"I’ve always wanted, though I didn’t always know I wanted, to write more like a song than a story. I’m tempted to say Steven Church does this, but on second thought this explanation might be looking at these essays from the wrong end of the earpiece: I think he writes like I listen to a song."
After reading it recently, I had to add this one to the Further Reading section of The List and the Story. Here's what I have to say about it:
This essay consists of forty-one "introductions" to her subject, the once-lionized Eighties visual artist David Salle, based on two years of interviews between him and Malcolm and published in 1994, when Salle was forty-one years old. In the eighteenth "false start," Malcolm says, "Nothing is ever resolved by Salle, nothing adds up, nothing goes anywhere, everything stops and peters out." Besides commenting on her subject both as an artist and as a personality, Malcolm also clues the reader into how her formal choices structure the essay's meaning: in attempting to know and to report on this conflicted, perhaps disingenuous artist, the only way to approach intellectual honesty is to present him in fragments. These fragments, presumably like Salle's work (I have to confess I'd never heard of Salle before I read this essay), are the only way to accurately and engagingly present him. Or, in the words of New Yorker staff writer Rachel Aviv, "it will make you attuned to how impossible it is to ever really know someone."
One of the things I like most about Kevin Drew as a songwriter is, He is not afraid to go there. I say that, I guess, as a warning: Listen too hard to the lyrics, and you'll find some seriously fucked up shit. But you know, and don't judge me, sometimes it is just so goddamn beautiful and artful and self-knowing. Like:
I don't love, I just fight with the violence in ourselves
Cuz it's all gonna break!
And you all want the lovely music to save your lives, we'll keep it coming, there is no lie to save your lives.
But a good running song is not about the lyrics. It's about aural propulsion. And for ten solid minutes, it does that. Like a good run, it has peaks and valleys, but it always moves, and its crescendos are positively transcendent. I could put this on repeat and run to it for hours.
(Knowing my mother-in-law is perhaps my #1 reader, I feel the need to apologize for all the profanity. Instead, though, I'll just say, They're from Toronto!) (She lives outside Toronto.)
It would be easy to assume, based on the scant activity on my blog, that I haven't been doing much with my year so far. Au contraire, mon frère. I neglected to post my resolutions early this year mainly because I didn't want to be held to account for the ones I discarded, but I will say that I've kept the two most important ones: 1) Getting back into the running habit, and 2) getting my ms in order for submission by the end of March.
The running is going well; in fact, I've been having so much fun making running playlists for my iPod that I've decided to start sharing my favorites. I think I'll call it my Pathos-Laden Running Playlist. As with my 12 Miserable Days of Christmas, I'll include the song with the option to download it for yourself on the right-hand corner of the player.
And the book! I'm feeling better every day about how it's coming together. After spending much of last year deconstructing, reconstructing, and languishing in the beautiful ruins of my disembodied sentences, I sank into a bit of a depression (writing-wise, at least) that carried into last summer. Then I got some great advice from poet/essayist Cynthia Huntington: Have a couple of people you know and trust read all the manuscript as it is right now, tell me what they see as the connections, revise accordingly, and set myself a deadline to get it done. Then move on to the next project. I got three kind and generous souls to read and comment on it in December (whom I won't name now but will be sure to include at the top of the acknowledgements if and when the manuscript sees publication), and set the deadline for myself. Hence the resolution.
Anyway, I've rewritten my About page to reflect all this; you can read it here.
Oh, and I have a review-essay of Steven Church's Ultrasonic going up on Essay Daily this Thursday - I'll post the link to that when it goes up. And I'm excited to announce that an long essay I wrote during the Kansas City Royals' postseason run will be going up on The Weeklings on Opening Day!
On my walk to the train this morning, it was 3 degrees out. I couldn’t open my mouth or my front teeth would throb from the cold. The F ran a good ten minutes later than usual, and someone had taken a big wet dump on the platform where I stood waiting for my transfer to the 7. By the time I discovered too late that the Metro North is running on a holiday schedule, which means I’ll have to pay an extra $15 for a cab in White Plains to get to work on time, all I could think was OH MY GOD I AM SO LUCKY I DIDN’T HAVE TO TRY TO FIND A PLACE TO SLEEP OUTSIDE LAST NIGHT. I’M SO GLAD I SLEPT NEXT TO MY LOVING, WARM WIFE WITH OUR HEATING-PAD CHIHUAHUA WEDGED BETWEEN US, AND THAT WHEN I GOT UP I GOT TO TAKE A BIG DUMP IN OUR TOILET RATHER THAN ON A TRAIN PLATFORM. I ONLY HAVE TO COMMUTE TWICE A WEEK, THREE TIMES TOPS, AND THE OTHER DAYS I CAN DO ALL MY WORK WITHOUT LEAVING HOME IF I SO CHOOSE, ESPECIALLY SINCE MY MOTHER-IN-LAW WAS GRACIOUS ENOUGH TO HAVE BOTH OF OUR CHILDREN OVER TO HER PLACE ALL WEEK WHILE THEY’RE ON WINTER BREAK. AND THE $15 I’M FLIPPANTLY SPENDING ON A CAB SO I WON’T HAVE TO WAIT AN EXTRA HALF HOUR OUTSIDE FOR THE BUS? WHAT A LUXURY. TO PARAPHRASE SNOOKI: FIRST-WORLD PROBLEMS. AND I STILL HAVE MY NOSE INTACT AND A GOOD OVERCOAT SO I KNOW I’M NOT IN A GOGOL STORY. WINTER WILL BE OVER SOON ENOUGH, AND MY KEEPING TRACK OF THE WEEKLY FORECAST IS A PRETTY TRIVIAL THING CONSIDERING I ONLY HAVE TO FACE THE ELEMENTS FOR A TOTAL OF LESS THAN AN HOUR TODAY.
AND I EVEN GET OFF-PEAK PRICING ON MY METRO NORTH TICKET.
Breeds of Misery: Complete and utter failure, codependence, the falsity of the American Dream
Best/Worst Lines:"SHANE: 'You're an old slut on junk, living there almost dead on a drip in that bed.' KIRSTY: 'You scum bag, you maggot, you cheap lousy faggot. Happy Christmas your arse, I pray God it's our last. BOTH OF THEM: 'And the boys of the NYPD choir were singing Galway Bay, and the bells were ringing out for Christmas day.'"
Who should it surprise to find out that my favorite "Christmas song" is also perhaps a scathing criticism of the American dream and a tale of irredeemable romantic woe? And by the Pogues, short for "Pogue Mahone," Irish brogue for "Kiss My Arse"? [My mother perhaps, but no one else.] Seriously, I almost cry every time I listen to this, and I feel eternally alive, and I want to wrap my arms around this cold insular city and traverse its endless grid until it's drained every ounce of being from my lifeless body. That's love.
BONUS: My buddy Rich Hartshorn sent me a great rendition by Gianni & Sarah - Enjoy!
"My wife and I have been married for going on seven years now. Our children, Checkers and Crazy Eights, are now five and two years old. Until I met my wife, I’d never had a coffee cake. Now I can’t imagine Christmas (or Thanksgiving, for that matter) morn without it. The recipe I’m about to give you has been in my wife’s family for roughly three generations now, by my estimation. Although my mother-in-law comes from Pennsylvania Dutch stock, I can’t help thinking this recipe is more a product of the 70s (we also have fondue every Christmas)."
Breeds of misery: Communal degradation, food "products," second-hand smoke
Best/worst lines: "Carve the turkey, turn the ball game on. Make Bloody Mary's
'cause we all want one! Send somebody to the Stop & Go, we need some celery and a can of fake snow. A bag of lemons and some Diet Sprites, a box of tampons, and some Salem Lights. Halelujah, everybody say cheese! Merry Christmas from the Family!"
Imagine National Lampoon'sChristmas Vacation as a song. Actually, imagine John Hughes listening to this song (it came first, after all) and thinking, "How can I make this into a movie?" Then, imagine my family watching Christmas Vacation every holiday season since 1992 and saying to each other, "No matter what happens, at least it's not this bad." And imagine me humming the chorus to this song in my head and thinking, "It could be worse."
Breeds of Misery: Lost love, cross-border romance, colonial mythology
Best/Worst Lines: "At night I wake up cold and lonely, bustin' at the seams. She haunts the early morning hours of December dreams. My Guadalupe, with big brown eyes, I wanna break the spell tonight."
In the grand colonial tradition of "Cherokee Maiden," "Squaws Along the Yukon," and "Hey Muchachita," this cautionary tale of a white man's star-crossed courtship with a native, brown-eyed little girl does not end well. Also like those songs, listening to this one always makes me a little uncomfortable. In listening to - and yes, enjoying - these songs, even ironically, am I complicit in a type of colonial superiority complex? I tend to alleviate this discomfort by reminding myself that I'm just four generations removed from this type of relationship between a white man and a Chickamauga woman, which by all accounts from my Arkansas folks was a long, happy marriage. Ah, well.
Breeds of Misery: Existential angst, bad timing, being a kid
Best/Worst Lines: "Gee, but it's tough to be a kid like me, but I guess there is nothing I can do. 'Cause all the stuff beneath the Christmas tree has to count for my birthday too."
A vintage hard luck story. It tears me up this time of year thinking about all the children (and adults!) born within a week of Christmas who have suffered the injustice of the doubled-up Christmas/birthday present. I'd like to gather them all around and comfort them with the knowledge that, in this at least, they are like the baby Jesus. That gold, frankincense, and myrrh? The first ever doubled-up present.
Breeds of Misery: Pedophilia/Incest, patricide, bearing false witness as Santa
Best/worst lines: "I guess he was givin' Millie's bruises time to heal. Of course he told us she was sick and we believed him. And at the department store as Santa we would see him. As he smiled, his own child was at home plottin', how off the face of this earth she was gonna knock him."
This is the Flowers in the Attic of Christmas tunes, daring you to stop listening as it piles heap upon heap of atmospheric detail until you only keep listening in the quixotic hope of a good end for poor Millie. The close of the song is actually fairly open-ended, prompting a "sequel" by hip-hop collective Atmosphere, "Millie Fell Off the Fire Escape." Not much mystery as to how that ended.
Breeds of Misery: Woe is me, first-world problems, post-boy band solo careers
Best/Worst Lines: Every. Single. One. It hurts my fingers to even think of typing them.
This is probably the most deserving song of any here, if only because it holds the twin distinction of being painfully, uncomfortably miserable for both the singer and the listener. Probably best known as a New Kids on the Block sidekick in the late Eighties/early Nineties, Page has a voice that reflects that pedigree. This piece of It's-Christmas-I-Miss-You ilk, recorded around the time of Page's short-lived ride on the NKOTB train, is possibly the worst Christmas song ever recorded. Pure misery. (Page is now Head of Music Partnerships for Pandora, so he seems to have recovered.)
Breeds of Misery: Family estrangement, loneliness, Christmas without sleigh bells
Best/worst lines: "I haven't heard you call me sister, I haven't heard it said in years. But it's a funny thing now it's the only thing I want to hear...I understand that you are angry. Well, maybe I am angry too. 'Cause I still love you brother, but I don't know what to make of you...Now do you sit by your plastic tree, and tell your friends you've no family?"
Man, this one kills me, perhaps because I imagine at least one of my sisters saying these exact things about me. I want to call her, to say I love her, and to tell her I no longer understand her any more than she understands me. But know this, sister: I wish you well. And I love you too.
Breeds of Misery: Poverty, wealth, being chased by a bloodthirsty king
Best/Worst lines: "People love the working man who does the best that he can, but don't forget all the horses and toys never could fix the poor, little, rich boys...People say they love the maid who sweats and toils just like a slave, but don't forget all the diamonds and pearls never could fix the poor little rich girls...Don't forget Jesus, Mary and Joseph, running from the law King Herod had imposeth, and they were each one quite odd: a mensch, a virgin and a god."
This song, sung by one of North America's great musical families, seems to be the spiritual flipside of Do They Know It's Christmas, taking as its mantra a quote from Twentieth-Century journalist Sydney J. Harris: "The rich who are unhappy are worse off than the poor who are unhappy; for the poor, at least, cling to the hopeful delusion that more money would solve their problems - but the rich know better." This helps me stomach Mr. Potter, and his spiritual flipside and identical twin Dick Cheney, whenever I see them scoff and harrumph yet again on TV.
Breeds of Misery: World poverty, indifference, the Eighties
Best/Worst Verse: "There's a world outside your window, and it's a world of dread and fear, where the only water flowing is the bitter sting of tears. And the Christmas bells that ring there are the clanging chimes of doom. Well, tonight thank God it's them, instead of you."
I actually wrote a piece about this song for A Child Grows in Brooklyn last year called "Why “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” may be the most important Christmas song to share with your children," and it turns out that I might be the only person in the world who unconditionally loves this song, Bob Geldof included. My reason for this love is simple: it was the first Christmas song I listened to as a child that made feel relatively lucky to live in a low-income US household on Christmas. And as celebrity agitprop goes, it's about a hundred times better than We Are the World.
Breeds of Misery: Lovelorn revery, clinical depression, seasonal affective disorder
Best/Worst Verse: "All my friends, I've returned to sister winter. All my friends, I apologize, apologize..."
Of all of Sufjan Stevens' extensive Christmastime EP songology - now enclosed in two lovingly and intimately presented box sets (which you can find here and here; you're welcome) - this is perhaps my favorite offering. It's beautiful, evocative, and intensely sad. I've always thought it almost read like an immaculately conceived suicide letter. At the very least it's a reminder, as we feast on the joys of the holiday, that Winter Is Coming. As Stevens says in his liner notes to the second box set: "This is the true horror-show catharsis of Christmas: the existential emptiness that perseveres in the heart of modern man as he recklessly pursues his search for happiness and comes up empty handed."
Breeds of Misery: Matricide, bereavement, hero debasement
Best/Worst Verse: "When we found her Christmas morning at the scene of the attack, she had hoof prints on her forehead and incriminating claws (Claus) marks on her back."
OK, perhaps too obvious. But man, what a horrific situation for a humorous holiday novelty song. And it gets even darker if those are Claus marks, not claws marks, on her back. (Apparently, someone created a direct-to-video animated adaptation in 2000, which I have not seen but seems to blend the song with It's A Wonderful Life and (SPOILER ALERT) brings back Grandma at the end. Cowards.)
Breeds of Misery: Addiction, self-pity, getting old, existential despair
Best/Worst Verse: "You say it's Christmas Eve? That don't mean nothing to me. Just another fucked up day, just another waste of time."
I first heard this song, about a 35-year-old heroin addict, when it came out in 1993. I was in college and somehow empathized with lines like "You smartass college fuck, act like you think you're tough. I was just like you, more proud than you could know. You think you pity me? Yeah, I'll kick your ass if you pity me." (I think I especially loved that they were playing primarily to college-town audiences.) I probably over-idolized Art Alexakis's street cred as a recovering addict, and envisioned myself romantically as either him or Jim Carroll by the time I was 35. What a disappointment I've been.
On a whim, I've decided to do "12 Days of Miserable Christmas Songs" - you know, those tunes that exult in the loneliness, heartache, and selfishness characteristic of our most maudlin American holiday. I'll be posting one a day starting on 12/13, and go through to Christmas Eve. Viva, Les Miserables! (Yes, that's Franish, or Spench.)
I'm currently obsessively reading All That Is Solid Melts into Air, underlining seemingly half the book while nodding in agreement. I love this passage that I just read, from his essay on Baudelaire, "Modernism in the Streets: The Mire of the Macadam":
"[Baudelaire] finds to his amazement that the aura of artistic purity and sanctity is only incidental, not essential to art, and that poetry can thrive just as well, and maybe even better, on the other side of the boulevard, in those low, 'unpoetic' places...One of the paradoxes of modernity, as Baudelaire sees it here, is that its poets will become more deeply and authentically poetic by becoming more like ordinary men...The 'bad poet' in this world is the poet who hopes to keep his purity intact by keeping it off the streets, free from the risks of traffic. Baudelaire wants works of art that will be born in the midst of the traffic, that will spring from its anarchic energy, from the incessant danger and terror of being there, from the precarious pride and exhilaration of the man who has survived so far...His mouvements brusques, those sudden leaps and swerves so crucial for everyday survival in the city streets, turn out to be sources of creative power as well. In the century to come, these moves will become paradigmatic gestures of modernist art and thought."
The "century to come" is now past, but this spirit still drives me and thousands of other urban writers, artists, filmmakers, musicians, and thinkers. But then Berman goes further, envisioning the present-day uprisings in Hong Kong, Ferguson and my beloved NYC while recounting the many people on the streets of the Twentieth Century:
"[F]rom Baudelaire's time to our own - the boulevard will be abruptly transformed into the stage for a new primal modern scene. This will not be the sort of scene that Napoleon or Haussmann [or Robert Moses or Rudy Guiliani or various police departments would like to see, but nonetheless one that their mode of urbanism will have helped to make.
"As we reread the old histories, memoirs and novels, or regard the old photos or newsreels, or stir our own fugitive memories of 1968, we will see whole classes and masses move into the street together. We will be able to discern two phases in their activity. At first the people stop and overturn the vehicles in their path, and set the horses free: here they are avenging themselves on the traffic by decomposing it into its inert original elements. Next they incorporate the wreckage they have created into their rising barricades: they are recombining the isolated, inanimate elements into vital new artistic and political forms. For one luminous moment, the multitude of solitudes that make up the modern city come together into a new kind of encounter, to make a people."