From the monthly archives: November 2008
Motor pranks
With the tank intact—
He’ll work for sleep
When the songs attack
And all good kids,
When the headache chain
Bows for bouts
With softer rock,
Knock the cow bravado—
No sleep for the King
of Pop Standards,
Nor freedom
From deleted retail,
For the kids await
New anthems
From his spiral pad
Battalion—
We raise a glass
To another year
Of next-day ayres:
The amped and beery,
Meticulous slosh
Means either a bastard
Show or a death-blow—
Show him former bravery—
The Lifeboat Tipper!
Airborne and kicking!
I
Summer. Dvorak leaves New York
to the rhythm of a train.
Three days to his beloved Spillville, Iowa,
past the wooded east
and across the plain to the horizon.
* * *
It takes eight hours to drive I-80 across Nebraska.
We keep changing radio stations as they fade in
and out, and I sing along with what we find.
Classical, country, rock and roll.
When I want you to sing with me, you remind me
that, in the days of the troubadours,
they would have paid you to stop.
II
Stravinsky rides the Delta Queen,
watching the paddle roll round
and round, water sluicing
through the wooden slats.
* * *
Our tenth anniversary. A hot air balloon
roars when the propane blasts. Out pilot
takes us across the tops of trees.
We look down at Oakland County Suburban
farms and stables. We swoop too close
to a farm and frighten horses that
take off across the paddock. Th pilot
shuts down the propane. Soft air strokes
our faces. The land passes below us
in silence.
III
Delius prefers the neat rows
of orange trees in the Florida groves
and the lush round fruit.
How he hates to leave for Leipzig
just to hear his own composition
played for the first time.
* * *
Only you want to camp in Death Valley
in August. The heat
makes the landscape wavy.
At night, you want a blanket,
but I’m way too hot. We lie in our tent
talking and listening to our voices.
They rattle around the desert bowl
and come back to us in an echo.
We are the only people
in this world.
IV
Benjamin Britten and Peter Pears
premiere a new work in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
Pears’ high voice floats out into the night,
in perfect harmony with his partner’s opera.
* * *
The waves are too strong for swimming,
Four to eight feet high, long rollers curling,
silent, then roaring in a sweep along the sand
to the coral reef. We stand up to our knees
in the water, watching young surfers.
You take out a boogie board, but it’s too much
for me, so I watch your lean body
flow with the rhythm of the water.
V
The Boston police stop
the first performance of Stravinsky’s version
of the Star-Spangled Banner. It is illegal
to tamper with the national anthem.
Canada’s radio station plays it
each Fourth of July for people
who live along the border.
* * *
We go to Holiday Beach with our friends.
On impulse, you climb a tree. The trick,
you decide, is to look as if
you’re not holding on to anything
so we can take a picture of you
floating in the air with your arms and legs
stretched out from behind the trunk.
Hurry. Take the picture, you shout.
VI
Scriabin dies
in a bed
in Beverly Hills.
You die
at my feet
in Riverview, Michigan.
VII
Horowitz eats breakfast
at Indiana University in Bloomington,
the only time he visits there.
A piano student gathers the prune pits
the great artist leaves on his plate.
* * *
Meadowbrook Festival on a summer evening.
Tablecloths and napkins in white, clothes in pink,
mauve, green, yellow, pale blue. The colors shift
across the sloping lawn. Picnics. Slanting sun
on wine glasses. Scattered voices and laughter.
You sit above me, your arms around my waist,
and I lean into your body. The conductor
raises his baton and the kaleidoscope stills,
waiting for the first note.
When Dana Owens covered “California
Dreaming,” I still lived in that state:
Sixty five degrees and no seasons,
Mountains jutting from the coast.
Dreaming I still lived in that state,
East coast winter, flat and dark, no
Mountains jutting from the coast.
Her lyrics, “I’d be so safe and warm”
East coast winter, flat and dark, no
Open space with gold-green hills.
Her lyrics, “I’d be so safe and warm,
If I was in LA,” like in prayers—
Open space with gold-green hills.
To eat outside in January,
If I was in LA, like in prayers.
Queen Latifah was my new preacher.
To eat outside in January,
Sixty five degrees and no seasons,
Queen Latifah was my new preacher,
When Dana Owens covered “California.
stable muscles decay
shoes become a game
or a song we can sing
with the man that carries
a shiny tambourine
here we, like silence,
make breath, we hum goodbye
in orange and white exhalations
here, falling, like the might of the light
that is your body, is your lightness
happens heavy-like
precipice dizziness
and the difficulty of sound
when all the angels
come down, saddle up
and ride away again
I walk and spare the line
lilacs, plastic lighters
your old white horses
the taming of your crucifix
& so our saga continues
on and we carry
and we end eden
like voice in wax-paper
envelopes
it always was
all over in two minutes
anyway
and the horses died
and I died
in your drinking cup
and now I hide
in night anthems
I do what I do
away from you
so you can show
me what brave is
every song plays a version of your name
the all-brown bear sewed from a pillow his dumb smile always
the bear is not meant to be perfect a gift for a love gone
wring out the water in the basement
radio flooded the signal was clear the creek goes running by still
the wool hat you found on the street
is washed & dried & still fits
your brother is still painting angry
painting saved bits of rubbish
hanging from his knees upside-down in one-bedroom apartments
we are choosing images of animals while they choose the songs that seem to go
along with the images of animals we choose
we laugh lightly the front door opens we menace with grace loud in
the neighborhood like Alice in her church in her restaurant
mouth
harps under our breath the dogs sleep
unaware
smell her hand
lay down
howl like you do
after your master comes back—
been gone so long
Do you know what word falls on the highest note in
“You’d be So Nice to Come Home To?”
The lowest is described by “fire”–
“You’d be so nice by the fire.”
It works up, at intervals, over a few bars
to “all”– “you’d be all that I could desire.”
Cole Porter was so good
that he didn’t worry about
rhyming “fire” and “desire,”
and if there were a universal
encyclopedia and gazetteer of every song
ever written, when the final tally came up
it would reveal that in the seven hundred years
there’s been “fire” and “desire” in English,
of the two hundred and fifty thousand
nine-hundred and twenty-two times
those words were rhymed in song,
by universal expert opinion, only he got away with it.
“Fire” was the depth that rested
in the “all” just before “desire”, and that
fire wasn’t some “Hunka hunka burnin’ love” cartoon,
but the hearth, commodious and possible and near.
In an attempt to pump up my esteem,
a therapist told me once
that he thought I had a
“Special perception of music,
an ability to make narrative of it…
(pause) I could never do that.”
So here is what I have squalidly appropriated,
what I think of these days
since mid-September of ought-one,
without the titillations of communal pride
or Churchillian rhetoric:
there is a legend of the Harlemite Sonny Rollins,
called a colossus at 26, retreating
to a Brooklyn walkup because greatness
was not great enough; he was sure
of the heart and nobility of question.
Alone, from atop the walkway
of the Williamsburg Bridge,
against the foghorns of East River tugs
and facile logic,
he argued with a tenor saxophone that
the ironies that inhere in theme and variation
could comprise a flourishing love.
Alone in that house
But for the party
Of witnesses
In abstentia:
Dylan and Simone,
Her boyfriend at the time,
Memories of the benelovents
Who loved even the most
Disastrous of shows—
She swore off music for a field
To cop the green and deliberate
Chops of a renunciate,
When in the twine hours
One night
She woke up in terror
After seeing her
Skeleton’s meridian
Thumbtacked
On the moon map
Above her bed,
She later said,
The whole album was done by dawn.
So Abram rose, and clave the wood, and went,
And Wilfred Owen bought it, a week before the Armistice.
Leonard Cohen droned: of a vision, of an altar
Of a voice very cold, of an axe made of gold . . .
Phil Ochs told us: it’s always the old
Who lead us to the war – then he went and hanged himself;
He couldn’t stick around for more–
Too many martyrs and endless war.
No draft now, no point, no end game in sight
Some kids craving college-some kids heard the hype
Of boot in their ass, it’s the American way,
Of Have You Forgotten?
Lotsa country radio airplay
For songs about cleaning out the sand devils’ nest
Twanging and hoary: the old Abraham and Isaac story
Of dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.
They go, and they stay there, and go back again,
Till they’re caught in the loop and they know nothing else.
Baghdad’s angry and simmering, waiting to blow:
Hi-tech games in the barracks, and out in the sun,
The glare and explosions, their buddies, civilians
The rage and white terror, what metal can pierce
And what metal protects, and oh shit, and oh FUCK!
And an ecstasy of fumbling
When the boredom splits open, sound cracks, things ignite,
And for years they will shake, those that come back in pieces
Or come back seeming whole –
In hospital beds they’ll dream-visit that sandbox
Or, pretending they’re home, lying next to a stranger
Who once was a partner, they’ll drown in it, still . . .
They thought they saw an eagle
But it could have been a vulture
Picking eyes out of the head
Of a soldier lying dead.
Some gave all. One gave nothing. He partied, got shit-faced,
Went AWOL in Texas, and sometimes flew planes
‘Cause he had sweet connections. He tuned out during ‘Nam
And learned nothing from it. He does not feel your pain.
He’s Saved now, and sober, still smirking, but old –
Old enough to kill babies, our babies and theirs;
He is holy, God spoke, he’ll do as he’s been told,
Chase the Evil Doers to their lairs!
He spared the Ram of Pride and launched the Crusade.
But some frat boys mature, and some only senesce.
The Decider still snickers, checks under the chairs:
Where’s the WMD at? He walks tall and swaggers,
Declares: Bring it on! He showed up his old man,
‘Cause he took out Saddam!
He putts and he bikes and clears brush and sleeps soundly.
And he’ll still wear a mantel of smugness around him
Intact and unmussed, when he leaves in disgrace.
Or will he? As he struts out these last lame duck days,
Does one nasty thought niggle, at the back of his pea-brain?
Of the country he wrecked, dude,
Like a car, when you’re loaded:
Dad’s gonna kill me. Dad’s gonna kill me . . .
Loudon Wainwright III is probably referring to formal considerations when he says HE’S NOT A WRITER. You know, he doesn’t write sonnets, sestinas or villanelles. But one only has to start with the title of his twentieth-something album, Recovery, and work their way back through this collection of songs (from his first four albums), to discover the tireless wit and grit of an always original voice. The things Loudon wrote and said at 25, revamped and re-recorded here, sound different coming out of the 61 year old, even though the words are the same, and that’s a very neat trick. The title also references returning to and continuing the healthy thrust of his first collaboration with producer/singer/songwriter Joe Henry (Strange Weirdos: Music from and Inspired by the film Knocked Up), and their cohorts, a band of all-stars including Greg Liesz (guitars—that’s his pedal steel) and keyboardist/composer Patrick Warren.
Since he was signed to Atlantic Records at the age of 23, Wainwright has enjoyed a varied career as an actor, from TV’s M.A.S.H. in the 70’s to Knocked Up in the new millennium, to in-house singer-songwriter for Jasper Carrott on London TV in the 80’s and occasional columnist (see interview). First and foremost, however, he is a songwriter, recording artist and constantly-in-demand live performer, He had a famous dad, famous couple of ex-wives and now he has famous kids. If you know Loudon’s music, and son Rufus’ and daughter Martha’s, then you know they like to talk about all that. Recently, shaking had a chance to do its own talking with Loudon Wainwright III about Recovery, and the things that move him to write songs.
