Suburban War: All My Friends, I Love You

I've spent a lot of time in the last few weeks thinking about when I was younger. Music has been my pathway to writing about times I haven't allowed myself to visit much because there's pain inherent in craning my neck to look backwards. I finally got out all my old pictures (as you can see on Facebook!) and looked at them with smiles, and not absolute sadness. I find myself owing The Joshua Tree and Grace all over again (and a few other things that I think I'll finally be able to write about after this post). 

I'm a fairly reflective person, but the reality is that when I look at the past I focus on my mistakes, so my desire is to look ahead, plan how to avoid future errors when I should be examining the things in my past that were good and right.

"You said the past won’t rest
Until we jump the fence and leave it behind"

I find that I've lost people along the way to the present, lost their names, lost their faces, lost my connection like a fuzzy radio signal. Looking at these pictures, I think, "why didn't I spend more time getting to know these beautiful people?" I discover that I've dug a big old hole in the back yard of my heart and buried the bones of memories, but now they're more present, more welcome than ever.

What footsteps did I take in the dark that I can finally look my memories in the eyes again?

"They keep erasing all the streets we grew up in."

"Suburban War" has been traveling with me, recalling to me things I felt when I returned home from Lewis & Clark after my freshman year. Things I feel now.

"With my old friends I can remember when

You cut your hair, I never saw you again

Now the cities we live in could be distant stars

And I search for you in every passing car"

Today I remembered an (unfinished) poem from 2001 that parallels aspects of "Suburban War".

Living in Two Places

 

I guess the weirdest thing

Is always seeing faces

From the city I’m not in

On the bodies of strangers,

Phantoms of relation.

Location is a trench

Dug right through the middle of me;

Shadows of shapes pour down my concave skin

Like rainwater gathering in a pool of reflection

Slick-bottomed, still,

In the heart of me.

I was thinking that maybe this feeling is regret for things left undone, but it isn't so. This feeling is not regret, it is love, it is space and time separating us from each other. Do you feel it, too?

"All my old friends they don’t know me now

All my old friends are staring through me now

All my old friends they don’t know me now

All my old friends they don’t know me now

They don’t know me now

All my old friends, wait…"

Maybe we all just want to say, "Friend, I miss you.

I love you.

I'm looking for you everywhere I go. Will I have the courage to reach out to you when I see you again?"

Ode to Brian Wilson

This is a poem I worked on for quite a while...it fell apart about 2/3 of the way through the poem and I couldn't finish it...gah!


Old Soul

           

I can see you

the darkness curving around your child-body like a globe,

your transistor radio like a moon,

all those notes encircling you like stars.

As in some bedside fable about the sea

you swallowed the gigantic moon

and it sunk into the core of your being,

waiting for its service to the sun.

Your axis tilted to pearl notes and then you shone.

When your father saw you shining like a jewel

he was at your ear

and put you to work chipping at the glow,

throwing his mantle over you to cover up the truth.

Every eye was on you in the studio,

each day longer,

each day hotter.

One day the dry L.A. hills bore up smoke like testimony,

and you were sure you’d lit the hills like tinder

with sparks of sound from your teenage symphony.

You closed your hands around the reels

and ash dropped from your fists like sand.

 

***Here's where the poem gets bumpy and I couldn't quite work it out...so my latest, way cut back version is below***

The fire wasn’t your fault.

It consumed you

until your moon blazed

your fingers hollowed with the emptiness of aborted songs.

You still feel the gape where it used to reside,

I know.  But Brian, I still see the moon inside you,

and all that bright beauty of your starry seashore transistor notes.

fin

***Okay, here's my tortuous crap-that's-left-over version ***

How long could you keep your sun reflector from (searing/burning) a hole (right) through you?

The sounds began to rain from your fingers,

the piano drenched in a quintessence of light,

the sounds of re-creation.

The more you (bled/poured/showered) song, the more mirrors you became.

The fire wasn’t your fault.

It consumed you

until your moon burst into char and ash,

the specks and granules like a broken artery,

your fingers hollowed, the empty (spaces/wombs) of aborted songs.

You still feel the gape where it used to reside,

I know.  But Brian, I still see the moon inside you,

and all that bright beauty of your starry seashore transistor notes.

Louie (inspired by a blues class)

Louie

Poverty set the table with the blues,

what else was there to eat?

Worryin’ about the next meal,

every meal,

and mama whorrin’ herself out.

Couldn’t learn schoolin’,

Couldn’t waste time complainin’,

Couldn’t believe

Jelly Roll’s skeel-deetlin doo-wa-tee-doin ivories.

Pawnshop trumpet and lips that fit the mouth.

scat / deet / doo-da

that Heebie-Jeebie jazz tinglin’ voice flirtin’ with the air.

This man’s a cornet inside!

When he was in Chicago every breeze was a tune,

the lift and settle, breath and sigh, solo.

The trash on the flurries was that holy Dixie band

couldn’t find no place to live.

No gig too small! No gig too far! No gig where we won’t play!

if ya pay us ‘nuf to live on, this here horn ‘n me,

an maybe if ya don’t.

Music.

New York, Chicago, Harlem, New Orleans.

Ain’t gonna be Gabriel blowin’ that horn

A Sample of My Freshman Year in College

Why “Up” is the best REM record

 

         “Up,” while being the most mature sounding REM record to date, is also the most mature recording they’ve made lyrically.  While all the REM records have been socially and politically challenging—albums such as “Monster” explored sexuality as well as the distance between people while “Automatic for the People” explored the universal and emotional connections between people—“Up” probes a transcending spiritual freedom in spite of the mistakes and limitations of human character and reason.  It is a record that recognizes the physical, relational, and material boundaries of being human.  REM distinguishes, perhaps as a result of losing a band member, that though not all is right with the world, or even their world, there is more.  There is a freedom that despite what happens, despite what people do to you or what you may even do to yourself, you can be separate from it.  You can “walk unafraid,” free from internal pressure to conform, free from a need to impress others, or even to be recognized by them in a clear light.  There is more, there is something further up.
          Perhaps REM leaned into “Up,” hinted at with “Everybody Hurts,” a song that portrays the sadness that takes over individuals in the wake of failure or pain, whether that be relationally or otherwise.  “Up” follows in its footsteps in terms of the innate compassion of the record.  The characteristic irony still remains with lines like “the concrete broke your fall” from the song “Why Not Smile,” but there is an exposure of the soul of REM in way new to the group.  When Michael Stipe sings “I’ll trip, fall, pick myself up and/ walk unafraid/ I’ll be clumsy instead/ hold my love me or leave me/ high,” you know that he’s singing the song as much for himself as for those who will hear it.

         REM takes the listener on a journey from the guilty to the defiant to the peaceful and fulfilled ending.  While the world fires “into [its] own ranks,” Stipe sings “my actions make me beautiful/ and dignify the flesh,”  ending appropriately with the long, glorious notes “I am free/ free.”