Break Out Your Clove Cigarettes

This past weekend Dear Husband and I went to a concert. Much to my amazement I had discovered a musician before they came to town rather than after. It was like fate was whispering in my ear. Dear Husband went along because he’s a good sport. He and I do not usually share the same taste in music, so I considered this a loving sacrifice on his part. Kudos, sweetie. I owe you a basketball game.

When we drove into the parking lot I saw a young man hovering on the edge, talking into a cell phone. “Isn’t that - I mean, that looks just like him!” Dear Husband replied, “They all look like that.” And, indeed, a lot of young men there did have that sort of school-boyish look, with hair short in the back and floppy in the front. A lot of others looked like they spent their lives in comic book stores. When the show started, Dear Husband said, “Well, I guess that was him.” Oh well, not that I would have interrupted a cell phone call to ask for an autograph. I’m too well-bred.

Floppy Haired Guy was Final Fantasy (or Owen Pallett – they are one and the same). Owen Pallett is a talented violinist. He has done work for Arcade Fire and The Pet Shop Boys and some other people I’m not so familiar with. He’s also played onstage with my other favorite artist Patrick Wolf. His live performances are mesmerizing. In the studio he has a bunch of other musicians to support him. On stage he plays his violin into a loop pedal (ooo, new terminology), then replays and records over THAT, and then does some more (including creating percussion on his violin) and adds THAT to the mix, to create layers and layers of sound. Sometimes he sings into the violin. I was wiggly with amazement.

While he was playing I was almost certain of God's existence.




He wasn't the only act. There was also a singer who came on before him, with the unlikely name of Larkin Grimm. I haven’t found anything online that captures her voice live. It has an elemental force; perhaps she channels it directly from a volcanic fissure. My jaw might have hit the floor a few times. She moved seamlessly from normal singing into a sort of banshee wail. She was … unsettling. I wouldn’t be surprised to find out she was a voodoo priestess or the tormented ghost of an Appalachian mountain woman, or, well, just about anything except for a normal, run of the mill, person.




The main band was the Mountain Goats. I guess they’ve been around forever and done a dozen or so records, all of which have some sort of loopy concept. They have the sort of solid fan base of vegetarians and semi-hippie slacker types. Seriously, there was an overabundance of Birkenstocks in the audience and the pervasive scent of clove cigarettes. Their latest album is The Life of the World to Come, and all the songs are based in some way on a piece of scripture. They aren’t a Christian band by any means, but it seems the singer really likes to read the Bible. For fun.
Here is a song from the Mountain Goats called Ezekiel 7 and the Permanent Efficacy of Grace. Not sure what's going on in this song, but it involves tying someone up, and you can't go wrong with that.

Break Out Your Clove Cigarettes

Gypsies, Tramps and Thieves

Here's the story: In 19th century England, a young woman, a gypsy and outcast, falls in love with the son of the parish priest. They are forbidden to marry and she dies of a broken heart (i.e. jumps off a cliff, takes poison, or pines away). Very romantic. It seems that Patrick Wolf ran across this story when researching his family background and finding a cross with the name Damaris among his ancestors' graves.

The explanation I've read about the story is a little confusing. I think he means the Anglican Church and not the Catholic Church, since the man was the son of a priest. Catholic priests may have been procreating for centuries, but they didn't usually publicly recognize their children and worry who they married. Also, if she were Catholic and had killed herself or if she were completely outside the faith, she wouldn't have been buried on consecrated ground with the rest of the family. I don't know if Anglicans have consecrated ground. You tell me.

But anyway, who cares. This is such a beautiful song and I think of Heathcliff and Catherine or Tess and what's his name. Different part of England, but it really reminds me of Wuthering Heights - the man crying out for his dead beloved.

Gypsies, Tramps and Thieves

Oh yeah, those cookies are HOT

Well, it’s that time of year – the holidays – when women’s magazines go all out to make you feel like the crappiest housewife/mom in the world provide you with helpful tips and delicious recipes for your Thanksgiving and Christmas festivities.

I think Good Housekeeping has a lot in common with Playboy. We’ve been socialized to look with concupiscence at photographs of a fat turkey with all the sides on a tastefully decorated table. If you are well-off or have a post-graduate degree, you read Martha Stewart or Real Simple. The Proletariat get off on All You. Good Housekeeping is somewhere in between. Interlarded with the articles on How I Survived Cancer and Skin Care Products that Really Work (in Real Simple that would be Extraordinary Uses for Ordinary Items and Decorating with Mercury Glass) are images of the Impossible. The Christmas edition of Good Housekeeping features a centerfold of elaborately decorated cutout cookies: snowflakes with royale icing, piping, and blue sugar that has somehow been coerced into sticking only to the piping; bells with silver dragees; candy canes with alternating bands of white frosting and red sugar. James McAvoy in a light dusting of powdered sugar. Oops - mind wandered a bit.

For some reason, the lower down the economic totem pole you go, the odder the projects, until you get confectionery constructed from white cake, fruit rollups, ice-cream cones, licorice laces, flattened gumdrops, rolls of Life Savers and toothpicks. Almost every “seasonal” dessert in All You reminds me of a Girl Scout Swap Meet – ingenuity devoted to the inconsequential.

Many glossy pages will cover holiday decorating and creating family traditions. You know, traditions such as Aunt Hester saying “Well, it’s an expensive gift” when your child does not display the appropriate enthusiasm and gratitude. The annual misbegotten children’s craft involving glitter. The cat throwing up after eating a roll of curly ribbon. Or, the traditional family greeting, “Where the hell is the tape?!”

I’ve found an article that describes how to create a lovely menorah from glass cylinders filled with blue glass pebbles and tapers. Do you know how many tapers you would go through in order to light these every night of Chanukah? Forty-four. Forty-four full-size tapers. You could buy out the entire candle section of your local Krogers.

Then there are the pages of gift suggestions – gifts under $50, gifts under $25 and so forth. Let me go snap up that little red-striped baby onesie so cunningly rolled into the shape of a lollipop - awwwww. This box of clever conversation starters! Nesting Christmas dolls! The newest children’s classic If You Give a Mouse an Assault Rifle! Vintage tampon cases! Stationary made by indigent Malaysian orphans from recycled candy wrappers! And you know, I’m not kidding about those tampon cases. They’re for real.

Meanwhile, the November edition of GQ features a chick with her boobs hanging out. Go figure.

Oh yeah, those cookies are HOT

Hey, I wrote something, and so did a bunch of people

Folks, I've been such a creative little critter.

Click here to read my story Sheol, which is on Metazen. Then look around because there are all sorts of interesting stories and poems there.

A few writers I've been reading lately:

Flawnt: he always writes something intriguing and unsettling.

I Must Be Off, a blog by Christopher Allen. He has adventures and misadventures.

Cat Sitting, by Frank Hinton, the editor of Metazen. This story had me in stitches.

Doodles and Words. By Cyn doesn't post enough. Make her post more.

Hey, I wrote something, and so did a bunch of people

Mental Music

I’ve been waking up with songs playing in my head. This is not the usual “I’ve got a song stuck in my head” sort of event. I’ve had that happen of course, sitting at my desk working and really annoyed that the tune of Poker Face keeps playing as background music and trying not to think of Lady GaGa, who makes me feel a little queasy.

I have never woken with a song cycling relentlessly through my head. Particularly not every bloody time I wake up, even if for just a moment in the middle of the night, or in response to a distress call from Firecracker. And it can’t be because I’m playing the same songs over and over. I played U2’s CD over and over for months and had peaceful nights. I ALWAYS play new music over and over. But now my sleep has a soundtrack.

I’m not even a musical person. I can’t play an instrument. I was pathetic at piano. My singing voice is just sad. I have no intuitive feel for music. I have emotional reactions to certain bands and songs, but I couldn’t tell you what key and I probably wouldn’t be able to pick out influences or have the language to describe, well, pretty much anything about a song.

But now I've got my own personal jukebox, all songs by Patrick Wolf. His music is burrowing insistently into my psyche. I'm walking around in a world of blackberries and thickets, doomed romances, mythical characters (Hi Theseus), shape shifters (Hello Vultures), towers, gypsies, bluebells, constellations, and pig farmers (yes, even pig farmers). What would it be like to have all that spring forth from your imagination?

It would be the best.

Mental Music

Hello Kitty Walks to Emmaus

Dear Husband is on his way back from Walk to Emmaus, so I suspect I won't have any time to post anything substantial. Firecracker in particular is eager to see her daddy again. She's had a few teary moments over the weekend. So if you want something to read, go back to Coffee and Renaissance, if you haven't already.

BTW, it seems Dear Husband was the only guy at the retreat with Hello Kitty bedsheets.

Hello Kitty Walks to Emmaus

Nope, no post happening here.

Really.

Nope, no post happening here.

Coffee (a little caffeinated fiction)

Another day of NaBloWriMo, which this late at night is starting to sound a bit obscene. I'm tired and I've been working on this fiction piece for too long.

So, post now, cringe later.


Coffee

I hate walking into restaurants and cafes by myself to meet someone. I always feel awkward, as if no one will claim me. I’m hanging on the threshold now for an agonizing few moments scanning the room until I see my friend.

“Hi!” she says, waving her cup at me.

“Hi.”

I’m always flustered. Why can’t I just be natural? Why does safety seem so fragile?

I order the first thing I can think of, because I get rattled when there are too many options.

“Have you heard from Lars?” she asks.

“Yes, he’s in London doing research at the British Museum. Then he’ll go to Cambridge. I get letters almost every day.”

And when there isn’t a letter I feel unmoored. I don’t believe he misses me really. He doesn’t need me, not the way I need him, to keep the world in place, to keep me from crashing.

“That’s sweet. Will you go over?”

“No money. He has a grant, but I don’t have enough saved, and no vacation.”

And I would be alone there, while he writes and researches with that single-mindedness I admire. It sucks to feel deficient. I would hate myself for not being bolder, for not setting my own course – Ireland, Scotland, the Hebrides, wherever. He would. He does. She has red hair, wavy red hair falling to her shoulders. I’ve always liked it, the way it glows in sunlight, how it springs against her cheek as she walks.

“How is Steve?” I ask.

Steve is a pill.

“We’re going on a trip this summer…”

Ah, matters have progressed. How…established. Serene, she always looks so serene. It’s hard to imagine her kissing Steve passionately, or undressing for him. The buttons on her blouse, would she undo them slowly, watching him, or

“That sounds great. I’m jealous.”

She always dresses modestly. She barely shows any skin at all, except where the neckline of her shirt collar opens slightly. Her skin is so pale, with just the faintest flush. She wears a delicate necklace, so delicate, light as breath, light as a feather or a soft kiss. A soft kiss there in the hollow of her throat.

“So how’s work?” I ask.

“Oh, I have a new project…”

She doesn’t use her hands much when she talks. She keeps them folded on the table, or touches the handle of her cup slightly, turning it in the saucer, or moves the salt shaker. It’s almost soothing. I imagine her hands are cool and that her touch is gentle.

“Do you want more?”

Shit. Idiot. You should have been listening.

“What?”

“Do you want more coffee?” And now I notice the server hovering impatiently.

“Sure. I guess.”

But how many have I had now? My legs feel jumpy. She’s never jumpy, never ruffled, never taken by surprise. I would like to.

“Oh, sorry. I didn’t mean to kick you. Um, what have you been reading?”

“I found this great novel…”

The third cup, or the tenth, I’ve lost count. Her eyes get very bright and lively when she talks about books. Green, with a ring of brown around the pupil. She has what I can only describe as a ladylike laugh, lips slightly parted, more a smile than a laugh. Lips slightly parted and I’m losing my way here

“You can borrow it when I’m done.”

“Absolutely, it sounds great. Thanks”

She slips off her jacket. It is getting warm, even with the overhead fans. Her arms are bare. She reaches up to tuck her bra strap back under the fabric. Black lingerie and yes, she sees you staring you complete idiot.

“Have, um, have you seen that new movie. Maybe we could go.”

“Sure, I’ll ask Steve.”

Goddam Steve to hell. Why did I drink so much coffee?

“You know, you should run away with me.”

She stops dead in the middle of whatever she was saying, and then laughs. “Lars wouldn’t like that very much.”

She is, after all, used to this, though I doubt she knows I am slowly unbuttoning her blouse, which is warm from her skin and I’m pulling her close so that her glorious red hair falls across my face when I kiss her, and then

“Thwarted again,” I say lightly.

I jump up so suddenly I bang my knee on the table and the cups rattle and several people turn around. “Ow. Sorry. I just need to go to the restroom. Too much coffee”

I stare at myself in the mirror. I look lifeless. I look futile. I feel flimsier than the airmail letters that Lars sends so regularly from England.

“I should go now. The stations near my place get sketchy at night.”

“Well it was great to see you.” She hugs me just long enough to demonstrate that she is open-minded yet inaccessible and smiles just a bit too much in her effort to be completely okay with me. If I were a man she would never speak to me again. Which just goes to show how insignificant a threat I am.

I walk off to catch the train. I turn the corner and as I pick up the pace I reach out my hand and drag my wrist across the rough brick wall. I can’t stop shaking. I really should have skipped that last cup.

Coffee (a little caffeinated fiction)