HALLOW'EEN

 (IN INADEQUATE, UNDERSTANDABLY INCOMPLETE SYNECDOCHAL DEMONSTRATIVE COLLAGE)

by Sam Cooper

 

 

Here are the weedy stores popped up in malls and strips, signs not solid but melted vinyl banners in black and orange, dripping words and snapping in the autumn breeze, and inside injuries and skins and deceits, auxiliary faces and fluids and bizarre one-use artifacts, and chirping mournful noises from somewhere in a forest of hanging fabric, and threadbare carpet embedded with twinkling, and lights flashing in the periphery, and from above novel songs you know by heart and you can’t remember where you first heard them and cinematic mnemonies and ambience that rises and falls and you are comforted by its rhythm, and smells like sweet glue and vacuum cleaners in the folds of the racks, and grotesqueries leaned against the wall and when you pass them you still can’t shake the childhood fear that one of them will move and you will embarrass yourself, and other human beings there with you averting their eyes but watching you warily like the disguises they are considering are reveling their secrets and deviations and desires and you realize that that’s exactly what’s going on but this thrills you instead of making you self-conscious about your own browsing, and too-many clerks who do not avert their eyes but desperately try to catch yours and just want to assist so they can break the tedium and mind-numb of spending temporary weeks scanning a landscape of unchanging gore and bad jokes and their heads tingling with loops upon loops of the same 80-minute soundtrack and they want to help you really just so they can talk to someone. But you imagine you are already disguised, and will not talk, not yet.

Here is a driveway scarecrow in the rain, stuffed and tied clothes like sausages, wet and lumpy, straw needles stabbing outwards through tiny holes and tears, a body slumped in a white plastic patio chair, darkening and slumping more with every passing minute and falling droplet, its head a pillowcase and crowned with a baseball cap, sitting for a week and a half now and removed tomorrow, unappreciated by trickortreaters more worried about the hems of their costumes quickly dampening and precipitation infiltrating the paper wrappers in jack-o’-lantern totes and printed bags, silently endurant of early frosts and lateral wind and rain like this rain for eleven days. When the scarecrow’s head, sodden and heavy, falls from its body, its cheeks are still tempera pink and its smile does not falter.

Here is a photograph of Keith’s Biggest Haul Yet, taken last year by his dad at Keith’s behest, in its glossy plane a mound of treasure as big as the boy himself or maybe it’s just a trick of the lens, but still it’s quite a Haul regardless, heaped in a way to suggest victory like the spoils of some battle, but neatly quadrisected and sorted taxonomically, Chocolate and Things Like Chocolate the biggest pile and deposited by Keith’s filmic left arm, and next to those Fruit Flavors and Bright Colors, and under those the Miscellaneous hill bristling with raisin boxes and hand-tied cellophane bundles, and Sour and Strange the smallest and farthest from him and under the Chocolate, and the boy sitting cross-legged and leaning forward with arms out like he’s trying to embrace his plunder, grinning hugely and eyes studded with red, and his mom’s leg in the background, practically saying itself did he know how far past his bedtime it was?, even though his face is flushed from just coming inside. In the photo, Keith’s costume is already off.

Here is a blank him or her spending the evening quietly and alone even if with other hims and hers, but in no way not celebrating or letting the night go by unmarked, answering the door and dolling out candy from a battery-operated bowl with a motion-activated zombie hand in the middle that he or she bought at discount at one drugstore or another, and maintaining the decorations that he or she is very proud of every year, but mostly observing internally, deliciously aware of something different about tonight, something in the air and all around, something like an unfocused image approaching but never attaining clarity, a tangible sense of mystery, not a question mark but a state of defined and complete being, more satisfactory and inclusive and right than any other he or she knows, a sense of being able to see through to some other side. His or her prayer is a long walk alone and silent under the moon and bony branches after the streets have emptied.

Here is Alexandra’s bee costume that hangs in a closet in her mother’s house, not exposed to anything but dust and darkness but still fading and becoming brittle even with such little time, collapsing in on itself, stripes of yellow and black both moving towards an eventual middle ground of dull brown, except now her mother realizes it has been some time since it was worn, and it was only worn three times, one day in the school pageant and once at a party and once on the Night Itself, some time since its handsewn hems were filled out with flesh, a little too tight in places but not too bad at all her mother thought, after all this time the felt and taffeta jealously holding the powdery bubblegum scent that was Alexandra’s when she was a little girl, hanging still and imploding incrementally, wrinkles deepening and sparkling wire wings shrinking and tights pulling up into themselves, slower than any perception, ignorant of the many years past, and the lives constructed and gone on with, and the unfailingly unringing phone, and the front door closing and opening and closing, and the temperature dropping, and the trees continuing to stretch heavenward. Soon, the bee costume will lose its retained odor and take on the smell of cedar shavings and lint.

Here are the leaves that crackle electrically under your feet and against each other as they waltz in the air, that are skeletons and gauze, shriveled and many-colored, landing on the ground softly with a sound that is more thought than sound. The shredded, outgrown, discarded skins of a season.

Here is the flickering scrying mirror of an art house screen, tattooed in silver and black 24 times every single second, the faces displayed huge and silent and pocked with dust and scratches, lips moving but no voices heard, dialogue divined in humorless and inky cards intruding periodically, the only soundtrack coming from the theater’s speakers a prerecorded plinking piano accompaniment, and the theater very small and the seats mostly empty, the audience nineteen in number and near-uniformly young, six watching unaltered and undistracted, five watching either high or drunk or both, three high or drunk or both and not really watching, two separate couples totaling four making out unabashedly in the next-to-last and last rows, and one homeless woman asleep near the exit, the eldest by far among them, all the faces illuminated by the screen’s reflected and strobing rays, blinking when the screen goes white and then darkens with the next presentation of the triple feature. When the theater lights go up no one will speak, having forgotten the shape of human speech.

 

Here is the house that Michael was so scared of one year, the one with the two guys in prefab-tattered polyester robes who stand sentry at either side of the door every year, the one with the blacklight in the porch sconce, the atmosphere and surfaces of porch not glowing but seeming to suck in light hungrily and this negative illumination somehow still luminous and beautiful, and the two guys not moving one inch but holding what Michael knew of course to be plastic axes but was scared of anyway and their angular robes fluttering slightly, haloed aurally by the noise of a sound-effects CD on a stereo inside the house sifting through the screen of a window, and the house is at best unassuming and at worst ugly and made of garish brick and faded shingles and ornamented with patchy lawn but was all the more frightening to Michael for these stanchions of normalcy so twisted and decorated nightmarishly, but still his fear balanced by his fascination, his unbeatable desire to go and stand between the two unmoving guards and say the three words that are one word and hope that nothing happens and hope that something happens, and he stood in the empty street and tried to decide, and an older kid in a hockey mask snuck up behind him and grabbed him and he screamed and almost peed his pirate pants, and the older kid ran off laughing and Michael found that he was laughing too and he went up to the sentried house and recited the spell and received his prize from a witch lady inside and nothing happened and he went to the next house and the next. That one year, Michael was nine. 

Here is a party, and all its noise and light and life, variables and details too many to catalogue, an organism itself, breathing and secreting, stretching out and curling back in, broadcasting a tuneless and tidal symphony into the night. It falls asleep at dawn.

Here is where Lily stands, abandoned and crying, fist clutching the handle of a woven plastic sack half-filled with lumps of sugar and color, eyes searching the groups of kids in her field of vision on doorsteps and sidewalks but trying to look like she’s not looking, and her princess costume is now hot even though the air is cold, and she can feel how ridiculous it is, how stupid and ugly she is in it, feel it on her skin, and her tears flow thickly with the sensation in the pit of her stomach, the angry nausea that was born when she first realized that they had left her, growing when mix-up turned into a joke turned into cruelty, and now she scans the bushes with eyes and ears for vibrating shadows or stifled giggles,  and resolves if she finds either to simply turn bravely and either go straight home or up the walk of the nearest house and get some candy by herself she can’t decide, but sees nothing and nobody, and takes a few steps one direction and then turns around and takes a few steps in the other, then reverses again and runs. Next year Lily will suddenly be too old to Trick or Treat. 

Here are apparitions of unfound razor blades, apples never weaponized, candy never poisoned, Tricks never played, souls far from lost or even really tempted, lawsuits never filed, children not taken or lost, windows and mailboxes and trees and gardens intact, tears not shed, Satan unsummoned, cavities never saccharinely bored. All seen wandering in the black windows of dead dark houses and the caged eyes of uncostumed kids.

Here is the best Halloween you ever had. Never forget it, ever.

Here are houses, lining strands of streets in webs of neighborhoods, all adorned with trimmings of fear, windows bearing cutout shadows of murderers and bulbous oversized rubber spiders and dripping blood, doors shadowed and hung with chains and gargoyles and cardboard bones, lawns strewn with limbs and viscera and overgrown with tombstones, bushes covered in stretched multicolored webs, architecture glowing antinaturally in green or red or blue or purple blacklight or blinking in the machinegun flash of a strobe, corners and crannies and dead flowerbeds attended by upright forms of demons and killers and reapers and monsters statuesque and grimacing, porches bathed in fog, skulls in the trees, pumpkins grinning and screaming and looking shocked and miserable and curious and devious or else wounded with the illuminated representational lines of bats and ghosts and vampires and castles and celebrities and words and shapes too varied and numerous to attempt to index, pumpkins everywhere. In the daylight the houses look not sad or funny but merely waiting, even if the Night has already passed.

Here are things that people call ghosts, spirits, phantoms, specters, entities, whathaveyou, drifting without affect, their most central core essence no longer human, this kind of ghost invisible, and there are visible ones, but this kind invisible save for a slightest outline of refraction in the crisp air, too subtle to be observed or measured by anyone or anything, and traveling in groups or singularly but never interacting, incapable of real interaction amongst their own and other kinds alike but not really minding, incapable also of minding, and carrying with them, propelled by an energy like that of memory and a feeling like the last plummeting moment before sleep, drifting through some border more permeable tonight, drifting up into lightbulbs and candle flames and in the branches of trees and into dark pumpkins and out in open spaces, and passing through houses and touching the living who look over their shoulders and crack their knuckles and maybe even shiver, drifting away to destinations unknown. If you could see them, they would be the color of the spots on the moon.

Here is a different New Years Eve, more appropriately positioned it seems than The Real New Year’s Eve, closer to a middle point, to a momentary straightening of the earth’s drunken, tilted circumnavigation around her furious star, crawling along a border of lightness and darkness, heat and cold, a private holiday unspoken and outwardly unmarked but one felt bodily, an annual sea change, a turning of the year and a turning of age more profound and meaning-full than any Dec 31^st/Jan. 1^st or birthday could ever hope to inspire, but this New Years is backwards from the calendar’s and its peaks and troughs are confused, its Big Moment is opposite, not tragic or sad but definitely no cause for celebration because the night’s enchantment and potential should never come to climax or denouement, and the black of the sky at the transitory hour is empty of fireworks because all fireworks came earlier in a joyous cacophony on the sidewalks and on doorsteps and inside houses and everywhere at once but quickly silenced in unison it seems, but the whistle of the wind down an empty street is more than enough for anyone because it is the moan of contentment and happiness and real magic and something you can’t put your finger on, not ever, and the sound is there because there are ears to take it in, unseen and ecstatic. When midnight comes, it comes too soon.

 

 

Portions of a Journal That Appears in My Work-In-Progress Novel.

Please note that these journal entries are not written by the protagonist of the novel, but instead make up a related narrative thread. -SC

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Last night, when finally I found sleep, I dreamed one of those dreams that’s too hyper-realistic (at least realistic on a psychic self-awareness level) to fool even a sleeping mind, one of those dreams that plays like a movie and even in the dream you think this is like a movie, in a direct inversion of the usual workings and tendencies of dream-logic, which is slow and fuzzy and gullible in an almost endearingly naïve and child-like way. Except even in the dream you know no one in their right mind would make a movie like the vision you are immersed in, either because it would be impossible to produce, or, more likely, would bore even the staunchest audience of experimental film connoisseurs and impeccably opinioned collegiate art/film school types. But despite all this, despite beginning to realize in the dream that it in fact embodies everything contrary to your recent proclamation of its filmic nature, you keep on self-referring to it as movie-like, if nothing else than to save face in a bizarre masturbatory way, considering that no one is there in the dream to judge you except yourself. It was the kind of dream that when you awake from it, assuming that you awake directly after and don’t dream more before waking, takes a little bit longer to leave your gradually brightening consciousness than dreams usually do, fleeting things that they are. The kind of dream that when it vanishes in the morning, evaporating like tendrils of mist off sun-kissed asphalt after a cloudburst, it leaves a physically felt, albeit momentary, hole. Except this dream stayed with me longer than that. A whole day, in fact. In this dream I lay with my eyes closed, back flat against my bed like I never sleep, feeling the cool texture of cotton sheets on my arms and flat-down palms and the backs of my knees. Somehow, I was absolutely confident that I was in fact in my bed, in my room; no doubt something about the weight of the air, and that sixth sense, someone-is-watching-you electric field feeling of knowing exactly where familiar walls are out there beyond closed eyes. The fan chopping above me made a sound much akin to that made by dragonfly wings, and sucked air towards the blurred radius of its blades, making the hairs on my body reach towards the ceiling. From beyond the glass of my two windows, there was no sound of wind, no cars rumbling or buzzing or swooshing or otherwise traveling down the street. The only sound I could hear, besides my own wet heartbeat rushing in the capillaries of my inner ear, was a similarly natural throb of frogs or toads. I became aware of the amphibian vocalization steadily; it started as a subtle and seemingly far-off hum, sounding hollow and weak with distance. Not quite a croak, more like a bird’s chirping, but accented with a certain liquid gurgle. Its pulsing seemed to travel nearer and nearer in a kind of aurally exponential increase, loudening slowly at first and then picking up steam until it reached a sonic plateau, freakishly loud and very close to the walls of my second-story room, a constant tidal roar like nightmarish Tibetan chanting. The frog-chorus, for I was reasonably confident even in the dream that only frogs, and not toads, make sounds of the sort I was hearing, although I wasn’t, and still am not, one hundred percent on that, rattled the glass with an amplitude driving its swampy timbre that could have only been produced by countless numbers of amphibians. I’m actually not sure if there is anything more than a superficial difference between frogs and toads, no real taxonomic/biological distinction. Again, not one hundred percent on that. As I lay in by bed with my eyes near-cemented shut, I envisioned an expanse of bulging, vocalizing frogs extending to a dark horizon, the curvature of the earth outlined and unsmoothed by the squirming sea covering the planet’s surface. The moon glinting off so many slimy backs. And the collective, multi-species call was enormously, bone-rattlingly, near-ridiculously loud. I could feel it vibrating in my skull, so that it became hard to tell if the sound was in fact external, instead of say, a fantastical and horrible echo feedback of the tiny popcorn sounds that I have always imagined accompanying the electrical snaps of synapse functions. There was no light behind my eyelids, as I squeezed them shut, not even the usual concentric rings that somehow explode from your eyes themselves even when you’re in complete darkness. I had never experienced dark like this before. In the dream, I lay perfectly still, seeing nothing and hearing only the amphibian throb outside my room, and thinking about how audience-like the appreciation of these two details was. I slowly, or at least as slowly as a dream will allow, began to realize that there was a weight on the bed to my right. This fact suddenly superceded all others; the frog-roar was mere background white noise compared to my acute tack-point awareness of a distinct and corporeal weight next to me on the bed. Dream-logic made an appearance as I realized it was impossible to open my eyes. Not as in I was physically incapable of the act, but more like I would have been breaking an unwritten and absurdly common-sense law. As impossible as deciding the laws of gravity and all their implications were simply tiresome and no longer applied to you, and floating gently up to the moon, which really is made of Gouda. I also knew that if I simply reached to grope out an understanding of what exactly was depressing the starboard half of my mattress, the mysterious weight would disappear. And so I lay immaculately still, willing the surface of my skin to receive and transmit any slight vibrations, changes of pressure in my right-side airspace, heat, cold, etc etc. Minutes passed, or at least what seemed like minutes. The frog-roar slid a little into the forefront of my consciousness, and my skin told me nothing. And then there was something, slight enough to seem imagined: a tremor felt in the flesh of my back, transmitted through the springs of the mattress. It persisted. As the frogs, or at least my perception of them, threatened a crescendo, I realized (in a flash like a cartoon lightbulb over the head) that the vibration I was feeling through the mattress was the steady rhythm of a pulse. In the dream, my own heart leapt. And then I felt a change on the dermal length of my right arm. A subtle warmth like a sunset’s last weak rays on your face. Excited and feeling daring, own dream-heart pounding and interfering with the through-the-mattress pulse, I moved a finger rightward. The warmth increased. I dared another finger, then ventured to risk a wrist-flex that positioned my hand perpendicularly to its arm and the rest of my body. With each movement, the heat to my right grew more intense. When I finally mustered the courage to shift my whole arm, I felt a mirrored shift in the mystery weight, distinct movement towards my person. The warmth was noon-sunlight-strength, and the frog-roar was louder than ever and now undeniably emanating from within the boney confines of my own cranium. My arm inched towards the mystery weight, and the mystery weight inched towards me. Judging from the familiar dimensions of my bed, as well as the heat, which was now like the blast of air from a quickly-opened oven sustained indefinitely and only getting hotter, my fingertips were only millimeters from white-hot physical contact with whatever was lying on my mattress with me. My mind was made up. The frog-roar was echoing in waves, surging like the ocean inside of head, my ears. I was going to close the gap. My brain fired off an executive order, my muscles twitched in recognition and affirmation. And then I woke up. 

 

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Inside my head I am screaming. Screaming at my own relentless internal vocalizations, screaming at them to please shut the hell up, screaming for some peace. Screaming at the walls, this body that is now rebellious, a cage, not mine anymore, not mine to own or control or lay claim to anymore, a rusty and barnacled anchor that I am chained to, screaming at it to break the bond, as it drags me deeper and deeper down. Screaming at the hours passing too quickly, screaming at my own inability to ignore the clock, at that curiosity that tugs and tugs at the back of my thoughts, so every time I think I’ve almost made it to one night’s good sleep, I chance a look and then all I can think about is the fact that 15—no—17 minutes have passed without any memorial or product or promise of imminent slumber. Screaming at the noises of the house, seemingly nocturnal, oh so silent in the middle of the day when the world beyond these four walls is just as noisy, just as alive, coming out to feed at night, the wheezing vents and the creaking studded beams and the hissing crackling carpet recovering from footsteps and the branches clawing against the windows and the fans in various rooms making an indescribable sound and the water rushing in the pipes like blood and maybe even a drippy plunking faucet all in conversation with each other, oblivious to their suffering audience. Screaming at the bold happiness encroaching externally every day, malicious, high-contrast, insufferable joy. Screaming at the time wasted, past, present and future. Screaming at my imagined screaming. Screaming at everyone else who must be feeling just like I do, and thus feeling like no one else feels like they do on the whole vastness of the globe. Screaming at too-easy definitions for too-complex things. Screaming at my own never being able to let go, to forget, to forgive, to get past, to move on, to chill out, to lighten up, to cool down, to live a little, to make my peace, to say my piece, to tune in, to really sniff out the problem, to apply, to meet halfway, to examine, to think of someone else, to turn that frown upside-down, to take my own advice, to be honest, to stop fucking myself over, to quiet the waterfall roar that’s always whooshing inside of me, to stop making plans that will never come to fruition, to really fight like I mean it, to hold on, to care, to live anything resembling a life, to stop lying to myself. Outside of my head, I am lying in bed, calmly and cheerfully writing, as the sky brightens and the birds sing glory to a new, beautiful day. 

 

 

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My skin is by the time you read this cold and still, by my own design. This was not an accident. This is by my own design. This cannot be a surprise. I have endured enough I think of realizing that there is nothing on my own particular brand of horizon. In fact, there is no horizon. Every new day is a cruel joke, every bit of information I, spongelike and improbably eager, absorb, is a waste. A doomed transmission. Strength (the one thing I’ve been encouraged to have besides hope [see below], and really just another meaningless hook on which to hang my existence, like it really manufactures enough self-satisfaction to go on, like it’s something to be proud of) just delays the inevitable, is an unwise area to which to delegate effort and attention, being nothing but a mask for fear and unwillingness to accept what’s certain. The breath I take in is the same air breathed, because nothing is wasted on this fucking planet except for time, for generations of humans in suffering and joy, and general humanity. The breath I took. There is no hope. Hope is dependent on a future. And the future doesn’t exist. It is only passing, and unreachable; it is only eventually the present. And the present for me is definitely not dressed with hope. Can’t you see how it’s all a cycle? Was all a cycle? That there was no way out save one, because there was never going to be any improvement? There is no improvement. There is no better. There was no better. Even now at the end, you can see, I have trouble distinguishing between the past and the present. There is only one difference between the two and that’s what drove me to this: what’s past is better. I had trouble distinguishing. At the end. You can say that, in the future (ha!), about me. It’s as good a reason as any. Maybe better than some, better than most. This is done now. This is past. I want to be forgotten. I know this is impossible. Try.

 

 

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There are times when I think I can still smell health, which does, you must believe me, have an odor. You just have to be unhealthy for a long time to notice its absence, the air it leaves empty around you smelling like nothing except slightly sweet decay, which you realize is just your own being getting older, shedding cells, wellness sloughing off, breaking down, dying, much faster now than anyone around you, losing tiny bits of itself, time, whatever. And I’m not talking about long illness type of unhealthy. Not long enough, no sense of finality. I’m talking about the kind of unhealthy that becomes the baseline, that redefines how you view health-related occurrences and issues, that reconfigures your understanding of health itself as a concept. The kind that isn’t just a framework for your life, or the foremost detail, but is your life. That kind of unhealthy. Antihealth. Health smells like trees. Like sidewalks and ovens. And dirt, and paint long dried and seltzer water and notebook paper and a lot of other things (with no doubt serious psychological/nostalgic/historical/personal implications) all mixed together into one unique scent. And I can still smell it, lingering in front of me, coyly, invariably when I am at my least healthy (which is, in itself, saying something). I am reduced to tears, horrible self-pity, which mutates into self-loathing, which mutates into self-pity into self-loathing into self-pity and so on and so on etc etc etc etc etc at its olfactory appearance. Memories, dreams of the time before have this scent associated. I read once that scent is the sense most tied to memory. The smell of health is its most defining feature; health otherwise is just an absence, an absence of problems, of conditions, of abnormality, of confusion, of (most important) awareness of physicality/reality, reality being the fact that you face an infinity of tiny deaths before the big one, that “You” are nothing but electricity surging through meat. It’s such a tired conceit that health is taken for granted, but completely and profoundly true. Health is taking for granted. And of course the scrim behind which you can forget all the promises you made while praying, unwell, antihealthy, suddenly hyperconscious of the fact that you take health for granted, and saying God (or whatever) let me make it through this the worst of it, and I swear I will never again not think of health (relatively speaking in many, including my own, cases) and try oh God to be thankful. The point is that the smell is a lie wrapped in an untruth. Health is no longer a fixture of my life. Whatever sense I have of its odor perfuming the nitrogen-oxygen intake of my nose is sheer illusion, bullshit, my mind playing cruel tricks on me, a sign of madness, and nearly unbearable. Sometimes, and I know this sounds pathetic, because really it is, I lie in my cell of a bed and dread smelling the smell of health. As in I will lie on my side feeling drool collect in the pocket of my slackening cheek, and hope (pray is far too strong of a word, given my fairly certain and field-tested theology, or lack thereof) that I don’t smell the smell of health. Brain cells are occupied, burned up in this process. Time is spent. Because health is not with me, never returning to me. What lies ahead is decline, or, worse, stasis. Smelling health would be smelling an untruth, something that is no longer part of my reality, no longer carries any real weight except for the fact that it is absent. An absent absence, only noticed because of its absence. Health is not an object, or a symptom, or a condition; it does not exist. It is itself a lie, created in hindsight wistfully after the proverbial shit has proverbially hit the proverbial fan. How can any living organism be said to be healthy when death is a constant, an inescapable nonvariable? How is mortality not the very definition of antihealth? How are decay, decline, and the countless lies that cover up the whole process not respectively mourned and sobbed over just as much as the capital-D Death, which is the only completely knowable, predictable installation of existence? It’s sickening (pun potentially intended). The worst part? I think my sense of smell is getting better. Like that old awful cliché about losing one or more senses or abilities and the other growing and expanding to pick up the slack. But what exactly have I lost to “gain” this new proficiency? Besides…

 

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I heard a little non-joke somewhere once. Maybe TV. There was no setup, at least none that I can remember. And the punchline isn’t really a punchline. Here it is— A psychiatrist approaches, assumingly flustered or likewise agitated funnily we’re to believe, his nurse, who’s been apparently having some exterior, off-screen chats with some exterior personage or another, which chats the MD has happened to eavesdrop upon. He approaches her and says: “Just say we’re very busy. Don’t keep saying it’s a madhouse.” I suppose what’s implied here is what’s funny—the (assumed to be numerous and active) also-eavesdropping patients whose progress has probably been halted or irrevocably reversed by being called “mad,” which thus makes the Dr. and his nurse’s jobs that much harder, probably really approaching madness, etc. But I don’t really find it funny. The whole little flawed thing relies on the jokee’s recognition of the literal (as opposed to the real-life) distinction between “very busy” and “madhouse.” As an observant outsider, an objective and decidedly anti-busy person, one in a position to note at least some of the frenzy of those capable of real business, I can say without a doubt that I don’t see any significant difference.

ONE THOUSAND THREE HUNDRED FIFTY HENCE

by Sam Cooper

 

The little plastic figurine of St. Gertrude of Nivelles on my desk started to move at 12:00AM on the dot, on a generally drizzly and unpleasant Tuesday extremely-early-morning, March 17^th 2009, as I was opening my eyes after a sneeze. A tiny twitch on the edge of my attention. It was nothing, I thought, a trick of my bleary eyes, and this quick write-off was seemingly verified by direct observation over a period of a few minutes, during which observation her gaudy two-and-a-half inch frame remained fossilized, head cocked towards her right shoulder, eyes supplicant and fixed upwards. Funny, I thought, and returned my eyes to my computer screen. And then she moved again. This movement I only noticed post-occurrence, as it happened too quickly and too microscopically to catch as it happened. St. Gertrude’s head was now cocked to her left shoulder and her eyes were gazing straight ahead. Straight ahead at me. Eyes into my eyes.

 I should probably mention now that this figurine is (was) not really holy or talismanic in any way usually attributed to saintly objects. And hasn’t moved (that I know of, and, believe me, I check) since that nearly-spring night. She still resides on the top level of my half-shelved writing desk, under the lamp (completely static). This particular and very secular St. Gertrude was purchased for me by a family friend as a Christmas stocking-stuffer, for the sole reason of my status of Cat Lover (Gertrude being the patron St. of cats, among other things, the reasoning behind which is most commonly thought to have something to do with that vermin would not drink from her well). She is cartoony in proportion and style—big head and big eyes, tiny hands, straight-out-of-the-tube paint job, glossy sheen just screaming kitsch, the cat she holds and the one peering out from the hem of her purple cloak more cute blobs than convincing feline forms. Her halo a bent disc of sickly yellow, translucent plastic, the thickness and make of which is similar to that rigid plastic of toy pinwheels. Purchased no doubt in a quirky novelty shop, the kind that sells Freud action figures and Band-Aids that look like bacon strips and t-shirts emblazoned with mildly and liberally offensive slogans.

So imagine the magnitude of my surprise upon finding little St. Gertrude not only having incontrovertibly moved, but looking into my eyes. After a moment or stare-down, the figurine seemed to realize that she (it?) had caught my attention, and blinked. The thing didn’t even really have eyelids before. She dropped the cat in her arms to her feet, where it orbited her and joined the other, and both of them (the cats, one chocolate and the other taupe) curled up and went to sleep. Then she outstretched her miniscule shiny hand, palm up like saints are apparently wont to do, and spoke. Or at least made the movements of speech. Her slit of a mouth opened (and I noticed, comfortingly, that there was nothing inside her, tunnel of a throat or organs or anything, which was good; something about the discovery of miniature internal physiology inside this figurine I’ve had on my desk for years I’m certain would have sent me into hysterics, which is of course assuming I wasn’t already in them), a fissure in the plastic of her face, and moved, formed the shapes of words, moving fast, faster it seemed than the speed of normal human speech contortions, but there wasn’t any sound. Well, there was a sound—a kind of teeth-on-edge squeaking—but it was not a voice. Then something horrible: she became frustrated, which of course implies some sort of intelligence, some sort of awareness in the little plastic woman. I was starting to feel sick to my stomach. She touched a hand to her veiled throat, then put out both her arms in a gesture of futility, bobbing them up and down slightly. All her movements were rapid and insectile, fast-forward. She started making speechmovements too, along with the gesture, automatic in her attempts at communication (jesusgodthislittleplastictoyistryingtocommunicatewithmejesuschrist). And the sounds coming from her seemed more voice- and speech-like than before. Maybe not. If anything, a bug’s parroting of a human voice, if that’s possible. The sounds in cartoons when clothed and behatted bugs talk and the words are not meant to be understood. Or maybe it was just really the squeak of warping plastic, augmented by my own (freaking out) mind.

By some force of providence, I had open on my laptop a recording program, with which I had been playing around with prior to St. G’s unexpected kinetics. With miraculous presence of mind I hit record, hoping that whatever sounds the little lady on my desk was making would be picked up by my laptop’s tiny built-in microphones.

She clutched at her belly and squeezed her eyes shut in apparent pain. She reached out towards me, continued making sounds and moving her mouth. She suddenly looked thinner than she had before, gaunt. I said something, frantic, and she winced and held her hands over the smooth plastic habit where, if she had ears, they would be underneath. She “spoke” more. I realized she was matching my distress now, surpassing it, wringing her hands and looking from side to side. The tiny cats awoke and cowered against her. I spoke again. The pain I caused her seemed greater this time. She buckled, fell to her knees with a little clink on the wood of the desk, got up, speaking. Her movements were jerkier now. The brown cat clawed its way up her habit and draped itself over her arm. St. G cocked her head to her right shoulder and emitted one more squeak, looking, searching at me and then upwards.

At 12:01AM on the dot, on a generally drizzly and unpleasant Tuesday extremely-early-morning, March 17^th 2009, the little plastic figurine of St. Gertrude of Nivelles on my desk stopped moving, and has not moved again.

I stopped the recording.

I sat for untold minutes, unmoving, unblinking, pupils tethered to the now stonily immobile St. G. Outside, a car’s progress past my house was marked by the swoosh of its tires on wet pavement. The real world letting itself be heard. I moved. I went to the bathroom, looked in the mirror. Same old me. The vomit was in my mouth before I was aware that I was sick. I imagine my cheeks puffed out comically and green like in cartoons; I more or less held it in and made the toilet and there remained for several noisy minutes. I cleaned up. Went downstairs and spent a sleepless night on the couch watching infomercials with all the lights in the living room blazing.

In the light of day, wearing raccoon eyes and exposed nerves, I ventured back up to my room. St. Gertrude stood erect and lifeless under my lap, on the shelf, cat in her arms and eyes decidedly dead. My laptop sat cold and silver on my desk, sleep mode light pulsating. I touched the mousepad and the screen roused, glowing. The recording program was still up, with the last’ nights recording displayed and stopped where I had left it. I piloted the little speck of cursor and zeroed the recording. Played it back to prove my own sanity. There they were, small spiky outcrops in the readout on the computer screen; played back through the laptop speakers the voice was tinny and even smaller than it had been in the room’s air. Then my own voice, booming and huge in comparison, audibly shaky and freaked out. I replayed the 18 seconds I had caught over and over. Can’t even begin to estimate...

I have listened to the recording many times since, but have never shared it with another soul. For days I listened to it straight, trying to discern English or (after I had done some research on St. G.) Dutch or French of German words. Did not find any. Just squeaks. Plastic on plastic. Hinges. My own voice was there; the two lines I had spoken (“What? What are you trying to say?” and “What do you want?”) marked with terror and edged with desperation. Then I remembered how fast her movements had been, quick and possessive of apparent temporal independence like a fly’s. I played back the recording at half speed.

And there were the words.

In English. In a voice that, when played at an intelligible speed, sounds not like a woman’s, but my own  (which is also present in the recording, albeit also slowed and stretched and thus booming and syrupy and not sounding at all like me). I have obsessed over the transcription, tweaked it after so many repeated playbacks. Here is what I am nearly certain is what was communicated that night:

 

“—made known the hour to you? Has it been foretold?”

{pause}

“Please… has it been made known?”

{my own voice, huge and sluggish: “What? What are you trying to say?”}

“The hour? Has it been made known?”

{pause}

{“What do you want? What do you want from me?”}

“—{garbled}—death? Has it been made known to you?

“Has it been foretold?

“Has it?

“Has it?”

HOW TO LOSE APPROXIMATELY 70 LBS. IN A LITTLE OVER A YEAR AND A HALF WITHOUT SUBSCRIBING TO ANY REAL PLAN, SYSTEM, OR PROGRAM

IN 33 EASY STEPS!

by Sam Cooper

 

Start with the small things. Noticing them that is, the small things—although small may be the absolute wrong word. The tabulation of jean-size increase over the last few years, the way you get winded when you go up the stairs in your own house. The pain in your feet after not-that-intense bouts of walking that implies some really hardcore podiatric load-bearing. The fact that you’ve always claimed to have an incredibly healthy and well-adjusted body image and contentedness with you own appearance, to which claims people have always said that is great to hear and really meant it you think, but still you can hardly stand to look at yourself in the mirror when you get out of the shower.

Catch sidewise glances of yourself reflected in the glass panes of windows and doors as you walk throughout your life (especially effective if you find yourself on a college campus, which is why collegiate references will be utilized henceforth) invariably surrounded by trim, lithe, fit, and smiling persons of similar age, whose slight frames seem suddenly effortlessly graceful and breathtaking, whose easy gait and pencil shadows give you a feeling like your guts dropping into your knees, and next to whom in the reflections of many crowded-around buildings’ glass surfaces you suddenly feel stiff and jerky and so fucking fat.

Decide to Make A Change and feel brief well-being-type fuzziness as you feel you have already won the battle somehow.

Quietly buy a scale from an online vendor. Select an expensive shipping option, as you are starting to feel this whole weight thing to be approaching crisis status. The scale will be cheap and plastic with a digital display that sometimes wildly varies in its numerical judgments so that for the rest of your losing-weight journey you’re never quite certain about the accuracy of its measurements of your heft.

Weigh yourself for the first time on aforementioned scale. When you see the number winking up at you step off the scale and weigh yourself again. Step off and take the batteries out of the thing, put them back in, rezero it, step back on. Realize that yes, that is correct. Want to cry but don’t, and notice that you aren’t really surprised.

(Repeat weighing on a daily level, skipping only those days when the task seems just too unbearable [after Thanksgiving, Christmas, Your Birthday, etc.].)

Start the Change You Are Making by eating less/better and continue throughout (possibly, probably for the rest of your life). This is easier said than done, but fairly non-difficult when you really take note of how much you were eating before, and what you were eating before, and how disgusting those quantities/qualities truly are. This step is immeasurably aided by taking an Elements of Nutrition class to fulfill your Life Sciences requirement to get your degree at the college that is so infuriatingly filled with handsome thin people. This class will make you hate food because it (food) is, within the context of the material, suddenly so damn biological, and the final project will require you to log every single solid or liquid you consume in a week as a caloric entity, and will give you some helpful pointers on how/what to eat, and as a bonus will provide extra encouragement when you look around your discussion section and notice while sitting in your uncomfortably small wooden desk that you are by far the fattest person in the room.

Sometime during this whole process begin to exercise spottily, jogging or biking late at night when no one can see you and all your jiggling and bloodred cheeks and explosive breath. Mention this exercise to friends casually, like its something that just spontaneously happened all on its own, hinting at the fact that you are, in fact, despite all appearances, Health Conscious.

(Repeat above step [spottily].)

Start shedding poundage, but don’t feel too proud of yourself because you are still, where the BMI is concerned (as you calculate in your NFSC100 workbook), borderline Class II Obese.

Continue on with your normal existence. Struggle through classes, fixate on love interests and then move on, engage in hobbies and activities. Watch your life pass by.

When weight loss isn’t going as fast as you want it to, remember the word endomorphic from 8^th grade Health class and remember that you are (i.e. endomorphic), and realize that you will never be as skinny as you want to be. The best you know you can ever hope for is chubby.  

Have an emotional/mental breakdown that is completely unrelated to any kind of weight issues. Essentially stop eating sometimes because the thought of choosing to be willingly part of any process that prolongs living is physically sickening, and also because sometimes you are so wrapped up in indulging in self-loathing and -pity and general feelings of being on the edge and going insane, and making dead-of-night tearful calls to friends who in no way deserve all the shit you are laying down at their telephonically connected metaphoric feet, and considering the possibility that you are in no way the person anyone (not even yourself) thought/thinks you are and maybe even not, by way of definition you can only experience and not really relate, a person at all in the traditional way of thinking, to remember to eat. Your only consolation during this time is that during the daily weighings you somehow have not abandoned through all the internal turmoil you discover how much mass can actually be disposed of as an effect of breakdown anorexia. Start to get cozy with the nauseous pang of stomach emptiness, masochistically relish the lightheadedness that accompanies serious low-calorie intake as a kind of high.

After a month or so of Bottom, rebuild your life and start to function as a human being again. By this time you will have flunked several classes, including NFSC100, which is okay; it was a terrible class anyway. Begin to eat normally again (or at least more normally), and expect your confused body to hold dearly onto whatever it’s fed; you will gain and temporarily keep a few pounds. They will disappear soon enough.

Take heart that summer (which is now upon you) and all the sweat and heat it implies is the friendliest season to weight loss (unverified by any hard facts but you feel, intuit that it this is true).

Begin the first sexual relationship you’ve had in an embarrassingly large number of years with a person of smallish proportions and twiggy build, so that lying next to her or him, trying to bat down the thunder of your own heart as you ineffectually attempt to initiate intercourse, you feel comparatively cetacean. So that during the actual coital act (when it is eventually initiated by your elfin partner) you can’t get out of your head horrible images of slipping somehow, crushing the avian her or him to death under your humongosity and ending up being involved in the most mortifying criminal investigation/legal proceedings/media circus imaginable, the inability to remove said images from cerebellum thus adversely affecting your already worred-about-on-a-dysfunctionally-paranoid-level performance. Nurture related-but-separate worries about not your own accidental physical lethality but instead more run-of-the-mill attractiveness, which honestly you find a tragically laughable concept (you being corporeally attractive in any way), even though by this point you’ve lost 30-some lbs. without much effort or attention and are back to high school weight (which isn’t exactly anything to brag about).

Buy some new jeans because you now have lost enough to do so. Again, don’t get too puffed-up because the new size is still objectively gargantuan.

Mutually split romantic ways with the person you have been in a sexual relationship with, after only having sex twice. Be unable to decide whether this small number is a good (saved you from more instances to obsessively, masochistically scrutinize for months and months to come) or bad (did not allow you to prove yourself as anything other than a creature of hilarious erotic ineptitude) thing. 

Continue all steps above that warranted repeating and proceed to lose more weight. Start to take comments about said thinning down in stride by acting humble and shy and actually surprised about the whole affair, so that the image you project is someone slimming down by the will of some force beyond his or her control, effortlessly, nonchalantly and somehow actually nonplussed at someone noticing and commenting upon something so effortless and beyond personal control or accountability. Swell with interior pride anyway. Prepare for this situation’s repetition.

Let months pass.

Allow yourself to enjoy Thanksgiving and Christmas as unfettered hedonistic extravaganzas. Hate yourself for this allowance when you gain 5 and 10 lbs after each, respectively.

Realize while working off holiday fat that your weight will indeed fluctuate, and you can Accept that up to a certain point.

Mark the one-year anniversary of Trying To Lose Weight. You have lost 50-some lbs.

Let months pass. Watch the little digital display on your cheap plastic scale flash lower and lower values

Struggle with depression all throughout and beyond, topically pertinent only because this may or may not affect your eating/exercise/will power. If you are lucky, comfort foods (the really lipid-heavy, addictive ones) will only seem unutterably sad and reminiscent of times past and better-seeming, and you will steer clear. You may not be lucky.

Buy new jeans and feel slightly proud of it because these new ones aren’t so objectively gargantuan as the couple of rounds of jeans bought before.

Spring Break brings a beach house, booze, snack foods, and a huge St. Patrick’s Day Meal. See above step re: Thanksgiving, and all the attached numerical and emotional baggage.

Hit your first plateau around the end of spring, but don’t despair too much because you have kept your year-old NFSC100 workbook and you can calculate your BMI and find yourself not Obese Class II or even Class I, but in fact only Overweight (albeit at the high end of Overweight, only about .2 Index points away from Class I Obese).

A month into summer take a serious interest in jogging. Buy some expensive and futuristic, seemingly lighter-than-air running shoes with reflective silver trimming that flashes in the sunlight (you exercise in the daytime now) with every up and down pump of each foot.

Watch your weight resume downward motion, noting that this movement is slower than before, but still in no means any kind of bad thing.

Start wearing clothes you haven’t been able to squeeze into for years. Buy new, smaller clothes. Start to think about realistically pursuing romantic opportunities without too many associations of impossibility and fear. Buy yet more new jeans, and a new belt (you have been drilling holes into your belts so far with a pocket knife). Enjoy physical activity and the fact that you don’t automatically get winded at its occasion. Notice that your fixation on the dimensions and geometry of your reflection is no longer motivated by fatal fascination or self-hatred, but rather curiosity and—dare you admit it?—pride.

At the end of the summer reach 70 lbs. lost.

Want to lose at least 30 lbs. more. 

10 Best Records of 2009 So Far That I Actually Own

10 BEST RECORDS OF 2009 SO FAR THAT I ACTUALLY OWN

 

(listed alphabetically by artist/band)

 

 

Dan Auerbach- “KEEP IT HID”

I would consider myself a Black Keys fan, but honestly get bored by the two-person/guitar/drums/electric-blues-rock shtick pretty quickly (although I was very impressed by last year’s Dangermouse-produced “ATTACK & RELEASE”). When I heard that Black Keys front man Dan Auerbach was releasing a solo record, I was definitely curious to see what he would sound like without his other half. This record borrows a lot from Dan’s band (the Delta licks, the white-guy soul vocals, the rootsy vibe), and either expands on or detracts from it, depending on the song. From the voodoo groove of “I Want Some More,” to the Appalachian dream folk of “Goin’ Home,” Auerbach proves that his considerable talents as a songwriter and performer extend far beyond the constraints of the Black Key’s blues assault.

 

Andrew Bird- “NOBLE BEAST”

Picking up pretty much exactly where 2007’s “ARMCHAIR APOCRYPHA” left off, Bird serves listeners another helping of intricate and delightful multi-instrumental wonder. However, this record lacks the wink of its predecessor; it seems without irony (not to say without gentle humor), and is a disarmingly sincere listen, from the most heartwrenching of violin parts to the most joyful whistle. Another rewarding aspect of this album is the particular emphasis placed on rhythm throughout, outlined by tight and frenetic drumming, claps, snaps, samples, strings, etc. The lyrics are decidedly abstract and generally intellectual in nature (you try to use the word “nomenclature” so successfully in a song), and Bird’s unblemished vocals seem more like another effective instrument in the fray than a sore-thumb human addition. What is most impressive about this record, however, is Bird’s attention to detail. No lyric seems unfitting, no sound seems out of place. 

 

Bon Iver- “BLOOD BANK”

Okay, so it’s an EP. And a short one at that, with only four songs. But dammit, do those songs really count. The title track alone qualifies this release for inclusion in a “Best Of” list. The songs are a little more hi-fi than “FOR EMMA…,” and mark a successful sonic departure from that record’s haunting starkness into more expansive, experimental territory (see the hypnotic and lyrically minimalist “Babys,” and the AutoTune-taken-to-it’s-most-extreme-possible-application-that-actually-still-works, a cappella “Woods”). Still, all the great Bon Iver features we’ve come to know and love are there: bittersweetness, striking imagery, and Justin Vernon’s surprisingly soulful vocals.

 

Neko Case- “MIDDLE CYCLONE”

Moving even more in the direction that 2006’s “FOX CONFESSOR BRINGS THE FLOOD” hinted at, this record further abandons Ms. Case’s noir-country roots in favor of a musical landscape more defined by initially unrecognizable sounds and ghostly atmospherics than twang (not to say that her earlier releases lacked those qualities completely). One could also posit that her time in the power-pop combo the New Pornographers paid off in all the right ways. This being said, throughout this record the most exciting aspect is definitely Neko’s decidedly non-pop approach to songwriting. Songs may or may not contain choruses, or really verses for that matter. Time signatures switch from section to section, and melodic instrumental lines pop in and out, helping to create a sense of shaky unease that perfectly compliments her dark, fairy tale-inspired lyrics (anthropomorphic tornadoes, talking spirits, lots and lots of animals). “MIDDLE CYCLONE” was at least partially recorded in a barn on her New Hampshire farm, and occasionally barn swallows, wind, and other natural sounds can be heard in the songs. These audio verite moments are just one contributing factor to the impression of organicism of the album as a whole. From start to finish, it sounds like a cohesive, natural piece, a glimpse into the personal and imagined world of a very talented musician. 

 

Cymbals Eat Guitars- “WHY THERE ARE MOUNTAINS”

Thrown into widespread attention by a glowing review from Pitchfork, this album is a really great little slice of indie rock from a very promising Brooklyn band. The tunes are fresh, extended sequences of manic, punk-inspired bursts and noise punctuated by hazy passages almost like lullabies. The vocals can get a little screamy for my personal taste, but overall they compliment the often-angular arrangements. All musicians are obviously very talented, interweaving instrumental and vocal parts that would each be impressive on their own, but add up to something really thrilling all together.

 

Danger Mouse and Sparklehorse- “DARK NIGHT OF THE SOUL”

Maybe the greatest album of the year never to be released (Google it), I find it sad that the legal issues surrounding “DARK NIGHT OF THE SOUL” are so far nearly superceding the music in the press the album is receiving. Basically, it’s a musical collaboration between Dangermouse and Sparklehorse, with a package designed by David Lynch. The who’s-who of talented singers provide vocals, from the Flaming Lips’ Wayne Coyne and the Super Furry Animals’ Gruff Rhys, to Iggy Pop and Vic Chestnutt. For so many cooks being present, the result is surprisingly cohesive and indicative of incredible vision in all aspects of the project. I think this owes much to Dangermouse’s masterful production skills, and the fact that many of the vocalists sing similarly to Sparklehorse, meaning that the melodies he wrote fit the various voices very well. The mood is uniformly otherworldly and often disquieting (would you expect any less from the people involved), but always enjoyable and rewarding, and the record will surely go down in history as one of the great casualties of record industry banality/idiocy.

 

Grizzly Bear- “VECKATIMEST”

This is an early contender for my personal Best Record of 2009. It’s quite unlike anything else released this year that I’ve heard, and honestly, anything I’ve heard before. It’s hard for me to really describe what makes this album so wonderful. I’ll start by saying that it was mostly recorded in a church, and it sounds like it. It’s not a grand or epic album, despite the intermittent orchestral augmentation, or an occasional soaring chorus or two. The mood is mostly hushed, the melodies original and the harmonies delicate. The vocals and instrumentation are somewhat fragile even at their loudest, seemingly under constant threat of collapse under their own restraint. But repeated listens reveal that the tunes are anything but truly fragile; they broadcast a confidence and musicality that makes the final overall product something that can only be described as uniquely fascinating. This is album is not an easy listen. Its many layers and unexpected changes demand attention and a careful ear, and honestly deserve it.

 

St. Vincent- “ACTOR”

I don’t think I’ve spent enough time with this record to really delve into all of it’s dense indie-rock-pop glory, but I do know that the first few listens revealed undeniable quality. St. Vincent (real name Annie Clark) spins tuneful webs, assumingly using traditional instruments and means, but the result is anything but traditional. Guitars sound like horns, horns sound like voices, keyboards are used as percussive instruments, voices may or may not be vocoded. It’s an intense listen. That isn’t to say that there isn’t real beauty and reserve exhibited. The opening track is reaches to cosmic heights with a (dare I say it?) heavenly choir, tons of reverb, and a (maybe) sampled orchestra. Clark’s voice seems like it would be more at home in the 40’s or 50’s, the kind of even chanteuse croon more commonly seen in the jazz clubs of old movies. Nestled within the often extreme and always interesting arrangements, her voice provides a needed contrast, a familiar point on which to hold on as she takes the listener through one of the more unique soundscapes of the last decade.

 

M. Ward- “HOLD TIME”

Even though I have a huge love for folk-rock, this is actually the first M. Ward album I have ever owned (if you don’t count She & Him’s “VOLUME ONE”). I am not disappointed. M.’s ear for subtle sonic shades and arrangement is really impressive, as are his skills as a guitarist, vocalist, and lyricist. The sound of the record is decidedly vintage and almost uterinely warm, a calming musical womb in which songs drift by, not without purpose or interest, but rather without any intent of listener confrontation. It’s refreshing to hear a record that seems so… eager to be listened to, as inviting and warm as an album can be without seeming disingenuous, cheesy, or pandering. This being said, there are a few decided missteps, which can mainly be found in the album’s two covers, Buddy Holly’s “Rave On” (generally unexciting), and the standard “Oh Lonesome Me” (goes on too long; the charm of the pretty new arrangement, tempo, and mood wears off after the fifth minute). This is another one I bought recently and definitely need to spend more time with.

 

Wilco- “WILCO (THE ALBUM)”

So this one won’t officially be released until June 30^th, but the leak has been widely available (including on the band’s website) for some time now. While Rolling Stone’s declaration of this album’s place being squarely between “BEING THERE” and “YANKEE HOTEL FOXTROT” is not really accurate, I can pretty much see where they were coming from. In many ways, “WILCO (THE ALBUM)” is a culmination of every musical identity and stylistic skin of the band’s career, from alt-country and classic rock to avant-gardism and electronica. But also, it’s not like anything they’ve done before, if for nothing else than the way that it blends so many disparate genre tricks and markers completely seamlessly. There’s pretty (“You and I”), there’s nightmarish (“Bull Black Nova” [the stand-out track on an album full of stand-outs]), there’s good ole rock (“You Never Know,” “I’ll Fight”), and there’s the profoundly moving (“Everlasting Everything,” “One Wing”). Overshadowing, and often shaping all of these sub-moods and –sounds, however, is an incredible melodic awareness that Tweedy and Co. have never exhibited to this extent before. The more I listen to this record, the more I feel like it will become a defining moment for the band, one that will hopefully lead this already venerable and astounding musical collective to new heights.

 

 

 

WHAT DIDN’T MAKE THE LIST:

(None of it is really that bad, just not “Best Of” list material, although my opinions are subject to change by the end of the year)

 

Cursive- “MAMA, I’M SWOLLEN”

Jason Isbell & the 400 Unit- “JASON ISBELL AND THE 400 UNIT”

Manchester Orchestra- “MEAN EVERYTHING TO NOTHING”

Super Furry Animals- “DARK DAYS/LIGHT YEARS”

 

 

2009 RECORDS I AM EXCITED TO GET IN THE NEAR FUTURE:

 

Wilco- “WILCO (THE ALBUM)”

Patterson Hood- “MURDERING OSCAR (AND OTHER LOVE SONGS)”

Neil Young- “ARCHIVES VOLUME ONE”

The Dead Weather- “WHOREHOUND”

Dinosaur Jr.- “FARM”

Sonic Youth- “THE ETERNAL”

 

My answer to a friend's prompt ("what is the one thing you've learned about love over time?")- may or may not actually answer the question:

Love doesn't exist in the way we all think it does. It is not a feeling one tunes into. It is not a destination or a goal. It is not a savior or solution. It is not nirvana. Love is a collection of moments that transcend their context to create something beautiful and intricate and complex and completely terrifying. It enters you and tears out your basic assumptions and turns you into someone you weren't before, and can leave at any moment without any warning, like a sunshower starts and stops. It makes you do stupid things and things that make you a better person. Love is a quantum cloud of electrons, a word whose meaning is impossible to chart, locate, or predict, but rather has to be assumed as all-inclusive, at once everywhere and nowhere. 

On the horizon...

... exciting things. 

From page 39 of my big collected Lord of the Rings edition: 

"He gave presents to all and sundry... Hobbits give presents to other people on their own birthdays. Not very expensive ones, as a rule, and not so lavishly as on this occasion; but it was not a bad system." 

From eMedecine: 

"Somnambulism (sleepwalking) has been described in medical literature dating before Hippocrates (460 BC-370 BC). In Shakespeare's tragic play, Macbeth, Lady Macbeth's famous sleepwalking scene ("out, damned spot") is ascribed to her guilt and resulting insanity as a consequence of her involvement in the murder of her father-in-law.

...On questioning, [the somnambulist's] responses are slow with simple thoughts, contain non-sense phraseology, or are absent. If the person is returned to bed without awakening, the person usually does not remember the event."

~~~

eh? ehhhhh?

SC

old pic but appropriate