My Year With Proust - Day 212

"The truth is that I scarcely belong to this earth upon which I feel myself such an exile; it takes all the force of the law of gravity to hold me here, to keep me from escaping into another sphere. I belong to a different planet."

Marcel Proust, The Guermantes Way, p. 156

Proust runs into his friend Legrandin, who shares these thoughts.  I don't know why this particular brief passage speaks to me so directly, but it does.  As we've discussed my Dad always complained/opined that I was never really truly there.  I was not hard to raise, just often distant.  These words are the Proustian version of the brilliant Neil Young song On the Beach.

My Year With Proust - Day 211

   "Alas, it was this phantom that I saw when, entering the drawing-room before my grandmother had been told of my return, I found her there reading.  I was in the room, or rather I was not yet in the room since she was not aware of my presence, and, like a woman whom one surprises at a piece of needlework which she will hurriedly put aside if anyone comes in, she was absorbed in thoughts which she had never allowed to be seen by me.  Of myself - thanks to that privilege which does not last but which gives one, during the brief moment of return, the faculty of being suddenly the spectator of one's own absence - there was present only the witness, the observer, in travelling coat and hat, the stranger who does not belong to the house, the photographer who has called to take a photograph of places which one will never see again.  The process that automatically occurred in my eyes when I caught sight of my grandmother was indeed a photograph.  We never see the people who are dear to us save in the animated system, the perpetual motion of our incessant love for them, which, before allowing the images that their faces present to reach us, seizes them in its vortex and flings them back upon the idea that we have always had of them, makes them adhere to it, coincide with it.  How, since into the forehead and the cheeks of my grandmother I had been accustomed to read all the most delicate, the most permanent qualities of her mind, how, since every habitual glance is an act of necromancy, each face that we love a mirror of the past, how could I have failed to overlook what had become fulled and changed in her, seeing that in the most trivial spectacles of our daily life, our eyes, charged with thought, neglect, as would a classical tragedy, every image that does not contribute to the action of the play and retain only those that may help to make its purpose intelligible.  But if, instead of our eyes, it should happen to a purely physical object, a photographic plate, that has watched the action, then what we see, in the courtyard of the Institute, for example, instead of the dignified emergence of an Academician who is trying to fail a cab, will be his tottering steps, his precautions to avoid falling on his back, the parabola of his fall, as thought he were drunk or the ground covered with ice.  So it is when some cruel trick of change prevents our intelligent and pious tenderness from coming forward in time to hide from our eyes what they ought never to behold, when it is forestalled by our eyes, and they, arriving first in the field and having it to themselves, set to work mechanically, like films, and show us, in place of the beloved person who has long ago ceased to exist but whose death our tenderness has hitherto kept concealed from us, the new person whom a hundred times daily it was clothed with a loving and mendacious likeness.  And - like a sick man who, not having looked at his own reflexion for a long time, and regularly composing the features which he never sees in accordance with the ideal image of himself that he carries in his mind, recoils on catching sight in the glass, in the middle of an arid desert of a face, of the sloping pink protuberance of a nose as huge as one of the pyramids of Egypt - I, for whom my grandmother was still myself, I who had never seen her save in my own soul, always in the same place in the past, through the transparence of contiguous and overlapping memories, suddenly, in our drawing-room which formed part of anew world, that of time, that which is inhabited by the strangers of whom we say, 'He's begun to age a good deal,' for the first time and for a moment only, since she vanished very quickly, I saw, sitting on the sofa beneath the lamp, red-faced, heavy and vulgar, sick, vacant, letting her slightly crazed eyes wander over a book, a dejected old woman whom I did not know."

Marcel Proust, The Guermantes Way, pp. 141-143

In the wake of my mother's long decline and eventual death, but also in light of just spending several days with my father, this is a painful but also very honest passage to reread.  As Proust reminds us, "since every habitual glance is an act of necromancy, each face that we love a mirror of the past . . ."  In this passage Proust is reflecting upon walking into a room and catching his grandmother unawares, and how he is distressed to find, not the woman of his memory, but, instead, "sitting on the sofa beneath the lamp, red-faced, heavy and vulgar, sick, vacant, letting her slight crazed eyes wander over a book, a dejected old woman whom I did not know."  However disconcerting, isn't it our duty to get beyond the break from memory and understand and love the new normal?

The other reason why this passage hits home is the growing realization of my increasing frailty.  When Proust writes, "But if, instead of our eyes, it should happen to a purely physical object, a photographic plate, that has watched the action, then what we see, in the courtyard of the Institute, for example, instead of the dignified emergence of an Academician who is trying to fail a cab, will be his tottering steps, his precautions to avoid falling on his back, the parabola of his fall, as thought he were drunk or the ground covered with ice . . ." I have the feeling that he could have describing the view that my friends and colleagues have of me.  A few years ago I was engaged to a woman much younger than me, who had told me that the age difference meant nothing to her, but in the end I suspect that the reason why she called it off was because she realized, to her horror (because she was a very sweet soul), that it actually did matter.  I threw my back out once and she had to help me on with my shoes so that we could go out for a walk on a foreign trip, and if I had to pick out a moment that marked the beginning of the end of the relationship it would be that otherwise tender moment.  In my, admittedly romanticized, reflection on that moment it represented her understanding for the first time that this was doing to be the future, not then, but eventually, and it was a shock to the system.  It seemed like she never viewed me the same way.  However, as we've been discussing for months, memory is a malleable and undependable tool, and by making this about age then I'm giving myself - and her, I guess - a pass for other ways that we both failed the relationship and instead blamed it on something we couldn't control.

My Year With Proust - Day 210

   "It has been said that silence is strength; in a quite different sense it is a terrible strength in the hands of those who are loved.  It increases the anxiety of the one who waits.  Nothing so tempts us to approach another person as what is keeping us apart; and what barrier is so insurmountable as silence?  It has been said also that silence is torture, capable of goading to madness the man who is condemned to it in a prison cell.  But what an even greater torture than that of having to keep silence it is to have to endure the silence of the person who loves! . . . Besides, more cruel than the silence of prisons, that kind of silence is in itself a prison.  It is an intangible enclosure, true, but an impenetrable one, that interposed slice of empty atmosphere through which nevertheless the visual rays of the abandoned lover cannot pass.  Is there a more terrible form of lighting than that of silence, which shows us not absent love but a thousand, and shows us each of them in the act of indulging in some new betrayal?"

Marcel Proust, The Guermantes Way, p. 122

These words hit home with me, and in a very painful fashion.  I've been in too many relationships where the person I loved would use terrible, frozen silence as a weapon.  It was one of those things which in the short term work because I don't like confrontation, not simply because it's unpleasant but also because I don't handle it well, so I would inevitably do whatever was necessary to smooth the waters and end the silence, even if it wasn't necessarily my fault or I had to make unconscious compromises to do so.  In the end, however, we both lost because I just found myself withdrawing into my own silent world.  I've promised myself that in future relationships I would fight more, rage against the silence, although I still have a tendency to disappear.  We always have the sense that a cutting remark from a lover is terribly cruel, but there are far worse things, the most obvious being silence.  There is a reason why most civilized nations (not the US, obviously) view isolation as cruel and unusual punishment.  So why do we do this to each other?  I suspect it is a curious combination of cowardice and cruelty.

My Year With Proust - Day 209

   "'I'm furiously jealous,' Saint-Loup said to me, half laughing, half in earnest, alluding to the interminable conversations apart which I had been having with his friend.  'Is it because you find him more intelligent than me?  Do you like him better than me?  Ah, well, I suppose he's everything now, and no one else is to have a look in!' (Men who are enormously in love with a woman, who lives in a society of woman-lovers, allow themselves pleasantries which others, seeing less innocence in them, would never dare to contemplate.)"

Marcel Proust, The Guermantes Way, p. 118

In this short passage Robert is mock scolding his colleagues for paying more attention to Proust than they are paying to him.  I can't decide whether Proust is just trying to be ironic here - or who is more in denial, Proust or Robert?

My Year With Proust - Day 208

"'The breakthrough in the centre at Rivoli, too - that will crop up again if there's ever another war.  It's no more obsolete than the Iliad.  I may add that we're more or less condemned to frontal attacks, because we can't afford to repeat the mistake we made in '70; we must assume the offensive, nothing but the offensive.  The only thing that troubles me is that although I see only the slower, more antiquated minds among us opposing this splendid doctrine, nevertheless one of the youngest of my masters, who is a genius, I mean Mangin, feels that there ought to be place, provisional of course, for the defensive.  It isn't very easy to answer him when he cites the example of Austerlitz, where the defensive was simply a prelude to attack and victory.' . . .

. . . 'You interest me enormously.  But tell me, there's one point that puzzles me.  I feel that I could become passionately involved in the art of war, but first I should want to be sure that it is not so very different from the other arts, that knowing the rules is not everything.  You tell me that battles are reproduced.  I do find something aesthetic, just as you said, in seeing beneath a modern battle the plan of an older one; I can't tell you how attractive the idea sounds.  But then, does the genius of te commander count for nothing?  Does he really do no more than apply the rules?  Or, granted equal knowledge, are there great generals as there are great surgeons . . .?'

. . . 'In fact I may may perhaps be wrong in speaking to you only of the literature of war.  In reality, as the formation of the soil, the direction of wind and light tell us which way a tree will grow, so the conditions in which a campaign is fought, the features of the country through which you manoeuvre, prescribe, to a certain extent, and limit the number of the plans among which the general has to choose. . .'

. . . 'Whereas the more intelligent of our teachers, all the best brains of the cavalry, and particularly the major I was tell you about, consider on the contrary that the issue will be decided in a real free-for-all with sabre and lance and the side that can hold out longer will be the winner, not merely psychologically, by creating panic, but physically. . . .'

. . . 'In the course of a campaign, if it is at all long, you will see one belligerent profiting by the lessons provided by the enemy's successes and mistakes, perfecting the methods of the latter, who will improve on them in turn.  But all that is a thing of the past.  With the terrible advance of artillery, the wars of the future, if there are to be any more wars, will be so short that, before we have had time to think of putting our lessons into practice, peace will have been signed."

Marcel Proust, The Guermantes Way, pp. 112-116

OK, I've cherry-picked several different passages out of lengthy discussion that Proust is having with Robert and his colleagues about war.  It's one of the most poignant moments in Remembrance of Things Past so far because they are on the cusp of an almost apocalyptic war that cost the lives of millions and began the process of knocking Europe off of its throne as rulers of the world.  Some of the comments are just foolish, and even the ones that hint at greater wisdom, such as the last comments about the "terrible advance of artillery," are still handicapped by classic misunderstanding.  How could they know?  World War I was going to be so profoundly different than any war that preceded it that it almost negated prophecy.  There is an old saying that the generals always fight the last war, meaning that they use what worked last time - so any time there is a new general with a new vision they are almost always successful.  You see it so clearly here.  Remembering the period that Proust is discussing, and the folly and horror that awaited, makes the novel all the more painful and also beautiful.

My Year With Proust - Day 207

   "'But now we really can't keep them waiting any longer, and I've mentioned only one of the two things I wanted to ask you, the less important; the other is more important to me, but I'm afraid you'll never consent. Would it annoy you if we were to call each other tu?'

   'Annoy me?  My dear fellow!  Joy!  Tears of joy!  Undreamed-of happiness!'

   'Thank you so much.  I'll wait for you to start first.  It's such a pleasure to me that you needn't do anything about Mme de Guermantes if you'd rather not.'

   'I can do both.'

   'I say, Robert!  Listen to me a minute,' I said to him later during dinner.  'Oh, it's really too absurd, this conversation in fits and starts.  I can't think now - you remember the lady I was speaking to you about just now.'

   'Yes.'

   'You're quite sure you know who I mean?'

   'Why, what do you take me for, a village idiot?'

   'You wouldn't care to give me her photograph, I suppose?'

   I had meant to ask him only for the loan of it.  But as I was about to speak I was overcome with shyness, feeling that the request was indiscreet, and in order to hide my confusion I formulated it more bluntly and amplified it, as if it had been quite natural.

   'No, I should have to ask her permission first,' was his answer.

   He blushed as he spoke.  I could see that he had a reservation in his mind, that he attributed one to me as well, that he would further my love only partially, subject to certain moral principles, and for this I hated him."

Marcel Proust, The Guermantes Way, pp. 101-102

Proust continues his campaign to get a photograph of Mme de Guermantes, in this directly asking her nephew, and his friend, Robert for his copy.  It opens with Proust asking Robert if they could use the more informal form of you, tu, as a mark of their friendship, which Robert agrees to happily.  However, Proust then follows up shortly thereafter by asking for the photograph, which makes you question the sincerity of his proposal to use the more informal form of tu.  I found myself writing in the margin, "Proust is kind of a jerk."  However, maybe all of us become total jerks when we're in love (queue that recording of When a Man Loves a Woman).  And maybe the best proof of how Proust's love for Mme de Guermantes is shown by the fact that as soon as Robert hesitates, and thus sets limits on their relationship, Proust decides he hates him.  Of course, he doesn't actually hate him, but such is the temperament of Proust, and especially as Proust as a young man.  It's important to keep in mind how young the protagonist was during this time period, both chronologically and emotionally.  It also makes me consider how we expect unconditional acceptance and support from our friends and lovers, but are so infrequently willing to provide the same.

Discography - Week 14

And we enter our second quarter of our year-long Discography discussion.  Of all of my crazy ideas over the years this may be my favorite one - or at least it's the one which is working out the best (although that statement is the very definition of damning by faint praise).

Gary Beatrice

John Prine, In Spite of Ourselves


The first time I heard "In Spite of Ourselves" I thought it was an enjoyable novelty song. The humorous observations this couple makes about each other are over-the-top, bawdy and quite funny, especially since the female lead is the wonderful but deadly serious Iris DeMent. But the slapstick humor is only part of the story. This is a love song that captures the passion between a long time married couple better than most any "serious" love song I've heard. Over time each other's quirks only serve to strengthen their bond. In spite of ourselves, we're the real door prize.  Indeed!

Dave Wallace

Dobie Gray, Drift Away

A great song about the healing power of music.  I think that Gray does the best job I've ever heard at capturing how I feel about music when it touches my soul: "And when my mind is free/You know a melody can move me/And when I'm feelin' blue/The guitar's comin' through to soothe me/Thanks for the joy that you've given me/I want you to know I believe in your song/And rhythm and rhyme and harmony/You've helped me along/Makin' me strong."

Miranda Tavares

Robbie Fulks, Fountains of Wayne Hotline

This song is hilarious! It envisions a formulaic band similar to Fountains of Wayne having the musical equivalent of writer's block, and calling a hotline to get some help. There are some choice terms in here: "radical dynamic shift," "slightly distorted melodic solo," "semi-ironic Beach Boys vocal pad," and "oh, thatGerald." Clearly, it's making fun of the bands who get radio play. And I can totally get on board with that. I rarely listen to the radio anymore. And when I tune in for that 20 minutes every three months, I am always amazed to find that somehow I still have heard all the songs before. Seems like every Top 40 artist has utilized the Fountains of Wayne Hotline.

But this song has another layer. Clearly there is some frustration on Fulks's part with having to follow a formula to get fans. "No fans, no singles, ten years laterI'm tired." So the artist has a choice: maintain artistic integrity and be heard by no one, or sell out, make your songs sound like all the others, and have your "art" appreciated. People are creatures of habit, and even the open minded like us esteemed musicologists can identify with the concept of a song "growing on us," meaning by the time we get around to liking it it's no longer new or innovative. Which is fine. The whole idea of music is to enjoy it. If you have to force yourself to listen to it, the purpose is defeated. 

Which brings me back to...this song is hilarious! The artist didn't lash out at listeners or mainstream media for failing to appreciate him. He didn't insult anyone's taste. There was no laying blame. He just poked a bit of fun. Thank you Robbie Fulks for expressing your real but unavoidable frustration with humor, creativity, and affectionate sarcasm. 99.8% of the human race could use a lesson in that.

Dave Mills

The Housemartins, The People Who Grinned Themselves To Death and You Better Be Doubtful

I hope this doesn't constitute an unwelcome politicization of the discography, but after last week's Republican Convention, I had to contribute these tracks from one of my favorite albums to come out of the British post-punk scene in the 80s. All due respect to The Smiths and Joy Division, each of whom could very well appear later in this discography, but this particular album from The Housemartins is just full of cheeky political rage and humor, so it's been a perennial favorite of mine. It seems quite thoroughly apropos right now, nearly 30 years after its release. These two tracks especially seem to transcend their original context of Thatcherite England and speak to the Brexit, the nomination of Trump, and today's generally bizarre political landscape. I hope you can enjoy these, and take appropriate caution from them, regardless of your political inclinations. 

Nate Bell

Goddamn Gallows: 7 Devils

I may have mentioned before that I am a former metal guy.  Nothing fuels the feeling of rebellion in the teenage mind like metal, a few loud chords, and sinister but ultimately fairly shallow lyrics.  I saw many a Metallica show before they started doing ballads.

Now that time is done but the guilty pleasure of a dark, loud song still remains.  My inner adolescent can now rock out to what is termed "hellbilly genre", like the Goddamn Gallows.  The tempo and pacing is similar to metal, the vocals are gruff and harsh enough for metal, but the major instruments are banjo and washboard.  It's viscerally appealing and has the moody, angry lyrics with many references to sin, Satan and the devil.  

But like many things in popular culture designed to be dark or scary---metal, horror movies, pop horror fiction--at base the lesson underneath the shock-tactic trappings is very firmly committed to teaching a mainstream and conservative moral parable.  The same is true of the Goddamn Gallows, "7 Devils".  

And, given a big enough philosophical crowbar, even a reformed metal-head can pry some meaning from a hellbilly rock song.

Old Mr. Shadow, Old Mr. Rain
7 devils callin',
Whispering my name
Old Mr. Shallow, Old Mr. Vain Tryin'
to outrun you,
On a graveyard train!
He laughs as he leads you astray
In Satan's arms he told me that he stays
He has a blackened heart
As he wallows in the dark
And forever he'll be searchin' for the day

Old Mr. Shadow may be taken literally, but I think even the authors intend for this to be one's own dark and negative side, the part of your soul that is your flawed, animal nature, but leads you astray---to the literal devil if you are of that belief system.  As for the graveyard train, we are all on the graveyard train, ever running to try to stay one step ahead of death, and one step ahead of our baser, darker natures before we die... even as the things we do lead to our own ruination.  

In the Kabbalah and the Judeo-Christian mystical ethic, 7 is the number of God, balance and perfection, while 6 is usually the number of fallibility, sin, and corruption.  So why 7? The 7 devils in medieval times were thought to be literal malevolent spirits.  They were the most nefarious of the devils because they were created by Satan in direct contradiction to the 7 holy virtues--the Seven Devils are a black reflection of the Virtues and embody the darker, debased side of the holiest values.  We know them as the Seven Deadly Sins but in earlier times they were thought to have actual malevolent avatars who would literally whisper in the ears of men and lead them to Wrath, Lust, Gluttony and the rest.

Mr Shadow--our corrupted soul, calls to the 7 devils and tries to lead us astray, so that we ignore our higher natures and send ourselves into a hell-bent spiral toward our own destruction:

"If you cross the gates while sleeping on the floor

Leavin' all your worries at the door

God left you all alone I see the devil on his throne

Now these dirty worn out roads, they are my home"

Aside from being dark, rebellious and somewhat creepy, why choose such a song?  Even blunt, stereotyped and traditional catechism such as this can be food for true reflection.  No matter what religious practices you have (or don't have), I have found over the last few weeks it is meet and well worth the time for meditation to constantly and continually fight the whispers from the 7 devils of our low natures, and to be continually on guard against the thoughts and actions that lead to hate, negativity, and a rejection of one's fellow humans.  Whether one believes they are literal or metaphorical, the 7 Devils lead to the destruction of the valuable part of one's self.  And why not enjoy a good cathartic hillbilly hootenanny while fighting the ugliness lurking in our own minds?

Cyndi Brandenburg

River Whyless, Pigeon Feathers

Just for fun this week, I wanted to post a song by a band that maybe you’ve never heard of before.  I discovered River Whyless, “named in the spirit of its ongoing love affair with the natural world,” during a recent NPR Tiny Desk Concert binge.  Once that door opened, I couldn’t resist exploring further, which led me to this choice.  I find it to be curiously compelling, although I am not really sure why—probably a combination of how I interpret the lyrics, the way the pace of the song changes throughout, and the aesthetic quality of the music video.   Whether you like it or not, it’s a good reminder to stay open to new possibilities.  (But then again, “you feed the fire when you close the door….”)

Dave Kelley

"I don't know God, but I fear his wrath

I'm trying to keep focused on the righteous path"

Drive By Truckers,  The Righteous Path

Not only is this line becoming my personal credo, it also provides the title for my selection this week.

Drive By Truckers are my favorite band of the last fifteen years for a number of reasons.  Lyrically and musically they are right up my alley.  I also believe that they are one of the most important and iconic American bands because of the way that they address issues of race and class.  Especially class.  We are living in a tumultuous political time with many Americans living in what appears to be a state of almost constant anger.  The Truckers are heirs to a progressive form of southern Populism that I admire greatly.  Of course Populism has always also had the potential (and often the reality) of becoming a vehicle for racism, religious and social intolerance, and anti-immigrant beliefs.  To say that we are seeing this played out at a depressing and frightening level during this political season would be an understatement of the highest order.  To the chagrin of Boo and Scout, I often find myself yelling "are you a fucking idiot" at the television screen.  There is no justification for racism, homophobia, religious intolerance, or anti-immigrant thought.  That does not mean that the anger felt by so many people living on the fringes of the modern economy is not justified.  The focus of the anger is just horribly misplaced.  Free trade, new technologies, and the outsourcing of much of our manufacturing and heavy industry are positive on a macro level.  However, it leaves far too many people marginalized and struggling to make ends meet.  Tragically the strategy of many of our leaders is to make certain that the focus of the anger remains misplaced so that people do not realize that they should be furious with political parties who care only about their vote and not their welfare.  "To the fucking rich man, all poor people look the same" is a line from a different Truckers song that applies here.

The protagonist of "The Righteous Path" seems very representative of those marginalized blue collar workers.

"I got a brand new car that drinks a bunch of gas

I got a house in a neighborhood that's fading fast"

"I got a couple of opinions that I hold dear

A whole lotta debt, and a whole lot of fear

More bills than money I can do the math

I'm trying to keep focused on the righteous path."

I'm trying to keep focused as I drive down the road

On the ditches and the curves and the heavy loads

Ain't bitching about things that aren't in my grasp

Just trying to hold steady on the righteous path."

"We're hanging out, and we're hanging on

Trying the best we can to keep on keeping on

we got messed up minds, for these messed up times"

"Trying to hold steady on the righteous path

80 miles an hour with a worn out map

no time for self-pity or self-righteous crap

trying to stay focused on the righteous path"

The image of life as driving too fast on a curvy road and trying to avoid flying off into the ditches is one that both Patterson Hood and Jason Isbell use very effectively in several of their songs, and I always find it evocative.  Not only are the lyrics to this song fantastic, but the music is very cathartic as well.  Turn it up loud!!!!!!

Mike Kelly

Richard Buckner, 10 Day Room 

At a little under 1:30, this song doesn't exactly waste time getting to the point.  Life's holding patterns are a form of mental purgatory- they're not necessarily bad things (after all the narrator of the song needs to dry out in a halfway house in order to make his life work again) but there's an undeniable sense of urgency that arises from the monotony of the present.  While it's always tough to tell what Richard Buckner's getting at in his lyrics so cryptic that they make Jay Farrar's look like N'Sync, the idea of staying grounded and forward looking when the pace of life slows uncomfortably down resonates through the song.   I'm not sure if the narrator's going to make it or not, but there's joy in the struggle.   

Gary Scudder

Bobby Vinton, Blue Velvet

I'm following my self-posed rule of mainly writing about songs that I'm thinking about at the moment.  So, for a while I've been volunteering at the Chittenden Emergency Food Shelf, which, among other services, offers a hot breakfast from 6:30-9:30 a.m.   Mainly I just sit in the back and wash dishes for several hours, because it's actually relatively quiet and I don't have to serve food and it fits my task-oriented personality - and it's really not that bad.  However, the other day everyone there was acting oddly: people were yelling at each other; a couple of the homeless guys were staring at me in a slightly menacing way (although they may have been looking through me); I managed to break the hose in the sink to soak the kitchen;  and even the normally nice folks who run the place were being peculiar.  I was having one of those moments when I was thinking, "You idiot, you could be sitting in Henry's Diner right now eating sausage gravy and biscuits, but, no you're here, dumb ass."  And I remember thinking, "At least it can't get any weirder."  And then Blue Velvet comes on the radio.  We've been talking a lot about how music can capture an age or how it can change your mood, but music can also act like a sponge and absorb so much of the world around it (I suspect this is because the musical pieces are short and interpretive).  Blue Velvet was a perfectly nice little song that played in the background of my life, until I saw David Lynch's classic 1986 film Blue Velvet (take all of this with a grain of salt because, as is well-documented, I'm about the biggest David Lynch fan in the world). After that the song became synonymous with weirdness and a revolving door into the darker depths of the human psyche.  Essentially, it's nature and meaning had been kidnapped.  I can still remember sitting the theater with Dave Kelley and just when Frank was getting to take Jeffrey out for a joy ride I said, "this is when it gets weird."  I don't know if Dave ever recovered.  Oh, and I could have written this on Roy Orbison's In Dreams, for that matter.  Both songs have been conscripted.  And, briefly, on a similar note, years ago I was getting ready to take off on an extended seven country, seven week trip on school business; although, truthfully, it had turned into an opportunity to get away and heal.  I had left my wife and the woman I was going to spend the rest of my life with had dumped me, and I was so torn up by stress and regret and sadness that I had lost forty pounds and generally looked like hell.  To top if off, two days before I was due to leave I had a bike wreck and wrapped my face around a pole, knocking out a tooth and providing enough stitches to make me look like the Frankenstein monster.  It wasn't starting off like a great trip.  The first stop was Kuwait City, and just as the plane landed on the tarmac in Kuwait the airline began to play the theme from Twin Peaks.  I could only laugh, and it actually set the trip off on the proper note.