hi guys i had to write a little narrative about hadestown for RBR and this new website we're working on, and i thought i would share it here. it actually was even longer-winded than this but the label edited it (lucky for you). enjoy! i am so grateful and proud that this thing is finally coming out march 9th. hooray!
ANAIS MITCHELL: A HISTORY OF HADESTOWN
ON HER FAMILY
My parents were hippie back-to-the-landers; I was raised on a farm in Vermont. We didn’t have a television and we barely had neighbors, but my dad had a library full of books—especially all the classics of a certain era, like Proust and D. H. Lawrence and Durrell, etc.—and records, lots of old folk and psychedelic rock records. And they all lived in the same library, the books and the records, and my dad, as a novelist and an English prof, was a real lyrics man, which I am sure all led to me thinking of songwriting as one wing of the literary tradition, a noble poetic enterprise.
I can remember my dad sitting me down making me listen to Santana’s “Europa”—it’s an instrumental piece—and my dad going, “Can you see it? Zeus has changed himself into a bull and kidnapped the beautiful Europa and now he’s running, running, running down to the sea…” He was also real into “Home at Last,” Steely Dan’s song about Odysseus: “Still I remain tied to the mast…” I don’t mean to give him all the credit, but he passed along some major stuff to me about life, art, music, Greek myths, whatever, that I’m still playing out.
My brother and I spent a lot of time running around in the woods making up games and stories—and that’s kind of still what I’m doing with the opera, in a way. My brother once decided he was going to build an opera house on top of a cliff that overlooked our farm. He was a teenager then and he enlisted all his friends to come help out. They cleared a piece of the woods but they never really got any construction going. That kind of crazy ambitious idea, if not encouraged by my parents, certainly didn’t really faze them: “Oh, yeah, Ethan’s building an opera house on the back cliff…”
ON VERMONT, LIVING THERE, AND THE ORIGINS OF HADESTOWN
I always thought I would move to a big urban center like New York, but I now live in a 200-year-old farm house in another rural part of Vermont, not far from the Northeast Kingdom, where Bread & Puppet Circus is. It’s a very radical part of the state: tons of anarchists and puppeteers and stuff. There are a lot of fiercely independent creative people in the area, including Ben Matchstick and Michael Chorney, my collaborators on Hadestown.
Vermont is a very special place, totally beautiful, but it’s easy to feel cut off from the rest of the country up there, especially during the long cold winter. A lot of us are trying to homestead in one way or another, and it takes a certain kind of crazy mindset. We have a dozen chickens and two cats. Almost everyone on our road has a big vegetable garden. We’re learning how to grow our own food and put it by for the winter. We have to rely on friends and neighbors a lot—we help each other out stacking wood, digging a garden, or whatever needs to be done. Being so far out we also kinda have to make our own fun. We still don’t have a television. We have a wood stove—that’s the television of rural Vermont. We don’t live in New York, there aren’t a majillion things to do on any given night, so we have to come up with stuff ourselves. I don’t know if a thing like Hadestown could have gotten off the ground someplace else. I don’t know if people elsewhere would have been as game, but in Vermont it was pretty natural; it was like friends and neighbors coming together to help each other out and make some fun: “Oh, there’s a pile of wood in your driveway? I’ll help you stack it” leads to “Oh, you want to write an opera? Sure, I’ll be Hades!”
ON THE FIRST RUN
When I first started writing the songs for Hadestown I had a few friends in mind to sing the parts, mostly singers from different bands around Vermont, and they ended up being the original cast. We rehearsed in a frenzy in the evenings during what I think was a two-week period. Our rehearsal space, and the first place we mounted the show, was the old labor hall in Barre, Vt., a beautiful old historical building where a lot of union organizing went on in the thirties. There was so much about those first shows that was flawed (at least writing-wise, on my end, in my own opinion) but they were some of the most magical moments of my creative life so far. Ben Matchstick created a whole world, a whole visual vocabulary for the show, in just a couple weeks. He’s a real magician, an eleventh-hour genius; he has the ability to make something out of nothing—no budget, no time, a rabbit from a hat. Then, of course, the collaboration with Michael Chorney, who wrote some of the most haunting and beautiful arrangements I’ve ever heard on any songs. One crazy thing about Michael is he doesn’t use any composing software, and he doesn’t play the arrangements on a keyboard as he writes them; he really just hears them in his head and writes them down with a pencil on staff paper—so a lot of the music he hadn’t actually heard out loud until the band got together a few days before the show! The band was Michael’s project at the time, Magic City; they had started out as a Sun Ra tribute band but were quickly evolving into something bigger. There was really a sense from the beginning of the collaboration that the Hadestown show had three voices in it: my songwriting voice, Ben’s visual/theatrical voice, and Michael’s orchestral voice. It was a sum-greater-than-the-parts kind of thing.
ON THE SECOND RUN
The feedback we got from those shows was pretty overwhelming. It felt like we had struck some kind of nerve. Still, there was so much missing from the story; people were saying things like, “Hey, I was so moved by that … What was going on?” So when we decided to mount a second draft of the show Ben and I really made an effort to flesh out the story with the lyrics and staging—not just the metaphoric emotional stuff, but the characters, the plot, the arc. I’d say writing-wise the show took many steps forward, but a couple steps back, during that second edition. I spent months writing very expositional lyrics that eventually got cut. There was constant tension in my mind between getting the story across and preserving the poetry of the songs: not just the purdy language, but the metaphors. It really dawned on me during this process that Hadestown was never gonna be a Broadway-style show. I was watching all kinds of Broadway stuff on video, classic musicals, trying to get a feel for story arc and so on. Everything is so clear and crude in those shows. The protagonist comes out onstage and the first number is him going “This is who I am, and this is what I want, and this is what is standing in my way, la la la…” But as much as I love a clear-cut story, this show just didn’t want to go there, at least not all the way.
To me, from a writing standpoint, the second draft of the show was kind of stuck in a netherworld; it was surely more focused than the first draft, but there was also a bit of expositional overstretch … which did not in fact make the story more understandable. For example, we really went deep into the post-apocalyptic stuff in the second draft. The idea was that Hades had broken his contract with Persephone—instead of letting her go above ground for half the year, he traps her in Hadestown, so the seasons are out of whack, and the above-ground world is nearly uninhabitable. There was this one song—“Epic,” it was called—which took forever to write, and attempted to tell that backstory. It was very dense and poetic and it was the battleground where I played out the exposition-vs.-poetry conflict for months as I edited it and re-edited it. It’s where I learned firsthand this lesson I heard in an address Sondheim gave where he said, “You have to understand that an audience hears a song in real time. It doesn’t matter how clever or beautiful your lyrics are, if they pass by too quickly for the audience to comprehend, it’s not working.” After the second run I’d ask people, “So didja get the thing about Persephone being trapped in the underworld, blah blah?” and they’d be like “Nope, didn’t catch that. So anyway…” It really blew my mind. I’d gotten into a place where I was concerned with trees and not forests. I was changing lyrics right up till opening night—which I see now was unnecessary, not to mention stressful.
As for the staging, the second time round we had more money and more time (though not by much!). The cast was expanded; Ben had pulled together some crazy awesome stuff with lights and this “utility chorus” that moved sets around on stage and populated the world he’d created. He really wrote some crazy beautiful staging sequences for that second draft of the show. As for Michael’s arrangements, he added an instrument (viola) to the band during that second year, and made all kinds of changes and improvements and additions to the score. There were a handful of new songs, intros, bridges. His was a hard position to be in vis-a-vis the collaboration because as the story was changing and Ben and I were rethinking plot points, lyrics, etc., there was plenty of perfectly gorgeous score that had to be modified or even scrapped to accommodate the changes. It’s hard to edit lyrics and staging, but probably even harder to edit a score for six instruments!
That year we had a more ambitious tour schedule put together in conjunction with Alex Crothers of Higher Ground Music: kind of a Vermont legend, he runs the one rock room in Vermont where nationally touring bands play. We actually did “tour” around Vermont and then down to Boston. We were driving this old schoolbus painted silver that used to belong to a local circus company. We were loading the entire set, the sound and light equipment, onto this bus and setting it up on different stages. We were crazy to try and tour a theater show like that. It was full-on winter and there were white-out blizzards a couple of nights. I lost a bunch of money on that tour, because of a few very dead towns, but a lot of the shows were really fantastic.
ON THE GUEST SINGERS
After the second run, there were again a lot of changes I wanted to make. I wanted to go a step further toward fully-realized characters, and a step backward toward the simplicity of the story in the very first show we did. I wanted to let go of some stuff that had never really sat right with me as a lyricist. We talked briefly about trying to mount another run the following year but the consensus seemed to be that to finish the songs, the song-cycle, should be the priority before staging again, and what better motivation to do that than booking studio time to commit the stuff to tape forever and ever? I worked real hard in advance of the recording but it was not as easy as I’d thought it might be to get things to a finished place. It felt a little like doing a crossword puzzle where there’s just a few squares missing, and it can only be one very specific thing. That is, we’d created a world, and now I had to be consistent within it, lyric-wise, music-wise. “Wedding Song,” “Flowers (Eurydice’s Song),” “Nothing Changes,” and “I Raise my Cup” were all new additions. “Wait,” “If It’s True,” and the two “Epics” also underwent major changes. I cut a song that had had a gorgeous score, and one that people were sorry to see let go. It was pretty tough!
But there was a crazy motivating factor, and that was, one by one these guest singers were getting on board. Ani DiFranco was the first, and I owe much of the momentum of the recording to her faith and belief in the project. I don’t think she’d even heard the Persephone songs when she said she’d sing them. That’s brave! Then there was Greg Brown: I’d imagined him singing the Hades part for a long time but still whenever I hear his voice coming in on “Hey, Little Songbird” I laugh for joy. His voice is subterranean, it has strange overtones, I feel it in my belly almost before my ears. He and Ani were both early songwriting heroes of mine. … Then there’s Justin Vernon: That was kind of a cosmic casting situation. Justin and his manager reached out of the blue and asked if I wanted to open the Bon Iver tour of Europe. They’d never met me; they had just heard my record once and liked it, and they thought, Let’s have her open the tour! It’s unthinkable, really. The very first night of the tour, when I heard Justin sing “Stacks” in Newcastle in the UK, my heart exploded; I thought, “He HAS to be Orpheus.” I wrote my manager Slim [Moon] and Todd [Sickafoose] the producer: “He is the Orpheus of the century!” I loved the idea that Orpheus, as a supernatural figure, could sing with many voices at the same time. But I had to have a stern little talk with myself that night; I was like, “This guy doesn’t even know you, and he’s already doing you a huge favor having you on the tour; you can’t ask him right away, you might weird him out, wait till the end of the tour and then see if it’s the right thing to ask him…” But the second night of the tour we were on a ferryboat from Scotland to Norway and I’d had a couple glasses of wine and I couldn’t bear it any longer—I just blurted it all out in a rush: the opera, the record, will you please please please be Orpheus? and Justin just said, “yes.”
ON THE RECORD
The first thing we recorded was Michael’s orchestral arrangements, and it was a powerful thing to hear them in the clarity of the studio rather than the rush of the stage. They positively soared. We recorded them with some incredible musicians mostly from Todd’s Brooklyn scene: Jim Black on drums, Michael of course on guitar and Todd on bass, Josh Roseman on trombone, Marika Hughes on cello, Tanya Kolmanovitch on viola, and at some point Rob Burger popped in and laid down some mind-boggling accordion and piano. We were in a beautiful and expensive studio so we had to act fast to record all twenty tracks or whatever it was. Todd is a great producer, able to hear everything at once, able to know if a take was “there” or not, able to encourage everyone to feel the same things, breathe together, breathe magic into things, even in studio world. He was marvelous in that stressful situation. Then he laid down all sorts of other instruments, sometimes following the notes of Michael’s score but in another “voice” or register, sometimes supporting the score from beneath with a lushness and weirdness. He recorded some very weird stuff: a glass orchestra, a trumpet player who mostly played percussively, and at one point he said something about how he was hunting for “vintage futurism” sounds. “Vintage futurism” is how I had once described the Hadestown story. Together we sorted through the vocals—from New Orleans, Iowa City, Eau Claire, Los Angeles, Vermont—at Todd’s home studio in Carroll Gardens. Todd is patient, totally discerning, and totally open at the same time.
THEMES OF HADESTOWN
I think it’s safe to say all three of us—Ben, Michael, and I—are pretty influenced by the work of Bertold Brecht and Kurt Weill. Brecht seems to approach the same tough theme in Threepenny Opera and Mother Courage: morality ceasing to exist in desperate conditions. “First you must feed us, then we’ll all behave…” “ When the Chips are Down” is really kind of an homage to that idea. “You can have your principles / when you’ve got a bellyful.” To me this is also the whole theme of the Joker in The Dark Knight and maybe the other Batman movies I haven’t seen. The Joker sets up horrific little test scenarios with human subjects to try and prove that people who are scared and desperate will turn on their fellow man. It’s a tough theme because we all recognize that capacity in ourselves—but that’s not all we have a capacity for, as the Joker finds out.
To me the essence of “Why We Build the Wall” is, it’s meant to provoke the question. Take global warming to its terrifying logical conclusion and imagine part of the world becomes uninhabitable and there are masses of hungry poor people looking for higher ground. then imagine you are lucky enough to live in relative wealth and security, though maybe you’ve sacrificed some freedoms to live that way. When the hordes are at the door, who among us would not be behind a big fence? These conditions exist already, but most of us don’t have to acknowledge them in a real way. I really and truly had no specific place in mind when I wrote “Why We Build the Wall.” People often say, “Oh, that’s just like Israel/Palestine, or that’s just like the US/Mexico border,’” and maybe it is, but the song was written more archetypally.
One funny thing is, the first song ideas came as long ago as 2004-5. I didn’t get deep into it till ’06 when we started working on the production, but in any case, the Depression-era stuff was part of the show long before the US economy tanked. I remember Ben and I watching Matewan together to get ideas about poverty, company towns, mining, etc. The whole show became uncannily relevant in the past year or so, which I didn’t expect. When I play Hadestown songs in my own shows, I usually introduce the show as quick as I can saying, “It’s based on the Orpheus myth, and set in a post-apocalyptic American Depression era …” At some point in the past year I noticed people were laughing pretty loud when I said that—it was so close to home!
The real moral of Hadestown to me is, yes, we’re fucked, but we still have to try with all our might. We have to love hard and make beauty in the face of futility. That’s the essence of what Persephone sings at the end of the show: “Some birds sing when the sun shines bright / my praise is not for them, but the one who sings in the dead of night / I raise my cup to him.”
Click the link to view the video!
http://vimeo.com/8676331
ain't no grave
Tue, Jan. 26 2010
wow the blog feels like a dinosaur, in these breakneck times. a paragraph feels like a tome. i guess i will post a video. I’m on tour with erin mckeown, what a rockstar she is, we ride trains, we talk about god, and the ego, and shoes, n then she gets up there and f-ing rocks the house every night, it’s really something special. here is us doing a gospel song as an encore in Newcastle. the rental amp was not working so she just claps her hands and holds em up like a revival.
"Ain't No Grave" w/ Erin McKeown, Newcastle, UK 2010
emotional cowboys n nashville
Wed, Nov. 18 2009
the other night I got talking with this songwriter kevin welch at the rice festival in fischer, TX. a very special small festival run and attended by emotional cowboys which are the REASON i love TX. we were in the backstage tent with music and crickets all these little sample boxes of a new kind of m & m with dark chocolate, not very good, I don’t predict they will be popular. kevin welch is a beautiful guy with long hair and a kind intelligent worn look. I guess he lived for years in Nashville and we came round to talking about it and he described living there in this very delightful way. he was saying how at one point, I guess in the nineties, there was a real special songwriter scene he was part of. he described how all day people would be tryin to write hit country songs and then at five o’clock at the bar or whatever there might be a bunch of songwriters, and one would say to another, so what were you workin on today?, and the other might just say the title, and then like ok so there’s this guy, he wants her to come back to him, but he can’t bring himself to pick up the phone, or whatever, and the other songwriter might go, ah yeah I tried that once, I couldn’t quite bring it home… kevin also said if a truly great song managed to get past all the bullshit and become a hit, all these songwriters would sort of rejoice together, like it was a win for the team, that beyond any feelings of personal ambition or competition, everyone just really wanted to see great songs make the mainstream. god I love that idea. the camaraderie on one hand, and the idea of selfless devotion to SONGS on the other. great songs are rituals to be enacted again and again by different believers... saw danny schmidt in austin, I love that man and his songs. he played a fascinating new one on his porch. also saw sam baker and got a copy of his fantastic new record ‘cotton’. i wish i lived in Nashville with those guys and we went to the bar at five o’clock
facebook of the mind
Sat, Oct. 17 2009
it’s one thing to do something because you love it. it’s another thing to do something so you can tell other people that you’re doing it (facebook has augmented this urge but it seems like people have always postured for each other in this way). maybe not JUST to tell people, maybe you love it, too, but if the primary feeling is pride and excitement that people will think you’re this or that sort of person because of what you’re doing… facebook. and then, there’s doing something so you can tell yourSELF that you do it/have done it (facebook of the mind). I woke up the other day in my bunk and wasn’t ready to face the world so I thought I would read some. a friend sent me a book which is a collection of interviews with famous writers from the paris review, d.h. lawrence, robert frost, henry miller, etc. it’s pretty great I’m just reading them one at a time. so anyway I started reading this interview with aldous huxley. it was very interesting for the first few pages and then I did the thing where you read a whole page and realize you haven’t comprehended a word cos your mind is elsewhere. so I went back and read the page again and then turned it and read the next page without comprehending. and went back and reread it and then read a third page without comprehending. and I was just beginning to go back over the third page when I thought to myself, who am I doin this for? I’m not a student… I don’t have a paper to write… I don’t even have a dinner party to go to, at which to discuss the aldous huxley interview. and I realized what I was kind of doing was, I wanted to be able to say to myself, “this morning I read an interview with aldous huxley”. that I am not a waste of a mind. that I am inquisitive and good. isn’t that weird? facebook of the mind is powerful and insidious. I honestly can’t tell how much of what I do is motivated by it. does anyone feel the same?
transcontinental revue 11.5.09 with liz durrett
Tue, Sep. 8 2009
the late jag magazine
Mon, Aug. 31 2009
at one point last year my friend j and i were going to start this magazine of interviews with various people, mostly ones who don't often get interviewed, it was going to be called "jag", the idea was we'd ask these people to talk about things they were excited or knowledgeable about, and we'd print the interviews mostly verbatim, editing for thematic coherence but not for grammar. but the magazine never got off the ground and the other day j asked if i minded if he posted some of the interviews he'd done on his excellent blog. so i said ok but i'm doing it too. so here's one of them, it's an interview with my maternal grandma lauraine and her good friend irene, somehow i feel like i shouldn't print their full names on the internet, i'm sure they wouldn't mind, but it seems impure somehow, anyway ENJOY:
Lauraine was born in 1925 on Staten Island, NY. Irene was born in 1920 in Roxbury, MA.
CHILDHOOD L: We were very fortunate in that my father had a job all during the Depression and we had a car. We were one of the few people in our neighborhood that had a car. My mother, for years, was the only woman in our neighborhood who drove. And the other person who drove, beginning at age sixteen, was my sister Harriet—she didn’t have a license but she drove-- and the second car that my father bought was a huge Packard with pull-out seats, and he got it for very little money because someone lost their money and they needed the cash and so my father bought that car in 1933—a Packard. And at age sixteen the word would go out that my sister was going to the beach. All the children came, got in the car, and she would drive “like h---” down this highway that had been built in the thirties, the WPA-- no cars on it ‘cause most people couldn’t afford a car. One child was always the lookout, so if there were any police cars… We used to have ten, twelve children in the car! And so that was our summer entertainment… At nighttime, in the summer, across the street from us was a streetlight and all the young people would congregate there—boys up until probably the age of seventeen, eighteen, when maybe they had jobs, we played street games, hiding games, “ring-a-livio”, and I’ve forgotten some of the others. And the whole neighborhood, maybe eighteen or twenty kids-- ME: You would just converge in the street? L: --and we’d decide what the game was and have teams, and of course as one of the younger kids that was always something to be chosen, finally, to be part of a team. And that was how we entertained-- ME: You mean you’d have two captains and they’d choose people for their teams? L: Yeah, and then one team would go out and hide, or, depending on what the rules of that particular game were, against the other team… …There were two ponds where we went ice-skating. You had to walk, one of them was certainly two miles away, and the other a mile, but you’d always have someone to go with, you’d always take a raw potato with you, someone would start a fire on the banks of the pond, and you’d put your potato in there and while you’re ice skating it was roasting and then just before you got to go home you’d pull your potato out and you’d warm up your hands and you’d break it open and of course it tasted delicious, didn’t have butter or salt or anything, and you’d eat that and walk home with warm hands and it didn’t cost a penny. And then they built two municipal swimming pools, both within a bus ride, a nickel bus ride, for me. One of them I preferred to go to because the boys who went to that one were of more interest to me, and occasionally we would decide instead of taking the bus home for a nickel, we would buy a hot dog for a nickel, and then we’d have a two to three mile walk home. I: You didn’t know any different. We didn’t know any different. L: That’s right. And it’d be a whole group, we’d all decide, are we gonna walk home today, are we gonna buy a hot dog…? I: …I think I walked to school, starting with kindergarten, no buses, no mummy-by-the-hand, and we crossed a big street, I think it must have been more than a mile walking to grade school… And when we got older and could ride the subway—it was also a nickel or a dime—we went into Boston, into the city, and Cab Calloway and all of the big name bands were on the stage, and you’d pay your admission, and you could stay there all day, if you went out and bought a candy bar, and then the next bunch came in, you could sit there, you could see two or three shows, I guess two maybe was the maximum… L: … I never went to New York, but some of my friends did, to see Frankie-- Frank Sinatra—I never went, Frankie didn’t appeal to me for some reason. But my girlfriends would go. It would cost a nickel on the bus, a nickel on the ferry and a nickel on the subway and then I don’t know what it cost to go— I: Probably a quarter. To this day I can tell you, unqualifiedly, he is, to me-- there’s nobody that touches him. And I listen now a lot and I can explain it by saying: he caresses each word. When he says “love”, my god! To this day-- I’ve got a lot of records, and there’s other good singers, Mel Tome, a lot of guys-- but to me, he represents the best… And you would swear that he is trying to seduce YOU. That when he’s saying, “hey, baby,” it’s YOU and nobody else.
DANCING I: On Friday nights… we must have been-- boys and girls-- ten kids that would gather in somebody’s house and dance. We learned how to dance to the radio. And that was Friday night! It would be like dating, but it wasn’t dating, it wasn’t one-on-one. We were a bunch of kids, and we’d pair up, and we’d dance. I must have been twelve because by the time I met Lewis I was fifteen and, you know, I had been around, with boys, he wasn’t my first... L: …I met George at a freshman dance at Cornell. He had never gone to a dance before, but both of his roommates were going. He was a good dancer already. I don’t know where he learned to dance, ‘cause he never really dated. But… people learned to dance, then… I mean, everyone seemed to dance. I: Yeah, Lewis danced. ME: You learned dance steps? I: Well, until the jitterbug, it was foxtrot or waltz. And polka! But I never had the energy to do the polka. Lewis did. L: But dancing was, in the thirties, popular. I: Dancing was MUCH sexier then than it is now. You were close— L: That’s right! I: --you were cheek-to-cheek, you could whisper little nothings in the ear, and it was yummy. It was a heck of a lot, you know, not better, but different than it is today. L: And maybe that’s why guys were more apt to learn to dance, ‘cause you couldn’t jump into bed. I: That’s right. ME: It was the next best thing? I: A vicarious thrill…
MAKING DO L: When we first were married, if George and I wanted to go to the movies, we had to scour the neighborhood for bottles. Bottles had a two-cent deposit, and we would pick up enough bottles for ten cents each to go the movies. See, there was a big push then… it was right after the war and so a lot of GIs were back in school and apartments were scarce, we paid forty-five dollars a month for our apartment and our income was ninety dollars a month, so almost fifty percent of our income went to-- I: Lewis’s older brother-- we were struggling, and could hardly make ends meet-- and Jack came over one night and said, “I’m gonna show you kids how to do this, I’m gonna fix you a budget.” So we wrote down-- nothing like movies or anything-- we wrote down the payment to the bank for the mortgage, and the oil, and the electricity, and I don’t remember, whatever the necessities were for living. So those things all came to two hundred dollars, and we were making a hundred dollars! There’s no way in hell you can budget-- it wasn’t a question of doing without a dress, or a lobster, or anything-- the money wasn’t there… ME: [Lauraine] was saying in the car on the way over that she has love letters that her father wrote to her mother and that in order to save paper he would write from top to bottom and then turn the page sideways and write horizontally the other direction over the other writing to save paper. I’m curious what kinds of things were scarce during this time? L: Well of course, we were married, and you were too, during the war. Butter and sugar, a lot of things were rationed-- I: Gasoline, meat-- L: Meat, yes-- ME: How much meat could you have? L: We had meat maybe once a week. I: We had stamps that, we were given books of stamps, and if I knew Lewis was coming home on leave I would save up, ‘cause I knew he liked butter, and he liked meat and all that, and sugar… …To this day, I don’t waste a glass of water… Now I have a well-- it used to be I was taking from our own can-- but now I have a well, so I take pitchers of water up to guests or if I have water from the sink I use it to water the plants on the back porch. I don’t use paper napkins hardly at all. I don’t care how many of these (gestures) I use because they go in the machine and then I may or may not iron them. I’m trying to think in terms of making do… Even for myself now, if I cook a chicken Friday night, boy, that goes a long way, I’ll get another dinner out of it, and I’ll get a sandwich when I go to Neat Repeats, and I’ll get a little bit for a salad, so a chicken or a package of thighs that costs me two dollars, whew, I get a lot of mileage out of that-- ME: Do you use the giblets and the neck? I: I save that for soup. I save all that and when I’m ready to cook a chicken soup… Did you ever meet that gal R....? She was eating my chicken soup and she said, “My, this is very nice chicken soup.” And I said, “Thank you.” She said, “You know, no matter how long I cook it, it doesn’t get this good.” I said to her, “R., it isn’t how long you cook it, you’ve got to have a certain ratio of the chicken to the water. You put in three legs and a wing and fill the pot this high with water, you can cook it till doomsday and it’s not going to get strong, you know!” But that stuck in my mind, she just thought, the longer she cooked it, the stronger it was going to get, but it doesn’t work that way… So I save the giblets, and even if I roast the chicken I take this part of the wing off, this little thing, and throw that in with the giblets, ‘cause there’s no meat on it… ME: What about the carcass? I: The carcass, I don’t do it, but some people save that also, and that goes for stock, chicken stock. You just make a big pot of stock and you don’t buy broth in a can, you just use your own, you can freeze it in ice cubes, in ice-cube trays, and just use two or three… But for chicken soup, well you can’t do it from just chicken bones, you have to put the bones in with a whole big nice chicken. You can make stock, or broth, with an onion and a carrot and some celery and simmer it down and get a broth, but in terms of a good strong chicken soup you have to have a good ratio of the meat to a small amount of liquid…
CHILDBIRTH I: Yesterday was Freddy’s birthday—our Freddy—and her very dear friend called me and said, “What were you doing on this day sixty-something years ago?” I said, “I remember very well what I was doing.” I was living with Lewis’s mother at the seashore, and I knew I had to come in, I guess my water broke, so Lewis’s sister, who had never had children, drove me to our house in Mattapan, and I washed the kitchen floor at about ten o’clock in the morning! And then we each went down to the delicatessen for a corned-beef sandwich. Nobody today would think of eating a corned-beef sandwich before she gave birth! So we go to the hospital, she drives me to the hospital, and I walk up to the desk, and the receptionist says, “Yes, can I help you?” Selma almost punched her in the nose! She said, “She’s having a baby!” You couldn’t tell, I really wasn’t sticky-out-y, I was small. And when the baby was born, in those days there were not enough cribs, it was wartime, so they used dresser drawers, (gestures) this one, and this one; Freddy was in a dresser drawer! And only the husband could come and visit, because they couldn’t handle company, and flowers, and all of that, so every day, for about, well it lasted five days, you were in the hospital ten days I guess… L: Yes, you were. ME: Ten days? I: Well, I think so-- ME: They would keep you there? L: Even when Cheryl was born in ’48, you were in the hospital ten days. ME: What were you doing? I: I don’t know, but-- L: Resting. I: I don’t know, but the part about this was, every day some other guy came and said he was the baby’s father! I had five brothers-in-law, they didn’t want me to be alone and feel neglected, so it was Chuck, and Jack, and Bill… L: They must have been thinking, that woman got around! I took a course from the obstetrician that I had, Dr. Hall, before I had Cheryl, and this was before really good birth control came out, but he did talk about other ways of birth control, because what was the one thing called, like a cap? I: Diaphragm. L: The diaphragm was just out-- ME: That was the first thing that came out? L: Right, but it wasn’t foolproof, or as foolproof as some of the other things, later… Anyway, Dr. Hall said, you know, there are some women, those ten days in the hospital are the only time they get a rest every year because they had a baby every year; as soon as they’d get home from the hospital, the baby’d be two months old, they’d have sex, she’d get pregnant-- I: Nine months later, another baby— L: So Dr. Hall was saying, “That’s why I’m really all for the ten days in the hospital.” ME: And when you were giving birth, would your husbands be there? I: Mine wasn’t, we didn’t know where Lewis was, he was away. L: George was away, too. ME: Would it have been allowed, though? L: No, oh no, no. Husbands were lucky to get in— ME: Would your mothers be there? L: Yes, my mother was there. I: Mine was gone… there was not air-conditioning there… you were in the labor room, windows were open, and somebody said, “if the men could hear this screaming, they’d never have sex with you and make a baby. It was horrendous. I don’t know how much you were medicated or not-- L: In my case I was really medicated; I was in labor for two days. I: Oh, dear. L: But I think they did medicate heavily. Well it depended upon the doctor— I: Sure, and the position of the baby and all that. But as far as I know… there was no such thing then as ‘normal childbirth’, where you “push, push, push…” and the husband holds your hand, and, “you’re doing fine, honey” and all that. You just-- you were medicated-- L: I think the idea was to knock you out. I: Yeah, pretty much. L: Things changed... Shortly after Cheryl was born, things changed…
DYING L: Irene and I were both saying that our favorite books, really, are biographies. I: …I’ve got one now… I’m interested-- Rose Kennedy-- her life story. And I haven’t started it and you know I may not be able to tolerate the religion-- are you on our side? ME: On which side? I: George and I-- we are brothers and sisters together… what’s the word? ME: Atheist? I: Atheist. Or what’s the other one? ME: Agnostic? I: Agnostic. L: George says he’s an atheist, H. says she’s an atheist, I say I’m an agnostic. ME: I think I’m in your camp. I: I think—I’m an atheist. But you know, I still say, I know people and a very, very dear friend of mine, her sister’s just been stricken with cancer, and they’ve only given her eight months to live—and M. is Catholic by birth, but she’s not a church-goer, but she said now, she’s praying for her sister… Now it’s not likely that she can pray for her to live, I wouldn’t think so, she can only pray that she doesn’t suffer too much. L: That’s what I would hope for. George and I have it all worked out. I: Yeah, right. But Hospice has a great deal to do with people as they approach… I’ve seen some good stuff… L: Yeah, you know, I did the Hospice training, and the first family that I was part of, I felt it was an honor to be part of that family going through the death of their ‘grand mamere’, because first of all she was such a fine, fine person, and secondly, the way each member of their family wanted her to pass on as peacefully as possible, and what they did for her to make— I: You know the one that stands out in my mind most of all was E… I wasn’t there… but E. and I were very, very close friends. And she was bathed in lavender and she was put in a beautiful gown and all the family and close friends were around her instead of carrying on, they were there, I don’t know if they were singing or reciting or what, but it was a beautiful ceremony from what I understand… And in your case, with your first experience, over and above what they gave to you, did you feel… a satisfaction that you were able to help them in some way by being there…? L: Yeah, I think so, because my role was to-- I’ve forgotten her name now-- was to keep her mind busy and more or less happy during those hours that she was under my care. Now, she was very religious, she was Catholic… the priest came every other day and gave her last rites, which, to me, was sort of black, a black thing, but it made her feel good. And her children, I think, were mixed, but they all loved her and each one, when it was their turn to be on duty, came up with either a book to read to her, or a story to tell, or they’d take her out for a little walk or whatever, to fill those hours for her in the best way that they could… …The story is that she had married at eighteen a farmer who already had seven or eight children and then she had seven or eight children by him-- I: He should have had a different hobby! L: Yeah, and she had six cows that were her cows that she milked by hand, it was a big dairy farm, and then she also fed the farmhands in addition to her own family, and all those babies growing up-- I: So how old was this woman when she passed? L: She was early seventies. I: Was it cancer? L: Yeah. But I never heard her complain… and everything you did for her, she smiled and said “thank you”… And I think it was just-- to see such love between all the family members—it was, to me, an honor to be part of that. I: And conversely, you must have, in your experience, been exposed to situations where you didn’t find that in the houses where you represented Hospice-- L: Oh, sure-- I: And how do you cope with that, how do you hold back your feelings…? L: Well, fortunately, I only had that with one family and-- you’re called in by the ones that do care. And the others are on the sidelines-- the ones who can’t wait till grandma’s gone, that sort of attitude. ME: And you would pick up on that? L: Oh, yeah. I think people think when somebody’s dying they can say whatever they want, and sometimes they do, they let a lot of anger out, or I don’t know… but fortunately I only heard that from one family.
go green cutlass supreme
Mon, Aug. 3 2009
two nights ago me & sarah bowman of the bowmans & s.’s friend j. cruised the blue ridge parkway from Asheville to craggy gardens in j.’s green cutlass supreme, “GO green” as he described it, like traffic light green, with a white top that came down, it was chilly and foggy and even sprinkling a little, at least drops were shaking down from the trees which was so fun, to get wet in a car, like an amusement park ride, we were drinking cheap red wine from plastic cups and j. drove looking straight ahead while s. and I spoke rapid, inspired girl-talk. someone should totally write a country song called “go green cutlass supreme,” I relinquish the title to whoever wants it, but please do a good job. this is funny because the reason I was in Asheville was to teach a songwriting workshop at this beautiful camp the Swannanoa Gathering, and in one of my classes we were talking about clichés, how to identify them, how to avoid them, and we were doing this exercise where we took an idea like “freedom” and we all generated imagery that illustrated that idea, but first we ruled out some obvious clichés like birds and the sky, and lo and behold about half the class came up with driving imagery, especially motorcycle imagery, and I said, “well, I’m afraid riding a motorcycle might a cliché,” and this one woman, who I wouldn’t have pegged for a biker, said dreamily, “not when you’re DOING it…” and we all laughed and laughed, it was very sweet.
guys, I am going on an internet fast for the rest of the month of august. catch you on the flip. love anais.
dear leonard cohen
Sun, Jul. 19 2009
please come for dinner
i will not eat corporate meat i will not eat corporate meat
Fri, Jul. 3 2009
I was supposed to work at the farm today but it’s been raining so much it’s too wet to weed, the mud clings to the hands and slows down the work, plus I guess the farmer doesn’t want us to compact the soil. we weeded some long rows of carrots a couple days ago, the camaraderie was fun, there were a dozen and a half of us working, which is why organic vegetables are more expensive, is you are paying like a dozen and a half struggling artists to weed them, but that’s a nice thought isn’t it, that the extra money is going into people’s pockets? Plus, they taste so. much. better, the vegetables, I mean.
but I would rather eat corporate vegetables than corporate meat, which at this point really TASTES like pain and fetidness, does anyone know, has it actually gotten worse in the past few years, or have I just grown out of the happy meal days of my innocence? in any case it’s hard to stay away from it especially on tour, but I will not eat corporate meat I will not eat corporate meat I will not eat corporate meat I will not eat corporate meat I will not eat corporate meat what bothers me most is not fast food places, where you know what you’re in for, but places like friday’s, and what’s that one, cracker barrel, which masquerade as actual restaurants with actual food, and charge more money, but are actually troughs of pain and fetidness. if I am eating corporate food I want it not to resemble food at all. I’d rather eat a twinkie than like meatloaf from friday’s. are you guys with me.
byte-size
Tue, Jun. 9 2009
I keep wondering if I should sign up for twitter, then hating the idea. I dunno if byte-size is really my forte. I’m gonna pretend for a minute I am twittering and see how it goes.
the indigo girls were like two pillars of a temple. they were both equally powerful and they stood side by side at a weight-bearing distance channeling the harmonies of the goddess (ack I think that was too many characters!).
we moved the baby chicks over to the neighbor’s house this morning. it was raining. thomas the mouse was watching with yellow eyes.
ohhhhh it’s kind of like haiku, dig it! 5-7-5
everyone on airplanes
is reading that book called “blink”
should I do it too?
grilling asparagus
isn’t as quick as it looks
on the food network
oh, those are terrible, I sound very bourgeois!
i hate this post!
i will post it anyway.
that’s the culture we live in!
two old videos
Wed, May. 13 2009
hi guys i think these videos are already on myspace but i never posted em here and looking at them makes my heart yearn for last fall when i got to open these tours for bon iver and then ani difranco w/ hamell on trial. bon iver was singing this sarah siskind song a lot and i got to sing it a couple times. me n hamell shared a dressing room most of the tour and we learned this lou reed song. you can see ani playing vibraphone in the back, what a badass.
"Lovin's For Fools" w/ Bon Iver, Paris, 2008
"Waitin for my Man" w/ Hammel on Trial, Amsterdam, 2008
ferron
Tue, May. 5 2009
i was lucky enough to open up for ferron in montreal this weekend, it was really something special, i grew up listening to her records, 'shadows on a dime' was the big family hit, my dad made sure we knew the words to every song on that record, i can see it now, the LP, ferron on the cover in some kind of leather or maybe it was a sports jacket leaning in the door of a building, she looked very strong, manly and womanly at once, a serious poet.
here are some great ferron lines:
"hearts are like meadows, with their weathered potential, with their reasons diluted by reason itself..."
"life moves so mysterious with its cute little spins/and it's everyone's koan and door to get in/it's old human nature/it's cold or it's hot/i think of you often/i like you a lot/if it's snowin in brooklyn/i'd say snow's what we've got."
also it was very affecting when she directed this line right at us the audience during her show: "i don't forget about the factory/i don't expect this ride to always be/can i give you what you wanna see?/can we do it one more time?"
one song i didn't grow up with, but discovered on the new 'boulder' record produced by bitch, is 'girl on a road':
"my momma was a waitress/my daddy a truck driver/the thing that kept their power from them slowed me down awhile". oh my GOD that is a good fucking line.
i had this feeling watching ferron sing like that she is a kind of a priestess. no kind of pious mind you. but she said something backstage about when you say a word, like 'door', you "summon the spirit of the door". it made perfect sense, words have power and medicine in them, all you have to do is utter them, that's a nice thought on an off-night.
portland cello project
Thu, Apr. 2 2009
from a hotel in anchorage, there is elevator music playing in my room it is sooooo bad, but I’m too tired to get off the bed and figure out how to turn it off, I see the speaker it’s coming out of, but it’s all the way across the room. oh god i am going to turn it off. one sec. did it!
it’s cold and white here, there’s lots of magpies and yesterday we saw a mountain goat. it is pretty much one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever been, except for the anchorage sprawl, which is just like any other sprawl.
I did three shows in the pacific northwest as a special guest of the portland cello project, they are so fantastic, they arranged and played several of my songs and we also learned this one sesame street song because we thought PBS was going to be following PCP with a camera for a few days, but then they bailed (postponed), but we sang the song anyway. I learned it from a mix tape, cookie monster sings it: “if moon was cookie”.
between Madison and Chicago I was joined for three shows by noelie macdonnell of galway, beautiful guy, i was lucky to have him along because a couple of the shows would have been pretty bleak otherwise. there was this one small town in southern Minnesota called Lanesboro. it comes as a surprise after miles and miles of corn, looking both old-westy and new-englandy at the same time. we played in a theater that once showed movies, quaint and old. there was not a big crowd but very appreciative as often is the case in small towns. before the show I was sitting upstairs in the greenroom. the place smelled of mold and shag carpet and insulation. I was drinking red wine from a cup-and-saucer cup and working on a song. I looked around at the walls which were made of that plastic stuff that is meant to look like wood and I had one of those flashes where what is cheap and weird is suddenly very beautiful. the whole scene, but the plastic walls in particular; I thought, “that’s beautiful”. noelie came up and we started playing some songs. townes van zandt ones for example. out of the blue noelie started describing some footage he’d seen of townes & steve earle and some others playing songs in townes’ trailer. “the walls were like this, beauty board,” he said, gesturing around. “I don’t know what you call it here—in Ireland we call it ‘beauty board’.” it made me smile!
on my way home now to practice with SPUTNIK! (me & n. are in this eighties band) for our FAREWELL SHOW at Langdon St. this friday the 13th. people come out if you’re around. the band is going on indefinite hiatus to “pursue solo careers”. also, the eighties is so five minutes ago. it’s a little sad though. everything I know about the keyboard, I know because of the band. I am gonna try and hunt down this video of us singing “we are the world” along with like our whole town at this festival last summer. if I find it I’ll post it here. over and out, anais.
folk alliance
Mon, Feb. 23 2009
folk alliance was pretty great. for those of you not in the know it is this conference that happens once a year in Memphis, tons of songwriters and other folk people take over the marriott and for four days there are songs coming out of every room on four different floors of the hotel. there are these showcases, some sponsored by the conference, others “guerilla” style, and there are some folk scene industry types there that might give you a gig or something but the real beauty of the thing for a lot of people is seeing so many comrades at once of the songwriter tribe. it was so fun and also made me want to go in a room and not come out till I write a dozen new better songs.
for sure there are not-great and great songs, but the interesting thing is how many totally different ways there are to write a great song. some people string imagery together pretty abstractly and it is stunning even if almost incomprehensible. other people are very narrative and they pull you in and tug you around in the most heartbreaking way. some songs leave much to the imagination and others very little and I know I’ve heard great songs in both of those camps. there’s nothing like listening to a great new song in a roomful of songwriters. like at five am one night this character cory branan wandered into our party and sang this song that I can’t remember anything about except the refrain went “what didn’t kill you make you wish you died” and there were like a dozen songwriters gasping for air and then having to go smoke cigarettes.
two more discoveries, joel plaskett of Toronto was absolutely delightful and apparently two of my favorite singers, ana egge and rose cousins, sing all over his new record coming out soon. and john Elliott of LA, I had met before and thought might be a genius and as it turns out he definitely is. there’s many other comrades I’ve mentioned them before so I won’t list them here but from the bottom of my heart I am so grateful to be in the tribe. rose polenzani has this line, “someone plays a song and it’s like a miracle… it’s like a miracle!” xoa
tour video from london, post-inauguration
Fri, Feb. 6 2009
"1984" live at the Luminaire (London, UK) January 21, 2009
notes from europe, and child ballads
Sat, Jan. 31 2009
watched the inauguration from a south english living room before the show. the next day the london tube was full of people reading newspapers with the headline “AND HE CAN DANCE” and footage of our man on the floor lookin good. finally got to play two gigs with the bowmans, they’re beautiful and so’s their music and we had fun talking psychology on the drive to newcastle. also in brighton I played with sharon lewis, my god what a songwriter, and afterward we sang some ballads, her voice being fragile and strong. dublin, my old friend robert blake was in town, we took a long walk down a country road and talked about everything. amsterdam, rotem perach, we ate raw herring in the frosty street, we went to a club called the new anita, it was full of dutch hipsters reading pomes in dutch, and illegal salons, what does that mean? smoke pot in the street, but do not under any circumstances get a haircut. hamburg, the angelic jan, I finally met tish hinojosa, we drank “mexicanas” which are tiny bloody marys. berlin, the “creaky boards” (ny), we talked about g-d and drank a lot and got desperate for peanuts, the soundman brought us to his basement studio and played us a song he’d written for his girlfriend in german.
reading my way through the “child ballads”, it’s five volumes, ten sections, 305 ballads many having multiple versions, and smart funny scholarly information as well. it’s really quite a treasurebox, it’s a world you enter, the vocabulary is all of a piece, for example, hands are lily or milk white, a steed or a gown might be berry brown, and so forth. very taken with a couple of them. one great one from the first volume comes from a time when christendom existed alongside the old world, must have been a crazy crossroads, anyway Thomas the rhymer who is like a poet/prophet who was given his gifts by the fairy queen, is sleeping under a tree when said queen appears to him. he takes her for the virgin mary but she says, no, I’m not as holy as that, but I AM the fairy queen (or is it elf queen). she takes him away with her and they walk and walk and he gets tired and then he sees a tree full of fruit and reaches up to pluck one… but she stops him, saying, this is how your people got in so much trouble, sit down on the grass with me I have some bread and wine. which they do and then she says, do you see that narrow path in the woods, covered with thorns etc.? that is the path of righteousness which few men will ever travel. and do you see that broad path covered in flowers, that is the path of wickedness, though some men call it heaven. and do you see that third path which is neither one of those? that is the way to elf land, and that is where we are going. isn’t that just fantastic?
gaza
Thu, Jan. 8 2009
hi guys
today i got this note from my friend. i thought i would post it here. as thinking feeling people we have got to be able to criticize a government, supported by our own government, whose actions are atrocious, and know that this is not a criticism of "jews" or "israelis" or any other thinking feeling people. xoa
"Hello,
Some of you receiving this are close friends of mine, others are mere names on my contact list. I have never sent out such an mass email, and probably will not do so again. I am writing to ask you do take some action in your life, large or small, to stop the savagery in Gaza. I need not tell you that, as I am writing this, at least 700 Palestinians have been murdered in the past few days, almost half of them unarmed civilians (10 Israelis have been killed also, 4 of them by "friendly" fire). Thousands have been badly wounded, many of whom will die slow, horrible deaths, as Gaza's hospitals now lack medicine, anesthetic, and electricity.
Most of those to whom I am writing, like me, are U.S. citizens. As such, we are in a unique position of responsibility. The rest of the world has consistently opposed Israel's relentless and chronic contempt for human rights and international law via the United Nations, and through large street demonstrations all over the world, yet they can do nothing to stop Israel. Israel can and will continue to do whatever it likes, as long as the U.S. gives the thumbs up. Every crime that Israel has committed in its short, brutal history has been done with U.S. money and weapons. Ours is the only approval that truly matters to Israel. Palestinians can do nothing to stop Israel from killing them and stealing their land. Europe and the Arab world can do nothing. Only you and I, as Americans who still retain some influence over the actions of our government, can stop this horror.
It is easy and enjoyable to look back on the great crimes of history, American slavery, the Jewish holocaust, etc. with moral indignation and the comforting certainty that we would have been in the minority who stood against these crimes, had we been been there. It is much more difficult to stand up to the contemporary incarnations of these atrocities, to choose to see through the thick veil of lies and justifications woven by the executioners.
If this letter has been an irritation to you, I apologize. If, like me, you find it difficult to sleep lately, thinking about the unimaginable cruelty being inflicted on an imprisoned population by a people who claim to have been "chosen" by God to rule a land which has been inhabited by others for thousands of years, about our elected government's uncritical support for the killers, about our soon-to-be President's refusal to comment on the atrocities, than I ask you to take action, whatever that means to you. It might be as simple as writing to your Senators and Representatives. Or attending a demonstration. Or taking more direct and militant action. Just do something, please. Don't let this moment in history be one on which you must look back with secret shame because you remained silent.
Sincerely,
David Symons"
are ideas overrated?
Fri, Dec. 19 2008
I’ve been thinking about this. at first it came from reading eckhart tolle. there was this beautiful concise passage about how we often look at the world and attach words to it, that is, we say, ‘that’s a bird’ or ‘that’s a tree’, and then think that we understand those things. but in truth we don’t understand them, we have only ‘covered them up’ with names. n. taught me a game where you make a picture frame out of your hands and then look at the world through it, if you’re driving in a car it becomes like a video, either way you try to see the world as a composition of shapes and colors and not identify things with words. it is more fun than you might expect!
then, I started thinking how well-versed most of us are in the language of ideas. we are taught from a very young age to look at a complex variable mysterious world and simplify it, recognize patterns in it, try to bring it under conceptual control. the texts of academia as I remember them (I studied politics) had little to no IMAGERY. it was a bloodless language that saw forests but not trees. what I wish I had spent more time studying is storytelling, the meat of the world. stories are more interesting than ideas.
my brother, as devil’s advocate, said something about how actually, there’s something about the human eye and the human brain, that is like… when we’re looking at the world, as much information is coming to our eyes from the brain as from the world, that is, the brain is saying, ‘look for parallel lines, look for these color distinctions, etc.’ and there was something about how when colonial ships were approaching the eastern shore of this country, many native Americans could not even SEE them, because they were so foreign that their brains were not telling their eyes to look for them. so my brother’s point is that actually conceptualizing the world is a big part of seeing it at all. good point… what a delicate balance that must be for the eye.
yesterday I’m listening to the radio washing dishes. the vermont ‘administration secretary’ or someone like that is taking calls about the cuts to social services the state government (contrary to what you’d think, we have a republican governor) is proposing in order to face the recession. this is public radio and there’s all kinds of liberal Vermonters calling in saying, ‘why not raise the gas tax, or tax the very rich, or this and that, instead of cutting funding for services to our most vulnerable citizens? the secretary is pretty slick and knows how to field this kind of thing. you can hear he’s very anti-tax. it’s a principle for him. then there’s a call from a guy who says something great. he says, ‘I think the secretary’s position is more ideological than logical.’
so simple but true. anyone can understand the value of the IDEA of low (or no) taxes, the idea of small (or no) government. what is harder understand is the reality of it. free market capitalism was an idea. and there is something beautiful about ANY idea when it exists only in the pure realm of ideas. but the reality of it, if it is taken to its logical conclusion… is illogical. much worse than that. seems like, attached to any idea, there are idealists, and there are profiteers. the idealists are chumps, and the profiteers are despicable. this must be true for ideas on the left and the right. so how can we live in this world? I wonder if going back to what my brother said, there’s no way NOT to see the world in terms of ideas, but that somehow we have to strike this balance where we see things more for what they are than for what we want them, or don’t want them, to be. having read this post I see it is a pretty conceptual bloodless argument itself. anyway I am sittin here by the fire in a blizzard and n. just went to put the chickens in.
the president
Wed, Nov. 5 2008
we don’t have a television so we went down to the neighbor’s house with the last of the bottle of scotch I brought home from europe. I wanted to believe it was a sure thing but I just couldn’t. me & n.’s second date was exactly eight years ago when we watched the bush/gore election together in a dorm room and went to sleep thinking gore had won. then there were the recount days when nobody knew what the hell was going on but when the ‘official’ call was made we all took it on the chin. I guess what I was feeling before last night was utter uncertainty about the depth of our corruption, like we were cutting into a fruit that may or may not have been completely rotten.
OH MY GOD I AM SO GLAD FOR THE WORLD. as slim put it: “he is almost better than america deserves, but since he will in many ways be the world's president, i think he is the man the world deserves.”
tour videos
Mon, Nov. 3 2008
Live with Rachel Ries @ Club Passim (Cambridge, MA) September 12, 2008
Live @ Berns (Stockholm, Sweden) September 23, 2008
graffiti
Thu, Oct. 23 2008
I’m sitting backstage of this venue in freiburg and there’s some funny graffiti on the wall. it might only be funny to bands of a certain type but I’m gonna transcribe some of it for you. it seems like someone just started a list of things you hear on the road/in the music business and other people added things and all of the things are numbered and at this point there are 67 of them though like half of them are crass and unfunny but here’s some good ones
1. it sounded great out front
3. don’t worry, it’s only a coldsore
4. it looked full to me
5. I love what you guys are trying to do
11. royalties? what royalties?
15. the hotel is close to the gig
18. no one has ever complained about that before
19. ac/dc played here and THEY didn’t complain
20. I’m really tight with those guys
32. I thought you took care of that
33. you’re going to rake once you recoup
ok actually it makes me feel kinda sad looking at that. there’s graffiti in the iron horse basement that says “your mom is a jamband”.
contra la por
Fri, Oct. 17 2008
in ireland we were involved in not one but two pub “lock-ins” where they do last call and some people leave while others stay and they lock the front door and draw the shutters and continue to serve tall dark and handsome guinesses and out come the cigarettes and, hopefully, the songs. as a singer i am all for the smoking ban which seems to be sweeping the universe but I must admit to a great feeling of old-fashioned underground excitement linked to the whiff of cigarettes in a public place. we had a great “sessioon” in county clare during which I sang, a cappella, every ballad I could think of which was not many. shane had introduced me to paul brady (his music, not him personally) and specifically his “definitive” version of the song “arthur mcbride” which is now a great favorite of mine in fact I tried to sing it in clare but could not remember all the lyrics and had to resort to wild gesticulating to get the end of the story across. kevin and mick of the most wonderful and charming band GUGGENHEIM GROTTO for whom I was opening also recommended “raglan road” and one other I can’t remember. I am crazy for these ballads man. it has happened before that I go to the uk or ireland and suddenly remember why folk music is important and beautiful. these british isles songs stab my heart much, much deeper than appalachian ones. I heard this song about “musgrave” or is it “musgrove” which I think is the british version of “shady grove” and I found it much more compelling.
now I’m in catalonia with the ani tour. tonight I am gonna attempt a song in catalan, it’s by a famous anti-fascist songwriter: RAIMON. it is called “contra la por” here is a rough translation:
“come, let’s call things by their names. if we don’t break the silence, we’ll die in the silence. life is against fear. love is against fear. we are against fear. against fear, without fear.
come, let’s call things by their names. all those who have suffered the weight of the immense boot and the sharpened blade (okay I dunno if “boot” is right) know what fear is. and know that it is difficult to call things by their names.
life is against fear. love is against fear. we are against fear. against fear without fear. without fear. without fear.”
copious
Fri, Oct. 10 2008
I actually cried in the taxi when the time came to leave the bon iver tour. it was a rainy dublin late-night and the cab driver was very friendly. that song came on the radio: “I ain’t missin’ you at all...” and I thought, “I miss those guys!” and I cried. it was like a movie. they are just BEAUTIFUL. I am the luckiest girl alive.
but you can’t step in that river twice and now there’s a whole new river. n. is visiting for a week in ireland. we cannot drink as much as irish people can it is physically impossible last night I said to someone, “the irish wit gets sharper with a few drinks but the american wit (if there is such a thing) surely goes the other way.” n. has got some great wool pants and a jaunty hat he looks like he could be from any era.
a lot of musicians look both older and younger than their age at the same time.
irish people have a great way of using fancy old-fashioned words in an off-handed way like “copious”. love. anais.
bon iver etc.
Mon, Sep. 22 2008
in Stockholm at a hotel. I was planning to sleep on the bon iver tour bus every single night to save money but after a week on the bus as awesome as tour buses are I was pretty ready to spring for a room. all day I’m dorking out it feels great. reading ‘the kite runner’ which is so beautiful. I’m trying to become one of those people who read contemporary fiction. I used to say I didn’t do it because if I was going to read I might as well read the classics, but in actuality I just don’t read enough at all. and it can be hard to get into classic-head especially on the road so lately I think it’s fun just to go to borders and see what people are reading out there! I read ‘water for elephants’ and ‘a new earth’ on this particular kick and got a lot out of both. ‘a new earth’ is making me notice how most of the things I say and do are motivated at some level by a desire to show off. so childish! like right now actually, it’s likely I am doing it. I could write volumes about the ego but I’m afraid it will come out preachy and I of all people by no means have a handle on my ego. but the book shed some light on it that’s for sure.
so. bon iver is f-ing unreal. the music is a howl in the darkness. warm, animal, sonorous. the songs are very special inspired subtle and gigantic. I am so lucky to be with them. also they are the funnest bunch of people. they are playing these beautiful halls full of beautiful people who are in love with their songs. that’s as good as it gets…
country e.p. w/ rachel ries comes out september sixth!
Tue, Aug. 19 2008
I wanted to tell you all that my friend rachel ries and I are releasing a little recording in just a couple weeks, it is called ‘country e.p.’, it’s five songs, two of mine, two of rachel’s, and we cover one song by our good friend louis ledford!
rachel is from chicago. she is one of the greatest singers, songwriters, and people I have ever known. I think she is classically trained and she learned to sing harmonies in church and she’s so good, she makes you want to weep. she has had a good deal of influence on my songwriting. there’s this one song on the recording, “o my star!” when I wrote it I thought to myself, “I am writing a rachel ries song”.
we’ve done some tours together. one time we were in milwaukee at this pub. there was some mix-up or maybe the soundman was late because I remember we didn’t go on till hours after we were scheduled. instead we hung out in the girls’ room and sang songs. I have always loved singing in bathrooms. that’s when we learned “bartender blues” it’s a james taylor song that goes, “I’m just a bartender, I don’t like my work, but I don’t mind the money at all…” we sang that every night of the tour. I think that song had something to do with the “country” idea. also louis ledford’s song, which is a perfect country song.
so we made this recording and the fun thing is if you buy it, you have to buy a little 7” vinyl record with three of the songs on it, but you also get a cd with all five songs. and we are excited that RBR is putting it out for us. you can get it at these shows we’re doing on the east coast, which by the way we are doing with a killer band. hope we see you!
mystery
Mon, Jul. 21 2008
n. is often quiet, and then he’ll say something very eloquent in an off-handed way. for example when I asked if he preferred john or paul as a songwriter he said, all in one breath, “I’d say I identify more with john’s abstract emotionalism and political fervor; however, as a bass player, I can’t help admiring paul’s sense of harmony, and his quirky gentlemanliness.” then the other day we were thinking back on a show I played with n. & his band, PARIS BATHTUB, and he said, “I love music, I love playing it, I love to be in a sweaty café, something lusty and imperfect in the air…” we were talking about “the mystery”. I said I thought of my songs a co-write between me and the mystery and he said, “but even that is once removed, the more accurate thought is, you ARE the mystery, the mystery is YOU,” and I knew he was right, whatever that means, it’s like what l. cohen said in I’M YOUR MAN about he used to think of himself as the hero of his own melodrama, then he “sank into the masterpiece”. the other night I was at Charlie-O’s, our local dive and there was a jazz band playing, guys we all know quite well, they were really rocking, it sounded great, I was watching their faces and suddenly I felt quite sure I could see a dual striving, on the one hand it was ego and pride and the rush of the stage, on the other hand it was selflessness, zen, spiritual service, and the interesting thing was I could see them both at the same time and they were not a contradiction
prairie dog town
Sun, Jun. 22 2008
nuther one down, I’m at the bouldin creek coffeehouse on south 1st in austin waiting for my flight this afternoon. this was a very fun trip with antje duvekot www.antjeduvekot.com and austin nevins. texas, new mexico, colorado & oklahoma. there was carslbad caverns, with its snack bar deep in the earth, roadrunners were a bit of a theme, also margaritas, I think I have decided I like cointreau in a margarita, the weirdest stop on the trip was “prairie dog town” somewhere off interstate 70 near the co/ks border, kind of a low-budget prairie zoo which housed, besides prairie dogs: raccoons, foxes, coyotes, pigeons, badgers, buffalo, many rattlesnakes, and then, believe it or not, two mutant steers, one with five legs, and one with six legs and two assholes both of which are functional.
antje is a beautiful woman and a beautiful songwriter. she has really infectious melodies. sometimes touring with another artist I start to get the other artist’s songs in my head like crazy. it can be annoying for the other artist I imagine when it’s like nine in the morning and I’m tunelessly humming their songs. touring with rachel in the past we had a rule, no singing of songs before noon.
just before my first set at kerrville the mc gets on the mic to announce that the democrats have settled on a presidential candidate and it is: OBAMA!
that was very exhilarating. to those who say it doesn’t matter, that he’ll be fed to the dogs, or that he’ll be elected and then rendered ineffectual, to those who say they don’t want to get their hopes up just to be crushed as they have in the past, I say, well what do I say? I say, we ought not underestimate the power of inspiration, inspiration goes a long way, I believe in it way more than I believe in american democracy. I wrote a brief poem for the man nothing special but I thought I might share it anyhow, yours, anais.
Prayer for Senator Obama
Lord, let him not be like the others
Let him not be proud
And bright-feathered
Let him not be a fruit
Rotted at the core
Let him not be a fish
In a school of fish, Lord
Let him not fall prey to the spiteful
Lord, let him not be slandered or worse
Let him not fall prey to sycophants
Lord, let him not learn conceit
Steady his hand. What he holds in it
Is precious and ugly, Lord, like a rat
With a diamond in its belly
Let him set it free
cosmic geography
Sun, May. 25 2008
before anything else I have to say, thao nguyen is a real and true rockstar, they don’t make them like her anymore, everyone should go see that show. I just opened a little run of dates for her and the get down stay down in europe and there were dance parties, card games, absinthe, peanuts, long hours looking out the window of the van at green fields and shocks of yellow rapeseed and intervals of self-cleaning toilets on the autobahn and vending machine cappuccino. it was fun—did it happen? it’s a shame to move so quick.
now I’m in turner’s hill, a small town in sussex, uk. it’s a magical place for me as my very first overseas gig was in this town—a wonderful promoter happened to hear a song of mine on the radio and sent me an email—did I want to play his acoustic series in sussex? there is a cosmic geography thing that happens when you book your own gigs, a message comes out of nowhere, a herald angel, then maybe a second one confirms the idea, suddenly you’re on the west coast, or across the sea, it’s the closest thing I can imagine to what a young man used to do in the olden days when he went to “seek his fortune,” a matter of picking up clues and interpreting signs, and this pleasure is somewhat diminished with an agent, not that it isn’t a hundred times more humane having an agent, it’s just a thing I notice. I wonder if agents have these cosmic feelings? I bet some of them do. but then again the agent never gets to strike out on the trail, she is more like the lady with the crystal ball...
in those days
Fri, May. 2 2008
I just posted this photo, an old one from the very first time I went to Buffalo, NY. I was at a bar called something like “Sportsman’s Tavern” where I actually had a gig despite the big screen TV overhead. In those days I was not fazed by that kind of gig, I was so happy to have a gig in the first place. Once in those days I drove from Charlotte, NC to Somerville, MA in one day because it seemed of great importance that I get to a gig there, something like a half-hour slot in a songwriter night at a bar with fifteen people who passed the hat. Thinking back now it seems that I was very happy, thumbing through the atlas was a sheer pleasure, there was free wine, I could sleep in my clothes in the car in the parking lot of a big hotel. But everything looks better in the rear-view. Here’s a poem I wrote one time.
My Single Days
I miss my single days.
I painted my face in parking lots
and public bathrooms.
I wore my clothes like feathers.
I swung like a dagger in a sheath.
I liked liquor then, and I danced crazy,
and for the sake of a man
I could shout all night over the music
about things I didn’t care for
or understand.
There were others more beautiful,
but I had a whole trump suit of my own.
It took years to collect and now
I don’t need it anymore.
Come close and I’ll tell you how,
for example, when he spoke,
instead of my gaze holding steady his eye,
I might let it follow the motion of his mouth.
A slight thing, but always effective,
I learned it from a friend.
And then, when his hand met mine,
I might grasp two fingers instead of the palm.
Just two fingers, the fore and the middle.
I discovered that one myself
and it never failed.
I ran upstream like the salmon run
I clung to the back of a silver bullet
And spun out onto the blacktop singing
I tell you, in the rear-view mirror
everything is suddenly cinematic.
Anyway at the Sportsman’s Tavern this old guy came up to me, I think his name was “Bob”, he was wearing a cowboy hat and he had a t-shirt that said, “you wouldn’t understand, it’s a black thing”. And someone snapped this shot. It’s one of my favorites from those days.
spring cleaning & stockpiling
Mon, Apr. 14 2008
just now I started cleaning the kitchen and couldn’t stop, you know how that happens? way leads on to way. there was a steel grease pan hidden under the side of the Vulcan that apparently hadn’t been emptied in decades and I burned my forearms with a weird cleaning product. there was a snow squall in the afternoon but the sun shone thru the whole time, it was cold and bright, n. and two friends were pruning the apple trees, they came in the house brushing snow from their clothes, the yard was strewn with boughs and branches. the trees have grown wild the last few years so their fruit is small and tart, one tree miraculously held onto its apples all winter long, they just froze there in red little bunches, and they are still there now. deer like to stand under that tree.
I remember my grandparents used to store apples through the winter by wrapping them in newspaper and keeping them in the closet under the stairs. they stored acorn squash on a high shelf and potatoes in the cellar. there were also many fruits and vegetables in the freezer in square plastic containers marked “strawberries, july ’85” and so on. that depression generation is full of homesteading tricks. I’ve fantasized a little about things we might stockpile in case of the next great depression, for example I’ve thought of wine, but the fact is if we had a stockpile of wine we might just drink it, wine is hard to ration. I know it will probably never come to it but don’t you agree there’s something fun about the idea of stockpiling? here are some things off the top of my head we might all want to stockpile:
coffee
if i smoked, I’d stockpile cigarettes
sugar
chocolate
frozen concentrated orange juice
rice
flour (but would it become rancid after a few months? I don’t know)
aspirin
tampons
contact lenses
birth control
firewood
batteries
lightbulbs
candles
film
blank cds & dvds
guitar strings
paper
pens
I could go on but I’m going to bed, please add to the list if you are inspired to.
love pome
Sun, Mar. 16 2008
Love Poem
I.
Before we met I lived alone
And purified myself with books
And curled tight inside the bud
Of my perfect childhood
But blossoms fell out in the street
Blossoms fell around my feet
The night he brought me home with him
The night he brought me home
II.
The place was a nightmare, stacks and stacks of
Books and papers, warped with age
Record jackets, cans of beer, mattress feathers everywhere
And he stood in the midst of it
Bare chest, slow smile
We’ll sleep out on the roof he said
I said okay
O and the loving stung me some
O and the loving rubbed me raw
O and I watched him all night long
And we were young and young and young
We’ll sleep out on the roof he said
I said okay
III.
His mother and I at the hardware store
For things that go around the house
She wants to buy chrysanthemums for us
In different colors
She says, "when he was little we would drive out to the farm
And buy the biggest pumpkin he could put his arms around"
I see his tiny hands
He staggers to the van
His mother looking after him and emptying her wallet
IV.
I hope I die before him
I hope he holds me just like this
A snail shell, a warm fist
I crawl inside forever
"mutual envy"
Mon, Feb. 18 2008
cabin fever is on man, i am kind of freaking out up here. i started surfing the net looking at the websites of my friends and comrades, then on to the websites of famous people, suddenly hours had flown by and i felt inexpressibly empty and wished i had spent those hours reading or writing a letter or staring at the ceiling instead.
(i will say one thing, i like the medium of a real website, as great as myspace is, it is not the same thing. also i think there is a bit of a sweet spot in an artist's career during which they are able to maintain a really great website. too little or too much success spoils it. the really cheap d.i.y. ones are annoying to look at and navigate and the really swish ones never have enough intrigue, they're all publicity soundbytes.)
the internet can be dangerous just like women's magazines are dangerous. they masquerade as intimately informative, but they are really elaborate vanity games in the spirit of commerce and self-loathing. the phrase from brothers k. was: "mutual envy". that about sums up myspace don't ya think? do i exaggerate?
love anais.
the dirty old moon
Mon, Feb. 4 2008
news:
the “groundhog” “saw” his “shadow”
we “might” be “headed” for a “recession”
ani difranco is a conduit of great power and light
p.s. I really hope obama wins this thing. I liked him a lot at the beginning, then came round to thinking every single candidate was beautiful each in a different way, specifically identifying with clinton’s struggle as a female candidate, how she is damned if she does and damned if she doesn’t act feminine and how unfair that is, and seeing edwards get his hair tousled by letterman on late night tv in such a charming way, but now I have to say I am firmly in the obama camp and it has to do with: a. simple aesthetics, what it looks like to our friends abroad to have a photogenic well-spoken black son of immigrants with an arab name and diplomatic manners leading this country and b. the fact that he might just be able to sweep the citizenry off its feet, that is, perhaps he won’t do anything sweeping himself as president, but rather inspire us, the people, to do some sweeping ourselves. I fear that certain people will vote for clinton because she is so wonky and smart, but that those people are thinking small because they are dreamers who have got crushed by their grown-up lives and are taking it out on the young and naïve every chance they get. and I fear that all that wonkiness might add up to not much legislatively speaking, not to mention the citizenry kicking back thinking we’re safe now that the democrats are in office. if they do get in office (surely nothing is sure).
p.p.s. on tour with mc I watched a good deal of late night television. I saw my friend austin nevins playing guitar on letterman with josh ritter for example, that was very exciting, I could not believe my eyes. i once wrote a song that was too dorky to sing in public, though I did sing it a few times, but I thought I would share the lyrics here that they not disappear in the quicksand of the cutting room floor. the important thing about this thought, to me, was that the kind of tv show where the audience has to be prompted to LAUGH is the most depressing thing in the universe. laughter is such a spontaneous human muscle of delight. if we don’t know what we find funny, we don’t know ourselves in the least.
late night television
people making fun of michael jackson
some things never change
they flash the sign and everyone starts laughing
seems to me it’s strange
it isn’t even funny
late night television
flickers from the corner of the bar
fortune and fame
wearing dark sunglasses and stepping into cars
always stepping into cars
they’re wearing dark sunglasses
it isn’t even sunny
i’ve been drinking all night
I been thinking bout you all night too
I wish that you were here
I’m going in the girl’s room
and blinking at this blur in the mirror
all my walls are caving
I’m flashing in the pan
I see michael jackson waving
semen on his hands
midnight glistening
blue lights flashing
nobody listening
everybody laughing
oh there was later a chorus to this song, I THINK it’s the same song, that went like this:
here’s to the man behind the mask
here’s to the boys in the back room
here’s to the dirty old man in the dirty old moon!
games
Wed, Jan. 2 2008
today (i wrote this some days ago) is the last day of many many many days of Christmas for n. & I, who have been to four fambly gatherings in three states. we played a lot of games, the grease in the gears, time-honored trick by which families spend time together without driving each other crazy. in my immediate family the traditional game is pinochle. we used to play four-man when I was a kid (you can play w/ 3 or 4), I was always partnered with my dad and my brother was partnered with my mom, it is a very serious awesome strategic card game and I’m proud to have been taught it as a kid so I wasn’t stuck playing “go fish” and “bullshit”. apparently one of our ancestors was shot on a riverboat near cairo, Illinois for cheating at pinochle, he had a crazy biblical name like Ezekiel. this year we indoctrinated n. who picked up the game very quickly. I thought: “I married well.”
the other game from my dad’s side of the family is called, “who, sir, me, sir?” my grandpa, the patriarch who usually leads this game, was not in attendance this year but I did teach the game to some friends about four a.m. at a party in vermont. everyone sits in a circle around the leader and the one to his right is the “head” and the one to his left is the “foot”. everyone is numbered right to left 1 2 3 4 5 etc. the leader begins the game saying,
“THE prince of paris lost his hat, who stole it, number five, number five (it could be any number here)…” at which point number five jumps in,
“who, sir, me, sir?”
“yes, sir, you, sir”
“no, sir, not I, sir”
“who, sir, then, sir?”
“number two, sir…”
“number two, number two, number two…” and if number two happens not to be listening, or not to remember her number, etc., then the leader continues, “number two to the foot” and number two has to move to the foot position, thus forcing number three into the number two position, and so forth down the line. apparently in my grandpa’s college days this was a drinking game so I suppose there might have been a bottle of something at the foot I dunno. this is a great game I recommend it. but at some point if you play it a lot, as is the case with my family, everyone gets so quick that the game loses some of its lustre.
we also played pictionary. but the real game of the year for us is “apples to apples”. apparently we’re not the only ones because n. went to the toy store to buy it as a gift and they said they can barely keep it in stock it is so popular. it is a very simple word game, no board, no dice, just cards, kind of like taboo but more subjective and interesting. I played it first at a party in Virginia, also at four in the morning. I haven’t got it in me to describe the game itself but I have to say, if your fambly is looking for a way to talk without talking, this is one way.
and in this moment I feel I can say: games with boards and game-pieces and dice are boring. they are a ruse on the part of game companies to codify a game so that it can’t be reproduced. monopoly could be an exception BUT monopoly is depressing. who disagrees with me? everyone loses, except one person, who feels like an asshole.
lonesome wolf, holiday inn
Sun, Oct. 14 2007
late nite hotel topeka ks. wolf hungry and it's too late for foraging. today i took a long walk in lawrence, who knew it was such a happening town? it had:
-music venues
-vintage shops
-good espresso
-student-types
-hobo-types, at least types who look like they have nothing to do, which i think is important for a town to have
-pizza by the slice (i wish i could have one now)
-the new york times
(hey i was thinking, if anyone else wanted to post THEIR ideas of how you know a town is happening, they could do it here.)
it's been raining like crazy and as i drive i'm listening a lot to this british version of brecht's threepenny opera- 'the british army will make salami..." f-ing brilliant, i have never heard a translation like that, well i suppose i have never heard any translation at all, but i just read the play and the lyrics were not near as evocative. "salami" is quite a word, because it's phallic as well as calling to mind the meat process, so it's sex, death, and tasty fat little sandwiches altogether. is anyone following.
i have a little theory about english/german, which i will now summarize quick-like as i seem to be falling asleep in my chair. anyway our english language has germanic origins first and latin influences second. seems like a lot of our words that relate to primary drives, basic needs, visceral things, come from the german like "ich, mutter, vater, will, liebe, hasse, haus, feuer, etc. i just love german, i actually find it more beautiful than the romance languages except maybe portuguese, because it makes you FEEL things not just glide along in perfect ballet-form, and in any case, i find that the poems and songs that make me feel most alive are ones with a lot of german vibe to them, for example think of the english word "love" which in german is "liebe" or some such as opposed to the more romantic "amor(e)". and the german word for hate is "hasse" i think, doesn't that sound awesomely snakey, whereas the romantic would be "odio" or i dunno in french, italian etc. but think how our english word "odious" compares to "hateful". it sounds pretty snobbish and i suppose it evokes one thing, but the german, the german brings your very innards to tingly wakefulness.
actually have i talked about this before? that would be embarassing. oh, oh yes back to the threepenny opera SO i guess a lot of translators kind of romancified brecht in translation, whereas this translation is very dirty and german and wham, i highly recommend it, i don't know who it is though, my friend gave me a burned copy.
more thoughts on nashville pop country. as there is a lot of that round here. i think what a lot of these nashville guys are doing, and what the radio is looking for, is the song-version of these tiny little books people keep by their toilets. one whole sub-genre is based on "you might be a redneck if..." and a whole other one is based on "life's little instruction book" or "chicken soup for whatever". these little books are kitsch in the purest sense and yet of course they can be very funny and moving. for example my grandma the other day over breakfast read aloud a passage from "all i ever need to know i learned in kindergarten" and the water sprang to my eyes. there's also some connection here with the reader's digest, what a weird institution that is, i used to enjoy it as a kid though.
if i were writing one of those little books you keep by the toilet i would include this advice which i thought up today for myself. because i can sometimes get into a very judgmental mood especially around other judgmental-types. the idea is that when you notice yourself judging someone or something, first let yourself silently make the judgment, then think if maybe the situation is funny, i mean if there's humor to be found there, and let yourself laugh about it, and then see if you haven't got a bit of compassion in you for that person or thing, perhaps this is convoluted, but i think that laughter, from the right kind of humor, opens a door in the heart, and compassion slips in. hot off the presses. god, listen to me.
well now i have spilled all my secrets.
i had a lot of other things i had planned to write about but i must lie down.
man i'm hungry.
talk to you soon!
deine anais
barack obama & hillary rodham
Fri, Sep. 7 2007
at the airport in newark i bought a copy of barack obama’s book THE AUDACITY OF HOPE. i was in the mood; i remember feeling so surprised to learn after the fact that al gore had written an environmental treatise years before his campaign, and wondering why nobody had read it. of course barack’s book is a best seller and there he is on the cover in every airport bookstore looking so handsome, compassionate, smart, kind of birdlike in his immaculate suit. i have only read a couple chapters of the book but i’m impressed with his writing. he can definitely construct sentences. he tracks the devolution of partisan politics from a more cooperative, dignified state of affairs to the current either/or platform which doesn’t reflect people’s needs or values. he surely comes from the left and he writes about his anti-authority ideas getting out of hand before college, but he also describes how by the time he got to college: “i began silently registering the point in dorm-room conversations when my college friends and i stopped thinking and slipped into cant: the point at which the denunciations of capitalism or american imperialism came too easily, and the freedom from the constraints of monogamy or religion was proclaimed without fully understanding the value of such constraints, and the role of victim was too readily embraced as a means of shedding responsibility, or asserting entitlement, or claiming moral superiority over those not so victimized.” that rang pretty true for me, I had that same dorm-room conversation.
then yesterday the times had an article about hillary rodham clinton which i found totally delightful. i kept wondering if she is an aries like myself, does anyone know? i had not realized she was actually a model young republican when she arrived at college but the events of the sixties swung her in the other direction. she became very active in the anti-war and civil rights movements but was always interested in change at the institutional level, by way of the system, that is, she wasn’t a take-it-to-the-streets kind of gal. i imagine that having come over from the republican side she had to deal with a deep sense of rift from her family and the values of her upbringing and perhaps being furiously by-the-book with her politics was her way of spinning out, but only so far, from the world she came from. so that when she went home for thanksgiving she might have to duke it out with her father intellectually, but not personally, like he couldn’t say that she needed a shower, or that she should stop smoking pot, since she didn’t. this is all just speculation of course but there’s something in it that i recognize in myself, not that i was raised republican, but that my own rebellions have also been kind of “managed”, and i tend to look at out-and-out rebels who have completely disowned the values of their fathers with a. a certain admiration but b. a certain disdain and c. a sad sense that these rebels, having orphaned themselves completely, will never really be happy no matter how they proclaim their happiness from the rooftops, they remain chained by rebellion just as most of us are chained by submission.
i get the sense that neither of these guys is very radical, but that they are both very admirable. and actually i don’t believe there’s room in the united states presidency for a radical as we understand the term. if i’d heard myself say that seven years ago i’d have disowned mySELF, and i DID vote for nader and it DOES make my heart crumble to think that my own father was right when he said that there was no room for a third party president and that all i would do was hand over the presidency to the republicans. in fact i think he even said i’d understand when i was older. i said dad, i’m young, it is my duty to vote for ralph nader because YOU OLD PEOPLE will never do it. and that was true. but i suppose the last seven years have shown us how low it can get, and plus, there is so much room for radicalism in schools, co-ops, town meetings, businesses, art, airwaves, we in vermont even have a pretty radical US senator, and these things are all MORE important than the presidency, because what we need in a president is someone to stand there, look concerned, speak intelligently, and NOT MAKE THINGS WORSE while people do the real work at the local level.
but then again i get a weird sense that maybe i’m not as radical as i used to be either. i have a homeowner’s policy now and i’ve started enjoying npr.
california
Mon, Aug. 27 2007
i’m writing from the town of tehachapi, ca, the trains roll through it dozens of times a day, I’m lookin at one now out the window of a diner. on the radio they’re playing “friends in low places”, i’m remembering watching that guy on the grammies when i was a little kid, it’s actually a pretty great song, with a rhyme like “places” “oasis” and “chases” that doesn’t seem forced, yah, maybe pop country has deteriorated in the last ten years. i listen to a lot of pop country on the radio when i’m driving, i can’t quite explain it, but it keeps me awake, i appreciate the craftsmanship, and once in a while it makes me to dissolve in a puddle in the driver’s seat, which is powerful, because it is so transparent, that is, one KNOWS one is being manipulated, but the power of a story well told is undeniable, no matter how kitschy the story is.
milan kundera said something in UNBEARABLE LIGHTNESS about kitsch, that what kitsch was was not just children playing in the sunshine, but also the one watching it and shedding a tear saying, “isn’t this great, and isn’t this right and good that I should be moved by these children playing in the sunshine.” it was deeper than that though when he said it. there was also something about kitsch being “the denial of shit.” i have gotta read more books. one thing i did this week was watch a lot of television. it was all because my friend aj roach (visit his website he’s brilliant) got in the car with me in LA and didn’t get out until santa cruz and he was into this series FLIGHT OF THE CONCHORDS which we ended up watching many, many episodes of in two different cities. so funny! “they’re turning kids into slaves so they can make cheaper sneakers, but tell me what’s the cost, cause the sneakers don’t seem that much cheaper, your sneakers are made by slave kids, what are your overheads?”
another train going by. this town has a lot of far out hippies in it, but it is in the most conservative county in california: kern. there are definitely two worlds at work. i’m looking across the counter at the pies, i used to work at a diner, our pies looked just like that, so puffy. the waitress just asked a guy did he want more? and he said ‘no i’m on a diet, got to watch my figure’ and she said ‘yeah i’m on that seafood diet, i see food and i eat it’, and she did not skip a beat, i was never good at that kind of thing as a waitress. there are some things you say in service jobs you’d never say otherwise, for example, “bye now”, “have a good one,” and i learned to call people “honey” which i almost never do now, it only comes out sometimes, for example if i pass a guy on the street and he asks me for change and i don’t have it or don’t want to give it, i say, “sorry honey” because there’s something about the use of it that humanizes the exchange, as well as making me feel in control, in a maternal sort of a way.
well i got to get going. thank you california it’s been a pleasure, california, your brow is smoother than the brow of the east, california, you have so many hybrid vehicles, you are a good cook, you sing to yourself, i love you, love anais.
song women
Mon, Aug. 13 2007
i met some beautiful ones recently.
peggy seeger. helped me & mc with the saturday crossword over breakfast at a hotel in bethlehem, pa this weekend. then she told the story of how she met her late husband who i think was a famous english song collector. she is a very bewitching woman and mc and i fell under her spell pretty quick. she would just start singing ballads right there at the breakfast table when they came into her head.
last weekend: emmylou harris. she stood onstage in a black dress, sparkling black tights (so pretty), cowgirl boots, and an especially great red western shirt with white fringe coming off of it. and of course, her hair. she sang a james taylor song that made me cry (the one about the mill worker, who works the rest of the morning, the rest of the afternoon, the rest of her life).
and before that: ani difranco. who is beautiful and tiny and has a beautiful and tiny baby. i was afraid to hold the baby for most of the little tour because i have this feeling that if a baby doesn't like you, and begins to cry while you're holding it, it signifies some secret dark energy within you that only the baby is capable of picking up on. but at the end of the tour i tried my luck and it was fine. in fact i loved it. anyway ani rocks so hard. she rocks so hard and she thinks so clearly. isn't that a rare combination?
what else?
n. and i bought a house, and then the housing market crashed like the next day. i don't think it was our fault though.
at home on the farm, they're making hay, i'm gonna help out, for all the city slickers, that means riding around on the back of a truck, stacking up hay bales, then unloading them in the hay barn.
we know a joke about a vermont farmer and a texas racher. the texan says, "sometimes i wake up at sunrise, get in my truck, ride it around the whole perimeter of the ranch checking fences, and when i get back home the sun's going down." the vermonter says, "yup, i know what you mean, i had a truck like that once."
amelie-les-crayons (and the end of an era)
Mon, Jun. 11 2007
at the very last minute, like a couple weeks before the tour, we (me and my "people"- ho! ho!) got an email from b., a french music manager from lyon, offering two support slots for his artist "amelie-les-crayons". we had not heard of b. or amelie but b. seemed to be a kindred spirit and i was going to be in france anyway with not a lot to do, we said "oui!" and after a big night in paris with the purest comrade of my heart, aj roach, and his fantastic band, i got on a train to lyon. the first show was a sort of private concert for friends and family of amelie and her gang, they were just pulling the drapes off all their new songs (i guess their record comes out in the fall) and the second was a more formal show, part of a festival that took place in a factory in the tiny town of perouge.
the reason i'm writing this is that this woman, amelie-les-crayons, turns out to be an absolute goddess like you cannot imagine. she sings what they call "chansonnes francaise" (i'm sure i spelled that wrong but anyway that's like the old school edith piaf style stuff, very dramatic and delightful and the audience claps in time) and for this show there was a whole theatrical set, costumes, a lighting designer, and amelie-les-crayons, serene, crazy, gorgeous, sat atop a tall tall stool and played a piano also raised up up high with the pedals basically suspended in mid-air, and my mind was fucking BLOWN, may i say, i could hardly play my sets, i felt something like a toad that has somehow got itself invited to the most beautiful tea-party and sits in a saucer blinking at everyone with "gold-rimmed eyes" (if that's not a fairytale it should be). anyway please find this woman. here is the url of her label's website, where you can find out about her and b. who turned out to be every bit as kindred as we'd imagined. http://www.neomme.com
riding back to lyon with the handsome young band, we talked about the french government and its support of artists. i guess as a musician if you can prove you play eighty gigs every ten months, the government will cover whatever living expenses you haven't been able to raise yourself (kind of a wild thought!). i have really no idea whether this system is effective or totally exploited, but just the concept that the state would recognize that the material support of artists (not just "the arts") is in the best interest of society... is radical and great.
also in lyon, the time had come, in fact was overdue, to re-blonde my blonde hair (which if you are an unnatural blonde you will know has to be done like every month and a half) and for various reasons i decided, instead of continuing down that expensive route, to go back as nearly as i could to my natural color which is... brunette! i share this with you because what i dread most of all is having to TALK to people about it, about my hair, as that is one of the most ridiculous dead-end conversations in the whole small-talk canon, and i had after a year and a half only JUST got to the point where people had stopped commenting on my blondeness, so... if you catch my meaning...
all best from the lanes in brighton!
-anais
the brothers k
Sat, Jun. 2 2007
can you believe dostoyevsky wrote this in 1880? i love this man. this is part of alyosha's collected remembrances of father zossima's conversations. when i read it i felt a shock of recognition! see...
"We are assured that the world is getting more and more united and growing into a brotherly community by the reduction of distances and the transmission of ideas through the air. Alas, put no faith in such a union of peoples. BY INTERPRETING FREEDOM AS THE MULTIPLICATION AND THE RAPID SATISFACTION OF NEEDS, they do violence to their own nature, for such an interpretation merely gives rise to many senseless and foolish desires, habits and most absurd inventions. They live only for mutual envy, for the satisfaction of their carnal desires and for showing off."
hove
Fri, Jun. 1 2007
when i was eight my whole fambly including grandparents and some aunts and uncles took a trip to england. it would probably have been 1989. in hindsight i was too young to appreciate it but perhaps as a child one does some other, deeper thing with the world than "appreciate" it. some memories of that trip: reading king arthur books & epic poems with my brother; my dad cursing as we drove round and round picadilly circus; canterbury hill, which was covered in stinging nettles-- my mom likes to recount this story as she finds it illustrative of the difference between my brother's and my personality-- my brother cleverly found a stick to push the nettles aside as he carefully and slowly made his way up the hill unscathed while i charged ahead, bare legs covered in welts, shouting "I HATE THIS I HATE THIS I HATE THIS." there are others but the most vivid memory i have is of a water park we discovered on the coast near brighton... it had three big fiberglass tubes, yellow red and blue, snakish, the water rushed through them and you went down on your butt or if you were brave, frontwards and headfirst, and it WAS the most exhilarating thing that had ever happened to you thus far! well i speak for myself.
i'm staying now in the town of hove just west of brighton and yesterday in an effort to stay awake/beat the jetlag i took a walk down to the seaside and behold! THE WATERPARK! it seemed to be closed, perhaps for the season, but it was unmistakably the same one that set my eight-year old heart to a joyful pound. i saw that it had a ridiculous name like 'duke ferdinand leisure centre' (not that exactly but something very british like that). i must also relate that it was a depressing scene, the fiberglass, the concrete, the candy kiosk nearby, all of it seemed poverty-stricken, faded and murky, the seawater met the stones, sketchy young guys tried to make conversation, the place had an asbury park feel to it, which made me wonder, is that a recent development or was it there all along and i, as a child, just didn't notice?
still it was way more beautiful than the wealthier streets with the many shiny real estate brokerages and salons and the grocery stores with the japanese-style plastic-wrapped fruit. if you know what i mean.
i live my life cradled in nostalgia, i like it that way.
if i recall correctly the waterslides were lined up from least to most crazy-scary, the yellow would have been the simplest one, the red was intermediate, and the blue deposited you hoarse and wet with your heart in your mouth! i also remember that back then there was graffiti on the sidewalk nearby that read, "oh do shut up you are all so boring" which in my family we all got a big kick out of. "oh do shut up you are all so boring." with love, anais.
autotranslation
Sun, Apr. 22 2007
many thanks to g for pointing the way to what i can honestly say is the greatest review i have ever received, autotranslated from god knows what language:
'The Smartness' showcases the faithful interpreter of Anais Mitchell
Anais Mitchell is a even vocalist/ birdcall author from Green mountain state,
with a natural endowment for storytelling. Her sheet music is Family line,
until now every bit a peddle of modern solid. Mitchell's cushy syrupy
spokesperson compatible with deltoid melodies allows the medicine to exist a
calming receive. Her newest record album The Light is a ingathering of
short-range stories featuring lovemaking, loneliness, redemption, and go for,
told with smother escaped lyrics and euphony.
the toad
Sat, Apr. 14 2007
thanks to nellie for sending along the mary oliver poem i was talking about. here it is-
Toad By Mary Oliver
I was walking by. He was sitting there.
It was full morning, so the heat was heavy on his sand-colored
head and his webbed feet. I squatted beside him, at the edge
of the path. He didn't move.
I began to talk. I talked about summer, and about time. The
pleasures of eating, the terrors of the night. About this cup
we call life. About happiness. And how good it feels, the
heat of the sun between the shoulder blades.
He looked neither up nor down, which didn't necessarily
mean he was either afraid or asleep. I felt his energy, stored
under his tongue perhaps, and behind his bulging eyes.
I talked about how the world seems to me, five feet tall, the
blue sky all around my head. I said, I wondered how it seemed
to him, down there, intimate with the dust.
He might have been Buddha- did not move, blink or frown,
not a tear fell from those gold rimmed eyes as the refined
anguish of language passed over him.
the mouse
Fri, Apr. 13 2007
mid-april and we’re still buried under snow. I’m watching thomas-the-mouse sprawl in the golden armchair. a miracle. his fur is soft as a rabbit’s. his yellow-green eyes, smiling and crass like a lizards. the pads of his feet are pink and black, like a kind of candy I can’t remember the name of. he squeaks at seven in the morning. he likes to join people us the bathroom sink when we’re brushing our teeth and he especially likes to be present during a bath, he perches on the edge of the tub with his paws in the water as though fishing.
we got the mouse from the humane society. it was an arduous process. the very first time we arrived he was there, in a little cage with his longhair sister, who we fell in love with immediately, but unfortunately she had yet to be spayed so if we wanted her we’d have to wait. I had a soft spot for the mouse even then and I said to n., well, what about this one?, and n. looked at the mouse and the mouse turned round in the cage exposing his tiny ass and shat right in front of our eyes at that exact moment, which we took to be a sign of some kind, and after all, we were in love with the sister. so we got a “hold” on the sister, we described her to friends, we even gave her a name: “edie”. then there was a series of frustrating visits where we thought the spaying had been done and went back to pick up the kitten but she wasn’t ready for various reasons, and then on the FINAL day when we were just bursting to have a kitten, the humane society made a mistake and forgot she was on hold at all and gave her away to another family. we were devastated and the humane society women felt so bad that they offered us any other kitten for free. so we took the mouse, who was still there waiting for adoption. we gave them twenty bucks as a goodwill gesture (usually a young kitten costs like a hundred). it’s funny for us to imagine that we “bought” the mouse for twenty bucks because he is like our favorite person.
last night at dinner someone said, people like to hang out with their pets because it’s the same thing as being alone and people like being alone whether they realize it or not. I wonder if this is true. when I was a girl I had a horse, a big beautiful round brown horse, three quarters morgan and one quarter quarter horse. I used to spend a long time talking with this horse about the dramas and difficulties of my pre-adolescence, while he stood in his stall munching grain, his big wet brown eyes watching me, mute but not entirely indifferent. it was cathartic in a way I don’t know writing in a journal could ever be. it’s nice to hear the sound of your own voice washing over animal ears. there’s a great mary oliver poem about that. “the toad”. I’d post it if I could find it.
the mouse knows when I’m about to go on tour. he begins acting up when he sees me packing. now… I’m outta here!
there's a guy craig bonell he has a great blog called songs:illinois check it out:
http://songsillinoismp3.blogspot.com/
he asked a bunch of peeeeeeople to send "postcards" from sxsw so i sent him one. then i thought hey i might as well post it on MY blog so here it is! still you should go to his site because he includes lots of sound clips of everyone i am talking about.
sunday morning comin down
impressions from sxsw.
thursday
my official set at momo's and i was so excited about the rest of the bands on the bill that i spent the night there, a luxury really not to have to elbow around on sixth or anything. ana egge played after me with tony and jason-- so rockin-- i have got this real thing about ana's voice like i'm always thirsty for it, for it and her songs, thirstythirstythirsty. also on the bill, stars of track and field and the winterpills, they both sounded so good, the room was full of sound. then sean hayes, i had never heard him but he came highly recommended and in fact he blew my fucking mind. we all sat on the dirty floor of the club looking up at his little haunted face under his little hat. his acoustic guitar sounded, i could not think of another word, GLAZED. his voice too was glazed but with a different sweeter rougher glaze. i can't remember a word he sang or what any one song was about but his poetry made perfect abstract sense and a couple of times i think i even pumped my fist for a killer line. it was like a trance, what he created. me i was charmed, my snake was charmed. finally i met matt the electrician.
friday
the caritas soup kitchen. props to laura thomas and that great organization. flatstock convention, some really beautiful stark work, i was very taken by small stakes among other companies, i got to say though there is an emotional coldness to a lot of rock poster art, i dunno if it's always been that way or if it's a trend, but i don't like it. saw bill kirchen at the continental club with ana and tony. i really came round to it and felt like dancing and did dance. i noticed tony is an exquisite human being. smell of meat out the back. dinner with southpaw jones and his lady friend, also exquisite. later my comrade danny schmidt at the hotel. i tried to nap on the floor before his set but the guard waked me and got me on my feet. danny is brilliant i hate for him to play in a hotel. then we rushed over to sixth for ron sexmith. i could watch and listen to him all night. he had a three-piece band behind him including jason mercer on bass. he sweated in a suit jacket. outside on sixth the people flowed like spawning fish. we went up on a balcony for a drink looking down on it all. a south austin party. ambitious to go to a party at that hour and soon i was cold and tired.
saturday
a long day for me of little engagements. finally the house show at jon and vanessa's-- such a delightful cast of comrades including DANNY SCHMIDT, NELS ANDREWS, AJ ROACH, KRIS DELMHORST, and SAM BAKER. my heart was bursting. i cannot say enough. the workers in song! we rode in the back of a pickup with a silver flask. people waved from the side of the highway. to waterloo to see the band of heathens, band of my dear old friend colin brooks, who just won a big award. they are five men all very handsome singing man harmonies. i danced with an italian guy. in my enthusiasm i sang him a part of bella ciao, an italian political folksong. "this is a song against ze fascists" he said. "FUCK THE FASCISTS!" i cried and he echoed me "FUCK ZE FASCISTS." i drank lone star. the night devolved a bit after that. though i will say aj roach and nels andrews are exquisite human beings. and colin too.
maybe it's the people i was hanging with, like for example the righteous babe people, and a few others i met and got to know, but i will say overall i found many people who genuinely love music for all the right reasons and are in the industry as a means of getting the music to the people, and this was beautiful. i expected a much higher degree of sleaze and happily didn't find it and i'm grateful for that, also inspired, what a lot of bright lights there are out there.
thanks for reading, xo, anais.
dan rather
Thu, Mar. 8 2007
hello. a chelsea apartment! "and the sun poured in like butterscotch and stuck to all my senses; won't you stay? we'll put on the day, and we'll talk in present tenses." at the house of norman salant who is a wonderful songwriter. he is singing over by the window and his two little finch-like birds are chirping in the cage.
well it has been quite a week. the universe had its way with me last week. i was very disappointed to have to cancel my little run of dates in the uk at the last minute. there's more... an obstacle course of sorts... i won't go into it...
on the bright side, i find i keep bumping into these bright bright songwriting lights everywhere i go. the "workers in song". they are everywhere. i am going to name some names which i usually don't do in my zeal for anonymity, names i might not have named before
nathan moore & the slip (surprise me mr. davis). you can hear me & brad barr of the slip singing some of nathan's tunes at the following site:
http://www.percyboyd.com/pickin.html
ana egge, aj roach. WOW MAN. both of them i associate with texas for whatever reason but i also crossed paths with both in memphis and again in new york where i am now. here are their sites
http://www.anaegge.net
http://www.roachmusic.com
also i was honored to open up for peter mulvey last night in manhattan. peter mulvey is on my short list of ideal men. like watching dan rather as a child. watching peter one feels that all is right in the world and good will prevail.
speaking of dan rather i remember watching full of emotion as he narrated the play-by-play presidential election of 2004. it was the end of his career, i don't even understand all the ins and outs of why he had to resign when he did, but during that broadcast there was definitely something funny going on, there was a boyishness and almost a senility, he kept saying exuberant old-fashioned things like "if a frog had side-pockets, he'd carry a handgun!" which i couldn't make sense of but i felt a love for that man like he was my grandpa or my crazy uncle. i felt that like the rest of us he wanted the dems to win though of course he strove to maintain his professional neutrality. i don't have a television but whenever i stumble upon some slick-headed or perk-breasted young anchorperson discussing the news like it was a gossip column i think, i miss dan rather. the era is over whether it ever existed or not. the idea that you could trust a man on tv to tell you what was going on in the world.
anyhow. love. anais.
more on cells
Mon, Feb. 19 2007
the thing about having a telephone on your body at all times is, there is no true solitude (and it's not as easy as turning the phone off, because owning a cell phone is a state of mind, a real addiction, not at all easy to re-program) and as someone i admire said, "greatness comes from a lonely mind," and this is one reason why these noisy little toys destroy our (one?) chance to live inspired, romantic lives.
even as i write this i see that it sounds hackneyed and reactionary in the boring way that old people can get about new technology. but i am being perfectly honest here and only just realizing the extent to which my whole mind has been hijacked by various insidious technological developments.
the simple life looks better and better. just before the tour n. and i got trapped for 36 hours in our little house by a nor'easter that drifted over our driveway among other places. at the same time we ran out of propane and so we had no hot water and could not use the gas range. we ended up cooking all-day soups on the woodstove and even discovered that one can fry eggs on the woodstove; it's slow going, but the eggs come out REALLY GOOD.
and what of the big wide world? there's something about experiencing it alone in silence, something of beauty or ugliness, craziness, loveliness, and NOT rushing off to share it right away, those things crystallize in the soul, they are another angle in the secret prism of the soul, refractive, illuminating. with the telephone we spill the sap before it turns sugar.
in any case i better begin to practice this little sermon now by warning anyone who calls me that i'm planning to keep my phone off as much as possible until i am finally able to give it up forever...
with love,
anais.
cells
Sun, Feb. 18 2007
very. sleepy. in this moment in Pennsylvania.
tomorrow I will write a real missive.
funny thing my cell phone is broken and I am enjoying it SO much, driving the snowy highways, listening to albums, not knowing what time it is and not caring, writing things in the notebook to be reckoned with later. it may well be that cell phones are speeding the devolution of the culture, just thought I’d throw it out there.
I could elaborate.
too tired though.
tell you tomorrow
ironism
Thu, Jan. 11 2007
Last night we watched David Byrne’s movie TRUE STORIES. It was really pretty great and it seemed ahead of its time in that it involved themes of corporate consolidation and American consumer culture that became widespread in the nineties, but the movie was made in 1986. N. said that maybe those ideas were there all along and we were just too young in the eighties to understand them, which could be true. Still David Byrne must have been a voice in the wilderness. TRUE STORIES was kind of a cousin film to NASHVILLE in my mind. I was moved more deeply by NASHVILLE, but I love the Talking Heads and have a feeling that David Byrne has/had something very special and un-nameable to teach us.
Then we got into a talk about “what is irony?” which has come up before and I have never completely understood. TRUE STORIES is about some of the darker aspects of our society but never do we get a feeling like D. Byrne (the narrator) is judging or finger-pointing or making a simple condemnation. He narrates the whole story in his crazy deadpan optimistic voice, and indeed there is a lot of beauty in the film despite its grotesque elements… the woman who has so much money she never leaves her bed… the malls and housing projects taking over the open fields of rural Texas… On the other hand it is not a sarcastic film, it’s not like D. Byrne is saying, “American consumer culture is so great” and we are all supposed to understand he means the opposite. To my ears there is not an ounce of sarcasm in D. Byrne’s narrative voice.
Some would say it is an ironic movie. Last night I maintained it was definitely NOT ironic but I think I may have be confused about that word and what I meant was it was not sarcastic. I understand the classical definition of irony, which can be explained via tiny vignettes (“an old man turned 98…” thank you Alanis). But people are always referring to this or that as ironic and it means something slightly different. And somehow I’ve come to really look down on this idea of “irony” and blame it for a lot of “the problems” of our culture today even though I don’t quite know what it is. Because I associate it with A. sarcasm and B. not saying what one means, not meaning what one says, not wearing one’s heart on one’s sleeve and C. an attitude of looking down on the story one tells (or the life one lives) from a critical distance instead of diving in and inhabiting the story to its fullest emotional and spiritual extent. And I associate ironists with like the critics in the arts section of certain big urban newspapers, and more generally those people whose favorite occupation in life is to cut others down to size, to belittle their dreams, and to pin their ART as it lives and breathes to the wall with a tiny placard next to it that explains with condescending brevity how it fits or doesn’t fit into today’s society. BUT you see how I am getting carried away and it is quite possible that this is not irony at all I’m describing, but something else entirely. Whatever it I'm against it.
If anyone has any thoughts on this please let me know.
mishmash
Sat, Dec. 30 2006
I had a thought about the corporate music industry which I don’t really have evidence for but it was kind of begun in another post in a very confused way and then I had some other ideas about it and I thought I’d write them. It has to do with androgyny and the fact that a lot of rock stars of the past had an androgynous thing going… to me I could almost see it going back to like the castrati that used to sing opera… but then for sure a lot of classic rock guys, while they were very masculine energetically, also had long hair, were at the forefront of the long hair thing, and the tight pants, there was Mick Jagger, and then later of course Michael Jackson, Prince, and a bunch of eighties bands, Patti Smith representing the women’s side (there must be more right…?), okay, are you feeling me? There’s also something thrilling about a vocalist you can’t quite tell the gender of, like MJ, or certain Motown guys, or Tracy Chapman, or my friend Jesse Aycock who lives in Tulsa (check him out) has another of these rare post-gender voices that cut right through the noise and straight to the heart. So anyway I’ve always had this feeling like the corporate music stars used to be WEIRD, totally bizarre freak-out kind of people, and that society understood that a musician was something different than a supermodel or a Hollywood celebrity, but that nowadays that distinction is less respected and we get these people that look as beautiful and generic as they sound, and they don’t freak anyone out in the least. And so then it hit me that maybe the problem is that the corporate world has become a bit afraid of androgyny, that their girls are too girly and their boys are too boyish and there is not enough overlap to make for a compelling cultural icon (let alone compelling art). I know so little about the corporate scene that I’m not really qualified to make this statement but someplace in myself I believe it to be true and it seems insidious and dangerous for kids to grow up thinking women are like this and men are like that.
I have to add though that the modern folk world is kind of an interesting case as well… I would say in some ways that the modern folk world is also a bit straight-laced as far as gender goes… these are sweeping statements but there ya go… in some ways, where the pop world has in the past embraced androgyny in MEN but not so much in women, the folk world has done the opposite, there are TONS of butch women in folk but not a lot of men bending it… anyway I’ll think more on this. There’s a good reason for androgyny and creativity going together and Virginia Woolf said it in A Room of One’s Own.
SO Holidays wow. The new year is yet to come and already I’m socially exhausted. We had four family dinners plus one tea in three different states. What happened… it snowed finally… Thomas The Mouse systematically caught and killed nearly all of our glass tree ornaments… N. & I finished reading Anna Karenina which we’ve been reading for like a year and a half, always aloud and mostly on driving trips. A really beautiful book, full of casual moments of blinding insight into human experience. Russia becomes more and more curious and exciting all the time. If I ever complain again about the trials of writing a three-and-a-half minute song you can hit me over the head with a big fat Russian novel. The next thing… as a gift to myself and with a kind of crazy optimism… I picked up Pity the Nation by Fisk, which I’ve been meaning to read for years, but it is another of these eight hundred pagers or what have you and my track record for these books is not good. But on beginning it I am completely swept away. It’s good to read about the real world, as tragic and incomprehensible as it is, as this book is about Lebanon in the 1980s, full of all kinds of figures and ideas I used to study in school and then conveniently forgot about in the happy vacuum of Vermont.
In sad news, two of our chickens were eaten up while we were away. We thought it was three until N. discovered a live chicken hiding in some kind of discarded stovepipe. Thankfully there were no remains, just a lot of feathers, so I hope it was swift and painless and whoever got them enjoyed a full holiday meal. Also I hope it was a fox because I’ve seen some red foxes lately and admired them, and I’ve always been fond of “The Fox Went Out On A Chilly Night” in which the fox, who is usually vilified, is the protagonist, “and the little ones chewed on the bones-o.” A worse thing happened to my brother’s ducks, who we think were killed by a fisher-cat. In his case it was five out of six ducks and in more than one instance the fisher-cat decapitated the duck and left only the headless body of the duck with stiff little feet—that is to say, the fisher-cat killed for vicious glee and not for food. Chickens and ducks are so intrinsically funny and Far-Side-esque that it’s hard to talk even about their death with the right kind of seriousness, but the truth is it was very sad, we cried (well I did) and we felt guilty for not having protecting them more vigilantly. In any case, life is short, art is long, if you’d like to see the chickens I’m talking about, skip over to the links section of the website, and you will find links to two videos of the chickens on YouTube, both very artfully made.
In music, etc. I am suddenly adrift. The opera was so, so fun and I think we did some great shows. We will do more, I’m hoping for fall ’07, once we figure out the next move creatively. Sputnik scrambled together a brave new set with many new songs, some of my favorites being “Money Changes Everything”, “Diggin’ in the Dirt”, “Train in Vain,” and “Once in a Lifetime”. Tomorrow we are going to play in my old hometown of Bristol, VT, as part of the Five Town Massive arts festival that happens every year there, run by these guys I went to high school with, who are doing a beautiful and honorable thing with the Massive. But as for Anais Mitchell shows, I have not played one in a while, so I think I have some work to do before I can go on tour again.
Feliz 2007.
well since it is now in the news section...
and since it is up on their website...
i suppose it is safe to announce here that righteous babe records is putting out THE BRIGHTNESS in february!
HOLY F***ING S**T! is the only way i can think to express the honor and excitement i feel about this. i could say all kinds of things about it and perhaps i will do that later. but for now i'll just say HOLY F***ING S**T! because it's one of these things like if you had told thirteen-year-old me, stumbling over the chords of "both hands" with little uncalloused fingers, or fifteen-year-old me learning to drive a car and listening compulsively to NOT A PRETTY GIRL, or seventeen-year-old me with my very first devastating heartbreak sobbing over "untouchable face", and on and on, that this brilliant woman with her finger on the political and emotional pulse of a generation would someday put out a record of mine, i'd have... i dunno what... something drastic. so that is all i have to say about that at this point. much respect and gratitude.
HADESTOWN. i don't want to deconstruct it or get nervous or proud or anything about it until the end of the run (we are still playing in vergennes next weekend and you should all come). i only want to say that i have had more fun putting this show together than i've had in a long, long time, because everyone involved is so wonderful and brilliant, that goes for my collaborators m. chorney and matchstick as well as the whole entire unbelievable cast. i feel like i'm in the middle of a passionate love affair and i can't eat or sleep right and i simultaneously want it to go on forever and know that it will be over soon aaaaaaaaaarrrrrr!
that's all.
happy holy-days.
love anais
In Virginia Towns
Sun, Nov. 12 2006
Jesus hangs around
In Virginia towns
In Virginia towns
Jesus hangs around
He hangs with the ladies in dust-smelling shops
He hangs with the workmen wasting their time
He hangs with the kids on the banks of the river
All chilly and shining and flat as a dime
In Virginia towns
Jesus hangs around
Jesus hangs around
In Virginia towns
He hangs around where the white clouds shift
And the blue ridge beckons by cleft and by thrust
He hangs around at the foot of the mountain
In wainscoted houses gathering dust
Jesus hangs around
In Virginia towns
In Virginia towns
Jesus hangs around
Lord have mercy on the lonesome traveler
Lord have mercy on the lonesome sound
Of the highway calling her sons back home
To the lonesome towns where Jesus hangs around
In Virginia towns
Jesus hangs around
Jesus hangs around
In Virginia towns
Jesus hangs around
Jesus hangs around
Jesus hangs around
In Virginia towns
twitch
Mon, Nov. 6 2006
I’ve just got through a manic cleaning of the house. wanting to leave it nice when I go on tour wednesday. honest work felt good after many long hours of opera writing and planning. this morning I wrote quite possibly the worst song I’ve written in years but didn’t realize it until I had recorded it and distributed it to members of the cast on the “finished” version of HADESTOWN. then when the long day was over n. and I sat down and listened to the opera start to finish twice and laughed hilariously during the new song both times. it was really terrible. but I may recycle that melody if I ever write songs for sputnik, our eighties cover band. I wonder if the song was influenced by “rent” which I watched the other night. I am a complete sucker for musicals and I was in a puddle at the end of “rent” even though there was much in the writing that I couldn’t abide, I mean “rent” is to like “Sweeney todd” what a hallmark greeting card poem is to Dylan Thomas, but no matter- “there’s only yes, there’s only this”- a puddle I tell you! also then I watched the whole bonus dvd about the poor man who wrote “rent” toiling away in obscurity in new york city for years and then, the night before the show opened, his heart just burst and he died.
my kitten is sleeping on my lap (there’s room for him and the laptop) and his tail is twitching all over the place. WHAT DOES HE DREAM ABOUT? I’m crazy to know.
tomorrow is election day. hopefully you all go vote. hopefully we take back the power mon and we can at least put the brakes on the freak machine. it will be my first time voting in our new town. hopefully I can find the place.
and after that I will be on tour with my great friend rachel ries. she is from chicago, a beautiful woman, a beautiful writersingerplayer and especially exciting for me, a beautiful harmonist. she can cook a good meal and be counted on to drive through the night if one is sleepy. she can introduce one to hip young bands one would never hear of otherwise. we are going to pass through some great towns and play with some wonderful admirable people like birdie busch and devon sproule. who also cook better and know more bands than me.
www.rachelries.com
www.birdiebusch.com
www.devonsproule.com
what else to report? as greg brown says “the moon is as round as a banjo.” I had the great honor of opening for the master himself the other night in lexington mass. it was great to meet him face-to-face without his shades or visor. I learned various backstage secrets about him which I shan’t divulge on the internet. I used to listen to that song about his grandma and weep. everyone needs a song about their grandma. there is some powerful poetry in his new songs... an abstractness almost… go out and get his latest record “the evening call.” salud amigitos.
sputnik & hadestown
Mon, Oct. 23 2006
hello friends!
this weekend SPUTNIK is going to open for MAD DUB at the masquerade ball at Langdon street cafe. sputnik is our eighties cover band; me, n., sara grace & jay ekis are in it for this show (the band shifts personnel a bit, well just the guitar player really, but I really like j. and I hope he stays with us, though he is involved with a lot of bands including this iron maiden cover band, anyway he is awful sweet and has a great ear and at our first rehearsal he jumped right in singing vocals on little red corvette, it was really something). speaking of which. there is nothing like the lyrics of the eighties. much of the time they make no sense (ex. “you look so fancy I can tell!” “killer… diller… chiller… thriller!” “color me your color baby color me your car!”) and then at times they are so vivid you can’t bear to listen to them for EXAMPLE: “I guess I must be dumb cuz u had a pocket full of horses, Trojans, & some of them used”. not only a bad pun, but can somebody tell me WHY this woman is going around with a pocket half-full of used condoms? is she saving them for something? not that I’m knocking it I mean that is a great f-ing song. it just makes you wonder. man it is so fun playing synthesizer. I barely know how to do it but each time we have a show (which is not very often) I learn something new and interesting. anyway come to the show! all of you. we open at 9. show is on 10/28 and a costume party.
also a lot of other news.
hadestown. it is all happening man and I am now going to copy paste the press release which is a little dorky as press releases are but it has all the info and I want you all to know. and with that I’ll leave you until next time, xo, anais.
For Immediate Release October 20, 2006
ANAIS MITCHELL, MICHAEL CHORNEY, MAGIC CITY AND BEN T. MATCHSTICK TEAM UP TO PRESENT NEW FOLK OPERA HADESTOWN, BASED ON
THE TRAGIC GREEK MYTH OF ORPHEUS & EURYDICE
HADESTOWN TO DEBUT IN VERMONT THIS DECEMBER
THE PERSONNEL:
written and produced by Anais Mitchell (Hymns for the Exiled, The Brightness)
arranged by Michael Chorney (viperHouse, Orchid, Seven Deadly Sins) for Magic City
directed by Ben T. Matchstick (Bread & Puppet Theatre, Insurrection Landscapers, Cardboard Teck Instantute)
THE PERFORMANCES:
Old Labor Hall in Barre, VT
Friday, December 8th at 8pm
Saturday, December 9th at 2pm & 8pm
tickets $10 in advance / $15 at the door
available from the Barre Opera House box office- 802-476-8188- www.barreoperahouse.org
and the Langdon St. Café in Montpelier
Vergennes Opera House in Vergennes, VT
Friday, December 15th at 8pm
Saturday, December 16th at 2pm & 8pm
tickets $10 in advance / $15 at the door
available from the Vergennes Opera House box office- 802-877-6737- www.vergennesoperahouse.org
THE PRODUCTION:
For centuries, the tragic Greek myth of Orpheus & Eurydice, in which the lyre-playing Orpheus descends into the underworld and attempts to win back his fallen bride Eurydice through the power of music, has been mined by artists from all corners of the world – a testament to its depth and universal appeal. Anais Mitchell’s Hadestown, created in collaboration with composer Michael Chorney and director Ben T. Matchstick and supported by the Vermont Community Foundation, brings this timeless story into a contemporary context that is poetically, musically and visually fresh. Debuting in Mitchell’s native Vermont, the folk opera takes its inspiration from Depression-era America: the underworld is not the land of the dead but an exploitative company town; Hades is a sadistic wall-building boss-king whose wife Persephone moonlights as the proprietress of a speakeasy; and Orpheus wields not a lyre but a banjo. But the opera is not so much a history lesson as it is a rich patchwork of artistic vision, social commentary and raw human emotion. Old-fashioned symbols of poverty and exploitation are fused with a kind of futurism — albeit a clunky, analog, “vintage” futurism (think post-apocalyptic Jeunet/Caro films City of the Lost Children and Delicatessen) — which prompts reflection on just how much we’ve evolved (or devolved) as a society since the 1930s. Above all, Hadestown is a love story – a love story exploring what becomes of the human condition under the most tragic and trying of circumstances.
phil collins
Thu, Sep. 28 2006
i really love phil collins. i wouldn't even call it a guilty pleasure because i'm not ashamed. just felt like putting that out there.
austin
Thu, Sep. 28 2006
what a beautiful trip with d.! chicago to austin in eight shows. d. is really a genius i am going to quote you some of his lines here:
"o clearwater tick tock tickyticky tock the gift of life in a plastic bottle... a little bitter but i ain't bothered filled my glass from the tap like the asked and it tastes just fine safe for now now is just a matter of... time"
and
"people pitched me pennies and they pounded on the glass then they left to see the painted man and i left to pack my ass good goddamn another empty town goddamn another shell goddamn cuz when i ride back home i'm a stranger there as well"
anyway i could go on but you should just buy the record:
www.dannyschmidt.com.
unlike other trips i feel MORE energized than when i began and like a big kick in the ass to write. i'll tell you some beautiful towns in the country. fairfield iowa. lupus missouri. tulsa oklahoma. don't go writing conde naste or nothin but dayamn there are people in these towns who know how to live right and get things done without acting like they're trying to get things done. austin goes without sayin. after the cactus last night we rolled down to momo's to see my friend c. in his band "the heathens". they were great with like five part MAN harmonies and everything. it was me and d. and my old friend g. from the republic of georgia. a beautiful man, kooky and smart with thick glasses and a spring in his step. me and g. used to deejay at our college radio station back in the day, o latenight leonard cohen, electronic adagios, the night all chilly and pretty and the cafeteria coffees, the piles of unreviewed albums, both of us underage, beer being more fun then than ever again, g. and i used to write poems, his gothic and epic, mine youthful and brief. i never have enough time with anyone but maybe it's most beautiful that way.
soon i'll be home with n. and our kitten: "mouse". apparently i missed his formative weeks and he is an adolescent now. cheers-- anais.
like the best artists are androgynous at heart
Tue, Aug. 29 2006
last week was a great week. session americana came to the cafe thursday and rocked really REALLY hard! then friday was rose polenzani and fdr- brilliant. i made a giant pot of borscht so no one could say i was not a good wife. late friday night after the show f. had his heart set on recording a song with everyone at the party. i dug out my neglected mbox and microphone and f. set about recording in multi-multi-tracks what was in fact a collective and creative effort. my turn came though to lay down something and i suddenly became cross with f. and his big plan because i always seem to freeze up when called on to improvise. but finally i did sing something.
i used to have a whole theory about how men and women's creative processes were related to their biological apparatus, that men cast many seeds in a great bukowskian splooge, most of them missing the mark but some of them bullseyeing and blossoming, while women were more likely to incubate one idea for months and only bring it to the light of day with a fair amount of struggle. in fact i think it is not true but it makes a certain amount of sense for me. that's why i don't always trust my brethren who are big bukowski men. and like the best artists are androgynous at heart as virginia woolf said in that book of hers, so what does that mean?
the dark is falling outside this terrible restaurant. i come here because the wireless is good and the food is bad so none of my friends come in and i can work uninterrupted.
boy it is me me me all the time in this blog. meanwhile in the middle east... goodnight and good luck.
p.s. i am attaching below an essay i wrote about fdr. i was going to revise it to be a bit less starry-eyed but to hellwithit, why not have stars in there.
FDR
FDR is the new incarnation of NYC songwriter Felix Mcteigue. He was incarnated when Felix embarked on what he called “a self-imposed, all bets are off, drive everyone in my life crazy, just for the hell of it” project to write and record fifty songs in the span of fifty days. When the smoke cleared, what emerged from his Herculean creative effort was a record called (of course) The New Deal, a thoroughly original d.i.y. masterpiece comprised of thirty-two songs on three separate discs. FDR engineered the record on his home equipment in addition to laying down all the instruments and harmony parts himself. I once heard him say, describing his role in producing a friend’s record, that he thought of arranging each song like rolling a tight little cigarette in order to get the nicotine (song) to the smoker (listener) as quickly and enjoyably as possible. This is a good way of thinking about FDR’s own album: it’s a pack of songs that are straightforward, joyful, and powerfully addictive.
The songs are brief and refreshingly direct. Their economy (to use a cold word) must have come as result of the creative duress of the 50/50 project; there just wasn’t time to cloak the naked, beating heart of these songs in cleverness and sophistication. Musically, this means no-holds-barred melodies that seem to be all hook. The instrumental parts (and there are many instruments: drums, bass, guitars, piano, organ) range from the catchy to the sublime, and the hasty, lively way they’re recorded gives the whole record an exuberant, human, off-the-cuff sound. This is an especially beautiful and in fact novel thing when it comes to FDR’s use of electronic voicings and drum loops because he uses these digital tools as though they were lovable, fallible old acoustic instruments-- again, no time for the compulsive perfectionism and tranciness that are so easy to fall into with digital recording. Lyrically, the songs have an earnestness you’d be hard pressed to find in any genre today: “I can hear you breathing clear across town. I have learned to forget I have been let down.” Or: “Best time I ever had! Never felt more alive! Than driving with you darling on the FDR Drive!” When they venture toward the abstract, FDR’s lyrics take on the simple striking imagery of haiku: “Snowflake on the asphalt… Ice cube on the boardwalk…” Out of all of this FDR emerges as a sort of protagonist figure; a man who wears his heart on his sleeve without coming across as even vaguely emo; a manly, vulnerable, admirable character who knows who he is and what he wants and expresses it the best way he knows how.
Here I’m reminded of something I read in an acting textbook by the Russian method actor Stanislavski years ago. The essence of it was that, contrary to the notions of many young actors, one can’t bring an audience to tears simply by acting sad. Only when an audience comes to identify with a character’s desire and that desire is unattained or thwarted does the audience come into the ecstasies of sorrow and rage the actor aims to inspire. FDR is above all, desirous. Also, he is optimistic, never giving way to the petulance and melodrama (“acting” sad) that bogs so much music down. He never succumbs to irony, that most supreme and fashionable form of cowardice. As his audience we don’t know whether FDR is a winner or a loser, whether he gets the girl, whether he is as free in reality as he is in his songs… but we want him to be! We want it badly because we see in his naked desire our own submerged ones! Their subterranean striving for the sun. “Spring can’t be stopped!”
FDR’s contagious optimism is inspirational; it is also revolutionary. The process by which the album was made makes d.i.y. look good again-- like the liberating, empowering concept that it is and not like an excuse for bad cover art— Who says you have to be a drummer to play the drums? Who says you need a recording engineer? There is a joyful innocence in the way FDR mixes live instruments with digital ones that hearkens back to the early eighties, when digital recording technology was still new and delightful and hadn’t yet come, as it somehow did come, to represent the dark forces of modernity (are you with me?). Visa-vis the political realm, FDR did mention during one late-night conversation his feelings about the potential of the Democratic Party and what his namesake and the old New Deal represented to him. All shades of the left will appreciate the vital importance of breaking out of a reactionary political cycle in which we define our values only in contradistinction to those of the right. We must have a positive, rather than a negative platform—in politics as in life—and we must have balls! And we must have plenty of instruments we don’t quite know how to play, and play them anyway. FDR has all of these.
Anais Mitchell
Montpelier, VT
Summer 2006
festivals
Sun, Aug. 6 2006
i promised when the new site was launched i would be a better correspondent and here i go. reflections on a cool dark tweeting august night. played two festivals this weekend, one the champlain festival just twenty minutes from the place i grew up, which was as sweet as can be, the kind of wholesome i felt at the clearwater revival where a song is a song and it doesn't matter what kind of voice you've got or whether you play an instrument. the other was the third NEKMF festival in the kingdom. gogol bordello headlined and i saw part of their set which blew my mind and also made me tired. the bare-chested, mustachioed lead singer whacking the microphone, hopping around the stage, the two hot babes with bowler hats, stockings, washboards, the crazy-eye gray-hair fiddler. in the audience dozens of painted cardboard skulls were tossed around by a giant cardboard skeleton. wow wow. someone said something about NEKMF filling the void left when bread & puppet and reggae fest stopped putting on their big vermont shows. i see it. the kingdom is like no other place. i almost felt at home. n. and i took the first of many naps in the westphalia. a guy came up after one of the champlain shows to tell me he doesn't like when songwriters draw out one word or syllable over multiple notes (i do this i guess). at first i was indignant but there may be something to it and i've been conscious of it since, listening to other songs. it has to be done right i suppose like anything. festivals are tiring because of the sheer volume of human wakefulness. so many people so present so ready to talk. but they are beautiful for that exact reason. i think this weekend i may have gotten over my attitude about them (i used to call them track meets because of the heat, the short attention-spans, and the performance anxiety). viva summertime, xoa.
beautiful, thump-thump
Tue, May. 16 2006
in bellingham, wa i did a surprise opening set for this wonderful environmentalist man named dana lyons. he had a big, big hit called "cows with guns" that was made into a children's book and published by penguin. it is a brilliant funny song that turned me back into a vegetarian for one night. r. and i walked to his truck in the dark. "i'm having a political reawakening!" i declared. "me too man!" said he and so we went to the casa de pasa where his beautiful dancing girlfriend awaited with her other friend drinking a hot toddy (my mother used to make these virgin for me as a kid in winter) and we ordered vegetarian and later dana lyons came by and told me i must absolutely pass through the redwoods on my way to california and hug them, and i said i would and now i am and this is why i am at the econo lodge of crescent city at the very northmost tip of 101. there they were, the redwoods, taller than anything, wider than anything, red and green and the ferny forest floor, it looked primieval (sp?), i expected to see dinosaurs at any second, possibly because i watched king kong en route to seattle, it was very moving the first time i saw it, but not the second time, though the first time i thought it summed up everything wrong with civilization and show biz and manhood, not to mention how as a woman sometimes you want a sensitive playwright to woo you with words, and sometimes you want a bellowing ape to break a predator's jaws apart to save your life and then to hold you gently in his (opposable) fingers as the sun sets over the crags.
as i say the redwoods are beautiful. oh space of the west. oh people of the west who use their bandanas for napkins and recoil in the face of styrofoam. forgive me for i have joined the bitter ranks of the great disillusionment. pry me from the jaws of the busy cynical monstrosity of the northeast, hold me in your massive palm as night falls on california. "beautiful". thump-thump.
in between i went through portland. portland! memories flooded back, hawthorne, the red & black, mississippi studios, mississippi pizza, my heart ached with nameless nostalgia, i saw the attic room where i stayed once, the child's chair, the desk that had the typewriter, i drank a glass of wine and watched a children's film called "nanny mcphee" in the baghdad theater, just to do it, i remembered forgotten lonesome scenes in bars, one bar with a shuffleboard and a sign that said "shrimp scampi: $2.50" which amused me and i asked about it just to see what kind of shrimp scampi could be had for $2.50, but they had stopped serving. i was alive then as ever. in portland i played an in-the-round show with two geniuses and tried not to envy their genius but only take it in like through my little gills. there is genius enough for everyone. cheers all.
good night and good luck
Sun, Apr. 9 2006
n. asks me to bring vinyl home from every tour. i was only away a few days this time but i did get to stereo jack's across from the cambridge common and found an original copy of highway 61 revisited which i don't think we've got. listening now on a sunday night in the attic room, digging the off-the-cuffness of it, at least it sounds off-the-cuff, one never knows. this was quite a weekend, scenes shifting one to the other rapidly, little windows on the worlds of old friends, i mean it is just staggering what is HAPPENING all at the same time, the attic rooms, the undisclosed locations, the infinite underground bars and revelations forgot, all the captives and fugitives in this vertiginous world. "she speaks good english and invites you up into her room" OH!
i watched "good night and good luck" late in the night. r. mckee might not have been impressed with the story but it was beautiful anyway and i ate it up, the black and the white, the journalists who love the truth at all costs, suspenders, swivel chairs, mccarthy looking like a charismatic psychopath with his receding hairline and spittle, the corruption that never has and never will go out of fashion. well, journalism is the most honorable profession i know. "everybody is making love or else expecting rain" OH! one day i too will wear suspenders and chain smoke. i knew a writer once who wrote songs while watching movies out of the corner of his eye. i wrote a song about it like "i knew you when i saw you watching movies in the dark." it's all i remember of the song. there was a rhyme with "the maker made his mark" i remember that.
a little trouble focusing here. the record wants flipping. going to leave you with that- cheers- anais
the north end
Thu, Mar. 23 2006
i don't know why i never write this goddamn blog. i guess in my heart of hearts i am waiting for my brand new very compelling website to be finished before i commit to the blog. but i was reading rose polenzani's blog which she keeps regularly with all manner of poetic and intellectual essays and i got jealous of her blog, i'd say i got inspired but it was more like jealousy. tanks rose. i'm in boston. the friends i'm staying with have these real jobs where they really do have to wake up early and so they've gone to sleep. i'm wide awake on the couch, it may have something to do with the leftover treats i had just now from mike's pastries in the north end, full of cream and sugar they were and chocolate crumblies on the outside. it was a beautiful cold day to walk through the north end. we were forcibly dragged into a restaurant which was low on ambiance but high on food quality. "come in, come on, yes, follow me, i remind me of you, into the dining room, here, these are my cousins" said the friendly proprietor as we were drug inside. i remembered the first time i realized that national geographic was weird. all my childhood i'd read articles about namibia and sri lanka and okay, i didn't REALLY read the articles, but enough to get a sense, and looked at the pictures. i always thought it was a perfectly objective magazine, but then they ran this article about the north end, where i had actually been, and i saw how those guys had melodramatized it up and down, and i can only assume it was the same with namibia and sri lanka but that i was none the wiser.
i've been re-reading robert mckee's book "story" which is a screenwriting textbook i got in college. it starts off brilliantly all about the story as a veryvery old, pre-aristotelian form of cultural catharsis, but then it gets very specific and a little compulsive for me. but i'd recommend it to any writer. look at this passage: "a culture cannot evolve without honest, powerful storytelling. when society repeatedly experiences glossy, hollowed-out, pseudo-stories, it degenerates. we need true satires and tragedies, dramas and comedies that shine a clean light into the dingy corners of the human psyche and society. if not, as yeats warned, 'the centre can not hold'."
well now i've made myself sleepy. catch you on the flip.
jingle jangle
Fri, Nov. 25 2005
it’s the day after thanksgiving, day of consumption, and in the north country lots of us celebrate “buy nothing day”. so none of my friends was buying anything, nope, they was busy making beautiful things out of papier-mache and recycled fabric and heating up leftovers and conspiring all kinds of fun and radical ideas and going outside for another log to put on the fire. but me I went to the mall. I didn’t even mean to do it, I found myself at the mall under the practical guise of a trip to lenscrafters and then as often happens, I found myself buying expensive corporate underwear right there at the mall on buy nothing day. santa claus was at the mall and this time he had a bald elf with him. little kids were getting on his knee and telling him what they wanted and then click went the digicam. there was a huge, very conical tree covered in blue lights. and young girls in tight jeans and sweatshirts, highlights in their hair, naked-faced, with boyfriends not as attractive as them, walking uncomfortably, brashly, arm-in-arm. tired-looking women in the food court where I used to get hot dogs from A&W but now there is no A&W. and a smell in the mall like the smell of my adolescence. experimentations with hair-removal cream and sample perfumes, something to make the blonde parts blonder and the tan parts tanner. a plastic pallet of eye-shadow that crumbled into nothingness on the bathroom shelf. je ne regrete PAS. but when I came home the huge caterpillar puppet was nearly assembled. I snuck in with my contact lenses and corporate underwear. I must admit I left the pink corporate bag in the passenger seat of my car because I was shy. i'm glad this is my world. now what do you think of that bruce springsteen version of “santa claus is coming to town”? I was scoffing at it, having just watched this dvd about the making of “born to run”, it suddenly seemed so lame and easy, until n. said, “well, there’s no better version of that song!” which is true. put a candle in the window people. soon enough, -a.
richmond
Tue, Nov. 15 2005
i'm in richmond at the tiny beautiful house of dear louis. the appliances are pea-green. the liquor cabinet is dark red-black. rosie is mostly white and she is my favorite dog in the world; our hearts beat as one. i like richmond, the billboards, the clocktower, the bridge where louis pointed out belle isle. once i thought of moving to richmond. once my feelings were hurt on a back porch in richmond. the sun breaks over richmond like an egg.
i'm on tour with my three friends, the tin pan caravan. each night is different and more fun than the last. i'm humbled and awe-struck by the songs of these friends, they are true artists, they take care and are brave with the language, they break free of the moorings, they work hard and they do it for love. a breath of fresh air! last night was our one night off. we went to a brilliant restaurant called mama zu’s. a semi-famous writer once said that sex was a unique human activity because “you just want to get it OVER with, as slowly as possible.” fine dinners are the same way. the pleasure of lingering is cut with the desire to cram the mouth. we made a lot of toasts. when it was finally over we went to the Laundromat. and when that was over we went to a couple of bars and finally ended up singing karaoke, which of course looks easy but is actually hard. you don’t get to pick your key. there is not much room for subtlety. after we had all sung once we felt we needed another chance. I had my heart set on a supremes song, but the dj spurned us, saying he already had too many submissions and it was getting late.
have you seen the drawings of woody Guthrie? I went to a panel about them this weekend. it was the saving grace of a difficult music conference. on top of everything woody Guthrie was a brilliant visual artist. and he wrote erotic letters to women who didn’t even want them. admirable!
chicagoooooo
Sun, May. 1 2005
hi people. problems with the blog, problems with the blog, hope this goes through. so much has passed through my rearview lately, it's hard to extract one blogworthy scene. there was a ukrainian bar in east buffalo full of left-leaning conspiratorial types and perogies and borscht and russian beer. i sang there and spoke my two or three phrases of russian (language of the oppressor) which are like, "please, i want to drink wine", "where is red square?" and my favorite- "maybe later..." there was a bar in pittsburg with beer in aluminum bottles and a midget who worked every saturday night. he had answered an ad in the window saying "midget wanted". my darling friend said in his excitement to the bartender "people in pittsburg don't give a f***!" and the bartender said, "exactly!" cool bars exist in a certain constellation. in pittsburg we drove the winding raised highways, the grinding semis and rusting iron railings and urban water beneath us, i burned candles on my dashboard. there was also vermont, lambs dropping on green grass, shivering and slimed. and i am in love, but i shan't talk about it on my blog as it is too dear to me to talk about.
next, i tour with darling rachel ries to texas. she has a new record and she's gonna be huge. texas waits with gaping open maw. hot stinking texas where you can buy an individual chilled can of beer at a gas station (not that anyone drinks and drives) and where men still call me "sweetheart" without a trace of irony. where the rivers are wide and brown and just the right temperature for swimming. today i am thinking the country is too large and diverse to make any generalizations about. i used to love generalizing back in college, it made sense to think of the culture as heading unhinged, desenfrenado, down one greasy hellbound track, but it just ain't true. old men in tollbooths are kindly. christians keep putting up weird pithy signs like "got jesus?" and sometimes it is funny. people work hard and drink a lot. the leftists congratulate each other and swap buzzwords. the machine rumbles on day after day. some people beg for their livelihood, some work for corporations and go to the gym. everyone feels guilty about something or other.
i am mostly quite happy. i'm working on being direct with people, honesty as the best policy. part of that means going ahead and weirding people out if i am in a weird mood. who are you readers, out there in the ether? come to my shows. hello anonymoses and all you weird bloggers out there. hello mama and papa, hello frogs. life is beautiful, gas is expensive! tonight the tin pan takes the stage in chicago... chicago is as windy as they say... WHOOSH! love anais.
archives
Sun, Dec. 12 2004
March 21, 2005
first day of spring
hello brotherly and sisterly lovers.
somebody told me that the tourism industry was trying change the city motto from "the city of brotherly love" to something less "gay-sounding". i don't think it worked, but i was searching about it online and i found this funny thing about how virginia, based on some of its ridiculous anti-gay legislation, ought to change its motto from "virginia is for lovers" to... "virginia is for procreative sex between married heterosexuals in the missionary position with the lights off" or "virginia... this ain't massachusetts" or "virginia... thanks for not being gay"...
mwa! anyway. i'm in philly this morning, i'll be in virginia tonight. it's overcast but it is now officially spring and i'm driving down into the heart of it, where the bubbly springs bubble and the smokies are smokin' and i can clean my poor darling car who has had cold little feet all winter.
i went on gene shay's radio show last night (wxpn) which i've been wanting to do for a long time. the man is an angel, also he has a bunch of adorable interns. also while in this fair city i got to do a philadelphia folksong society house concert, which was really something. as SOON as my set was finished the society broke out their instruments and began several different campfires in different rooms of the house, without the fires, of course. in any case folksingin' is alive and well in philadelphia. and now... and now... it's monday morning, i go to play my gracious host's incredibly beautiful martin guitars, and then to push off. until soon,
anais.
march 12th, 2005
the pursewarden affair
hello people.
greetings from the turnpike motel in southern maine. i NEVER stay in motels because i really canât afford it, but i was driving along, wondering how to get in touch with a friend who could put me up, thinking how the new england winter really messes with the great american dream of *living in oneâs car*, when it called to me from the side of the highway in vacant neon tones. i took a room for two nights- a gift to myself- my birthdayâs coming up! itâs beautiful here, clean and warm and silent except for the neutral sound of traffic, like wind or surf. motel owners are so darling. if the music career doesnât pan out youâll know where to find me.
and itâs so GOOD to have a room of oneâs own, itâs got me writing, itâs got me wishing i could stay forever! i am quite happy today. i have these peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. i have this harmonica. i have this bottle of wine and no corkscrew and i may in fact have to push the cork in... gram parsons has a line: ãspend all day at the holiday inn, trying to get out of bed...ä
o, pursewarden
have mercy on my heart!
maybe i donât want to call it ãartä
just because you nailed it to the wall
maybe iâm a critic after all!
what news? i spent a good deal of time at home in vermont last month. there were some auspicious goings-on, for example, the buddha-lamb was born. there was one very old ewe ãmarked for deletionä (i mean that lovingly, not disrespectfully) that escaped from my dad whilst he was trying to put her in the truck along with ten old ewes bound for the slaughterhouse. she was wily enough that my dad gave up and let her stay on another year. somehow this ewe got pregnant much earlier than the others, and gave birth last week to a single ram lamb in the freezing dark of night. my brother, who happened to be walking up the drive-way at night, heard the lambâs cry and went up to the field to see, and there was this lamb, alive against all odds, with his old mother who had no milk. so my fambly took him into the house and fed him by bottle until they found some young unsuspecting 4-H person to take him on. the whole thing smacks of good omen-ness. springtime, faith, etc. but here in maine thereâs a blizzard on. itâs dark in the middle of the day. and i am a wintry tumbleweed. this is a weird time of my life in which every few days i resolve that i must absolutely move to some big metropolis immediately. and i announce these intentions to everyone i meet, but havenât made it happen. um... what else...
all youse in the south, i am coming for you, check the calendar. my big jolliest wishes to all.
January 29, 2005
vermont, the independent republic of
oooooooo, vermont is cold, cold, cold as can be, "cold as a witch's tit," as my godmother always says. i come home and all is as i left it. o little green subaru of my heart! o tights and sweaters long neglected! my parents dancing barefoot to bluegrass at the american legion hall. my brother and susannah working stealthily away at various radical and studious pursuits. grandpa at dinner in his bathrobe and the bright red tarbush i brought from cairo, grandma delivering plate upon plate to the table, recipes gleaned from far and wide. and outside the glitter of sunlight and icicles, the sheep and the sheepdog indistinguishable, the drive plowed, the evergreens ever-optimistically nodding their branches "yep, mmm-hmm, ayuh." egypt recedes in the memory like a falling watermark.
i haven't been thinking about w. very often. the initial shock of his re-election made me turn to other news, other ideas, other public figures, in a fit of disbelief and maybe denial that he was STILL THERE, his face was still all over television and would be there throughout most of my twenties. just before i left cairo i had this angel of a cab driver. he shared his sunflower seeds, we had a sweet and spirited conversation about how the american and egyptian peoples are brothers; we agreed about how "fi farq kabir bain ash-sha'ab wa al-hokuma" (there is a great difference between the people and the government) and etc. he is totally down with the sha'ab al-amriki. happy silence. then he says without a trace of anger but only sorrowful confusion, "but... tell me one thing. the american people VOTED for w. a second time. why did they do that?" oh, why? i mumble something about the problem of business being in bed with government, the problem of the big media. "the big media are owned by..."
"jews?"
"no, not jews, but... moneyed people, you know." and on and on. his sweet animated face under a woolen cap. mouthful of smoke and sunflower seeds.
his question ringing in my ear: WHY did the american people vote for w. a second time? how exhausting it is, having to look like IDIOTS abroad. last year it was all fine and good to say the election was stolen, to commiserate even with europeans re: this analysis. but this time it is front page, bold headlines, no doubt, america votes destructive arrogant idiot into office- A SECOND TIME. why? "moral issues," or, "the influence of the christian right," or "the influence of neo-conservatism," or "the failure of the vote-counting machines..." yada yada. all of the arguments eating their own little tails. most of all, it probably comes down to FEAR voting w. back into office. o america. we will have to be very brave these next years. we will have to figure out how to be brave, because i think there will be plenty of fear- justifiable AND manufactured- to go around.
i was planning to wax eloquent on your asses but in fact i am suddenly half-asleep. anything else to report? well...
my mom and i are going on a fad diet tomorrow. please don't inform the righteous sisterhood. i am busily booking the spring and summer and if you have any exciting gig ideas, don't hesitate to contact me. today i am listening to early simon & garfunkel, and father simon has a sermon for us all. it is above and beyond the kind of line anyone is allowed to write these days. it goes as follows:
"life, i love you. all is groovy."
put THAT under your pillow tonight.
~deine anais.
Posted by Anais at 05:32 AM
January 20, 2005
censorships
such a morning like no other morning! get this.
so i ended up doing this interview egyptian television, a brief interview on a cultural program set up by a journalist i met at a party. i had to wake up at an unheard of hour to get to the station, it was just getting light, the streets were empty, but outside the mosque near my apartment there was a crowd praying in the street. today was a huge holiday, eid al-adha, when animals are slaughtered according to hilal and everyone eats too much meat. i walked several blocks to find a cab. people were in full, generous holiday spirit, very sweet, an old man offered me a cookie, i offered him a section of tangerine. the interview was in arabic, not really my strong suit, and i'd been trying for the past 24 hours to figure out how to say something in this interview that is "SHWAYA siasia"- a LITTLE political- that could express my own opposition to american foreign policy in the region without sounding like an idiot or reinforcing anyone's knee-jerk anti-americanism. i felt it was an important gesture, no matter how tiny, not only to represent the diversity of american opinion but also be an example of how someone can (ideally) be critical of one's own government on TELEVISION! but it was kind of a balancing act; on the one hand i was thinking i ought not censor myself- "wwafd- what would anne feeney do?" is what was thinking- and on the other i had visions of ending up on the front page of some wierd islamist opposition newspaper. so i ended up with something like "i'm worried about the state of international politics, and the policies of my goverment in this region, i'm worried about the misunderstanding and distance between the american and arab peoples..." and for this reason, cultural exchange is important... yada yada, music as international language, yada yada... also i played a couple verses of the "two kids" song- hadn't planned to, but i was describing the collaboration with the syrian poet who wrote the second verse and the hosts asked me to. all in all it was very lovely and we talked most of the time about simple things, heart-as-opposed-to-head things.
THEN it was the ripe old hour of nine a.m. and i was determined to witness some of the eid al-adha goings-on, so i took a cab to the saida zeinab district. there i first watched a huge ram get skinned and gutted completely. he was massive and he lay in a pool of bright red blood on the sidewalk with marbles for eyes. after the throat is cut and bled and the animal dies, a slit is made near one hoof and then a man blows into the slit as though he were inflating a balloon. and the animal DOES inflate- the skin separates from the muscle, then it is punched down like rising dough- and then the skinning commences. the young men doing the butchering wore jeans and rubber boots, no gloves. people were very kind and offered me free tea and cigarettes. i told them about our sheep farm. this was very interesting and pleasant. a few blocks away, at another shop, i watched the slaughter itself: this sheep had all four hooves bound, and he was very much alive when i arrived, i looked right into his eyes, and his nose was wrinkled in the way our ewes' noses wrinkle when they are in labor. the throat was cut, the blood came gushing out onto the sidewalk in front of my feet, but it took longer than i could have imagined for the animal to die- he kept kicking when the men tried to begin the inflation process. this was all fascinating, horrifying, inspiring, by turns. how is that in one instant, a beautiful, sentient, creature becomes MEAT? i marveled at this noble killing process happening right on the SIDEWALK, in broad daylight, little kids and entire families watching. even i, who grew up on a sheep farm of all places, had never seen such a thing. i wondered what percentage of americans had ever witnessed a slaughter- our own little cultural censorship, eh? to have never smelled the scent of really fresh meat, to have never seen the color of that blood except in the movies. and cairo was red all over!
THEN as i wandered on past the throngs of poor people clamoring for the free plastic bags of meat which is handed out as charity (in truth, as someone pointed out to me, most of cairo's population is poor enough that this is the ONLY time they eat meat all year! imagine the richness of it.), past the cows and sheep still marvelously alive, tethered to wooden posts, past the fruit stands and closed shops, i saw something i have NEVER seen in ANY part of the middle east- a kid, looks to be maybe fifteen, sitting on a bench as i was walking by, wearing kind of an eighties jacket, had his fly wide open and his erect penis in hand. i gasped out loud, i was so surprised, and then told him "shame on you, shame on you!" as i walked quickly away. but a few streets later i noted he was following me (his jeans zipped at this point), and i shouted some more things at him, and finally ended up CHASING him down the bloody street until he disappeared. a little kid came up and said "i saw you on tv!" wierd. i hailed a cab. i was thinking about this eighties kid, what could have driven him to such perverse boldness... it's a wonderful thing about cairo and much of the middle east that despite the non-stop bullshit and cat-calling, crime is virtually non-existent, and flashing doesn't really fly. hard to be discreet as a flasher in a city so crowded. my first thought was that maybe he had been eating meat for the first and only time this year, that he had become emboldened and intoxicated by it, that he HAD to express it somehow! then all the usual thoughts about what happens when you cover something up- it always pops out in wierd ways. i read an article once by a certain grossman about how the act of killing and animal slaughter is to today's america what sex was to the victorian era- that we cover it up as fully as possible, but it always finds its perverse way back into society. it made sudden sense... women covered head-to-toe, the eighties kid with his cock out, the sheep kicking on the sidewalk, a tarantino film, state suppression of the media, writers made into martyrs and enemies, boring pop music, boring folk music. i won't try and tie things together too much- this is not academia after all, but a blog! but it was a hell of a morning. i went home and took a three hour nap. bless you, readers! kul senna wa antum taibeen. i'll be states-side next week and i'll update the calendar.
Posted by Anais at 08:27 PM
January 09, 2005
end of the quartet
hey captain a-rab
taxi cab driver
queen mab arrives
in your backseat again
drunk as a djinn
high as a minaret
asking for cigarettes
laughing at nothing!
went up for a couple of days to alex, as i was nearing the end of durrell's "alexandria quartet" and wanted to make a proper pilgrimage. stayed in a really, really cheap hotel without enough blankets ("you know you're a grown-up," a friend said once, "when you stop staying at cheap hotels". the same friend said, "you know you're a grown-up when you don't feel you have to finish your beer just because you paid for it") but with a brilliant balcony view of sa'ad zaghloul square and the corniche. i read durrell furiously in cafes and restaurants. also i ate fish and enjoyed it. a guy showed me how to shuck the exo-skeleton of a gambari (shrimp) with grace- the head comes off easily. then there is a split up the back, which you stick with your fork. then with your knife you remove one side of the shell, flip the shrimp, and remove the other. it seems to me if the gambari is smaller and there is no split up the back, you should stick the belly instead of the back. but then there is the problem of its little legs. this may all be elementary to you, dear reader, but i choked on a fishbone once as a child, developed a kind of a phobia, and only now am i developing a taste for seafood. it is always an adventure! most of the places in durrell's alex aren't there anymore, but some are- the cecil hotel, trianon, pastroudi's, and the streets- nabi daniel, fuad- are of course still there. there was a proper mysticism about the visit.
but now i'm back in cairo, and kind of at a loss because i've been reading the quartet for what seems like a long time and suddenly there is a great gaping hole where the books used to be. can one be nostalgic for books? if you can recommend something, go ahead. only i think it should be something stark and masculine if possible. well, ishta aleikum. cream on you. that sounds dirty in english but in arabic it is a genuine well-wishing compliment. i'm going back to my flat for olives and tamarind juice and arabic grammar. the flat is cold and maybe i will sit around in my leather jacket.
my jacket fits me like a glove
i wear it in and out of love!
keep warm all youse. hey usa, i'll be back at the end of the month, keep the home fires a-burning. deine anais.
December 26, 2004
the god abandons antony
a gift! the following is a poem by constantine p. cavafy (a greek alexandrian poet). let it be known that my dad in his keen literary way picked up on the fact that leonard cohen's song "alexandra leaving" is an approximation of this poem. let it also be known that one of our two rams is named antony. he is beautiful, with kind eyes, quiet steaming breath, and a scent of lanolin.
and in case, like me, you might benefit from a little background re: the poem, it's like this: the musical procession is the sign that marc antony's god, bacchus, is abandoning him- meaning, the game is up, his love affair with cleopatra, his love affair with the city of alexandria- and the romans are coming to kick his ass. how to deal with that gracefully... enjoy.
The god forsakes Antony
When suddenly, at midnight, you hear
an invisible procession going by
with exquisite music, voices,
donât mourn your luck thatâs failing now,
work gone wrong, your plans
all proving deceptive÷donât mourn them uselessly.
As one long prepared, and graced with courage,
say goodbye to her, the Alexandria that is leaving.
Above all, donât fool yourself, donât say
it was a dream, your ears deceived you:
donât degrade yourself with empty hopes like these.
As one long prepared, and graced with courage,
as is right for you who were given this kind of city,
go firmly to the window
and listen with deep emotion, but not
with the whining, the pleas of a coward;
listen÷your final delectation÷to the voices,
to the exquisite music of that strange procession,
and say goodbye to her, to the Alexandria you are losing.
- Constantine P. Cavafy (1911)
Translated by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard
details, practicalities, geographies
christmas in cairo! a woman singing some kind of epic arabic folk song in the living room of a christmas party, one hand at her ear, tucked under her long, dark hair, and it is as though she is WAILING for every broken heart on earth, none of the guests can move to re-fill their plates or glasses, so arresting is her song. in the middle of the night, men working in the street with sand and concrete, the beautiful slow motion of their rough hands. cats on the torn-up sidewalk. cats: a black kitten named "justine". also a kitten trotting happily round an open air cafe with a gigantic cockroach in her mouth. a table-top, empty colored glass bottles and flickering candles. the viscous red of mulled wine. the brilliant felt green of pool and snooker tables. journalists, american journalists, their simultaneous bravery and child-like-ness. the three-dimensionality of politics in a place so near to jerusalem, baghdad, darfur- three-dimensional in that it is about details, practicalities, geographies, as opposed to so much shuffling paper. a short-legged donkey on a four-lane highway. the buoyant tune of "feliz navidad"- everyone all smiles at the end of a night of dancing on tables and chairs, a shimmering crowd, sweating buckets, the hurried smiling waiters, the flashing of cigarette tips and earrings. my housemate singing every verse of "good king wenceslas" in the shower. a small hungry boy begging for change; i give him some and he asks for more and i say (in arabic) "impossible- i'm poor!" then realize what i've said and feel like a real asshole. kohl powder bargained for at the market. the ebony bottle and tiny wooden applicator. MOUNTOLIVE and the erotic expatriate literary mythology i admire most. et cetera!
Posted by Anais at 04:31 PM
December 12, 2004
holy daze
salaam, you guys,
this is a blog! but let's call it something else, something tasteful, a journal found lying on a park bench, an open letter, a public record, a famous correspondence...
i'm in cairo, it is so, so good to be back. for two weeks i was on tour with a rock project called "circus guy's rocknroll revue"- the tour had its inevitable ups-and-downs, but ultimately it was really wonderful. we played american rock, arabic folk and pop, and some educational songs- part of the project (which was sponsored by the state department!) involved promoting solar and wind energy, and we played a couple of solar-powered shows. i learned a fairouz song i've been wanting to learn for a long time- "habaituk"- and for a week our angel of a driver, eimad, coached me through the verses. our two best shows were in cairo proper, people twisted and shouted in the aisles, and in the arab world there is a beautiful ethic of clapping BETWEEN verses the way you might say "amen!" mid-sermon, very encouraging! can we start doing that in the states?
then the band went home, and i moved into an apartment in zamalek, a beautiful, spacious place with antique chairs and a wraparound balcony eight floors up. i'll be a houseguest and then a subletter until the end of january.
people like to bitch about cairo, the crowdedness, the pollution, the black dust that settles so quickly over every inch of a place, but truly i'm humbled by the dignity of this city, the old men frowning over chess, backgammon, newspapers, cigarettes and turkish coffee, the frosted green stella bottles, the laundry that hangs like pirate flags from the windows of houses, the uninhabitable inhabited, the friendly, muscular morning, the whispering neon night. oooooooo! i haven't been reading the news. i learned the norwegian troll-walk last night. in another life i'd be a norwegian troll. vigourously warm wishes to you. ~anais.
