The music of Schumann’s ‘Ghost Variations’ was supposedly sung to him in a feverish dream near the end of his life, and it comprises his last written work. In the midst of writing them he tried to drown himself in the Rhine, only to be rescued by bargemen, and a day or two later he reportedly finished the music. After that he voluntarily entered an asylum where he would die two years later.
There is something very ghostly about this music, fitting for the eve of October, fitting for the time of the year when the veil between worlds is at its thinnest and most easily penetrable. Unlike some ghost stories, this one is more soothing and consoling, resulting in calm and acceptance, a resignation to the customary line between the physical world and the spiritual world, and those elusive moments when the line is blurred or erased.
Shadows of the past are my usual ghosts. They haunt and vex my every step, and no matter how hard I have tried to shake them, their release only comes with a hard-won and well-earned understanding of why they remain. It’s best to make peace with such ghosts, to embrace the aches of the past and to gently but deliberately untie their tethers from the present. Like so many people, sometimes all they want is acknowledgement – a nod and a kind word of forgiveness or apology – and this is a perfect time of the year to do so. A winter is best spent stark and bare – it is the natural way of the world, which wants to strip everything down starting with the leaves, and leave its own mark in ice or snow until it’s ready to clothe us again.
It doesn’t happen that often, but on those years when our pool season gets cut short for whatever reason, we do our best to keep the pool heated and running until the last warm days have departed. That worked well this year, when I’ve been able to make it into the warm water at least three times since the calendar clicked to fall. It’s a welcome bonus we absolutely needed. And a happy reminder that all is not lost when it comes to little joys and last-minute reprieves.
Having already used R.E.M.’s exquisite ‘Nightswimming’ (my favorite song of theirs) in this post, I’m going with ‘New Orleans Instrumental No. 1’ for this swim post, taken from their best album ‘Automatic for the People’. It has an end-of-summer vibe to it, mellow and slightly somber, with a certain sweetness that tempers an inherent sadness. When fall arrives, those are the vibes that come out.
The water is different now. Warmer than the air, it’s not refreshing like it was in early August and summer was at its height, but rather embracing and comforting. It wraps around the body like a gossamer blanket, barely there, but noted immediately as soon as you slip out of it. At those moments the night air is harsh and bitter, cutting into your skin with the slightest breeze. You slip back in like you would into bed on a winter morning.
A pair of citronella candles glows and flickers. There is still the possibility of mosquitos; a couple of them found their way inside recently, seeking warmth, seeking blood. On this night, they keep their distance, adding to the eerie quiet that hangs over everything.
It’s a quiet not found during the summer, when all sorts of insects make their noise and voice their concerns, when the aforementioned mosquito brigade buzzes and pricks, and, later, the crickets chirp their quirky song. Tonight I listen to the quiet lapping of the water on my neck and shoulders, and the occasional rustling of the fountain grass when the air moves just the slightest.
There’s something reassuring about an autumn that enters in such silence.
BETTY, I WON’T MAKE ASSUMPTIONS
ABOUT WHY YOU SWITCHED YOUR HOMEROOM BUT
I THINK IT’S CAUSE OF.…ME
BETTY… ONE TIME I WAS RIDING ON MY SKATEBOARD
WHEN I PASSED YOUR HOUSE
IT’S LIKE I COULDN’T BREATHE
YOU HEARD THE RUMORS FROM INEZ
YOU CAN’T BELIEVE A WORD SHE SAYS
MOST TIMES, BUT THIS TIME IT WAS TRUE
THE WORST THING THAT I EVER DID
WAS WHAT I DID TO YOU
While her ‘folklore’ album was my soundtrack for summer, Taylor Swift recently released ‘Betty’ which is rather more fitting for fall, considering its high-school storyline of teen drama. It’s one of the best story songs I’ve heard in recent years ~ compelling and powerful with a few well-chosen words to convey an entire tableau of the emotional mayhem that happens when you’re only seventeen. My work pal Andy said this was his favorite song from the album and the reason for why it resonated so much was that he could relate to the guy in the song, and I can totally see it. A playboy with a heart of gold is impossible not to love, even if there’s emotional wreckage left in his wake. I can see Andy filling that role with ease. (And I was totally Inez, I admit – but this time it was true! Still am on most days.)
BUT IF I JUST SHOWED UP AT YOUR PARTY
WOULD YOU HAVE ME? WOULD YOU WANT ME?
WOULD YOU TELL ME TO GO FUCK MYSELF?
OR LEAD ME TO THE GARDEN?
IN THE GARDEN WOULD YOU TRUST ME
IF I TOLD YOU IT WAS JUST A SUMMER THING?
I’M ONLY SEVENTEEN, I DON’T KNOW ANYTHING
BUT I KNOW I MISS YOU
Ahh, high school drama and trauma ~ always so heightened and extreme, and simultaneously innocuous and fleeting. How much hurt we knowingly and unknowingly inflict on those we love, those who mean the most to us. I’ve long maintained that it’s sometimes more painful to hurt someone else than to be the one who’s getting hurt. The sort of pain that transpires when you’re the one doing the hurting can haunt you far longer than the pain you get when on the receiving end, and it’s a heartache that shades and blunts all the happiness you might feel forever after. I didn’t learn that lesson until it was too late, and by then those moments had been carved permanently into my heart, and the awfulness I sometimes perpetrated became a stain on everything good I might have done.
BETTY, I KNOW WHERE IT ALL WENT WRONG
YOUR FAVORITE SONG WAS PLAYING FROM THE FAR SIDE OF THE GYM
I WAS NOWHERE TO BE FOUND
I HATE THE CROWDS, YOU KNOW THAT
PLUS, I SAW YOU DANCE WITH HIM
YOU HEARD THE RUMORS FROM INEZ
YOU CAN’T BELIEVE A WORD SHE SAYS
MOST TIMES, BUT THIS TIME IT WAS TRUE
THE WORST THING THAT I EVER DID
WAS WHAT I DID TO YOU
I have always lived in the belief of having no regrets, because we are all the sum of our history and experiences, and changing just one of those little decisions or moments might change all the work and effort we have executed in the hopes of being better. Now I’m not so sure. I think I might have done things that made that road easier, that might have healed the hurt a little faster. I would have been kinder ~ that wouldn’t have cost anything, it wouldn’t have hurt anyone, and it wouldn’t have been that difficult were it not for a cold sense of pride and perfection that steeled me against a world that wasn’t always out to get me. I would have been more open and vulnerable, allowing my heart to be broken because it would eventually ~ no matter what ~ and that might not have been the worst thing then. I would have also done better at mending those hearts I did break, instead of finding excuses to be angry and cruel, and leaving them behind.
BUT IF I JUST SHOWED UP AT YOUR PARTY
WOULD YOU HAVE ME? WOULD YOU WANT ME?
WOULD YOU TELL ME TO GO FUCK MYSELF?
OR LEAD ME TO THE GARDEN?
IN THE GARDEN WOULD YOU TRUST ME
IF I TOLD YOU IT WAS JUST A SUMMER THING?
I’M ONLY SEVENTEEN, I DON’T KNOW ANYTHING, BUT I KNOW I MISS YOU
We can’t go back though. We can’t magically fix the past even if we do our best to make amends. There is grace in the effort to try, but there’s no way to do it without leaving a scar, or stirring up the muck that might have settled in the ensuing years. I’d like to think I have forgiven and been forgiven for my own mistakes and faults, but forgiveness is a messy business. Rarely completely fulfilling, it’s become more than specific closure I seek, and more about making the world a little safer and less difficult for the people in my life now. It would be easy to slip into anger and rage at the person I once was, and at those who I ended up hurting. That’s the thing about hurting people ~ the darkness feeds upon itself, multiplying while ricocheting off its own hurt and causing more hurt along the way. Collateral damage. And all that you do unto others will be done more insidiously upon yourself. You just don’t know that yet.
I WAS WALKING HOME ON BROKEN COBBLESTONES JUST THINKING OF YOU
WHEN SHE PULLED UP LIKE A FIGMENT OF MY WORST INTENTIONS
SHE SAID “JAMES, GET IN, LET’S DRIVE.”
THOSE DAYS TURNED INTO NIGHTS
SLEPT NEXT TO HER, BUT I DREAMT OF YOU ALL SUMMER LONG
We don’t always get a second chance to make things right. Especially when those transgressions occurred at the tender age of seventeen. At that time in life it feels like all you have is time, but it moves quickly, and it distracts and destroys, and before you know it you’re in your 40’s and haven’t learned a goddamned thing about how not to hurt people. Fall brings it all back, and I remember fall in Amsterdam. I remember football games and band practice and cornfields filled with crows. I remember the boy who killed himself and the girl whose heart I broke. I remember raking leaves and hating my family and wondering why I should be the one to survive. The smell of burning wood. The sting of salt in my eyes. The longing no one explained. The loneliness. My own broken wings.
What would I do if I could go back and do it all over again? What would any of us do? Would we whisper to our old selves what moves to make, what moves to avoid? Would we write notes of guidance, leaving our shadows with explicit instructions on what was about to happen? It wouldn’t make a difference, not in my world anyway. There was nothing I would have heard back then, especially if it came from my own voice.
BETTY, I’M HERE ON YOUR DOORSTEP
AND I PLANNED IT OUT FOR WEEKS NOW
BUT IT’S FINALLY SINKIN’ IN
BETTY, RIGHT NOW IS THE LAST TIME
I CAN DREAM ABOUT WHAT HAPPENS WHEN
YOU SEE MY FACE AGAIN
THE ONLY THING I WANNA DO
IS MAKE IT UP TO YOU
SO I SHOWED UP AT YOUR PARTY
YEAH, I SHOWED UP AT YOUR PARTY
And so we have James, showing up at Betty’s party, all hope and promise and the possibility of redemption, like all of us trying to make up for a summer of mistakes, for a stretch of unforgivable actions, for everything we didn’t know back then. No matter what might happen afterward, in that one single moment there is grace. Solace. Healing. In the act of trying there is a humility that becomes its own balm, and the way we have to forgive ourselves.
YEAH, I SHOWED UP AT YOUR PARTY
WILL YOU HAVE ME? WILL YOU LOVE ME?
WILL YOU KISS ME ON THE PORCH IN FRONT OF ALL YOUR STUPID FRIENDS?
IF YOU KISS ME, WILL IT BE JUST LIKE I DREAMED IT?
WILL IT PATCH YOUR BROKEN WINGS?
I’M ONLY SEVENTEEN, I DON’T KNOW ANYTHING
BUT I KNOW I MISS YOU
We never quite discover what Betty does ~ the song is left open in the best possible way. No one is guaranteed a happy ending. Happy endings are rare when you really think about it. We also have a somewhat skewed view of what makes a happy ending ~ is it really about battling all the illness and hurt and making it to an ancient age through years of discomfort and fatigue and pain? Isn’t a happy ending when we go out at our prime, at our most jubilant and hopeful, struck down at the height of all that we will ever be? I don’t know. Fall asks such questions in preparation for winter. I’m not quite ready to answer. Let a few hard frosts embolden our resilience.
We can try to go back and right the wrongs of the past by being better in the present and future. Those of us who have made mistakes can spend a lifetime making up for them, and maybe that makes us better people. So here we are again, standing on the doorstep of what we’re going to be in the next moment, standing on the doorstep of what we still might become.
STANDING IN YOUR CARDIGAN
KISSIN’ IN MY CAR AGAIN
STOPPED AT A STREETLIGHT
YOU KNOW I MISS YOU
“When people are ready to, they change. They never do it before then, and sometimes they die before they get around to it. You can’t make them change if they don’t want to, just like when they do want to, you can’t stop them.” ~ Andy Warhol
IF YOU COULD READ MY MIND LOVE WHAT A TALE MY THOUGHTS COULD TELL JUST LIKE AN OLD TIME MOVIE ABOUT A GHOST FROM A WISHING WELL IN A CASTLE DARK OR A FORTRESS STRONG WITH CHAINS UPON MY FEET YOU KNOW THAT GHOST IS ME
Fall has always been about the drama. This was when the night-time soap operas returned, and in my formative years I was all about the soap operas. New plot lines were set into motion. Cliffhangers were resolved or spun into secondary moments of suspense. The start of the fall television season in general was always an exciting time. Worn-out characters were replaced by new ones, sets were energized, haircuts were revamped, and styles shifted slightly with the times, whether period or modern. In some ways it was a lot like the start of school, when everyone came back slightly altered and reinvented.
Perhaps this year more than ever we are in need of such a re-boot, so I’m taking this moment in time to re-energize my good practices, and curb some of the unhealthier things that have started to become habit (we will stop buying so much chocolate and so many cookies, and instead invest in fresh fruit). My meditation practice will continue as well (on the 25th of this month I’m moving up to 25 minutes per day), and I’ll refocus energy on my mindfulness. When things turn lighter in the summer it gets easier to be more naturally mindful – that will take more effort when there’s not a pool or gardens or a pleasant outdoor day just around the corner.
As for a reinvention here, you may have noticed the darker theme and header and sliders, as befits this marker in history. We are on the precipice of something, and it feels like the middle of night. I’m sidling up to it in the hopes of reconciling myself to the darkness, while glowing a little brighter to make up for it. There is a pair of new categories here as well – Antiracism and Mindfulness – serious topics I’ve been more interested in expounding upon and exploring, and which have naturally grown into what I hope will be substantial pillars of what makes this site vital.
A new season is at hand. A new chance to be better has arrived. The opportunities unfurl to improve from within. Just as we begin a retreat from the outside in, so too do we return to the interior of our mental make-up, and to improving the constitution of our soul.
I DON’T KNOW WHERE WE WENT WRONG BUT THE FEELING’S GONE AND I JUST CAN’T GET IT BACK
“Sometimes people let the same problem make them miserable for years when they could just say, So what. That’s one of my favorite things to say. So what.” ~ Andy Warhol
The whisper, urgent and fierce, came to me in a blackness so dense I couldn’t be sure it was from another human being. For all I knew, and for all I could see in that night, it came from some feral being that was part ghost, part manifestation, and part spirit. But I felt its heat, felt its fetid moisture, and every once in a while I heard the click and grinding of teeth. Then, the ice cold essence of absence, as if its breath crystallized into tiny daggers of ice which fell to the earth like the delicate, barely-heard rustling of snow falling on hard ground.
“Do you hear me? Do you know what I’m saying?”
In that first semester at Brandeis, I was hearing voices in my head. Looking back, it was just the one voice, and it was less an actual voice and more a manifestation of all my doubts and disbeliefs in myself. But it repeated itself, growing more vicious and more relentless as the days turned colder. At the time, I simply wasn’t listening to my heart, and so it spoke for itself. I couldn’t see it then. I couldn’t hear it then. All I felt was confusion.
And the whispers grew increasingly ferocious.
IF YOU COULD READ MY MIND LOVE WHAT A TALE MY THOUGHTS COULD TELL JUST LIKE AN OLD TIME MOVIE ABOUT A GHOST FROM A WISHING WELL IN A CASTLE DARK OR A FORTRESS STRONG WITH CHAINS UPON MY FEET YOU KNOW THAT GHOST IS ME AND I WILL NEVER BE SET FREE AS LONG AS I’M A GHOST YOU CAN SEE
In the family station wagon, I was probably ten years old when this song played over the easy listening station my parents favored. The melody was sweet, the hook was catchy, and the tinge of folksy accessibility made it a natural choice for people who introduced their kids to music through Peter, Paul and Mary. As our wagon careened through the streets of Amsterdam, I sat in the backseat looking out at the world of fall.
I remember passing McNulty Elementary School, where I would attend kindergarten through sixth grade – the formative childhood years that feel simultaneously sweet and dangerous, innocent and somehow teeming with terror. Seeing it in my mind through the lens I’ve chiseled in the past year, I mourn that I couldn’t put voice to my social anxiety and the issues it caused. It was a thread that ran throughout all of my schooling, including that first semester at Brandeis when I was already a young adult. Fall was always terrifying that way, and I went through it all without fully understanding or grasping what was going on behind the scenes.
IF I COULD READ YOUR MIND LOVE WHAT A TALE YOUR THOUGHTS COULD TELL JUST LIKE A PAPERBACK NOVEL THE KIND THE DRUGSTORE SELLS WHEN YOU REACH THE PART WHERE THE HEARTACHES COME THE HERO WOULD BE ME HEROES OFTEN FAIL AND YOU WON’T READ THAT BOOK AGAIN BECAUSE THE ENDING’S JUST TOO HARD TO TAKE
In this, the fall of my 45thyear on earth, I’m beginning to hear that little voice, but unlike it sounded on those fall school days, it comes with nothing frightening or fearful. Instead, it is a gentle guide, nudging me this way or turning me slightly that way, so that I’m always on the right path. The message is finally being heard, even if I don’t always like what is being said, even if it’s going to mean more work, more effort, more confronting those difficult demons so deeply embedded from so many years ago.
Fall is the ideal time for such a reconfiguration: a moment to reset and restart. Right after every restart, the screen has to go dark for a bit. In the past, I would have turned away from the darkness, and possibly offered something lighter and frivolous to counteract the lack of illumination. This year – the wretched beast that is 2020 – I’m not going that traditional route. I’m going to embrace the darkness. I’m going to walk with it, and try to understand it better. I’m going to befriend it and fold it into my life. There is no true daylight without a night that comes before it.
I WALK AWAY LIKE A MOVIE STAR WHO GETS BURNED IN A THREE WAY SCRIPT ENTER NUMBER TWO, A MOVIE QUEEN TO PLAY THE SCENE OF BRINGING ALL THE GOOD THINGS OUT IN ME BUT FOR NOW LOVE LETS BE REAL
I NEVER THOUGHT I COULD ACT THIS WAY AND I’VE GOT TO SAY THAT I JUST DON’T GET IT I DON’T KNOW WHERE WE WENT WRONG BUT THE FEELINGS GONE AND I JUST CAN’T GET IT BACK
Not gonna lie, this fall is likely to be brutal, and in all bluntness I don’t know how we are going to do it. How do you heal a nation so divided? How do you repair and mend all the emotional damage that is still being rendered? How do you socially distance for an entire holiday season?
But everything that has already happened in 2020 has revealed that we can do it, even if nothing is stable, even if there is nothing of which we can be certain anymore. There is something terrifying about that. Something incredibly freeing too. When the notions of safety and security turn out to be tethers, sometimes it’s better that they break.
Into that darkness, may we fall with freely-given abandon, and let it bring about something more beautiful, more colorful, more enriching and more empowering.
Fall begins again…
IF YOU COULD READ MY MIND LOVE WHAT A TALE MY THOUGHTS COULD TELL JUST LIKE AN OLD TIME MOVIE ABOUT A GHOST FROM A WISHING WELL IN A CASTLE DARK OR A FORTRESS STRONG WITH CHAINS UPON MY FEET THE STORY ALWAYS ENDS AND IF YOU READ BETWEEN THE LINES YOU’LL KNOW THAT I’M JUST TRYING TO UNDERSTAND THE FEELING THAT YOU LEFT
I NEVER THOUGHT I COULD FEEL THIS WAY AND I’VE GOT TO SAY THAT I JUST DON’T GET IT I DON’T KNOW WHERE WE WENT WRONG BUT THE FEELING’S GONE AND I JUST CAN’T GET IT BACK
This summer’s soundtrack belonged indisputably to Taylor Swift’s ‘folklore’ album, which was gorgeously low-key, saturated with a searing melancholy, and accented by a melodic beauty missing from a lot of pop music these days. For these last few days of summer, and just before we begin the seasonal recap, give this cut a listen – it’s called ‘This Is Me Trying’, and it makes the perfect accompaniment to one of the last swims of the season, fittingly cloaked by the night, perfumed by the angels, and draped in ambivalence.
I’VE BEEN HAVING A HARD TIME ADJUSTING
I HAD THE SHINIEST WHEELS NOW THEY’RE RUSTING
I DIDN’T KNOW IF YOU’D CARE IF I CAME BACK
I HAVE A LOT OF REGRETS ABOUT THAT
PULLED THE CAR OFF THE ROAD TO THE LOOKOUT
COULD’VE FOLLOWED MY FEARS ALL THE WAY DOWN
AND MAYBE I DON’T QUITE KNOW WHAT TO SAY
BUT I’M HERE IN YOUR DOORWAY
I JUST WANTED YOU TO KNOW THAT THIS IS ME TRYING
It’s the way the water pulls you down, at that time of the year when the water is warmer than the air, when the only way out is through, when the wilderness of night floats above the break of day, and you swim down deeper into the warmth, into the place from which we came. That crux of summer and fall, that space between happy and sad, and all you want to do is let go and release and succumb to the darkness. It might be easier that way. It might be better to sink all the way down…
THEY TOLD ME ALL OF MY CAGES WERE MENTAL
SO I GOT WASTED LIKE ALL MY POTENTIAL
AND MY WORDS SHOOT TO KILL WHEN I’M MAD
I HAVE A LOT OF REGRETS ABOUT THAT
I WAS SO AHEAD OF THE CURVE, THE CURVE BECAME A SPHERE
FELL BEHIND ALL MY CLASSMATES AND I ENDED UP HERE
POURING OUT MY HEART TO A STRANGER
BUT I DIDN’T POUR THE WHISKEY
I JUST WANTED YOU TO KNOW THAT THIS IS ME TRYING
Will we ever make sense of this summer, or better yet this year? I don’t know… I don’t know. What were the lessons we were supposed to learn? Even the teachers don’t seem to know. Where has all the wisdom been hidden? At the bottom of the ocean ~ deep and dark and impenetrable ~ or the bottom of the pool ~ empty and full at the same time, like the heart and the head? In this warm water of life, like the fluid in which we all began before being expelled or pulled into cold, vicious air, I float down, falling gently, waiting for something or someone to break my fall. Only no one is there.
AT LEAST I’M TRYING…
AND IT’S HARD TO BE AT A PARTY
WHEN I FEEL LIKE AN OPEN WOUND
IT’S HARD TO BE ANYWHERE THESE DAYS
WHEN ALL I WANT IS YOU
YOU’RE A FLASHBACK IN A FILM REEL
ON THE ONE SCREEN IN MY TOWN
AND I JUST WANTED YOU TO KNOW THAT THIS IS ME TRYING
We laughed and we ran, we played and we danced, we stumbled and we fell – that’s what summers are for, and we took our cues from the stars and the moon. We weren’t perfect, and we made mistakes, but we never gave up. The older we get, the less we understand, and the less it seems to matter. There comes a time when understanding is a luxury, when survival is more the raw stuff of breathing and sleeping and moving solemnly through the silence, through the hurt.
And so I move through the water and the summer, and if I come out at the other end maybe we’ll find each other there.
While we wait ever-so-patiently for the new pool liner to come in, here’s a glimpse of the distant past ~ a pool shot taken way back in 2000, in the summer when I met Andy. That summer was largely a rainy one, but there were glimpses of sun, and a fair share of pool-ready days. Coupled with the central ari conditioning system at my parents’ house, it was a no-brainer to escape to the heat of Boston and spend the season in Amsterdam. (New York – upstate. Don’t think it was the better-known Amsterdam in glamorous Europe. The only pot we had came from the dog next door.)
It was the dawn of the new millennium but the music charts harkened to the hey-day of the 1980’s with Madonna’s ‘Music’ just coming up and Janet Jackson’s ‘Doesn’t Really Matter’ surfacing at #1. There were boy bands in the form of the Backstreet Boys and ‘N Sync, and at 25 ripe years of age I still hadn’t quite decided to age out of stanning for them. In so many ways, it feels like such a simpler time. We hadn’t yet been attacked on 9/11, and our country certainly hadn’t lost 150,000 people to a pandemic and poor leadership.
Nutty, nutty, nutty indeed…
Such a simpler time. Even Britney was still that innocent, and Janet’s nipple piercing was but a wanna-be twinkle in Justin Timberlake’s eyes. Summer was the way summer should be – light and effervescent, with just enough rain to cast a subtle melancholy glow over certain days, but not enough to dampen the spirits for longer than a few hours. It rebounded in sunshine and sunflowers, elongating through the underestimated month of September, even daring to seep into the first couple of weeks of October.
More than a pool or even the ease of summer, today I long for the simplicity that comes with being twenty-five years old in the year 2000. That won’t ever happen again, not for anyone. The world has changed. And summer will forever be different.
For all of her career, Taylor Swift has put me on a pendulum of love and hate. It would regularly and consistently swing back and forth between the two emotions ~ for every ‘Out of the Woods’ there was some shot of her dancing in the audience of some awards show. I had whiplash from the extremes she inspired.
The past few years, and her last couple of albums, have made me more solidly on the love side, as she courted more dance-pop maneuvers and took some brave political stances against the Republican awfulness happening right now.
Then, in a surprise move paved by Beyonce, Swift released an entire album of new material without more than a day’s warning. Whimsically entitled ‘folklore’ I didn’t expect much in this collection of songs created during the COVID isolation we have all been going through. Quite frankly, I was ready to be rather annoyed by some tortured isolationist bullshit by another super-rich celebrity who was finding it difficult to quarantine in their three mansions by the sea.
I was wrong.
This album is quite possibly the best Taylor Swift album I’ve heard. Hell, it’s the only Swift album I’ve heard in its entirety because it is just that good. It doesn’t have any instantly-boffo bops like ‘Shake It Off’, and it may be lacking the aural-candy of her recent pop hooks, but what she delivers in place of those popularity grabs is a cohesive soundscape of story songs. It emits a chilled-out vibe that has it uncharacteristically categorized as an alternative album ~ surely the first in her career ~ and may just be the antidote for a summer of discontent and horror.
(Lead single ‘Cardigan’ isn’t even the best of the bunch – try ‘Exile’ or ‘August’ or ‘This Is Me Trying’.) The collection of ‘folklore’ deserves to be heard in its entirety, on a somber summer day, or a sultry summer night, and this kind of artistry and power transcends genre, image, and reinvented musical glory.
Crafting compelling musical art occasionally feels like it should come easier during the peaks and valleys of our twenties than the less volatile and extreme moments of our forties, but Rufus Wainwright defies that notion with the gorgeously dramatic ‘Unfollow The Rules’ – an album that could only be created by someone who’s seen those peaks and valleys, survived them (sometimes quite barely), and lived to push and defy and challenge.
“I’m no Hercules, and this is Herculean,” he laments on the title track, “And tomorrow I’ll just be feeling the pain.” He continues, “Don’t give me what I want, just give me what I’m needing,” and amid one of the most exquisitely beautiful arrangements it’s a heartbreaking and sobering look at the cost of living, measured in careful consideration, a notion not accessible to most of us in our twenties, and a telling treasure map of all the places he’s already been.
Not that any definitive peace or resolution results from that awareness or resignation – see opening track ‘Trouble in Paradise’ – a lovely, languid jam that sounds as good as its tension-celebrating ambivalence conveys a shaky balance. Mr. Wainwright has always been a bit of a trickster in his work, shape-shifting and winking at every unexpected turn and key change. ‘Unfollow the Rules’ finds him endearingly in trickster mode, reminiscent of his very best work, now imbued with some hard-won wisdom, or at least the chuckle of acknowledging the occasional lack-thereof.
‘Romantical Manâ’ neatly addresses critics and all the accompanying heaps of detritus piled high on those daring to be “romantical” in such a cynical universe. ‘Peaceful Afternoon’ wryly describes thirteen years of a relationship – a feat for any two people to survive – and might be one of the greatest songs about marriage ever written. Magnificently capturing both the ennui and ever-changeable excitement that exist simultaneously in any long-term relationship, this ‘Afternoon’ is a lovely piece of music, taking flight and soaring with its strings and backing vocals, while positing whether the mundane can be beautiful, and why ever not?
Biting-humor and wicked-wit sharply-intact, ‘This One’s For the Ladies (THAT LUNGE!)’ finds Wainwright working through the search for peace and paradise as a harp weaves its luscious scales like golden threads into a wondrous land “where people listen to your plan” and “where no one stares at your face.” The Sondheim-celebrated ladies who lunch have always struck me as more than just socialites who have nothing but time and money on their hands; they seem more like unhappy, or at least slightly discontent, objects of beauty looking for purpose as much as for an escape. The meandering and queasy music personifies the ways we make such an escape.
Just when you think he may have it all figured out, or at least found a way to make some peace with all of it, he begins the glorious dirge of ‘Early Morning Madness’ which locates an early morning sadness where “I’m a perfect mess.” The only solution is to go back to bed until the dinner bell rouses him again. The battle with one’s own demons, addiction or otherwise, has never been more beautifully rendered than in this morning-after musing. The entire album leads up to this operatic highlight – a marvelous trough that holds its own dim beauty, and the solace of leaning into those moments of madness. Plunging exuberantly into the skittering strings and high drama of ‘Devils and Angels (Hatred)’, the song-cycle trio that ends the album embodies the richly-varied work that Wainwright has added to his impressive oeuvre in recent years.
Closing track ‘Alone Time’ reminds the world that sometimes Rufus and a piano is all we ever really needed to get away from it all, a very pleasant reminder in these perilous times. It’s also a call for some solitude at a time when we are all both connected and disconnected in so many ways – as much a need for an artist as for a husband as for a father and for a son. In crafting such a timely album, Wainwright has managed to make it timeless, the magic stroke of a genius artist in top form.
A wink to Madonna is hook enough for me to follow like a love-struck dog, and so I was hot on the trail of the latest video from Bright Light Bright Light, which is the fabulously retro ‘I Used to be Cool’ – and it arrives just in time to become a top contender for song of the summer. Thus far that search has been a rather drab and dour affair, dovetailing with the disaster that is 2020 as a whole. Uninspiring, depressing, and downright dangerous, the start of summer has never been this wretched. And so we turn to this piece of perfect pop escapism, in the nick of time to turn things around. While our pool remains unopened and in perpetual repair, a pool-themed video is precisely what we need to live out our fantasies, summer-style… just let the music set you free…
Bright Light Bright Light has already been named a Hunk of the Day here, and this only emboldens that selection, while setting up an almost-certain bid for a repeat Hunk performance. In the meantime, put this playful puppy on repeat and get your summer jam on, even, and especially, if you don’t have a pool right now.
Certain music makes my heart swell. If you’ve seen the movie ‘Up’ you may be similarly affected by its musical motif. If you haven’t, it’s a Disney/Pixar film that has what some have cited as the most devastating opening of any Disney film, and I’ll admit that if you don’t get a little choked up by the start, I question whether you possess the human emotions necessary to appreciate anything here. As for me, the music is tinged with vaguely-summer memories. Happiness and hope, shot through with a little sorrow; we all wilt a little in too much heat.
I remember watching this in the theater the first time with Andy. It was the summer of 2009 – a year before we were going to be married. Seeing the opening couple go through their life without kids resonated, as did the fullness of the life they ended up sharing. As we near our 20th anniversary of being together, I’m once again moved by the music and the sentiment this recalls.
For the last century, the universe has been whispering to humanity to slow down, to dwell in stillness and take in pockets of quietude. Lately, it’s begun to scream and rage since no one seems to be listening. If you’re looking for something deep to help you process everything that’s gone on over the past few months, or if you’re simply looking for something to help you get through the damn day, I found the perfect album for meditative rumination.
A thirteen-song musical cycle that is as delicately-nuanced and shaded as its cover art ~ a corner room looking over what might be either the rise or fall of the sun on a body of water – ‘Welcome Home’ is written and performed by one of my brother’s friends, Karel Barnoski, whom I remember with much amusement from our childhood days of playing hide and seek. Hearing him in this realm makes me marvel at the wondrous possibilities that life lays out for each of us, and what we decide to make of them.
Opening with the jaunty ‘Interplay’ the mood is initially playful, which is fitting for the memories I have of Karel as a kid. By track two, however, things take a thoughtful turn: ‘Bath’ offers a balm to everything going on in the world right now ~ a contemplative, sparse soundscape that seems to encapsulate so much of the quiet and stillness that reveals Barnoski’s mastery of the space in-between the notes.
Title track and album centerpiece ‘Welcome Home’ is tailor-made for 2020. Home is many things to many people ~ not always a place, not always a happy frame of mind ~ but it’s what grounds us, it’s what centers us. We may not have grown up in a perfect household, but even the most nomadic among us carries around an essence of home ~ a place, whether physical or spiritual ~ that speaks to us in its own way. Finding that space, and keeping it sacred, is a big part of our journey in this world. The music here allows that place to exist.
‘2019’ is one of the first pieces I’d ever heard Barnoski play on one of his FaceBook live events. It arrived just as we were all hunkering down in our stay-at-home existence. Maybe that’s why it feels a little more powerful ~ the way a song melds to a moment that, as it’s happening, you somehow realize will be historical and resonant, that you are making a memory that will burn itself indelibly into who you are about to become. Here, it offers calm and beauty, refuge and consideration, a way of sorting out whatever ails your own little world. I’ve kept this one on repeat when writing, and it clears the mind and heart like a mini-meditation.
‘The Knife’ brings an underlying tension to the proceedings, darker shadings and a stormy turbulence that is only partially resolved in its dramatic continuation, ‘The Knife (Jam)’ – seven-plus minutes of musical excitement that is a journey unto itself. About halfway through the storm gives way to calm, and a sort of ambivalent resignation, then swirls back around for one final flourish before letting everything settle down again.
The dim mood conjured by ‘Isolation’ perfectly embodies so much of 2020 and reminds me that music and art still matter, that they still provide a haven and comfort for all people. A work of beauty is an invitation for everyone to appreciate, one of the last and perhaps only truly egalitarian systems we have as a civilization. Barnoski touches upon the events of the past few months in his titles, such as ‘Quarantine’ and ‘Stir Crazy’ and if a pandemic keeping us all home results in such glorious work, then it appears the universe is seeing us through these changes and ushering in a new normal framed with beauty, framed with an appreciation for something quieter, something that sounds like a piano being played for the sake of all of us ~ to keep us calm, to keep us together as much as we are apart, to keep us from going crazy.
Every once in a while a collection of music will come along that so deftly and magnificently captures a moment that it’s unclear whether it was the hands of the artist or the hands of the universe guiding us into such states of rapture and beauty. ‘Welcome Home’ stakes its claim of timelessness thanks to the artistry of Barnoski and the way he blankets a difficult world in swaddling clothes of musical consolation. He plays the hurt into the heart, allowing it to have its time and moment there, then plays it gently away, and we are better for having heard and felt it.
Final track ‘All Together Now’ brings back the theme from ‘Welcome Home’ ~ a happy and hopeful return to a time that may not come again, and that may or not have ever been. That’s the remarkable gift this song cycle ends up being ~ it gets us as close to the human experience as music ever can, carving out the space for us to confront demons, reconcile turmoil, and create a new reality. ‘Welcome Home’ is a session of sonic therapy we could all use right now.
This is just for the second night of summer. Turns out I had the foresight to put this on our first summer mix, and it came on over the stereo as I wilted from the midday heat, without a pool or a new summer fragrance. Is there a sadder state in which to find oneself? Don’t answer, universe, I already know there’s nothing to complain about. Certainly not on the second night of summer.
Well it’s the second day of summer
You already got me sweating about it
Oh it’s the second night of summer
And I’m disintegrating without you
Throwing me that shade like I’m not cool enough
Throwing me that shade like I’m not
Like I’m not cool enough
Throwing me that shade like I’m not
Like I’m not
Like I’m not cool enough
Not cool enough
Some songs are no longer relatable to me lyrically. When we’re talking about a woman who’s getting on a plane with a carry-on and without me, well, what’s the big deal? And if anyone is throwing me shade, I’m throwing it right back, and the shade I throw is the stuff of endless night. Some songs I simply like because of the way they sound, the way I did as a kid before I know what ‘virgin’ or ‘preach‘ meant. Isn’t that the point of a pop song anyway? This one is taking me away in a haze of heat, riding waves of hot air like I’m not cool enough…
Sun up and sun down
Sun up and sun down
As for this second night of summer, the heat is on. Beating a hasty retreat to the interior of air-conditioned coolness, I sink gratefully to the floor, where a soft rug awaits my lotus-positioned body, folding in on itself like some intricate piece of origami. Closing my eyes, I take in the start of summer, on its second day – the forgotten day, because everyone only talks about the first day, and what does the second even matter?
Well it’s the second day of summer
You already got me sweating about it
Oh it’s the second night of summer
And I’m disintegrating without you
Throwing me that shade like I’m not cool enough
Throwing me that shade like I’m not
Like I’m not cool enough
Throwing me that shade like I’m not
Like I’m not
Like I’m not cool enough
Not cool enough
THE SUN HAS LEFT AND FORGOTTEN ME
IT’S DARK, I CANNOT SEE
WHY DOES THIS RAIN POUR DOWN?
I’M GONNA DROWN IN A SEA
OF DEEP CONFUSION
‘Hang On Little Tomato’ is a song by Pink Martini that perfectly personifies this almost-summer moment in a year that has just gone completely bonkers. It’s swerved riotously into cray-cray territory in ways we probably won’t fully comprehend and realize until we’re all dead and buried and the history stored in the cloud reads back like a doomsday novel. Not quite the beginning of summer most of us had hoped for, and certainly not the celebratory year I had in mind for 2020, but then I hear this song, and I take a few deep breaths, and I realize we will be ok if we just hang on…
This happy song reminds me of the baby shower I threw for Suzie and Pat before the birth of Oona. It was in November, but the weekend it took place was a glorious throwback to a late summer moment – all sun and warmth and beams of happiness. Suzie’s spirit has always been infectiously upbeat, even when pregnant, and this song and album added to the joy and quirky atmosphere of a baby shower thrown by a not-quite-baby-friendly yours truly. It turned out lovely enough – the guests make a party, and Suzie’s pals (along with her Mom’s pals) were a hoot unto themselves. It’s not easy to throw-back to summer in November, but we managed it, thanks partly to this song.
SOMEBODY TOLD ME, I DON’T KNOW WHO
WHENEVER YOU ARE SAD AND BLUE
AND YOU’RE FEELIN’ ALL ALONE AND LEFT BEHIND
JUST TAKE A LOOK INSIDE YOU YOU’LL FIND
YOU GOTTA HOLD ON
HOLD ON THROUGH THE NIGHT
HANG ON
THINGS WILL BE ALL RIGHT
EVEN WHEN IT’S DARK AND NOT A BIT OF SPARKLING
SING-SONG SUNSHINE FROM ABOVE
SPREADING RAYS OF SUNNY LOVE
This year, Suzie delivered a tomato growing container, fences and all, from her Mom, and we planted a few tomato plants – the first vegetables we’ve planted in probably ten years. Seemed a good time to do so – end of the world and all – and we already have some fruit forming on the lower branches of the upward-reaching vines. Tomatoes can be tricky to grow well – susceptible to certain diseases and growing dangers – but I was raised by a father whose main claim to cultivating fame was a vegetable garden robust with tomatoes that lined the garage sill in all stages, shapes and sizes of ripeness. We had an excess of the red fruit, matched only by the number of zucchini from his other garden. I learned the power of manure and proper soil preparation. Witnessing firsthand the back-breaking work turning over a decent patch of soil required, the way my father worked well into the dwindling light of the evening to make the dirt a welcoming home. He would then nestle the tomato plants deeply into the ground at an angle, piling the soil up most of the stem because he knew the roots would grow from the whole stem, stabilizing the plant. They soon righted themselves, rooted in stability, and then quickly began their fruit production. We began picking tomatoes soon thereafter and didn’t let up until the fall. There were many BLT sandwiches, or just simple fresh slices with some salt and pepper. They seemed to taste better coming out of one’s own garden.
JUST HANG ON
HANG ON TO THE VINE
STAY ON
SOON YOU’LL BE DIVINE
IF YOU START TO CRY, LOOK UP TO THE SKY
SOMETHING’S COMING UP AHEAD
TO TURN YOUR TEARS TO DEW INSTEAD
Andy grew tomatoes in the garden at his first house too – bushels of cherry tomatoes, along with some peppers. He had a little trouble with the beefsteak variety – one of which I made the mistake of planting this year (we shall see) and when we planted some at our current house, it was always hit and miss.
One fall we neglected to get to all the fruit before the killing frost, and the next year a multitude of sports popped up. We let them grow, eagerly anticipating the sweet tartness of whatever hybrid we had, only to be disappointed with the bitter flavor of some second-hand wannabes. Since then, we’ve avoided the laborious vegetable garden in favor of pretty perennials that returned year after year, growing in size with an easier routine of maintenance. But we missed the fresh bright fruit of a homegrown tomato, so this year we said yes to a container from Aunt Elaine, and currently are coddling a trio of plants just beginning to offer their first crop of fruit.
AND SO I HOLD ON TO HIS ADVICE
WHEN CHANGE IS HARD AND NOT SO NICE
IF YOU LISTEN TO YOUR HEART THE WHOLE NIGHT THROUGH
YOUR SUNNY SOMEDAY WILL COME ONE DAY SOON TO YOU
Every day, I visit the little tomatoes we have, watching them with a protective gaze and sending up a crop of little prayers that they make it – that some spell of mildew doesn’t take them out, that they don’t fall prey to the proliferation of chipmunks in the neighborhood, that something else doesn’t cut short their treacherous road to ripening. After the year we’ve already had, I don’t have much faith… but I’m still hanging on.
At this time of the year, there are stars in the sky from dawn to dusk, as the Chinese dogwood carries its bracts above its bright green foliage. They put me in the mind of this song, which I am only just beginning to understand and hear as if for the first time. The lyrics are haunting. I will not print them here. Not yet. They should be heard as they were sung, the way the artist intended.
Who can say what art even means anymore, what purpose it serves, what good and evil it works in the world. I always wonder about such things in times such as these. When the universe turns brutal, and leaves us with lessons we may or may not be ready to learn, it knocks the wind out of me for a while. I question everything and feel uninspired. Unable to activate the usual frivolous drive that impels me to decorate the atmosphere around me with silly, pretty things, it’s like the rudder was removed and I’m spinning in aimless circles. I can’t even properly formulate a simile or metaphor – it all sounds like a mess.
