Salinger Month

Despite the million pop culture references to The Catcher in the Rye and J.D. Salinger I had never picked up anything by him, so this month I set out to remedy that. The book team, thanks to Nick, started with Franny and Zooey. The Glass family is a tortured lot of savants, misfits, and geniuses, and without Salinger it is apparent that there would be no Max Fischer or Tennenbaum family. Next I hit a few of the Nine Stories, specifically “For Esmé with Love and Squalor”, and “A Perfect Day for Bananafish” both of which I enjoyed, especially Esmé. Lastly I read The Catcher in the Rye.

I saw pretty quickly why Salinger is as revered as he his. His ability to assume the voice of a character, to craft dialogue that is outrageous, witty, and full of humor, his balance of both lightness and darkness, adulthood and youth, are all unique. A lot of it was bildungsroman, which is perhaps why it appeals so much to the young generations. The Catcher in the Rye felt very black comedy. Holden is so full of both wisdom and flaws. He feels he’s a victim and that he’s the only one. I loved the section when Mr. Antolini tells him, “The mark of the immature man is that he wants to die nobly for a cause, while the mark of the mature man is that he wants to live humbly for one.” My expectations were through the roof on this one, and I wasn’t let down, but neither was I blown away. “Don’t ever tell anyone anything,” he says. And what am I doing? I’m telling you something. That’s what I’m doing.

Franny and Zooey was my favorite, probably due to the subject matter more than the writing itself. Spirituality and religion are integral to the story, which I’m always thinking about anyway, and I was really affected by the book as it built to its redemptive, climactic end. And Zooey is so ruthless with her! This is beautiful interaction and I was moved when he told her to be God’s actress. Zooey says, “An artist’s only concern is to shoot for some kind of perfection, and on his own terms, not on anyone else’s.” How often do we approach our relationships or our art or our hobbies and all we do is try to achieve some arbitrary, socially imposed objective? And pretty soon we are pandering, in whatever it is we are doing, not to some real value, but to something false and hollow and thin. And our worship becomes that way too, and I think that is what Franny was struggling so much to come to grips with spiritually. There is always going to be some level of hypocrisy among the practitioners of any faith, and she is so fed up with phonies that she commits herself blindly and wholeheartedly to a worship she doesn’t fundamentally understand.

That’s my take, if you really want to hear about it.

No Country For Old Men

As brutal as McCarthy’s stories are, I love reading them. No Country For Old Men starts like a lightning bolt and never runs out of gas. The cast of characters in this novel are more accessible, more likeable, than in the other books of his I’ve read. The plot is a twisty weave that leaves a growing trail of dead as the pages turn. The prose seemed a lot less dense than that in Blood Meridian or All the Pretty Horses, but was still engaging. The beautiful thing about his characters is that they never say anything more than they need to. In this book they are simple folk, borderland Texans, for the most part, and the protagonist is Sheriff Bell, a beautiful elderly soul whose ruminations are the life blood of this novel. He looks back on his life and the recent events of the book , struggling to make sense of it all.

He says, “I think the truth is always simple. It has pretty much got to be. It needs to be simple enough for a child to understand. Otherwise it’d be too late. By the time you figured it out it would be too late.”

Of his wife he says, “Marryin’ her makes up for ever dumb thing I ever done. I even think I still got a few left in the account. I think I’m way in the black on that…If I didn’t have her I wouldn’t know what I’d have. Well, yes I do. You wouldn’t need a box to put it in neither.”

He says, “I think we are all of us ill-prepared for what is to come and I don’t care what shape it takes. And whatever comes my guess is that it will have small power to sustain us. These old people I talk to, if you could have told them that there would be people on the streets of our Texas towns with green hair and bones in their noses speaking a language they couldn’t even understand, well, they just flat out wouldn’t have believed you. But what if you’d of told em it was their own grandchildren?”

Well, those are the lighter moments, but I welcome a book that gives me good reasons to reflect hard on my past and to sincerely contemplate my future, not to mention that of my family or community or nation.

An Eternal Round

Sixty three years ago to this very cold day a petite, softspoken woman labors under travail of child in a Tooele hospital that bears her same name. This is the beginning. The woman has done this four times previous and despite doctors recommendations otherwise she is familiar enough with her ailing body to know it can endure one last run. Her breath catches. The almighty spirit of God rests upon the woman and she brings to light a daughter (not without complications). This is Rhea. A product of faith, destined to disseminate the same.

We are so enamored with beginnings and endings, are we not? In the turning of the earth the day does not end, nor does the night for each orbiting planet, and in the furthest reaches of a universe without age there is no beginning, and that is a thought I turn over and taste in my mouth from time to time. Because in a little hospital in rural Utah, in an oxygen tent feet away from a selfless mother, cries a baby whose life has just begun, at least by our standards. Yet in spheres beyond this stand scores of onlookers with eyes of finer material who see not a beginning but an ending. Now that is perspective!

Rhea lives and grows. She laughs and cries. She plays. She kisses, she falls, she learns, she thinks. She meets a prince and settles down, and in rural hospitals of her own she six times labors under travail of child and six times participates in the providential work of beginnings and endings.

I will not cheat the logs of heaven nor the jorunals of earth a descent life's rendering. But I merely offer, on a day fit for remembering, a small thought for a being whose familial sacrifices will impact generations of beleivers, scientists, athletes, musicians, prophets, politicians, linguists, and dancers in countries not her own and in homes that vicariously are, because isn't that where it begins and ends?

I submit that she will be comforted. I submit that she will inherit the earth. I submit that she will obtain mercy and kingdoms. I submit that she will see God with eyes open wide. For what does he see in her? He sees "what in God's eye (s)he is--Christ. For Christ plays in ten thousand places, lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his to the Father through the features of men's faces."*

Happy Birthday Mom.

*Gerard Manley Hopkins

New York City

Christy, Gus, and I returned this last weekend from a long seven day trip to New York City, part business part vacation. While we were there we did the following activities: Fun with friends (Adrienne, Michelle, and Brent), Time Square, Broadway play (The Drowsy Chaperone), Central Park, Patsy's Pizza, SoHo, Little Italy and genuine gelato and postres, The Museum of Natural History, about a hundred clothing stores, IKEA, the twisted Gordion knot that is the freeway system in New Jersey, Pampano (Modern Mexican cuisine), The Crown Plaza Hotel, Subways, Buses, Taxis, The Top of the Rock at Rockefeller Center, The Statue of Liberty, Ellis Island, Ground Zero, and the MOMA (Museum of Modern Art). Gus was an absolute soldier and garnered lots of attention in public transit. Christy was inebriated with the joy of the city. We will most certainly return at some point. There is always something waiting there.

We forgot our still and video cameras, but bought a cheap digital when we got there. Here are a few pictures:

Seize the Day

This month the book team attacked Seize the Day by Saul Bellow. This was a reread for me, and knocked my socks off both times. I picked up on so much more this time than I did before. Bellow is an observer and a philosopher. His characters are all deep and fleshed out. As the title might suggest this book is largely about how one must (absolutely must!) take advantage of the moment and become. It is up to you and none else. One of my favorite passages is a conversation in which the enigmatic Tamkin gives the pathetic Tommy Wilhelm a lesson in what he percieves to be the nature of souls:

"In here, the human bosom--mine, yours, everybody's--there isn't just one soul. There's a lot of souls. But there are two main ones, the real soul and a pretender soul. Now! Every man realizes that he has to love something or somebody. He feels that he must go outward...The interest of the pretender soul is the same as the interest of the social life, the society mechanism. This is the main tragedy of human life. Oh, it is terrible! Terrible! You are not free. Your own betrayer is inside of you and sells you out. You have to obey him like a slave. He makes you work like a horse and for what? For Who?...The true soul is the one that pays the price. It suffers and gets sick, and it realizes that the pretender can't be loved. Because the pretender is a lie. The true soul loves the truth. And when the true soul feels like this, it wants to kill the pretender. The love has turned into hate. Then you become dangerous. A killer. you have to kill the deceiver....Whenever the slayer slays, he wants to slay the soul in him which has gypped and decieved him. Who is his enemy? Him. And his lover? Also. Therefore, all suicide is murder, and all murder suicide. It's the one and identical phenomenon. Biologically,
feeble, like a parasite. it happens unconciously, unawaringly, in the depths of the organism."

As I read this I became concerned as to how I might be a parasite unto myself. How is it that I court my "pretender soul," however you may define that (natural man, carnal man)? I'm sure there are many ways that I do this, but the more I thought about this the more I feel that the triumph of the true soul over the pretender soul hinges upon love. What do I chose to love? How do I choose to love it? If I choose to love shadows and smoke and all things ethereal, then I will be nothing more than a farce, a flimsy mask. But if I love something virtuous and I pursue that love with full purpose of heart then there is nothing parasitic about that and the true soul is the victor.

Best Albums of 2006

That familiar December chill is in the air, and as you shudder from the cold biting at your neck you might turn around to see that it isn't the windchill factor cutting you after all...but rather a thousand year end lists telling you what was "good" and "bad" from the year in music.

Knowing that I'd like to try a more comprehensive list this year than I did last year (and because I wasn't altogether satisfied by my year end list last year) I kept track of essentially every album I heard in its entirety this year. There were about sixty albums in all, and here are my top twenty. I have attached a somewhat arbitrary number to each of them called "iRanking." I made that up, and it is really just poppycock. The number is derived from taking each indvidual song ranking from my iPod (a five-star system) and averaging them to reveal the album's iRanking. Sometimes it reflected my love for the album accurately, and sometimes it did not. All this list business, its just a bunch of hooey anyway.

By the way, this is my 100th post. I feel good about that.

So without further ado, here is my Best Albums of 2006 list:

20. Richard Buckner: Meadow
iRanking: 3.40

Colby introduced me to Richard Buckner years ago and I didn’t give him the attention he deserved then. I’ve listened to and bought several of his albums since then and have come to appreciate the great music he makes. Meadow is a little coarser than its predecessors, in production, but his writing remains beautifully linear.

19. Emily Haines & the Soft Skeleton: Knives Don’t Have Your Back
iRanking: 3.40
I know very little about Emily Haines. This record is apparently a solo project aside from her band Metric (who I’ve never listened to). She is armed with little more than a piano on most of the record. The songs that shine the most are the ones that have the most production. There are too many songs that share the same plinking piano, else this could have been a "great" record, but as it stands now it remains a satisfyingly "good" record.

18. Regina Spektor: Begin to Hope
iRanking: 3.41
Regina Spektor is an eclectic artist who has a great touch on the piano. Begin to Hope is accessible and poppy, but doesn’t stoop to industry conventions. Many of the songs are narrative based and enjoyable to listen to, but this isn’t life changing stuff, nor ever will be. She is entertaining and whimsical and on those levels this album best succeeds.

17. Page France: Hello, Dear Wind
iRanking: 3.42
The toughest thing when singing about Jesus, is doing the subject matter justice while maintaining a sense of musical artisty/integrity. Most efforts turn out cheesy and oversentimental. This is why I have a general aversion to most Christian music, and even though Hello, Dear Wind may not fit neatly into that category, I think it does a pretty honest job of keeping it real without slipping into the common faux pas of the genre. This is definitely one of the more listened to records on my list this year.

16. Gnarls Barkley: St. Elsewhere
iRanking: 3.42
This is one of those groups that blew up commercially this year. It was fantastic to see Danger Mouse and Cee-Lo Green working their gig via outlets like the Tonight Show and Late Night. "Crazy" is just one of those infectious songs you can’t not like. Forget the Taylor Hicks soul patrol, Cee-Lo has arrived. I’m familiar with some of the work he did with Goodie Mob, but he really gets to let his voice shine on this album. Not all of the songs are good, but the ones that are, are really good.

15. Grandaddy: Just Like the Fambly Cat
iRanking: 3.46
R.I.P. Grandaddy. They are no more, and this is their last record. I still think Sumday is one of the best pop records released in the last few years, and though Just Like the Fambly Cat doesn’t hit on all of the cylinders Sumday did, it gets close in several moments. Jason Lytle is a craftsman and I love his whispy voice. I’ll be looking forward to hearing his solo material in the future.

14. Damien Jurado: And Now That I’m In Your Shadow
iRanking: 3.46
This album sees the minimalist Jurado hearkening back to the Ghost of David era. He tells his stories in a simple vernacular, stories of forbidden love and one-way leavings. This is not a cheer-you-up record, but the welcome dose of empathy you are looking for on the cold, lonely nights. The record suffers a bit from lack of variation in tempo and feel, so by the end you are pretty beat, but the songs all well-written.

13. Kris Kristofferson: This Old Road
iRanking: 3.50
I love Kris Kristofferson. I didn’t read many reviews of this album this year, but it is a great one. It is timely and delivered with force, passion, and grace. This is the type of album that Willie Nelson and other contemporaries who are still treading water only wish they could release. What Neil Young was trying to do with Living With War (parts were terrific), was done here with more effectiveness and refinement.

12. Islands: Return to the Sea
iRating: 3.79
In April of this year I heard "Rough Gem" and became infected with the pop bliss of Islands. It is the best song on a record that has some weak moments, but is by and large a great first effort for ex-Unicorn Nick Diamond and company. Lyrically I’m not blown away by this record, but it inventively balances twinges of country, rock, and pop. They seem to be a band in flux, already losing founding member/drummer J’aime Tambeur, and their future may be cloudy, so take advantage in the meantime.

11. Half-Handed Cloud: Halos and Lassos
iRating: 4.00
John Ringhofer, whose moniker is Half-Handed Cloud, has a unique voice that can turn someone off immediately. But I find it endearing. He brings a new definition to the idea of musical economy. Even Jerry Lee Lewis wrote longer songs than this guy, and there aren’t many people you can say that about. Here we have 19 songs that clock in at just under thirty minutes. You do the math. Halos and Lassos is loaded with Biblical allusion, but not in some primary Sunday School way. He deals with his subject matter with respect, awe, irony, wonder, and all out pop prowess. After one listen you’ll be "do do do do"-ing just fine.

10. Destroyer: Destroyer’s Rubies
iRanking: 3.60
I know very little about the ubiquitous Dan Bejar, aside from his work with TNP. What I do know is that it takes talent to hold my attention for an entire ten minute song and "Rubies" does that. Dan’s voice will grate on some—its not always on tune, and his style often relies on talk-singing and "da da da" choruses. His lyrics are an extremely elusive conversational poetry, open to interpretation. I’m afraid even Dan Brown in all his code-unraveling trickery couldn’t dismantle a Destroyer record, much less me. So if you enjoy a lyric solely because of its flow and sound and imagery, this tea cup is yours.

9. TV On The Radio: Return to Cookie Mountain
iRanking: 3.65
This one must be a creative tour de force beyond my understanding based on all the critical praise it’s been given this year. I’ve listened to it quite a few times, and it still has yet to resonate with me on a genuine personal level, but I can’t deny that they’ve tapped into something intense and enormous. I don’t love everything here, indeed I dislike some of it, but there are parts that are amazing (Wolf Like Me). Some are comparing this album to OK Computer, the standard by which all things are apparently judged by indie bloggerdom. There were enough highlights on this album to keep me returning to it for relistens, but a front to back journey does requires a portion of patience.

8. Figurines: Skeleton
iRating: 3.75
I was tipped off to Denmark’s Figurines by 3hive, and have been excited about them all year long. I had to special order the album because stores just don’t seem to carry it. Figurines will inevitably draw comparisons to Modest Mouse, but they aren’t trying to tread the same ground. These songs are catchy, melodic rockers. Structurally they are doing nothing new, but the hooks are so chiseled they make me want to hop around my living room.

7. Peter and the Wolf: Lightness
iRanking: 3.75
Red Hunter has that incredible baritone that I kind of wish I had. Not as deep and mysterious as Richard Hawley, but with enough gravitas to give his contributions a special room in the mansions of indie rock. He sings on the title track, "Every morning’s another chance, to see a different meaning. Carry on the memory, maybe then the lightness will come to me." I love the idea of how time can bring clarity to experiences and situations that never quite reveal their full meaning until proper reflection is given. This is a great album that never quite commits itself to any particular genre.

6. The Decemberists: The Crane Wife
iRating: 4.00
There was no dialing back on the oddities from this major label debut. Colin Meloy and company moved forward with a musical spectacular based on a tragic Japanese folktale. Not exactly the money-making formula typically employed by corporate big whigs. But that is because the Decemberists are not a money-making formula, just artists delving joyously deeper into their craft of storytelling songsmanship. For me there were a few musical hiccups on the record, but overall (and including the iTunes extras) it is another fantastic release from these Oregonians.

5. Sufjan Stevens: The Avalanche
iRating: 4.12
The first thing that must be noted about The Avalanche is that it is a compilation of outtakes and extras from last year’s monumental Illinois. These songs did not make the cut for various reasons, and were doomed to perhaps never be released. Thankfully Sufjan reconsidered this year and we were graced with an album of extraordinary songs peppered from time to time with some mediocre ones. But the great ones are outstanding. "Springfield" is a channeling of CSNY, and "No Man’s Land" is a parade of new patriotism, answering as the foil to Woody Guthrie’s "This Land is Your Land." You can easily pick out the dross from Illinois, but at least half of this record is as good as its predecessor.

4. Cat Power: The Greatest
iRating: 4.15
Believe it or not, the title of this album is not pretentious in the least. Chan Marshall has unleashed her most commercially viable record yet, and done so without compromising her artistry. The music unfolds like dark tapestry on winter windows, full of slow tempo longings. Her voice carries the beautiful gravity of the lyrics, putting bite on the wit, sadness to the resignation, and humor to the irony. Oh, and she’s absolutely beautiful.

3. Band of Horses: Everything All the Time
iRating: 4.15
I first heard "Funeral" on the blogs right around the new year and knew that I was listening to something anthemic. "At every occasion I’ll be ready for a funeral." When I got the whole album I was pleased to find it was a stinging, head-bobbing, spine-swaying, straightforward pop rock record. But pop records are released by the dozens each week, why should this one be so good? Solid song craftsmanship, great melodies, and the terrific tenor of Ben Bridwell that is reminiscent of Jim James, only better.

2. Joanna Newsom: Ys
iRating: 4.20
There is certainly a level of novelty here. Ys has but five songs—each of them expansive, reaching 8 minutes on the short end, and on the long end 16. There are orchestral arrangements that include, from time to time, the hard-to-incorporate mouth bow. The harpist appears on the album cover in a Renaissance-style painting. Given her childlike voice, and quirky annunciation, all these elements combine to make a bizarre combination that will estrange some, but will be magnificent to others. As cryptic and idiosyncratic as she might be, there is not another album released this year that has the lyrical poeticism that this album has. These are sprawling narratives filled with gorgeous, specific imagery: "I dreamed you were skipping little stones across the surface of the water / frowning at the angle where they were lost, and slipped under forever / in a mud cloud, mica-spangled, like the sky’d been breathing on a mirror." The music itself isn’t as enjoyable for me as it was on Milk-Eyed Mender, but Newsom is in top form on "Emily" and "Cosmia."

1. Neko Case: Fox Confessor Brings the Flood
iRating: 4.25
Ever since I began writing music myself, I’ve always been dazzled by what some artists can do with two chords and a voice. Quality isn’t necessarily a derivative of complexity, and what Neko Case does so magnificently on this album is pound you into glorious oblivion with her simple musical bars. Her voice soars in absolute brilliance. She plays such a seemingly backseat role with TNP that I didn’t expect to be swept off my feet in this way. There is really no wrong turn on Fox Confessor Brings the Flood. Each song fulfills the very measure of its birth.

Smelling Roses

Life’s mysterious currents have now washed us ashore in Rose Park. This is a house that needs the touch of a master’s hand, but unfortunately I can’t play. Over the course of the next few weeks we will be gutting the kitchen and bathrooms, and putting in new ones, demolishing one wall, ripping out all existing carpet and laying new, putting in new hardwood floors, new furnace and central air, various framing and touch-up, paint, and no doubt a hundred other menial jobs. The plate is full.

We now have possession of the house, but are currently living with the in-laws while the repairs are made. We are grateful for their hospitality, and grateful for my family coming down from Idaho to lend their arms, backs, and brains to the project. Perhaps it is time to make good on a promise I made to God a year or two ago in song:

Can I be your son
and your generation?
Build me a house,
I’ll fill it with life
and cut off all bad association.

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.