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Thursday, August 02, 2007
OH, CANDY
Cheap Trick
Cheap Trick
Epic : 1977
[Buy it]
LISTEN
Lambchop
No You C'mon
Merge : 2004
[Buy it]
SYMPATHY
Sleater-Kinney
One Beat
Kill Rock Stars : 2002
[Buy it]
WALKING AND FALLING
Laurie Anderson
Big Science
Warner Bros. : 1982
[Buy it]
Throughout my life there has been a type of female friend who has come to me with problems. When I was very young, these were girls I was interested in dating. Why else would you listen to four thousand hours of girl problems? Ha ha. I am joking. You would listen to them because they are people, too, people you care about, and listening to the problems of people you care about is both altruistic and selfish, in that it exhibits kindness and also illuminates aspects of the human condition, which is vital, especially if you plan to be a writer. Ha ha. I am joking again. The real answer, especially when I was fifteen, was somewhere in the middle. I wanted trust. I wanted to trust other people. I was willing to listen. I was not shy about giving advice when I thought it was appropriate. I had a certain appetite for problems and no real capacity for being shocked. And I was interested in dating them. So that's what happened.
Fast-forward fifty years. Now rewind twenty. Now rewind another ten. Now fast-forward five. Okay. That's about right. That's about now. The phenomenon I have sketched above has continued to occur, with several key differences. Just this week, for example, I heard some problems. Because I have been trusted with these problems, I am obligated to blur the facts. So what I will do is refer to individual people as if they are groups of people. I will also furnish some incorrect details. These people are half-Japanese. These people like Half Japanese. They are either the tallest or shortest people I have ever known. They never read magazines, which is rare for women, and they once punched a guy in the stomach during a carnal moment in a hotel bathroom in Portland, Oregon. There. That should do it.
Anyway, this week, these people had discussions with me about sad things in their lives. Mostly, these were romantic things. I have worked out the romantic problems in my life -- or at the very least brought them to a resting point -- but I remember the time of tumult and trouble, and as a result I am a good candidate for listening. These people said, "I don't understand this guy," or "Why didn't this guy do the thing he said?" or "Why would someone visit me and bring me a newspaper as a present?" and "I have to say I'm disappointed." Sometimes they cried a little. Five days later, their sadness has faded from memory a bit, though at the time it seemed urgent. It wasn't that I thought something tragic would happen, but I couldn't be certain. Times get tough. Self-worth wiggles and wobbles. People get sad. They need friends to pick them up. They should be reminded that they're something to many people even if they're no longer everything to one person. If I had to do it all over again, I might just email a copy of "Oh, Candy," one of the saddest songs ever written about an irretrievably sad friend. Oh Candy why did you do it
You didn't stick a needle in your vein
You just got so damned depressed
We all liked you except yourself
Oh, Candy worked so hard
At doing what he thought was right
It really really doesn't mean a thing Or maybe it would have been too much. It's about a suicide, after all. These were sad people. Believe in yourself, I said. He's a jerk, I said. He's not really a jerk, probably, I said, because if he's a jerk then that's going to undermine your sense of having picked a good guy, but he's probably afraid of you. It's hard to imagine someone not wanting to be with you, I said. In the end, it made them feel better. I know because they told me. (I'm sure it also made them feel a bit worse, to live inside their problems with such intensity, but I'm not a big believer in repressing sadness at the moment. Or rather: I am a big believer in it but I believe that other people should do the opposite.) And that was my aim, to make them feel better, so far as I could. Job well done. I went to eat with my wife and my kids. I went to shoot baskets at the playground. The women who were my friends had cut their sadness with conversation and that was enough for me. All I had to do was listen, which is what Kurt Wagner's doing in "Listen":Tell your trouble to
Someone stuck here just like you
Sucking in the smoke
Like it's going out of style
And I'll listen,
To what you have to say
You said it any way to me Then, last night, after a few days of listening, I suddenly became exhausted. I went to sleep early and woke up in the middle of the night with an evil question in my mind. I am not going to disclose the question yet, because it's embarrassing. But I'll just say that it is a horrendous question, horrendous to think and even more horrendous to actually type, so I hope that I will get at least some credit for bravery. But I'd be lying if I said that the this shameful, horrendous thought didn't cross my mind, and that's what writing is for, in part: to give voice to the thoughts that cross your mind, catch sight of themselves in the mirror, and run off, appalled by their own ugliness. So here's the thought I had when I woke in the middle of the night: Where's my goddamn reward? If you spend time being a big fat shoulder for someone to cry on, aren't they supposed to go to the catalog of shoulder gifts and pick something out and send it to you? Yecch. Even now, it makes me unhappy to hear myself think that. How bad a person does that make me, that I decompressed from the process of hearing about someone else's horrible week and settled eventually on the question of my own reward? As bad as Ken Lay? As bad as Robert Blake? As bad as Pol Pot? The charitable answer is that it puts me just south of Ken Lay, because all I was really doing was desiring, after the fact, in an imprecise way, that the friendship be mutual, as it has been before, as it should continue to be. But if the charitable answer came so easily, I wouldn't have been grappling with this in the first place.
I couldn't find a song about this, not exactly, because there's no song called "Selfish Jackalope." The closest I could come was "Sympathy," which isn't about adult friends, men and women, dealing or not dealing with each other. It's about Corin Tucker's fear over having a premature baby and her appeal to God. It would be presumptuous and even idiotic to insert myself into that relationship, even for the purposes of understanding my reaction to the people who need my sympathetic ear, and for that reason I'm going to do it:I know I come to you only when in need
I'm not the best believer
not the most deserving Do people deserve to be heard when in need? Yes, obviously. Candy did. So did my friends, which is why I listened. But what does it say about the process that they can't exactly reciprocate? Or, more to the point, that they are maybe not aware of the ways in which they can -- and, as Ken Lay would say, should -- comfort me just as I have comforted them. Just because I don't say I'm not sad (which I don't) doesn't mean I'm not sometimes. It's just that I'm less likely to say so, and say why, in a straightforward way, and so they are less likely to be able to offer comfort through listening. I guess I could say, "Hey, look, I am always happy to listen to you, but yesterday I got this crazy fleeting sense that I want more concrete rewards. It landed on me like a black butterfly while I was sleeping. It smelled like tar. It said, 'Remind them that they have the power to comfort you too.' At any rate, forget it, because that fleeting sense has fled. I am mortified. Back to normal."
I would never say that.
After this idea cooked (rotted?) inside me for a day or two, I actually did work up the courage to articulate it -- with great tentativity -- to my half-Japanese friend, and she had an interesting response. "What reward do you want?" she said. That question deafened me. What reward would I want? Money? Dirty pictures? Whiskey? An e-card? A hug? A puppy? For everyone to be fifteen again? I guess the sane safe answer, the only answer I'd ever give in public, is that I want to trust that friends will pick the appropriate reward and give it at the appropriate time so that I'm comforted when I need to be. That sounds like a dodge. In fact, it's both a cop-out and an opt-in. Which is, maybe, what friendship has to be to be real.I wanted you and I was looking for you but I couldn't find you.
I wanted you and I was looking for you all day but I couldn't find you.
I couldn't find you.
You're walking.
And you don't always realize it, but you're always falling.
With each step you fall forward slightly and then catch yourself from falling.
Over and over, you're falling and then catching yourself from falling.
And this is how you can be walking and falling at the same time. Labels: ben, pop, rock
posted by Ben
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