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Thursday, May 15, 2008
GREAT EXPECTATIONS
Miles Davis
1969
Available on : The Complete Bitches Brew Sessions
Sony : 1998
[Buy It]
YOUR ENEMIES CANNOT HARM YOU (BUT WATCH YOUR CLOSE FRIENDS)
Edward W. Clayborn
1927
Available on : Goodbye, Babylon
Dust-to-Digital : 2003
[Buy It]
(SHE'S SO) SELFISH
The Knack
Get the Knack
Capitol : 1979
[Buy It]
SHE'S MY BEST FRIEND
Lou Reed
Coney Island Baby
RCA Victor : 1976
[Buy It]
MY FRIENDS HAVE
Marianne Faithfull
Before the Poison
Anti : 2005
[Buy It]
OLD FRIENDS
Willie Nelson and Roger Miller (with Ray Price)
1982
Available on : One Hell Of a Ride
Sony : 2008
[Buy It]
The other day I was bothered by life: frustrated by it, impatient with everything around me. I went for a walk with the iPod, set to a playlist I made of especially long songs. They're intended to calm me down. One of them was Miles Davis's "Great Expectations," which he recorded during the Bitches Brew sessions and later released on Big Fun. The desired effect was not what I got. I found myself thinking about the title rather than the music--occupational hazard--and how many of life's disappointments result from unmanaged expectations. I went home and called a friend to complain. I picked the friend of mine who disappoints me the least. I can usually count on her to make me laugh or remind me that the world's a good place, if only because there are laugh-productive people like her in it. She answered curtly. "What's up?" she said. I said that I was bothered by something but couldn't quite figure it out. She said she'd have to call back. She is a landscape architect, and these days she's working on an arboretum, and she was waiting for a call from an insect expert.
"An expert on insects or an insect who is an expert?" I said.
"I have to go," she said. While I was waiting for her to get back to me, I became annoyed again, not at the world, but at myself. I had allowed myself to have high expectations again, and she hadn't lived up to them. Then I got annoyed at her. Were my expectations so high? I was feeling bothered, as I said, and I wanted a sympathetic ear, not an ear connected to a body that was preoccupied with a stupid insect expert. Mostly, I resented the fact that by ending the conversation without really talking to me, she had created an imbalance that, for a few minutes, seemed grave. She isn't always employed, at least not to the same degree. Arboretums are a seasonal concern. On days when she's not as busy, she calls me frequently to talk about her problems. Maybe she's fighting with her brother. Maybe she went on a bad date. Maybe a bird flew by her window and gave her a dirty look. I don't mind listening. I like it. But then the shoe is on the other hand, and I need her to talk to me, and she can't deal with my bad day, it irritates me.
What do you do when you're feeling this way? I've been known to kick a chair or say mean things to people nearby. This time, I listened to music. I started with Robert Johnson's "When You Got a Good Friend," which seems to be a song about treating those close to you well until you get to the third verse:
Mmm, baby I may be right or wrong
Baby, it your opinion, I may be right or wrong
Watch your close friend, baby, then you enemies can't do you no harm Johnson was taking up a theme articulated in other records of the twenties and thirties, most notably the preaching blues "Your Enemies Cannot Harm You (But Watch Your Close Friends)," by Edward W. Clayborn, which seems mostly like a big I-told-you-so to Jesus but also states explicitly that close friends have access to parts of you that others do not, and that they can use that access for good or evil:
People I want to tell you
Just how your friend will do
They will wait to get your secret
And dig a pit for you This started me thinking. What finished me thinking was the Knack's "(She's So) Selfish," which sketches out a related (if far more carnal) problem:
And she say
Gimme gimme gimme gimme
Gimme gimme gimme gimme
Gimme gimme gimme gimme
Gimme gimme gimme gimme please
Oh won't you give it to me please please please baby
Day after day after day
After night after night after night
You've been giving her what she wants
Is she giving you what you need
No way The song is four-and-a-half minutes long, and the impulse to send it had dulled by the third minute, mainly because I remembered that everyone is selfish, and everyone knows that everyone else is, too. If I like listening to my friend's problems and want to hear more of them as a result, doesn't that make me just as selfish as she is, but with a different agenda? Evidently there's something about hearing from her I like, and when the rate of contact is reduced, I kick and scream about it.
I became more reasonable. I couldn't help it. I know that in the days when she's calling me very often, it's partly because she's unhappy. It's not that she associates me with unhappiness. It's just that one of the versions of our relationship casts her as the somewhat underemployed, somewhat isolated one. I work in an office. She doesn't really. I am married. She isn't anymore. So frequent calling is a double-edged sword: I'm making her feel better, I hope, but she must also feel like she's reinforcing that side of herself: the underemployed, the isolated. At other times work gets busier (arboretum season!) or she starts dating someone, and in those times she goes partly off the radar. It's not that she vanishes entirely, or at all. But the parts of her that are more needy recede. Right now, both are true: arboretum, boyfriend. In many ways this is good. I'm sure she feels happier and more balanced. But since I have chosen to make peace with (and even learned to enjoy) the parts of her that are needy, I miss those parts of her. Or maybe I just resent that she doesn't seem to develop a corresponding interest in dealing with the parts of me that are needy. I always liked that part in Lou Reed's "She's My Best Friend" when he sings "she understands me when I'm falling down"; I have included the alternate, far louder version that was included on the "Coney Island Baby" rerelease.
The day went on, and I went on with it. I calmed down into circumspection, and started asking myself rhetorical questions. Did I have the right to feel annoyed I wasn't a higher priority that day for my friend? Of course. Did I have the right to say anything about it? Not really. Was I aware that any real friendship is the average of those days when you're not the other person's priority, the days when the other person isn't your priority, and the days when you're both more interested in engaging? Sure. I even found a song that summed it up nicely: "My Friends Have," which P.J. Harvey wrote and Marianne Faithfull sang. Like many Faithfull songs, it takes a fairly straightforward sentiment and turns it on its head with her blasted vocals:
My friends have many features
Many reasons, I can believe them
My friends have many things that
I am needing, to keep me singing
Yeah, you're a friend of mine
You're a friend of mine
Yeah, you're a friend of mine
You're a friend of mine Eventually my friend called back. We had a nice conversation. I accused her of being a jerk for not coming through but admitted that I was a jerk for expecting too much. She agreed and added that I was a jerk for even thinking of sending her the Knack song, which she remembered had a line in which the woman gets the guy "by the short hairs." "The singer says 'it's the only thing she'll leave you down there,'" she said. "That's disgusting."
As we spoke, I faced into the galling realization that as I get older, I need people more. And not people in the abstract: Certain people. Friends used to be more fungible: if one went missing, I'd pick up the thread with another one. It made life easier. But then you settle into yourself, and you meet your wife, and you have children, and time sifts whether you want it to or not, and most friends recede. Those few who remain become permanently, irreversibly important. You can act casual. You should. Admitting that other people--specific other people--are important to your survival is embarrassing, even more so if it's true. I can't predict the future at all, so I can't predict the future of the friendship between me the landscape architect. It's just as likely she'll acquire a serious boyfriend who doesn't like the idea of her having close friendships, or that someone will hire her to design a town square in Alaska, and she'll vanish never to reappear. But I'm entitled to my hope, no matter how prognostically nostalgic and mawkish. And in the same spirit, I'm entitled to "Old Friends," not the Simon and Garfunkel hit but a Roger Miller song on which he's joined by Willie Nelson and Ray Price:
Old friends
Pitching pennies in the park
Playing croquet til it's dark
Old friends
Swapping lies of lives and loves
Pitching popcorn to the doves
Old friends
Looking up to watch a bird
Holding arms to climb a curb
Old friends
Lord when all my work is done
Bless my life, grant me one
Old friend We can go to the arboretum.Labels: ben, country, rock
posted by Ben
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