Archives : all posts by Dan

Joanna Newsom - "Baby Birch"

    A calendar is a shitty way to mark time. I don't know why anyone would want to see August 28th ever again. We should just go forward, numbers are infinite, we don't need a fucking reminder machine.
    It was hot and clear and I was up at 7:00 with the birds but the appointment wasn't until 10:35. The fact that it was 10:35 and not 10:30 made me sick, like I was in a five-minute conveyor belt. I called her to come pick me up and they were playing Journey in the waiting room and of fucking course there was a box of toys.
    After, we smoked her last cigarette and her lipstick was on the filter and I thought can you catch being crazy like a disease. We both squinted and we seemed to be smoking our whole conversation into the soft breeze. It was the best time I've ever had being totally silent.
    When we were driving back I looked at her driving, her arms bent outwards on the steering wheel, like she were pretending to know how. I thought about that cat, looking up at me from her carrying case on the bus that night back before the holidays. I thought about how I let her out, even though the driver told me, allergies, not to. I took her out and I held her in my lap and whispered to her because she looked scared. I whispered, "The Dalai Lama doesn't die, he is simply reincarnated into the next soul, there is always a Dalai Lama in the world, even if there is no world."

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(Sean posted beautifully about Baby Birch previously)

Joanna Newsom - "No Provenance"

    By June Megan was back, finished her year. They didn't see each other much anymore. Ben was on the scene now. They spent all their time together, so Megan mostly wandered silent in the grey trees that extended behind the library on Mlacak St. The streets were so wide and new here, they didn't crumble like the twisted guts of the city. They were proud, big thick proud roads like bars of gray chocolate, made your teeth hurt to drive on them, all of it was so sweet.
    Megan was at a party and they were there and when her and Ben left, Megan went to the drink table and made one without mix. His beard and his glasses were like some kind of mask, they must be tricking her, like the way a Planet Hollywood looks like you're walking into a planet, but it's just a restaurant. Megan was so alone with her love now, she had never been more alone than this, her love was in heaps, piles and piles of a devalued currency, couldn't buy a gumball with it. They probably lay in bed and smoked, took pictures of each other and read love into their eyes. Serious, dour love that was finally true to both of them. It was probably like that. Megan held on to all the versions of herself there ever were, she held on to them like little jealous children. She wanted to have sex.
    Adam was an old friend, they spoke occasionally, a few 'we should catch up's and one time when a text exchange ended like a half-eaten meal. They fell together outside sitting on the stoop and it was quiet away from the music. He had his own house, it wasn't exactly easy, but it was easier than owning a house in the city. It was small and felt like one of her essays for school, rushed, half-cocked, at times inelegant. Their bodies fit like fallen chairs, they came together like trying to actually touch your reflection. They didn't talk or laugh and he smelled not like she expected, somehow sharp, like he'd been boiled.
    It happened like a fire with the kindling and the rush of flame and the steady part and the slow decline. Megan wondered if she got the message, the message that seemed to tingle her belly-button, the message that there was nothing she would not do to punish herself for letting her go. I'm sorry I ever went away to school, I'm sorry I ever wanted anything other than pretending we were just friends.

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this is a re-post from March 2010, but now it's part 4 in this series.

Joanna Newsom - "Good Intentions Paving Company"

    It was still too cold to take in the outdoor car cover, the aluminum housing covered in a clear tarp, so the two of them sat in the car, in the cool evening as it rained in March. With March you take your chances. Sometimes you find yourself sweltering in the sunshine in a winter coat and boots, other times a spring coat will feel like you're wearing a plastic bag when the wind kicks up and around a corner. But that night the night was warm, a few degrees above freezing, and it was raining. They sat in the car, with the seats tilted back, and smoked and listened to the rain clapping softly on the tarp. The orange streetlight cast a swath on the road and silhouetted the smoke as it rose to the roof of the car. They had been doing this sort of thing since they were sixteen, the kinetic magic of those first few times being enough to sustain these past ten years. They would talk more openly than with anyone in their lives, listen to the radio and add up the parking tickets and imagine how they could steal that much money to pay them off. They used to make love in these times, in the car, and they used to laugh about who was the boy and who was the girl. Now they cast loaded snickers, breathed smoke up to the ceiling with a smile, knowing everything and knowing nothing.
    "Can you roll down the window?"
    "I don't know, can I?" while rolling down the window.
    They had reached that precarious point where there was a list of necessary answers to any given thing, and they had to play out these little scripts every time one would come up. That tipping point where you can either hold those moments close like warm hot chocolate or dump them out like dishwater. And as with anything balanced ever so delicately, be it the pencil at the edge of a desk, or a book left open with a page in the air, it takes merely a breath, even a sigh, to move it.
    "I think I'll get married."
    "To me?"
    another snicker, "No, silly."
    The smoke wound out the window and out from under the tarp, and fought against the rain as it wound right up to outer space.

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Joanna Newsom - "81"

    The bus home. It was all dark grey and dark blues, deeply stained carpets of all kinds. Megan carried a case, with a cat in it, and stood cold in the line, trying to keep herself as close to sleep as possible. The pre-check of barcodes and serial numbers and print-outs, had a red-cheeked man refusing eye contact, until he saw the bag. He looked it over, it seemed to frustrate him how cute it was, as if that meant it would try to break the rules,
    "Don't open that bag."
    "I know," she said, thinking lip balm, front suitcase pocket, before I put it up top.
    "Someone could be allergic," he continued, looking down the line like someone was going to shake his fucking hand for saying what they were all thinking.
    "Well," she replied, and handed him her print-out.

    In the dark of the ride, she still couldn't sleep. Little pockets of smartphone light burst up occasionally. Through the cracks, she looked at pictures of strangers and watched them tagged. She turned on her overhead light just to clean her glasses, and the dust looked like stars. Who could ever mistake anyone else for something reincarnated? Next to her sat quietly the little gift she was bringing and when they made eye contact, they seemed to say to each other, "I know, I'm not sure either."

    When Megan gave her the gift, it was received in much the same manner, but still they hugged and sort of wrestled on the carpet, near the tree and near the candles, the kitten sort of leaning on the two, its two moms fighting.

    Christmas, the holidays, are better when you have nothing on your mind.

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Joanna Newsom - "Have One On Me"

    School. School has the ring of routine, the self-regulated purity of forgetting anything except this book, anything except these 5,000 words. It started when it was warm, and the grass had not yet faded. She walked each day back to her room in the three-story building, and the neighbourhood revealed itself with each pass like illuminating brush strokes. After a week she found a place to buy lentils in bulk, and was overcome with that calm feeling, she smiled too widely at the woman behind the cash in her sparkled scarf.
    And the months climbed slowly, persistently past, in that way that one new idea per day clicks a semester by at a steady pace. One day is the allegory of the caves, the next is the Harlem Renaissance, the next is an article by Sontag, photocopied a bazillion times. Over soup, today red, today orange, today brown, she wonders about the utensils of information. And they never talked. Not an email, not a skype call, not a single mix CD. Not a word.
    Megan thought about her often, it was as if she had left her in suspended animation, left frozen at the foyer railing, holding her breath, waiting. She knew in her mind this wasn't true, but the ghost in her heart was always in that frozen position. When she looked in the mirror, Megan wondered if she had noticed these wrinkles, or if they were new, and if she would ever say anything about them. And in the shower she thought about painting her toenails, but every time she got out she forgot about it.
    The first word was on December 8th. An email, one line long: (No subject) are you coming here for the holidays? if yes, when? Of course it was yes, how insulting. She had that way of doing that, asking purposely dumb questions because she wanted to be fawned over. And using "here" instead of "home", how insulting. She was trying to get a rise, back to the paper. Still 3,422 words left to write. Nothing could be decided until the end of 3,422 words. Not even what to eat or where to get smokes, let alone where to go on Christmas or what to get anyone ever who didn't need anything always it's just stuff and stuff is bullshit who cares I can't think about that now.
    School. School has the ring of routine, but also the hypnotic quality of a cult. This could be normal to me if I stayed here long enough, thought Megan. When I finish this paper I'll answer her email. With an insulting email like that, she deserves to wait for a response. She's probably drumming her fingers, sitting by her laptop, she was probably asking because she wants to know when to have my present ready, or maybe she's trying to decide how guilty to feel, I wonder if she's wearing my sweater or she even thinks about me longer than it takes to write one fucking sentence. 3,415 words.

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Joanna Newsom - "Easy"

    The breakfast table. The everlasting breakfast table. An old receipt from the pharmacy "Itm Personal 2 || 18.00 *** 50pts". Stain Island, with a crumb in the center, in a checkered sea. And that tired old basket, so sick of rotting fruit. By the end of August, by the 28th, you're so sick of the heat and the sun, but still you don't want it to leave.
     She came downstairs and put her bags by the door, always twenty minutes early for everything, happy to wait, happy to worry, will take any excuse. Off on a bus out of town in an hour, a whole summer, a whole forever has come to this. They talked about Mark Karma and picked at the corners of the breakfast table.
     "What will it cost for an 'A'?"
     "What do you mean?"
     "Well, you'll make tons of friends, but maybe not as many if you're working all the time."
     Her smile seemed embarrassed, like it was caught naked, feigning pride.
     "So I'll pay in social life?"
     "Everything costs something," she said and they both stared at the sunken peach in the poor old basket.
     She spoke again, "I'm not going to come to the station."
     "I'll be back."
     This hung in the air like dust in the sun, until she repeated it back to her with an Austrian accent. And when they'd pushed the clock as far as it would go they walked to the foyer, cool and shaded, to say goodbye.
     "Goodbye, Megan," she said, and hearing her say her name like that made her want to drop out of school, to take her upstairs and tear her clothes off, it felt like her last chance. But for Megan, a plan laid was a thing greater than herself, greater than her desires, it was somehow the greatest authority.
     She checked her earrings with her fingers, straightened her tie and smirked out the door. The damn sun was baking and she thought what will she eat for dinner? there's no groceries in the house. But thought better than to say it, best to leave on a dramatic note.

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I'm no spring chicken, I'm 47. A lot of my friends have been married and are getting divorced and they look at me like I'm some kind of savant, like I knew a secret the whole time. They say "you're so lucky, you've been single this whole time," and they want to party. And I say guys, I'm the same age as you, I got here too, I just wasn't married while I got here. And after some drinks they kind of look at me like I knew it was coming, and they ask me about my love life and I tell them the same thing, people have survived on less. They always ask about Theresa and Katie, first Theresa and then Katie. But Theresa and I dated in 2000, and Katie was in 1998, not exactly current prospects. They say I should reach out and keep them in my life and I would like to I really would but I have a problem. Whenever I'm close with someone, and then we break up, I lose the ability to talk to them. And I know what you're thinking, we all do, but I mean that I really lose all control of language. Imagine if you woke up tomorrow without hands. You'd quickly come to realize how often you use those things, and how without them you just sort of stand there and wait for an answer. It's like that, I wish I could talk to them, but in their presence, all words, all sentences, all knowledge disappears. I still have my French, what little of it I have, "merci" and the like, but they don't really like it when I respond only in broken French, and the rest is just gone gone gone. Theresa says it's my fault, that I'm just choosing to be silent or frozen, or mouth agape, but it's not in my control, it's more like the weather than the coat I choose to wear. And so I think I'm at a disadvantage compared to most people, I can't keep a single connection with anyone I've loved, you get one go with me, and after that I'm used up.