What are Your Crimes?

I've been reading the Prince of Tides, a book that has given birth to a new song. The challenge of parenthood was herculian enough without reading this book, which has only emphasized the beauty of family ties and the tragedy of exploiting them. These lyrics are written in the fictional first person as a reminder to myself of my responsibilities.

This broken photograph framed in the mirror
Hung like a famished shadow
Hollow from all the vicarious dreams
Lying broken in piles on the floor
Pick up the shards one by one
The jigsaw is never quite done
As long as you're here
As long as you're here

Spinning around with your hands on my spine
The shaping--it feels like a blow
Every false potter who reaches for me
Tries to put their own heart in the show
Marred like a stone on the wheel
I knew your stone heart couldn't feel
Til the molding is done
Til the molding is done

Crank up the discs and plow down my back
Plant the spring seeds in my flesh
Call down the rain from impossible clouds
I'll sprout the wings you will like best
Harvesting all of your fruit
Fear on the leaves and the root
It grows harder each year
It grows harder each year

Kill me with love, go on kill me with love
Inject me with your wasted time
Just don't believe, don't you ever believe
You will save me with all your sad crimes

Halloween Nightmare

Is it a chicken? Is it a duck? A Chuck, perhaps? Enjoy this video of the boy's first Halloween.

Balm of Gilead

In the northwest of current day Jordan, lies a place once known as Gilead. It was a land divided between Israel’s tribes, and native to this country was a bush that produced a gummy pitch from which a healing balm was made. Thus, the scriptures come to talk about the balm of Gilead.

Marilynne Robinson is an author hallowed in some eternal sense. This novel of hers is the very balm of healing. Set in the rural Midwestern town of Gilead, it is voiced by John Ames, a third generation preacher who has been diagnosed with a terminal heart condition. The book is one long letter, his “begats” as he calls them, to his very young son bound to never really know his dad, except by the accounts of others and this epistle.

I feel I will do this book injustice by offering a synopsis of its contents, however well-intended. I wonder what my feeling of this novel would be if I were not a Christian, but I realize that sort of speculation is useless. All I can say is how I felt when reading it, which is full of awe, and love, and happiness, and sorrow, and forgiveness, and compassion. Perhaps all these emotions are compounded by the fact that I have a brand new baby boy, and that I couldn’t help but think about what I would say to him, were I consigned to a similar fate. I can’t recommend this one enough. Gilead is full of that rare wisdom that takes a life of joy and loss to acquire, and is dulled not by time.

Tagged

My cousin-in-law Jen has tagged me. Haven't been tagged since elementary school, really, so this is new.

What do you like most about where you live?

Purple mountain majesty (I look but don’t touch). Proximity to friends. A fearless Bishop. An overabundance of teetotalers.

If I’m to be completely truthful, something for which I strive, location isn’t that big of a deal to me.

What is one of your all-time favorite music albums and why?

Oh no. My heroine of choice. There are several albums that, for me, are complete masterpieces. All of these are ten out of ten, and get played constantly at my house.

Elliott Smith – Figure 8. Genius songwriting. No doubt one of the best songwriters of the last few decades.
The Beach Boys – Pet Sounds. Can’t say enough about these songs. Brian Wilson is the touchstone for all arrangers and producers. Where would we be without this album? God only knows.
The Shins – Chutes Too Narrow. Trendy perhaps now, to like the Shins, but forget all that. This band kills. Their lyrics are king, and those melodies….those beautiful complex melodies.
Joanna Newsom – Milk-Eyed Mender. Girl + Harp + Poetry + Wacky Voice = Greatness. It’s simple mathematics really. I wish Christy liked her.
The Beatles – Sergeant Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band. Such a “duh” choice, I know, but this is the band doing what they do best.

Perhaps my favorite all-time, and when I say “all-time,” I’m stretching forth from the Beatles, to that forgotten violinist in Cold Mountain, to Bach, to David and his chorusmaster Asaph (most of these had no ability to make an album…Rubber Soul started that, so it’s kind of new) is Sufjan Stevens – Illinois. I’ve raved about this album enough on this blog, but not only is he a wonderful writer of fiction (another soft spot of mine) but he made this album. All cumbersome song titles aside, when Carl Sandburg visits him in his dream it goes like this:

I cried myself to sleep last night
And the ghost of Carl, he approached my window
I was hypnotized, I was asked to improvise
On the attitude, the regret, of a thousand centuries of death

Even with the heart of terror and the superstitious wearer
I am riding all alone, I am writing all alone
Even in my best condition, counting all the superstition
I am riding all alone, I am running all alone

And we laughed at the beatitudes of a thousand lines
We were asked at the attitudes, they reminded us of death

Even with the rest belated, everything is antiquated
Are you writing from the heart? Are you writing from the heart?
Even in his heart the Devil has to know the water level
Are you writing from the heart? Are you writing from the heart?

And I cried myself to sleep last night, for the Earth and materials,
They may sound just right to me.

That burning question sneaks around in that shadow behind my brain…“Are you writing from the heart?” Because I know that if the answer is “No,” then I am really not doing much good here in this life then.

(Come back for my end-of-year, best albums of 2006)

Did you have a passion for something as a kid that you still have now?

Few passions have come and gone, so I can safely say reading, music, wrestling (tights and shoes, not tights and boots). I also tried to get to know Jesus then, and still pursue that arduously.

What do you like most about having a blog?

My blog, as you can see, is not a place where I journal my life. I have a journal for that. I finished a volume just last week, in fact. Those are precious books for me. What I like about my blog though, is that it is a creative outlet. When I’m not creatively reading, or creatively writing, or creatively composing, or creatively loving my wife and child, I try to creatively blog. I do all of these things with mixed results.

Who's next? The only other person who has a blog that I know of is my sister-in-law Alicen. You're it. Colby, you have a website, so you're it too.

Slipping Away

The last thing I did before retiring for bed last night was listen to the new Decemberists album, The Crane Wife. I’m not sure if this was or wasn’t the cause of my fitful sleep, but shortly before 4 A.M. I’d had enough of the tossing and turning, and the strange half-realized dreams that could never quite get off the ground. I decided to turn on the light and read myself into something deeper. The lyric going through my head at this time was “…you’ve been slipping, been slipping away.” I know this is from Her Majesty, but this is all my mind could catch hold of. I’ve been munching my way through Marilynne Robinson’s delicious Gilead. This is a novel I will read three or four times before I die. I put it down on page 100, went in and checked on Gus. He was sleeping on his side and I knelt down and touched his chest so I could feel him breathe. He is such a beautiful boy. There is so much I want for him.

The Gus

Here he is, live and in color, smuggling off with our hearts and all of our attention.

So Much Depends Upon...

Already summer is slipping away, and I find myself looking out my window at work, which is filled with gray clouds and dark shadows and wetness. I'm not ready for Fall yet, but it's coming regardless, and I'm hoping for a nice long Indian Summer. But for now this view will laugh at me. I'm reminded of that William Carlos Williams poem:

The Red Wheelbarrow

so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens

Majesty Snowbird and the Chinese Butterfly Brigade

Here is a video link to a portion of Sufjan Steven's new song "Majesty/Snowbird" courtesy of Chris at Gorilla Vs. Bear. I'm a sucker for this stuff. It's no secret that I think Sufjan is nigh on untouchable, and this clip gives me chills. Rumor has it that this song is a ten minute anthem of sorts, and I can't wait to hear the entire thing.

Majesty/Snowbird

Stay tuned for November 21st, when Sufjan releases a 5 disc boxed set Christmas album, which includes 42 Christmas tunes (17 of which are originals). Among the titles are the following, "That Was the Worst Christmas Ever!", "Come on! Let's Boogie to the Elf Dance!", "Hey Guys! It's Christmas Time!", and "Get Behind Me Santa."

The Alarm of War

My bowells, my bowells!

I am pained at my very heart

My heart maketh a noise in me

I cannot hold my peace

because thou hast heard

O my soul

the sound of the trumpet

the alarm of war.

-Jeremiah 4:19

Blood Meridian

Or the Evening Redness in the West



Once in a great while I’ll finish a book that wrings my mind to the point of sleeplessness. It hasn’t happened, I confess, for some time, but last night I finished Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian, and couldn’t rest for a half hour. Then I woke up at 4:45 A.M. thinking about it and couldn’t get back to sleep again until 5:30. The Judge will haunt me, I’m afraid, for as long as I live. We seem to be a race both obsessed with and plagued by violence, and the Judge drives this idea home with more force than any other character in any other medium I’ve ever known. I’ve never read the like with respect to intensity of prose, the snappy vernacular dialogue, certainly the violence, and, perhaps most of all, the taut philosophical veins that pulse through the novel. It was like looking through some ghastly peephole into the human condition, and being afraid, truly afraid, at what I saw. I don’t know if I should be, and I certainly don't want to be.