drawn to people who would hurt me or I ran away from the ones who could be good to me. Either way, I would end up alone, confused, ashamed, and missing something, feeling I had screwed up.
I didn’t understand myself.
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May 12th, 2008
7287pwkr
This one’s pretty self-explanatory: I had a drug addict boyfriend. (You don’t know him; he isn’t/wasn’t famous.) I’ve had more than one drug addict boyfriend, actually (and none of them was Evan, so you can put that out of your mind — Evan was never my boyfriend and he was never addicted to any one drug, as far as I know), but this song focuses on one particular guy.
I didn’t hate the guy or look down on him for having this problem. Having a drug problem makes a kind of sense in this cruel world. I mean, who doesn’t want to escape from all the random, ever-present meanness and bigotry and hatred and all the millions of kinds of pain and suffering?
I sometimes wonder why I never developed a drug problem. I seemed like the perfect candidate: insecure, self-absorbed, artistic, prone to depression.
The guy was clean when I met him, but after a few months with me, he needed the drugs again. Like I said, I can’t really blame him. Besides, I’d drive anyone to drugs.
I just want to clarify something. The one part of the song that is factually totally false is the ultimatum part. “I say it’s me or drugs, you choose drugs” is so not me. That never happened. It just sounded good in the song. Same with “I withhold your medicine.” I never did that, either. He was (technically) gone by the time he actually got his hands on any of his “medicine” and before I could have “withheld” it, if I had wanted to withhold it.
I am not the ultimatum-issuing type. I am a fatalist. I say let people make their own mistakes. Especially when it comes to addicts. Addicts don’t ever get straight for real until they decide, on their own, to do it, for themselves. Right? And so I would never say anything as futile and unrealistic as “It’s me or drugs, buddy. Choose.” That’s so manipulative. I would either leave or deal with the situation as it was. And he left before I had a chance to decide whether or not to leave.
Plus, I think “Choose life” as a slogan is so cartoonish and ridiculous — as if it were that easy to just end a serious addiction with the power of positive thinking, and logic, and a snap of the fingers — that I just had to mock it. If you think it’s that simple then I have to assume that you have no deep-seated emotional or psychological damage, and so you don’t understand what drives people to drugs, or to death — to the opposite of “Life.” To say one can “choose life” like choosing an ice cream cone flavor would mean one could also “choose to be an addict” or “choose not to be hurt by anyone,” which seems absurd, to me.
At the time of the song, I wasn’t so sympathetic to the guy, but I have mellowed and grown more empathetic with age.
He left on his own. It wasn’t because I made him choose. He made his own very clear decision to leave me and go back to his former love, heroin. It’s understandable.
One good thing he left me, before he left me, was the verse chord progression of this song, in that cool, unique guitar tuning with the low low C on the bottom. (I can’t tell you the rest of the strings’ notes because I want to keep it a secret.) He came up with the tuning on his own, I think, and I’ve never seen or heard anyone else play with it. It has a very special poignant sound, don’t you think? That was what he left me.
All of my mistakes and my suffering can be turned into music. That way, I don’t have to take my occasional rage out on other people, whom I really don’t want to hurt, no matter how much they hurt me. (Two wrongs never make a right.) The world would be such a better place if all people could channel their anger and pain and feelings of powerlessness into pretty melodies and clever turns of phrase, wouldn’t it?
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May 4th, 2008
7287pwkr
“Hotels” isn’t really a song about hotels. It is a sonic longing for “home.” Not necessarily for a physical place, but for the feeling of belonging, safety, assuredness, comfort.
Sometimes, between tours, I would go to my mother’s house — the house I grew up in — to decompress and also to try and find some of that nice “home” feeling, but I would find that that place wasn’t really “home” anymore. I wasn’t a kid anymore and I didn’t really belong there anymore. But that place was the only home I had ever known.
I wondered, writing the song, if I would ever have my own home, my own family. I had just been dumped by somebody, and this, and my romantic track record, did not bode well. I’d been on the road for so long — in an endless cycle of write/record/tour — that I hadn’t established a real substantial life of my own outside of the road. And I don’t know if you can even call the road “life.” It’s more like avoiding life — keeping real life at arm’s length by escaping it; by putting it on hold while you dart around the country and the globe.
I missed my effortless childhood friendships, and the fun games we used to play outdoors in summer as we raced to make use of the remaining light as dusk turned to dark. It makes me kind of sad to think that I don’t play any of them anymore, and probably never will. No kickball, no tag, no Red Rover. Now, at summer’s end, as I put together the song, the sound of the maple tree leaves swishing in the dark quiet of the summer night (“the night wind in the trees”) broke my heart. The sound was so evocative of things I missed and things I knew I might never get the chance to experience. And of all the things I might’ve dreamed of as a child.
I’ve always been very sensitive to nature, and the weather and stuff. It stirs strong emotions in me. God — my idea of god — is in nature. Not in church, but in the wind in the trees, in the falling snow, in thunder and lightning, in rainstorms, in phosphorescence, in the aurora borealis, and in the cedar waxwing, the coolest-looking punk rockest bird you’ll ever see. (Now that — the cedar waxwing — is intelligent design.) That’s why I think crimes against Nature are so heinous and hard to understand. Nature never sinned, so Nature doesn’t deserve punishment.
I can’t even kill bugs except in clear-cut cases of self-defense: I will defend myself from a mosquito or a tick or a louse or any other similar bloodsucker-type aggressor, if it is in the act of attacking me. But ants? Daddy Long Legs’? Beetles, worms, bees, roaches, pinchers, ladybugs? I leave them alone. What harm are they doing? They are just trying to live their lives. If I find one indoors I scoop it up and put it back outside.
We had this game we would play, outdoors, that involved one person (“It”) closing his eyes and counting while the other four or five or however many kids were playing went and hid in various (hiding) places of their choosing, scattered around the house — crouching behind bushes, behind trees. And then the designated “It” person, done counting, would take off running a path around the house and kids would jump out from their different points along the runner’s route and try to tag “It” while “It’ tried to make it all the way around the house — 360 jagged degrees — without being tagged. Whoever tagged “It” first go to be “It” next. As “It,” just before I took off running, I would feel a scary/thrilling surge of adrenaline, kind of like right before going onstage.
This game was best played in the dark or near-dark.
There was a thick nautical-type rope attached to a big high tree branch in the back yard. It hung down to about five feet above the ground. The rope was looped and knotted at the bottom. I would grab onto the loop tightly with both hands and go running in one direction and fly up into the air and do a half turn and then come back down, hitting the ground running and then flying back up into the air on the other side. There was a dirt groove worn into the ground underneath the rope. As I got going and building up speed and height, I would whip my body around and try to do as many 360 degree twirls as I could while I was up in the air — to do more and more rotations each time, as I gained momentum — like a skateboarder or snowboarder would do with his board on the turns up above the ramp.
We were always outdoors, as kids, in the warm months. My dad even had outdoor punishments. If one or any of us was being too loud/argumentative/rambunctious at the dinner table Dad sometimes would order the offender, “Go outside and yell at a tree for two minutes.” Or “Go run around the house three times. NOW.” And we would obey. It made being punished kind of fun.
My father also concocted a punishment involving something he called the “apple butter paddle.” It was really just an extra-large wooden spoon that hung by a nail on the wall in the kitchen. I don’t know why he called it the apple butter paddle because it was a spoon not a “paddle” and no one in our house ever ate apple butter nor did Dad ever make it, or churn it, as the name — and the hugeness of the implement — implied that he might. As far as I remember, the apple butter paddle was used only for one thing:
When one of us was being bad at dinner, sometimes Dad would announce that it was time for the apple butter paddle and the offender would have to prepare to be whacked on the butt with the big thick wooden spoon. Whoever was in trouble would have to assume the position — bending over, standing on two feet, next to the fridge, by the point at the wall on which the apple butter paddle hung. Dad would make a big production out of it. He’d roll up his sleeves, push his chair back from the dinner table and walk over to the apple butter paddle and take it slowly, deliberately, from its post on the wall. While all this was happening, the one about to be whacked would run into my dad’s office and grab a few magazines — Sail, National Geographic (ones with hard bindings) — from the magazine rack and shove them down the back of his pants and then run back into the kitchen and bend over, giggling, the magazines clearly visible — sticking out up above his waistline — to Dad and all others observing the spectacle. Then Dad would reach his hand up, holding the spoon, reach it up, way up, dramatically, and then he would bring it down and “tap” on the padded ass of the victim. One little tap. It wasn’t a real punishment but more like a comedic dramatization of a punishment, or a symbolic punishment. (Meant to teach us something, I’m sure, but I’m not sure what. Maybe to teach us that authority figures should not be taken seriously.)
I felt kind of lost when I wrote “Hotels.” I felt that I was in a transitional phase but I also felt that my whole life was a transitional phase; always on the road — to somewhere, from somewhere. All I could think to do — all I knew how to do — was music, more music about wanting to go back to a time and place when everything seemed possible and I had all I thought I wanted and I had no worries.
I don’t actually think that time or that place or that feeling ever really existed — memory is part fantasy — but I wanted to feel that way. I wanted to go back. To some idealized childhood that probably never really happened. Back to nine or ten years old. Before my parents’ divorce. Before troubles. Before worry and depression and anxiety and boyfriends. But I knew it was impossible.
Always leaving, always traveling, never home — that was my life. Even when I was “home,” I wasn’t home. My restlessness (wanting/needing to escape from my Self and into the music, into the Road, into this vast country) was pathological. I needed always to be somewhere else, to search for the geographical solution (even though Dad had warned me, “There is no geographical solution.”) because when I stayed in one place for too long, I got scared. When I was still I had time and space to think and then I would start thinking about the emptiness — about what I missed and what I wanted but didn’t have. So I would move (to try and physically escape the fear and sadness), but by moving, constantly, I gave up being able to make a home for myself anywhere and so I perpetuated the cycle of loneliness/rootlessness/homelessness.
It was scary, at that time, when writing the song, to think that “I may not find an answer”; that my longings may never be resolved, and that maybe this — this spiritual homelessness — was my fate and my life, for now and forever. Scary to think that “there’s only in between” — between journeys, between destinations, between point A and point B — because there is nothing and no one at either end; nothing and no one to go home to but an apartment. The only life I had was hotels and recording studios and rock clubs, and that’s no life, after a certain point.
My life was like the tree branch rope: always swinging back and forth.
It’s easier for me to deal with these uncertainties now. I have learned how to handle my situation. It has stopped feeling so scary and begun to feel more like a kind of unlimited freedom. I’m not stuck anywhere. I can do whatever I want, go wherever I want, whenever I want. Instead of seeing my not-belonging as a curse, I can look at it as a wonderful kind of freedom. It means the future is still unknown, and completely open. And that’s kind of exciting. Anything could happen.
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April 28th, 2008
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