My Year With Proust - Day 360

And so I wrote to Mme de Cambremer to decline, just as, an hour ago, I had sent Albertine away: grief had destroyed in me the possibility of desire as completely as a high fever takes away one's appetite . . . My mother was to arrive the following day.  I felt that I was less unworthy to live in her company, that I should understand her better, now that a whole alien and degrading existence had given way to the resurgence of the heartrending memories that encircled and ennobled my soul, like hers, with their crown of thorns.  So I thought; but in reality there was a world of difference between real grief, like my mother's - which literally crushes the life out of you for years if not for ever, when one has lost the person one loves - and that other kind of grief, transitory when all is said, as mine was to be, which passes as quickly as it has been slow in coming, which we do not experience until long after the event because in order to feel it we need first to "understand" the event; grief such as so many people feel, from which the grief that was torturing me at this moment differed only in assuming the form of involuntary memory.

   That I was one day to existence a grief as profound as that of my mother will be seen in the course of this narrative, but it was neither then nor thus that I imagined it.

Marcel Proust, Cities of the Plain, pp. 795-796

First off, let me start with the conclusion of this passage.  I cull out sections from Remembrance of Things Past for several reasons, ranging widely from their relationship to essential themes in the novel or life to sections which I just find extraordinarily beautiful.  However, sometimes I also tag passages simply because Proust, as is his wont, is hinting at future actions.  So, clearly, we have heartbreak to come.

Proust includes an interesting commentary on the difference between his mother's grief, "which literally crushes the life out of you for years if not for ever," and his own, "which passes as quickly as it has been slow in coming."  There is a difference, obviously, between losing a grandparent and a parent, although both are painful.  It seems to me that when a grandparent dies you lose part of the innocence and wonder of childhood as part of the unconditional love that grandparents give you that your parents never quite do, which means that when they die part of your childhood finally dies.  Whereas when a parent dies the great wheel of life has turned, and, even if you're not thinking of it at that moment, you're now next in the queue; so, I would argue, you are also grieving for yourself and your diminishing future.

Part of the difference, I'm sure, relates to our clumsy (although not Proust's, clearly) use of language.  We're imprecise and lazy, and few people are as imprecise and lazy in their language as I am, but I do try. For example, I always chide the kids, both my son and the ones who are passing through my life now, to be careful in their use of language, especially a word like "hate."  I inevitably point out to them that they strongly dislike something, which is not the same as hating it.  The other day I finished my discussion with this point, which I think is logically iron clad and impervious to critique: "Someday you're going to come to me and tell me that you hate someone and that you want me to help kill them.  Now, I'm always happy to help, but I need to know that you're serious and that you actually hate this person more than you do meatloaf."  Their response: ". . . OK . . . thanks . . . Mom!"

My Year With Proust - Day 359

And I asked nothing more of God, if a paradise exists, than to be able, there, to knock on that wall with the three little raps which my grandmother would recognise among a thousand, and to which she would give those answering knock which meant: "Don't fuss, little mouse, I know you're impatient, but I'm just coming," and that he would let me stay with her throughout eternity, which would not be too long for the two of us.

Marcel Proust, Cities of the Plain, p. 790

One of the most touching moments so far in Remembrance of Things Past was Proust's earlier reflection of how when he was much younger he would tap on the wall to signal his grandmother.  He ends this heartbreaking dream sequence, featuring loss, loneliness and regret, with this beautiful redemptive prayer.  I've been talking for sometime about having my son convey my ashes to the Wadi Rum in Jordan for dispersal, with the romantic idea that I'll join the jinn in haunting the desert.  However, if I spent eternity in a childlike state of innocence and wonder, drinking Bosco with my grandmother Maude in her little kitchen in Rising Sun and/or "helping" my grandmother Alice run her old country store (which mainly consisted of me depleting her candy supply from that old cracked glass display case) I can't imagine that God could offer me much more.

Rising Sun to No Sun

And another in my series of silly pictures of me wearing my Rising Sun, Indiana t-shirt overseas.  I normally do not like pictures of myself, for the obvious reason (I know I'm getting older and don't need the constant reminder), but for some organic reason this has become a thing.  Since it is unplanned there is not any real main logical reason for it, although I suspect it's somewhere between an homage to Rising Sun and a celebration of the fact that I don't live in Indiana anymore.  Someone suggested I should collect them all and send them to the local Rising Sun newspaper, which seems funny although I could also see some people taking it the wrong way.  A few years ago someone prodded me on Facebook to answer some question about the farthest north, south, east and west you had ever been, which I did, and then received grief for showing off.  I'm afraid the same thing would happen here.  The picture was snapped by my son on the edge of a cliff in Hellnar, Iceland, as I tried desperately to not be blown into the ocean.

About five minutes later a squall blew in from the ocean and it was a complete whiteout for an hour; luckily we had walked back to the nice little local coffeeshop so we could enjoy the show in peace (and latte fueled warmth).

My Year With Proust - Day 358

" . . . She must think that I've forgotten her now that she's dead; how lonely she must be feeling, how deserted!  Oh, I must hurry to see her, I mustn't lose a minute, I can't wait for my father to come - but where is it?  How can I have forgotten the address?  Will she know me again, I wonder?  How can I have forgotten her all these months?  It's so dark, I shan't be able to find her; the wind is holding me back; but look! there's my father walking ahead of me . . ." I call out to him: "Where is grandmother?  Tell me her address.  Is she all right?  Are you quite sure she has everything she needs?" "Yes, yes," says my father, "you needn't worry.  Her nurse if well trained.  We send her a little money from time to time, so that she can get your grandmother anything she may need.  She sometimes asks what's become of you.  She was told you were going to write a book.  She seemed pleased.  She wiped away a tear." And then I seemed to remember that shortly after her death, my grandmother had said to me, sobbing, with a humble look, like an old servant who has been given notice, like a stranger: "You will let me see something of you occasionally, won't you; don't let too many years go by without visiting me.  Remember that you were my grandson, once, and that grandmothers never forget."  And seeing again that face of hers, so submissive, so sad, so tender, I wanted to run to her at once and say to her, as I ought to have said to her then: "Why, grandmother, you can see me as often as you like, I have only you in the world, I shall never leave you any more." What tears my silence must have made her shed through all those months in which I have never been to the place where she is lying!  What can she have been saying to herself? And it is in a voice choked with tears that I too shout to my father: "Quick, quick, her address, take me to her." But he says: "Well . . . I don't know whether you will be able to see her.  Besides, you know, she's very frail now, very frail, she's not at all herself, I'm afraid you would find it rather painful.  And I can't remember the exact number of the avenue." "But tell me, you who know, it's not true that the dead have ceased to exist.  It can't possibly be true, in spite of what they say, because grandmother still exists." My father smiles a mournful smile: "Oh, hardly at all, you know, hardly at all.  I think it would be better if you didn't go.  She has everything that she wants.  They come and keep the place tidy for her." "But is she often alone?" "Yes, but that's better for her.  It's better for her not to think, it could only make her unhappy.  Thinking often makes people unhappy.  Besides, you know, she is quite lifeless now.  I shall leave a note of the exact address, so that you can go there; but I don't see what good you can do, and I don't suppose the nurse will allow you to see her." 

Marcel Proust, Cities of the Plain, pp. 788-789

Proust's dream about his grandmother continues, and his father arrives.  This entire passage is just heart-breaking.  I keep reflecting back on my own grandmother, in this case Maude, my father's mother.  When I have these melancholy reflections she is my default setting, as compared to my mother's mother, Alice.  It's not that I didn't love Alice, or, as we called her, Phoodie (because of her odd/endearing habit of saying "phoodie doodie"), but because she was always a much more active presence in my life, and actually lived with us for a while when I was growing up.  Alice's health was much better and I don't think she was ever in the hospital more than a couple days in her entire life, until one day she got up, prepared herself for the day's Phoodie business, and dropped dead of a stroke.  So, when I think of someone fading away alone I always default to my grandmother Maude, who lived years beyond my grandfather Herb's (Jum) passing.

But the thing here is that Proust is discussing his dead grandmother, and Marcel, in that strange dream logic, completely understands that fact.  Consequently, this ends up being a rumination on the next world, and that most Proustian of phenomena: memory.  What do we owe the dead?  It seems that the least we owe them is memory, which is also often the least we give them.  We have no trouble spending their inheritance or going into debt to provide the fancy funeral that Lucinda Williams brilliantly critiqued but then we forget about them.  In my gentler moments I think that funerals, although never expensive ones, serve the same point as the Jewish custom of limiting the public display of suffering.  However, in the case of expensive ones it's another example of the commodification of everything, in this case grief, that dominates, and blights, a capitalist society.  I don't know, maybe it's the same thing as parents who throw lots of money at gifts for their kids, because it's simply less exhausting than spending them with them.

Marcel wants to visit his grandmother, if only in dreams.  His father tells him it's probably impossible: "Well . . . I don't know whether you will be able to see her.  Besides, you know, she's very frail now, very frail, she's not at all herself, I'm afraid you would find it rather painful.  And I can't remember the exact number of the avenue."  She is fading and is very frail, but in this case it is her memory that is fading and is very frail.  As part of this lovely metaphoric rumination on memory and loss and meaning (which feels like it belongs in one of those dark Dicken's Christmas stories), Marcel asks his father about the afterlife: "But tell me, you who know, it's not true that the dead have ceased to exist.  It can't possibly be true, in spite of what they say, because grandmother still exists."  His father's answer seems terribly true and truly terrible: "Oh, hardly at all, you know, hardly at all.  I think it would be better if you didn't go.  She has everything that she wants. . ."  He admits that she is alone, "but that's better for her.  It's better for her not to think, it could only make her unhappy.  Thinking often makes people unhappy.  Besides, you know, she is quite lifeless now."

The other day in my Dar al-Islam class we were discussing the point that Nasr makes in his brilliant book The Heart of Islam that whereas in Christianity the greatest sin is to disobey God, in Islam the greatest sin is to forget God (essentially meaning that the notion of tawhid, or oneness, is so central to Islam that one could not logically make the decision to break with God, but a person, being human and thus terribly flawed, might forget; I know enough atheists who have left Islam, at least temporarily, that it's important to remember that Nasr's point is more aspirational than definitive).  Is forgetfulness the greatest sin of all relationships?
  

Discography - Week 41

We have reached Week 41 in our Discography music discussion, which is also our penultimate thematic week.  Due to a series of high level meetings with the esteemed Bob Craigmile we are going to discuss the Best Guitar Solos and/or the Best Guitar Songs (Bob suggested Solos and I added an amendment, because I'm all about compromise).

Bob Craigmile

My pick for guitar solo is Pink Floyd's Comfortably Numb, which actually has TWO solo sections and the second one is almost like two solos itself. 

The first solo at around 2:40 soars like some sort of elegant raptor looking for a place to land.  It's brief and really is just a break 

The longer second solo at 5:05 is the eagle (sorry to be so corny) spying it's prey and swooping into the attack.  Oddly, given my imagery, this solo has so much sadness haunting it. The Wall album and story arc is itself incredibly depressing, and I relate to it a little too well. 

One vector for depression I've learned is anger.  It can be anger that's turned inward (in my case).  Instead of being comfortably (at least physically) numb, there is a numbness that is also uncomfortable and I believe that the solo indicates this conflict between anger and sadness in dramatic, even epic, fashion.  The lyrics and movie make this case, given Pink's missing father and messed up Mum, not to mention the drama at school.  But you could only listen to the solo to hear it all.

One wonders what our current President makes of this song.  He's of the same generation as Roger Waters (3 years apart).  Had some sort of troubled relationship with his father (was shipped off to military school), got rich and famous and fucked it all up, including marriages and kids.  Alas, I come not to analyze the Orange or the Pink.  

I think that a lot of men my age have trouble with emotions and expressing same (so my ex told me).  We really didn't have great models for it; this is not an excuse of course, but a reminder that we don't create ourselves, even if we're born rich, or our dad dies in the war.  Stuff happens.  This gets channeled into song and we somehow have a great solo from a guy who, despite being a male model, gets transforming pain into beauty.  Eagles fly.

A favorite guitar song is Funk 49  by the James Gang.  (Thanks to the aforementioned Rock Band video game, I also got into it with fake drums).  This song has some great crunchy riffs that just make other guitarists so jealous.  Einstein said imagination is more important than knowledge, and the guitar work on this song is full of imagination.  As opposed to Comfortably Numb, it's not unhappy, but has a great steady drive that puts a smile in my heart.

Gary Beatrice

The White Stripes, Blue Orchid 

Television, Marquee Moon 

Billy Joe Shaver, Georgia On a Fast Train 

I was a bit nervous when I saw that we were having a guitar week theme. I love guitars, but I've never really worshiped at the altar of the acknowledged guitar gods. I enjoy Jimi Hendrix and Eric Clapton et al, but not as much as others do. For the most part guitar solos kind of bore me. Please don't take my rock n roll critic credentials away.

But I am pretty sure the theme includes guitar driven music and I can do that. Hell I love that!

I never seriously played any instrument so I have no idea if Tom Verlaine and Jack White are skilled guitarists or if they are playing the way I type (with two fingers). But I know they sound cool as hell. Television came out of the 70s New York punk scene with Talking Heads, Blondie, Ramones, etc. (for more read Love = Buildings On Fire, thank you Dave W), and Jack White came out of the seminary with his sister Meg (Get Behind Me Satan!). Or so he says. At any rate, these are somewhat traditional guitar driven songs, songs that get stuck in my craw for days at a time, but pleasantly so.

Georgia On A Fast Train is a different story. 

B J Shaver is a renowned songwriter, writing dozens of country tunes for Waylon Jennings, Johnny Cash, and others among the stalwarts of traditional country music. But his son, Eddie, grew up in the 80's and found himself gravitating towards the guitar monsters of that time frame, particularly Eddie Van Halen (whom he was not named after).  Dad and son played together and the result was this perfect country song that rocks to high heaven.

Soon after this recording Eddie Shaver died of a heroin overdose.

Let's not let this happen to our children.

Dave Wallace

Richard Thompson, Can't Win

In what I'm sure will come as a relief to all of you, I'm taking a break from my Month of Trump theme to weigh in on this week's theme.  I can't swear that this is the best guitar solo ever, but it's a heck of a good one.  Richard Thompson is one of my favorite artists and an incredible triple-threat - amazing songwriter, terrific singer, incredible guitar player.  This live version of Can't Win shows off his guitar heroics at some of their best.  About 30 years ago, Gary Beatrice, my Dad, and I went and saw Thompson with his first solo band, following his break-up with his wife, Linda Thompson.  All of us walked out with our minds blown.  This version of Can't Win gives you a little taste of what we saw that night.

Jack Schultz

In my humble opinion, Gary Scudder chose the greatest guitar song of all time with his Week 24 selection of ‘In Memory of Elizabeth Reed’ by The Allman Brothers Band, as played on Live at the Fillmore East.  It features both Duane Allman and Dicky Betts jamming in an improvisational style inspired by Miles Davis and John Coltrane.  One can lose oneself in the epic riffs of this 10+ minute song.  It’s a masterpiece.  I can’t touch on The ABB this week without conveying the hope that Butch Trucks has found peace.

Since In Memory of Elizabeth Reed has previously been honored, I’ll go with one of my personal favorites—‘SmokingGun’ by Robert Cray.  The guitar solo herein may not be classic, but I find that I never grow tired of it.  There is a moderately controlled angst to the whole song.  I like the double meaning of the metaphoric smoking gun coupled with the literal smoking gun used by the jealous protagonist.  I saw Cray way back in 1989 and he delivered a no-nonsense, crisp performance. 

Prior to his successful solo career that got rolling in the mid-80s, a young Robert Cray can be seen in Animal House, as the bass player with Otis (that’s three straight weeks of Otis references) Day and the Knights.  Seriously. 

Phillip Seiler

Couldn't limit myself. Sorry:
___

Because I like to cheat, I have three selections for this week. The first two are, I think, obvious choices. Simply the best guitar solo I have ever seen was when Prince shredded “While my Guitar GentlyWeeps” at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame ceremony in 2004. I’m not much of a Prince fan. I recognize his immense talent but, for whatever reason, his songs don’t speak to my soul. But this solo is the definition of pure effortlessness. He is one with that guitar in a way I have never seen another play. It is a thing of pure beauty and joy. And he knows it. And he knows you know it. 

Song two is also no huge surprise. Dire Straits “Sultans of Swing”  This is my nominee for best guitar song. It has that beautiful infectious hook and then Mark Knopfler just builds his own wall of guitar around it. One could argue that the song exists merely to provide a structure for the guitar solos rather than the reverse. This is the 10 minute live version so settle in and get those headphones cranked up. Finally, a special shout out to the red sport coat and white athletic headband. I know what my uniform to the next 4 sport triathlon will be.

And finally, as an admitted Todd Rundgren fan I would be remiss if I did not draw attention to his notable chops on the guitar. Utopia - Singring and The Glass Guitar.  This song is indefensible and probably the best example of 70s goofy fantasy/prog rock miss-mash you will ever find. (Skip in to just before the 8 minute mark for the guitar solo if you don’t want to watch the full 14 minutes.) “I’m going to climb a giant pyramid on stage and be the top of it while I play a 2+ minute guitar solo.” Spinal Tap couldn’t satire this if they tried. Self-indulgent, nerdy as hell, bombastic as all get out. I love every minute of this nonsense.

Dave Mills

"Bulls on Parade" and "Killing in the Name" by Rage Against the Machine (guitarist, Tom Morello)

This is one of those theme weeks that pulls in way too many directions. Do I go for the classics and choose a track from Clapton, Jimmy Page, Hendrix, Roger Waters? Do I go for the blues with Stevie Ray Vaughn or B.B. King? Do I indulge my high school infatuation with hair metal and choose a track from Slash, Dave Mustaine, or Dimebag Darrell (sorry, just had to get the name of Pantera's guitarist in there -- it's just too good) Or? Or? Or?

In the end, the reign of the Orange Tyrant has once again swayed my choice, and I began to think of the guitar the way Woody Guthrie did: THIS MACHINE KILLS FASCISTS. Once I remembered Woody's guitar, the choice was clear. We need some unambiguous fascist-killing music here. And Tom Morello, of the band Rage Against the Machine (and some really fantastic political protest projects like The Nightwatchman) is taking dead aim at today's fascists with his guitar. 

I could probably choose just about any Rage song here, but "Bulls on Parade" (from their 1996 Evil Empire album) captures my mood right now. This song calls out the hypocrisy of "family values" candidates and voters who "rally 'round the family" but do so with "a pocket full of (shotgun) shells. "Weapons, not food, not homes, not shoes. Not need, just fed the war cannibal animal..." This is how we end up with bulls (cops in riot gear) on parade. Zach, the vocalist, also name-drops a Mexican revolutionary, Genovevo de la O, which I find very timely. The guitar work in this song is spot on for an angry political rant. It occupies this aggressive, angry, frenetic space between metal and hip-hop, with some rowdy funk flair thrown in for good measure. It gets me riled up every time, ready to march.

There's more great guitar work on "Killing in the Name" a song which also calls out hypocrisy and violence, focused this time on racist policing tactics. "Some of those who work forces (police officers) are those who burn crosses" is a repeated refrain. In the live version, they'll switch it up and sing "some of those who burn crosses are those who hold office." This was written in 1991, in response to the Rodney King beating, but sadly, it's still relevant, maybe even moreso, today, with the ascendency of Steve Bannon and his ilk. So here again, Rage channels my rage. The line repeated over and over at the end is "Fuck you! I won't do what you tell me!" Although the women's march in Montpelier last weekend wasn't anywhere near this rage-filled, it still feels like a first step to "Take the Power Back" (another Rage track I recommend). 

Dave Kelley

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Actual Week 41 Pick
Cream, Crossroads

"No further comment needed" DK
[editor's note: This sounds like a defiant statement of rock and roll purity, but mainly Dave forgot it was a thematic week (which means he gets to join Dave Wallace and myself in the Senior Moment Troika, because we also forgot and had to amend our posts)]
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Last weekend was a good one for the soul.  Not only did I attend a great, cathartic, restorative Frank Turner show, but it was also awesome to see the huge Women's Marches held around the country and the globe.  That has got me thinking about redemption, resilience, overcoming adversity, and refusing to surrender to dark forces.  At first I thought about using Tom Petty's "Won't Back Down" or "Redemption Song" by Bob Marley.  As much as I love those songs, I decided to go in a different direction with two other tunes.  Sometimes strength and resolve come from quiet contemplation.  At other times, they are reached communally in the presence of a lot of like minded people.  In the best of worlds, both take place. I would like to think my choices this week represent the two sides of that coin.

"This City"  Steve Earle

In the series Treme which is set in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, Steve Earle has a small recurring role as a busker and long time New Orleans resident.  The producers of the show asked him to write a song in the voice of his character, and he came up with this brilliant tune.  New Orleans was failed by its state, local, and national governments before, during, and after Katrina.  Yet it is still standing and remains my favorite American city to visit.  We are living in a post-Trump inauguration world and not New Orleans in the aftermath of Katrina, but the message is the same.  Especially if you want to view this country as that shining city on a hill.

"This city won't ever die

Just as long as her heart beats strong

Like a second line steppin' high

Raising hell as we roll along

Gentily to the Vieux Carre

Lower Nine, Central City, Uptown

Singing Jacamo Fee Nah Nay

This city won't ever drown

Doesn't matter cause there ain't no way

I'm ever gonna leave this town

This city won't wash away

This city won't ever drown."  

And the other side of the coin is:

"Get Better"  Frank Turner

DW has already mentioned the absolute awesomeness of the Frank Turner show that we saw last Saturday.  It would have been a tremendous concert regardless, but the fact that it came on the same day as the Women's marches and shortly after the inauguration of the lunatic whose name I need not mention, made it all the more special.  The crowd was raucous, and Turner made several comments from the stage in support of the marches and denouncing the president.  The show had a bit of a rally feel to it.  At the same time, the music and its performance were very positive and just a hell of a lot of fun.  As DW mentioned, I did not realize how much I needed a show like that until I experienced it.

"I got me a shovel

And I'm digging a ditch

And I'm going to fight for this four square feet of land

Like a mean old son of a bitch"

"We can do better

Because we're not dead yet."   

I feel like as our administration is showing the world the worst face possible, millions of people around the country are rallying around the better angels of our nature.  

Gary Scudder

Neil Young, Cowgirl in the Sand (live)

When we first started this project (now almost a year ago) I told myself that I was not going to overload on Neil Young songs, and, at least until recently, I did a pretty good job of that.  Maybe it's the trauma of the Trump presidency, but I've found myself dipping back into my memory of a happier, or at least more hopeful, age.  So, I guess not surprisingly, I'm promoting a NY song this week.  Beyond the deeply personal and purely subjective side of the issue, one of the reasons why I believe Young is the greatest of all time is that he is both a great song writer and a great musician.  There are better songwriters, but they either aren't transcendent musicians or ran out of things to say too quickly.  There are better guitarists, but they're not particularly inspired songwriters (a great example would be Eric Clapton - unless he's pushed he'll produce the worst dross imaginable).  Beyond that, I think Young is a very underrated guitarist (essentially he can bring it) with a very distinctive style; the first time you hear Warren Zevon's Sentimental Hygiene you know Young is playing lead guitar.  I was going to suggest Young's I've Been Waiting For You, which always finds its way onto my list of great songs no one has ever heard of (other than David Bowie he did a nice cover) but it's too short and, to use one of my favorite pretentious phrases when discussing film, not fully realized (I always secretly hoped that he would return to it and expand upon it, like Bill Evans did with Waltz for Debbie, but more on that later).  As I pointed out in the 110 Neil Young songs better than Heart of Gold, there is as much mythology as fact about Young, and one of them relates to the recording of his album Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere.  According to legend he wrote Cowgirl in the Sand, Down by the River and Cinnamon Girl in the same afternoon as he suffered through a high fever from the flu.  I don't know if it's true, but I also don't know if I care - it is a good story.  There are some songs that you grow to love, and then there are others that hook you right away - and for me Cowgirl in the Sand falls into the latter category.  Over the years, instead of growing tired of it, I've found I love it more and more, maybe because experience has reaffirmed the truth of the line, "it's the woman in you that makes you want to play this game."  I'm including a link to the scorching version featuring the Danny Whitten golden age Crazy Horse from 1970 on the Fillmore East live album released a few years ago as part of the Neil Young Archives collection.  It's sad to think what might have been if Whitten hadn't, like so many others, had his talent ruined and his life taken by heroin; an event which, ironically, spun Young off to his "ditch trilogy," which I consider his best work.  The later Crazy Horse had its own strengths and formed a ugly/beautiful inspiration for grunge, but Whitten was a great counterbalance to Young and the band was much tighter, and, well, I would argue, more of a band.

My Year With Proust - Day 357

But as soon as I had succeeded in falling asleep, at that more truthful hour when my eyes closed to the things of the outer world, the world of sleep (on whose frontier my intelligence and my will, momentarily paralysed, could not longer strive to rescue me from the cruelty of my real impressions) reflected, refracted the agonising synthesis of survival and annihilation, once more reformed, in the organic and translucent depths of the mysteriously light viscera.  The world of sleep, in which our inner consciousness, subordinated to the disturbances of our organs, accelerates the rhythm of the heart or the respiration, because the same dose of terror, sorrow or remorse acts with a strength magnified a hundred-fold if it is thus injected into our veins: as soon as, to traverse the arteries of the subterranean city, we have embarked upon the dark current of our own blood as upon an inward Lethe meandering sixfold, tall solemn forms appear to us, approach and glide away, leaving us in tears.  I sought in vain for my grandmother's form when I had entered beneath the sombre portals; yet I knew that she did exist still, if with a diminished vitality, as pale as that of memory; the darkness was increasing, and the wind; my father, who was to take me to her, had not yet arrived.  Suddenly my breath failed me, I felt my heart turn to stone; I had just remembered that for weeks on end I had forgotten to write to my grandmother.  What must she be thinking of me?  "Oh God," I said to myself, "how wretched she must be in that little room which they have taken for her, no bigger than what one would give to an old servant, where she's all alone with the nurse they have put there to look after her, from which she cannot stir, for she's still slightly paralysed and has always refused to get up!  She must think that I've forgotten her now that she's dead; how lonely she must be feeling, how deserted!

Marcel Proust, Cities of the Plain, pp. 787-788

Proust's sorrow and anxiety and guilt surrounding his grandmother follow him into his dreams and if anything intensify: "The world of sleep, in which our inner consciousness, subordinated to the disturbances of our organs, accelerates the rhythm of the heart or the respiration, because the same dose of terror, sorrow or remorse acts with a strength magnified a hundred-fold if it is thus injected into our veins . . ."  I find the fact that, in his dream, his grandmother is trapped in a tiny room, "no bigger than what one would give to an old servant,"fascinating.  As one grows older our world does become smaller, if for no other reason than physical infirmity.  Sadly, it also happens to us emotionally.  I've always felt guilty for not spending more time with my grandmother Maude, my father's mother, especially since I've come to believe that I probably have far more in common with her in regards to intelligence and temperament than most members of my family (which is good and bad, actually).  She was so profoundly deaf (something else I increasingly share with her) that it was exhausting, for both of us, to spend time trying to carry on a conversation (although I truthfully I wanted to know more about her and her side of the family; essentially, I suspect that I'm Evans in more than middle name).  Because of this her emotional world was shrinking as well.  I wish I would have created opportunities to just driving out to Rising Sun and read with her, even if that meant just sitting side by side on the couch, and it breaks my heart that I failed her in something as simple as spending time with her in her declining years.

The dream continues, but this seems like a good place to break so I'll pick it up tomorrow.

My Year With Proust - Day 356

I did not try to mitigate my suffering, to embellish it, to pretend that my grandmother was only somewhere else and momentarily invisible, by addressing to her photograph (the one taken by Saint-Loup, which I had with me) words and entreaties as to a person who is separated from us but, retaining his personality, knows us and remains bound to use by an indissoluble harmony.  Never did I do this, for I was determined not merely to suffer, but to respect the original form of my suffering as it had suddenly come upon me unawares, and I wanted to continue to feel it, following its own laws, whenever that contradiction of survival and annihilation, so strangely intertwined within me, returned.  I did not know whether I should one day distil a grain of truth from this painful and for the moment incomprehensible impression, but I knew that if I ever did extract some truth from life, it could only be from such an impression and from none other, an impression at once so particular and so spontaneous, which had neither been traced by my intelligence nor attenuated by my pusillanimity, but which death itself, the sudden revelation of death, striking like a thunderbolt, had carved within me, along a supernatural and inhuman graph, in a double and mysterious furrow.  (As for the state of forgetfulness of my grandmother in which I had been living until that moment, I could not even think of clinging to it to find some truth; since in itself it was nothing but a negation, a weakening of the faculty of thought incapable of recreating a real moment of life and obliged to substitute for it conventional and neutral images.)  Perhaps, however, the instinct of self-preservation, the ingenuity of the mind in safeguarding us from pain, already beginning to lay the foundations of its necessity but baneful edifice on the still smoking ruins, I relished too keenly the sweet joy of recalling this or that opinion held by the beloved being, recalling them as though she had been able to hold them still, as though she existed, as though I continued to exist for her.

Marcel Proust, Cities of the Plain, pp. 786-787

Proust continues to reflect upon the pain of his grandmother's passing, and to live within that pain and to know it.  He was determined not to hide it or to mitigate it in any form, although he wasn't really certain if it would lead him anywhere: "I did not know whether I should one day distil a grain of truth from this painful and for the moment incomprehensible impression . . ."  However, he somehow knew that if he was going to learn something, anything, about the sorrow of his grandmother's death, or, in a larger sense, life itself, it would have to come from from a place of such pure pain.  He continues, "but I knew that if I ever did extract some truth from life, it could only be from such an impression and from none other . . ."  In a life of clumsy misconceptions and conscious outright lies, all of which seems particularly relevant in today's world of Trumpian post-truths, there was a truth, a reality, a purity to be found in pain and loss.  Digging deeper, Proust reflects, "I was determined not merely to suffer, but to respect the original form of my suffering as it had suddenly come upon me unawares, and I wanted to continue to feel it, following its own laws, whenever that contradiction of survival and annihilation, so strangely intertwined within me, returned."  Granted, there is a vanity to suffering, wherein the suffering is really just about us, and people recognizing our suffering, and not about what we have lost, which is why I've always respected the Jewish tradition of providing a very structured period for public demonstrations of loss and suffering, and beyond which it is really disrespectful to the deceased.  What you carry in your heart, of course, can go on for years.  Still, in suffering there is a directness, again, a purity, that is not contaminated by self-perception or justification or the rewriting of our own personal history to fit our own life novel.  But, too quickly, it can take on a life of its own and can become a passion as distracting and ravenous as any other, as Proust writes, "I relished too keenly the sweet joy of recalling this or that opinion held by the beloved being, recalling them as though she had been able to hold them still, as though she existed, as though I continued to exist for her."

My Year With Proust - Day 355

   But never should I be a be able to eradicate from my memory that contraction of her face, that anguish of her heart, or rather of mine; for as the dead exist only in us, it is ourselves that we strike without respite when we persist in recalling the blows that we have dealt them.  I clung to this pain, cruel as it was, with all my strength, for I realised that it was the effect of the memory I had of my grandmother, the proof that this memory was indeed present within me.  I felt that I did not really remember her except through pain, and I longed for the nails that riveted her to my consciousness to be driven yet deeper.

Marcel Proust, Cities of the Plain, p. 786

Building upon yesterday's reading (and setting up tomorrow's - and the next day's, this is Remembrance of Things Past, after all), Proust continues to reflect upon the memory of his grandmother, and especially the pain that he brought her.  He could have tried to shift to thoughts of happier times but he did not.  Rather, "I clung to this pain, cruel as it was, with all my strength, for I realised that it was the effect of the memory I had of my grandmother, the proof that this memory was indeed present within me."  Since memory is stamped by emotion it's not particularly surprising that Proust, or any of us for that matter, remember the painful events so clearly.  I think happy moments, or at least the vast majority of happy moments, are quieter moments, and thus not as emotionally-charged, so they are not imprinted on our memory as clearly, whereas painful moments are sharper, more discordant, and thus more likely to be locked away in our memory virtually intact.  Still, Marcel doesn't shy away from them because he feels that they are all he has, and he has to cherish every memory of his grandmother, even the painful ones, because "the dead exist only in us."

My Year With Proust - Day 354

   Instead of the pleasures that I had been experiencing of late the only that it would have been possible for me to enjoy at that moment would have been, by touching up the past, to diminish the sorrows and sufferings of my grandmother's life.  But I did not remember her only in the dressing-gown, a garment so appropriate to as have become almost symbolic of the pains, unhealthy no doubt but comforting too, which she took for me; gradually I began to remember all the opportunities that I had seized, by letting her see my sufferings and exaggerating them if necessary, to cause her a grief which I imagined as being obliterated immediately by my kisses, as though my tenderness had been as capable as my happiness of creating hers; and, worse than that, I who could conceive of no other happiness now but that of finding happiness shed in my memory over the contours of that face, moulded and bowed by love, had striven with such insensate frenzy to expunge from it even the smallest pleasures, as on the day when Saint-Loup had taken my grandmother's photograph and I, unable to conceal form her what I thought of the ridiculous childishness of the coquetry with which she posed for him, with her wide-brimmed hat, in a flattering half light, had allowed myself to mutter a few impatient, wounding words, which, I had sensed from a contraction of her features, had struck home; it was I whose heart they were rending, now that the consolation of countless kisses was forever impossible.

Marcel Proust, Cities of the Plain, pp. 785-786

Proust continues to reflect on the memory of his grandmother, and the role that she had played in his happiness and the role that he had at times played in her unhappiness.  Once I proposed that the greatest lesson that your grandparents ever teach you is that, after their death, you learn the hard way that you should have spent more time with them and told them that you loved them more.  It is almost always our first experience with loss, or, as he reminds us, "it was I whose heart they were rending, now that the consolation of countless kisses was forever impossible."

My Year With Proust - Day 353

For with the perturbations of memory are linked the intermittencies of the heart.  It is, no doubt, the existence of our body, which we may compare to a vase enclosing our spiritual nature, that induces us to suppose that all our inner wealth, our past joys, all our sorrows, are perpetually in our possession.  Perhaps it is equally inexact to suppose that they escape or return.  In any case if they remain within us, for most of the time it is in an unknown region where they are of no use to use, and where even the most ordinary are crowded out by memories of a different kind, which preclude any simultaneous occurrence of them in our consciousness.  But if the context of sensations in which they are preserved is recaptured, they acquire in turn the same power of expelling everything that is incompatible with them, of installing alone in us the self that originally lived them.  Now, inasmuch as the self that I had just suddenly become once again had not existed since that evening long ago when my grandmother had undressed me after my arrival at Balbec, it was quite naturally not at the end of the day that had just passed, of which that self knew nothing, but - as though Time were to consist of a series of different and parallel lines - without any solution of continuity, immediately after the first evening at Balbec long ago, that I clung to the minute in which my grandmother had stooped over me. The self that I then was, that had disappeared for so long, was once again so close to me that I seemed still to hear the words that had just been spoken, although they were now no more than phantasm, as a man who is half awake thinks he can still make out close by the sound of his receding dream.

Marcel Proust, Cities of the Plain, p. 784

Another, in a seemingly endless stream, of beautiful, thoughtful, ruminations on memory and meaning from Proust.  He is still struggling with the memories of his grandmother that have come flooding back during his visit to Balbec.  Proust proposes, "It is, no doubt, the existence of our body, which we may compare to a vase enclosing our spiritual nature, that induces us to suppose that all our inner wealth, our past joys, all our sorrows, are perpetually in our possession."  But, of course, they are not always in our possession.  "In any case if they remain within us, for most of the time it is in an unknown region where they are of no use to use, and where even the most ordinary are crowded out by memories of a different kind, which preclude any simultaneous occurrence of them in our consciousness."  It's easy to see why people write books claiming that Proust was a neuroscientist before there was a field of neuroscience.  You only need to go back to the famous discourse on the tea and petite madeleines to understand, although understand is probably too strong a word, how one recovers these memories.

What is key in this particular section is that the shock of the flooding gives Proust back himself, which he suggests has been gone for some time.  "Now, inasmuch as the self that I had just suddenly become once again had not existed since that evening long ago when my grandmother had undressed me after my arrival at Balbec"  If, as Linden and many others, the self is a construct of memory and perception, it would not be surprising that a "hidden" or suppressed memory might, in addition to forming the self, also play a role in re-forming the self.  "The self that I then was, that had disappeared for so long, was once again so close to me that I seemed still to hear the words that had just been spoken, although they were now no more than phantasm, as a man who is half awake thinks he can still make out close by the sound of his receding dream."  In the Quran it is repeatedly pointed out that Allah is closer than your jugular vein.  It seems to be the case with memory as well.

Light a Candle and Curse the Darkness

As my son and I were preparing for our recent trip to Iceland we naturally devoted some time to background reading in various travel guides.  By now I have a couple shelves full of guides, mainly Lonely Planet, which I sometimes pick up and peruse, even if I'm not headed back to that particular country, almost as if I were rereading a favorite novel.  One of the things that struck us was the Icelandic tradition of putting up outside lights and leaving them up on all night long, for months.  Sure, part of this relates to Christmas, but it was also an attempt to dispel the gloom of those endless northern nights.  When we were there the first week in January there was barely more than four hours of light a day, which made Vermont seem equatorial by comparison.  What we didn't know is that this desire to hold back the oppressive night extended to cemeteries.  As we drove around the western coast we saw multiple cemeteries that featured lights.  How depressing would these little, isolated, wind-swept cemeteries, dug out of rocky soil, be, especially in the endless Icelandic night, if not for the lights?  This little happiness shouldn't be reserved for the living.  So, truthfully, what better place to have lights? Clearly there is a Lucinda Williams or Otis Gibbs song waiting to be written on cemetery lights.  On every trip I bring something back, although it is rarely anything physical.  This time I've brought back the desire to put up my lights, even if it's just to string lights on the misshapen evergreen at the end of my driveway earlier next year, and leave them lit from the beginning of November through the end of February, as an homage to Iceland and a celebration of the living and the dad.

A little cemetery that my son spotted as we were driving around on our next to last day in Iceland.  We had noticed the cemetery lights a couple days earlier in Stykkisholmur, and I regretted not snapping a couple pictures then.  Luckily his younger eyes spotted this cemetery and we pulled over.  I don't consider it disrespectful to take picture of the cemetery.  Rather, to me I wanted to celebrate the spirit of a people who will not be cowed by an unforgiving landscape.

You can just see the extension cords which crisscross the cemetery.

I don't know why I found this tradition so moving, and it could be that other countries have the same practice, but I'll always associate it with our trip to Iceland.

My Year With Proust - Day 352

   Disruption of my entire being.  On the first night, as I was suffering from cardiac fatigue, I bent down slowly and cautiously to take off my boots, trying to master my pain.  But scarcely had I touched the topmost button than my chest swelled, filled with an unknown, a divine presence, I was shaken with sobs, tears streamed from my eyes.  The being who had come to my rescue, saving me from barrenness of spirit, was the same who, years before, in a moment of identical distress and loneliness, in a moment when I had nothing left of myself, had come in and restored me to myself, for that being was myself and something more than me (the container that is greater than the contained and was bringing it to me).  I had just perceived, in my memory, stooping over my fatigue, the tender, preoccupied, disappointed face of my grandmother, as she had been on that first evening of our arrival, the face not of that grandmother whom I had been astonished and remorseful at having so little missed, and who had nothing in common with her save her name, but of my real grandmother, of whom, for the first time since the afternoon of her stroke in the Champs-Elysees, I now recaptured the living reality in a complete and involuntary recollection. This reality does not exist for us so long as it has not been recreated by our thought (otherwise men who had been engaged in a titanic struggle with all of them be great epic poets); and thus, in my wild desire to fling myself into her arms, it was only at that moment - more than a year after her burial, because of the anachronism which so often prevents the calendar of facts from corresponding to the calendar of feelings - that I became conscious that she was dead.

Marcel Proust, Cities of the Plain, p. 783

This is a beautiful, thoughtful and heart-rending passage.  Marcel has returned to Balbec and he is suddenly overwhelmed by the gentle but also painful presence of his grandmother.  It is his first visit to Balbec since the passing of his grandmother, and it becomes terribly real; as he reflects, "I became conscious that she was dead."  However, at the same time he regained his grandmother, his "real grandmother," the one who supported him and populated his dreams before her stroke; not that husk that barely existed afterwards.  It seems to me that memories, like ghosts, haunt certain locales, which make those frail of heart more than a little afraid to revisit these haunted spaces, these crossroads.  My own experience with locations like this relate more to the death of a love affair than the death of an individual.  I can think of locations, most notably Vienna and Zanzibar, that I never wanted to visit again because they were places that I visited with a lover, and the thought of going there alone seemed horrible.  Proust warns us of the "anachronism which so often prevents the calendar of facts from corresponding to the calendar of feelings."  However, I survived those return visits, and discovered to my joy (and relief) that those ghosts were friendly ones.

Discography - Week 40

And by now Donald Trump is president.  I suppose I should be pissed, but, who knows, this may turn out to be a golden age.  But I digress . . .

Most of this week I've found myself almost soul crushingly sad as compared to righteously angry.  Many Trump supporters have suggested that they were unhappy with the inauguration of Obama and the left just needs to get over itself, which I find to be pretty tortured logic (even for a Trump supporter).  If you want to compare the Republican response to the inauguration of Barack Obama to the Democratic response to the inauguration of George W. Bush you might be able to construct something akin to a compelling argument, but this is a whole other level of existential angst.  However, as the week has progressed I've found my passion rekindled - and the fact that so many folks, including blog members such as Cyndi and Kathy and Phillip - and our dear friends in Michigan Heidi and Andy - are participating in the Women's Marches, which I think is the beginning of a wave of protest, fills me with tremendous hope.  So, to paraphrase a saying from my Hoosier boyhood, fuck Donald Trump and the whores he rode in on.

Next week will be our penultimate thematic week, and through a series of high level meetings with the excellent Bob Craigmile (well, actually one email, but we do live in a post-truth age) the proposal was made, which I vouchsafed as a Proposal of Excellence, that our theme be Best Guitar Solo - which I then amended to Best Guitar Solo or Best Guitar Song.

Gary Beatrice

Rolling Stones, Dead Flowers

"Dead Flowers" may not be the best Rolling Stones song ("Gimme Shelter" is), but it is one of their best. Likewise "Dead Flowers" may not be their most influential song (maybe "Satisfaction"?), but it is one of their most influential. It also, I bet, is their most covered song. Not bad for a song that was not one of their sixty or so singles, and one they rarely played live.

First of all, as with most everything on their brilliant four studio album run, Beggar's Banquet, Let It Bleed, Sticky Fingers, and Exile on Main Street, the band is in top form, particularly the Watts/Wyman rhythm section. But significantly, and perhaps because of Gram Parson's influence, when Keith Richards brought this country song to Mick Jagger, Mick sang it straight and not tongue in cheek as he did on several other country songs.

Today "Dead Flowers" is considered a cornerstone in the ultimate Americana / alt.country playlist. Likewise the Stones are recognized as one of the rock acts that helped to make country music (and, sadly, heroin, the dead flower in the song) cool. But all of that is secondary to the fact that this is simply a killer song.

Dave Wallace

Warren Zevon, Desperados Under the Eaves 

The month of Trump continues with a return to Warren Zevon's self-titled debut album.  Desperadoes Under the Eaves provides a view of the end-of-the-world through the eyes of a burned out LA alcoholic.  I love the imagery Zevon uses, with a sense of impending doom underlying the whole thing:

Don't the sun look angry through the trees

Don't the trees look like crucified thieves

Don't you feel like Desperados under the eaves

Heaven help the one who leaves

Dave Kelley

Harry Nilsson, Many Rivers to Cross

This is a very stream of consciousness post.

Here are some thoughts behind it:

1)  Fuck Donald Trump.  I am resisting the urge to post something about tomorrow's Inauguration.  "Eve of Destruction" was an obvious song to select, but I am tired of having my thoughts dominated by the cocksplat being sworn in tomorrow.

2)  One of my favorite television shows of all time recently ended its fantastic run.  To anyone who has not checked out Rectify, I highly recommend it.  One of the last episodes featured a beautiful scene with the male lead and a potential love interest dancing to this song.

3)  I have an abiding love for a lot of 70's soft rock. 

Harry Nilsson had a beautiful voice and was also a tremendous songwriter.  Like all too many who fit this description, he was ultimately ruined by substance abuse and mental health issues.  I highly recommend the documentary about his life.  This is a cover of a Jimmy Cliff song that he recorded with John Lennon.  I find it haunting and beautiful.  We all have many rivers to cross, and there are some rivers that defeat us.

Dave Mills

Mike Doughty, Wait! You'll Find a Better Way and You Could Fly

These two tracks are from Mike Doughty's latest release, The Heart Watches While the Brain Burns. I enjoy these tracks (and the album as a whole, for that matter) for the same reasons I enjoyed his early band, Soul Coughing. Do you remember 1996's "Super Bon Bon"? What a kick-ass song. "Move aside and let the man go through, let the man go through..." I love the mix of rock, hip-hop, jazz, and just plain old experimental noise. These days, Doughty has moved to Memphis, as other tracks on the new album clearly attest. But he's kept his hip-hop connections, collaborating on this album with hip-hop producer Good Goose. The result recalls the best of Soul Coughing's early efforts. On the first track I've shared here, the chord progression is actually the same as Ray Charles' "Hit the Road Jack," albeit slowed down considerably and tweaked with a unique combo of crunchy guitars and 8-bit sound effects twinkling deep in the background noise. So that's a fun fact. And on the second track, the time signature is 7/4, the kind of rhythm that, Doughty notes, perhaps only Neil Peart could actually play. Doughty and Goose did it with software. But however they did it, it's an infectious groove. Lyrically, both songs are a strange mix of darkness and hope, so maybe that's appropriate.

Kathy Seiler

This week I attended a Board dinner at work, where a bunch of my dear friends (many of them involved with this blog in some way) were asked to talk about their travel in their courses, a la Scudder. I didn't know any of them were coming to the event, so it was a delightful surprise to see them there. They spoke briefly about their adventures, and then introduced student speakers who had gone on these trips with them. It was magical hearing the students talk about how much these trips had changed the fabric of their very being. It made me want to travel more, which I sadly have not done nearly enough of in my life.

But really, the best part was that every time I looked back at Scudder, it was like looking into the face of a 5 year old who had just gotten THE ONE TOY they wanted more than anything else in the entire world. Sheer joy and delight (along with quite a bit of giggling) bubbled from him as he listened to the students recount their adventures and the ways they had been transformed. I'm sure it didn't hurt that almost all of them mentioned his name. I say all this at the risk of making his head grow far too big to fit inside a classroom on Monday. At the least, I hope I succeed in embarrassing him on his own blog to temper that. But I gotta give the man props for his unrelenting commitment to such amazing educational experiences. 

On the drive home, I was listening to one of the several Tedeschi Trucks Band albums I own. The song Idle Wind came on and it was like I was listening to a song about Scudder. And this was after just having left an event where his name was mentioned every few minutes during the presentations. WTF? Does the band know him too? Clearly this song is about him. Or at least I'll bet he thinks the song is about him... (oh wait, that's a Carly Simon song). There are some words I can't quite make out and the internet clearly TOTALLY garbled the lyrics by whatever automatic transcription program the song was run through, so don't look the lyrics up, but listen intently and see what you think.

And with that, I'm off to exercise my right to assemble and say what I think with thousands of others in the Women's sister March in Montpelier today along with most of the rest of my family. It will be my first public protest and I can't wait. It might not be an exotic African travel location, but I hope it's an equally powerful experience.

Phillip Seiler

As a kid of the late 70s, early 80s, I have an affinity for music from that era. I am not one who stops exploring for new and interesting tunes but I am also not one to jettison all my past musical loves just because I have heard them umpteen million times. Kathy will happily tell you that I am susceptible to a bit too much nostalgia and she is probably correct in that regard. And yet, the elevation of a reality TV star to the presidency seems eerily parallel to the elevation of a movie star to the same role back when I was first discovering what music moved me and why. 

This is all a long winded way of saying that I am drawn to both the music of my childhood and the reasons why it had meaning to me at the time. I recently re-purchased The The’s album Soul Mining and have been rediscovering This is the Day.
Like much of the 80s, it is a fairly simple song with a decided lack of instrumentation. But the melody is catchy as hell and I find the lyrics irresistible.

“Well, you didn’t get up this morning
because you didn’t go to bed…”

First lines and the scene is set. I love the Bright Lights Big City second person perspective as well. It holds throughout the song. Who is he singing about? Is it really someone or is it generic us? 

We hit the chorus in a bit:
“This is the day
your life will surely change
this is the day
when things fall into place”

Is this the day? Do you transform and everything is better? Or is this just another morning in a string of mornings where you vow to change and then make all the same mistakes, all the same bad choices?

As past becomes prologue, I know which I believe to be true.

Jack Schultz

Otis Gibbs, Empire Hole

After listening to Otis Gibbs' Mount Renraw a couple of time, I think my favorite song is Empire Hole.  It's about people leaving Indiana.  Otis relates it to the limestone quarries his dad worked in.  Basically, the song conveys how the Empire State Building, Pentagon, and Yankee Stadium came from the limestone of Oolitic, IN.  And.....Indiana is basically left with a giant hole in the ground.  The funny thing is, he loves Indiana, but it is a great metaphor.  Anyway, as much as I like Sputnik Monroe, I think I like Empire Hole better.

Gary Scudder

I actually originally had chosen a beautiful song (and wrote up a fitting homage) that always fills me with serenity and appreciation for life, but, you know, much like the esteemed Dave Wallace, I just can't let the Trump election/inauguration/presidency go.  And, so, it ended being unholy union of a couple songs. First up, Neil Young's Fuckin' Up from the underrated album Ragged Glory (with the modern incarnation of Crazy Horse at its thrashing, not quite in tune, best).  As you folks know, I'm a complete Twitter whore, which allowed me to "hear" the response of so many people from around the world to the Trump (sort of) win.  They were almost universally stunned, but they also found themselves saying, sometimes harshly and sometimes delicately, "you don't get to lecture us ever again about anything."  We had pissed (appropriately, as we now know) away the moral high ground that we had at least claimed to have ever since the "city upon a hill" sermon.  What we've forgotten is that it is not simply rights that matter - such as the inalienable right, mentioned repeatedly in the Bible, to own a semi-automatic rifle - but rights and responsibilities.  There are rights and responsibilities inherent in living in a functioning democracy.  It is your responsibility as a voter to keep abreast of the issues and to think about what is best for the entire country and the different people who live there.  You're not supposed to vote out of spite or misogyny or racism, but instead out of a mature, educated, dispassionate sense of what is best for the country - what the founding fathers would have referred to as virtue.  Truthfully, however, I'm far angrier at the almost fifty percent of the population that couldn't be bothered to vote, and who masked their laziness and indifference, and, well, irresponsibility, with claims of not really liking either candidate or not voting as a sign of protest.  These people have failed their country.  As Young questions, "why do I carry such an easy load?"  And, yet, he stilled fucked up, and so did we.  Maybe it's because we carry such an easy load.  Maybe it's like when we're married to an appropriately hot and willingly sexually compliant partner, but can't bring ourselves to cross the six inches of the bed to do something, while flying halfway across the country for an utterly destructive protest fuck.  If I were not so worried about all the people that Trump and his myrmidons are going to hurt I'd actually feel an almost priapic sense of schadenfreude for a country that fucked up and got what it deserved.  However, people are going to suffer, and we need to keep that in mind. That brings me to my second choice, the Ryan Adams song Please Do Not Let Me Go, from the album which I feel is his best, Love is Hell.  It is an extraordinary song about pain and finding love and survival where you find it.  It seems that we desperately need to not let each other go because I think that, at least for the foreseeable future, we are adrift in a very cold and stormy sea with no shore in sight.  Which, finally, reminds me of an old Persian saying: Pray to God, but in the meantime keep paddling towards the shore.

My Year With Proust - Day 351

   I asked Albertine if she would like something to drink.  "I seem to see oranges over there and water," she said.  "That will be perfect."  I was thus able to taste, together with her kisses, that refreshing coolness which had seemed to me to be superior to them at the Princesse de Guermantes's.  And the orange squeezed into the water seemed to yield to me, as I drank, the secret life of its ripening growth, its beneficent action upon certain states of that human body which belongs to so different a kingdom, its powerlessness to make that body live but on the other hand the process of irrigation by which it as able to benefit it - countless - mysteries unveiled by the fruit to my sensory perception, but not at all to my intelligence.

Marcel Proust, Cities of the Plain, p. 651

Here's another one of the classic Proustian sections which is remarkably sexually charged without the merest motion of sex.  One minute Albertine is, in response to his request, raining kisses on him, and then the next she is gone.  Starting the next paragraph Proust writes, "When Albertine had gone, I remembered that I had promised Swann that I would write to Gilberte, an courtesy, I felt, demanded that I should do so at once."  Albertine is very quickly forgotten.  Of course, it followed hard on the heels of: "And the orange squeezed into the water seemed to yield to me, as I drank, the secret life of its ripening growth, . . . mystery unveiled by the fruit to my sensory perception, but not at all to my intelligence."  If you've had that much action you definitely need a break.

My Year With Proust - Day 350

   I decided not to question Albertine as to how she had spent the evening, feeling that I should only reproach her and that we should have no time left, seeing how late it was already, to be reconciled sufficiently to proceed to kisses and caresses.  And so it was with these that I chose to begin from the first moment.  The loss of all equanimity, of all sense of directions, that we feel when we are kept waiting, and, taking the place inside us of the calm spirit in which we had been picturing her coming as so great a pleasure, prevents us from deriving any from it.  Albertine was in the room: my disordered nerves, continuing to flutter, were still awaiting her.

   "I want a nice kiss, Albertine."

   "As many as you like," she said to me in her good-natured way.  I had never seen her looking so pretty.

   "Another?" she asked.

   "Why,you know it's a great, great pleasure to me."

   "And a thousand times greater to me," she replied.  "Oh, what a pretty book-cover you have there!"

   "Take it, I give it to you as a keep-sake."

   "You really are nice . . ."

   One would be cured for ever of romanticism if one could make up one's mind, in thinking of the woman one loves, to try to be the man one will be when one no longer loves her.  Gilberte's book-cover, her agate marble, must have derived their importance in the past from some purely inward state, since now they were to me a book-cover, a marble like any others.

Marcel Proust, Cities of the Plain, pp. 764-765

Albertine has finally arrived and Marcel puts aside his anger and impatience, at least on the surface, because he knows (or at least he believes) if he confronts her she'll just lie, an argument will erupt, and then he'll have no chance for sex.  At least at this point it looks like they're relationship has truly come full circle.  There's always that dangerous moment when you start making love to your booty call, but it seems that he's moved beyond that and his love for Albertine is just a memory.  And it's not just her, because he very casually gives her a book cover that he had received as a gift from Gilberte.  As Proust tells us, "One would be cured for ever of romanticism if one could make up one's mind, in thinking of the woman one loves, to try to be the man one will be when one no longer loves her." Of course, if you can convince yourself, and more important her, that you know love her then you'll be irresistible to her.