I sat with Joe in the capitalist chains on Belmont Ave. It was the first time I had seen him since he moved to England in January or February. And we talked about the process of writing. And he said that he and Cassie are in two writing groups. That they got rid of Netflix. That they admonish each other when they don’t write.

That he read this book by this Buddhist who says everything is the compost heap. And you need to let things sit on the compost heap a while before drawing from it. That you need to write all the time. That she writes all the time. Her goal is to fill a spiral notebook once a month. Then shoe goes back through and picks out the good parts and works with it to make something good.

We emptied our cups of cocoa. The dregs were sugary and cold. And I said “I will go home and write for five hours.”

I will go home and write for five hours…

I will go home and write for five hours…

I will go home and write for five hours…

Instead I made a can of Trader Joe’s turkey chili and watched an episode of Breaking Bad. Then I looked at tumblr and felt ashamed.

Adjustment Bureau

Last weekend I participated in a review conversation with Susan Quesal about the new film The Adjustment Bureau. The review was a contribution to her blog, Embrace The Mediocre. I was filling in for Geoff George, her co-blogger.

Read it here.

Goodbye To All That

I met him in our old meeting place,

the newly re-tiled hospital room

with the new heavy curtains,

the kind that trap light

like a hotel room.

And anyway he said they had to use

the defibrillator last night

asked me to turn the TV down

said he needed a cigarette

said he like really really needed a cigarette.

And in that moment I hated him

for what he did to him

and all the things he did to him.

And also myself

for what I did to him

and the things I could not prevent.

But who would I have been

telling him about his vices

when I had plenty

of my own?

The King is Dead

On “The King Is Dead” the new Decemberists album due out January, ’11, the band returns to their “roots,” putting out a straightforward acousticky country folk collection. And upon first listen it is good, for the most part. Some of the songs are flat, but some are completely great. Check out both January Hymn and June Hymn for reference.

What I find most notable about it is that the Decemberists record it is most comparable to is not a Decemberists record at all but the posthumously released Colin Meloy pre-Decemberists band Tarkio.  It has acoustic guitar, accordion, twangy lap steel, harmonica(!!!!) and fiddles and endless, endless hooks. It is everything a traditional Decemberists fan would hate.

However, I would argue that returning to these supposed roots is the best thing decision Meloy could have made at this point in their career. They were following a long, annoying trajectory whose novelty ran out a while ago. On “The King is Dead” they are doing what they do best; writing good music and letting the story-lyrics stand on their own. There are elements of story, but it’s more subtle. It’s a story, but still retains some of its universal appeal and relatable-ness. Like, “This is how I feel, and I am probably a character in a story.” This is just good songwriting, and not different from what any other songwriter does, be he John Darnielle or Bruce Springsteen.

Ever since Picaresque The Decemberists have just become bloated, inflatable versions of The Decemberists I truly love, where the songs, instead of telling a story are just winking and nudging you, completely aware that they are telling a story, if that makes sense. They haven’t been subtle and have been beating you over the head with the fact that it’s a narrative. More like, “I am a character, this is my setting, here are the themes of my narrative, these are my motivations, here are the other characters, now some shit is gonna go down.” I guess I just feel like they have been trying to hard to be The Decemberists instead of just writing good music and songs in a more natural way.

Here Meloy and co return to let the songs speak for themselves and let the stories do the work. The lyrics are more in the tradition of songs like The Bachelor and the Bride or Shiny. And this fan could not be happier. Sure, it doesn’t sound like The Decemberists, but the songs are overall stronger because of this. And it’s pretty, which I like.

edit: it has now reached the point where I appreciate the album more for what it is doing than for what it is not doing. well played, Meloy.

Places

A thing that is true about me is I get particularly annoyed when people have an irrational competitive positive team-spirit attitude about the city or state or country they are from. So part of me wants to identify this Chicago winter we are now knee deep in as specifically worse than in other regions of the country. But that isn’t true. There are other places that have it worse. But it is my tendency to do so.

I’m from Iowa. Growing up there, we talked endless shit about it. We hated the towns, the country, the geography, we hated the weather, the people, the economy.  We had no love.

But when I moved to Minnesota, and people would scoff at me for being from Iowa, (I would get the condolences of Minnesotan strangers when I told them where I was from) as if Minnesota is better… I wasn’t expecting that. My attitude could best be described as, I can say what I want about my brother, but don’t YOU say anything about my brother. Also, their arguments against Iowa weren’t valid. It was stuff like, “Ya’ll fish in the ditches, don’t ya, cuz ya’ll are stupid,” and “Ya’ll don’t drive so fast, huh.” Minnesota is geographically identical to Iowa.

But it made me appreciate Iowa more. We don’t give a fuck where you’re from. We’re gonna be nice to you or silently judge you. We don’t have this forced bullshit love of our hometowns that other places seem to have. We don’t sing our school fight song when we get together. That’s not a thing that happens. What does happen is we will visit our hometowns or our college towns or places we liked once, find the one thing we liked about it, and hold onto and savor that one thing until the juices have been sucked dry. And then we will mourn the loss.

When I moved to Chicago, they didn’t have the same attitude toward Iowa that Minnesota has. And no one is really from Chicago, anyway. If they’re not from the suburbs, they’re from other states and don’t care about Iowa anyway. It’s just another place that fills in the blank of “where are you from?” when making small talk at parties. There’s not a competition.

Though there was this attitude of “Don’t you love it here? Isn’t it totally awesome here?” which wasn’t really how I was feeling then. I didn’t know anyone or know my way around and I was sort of just waiting to start sticking basically. So any enthusiasm I had for it at first was forced. Though, obviously, since being here I have created nodes and different niches and found things I loved and began to surround myself with those things. And it’s gotten to the point where I can’t realistically imagine moving anywhere else. It would be a great sacrifice. It has everything I could ever need.

But where I wanted to go with this is… Chicago winters are goddamn cold. They are not more cold than your winters. But goddamn. It’s cold. And my tiny apartment is doing this thing where the ceiling area will be really hot, and I will be sweating on top and have to remove a layer. But my feet are fucking freezing. Like. They are in pain because they are cold. And if you touch the floor, you will need to get up and wrap yourself in a blanket.

Which is oddly enough also how my microwave is. I will cook something and part of it will be burnt to a crisp, black and splitting, and then another part will still be cold. And there’s nothing I can do.

Anyway. Just an observation.

Top 10 Albums of 2010

I contributed my top ten albums of 2010 over on the chirp blog.

Check it out.

My Beautiful Dark Twisted Guilty Confession

As it turns out, Kanye West’s new album has entered my psyche in a way I was not anticipating. As a pop culture icon, Kanye is not someone I find myself identifying with or sympathizing with. Also, I am not a hip-hop fan*. It’s taken a lot for me to both admit this in my adulthood and work through it. And I think I have figured out why; hip-hop is mainstream music.  I think I was afraid that by admitting I wasn’t really a follower of the genre that that said something about me as a white person, but then I remembered why I rejected hip-hop in the first place: it was what the popular assholes were listening to in high school. There was nothing attractive about it for me. For me, it was all about punk (which I mistakenly believed was more politically conscious (which it is in some cases and isn’t in other cases)). And then there is Kanye. He has produced an album that has caught my attention in a huge way that few albums have this year.

Once I found out that there was hype about his new record, My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy my curiosity was piqued and I had to have it. I had heard his music before but am not closely intimate with his previous work, so I don’t really have that to work with. But the first listen through I was not impressed and was disappointed that something undeserving was getting such hype (10 out of 10 on Pitchfork, #1 Billboard). So I kept listening. And listened again. And made other people listen. And soon (within days, actually) the imagery and the ideas and the hooks were sinking in.

Now I am able to pick apart things I genuinely enjoy about the album. Basically I like it when people are able to take all the ugly things about themselves, the things they don’t like, the character flaws, and work through them as a form of catharsis to make something positive, to make art. The best books, the best music, the best movies, are always from some dark personal place you don’t so much like talking about in public.

In particular, the song “Runaway,” he acknowledges he is terrible with women and cites specific reasons why, up to and including infidelity and an inability to see past his partner’s superficial problems.  He calls himself a douchebag, an asshole, a scumbag, a jerkoff.  Kanye West, the performing artist that our president publicly wrote off as a jackass, is working through some very heavy burdens on this record. And rarely on it is he the hero.

Another song that has been haunting my nightmares the past couple days is “Blame Game,” where he characterizes a romantic disaster / doomed relationship with possibly the same girl featured in the other songs. At the end of the song he is trying to call her and her phone accidentally calls him back and he can hear her with another man. The voice of the other man is Chris Rock in an oddly hilarious but horrifying monologue where he reveals all the things they’ve done together.

I find myself quoting it out of context to my friends and then have to explain what it is.

Below find “Runaway (feat. Pusha T)” from My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy. I guess the song is one he performed at the VMA’s or something, but I hope you will be able to listen to the song in its own context.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IN8thsv67Sw

*It should also be noted that since getting involved with CHIRP hip-hop has been winning me over more and more, as we have conversations about its history and what role it plays in American culture. Word.