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Tuesday, September 09, 2008
IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD
Tom Waits
Swordfishtrombones
Island : 1983
[Buy It]
HUMAN FACTOR
Milemarker
Non Plus Ultra
Paralogy : 1998
[Buy It]
PEOPLE, THE VEHICLES
Maritime
We, the Vehicles
Flameshovel : 2006
[Buy It]
Most mornings, I roll out of bed between 9:30 and 11:00, depending on whether I managed to get to sleep around 1:00 a.m. (early for me) or closer to 3:00 a.m. (more typical). My room has one big window, with a giant blue-green curtain covering the Venetian blinds. On sunny days, the light shining through the blinds and curtain conspire to make my room feel dim but shimmery, blue-tinted, like an aquarium. This pleases me. I get up and restore order to my apartment while I boil water for coffee: put away the paints and brushes strewn about, stow away musical equipment, wash cheese-and-cracker residue off of a plate. I straighten up whatever chaos I'd left behind in the night, because in the morning, I crave order and symmetry. By the time I finish the kettle is singing, and I fill up my water bottle, pour my coffee, gather books and magazines and notepads, and walk onto the porch. It's a wraparound porch, with cracking off-white paint and tapered columns, two of which frame a vista - the house across the street, the road and the tops of the cars parked there, with a frame of bushes and trees and snaking ivy - a vista I've looked at often enough that it has assumed the solidity and formal elegance of a painting to me.
There are a number of other factors that govern my waking time, most of them having to do with people, with the intrigues of coexisting with them. One of my neighbors runs a daycare center out of her home, and sometimes I'm roused by the cries of children who have perhaps been served Kool-Aid and Pop Tarts for breakfast. The sonic character of the play of children in communal, parentless situations resembles that of a horror-movie sanitorium: there are cries, meaningless screams, demented fragments of song and impromptu percussion, atavistic chants. I like children but find them frightening in these petri dish situations.
On Thursdays I typically wake up earlier than I'd like because of the garbage and recycling and yard waste trucks clamoring in the streets. Or sometimes, the young home-owning Republicans across the street (I do not know these people, but because of certain contextual cues - an American flag on the porch, a home security sign on the lawn, an undue obsession with home-and-yard maintenance, and a businesslike efficiency of interaction with each other - I mentally regard them as "the young home-owning Republicans"), rouse me with weedeaters and mulchers and lawnmowers, which they deploy around the crack of dawn because, one presumes, you've got to stay on top of these things lest they spiral out of control. I do not like these people, whom I do not know. I wonder if it ever occurs to them that deploying gas-guzzling, emission-spewing, incredibly loud machines at 8 in the morning, in the service of esoteric cosmetic imperatives, has more to do with sociopathy than civic responsibility. I feel bad about myself for disliking them without knowing them, and worse for feeling certain that, having seen me on my porch, frivously reading my books and drinking my coffee well past noon, they dislike me as well.
There are two kinds of people in the world: those who believe that there are two kinds of people in the world, and those who do not. In the morning, when I get woken up too early by a weedeater, I am one of the former. I think that I am the kind of person who stays up late chasing ephemeral intuitions, and that these neighbors are the kind of people who get up early chasing pragmatic ones. I feel as if some fundamental schism in our worldviews is being illustrated, as in a parable. There is something imperialistic about early-morning, noisy lawn care: you're keeping up your home and letting the whole neighborhood know, almost like a challenge. Meanwhile, I paint in silence. In the mornings I am generally optimistic but can easily tilt into unease and misanthropy, if I have the wrong kind of interaction with someone, and these interactions can be very abstract, not requiring actual contact. I worry about the people around me, and how we relate to each other. My way of being can come to seem furtive and strange to me. I find myself mentally referring to the people who comprise my surroundings as "these humans," a self-excluding formulation that shocks me when it floats into my mind.
I worry that the mailman does not like me, though I've seldom stopped to consider whether or not I like the mailman. He refuses to take a letter I'm trying to mail if I put it inside the box - it just sits there, for days. I have to put any letter I want to mail in the curved metal arms depending from the bottom of the box, where it's threatened by wind and rain and I have to keep checking to make sure it hasn't blown away until he comes to take it. To me this seems unreasonable on the mailman's part - the letter is clearly stamped and printed with my return address, and I feel as if he's being a bit Draconian in adhering to mail-delivery protocols. I feel certain this is a sort of tacit revenge on me for regarding him, simply, as "the mailman." I would like to invite him to have a cup of coffee with me and find out about his family, his fantasy football league, his bachelor's degree in sociology. But he's busy, delivering the mail, and I actually don't want to chat with anyone in the morning - I want to read my books, and make grand plans for the day while my mind is agile and glittering with caffeine. I worry that he thinks I'm some kind of online shopping junkie because of all the brown padded mailers I receive every day, filled with promotional CDs; I worry that he regards me as a typical American overconsumer, sitting on the porch drinking coffee every day, waiting for my booty to arrive. I want him to ask me about all the brown padded mailers so I can set the record straight, but he doesn't ask. I'm suspicious that he's simply throwing away some of the brown padded mailers because there are so many of them and he can. We exchange hellos, him gruff, me overly enthusiastic, and go our seperate ways: malevolent mailman and depraved online shopping junkie, two ships passing in the night. We'll never know each other better than this.
There's this one guy who often walks by my place, a scruffy hipster dude, who always has an acoustic guitar (spray-painted blue) slung over his shoulder, and he plays it as he walks. He never acknowledges me when he walks by - just walks and strums, eyes fixed straight ahead. Sometimes, I carry my own acoustic guitar onto the porch in the morning, hoping that he'll walk by and I can join him in an impromptu duet. But he never appears when I have my guitar. I wonder how he would react to this: would it be an intrusion? Would he feel as if I were making fun of him? Or would he be delighted? My intention is delight, but it's impossible to say. I wonder if he's practicing, or neurotic, or just killing time on his walk. I like him without knowing him, and I like it when he walks by - I can hear him coming before I can see him, and I can hear him trailing away, like a cat with a bell on its neck. I like the unexpected intrusion of music into my life so much better than lawnmowers.
I imagine getting up and following him, playing my guitar; I imagine him not acknowledging me but continuing to play. I imagine us strumming through the neighborhood like Pied Pipers, neighbors streaming out of doors with their own instruments and falling in line behind us, strumming guitars, blowing horns, banging pots and pans, all of these people who live in such close proximity to me, whom I do know in any meaningful sense of the word: the young homeowning Republicans; my landlord, who seems hardworking and kind, and his wife, who did not want to rent me the apartment because of my "shaky finances;" the two middle-aged sisters who've made it clear they aren't much interested in even exchanging hellos with me, who own both a pickup truck and a Mercedes, who convey the impression of having construction jobs but subscribe to Cosmo (the mailman is very careless about properly seperating the mail, and I often find myself making corrective deliveries); the elderly lady who checks her mailbox a depressing number of times per day; the lady with unnaturally red hair who runs the neighborhood watch and has a face like a nervous, corrupt bird (who often walks by with her husband, each with a dog on a leash, and who chatters incessantly at the mute husband in a gossipy, preemptory way while giving me suspicious glances out of the corner of her eye, because she runs the neighborhood watch, which gives her a vested interest in my private life - I, with my strange tattoos and my porch and suspicious hand-rolled cigarettes and asymmetrical hair and coffee or glass of beer; I, with the impression I must convey of being on the verge of throwing a raucous party or trying to sell designer drugs at any moment: obviously, I do not like her either) - that we would all fall in line behind the mystery guitarist, and follow him where ever he leads us. (I would like to know where he's going, for some reason it feels like a place I would like to be.)
This morning, as I sat on my porch reading an article in Harper's, a tall, thin African-American man walked by. (Having been weaned on racial and sociocultural sensitivity, I will usually go to great lengths to avoid mentioning race when describing someone, insisting to myself that it isn't pertinent despite all evidence to the contrary - often such a conversation will involve me going, "You know, he's about this tall, has dreadlocks, sometimes wears a little goatee, favors t-shirts with the collars cut out," before my interlocuter's eyes light up with recognition and they say "Oh, the black guy?" and I sigh and say, "yes.") I mention that he was African-American only because he was older than me and he called me "sir," and I am always uncomfortable to be called "sir" or any other honorific, especially if the person calling me "sir" is older than me, and African-American. He was tall and thin and wore a baggy t-shirt, and he was slicked with sweat, and his face was a rictus of despair, mouth stretched into an almost parodic moue, like a tragedy mask. "Good morning, sir," he called up onto the porch as he walked by, and I chirped "good morning" in return, in a tone I hoped implied enthusiasm and openness, the tone of someone who does not need or want to be called "sir." And then he began to speak, in a tone of voice that sounded like pain incarnate; his voice was high and stretched and he appeared to be on the verge of tears. I listened as he told a long and incomprehensible story about diabetes and bipolar disorder and a some social or medical program that didn't entitle him to take some bus and could he show me the form. I was having trouble keeping up. "I'm sorry," I said, "but I don't understand. Why do you want to show me this form?" He was standing awkwardly in the bushes below the raised porch, talking up to me as if I were a judge. Then it came clear that he wanted bus fare from me, but I had nothing to give him - who keeps cash on hand any more? I told him I had no cash and it was true. I don't know whether or not he believed me - we looked at each other for a moment longer, at an impasse, and he trudged out of the bushes and down the street without another word. I had nothing to give him.Labels: brian, people
posted by Brian
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Monday, January 29, 2007
REAL PEOPLECommon BeGeffen : 2005 [Buy It]THE OTHER SIDEDismemberment Plan ChangeDeSoto: 2001 [Buy It]PEOPLEEl Perro Del Mar El Perro Del MarControl Group : 2006 [Buy It]People I KnowSome of us stagger through slanting rain, leaning into the wind. We run into walls and closed doors, stubbing toes and fingers. Some of us glide through curtains of sun like kites, limbs strong and smooth in concert, taking us wherever we want to go. Strangers smile at us and wonder why they did, and no doors bar our way. Some of us lurk in between, sometimes glowing, others guttering, and over all we do okay for ourselves, but still. We want to know why this is, and if it's fair. And if it is fair, then by whose standard? And if it isn't, by what oversight? Sometimes we feel like our steps turn the earth, that when we appear to turn a corner we actually continue straight while the universe swivels ninety degrees against the angle of our footfall. Sometimes we feel like we walk and walk and the universe won't move; behind us our prints fill with snow. Some of us spend a lot of time trying to be something we're not, and slowly become that thing. We regard self as autonomously created, and are unsympathetic toward cultivators of incomplete or undesirable identities. Some of us want to find out exactly who we are, and never do. We feel uncomfortable in our skin and covet others'. Some of us know just who we are and live inside that person, and are still unsatisfied. We regard self as innate, immutable, and curse the one with which we were born. Resignation brings peace; struggle breakage. Some of us don't believe in self, and wind up locating ourselves in that disbelief. Some of us just are. Some of us believe in love and some of us don't, and we can trade places in the most remarkable ways. Some of us spend our lives looking for love and never find it, and we wonder if it wasn't out there or if we were never in the right place at the right time. Some of us find love, but then decide that we enjoyed the looking, and turn our backs on it. Some of us find love, then lose it, and sometimes we pretend it isn't lost because we fear that we'll never find it again, and hope that it will return, and sometimes, it does. Some of us never even think to look for love, and we find it or we don't, and life goes on either way. We all live. We run, sometimes. We walk. We scream and sing and laugh and moan. We itch and scratch and cry and smile. We spill hot coffee all over ourselves. We watch movies and make movies and imagine movies. We eat and cough and swear and lift incredibly heavy objects clear over our heads, legs trembling like plucked strings, only to put them back down. We wink and wash and belch and sleep. Before we say things we know are cruel, we say I'm not trying to be mean but. We sneeze messily into our hands, glance around furtively, and wipe them on our seat's undercarriage. We chew gum and fingernails and remove hair from some parts of our bodies, cultivate it on others. We fake smiles. We question the reality of things we can put our hands on and feel. We hurtle through the sky in machines, skipping over clouds like a flat stone, and don't feel as if we've moved. We run down a barren stip of dirt in an amber late-afternoon light, feeling the textures of flexion and release, and we go very far. We speak. We speak with clicks and grunts and glottal stops and trilled R's and sibilant coos and firm trochees and soft glides. We string chains of polysyllables peppered with Latin and French into a cultivated stutter. We speak in ellipses and generalizations, half-truths and barbs, riddles and allusions and cliches. We speak to fill empty space, to assign value, to affirm presence. We speak to large crowds, gesturing expansively, saying nothing. We use language as a wedge to penetrate the world, and as a shield to fend it off, and as a thin dark line to divide it into things. As children, with cartoons and drawings and maps, we learn to regard the world as a field of burning color demarcated by hard boundaries, and we learn to use speech to define the spaces between the boundaries. This makes things easier and we feel comfortable, until eventually, we try to name the edges. We name all things that exist and many that don't.
We dream. We dream of invisible time travelers watching our lives like television programs, of dead relatives returning alive (but radiating a palpable menace), of being attacked by balloons, of our teeth and hair falling out, of going to school without pants. We dream of falling great distances but never rememeber the impact, of a parking lot filled with red sedans glinting dully on an overcast day, of breathing underwater. We dream of a clock with its hands frozen at 11:10, pendulum idly swinging. We dream of attending parties where everyone knows something we don't. We dream of coming undone from the earth and vanishing into the sun.
We find shapes in the clouds and force the stars into improbable constellations. We view the sky as a mystery, and an omen. We sit by foggy windows watching wet leaves fall and spin on the ground. We have strong opinions on topics we know little about, equivocal ones on topics we know well. We dress up as anthropomorphic animals and have sex with each other, and we don't understand why anyone finds this stranger than wearing a tie or playing golf. We hide keys under mats even though we all know the keys are under the mats. We gingerly avoid stepping on cracks, or we march down the sidewalk stomping on every crack we see. We only tread upon tiles of a certain color in malls, thrilling ourselves with visions of a fiery demise if we misstep. We count our steps in our heads, starting over whenever the terrain changes, looking for a rhythm or pattern. We do whatever we can to fragment the world into digestible bits, even if the divisions seem haphazard as a book's pages.
We aren't perfect, but we try. We kick sand castles. We wash our hands exactly seven times per hour. We knock down mailboxes with bats, just to hear the clang and feel the shock waves in our arms. We lock car doors when people walk by. We roll our eyes and make impatient gestures while pretending to listen to whoever's on the phone. We urinate in showers and pools. We go to great lengths to see each other naked, and some of us enjoy it more if the naked person doesn't know they're being seen, or pretends not to know. We shoplift out of necessity, idealism, or for no reason at all. We don't call our parents for weeks at a time. We don't recycle, or we do because we're afraid of appearing ignorant. We make decisions that change our lives forever, and decisions that don't change a thing. We wear mismatched socks on purpose. We dislike television yet watch it for hours. We write because it's possible to do so. We peer into reflective surfaces at every opportunity. We count the seconds between the flash of lightning and the rumble of thunder, mentally converting time into distance, and for some reason are not amazed that we can do this. We put our lips on each others' stomachs and blow. We drink liquor until we are violently ill, and we do it again. We can't remember much about our first year of college, but we never forget how someone looked tucking a lock of hair behind their ear in front of some water and a bridge. We compose long, florid letters and throw them away, to yellow and shed lilac into the dump. We invest some naturally occuring substances with great value, others with none. We tell each other we need haircuts, then compliment each other on them. We hate tourists, and are forced to stay home and abide them, or travel and join their ranks. We part our hair on one side all our lives, then suddenly spend months training it toward the other. If we hold a pen, we doodle idly on whatever's at hand. We think a lot about where we go when we die, though we rarely consider where we were before we were born. We sit by our grandfather's bedside wanting to ask him if life wound up feeling okay, but we don't, because we're afraid he'll answer.
We disregard warning labels. We loop rubber bands around our fingers until the tips swell up like sausages, just to get a rise. We run with scissors and play with matches and burn ants with magnifying glasses in dry straw fields. We take cold medicine and operate heavy machines. We hurl ourselves from bridges with cords strapped to our ankles just to feel the air move. We stand by caged propane tanks, blithely smoking. We eat ice cream so fast our heads feel like they'll burst. We keep guns under our pillows. We tumble over waterfalls in barrels. We tie blades to our feet and go sliding across plains of ice, but we hold hands while we do it. We inhale smoke even though it will kill us, and pretend we have no choice. We use needles, and share them. We do things requiring pads and helmets. We fly on trapeezes and wrestle alligators. We drive off overpasses and swallow bottles of pills and crash in planes and grab live wires and sink in the sea and contract cancer and have heart attacks and tumble down stairs and plummet from windows and ingest poison and starve and blacken in flames and are torn asunder by bombs falling from the sky and open our veins into alabaster tubs. We trust that others will deal with what remains. We shoot people to death in public places so that we may not be forgotten. We tattoo our skin to make it ours. We write symbols on bathroom walls before we know what they mean. We build monuments and tombs. We love to see our names in print. We scrawl graffiti on trains. We break windows and open hydrants and burn down houses. We splatter mud onto clean laundry flapping on lines. We spend hours grooming lawns and hedges. We flock in droves to ancient castles, making sure to take something away or leave something behind. We dye our hair unnatural colors. We choose art over life because art lasts.
We bloom into warm wet darkness and squeeze through a tunnel toward a pinprick of light. We burst into the world amid shimmering waves of chaos and color and pure sensation. We blink and wail and become the absolute center of any room we're in. We put on clothes and learn where to pee and how to walk instead of crawl and we grow. We learn to make the same sounds with our mouths that everyone else makes with theirs, and in what order to make them. We get bigger and get braces and get them off and figure stuff out, then figure out that we were wrong and start over. We go to school and graduate or drop out and get jobs and get fired or quit and get new jobs and fall in love and get married and fall out of love and get divorced or stay married. We never try to kiss someone and wish we had, or kiss them a couple times and regret it. We are frightened and depressed. We are pissed and apathetic. We are anxious and malign. We are floored and ecstatic. We say things like butterflies, and mean them. We extend to our maximum length and then recede from the space we filled. We wrinkle and fade and wither and dim. We get glasses and lose them all the time. Sometimes we find them right on top of our heads. We retire and move someplace warm and sunny, where the weather stays in the skin, not the bones. We sweat and clutch at the sheets and gasp and shudder and divide and return to the warm wet darkness from which we sprang and never really find out why.
Labels: brian, people
posted by Brian
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