For a brief moment, Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys were truly the American equivalent of the Beatles. Pet Sounds was an acknowledged influence on the famous Liverpudlians, and the sad pun of Surf’s Up, so darkly powerful in its simplicity, stands in stark contrast to the beautifully arranged, sun-soaked nothing on which they first ascended. “Surfin’ USA” was their “I Wanna Hold Your Hand,” and vapid commercial success became for them as well a spring-board to serious art.
When I say them, though, what I really mean is Brian Wilson. This is important, because that primary difference, the lack of diffusion in talent, became a problem when he gained a hundred pounds and fell apart inside himself. Imagine if the Beatles were really only John, and then John lost his mind; that’s what happened. Brian Wilson was perhaps the finest singer/song-writer of his generation, John and Paul included, but though he was a towering talent, and a beautiful artist, he was also very, very sad.
it’s always there the signs were clear
there’s no lifeguard on duty here
my mother said you mustn’t fear
the ocean but respect it, dear
for if you swim you have to know
that some go down with the undertow
the fields are waiting gold and fair
they’d cradle my head and play with my hair
but i have got the longing stare
and what i seek is way out there
you’ll never reap if you don’t sow
though some go down with the undertow
i know it’s all some bright disease
the crazy lust for shining seas
i’ll miss your laughter in the trees
but i won’t miss begging from my knees
the skies will rend and a wind will blow
when i go down with the undertow
so if one day it comes for me
just let me go i’ll be fine you’ll see
the end at last will set me free
and peace compose me gracefully
the stars will shine and a wind will blow
when i go down with the undertow.
In this slow cover of an up-tempo ’80s song (a bit like “Mad World,” of Donnie Darko fame) Todd Terje takes over where Bryan Palmer thought he had finished. Covering an ’80s song with ’80s prom-music synths just tickles me all over, and digging Bryan Ferry up out of his ignominious retirement to sing it was a stroke of genius. The original’s lyrical excellence, the loss and regret in Ferry’s voice, the booming bass and retro synths — this song gets a lot of things exactly right. Your mileage may vary, but I find the whole thing strikes way too close to the heart. I find it really emotional.
“Johnny’s always running around
trying to find certainty he needs all the world to confirm
that he ain’t lonely…
Another old Concert à Emporter from the early days. Vincent Moon, my hero of musical film-paintings, is the fellow smoking and imploring him to sing. Kele, the man being implored, is both famously shy and gay. I like this a thousand times more than the polished studio version. A thousand thousand times more.
“Alright, I’ll tell you one. Just one, then you’ve gotta go to sleep. Your mom’s already going to kill me for letting you stay up this late. Deal?”
“Deal.”
“I’ll tell it to you as it was told to me, but forgive me if the details aren’t perfect, this old brain has seen better days. You remember Siddhartha? From last time?”
“Yeah, the prince who gave up all his money.”
“Yeah, that guy. Well, he had been on the road a long time now, and a group of people had taken to following him. Each morning at dawn these folks who had abandoned their lives gathered to hear Siddhartha talk. The talks weren’t religious, not in any organized sense, he was just thinking out loud, trying to figure out how to live. One of these followers was a young man named Kasyapa. He was new to all of this, Kasyapa. He struggled with the teachings, and the others made fun of him for his difficulties. But still each morning he came and sat before Siddhartha and tried to understand.
One morning the people gathered as usual, but instead of speaking, Siddhartha held up a white flower and sat looking at it. His students waited patiently for him to begin. Minutes passed. Then hours. “What is it?” Someone asked. “What’s the lesson?” said another. Soon it was noon, and still Siddhartha simply sat in silence with the flower. One by one the people, shaking their heads, some in confusion, some in disgust, rose and went about their daily chores. There was still much to be done in a camp in those days, even for poor wanderers. So they drifted away, until only Kasyapa was left, sitting alone before the portly sage.
He stared and he stared, this boy, with his brow scrunched and his tongue peeking from the corner of his mouth. He tried with all his power, straining until sweat beaded on his brow, but nothing changed, nothing became clear. “I’m sorry, master, I don’t know what you want me to say. I don’t understand.” Siddhartha just sat, unchanged, looking at the flower. Kasyapa let go a long breath, closed his eyes, and bowed his head. He had chores to do.
Before he got to his feet, however, he looked one last time at the flower. And this time, in a wordless stillness that stretched on forever, he looked and he saw. And he smiled. When he looked up, grinning, at Siddhartha, the Buddha was smiling back at him.”
how would this world appear
if human sexuality were only
an annoying itch to scratch?
what would we aspire to?
what would our incentives be?
would we have ever built
the pyramids? notre dame?
rome? would we have had
an inquisition? a holocaust?
an apollo program? a mozart?
how are these things related
to sex? how is this shitty poem
related to sex? will you fuck me?
do you want me yet? wait don’t
pick him please i’ll do better
than this i promise here i will
distinguish myself here look!
fancy plumage! there! can i stop?
for fuck’s sake i never dreamed
of building pyramids anyways.
Sometimes people ask me what I’m doing, and I say listening to music. They say, right, sure, but what else are you doing? And I say well, nothing else. I’m just lying here, with my eyes closed, listening to music.
The man sat very still in the passenger seat, thinking on the sorry sequence of events that had led him here. As rain pattered against the roof of the car, he felt a sort of removal from the whole thing, like he was watching a tired re-run. Inside the Chili’s, the work party rolled on without them. The little blonde in the driver’s seat continued to sob, and the Brian Jonestown Massacre continued over her speakers:
“You should be picking me up…”
“Hey now,” he reached out a hesitant hand and placed it on her shoulder. “Come on now.” She undid her seat belt and laid her head in his lap.
“Instead you’re dragging me down…”
Hm, he thought. Not ideal. “Shouldn’t we go inside? The crying shuddered slowly to a stop. She sniffled, then said something muffled into his crotch. “What?” he asked.
“I don’t want to.”
“Then why did you come?”
There was a long silence down there, and some more sniffling and inaudible mumbling. That would be quite a thing to explain if anybody asked, that raccoon face of wet across his front. Finally it came, in a tiny mouse voice, just barely audible over the music, “I miss him.”
“Christ.” He sighed. “Fair enough.”
She sat up and smeared a hand across her face, wiping equal parts make-up and snot, before reaching again for the bottle. He’d already said his piece about the bottle, there was nothing more to add. She took a pull, used the back of her hand at the corner of each eye, then leaned against the window.
“Listen,” he said, “I get it, trust me, I really do. But this is terrible. You need to either let me drive you home, or go inside.” She rolled her eyes and groaned. “Look, if you go in there and get what you want, it’ll happen immediately. If you don’t, and you’re brave enough to see it, you’ll know that immediately as well.”
He reached across and pulled the handle of her car door. “Well?” he asked, as the door swung open. “Either I’m driving, or you’re going inside. Gotta get out, one way or the other.”
She looked her chin down into her chest, then tilted her face to the side, then slowly up to look at him. Her blue eyes, bleary with crying and drink, ringed with smeared mascara, half hidden behind the strands of blonde fringe, were surprisingly lucid. “Alright.” She screwed the lid on the bottle, tucked it under her seat, and dabbed at her makeup in the rear-view mirror. “Alright,” she said again. Then she took a deep breath.
He watched her walk across the parking lot, more poised on those black heels than he would have expected. She stopped before the door, tossed her hair over her shoulder, and looked back at the car. His heart hurt a little in his chest. Good luck, he mouthed, knowing she couldn’t see him. She went inside. He got into the driver’s seat and turned up the music:
“Now that you’re not around… Now that you’re not around… Glad that you’re not around…”
And there she was again. The door slammed shut behind her, and she went fishing under his seat for the bottle. “You were right,” she said, “I could tell.” She took a long, gulping drink. “Let’s go.“ He pulled out of the parking lot.
“Which way is home?” he asked. She pointed. After a while they left the street lights behind, and the country road began meandering through alternating vistas of darkened forest, then corn fields, then forest again. “There,” she said, as they entered another break in the trees. He pulled up in front of a little one-story house with an over-grown lawn and some rusted junk out back. The kind of house that looks like a trailer, but with a cement foundation. Lights were on inside.
“I’ll take your car back to mine and leave it there. You can get a ride in tomorrow?” She nodded. “You mind if I talk for a minute?” She shook her head.
“What you’re feeling? That sensation in your gut, like it’s about to split you open and spill out your intestines? I don’t know what it is, specifically, but it’s not love. Not anymore, not really. It’s rejection, and it’s fear, and it’s self-loathing, and it’s loneliness, and more than anything it’s the loss of a savior. But that pain isn’t love, and there are no saviors. You have to save yourself.”
She looked at him for a long moment, those blood-shot eyes — rimmed by mascara, half-hidden by the fringe — older than they seemed. “You’re wrong,” she said, “And what’s more, you’re kind of an asshole. But thanks, I guess, for trying.” She got out and let the door click shut behind her.
“I’ve got some pills, I’ve got a bottle of wine… and I’m feeling fine… I don’t miss you, no, I don’t miss you at all…”
He sat there parked by the road, listening, rubbing a hand over the stubble on his chin. Rain drummed softly against the roof, and in the distance lightning lit the sky. As he counted seconds and waited for the thunder, he suddenly felt very alone.
when the aliens land at last
to ask humanity honestly why
we deserve to exist here why
we shouldn’t just be removed
from our verdant kingdom why
we wouldn’t be better served
with wine for we are so clearly
delicious done correctly why
we shouldn’t be kept in cages
too small for bodies from birth
in darkness shot with steroids
genetically altered for growth
until we’re pressed to the walls
of our cages and our legs break
beneath great bulbous bodies
and we collapse but can’t fall
so we scream please release us
and pray waiting for the light
at last blinding then followed
by the slaughter sweet escape
into freedom from a life grown
worse than death when the aliens
land at last to ask honestly why?
what have we added to existence?
in our panic we’ll say compassion
and they’ll cross their squid arms
and we’ll show them efficiency
and they’ll eye the strip mine
we made of earth unimpressed
so in desperation we’ll come
to what’s beautiful and lacking
the means to explain it we’ll turn
to our artists help them up
brush the mud from their eyes
and say sorry we’re so sorry
and ask politely to be saved.
i was on your side so why weren’t you
on mine? oh we’re adversaries? fine
art will stay zero sum if there’s only
enough space in our people’s collective
wallet and attention for one i pick me
oh don’t give me that look that thing
to review that work of not-yet-rejected
-a-thousand-times freshness that gasp
for praise when what you need is bitter
medicine to swallow for me it’s a lose
lose either way if it’s terrible i become
the bad guy if it’s good i’ll resent you
your effort and dedication your talent
is a detriment really resting laurels
so often catch us staring it’s the doing
the failing and the doing and the dying
to do it until it happens there are zero
child prodigy writers get wise i worry
that we like being artists affecting art
more than actually making it markets
set our values ranking pieces against
pieces turning artists into rivals for
what? fame? praise? the prize is to live
this life like a dream like a fairy-tale
creature who’s not forced to concede
the summation of a life in market value
my value makes me eye all you assholes
with dreams with suspicion why is this
so complicated? why isn’t there space
in our people’s collective why don’t you
make your thing and i’ll make my thing
and then we’ll have two pretty things.
handkerchief tied to stick 