Running and Non-Being

Thank God we can still go running.  There’s nothing to train for, since all the races and tennis tournaments have been cancelled.  Nonetheless, I’ve been going for long runs on Saturdays, and I’ve found myself adding one more mile every week, up to 11 as of last Saturday.  I suppose I will keep going.

There are obvious reasons for this: trying to stay in shape, getting outdoors, etc.  Fortunately spring comes earlier in Geneva than it does in Boston.  When I was flying back and forth a lot, it seemed like the leaves would appear on the trees here all of a sudden.  But this year I’ve been able to watch its gradual encroachment.  The trees are almost full now, which softens the landscape and warms the heart.  It also suggests to me an indifferent creator who goes about her business, pandemic or not.  My friend Nicola said that she felt like the planet wanted us all to stop so it could breathe a little.

As one runs longer, a queer thing starts to happen to one’s perception of the distance.  Things start to get relative.  What seemed like a long way to run a few weeks ago doesn’t seem like such a big deal.  I’ve experienced this before when training for longer races.  I suppose there’s also a similar phenomenon going on in our collective assessment of the covid tables in the newspaper.  Not long ago, it seemed horrific that Italy would have 10,000 total cases; in the past 24 hours, more than half that number of people died from the disease.  The last time I was in an airport, I noted warily that there were eight total cases in Geneva; this morning, the local newspaper was celebrating that there were “only” ten new cases diagnosed yesterday.  We are shocked, as we should be, as the numbers get bigger.  But at the same time each individual case starts to mean less.  Each life becomes marginalized, in the economic sense of “marginal.”

There is a less obvious aspect of long runs, which starts to reveal itself to me once I start going beyond 10 miles or so.  Murakami, in What I Talk About When I Talk About Running, writes about how, during a 24-hour endurance run, his felt his ego begin to disintegrate.  My experience is obviously less extreme, but I get glimpses of that: at a certain point, it’s as if I were taking a hammer to my psyche which had been trapped inside a Zoom window 12 hours a day for the past month.  My thoughts become not my own.  Not like I’m hallucinating exactly (although I’ve heard that that can happen), but like they are flowing, very quickly, both from within me and from somewhere else.  This is very hard to describe.  Perhaps this is aided by the fact that I don’t listen to music or anything when I run.  Last Saturday it manifested in a torrent of thoughts which came so fast that I couldn’t even grasp them as they went by.  This feeling is both alienating and strangely pleasant.

Nowadays, we tend to think about ascetics (to the extent we think about them at all) as wackos: backward ignoramuses whose forms of self-denial – fasting, living as hermits in caves or on the tops of columns – were nothing more than strong indicators of mental illness.  I’m tempted to cut them a little slack, especially after a long run.  In 2020, we hear the term "mortification of the flesh," and it sounds like no more than self-punishment: an expression of shame and unworthiness that is both irrational and unhealthy.  But back in the day this was seen as an essential step in contemplation, in the direct experience of God.  Bonaventure’s Threefold Way lays this out quite neatly: through purgation, illumination, and perfection, you may encounter the Divine, not just as some faraway concept, but through your own direct experience.  Bernard McGinn, in the excellent Essential Writings of Christian Mysticism, sums it up nicely: “Asceticism is seen as a necessary, if not sufficient, preparation for mystical grace…The divine nature in its majesty, goodness, and purity is so far removed from the imperfect world that for any created being to dare approach God implies a purification that goes beyond just overcoming the effects of sin…It becomes something like an essential condition for anyone who seeks God in this life.”

If you prefer (as I generally do) not to get too hung up on the “sin” part, note this is not far from the Buddhist concept of non-self.  If you're looking for a similar effect minus the knee damage, meditation can work just fine. The point is that self-annihilation, in one form or another, is a prerequisite for transcendence.

For a much deeper and more cogent exploration of all this, I can't recommend the classic Running and Being, by Dr. George Sheehan, highly enough.

Here we are

The other day someone wrote on Twitter “I know we’re all just stuck inside…” and I nodded my head in appreciation.  It wasn’t until 24 hours later that I realized that the author was talking about the fact we’re all supposed to stay indoors, rather than our collective emotional state. 

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One of our cats has an artificial ureter.  It needs to be flushed out every three months, and the Kleintierklinik in Bern is the nearest place qualified to do it, so we drove up there on Thursday.  The notification boards on the near-empty highway urged us to “STOP CORONA.  RESTEZ A LA MAISON.”  Closer to Bern, the message switched over to German.

When we arrived, there was a truck with a University Hospital logo on the side backing up to the front door.  The driver lowered the hydraulic ramp-thing in the back, and I thought we were going to get to see them move one of the cows or horses (or camels!) they’re known to treat in Bern.  But instead we watched as they wheeled two or three ventilators out and into the truck, I assume for transfer to the regular hospital.  Human needs taking precedence over those of the Kleintieren these days.

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I’m avoiding the numbers this weekend.  For a couple of days at least, I’m eschewing the exponential curves in the NYTimes – the upward-right slope which in my day job signifies growth and success and which in this case signifies the opposite.   Same thing for the canton-by-canton breakdown in the Tribune de Geneve, Geneva now competing with Vaud for top of the table in Switzerland.  The cantonal authorities also publish daily detailed charts for Geneva, including how many new cases there are, how many people are in the hospital, how many of those are intubated.  Earlier this week I had a glimmer of hope that we had peaked, as the daily new diagnoses seemed to be trending downward.  On Friday, though, they modified the chart to show both negative tests and positive cases, and it was clear that the numbers had only come down because fewer people had been tested.      

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It helps that the Swiss are good at following rules.  On Wednesday I ventured out to the grocery store at the larger shopping center by the stadium, as we thought it might be less crowded than the one closer to our place in town.  A friendly security guard in a face mask was at the entrance, directing people to the back of line that stretched down the corridor, past the other (darkened) stores in the shopping center.  There were around 15 people in front of me in line, and we all idled our carts in between the hashmarks of black tape that had been stuck to the floor every two meters.

 

I made it to the front after only 10 minutes or so, but not before the guy in front of me (who wore a high-tech-looking mask with Velcro at the back and complicated-looking valves over the mouth part, giving him the appearance of a post-apocalyptic skier) had an awkward exchange with the security guy, who tried to hand him a laminated card with a number on it – evidently the mechanism they were using to keep track of how many people were in the store.  I couldn’t hear their voices given the masks and the hashmarks, but it became clear that high-tech-mask guy wasn’t thrilled with the idea of taking something from someone else’s hand.  Robot-dance-like gesturing and pointing ensued, until finally the security guy produced a bottle of hand sanitizer from his pocket, which settled matters.

I wore a mask myself, even though I’ve read the same articles you have about how they don’t really help.  I felt the odd warmth of my deflected breath on my eyeballs, and my glasses kept fogging up.  All of us in the store seemed to be moving at around 75% of normal speed, careful not to get too close to anyone else.  Fortunately, there was plenty of pretty much everything in the store; only the pasta aisle looked a little denuded, but not bare like last week.

At the checkout, an older guy in the lane next to mine was mildly admonished for violating the distance de sécurité.  The checkout woman in my lane and wore powder blue latex gloves and a mask.  After bagging and paying, I thanked her and said I realize it’s not easy for everyone who works in the store, etc..  She shrugged and replied, “Oui, mais on est là.”  

Grounded

It's like November 2016 all over again.  With each morning a fresh sprig of existential dread as I check the overnight news on my phone.  Today I learned that all of Italy, not just the northern provinces, is now on full quarantine, as their total number of cases approaches 10,000.  The financial markets got clobbered again yesterday – the S&P losing 8% and SAN.PA dipping below 80 (my online sell order for 85 thus blithely ignored).  My better half insists it's time to buy gold.

My company’s “non-business-critical” international travel ban is still on, so I continue to work from home at least until the end of March.  Working from home is what I do anyway when I’m not traveling, so it’s not too a big cramp in my style, so to speak.  Ask me again in four weeks.

The left-leaning media outlets in the US cannot resist engaging in some schadenfreude around Trump’s arrogance and ill-preparedness for all this.  There are 729 confirmed cases in the US as of this morning, but since test kits have been in short supply, one suspects that this is a gross underestimation, kind of a negative ascertainment bias. 

The Economist had a good piece in their “Graphic Detail” section (the one in the back near the obituary) analyzing travel patterns between other countries and China to predict how many cases a country should have versus the reported cases.  The US seemed to be underestimating only slightly, while Russia (“nothing to see here!”) should have many times more cases than they’re reporting.

Seeking succor in probability theory, I spent some of my Saturday fiddling with Excel to calculate the number of cases per capita by country.  A problematic exercise given the testing issues mentioned above, but I thought this might provide some context and clarity.  Here it is, sorted by cases per 100,000 inhabitants (cases as of Mar 10 am CET):

My Excel defaults to European decimal style, so the number for Italy is one-point-five cases per 100,000 inhabitants, not one thousand five hundred.  So one could look at this and conclude that there’s nothing really to worry about: you would have to shake hands with around 65,000 (100,000/1.5) Italians to encounter one infected person.  The current situation in the US – only one case per 14 million people – seems like nothing to lose sleep over.

Of course, this kind of logic crumbles under the slightest scrutiny.  In the Italian scenario above, there’s no way of knowing whether it will be the 65,000^th or the 1^st person you encounter who’s infected.  And of course it’s not the number of confirmed cases; it’s the number of carriers, most of whom are asymptomatic, out there, somewhere.  The numbers rise faster than we can keep track of them.  In the time it took me to write, edit, and post this entry, the number of cases in Switzerland went from 374 to 485.  My alma mater just told all its students not to bother coming back from spring break.  I don’t believe I will be seeing the inside of an airplane for a while.

For the spirit ever lingers

Like John Cusack in High Fidelity, a bunch of us has been making top ten lists for the past thirty or so years.  It started with a group of friends gathered in a north Jersey diner with lists written in ballpoint on the back of paper placemats, and eventually expanded to include me and a couple hundred other people.  Some of us were musicians, or somehow connected to musicians, but we were all motivated enough each January to devote significant time and energy to the Critics Poll: making our cases for the best album, or best single, or best use of a nontraditional instrument in a pop song, etc. of the previous year.

As many of the Critics approached their sixth decade on this planet, the energy for this sort of activity began to ebb.  Careers, families, illness, and/or lack of desire to engage with the new Deerhunter album would get in the way, and many of us would find ourselves in November having listened to hardly any new music that year.  Fewer and fewer of us bothered to fill out a ballot, and finally Tris McCall, organizer of the Poll from its inception, stopped compiling it.  Fortunately, McCall – musician, music critic, one of my former bandmates, and honest-to-God genius – carried on publishing his own ballot on his website, as well as his Listening Schedule: a list of a hundred or so albums released during the past year to be (re)listened to, two per day, from early December until the end of January. 

I’m not sure specifically what inspired me to take up the challenge of following along with the Listening Schedule this year.  The fact that I would even consider this a “challenge” says something about my own state of mind.  Too many of my waking hours are filled with social media and other nonsense, so there’s no reason I shouldn’t make time to engage with some actual art, or at least what the kids are up to these days.  In any case, I’m glad I did.  Despite the untimely demise of the man who was the #1 influence on my humble musical life, 2019 was a fantastic year in music.   

Top Ten Albums of 2019

10.  Julia Jacklin — Crushing.  Invites comparisons to Courtney Barnett: Aussie, fronting a four-piece, but a much better singer, playing things much straighter and less noisily.  She sings about how our identities are informed (defined?) by our relationships, and how when the latter collapses, so does the former.

9.  Pivot Gang — You Can’t Sit with Us.  Thrilling, smart, deep hip-hop.  Eeyore name-dropped in the first 15 seconds of the opening track.

8.  Homeboy Sandman — Dusty.  This would feel right at home alongside the Native Tongues, with references to golf and public broadcasting over early-70’s electric piano, funky drums, etc.  A point driven home by the track “Why?” (a erstwhile response to ATCQ’s “What?”) and his uncanny channeling of Dres from Black Sheep about two-thirds of the way through the album.

7.  Lana Del Rey — Norman Fucking Rockwell.  I am reduced to saying that I feel like this is an artist is in a class of her own, for better or worse.  This album sounds like slow motion feels.

6.  JPEGMafia — All My Heroes Are Cornballs.  Whoa.  Off the deep end psychedelic hip-hop.

5.  Bruce Hornsby — Absolute Zero.  Kind of like if Tom Waits had decided to sing about nucleotides and cryopreservation rather than about sailors and prostitutes.  No, that’s not doing this justice.  Bruce Hornsby is certainly geeky enough, but he is massively soulful, and the playing and arrangements on this are out of sight.  Jazz drumming demigod Jack DeJohnette makes an appearance.

4.  Ezra Furman — Twelve Nudes.  Hurtles from Hüsker Dü speedballs to generational anthems.  Triumphant and hilarious and beautiful.

3.  Sego — Sego Sucks.  Swaggering post-punk drenched in fuzz bass and irony.  Less casual than you might initially think.  Recommended if you like Butthole Surfers and early Beck.

2.  Andrew Bird — My Finest Work Yet.  This is a great album, in the 70’s singer-songwriter tradition: reedy vocals; roomy, organic production, with string arrangements that never sound over-the-top; superb drumming.  Everything in its place, but not fussy.  Unexpected chords thrown in the 3^rd or 4^th time through a verse which always seem to work.  I wanted every song to go on for longer. 

1.  Richard Dawson — 2020.  Like Celtic folk meets the Fiery Furnaces meets Captain Beefheart meets XTC.  Also like nothing else you’ve heard before in your life.  Over the course of a single listen, I found myself laughing, cheering, crying, applauding, fist pumping, and singing along.  I realized today that listening to this album is like reading David Foster Wallace’s best essays.  Both manage to capture the horror and ugliness and absurdity and fragility and struggle and undeniable beauty of Today’s World, while at the same time flooring you with their technical mastery, while at the same time somehow making you feel loved.  My best album of 2019 by a country mile.

For the curious / bored / insomniac among you, here are my notes on the rest of the Listening Schedule.  Caveat: I listened to most of the albums of this list a total of one time, so I may be way off the mark on some of them. (* = recommended)

2 Chainz — Rap or Go to The League.  I don’t care how sympathetic a character you are (and 2 Chainz is an extremely sympathetic character), no one but no one wants to hear about your high school sports glory days.  Still, as someone who has logged many thousands of hours shooting free throws, I do appreciate his allusion to the “BEEF” (Balance, Elbow, Eyes, Follow-through) jump shot technique.  Also wins the award for best income tax optimization strategy on record in 2019. 

American Football — American Football (LP3).  Don’t let the band / album name fool you: these guys are harmless.  A fondness for guitar arpeggios and odd time signatures.  I feel like there could be a prog act in here somewhere waiting to be unleashed, but they’re too old for that.  Also too much first-person singular in the lyrics.

Anemone — Beat My Distance.  Reverb all around, and sustained organ running through every song like someone highlighting every word on every page of a book.  The front woman sings about men she likes, and men she doesn’t (perhaps it’s the same man).  The bass player keeps himself very busy.

Belle & Sebastian — Days of The Bagnold Summer.  Glaswegian chamber-poppers settle into tweedy middle age, with gentle acoustic ballads, several instrumentals which sound like the soundtrack to a movie about Belle & Sebastian, and a note-for-note cover of a song off their first album.  I think I liked Stuart Murdoch better when he was primarily confused and horny, but this will do.

Better Oblivion Community Center — Better Oblivion Community Center.  Acoustic-y and indie-y act with male and female vocalists who often sing in unison but not in harmony just in different octaves.  This could be kind of cute and joyful like Mates of State, but I found it distracting, like you can’t figure out which one of them to listen to.  Some good lyrics though.

Big Thief — U.F.O.F./Two Hands.  If Joanna Newsom and Jesse Sykes had a love child who put out two albums a year, this is what it would sound like. 

Blood Orange — Angel’s Pulse.  I was going to say that this sounds like a collaboration between The Weeknd and the guys from Air, but didn’t those guys already collaborate on something?  Or maybe it was Daft Punk.  This probably deserves more than one listen.

Danny Brown — uknowhatimsayin¿  He seems to have gotten things back onto the rails somewhat, which I’m happy about for his sake.  However, I’m not sure if I find this version of Danny Brown as interesting as the one who spent his afternoons snorting Adderall off the kitchen counter.  This probably says something not so nice about my relationship to the artist. 

* Camila Cabello — Romance.  The most likable of the current crop of top 40 stars.  Multi-octave vocal gymnastics, sly production, and the requisite teenage friskiness.

Calliope Musicals — Color/Sweat.  I’m not quite sure what this band is up to.  Singer pogo-s around like Dale Bozzio.  Songs that range from disco anthems to Britpop-sounding stuff to a final track that worships a paper cup of whiskey.  Your guess is as good as mine.

Chance the Rapper — The Big Day.  Clever rhymes and guest appearances from everyone from Nikki Minaj to Death Cab for Cutie to Randy Newman.  Still, I can’t shake the impression that I’m listening to this generation’s Will Smith.

* Charly Bliss — Young Enough.  They’ve gone full Metric on this one, with blaring synths outgunning the Fender Jaguars.  Who can blame them, as the guys over at Netflix are probably falling all over themselves to get Charly Bliss to do the soundtrack for one of their new coming-of-age dramedies.  This didn’t quite reach the heights of Guppy, but I think they’ll will be with us for a little while, which is a good thing.

Frances Cone — Late Riser.  Whenever I used to put on music that my father didn’t know, he would inevitably say, “Sounds just like Fleetwood Mac.”  Here’s one case where he would have been right, as the lead singer does a credible vodka-breathy Stevie Nicks impression, and a couple of these songs wouldn’t sound out of place on Tusk.  Errs on the moody side.

* Rodney Crowell — Texas.  If you’ve been tempted to read that Hillbilly Elegy book, listen to this instead.  Telecaster twang, grizzled guest stars, and red state America in 2019.

* Denzel Curry — Zuu.  Euphoric, shameless hip-hop, due east of Manny Fresh, at roughly the same latitude.

* Stella Donnelly — Beware of The Dogs.  Cute Australian sings about dark stuff over bright chords. 

* Drake — Care Package.  The Manchester City of rap music, delivering quality each time out, if not always at the top of the table.  Rich and famous people can get awfully tedious though.  This album needed to be about 1/3 shorter.

The Early November — Lilac.  NJ emo darlings ditch some of their guitar angst for keyboards and mellower flows.  I probably need to listen to this a few more times.

Rose Elinor Dougall — A New Illusion.  Piano-driven straight-ahead pop/rock, heavy on the sustain pedal, and with a punchier rhythm section that one might expect at first.  The singer evidently used to be in a band called the Pipettes. 

* Billie Eilish — When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?  I loved the lead single from the first time I heard it on the radio.  The rest of the album doesn’t quite live up to it, but it holds its own.  You’ve probably read enough about her already, so I’ll just say that it’s nice to see the Leslie speaker (or the digital equivalent thereof) getting some PT in 2019.

Elbow — Giants of All Sizes.  The kings of waltz time, back with big, shiny production and Guy Garvey’s presentation of every syllable of every lyric as if it were a Fabergé egg.  I fear that they don’t have much interesting to say, or perhaps I’m just not listening closely enough.

Fontaines D.C. — Dogrel.  Little margin for error for groups like this.  You need either a consistently funny lyricist or a kick-ass rhythm section, or else a full-length becomes tedious. 

* Dori Freeman — Every Single Star.  A nice tidy package of a country album.  No bells and whistles, just compact arrangements under thoughtful lyrics about love and loss, with a few unexpected chord changes and shaved measures.

* The Futureheads — Power.  The smarter, but less successful, and therefore more bitter, and therefore smarter, and therefore less successful, and therefore more bitter younger siblings of the Kaiser Chiefs.

Gang Starr — One of The Best Yet.  Old-school hip-hop revival, picking up where it left off.  I was never really into them the first time around, so the nostalgia factor is kinda lost on me, but this is good.

Freddie Gibbs & Madlib — Bandana.  Madlib’s tracks have always left me feeling anxious and claustrophobic, like being at one of the 1950’s cocktail party scenes he likes to sample, with shrill horns and laughing, drunk women.  Freddie Gibbs’s inspired logorrhea doesn’t save the day.

GoldLink — Diaspora.  Nimble, quick DC rapper.  His beats become more interesting the farther they venture into “ethnic” sounds and rhythms.  One to keep an eye on, I think.

Marika Hackman — Any Human Friend.  Manages to sing for 40 minutes about sex without being the least bit sexy. 

Courtney Hartman — Ready Reckoner.  Acoustic folk aimed squarely at the “Mountain Stage” crowd.  As if to leave no doubt, one track even features the sound of someone hiking, chirping crickets and all.  The artist you are looking for is Laura Marling.

The Highwomen — The Highwomen.  At the vertex of the Venn diagram formed by the Travelling Wilburys, The View, and Sassy Mom t-shirts, lies this supergroup of B-list female country vocalists.  I imagine that there is a demographic that would adore this, and boy oh boy am I not in it

* Injury Reserve — Injury Reserve.  This feels like watching an episode of Atlanta, or like watching Vines, or doing both at the same time.  Clever, honest hip-hop with unexpected yet effective vocal effect glitches.

The Japanese House — Good at Falling.  Inoffensive electronica.

* Carly Rae Jepsen — Dedicated.  Extremely well-conceived and executed bubble-gum pop.  Puzzling album sequencing, as the first two songs are kind of crappy, and the rest are great. This could be a result of some record company AI-driven algorithm that is beyond my comprehension.

* King Princess — Cheap Queen.  Things seem to be calibrated just right here.  Singing is soulful but not hammy or cloying.  Arrangements are groovy but not overly derivative.  Production throwing just enough curves to keep the batter from sitting on fastballs.  Maybe I was just in a good mood the day I listened to this.  Or maybe the songs are just really good.

Steve Lacy — Apollo XXI.  Jazzy chords, falsetto, and sex lyrics do not a Prince make.

* Mon Laferte — Norma.  I hesitate to simply label this as “Latin pop,” because it’s a genre I know nothing about, but I do think it sums up what’s going on here: Spanish vocals, Latin percussion, horns, acoustic guitar.  Fronted by a Chilean dynamo who jumps from nightclub vamping to insane wailing to capable rapping to Guinness-book-worthy rolling of her “r’s.”  Should probably do for Chile what Bjork did for Iceland, although for all I know she already has.

* Miranda Lambert — Wildcard.  High-quality modern country with top-notch musicianship as always.  I can’t look past some of the tired C&W tropes (twangy vox, pedal steel, sour mash harmonies), and the ethos that alcohol and sass will solve all one’s problems.  But this is good and real.

Jenny Lewis — On the Line.  I believe I’m supposed to like this artist, but I am not at all a fan of Jenny Lewis’ singing voice.  Matters are made worse by the brassy, overdriven vocal effect they’ve put her through.  Seems to want to channel Kate Bush or Carole King, but neither the songs nor the performance quite gets there for me.  The artist you are looking for is Lana Del Rey.

* Jimmy Eat World — Surviving.  Emo with a bit of the vocal edge sanded down.  Do I hear Night Ranger here?  Awesome guitar tone, and not afraid to let the songs breathe.

Little Simz — Grey Area.  Energetic British female emcee.  Sampled soul beats are a little trite, and I’m not sure she has enough to say for a full LP.  A for effort.

* Lizzo — Cuz I Love You.  Feels closer to an original cast recording of “Self-Empowerment: The Musical” than a pop or R&B album.  A+ for effort, and a welcome and inevitable guest appearance from Missy Elliott.

Metronomy — Metronomy Forever.  The artist you are looking for is LCD Soundsystem.  I did like the song in which the narrator is the drummer.

Mdou Moctar — Ilana (The Creator).  How do all these Touareg dudes end up with Stratocasters?  This is cool for a while, but ends up drifting down the Rio de Santana a bit too far for my taste.

Maren Morris — Girl.  This artist is not exactly sure what she should be.  She would technically be filed under “Country,” and she does try to pull a Miranda Lambert imitation, although not really convincingly, on “Some of My Favorite People.”  I think that she really wants to be Ariana Grande when she grows up, and I wish her luck with that.  Winner of the Mixed Metaphor of the Year award for that single about bones and houses not falling, etc. 

* Van Morrison — Three Chords & The Truth.  Truth indeed, as Van the Man reminds us all how it’s done, and how much he still has left in the tank.  I do feel like I deserve some kind of royalty for the drum part I played on a song called “Mergers & Acquisitions” back in ’96, but then again every note I’ve ever played on the drums is indebted to Neal Peart, so it all balances out.

Morrissey — California Son.  Somehow Morrissey and Van Morrison are able to capture the angst and horror of the world in 2019 better than almost anyone.  Something to be said for experience, and crotchety-ness.  (See also last year’s Roger Waters abum)

The New Pornographers — In the Morse Code of Brake Lights.  Carl Newman and his band of merry Canadians are back at it, and they stay faithful to their formula of unexpected chord sequences and clever-ish but indecipherable lyrics.  A few songs here will get your head bobbing, but I can’t say they’ve trod any new ground this millennium.

* Olden Yolk — Living Theatre.  Really good.  I detect The Clientele, Real Estate, REM, Carly Simon?  Moody but not morose.

Operator Music Band — Duo Duo.  This aspires to Art with a capital A, from the album cover onward, à la Stereolab.  Some groovy keyboard, but I fear that the quality of the songwriting doesn’t quite get there.

Oso Oso — Basking in The Glow.  Pretty vocal harmonies and judicious use of guitar distortion distinguish this from your run-of-the-mill emo.  One could do worse.

The Paranoid Style — A Goddamn Impossible Way of Life.  I probably should have listened to this more closely, but I was cooking dinner.  Like Eleanor Friedburger on amphetamines, but lower-quality musicianship, and some questionable production / engineering choices.  Music like this works best when it’s stripped down (think Telecasters through a Fender Twin), but they tried to go for “beefy” (think Les Pauls through Marshall stacks), yet meanwhile the bass drum sounds like me flicking a cardboard box with my index finger.  I shouldn’t be so critical. 

Pedro The Lion — Phoenix.  The Karl Ove Knausgaard of guitar rock.  Prosaic nostalgia for lost youth, executed with shameless and tireless clarity.

Caroline Polachek — Pang.  Female vocalist over keyboard tracks which alternate between moody and jumpy. 

Mike Posner — A Real Good Kid.  Dude knows his way around a pop song, and my sincere condolences on his loss, but this is some solipsistic, Camp-Rock-sounding stuff.  It will probably sell a gazillion copies, if it already hasn’t.

Pronoun — I’ll Show You Stronger.  Dense with chime-y guitars and 16^th notes on the hi-hat.  I have no idea what the lead singer is on about, as she’s buried deep in the mix somewhere, and she sings in some kind of ESL accent (even though the Internets say she’s from Boston?), often with some weird glottal auto-tremolo.  Lyrics: they still matter.

* The Rails — Cancel the Sun.  As if Richard and Linda Thompson had stayed married and gotten really into Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

The Rocket Summer — Sweet Shivers.  Remember that scene in Footloose when Kevin Bacon is all angry about something, so he goes to that abandoned warehouse and dances?  This album is like that.  These guys are good at their instruments though, especially the drummer.

Lucy Rose — No Words Left.  Despite the title, this is not an album of instrumentals.  Would fit right in on the Sirius/XM “Coffeehouse” channel.

* Ximena Sariñana — ¿Dónde Bailarán Las Niñas?  The Snoop Dogg of Latin pop.  Laid-back clave beats, 80’s synths and a Mexicana vocalist who delivers all the songs, even the dancier numbers, without breaking a sweat.  Easy listening. 

* Say Anything — Oliver Appropriate.  I’m very late to the Say Anything party.  And while the overall style on display here – delivering every syllable and plucking every guitar string as if his life depended on it – can wear on you, there’s enough here to merit a recommendation.  Songs, and song fragments (am I the only one hearing Guided by Voices here?) about drugs and love and death, fully earnest but leaving room for cleverness.

Nico Segal & Nate Fox — Intellexual.  Floaty, jazzy R&B / hip-hop stylings.  At my day job, we would say that this “fails to get traction.”

Sleeper — The Modern Age.  Guitar-driven “alternative rock” (whatever that means these days) with a female vocalist who would benefit from some pitch correction.  I appreciate the energy, but I feel like there are a fifty thousand other bands around like this, many of whom do this better.

Solange — When I Get Home.  Moody / arty R&B, with great basslines and unexpected synth.  I should probably appreciate Solange more.

Somos — Prison on A Hill.  Apple Music categorizes this as “punk,” but this is light years away from the Melvins.  I hear more REO Speedwagon, or Grace Under Pressure-era Rush.  Chorus-y guitars and electronic drum fills abound, along with earnest lyrics about war and climate change.

* Bruce Springsteen — Western Stars.  The arid plains and dust bowls of Nebraska and Ghost of Tom Joad have been peeled back to reveal a technicolor Western epic, swooping strings and horns ablaze like in that “Welcome to America” video they play at passport control at Logan Airport.  At first, you might worry that there’s some MAGA-esque mythologizing going on here, but, Bruce being Bruce, there’s more than enough bitter to offset the sweet.

Laura Stevenson — The Big Freeze.  Further evidence of the profound influence of Stevie Nicks on today’s music.

* Harry Styles — Fine Line.  Very listenable MOR pop music.  I should know this guy already, right?

Taylor Swift — Lover.  All blemishes have been airbrushed away.  There’s a clever line here and there, and the vocal performance is solid, but I honestly found Mike Posner more sympathetic than this, and that’s saying something.

Tegan And Sara — Hey, I’m Just Like You.  This appeared on the listening schedule right after JPEGMafia, I suspect not unintentionally, as this is an effective palate-cleanser.  Like sorbet, cool and leaving you ready for the next course.  I imagine this is on heavy rotation among Women’s and Gender Studies majors.

Tyler, The Creator — Igor.  Aimless and indulgent.  A couple of cool beats and a bit of decent rapping and a whole lot of nonsense. 

Vampire Weekend — Father of The Bride.  There’s no rational reason why I shouldn’t like this.  The songs are good, the singing is good, the arrangements are good, each snare drum sound is more impeccable than the last.  Maybe I’m jealous? 

* John Van Deusen — (I Am) Origami, Pt. 3 — A Catacomb Hymn.  The drummer avoids the crash cymbal enough to keep us on just this side of the border to Emo-town.  Vocals like Michael Stipe, songs like Matthew Sweet, and an album title that sounds like it came out of a Rush-song-title-generator bot.  There’s something here, though, and in fact there are a Pts. 1 and 2, the latter of which Apple Music classifies as “Christian & Gospel.”  I believe this guy deserves a closer look.

Vanishing Twin — The Age of Immunology.  Arty psychedelia that sounds like is was made by some kind of “collective.”  Being a fan of both “art” and “psychedelia,” I can dig it, although the tri-lingual spoken word bits are more Guggenheim than Ummagumma.

Wand — Laughing Matter.  What the hell happened to this band?  Someone probably told them that they sound like Radiohead, and they took that as a license to go on a seven-year-long aimless jam.  Unfortunate.

Weezer — Black Album.  I’m always interested in hearing what Rivers Cuomo has to say.  This time out he’s ditched his overdrive pedal for a wah-wah and a piano, and the results are hit-or-miss.  Irresistible lead single and top-notch drumming, though.

Aaron West & The Roaring Twenties — Routine Maintenance.  Emo guys doing emo-Americana, with thoughtful arrangements.

Kanye West — Jesus Is King.  If you’ve been following Kanye from the beginning, you know that the religion thing is not a gimmick.  I’m not sure how well his theology reconciles with Matthew 19:29, though, and I get the feeling he didn’t really try too hard this time out. 

* Billy Woods & Kenny Segal — Hiding Places.  I had no idea what to expect when I first put this on.  From the artists’ names I thought maybe country?  This is a long, long way from Seals & Crofts.  Cold-eyed hip-hop with beats to burn, from two guys who sound like they may have some post-Operation-Enduring-Freedom PTSD to sort out.

Jamila Woods — LEGACY! LEGACY!  Confident and capable R&B, hammering home a message of self-empowerment, each track named in all caps after various idols of hers.

White Reaper — You Deserve Love.  The antithesis of the Black Angels: heavy on the “white,” light on the “reaper.”  Badfinger / Cheap Trick for the end of the decade. 

* Y La Bamba — Mujeres.  The more straight-ahead numbers sound like Camera Obscura, which I don’t think plays to her strengths.  When she lets her formidable rhythm section head off at full gallop, this becomes transcendent.

Young Thug — So Much Fun.  Feels a bit like a genre exercise in modern rap music, although maybe this is actually the genre and modern rap music is the exercise.

Lux et Tenebrae

The girls spent this Christmas with us in Geneva.  Before they arrived, we had talked about all the fun things we might do – a day trip to Lyon, a water-park outing – but instead we stayed at home and cooked and ate and played board games.  Lydia and I let them stay in our bedroom, since it’s bigger than the guest bedroom and there are three of them,  so it wasn’t long before an undergrowth of beauty products and sweatpants and bras took root across the floor.  Because they don’t live with me (I was about to add “full-time,” but the qualifier is kind of unnecessary and also represents a certain sense of denial), I think I find myself feeling their presence, and a subtle hum of joy from their presence, more than I otherwise would. 

We played a lot of Deception: Murder in Hong Kong, a semi-cooperative game in which some players (“Investigators”) are trying to identify a murder weapon and a clue out of a collection of weapons and clues on cards in front of each player.  (The "Hong Kong" bit is irrelevant, but for thematic consistency everything is written in both English and what I assume is Cantonese).  Some of the weapons/clues are obvious ones (“axe”), while others are more bizarre (“e-bike”?) and/or gruesome (“surgery”).  One of the players (the “Forensic Scientist”) silently tries to direct players to the right weapon/clue by providing more information about the crime, using different cards covering the appearance of the scene, the location, the motive, etc..  One player is the “Assassin,” and only she and the Forensic Scientist know who she is, and which weapon and clue are the right ones (with 6 or more players, there’s also an “Accomplice”).  The wrinkle is that none of the Investigators knows which player the Assassin is (there’s a ritual at the beginning of every round involving closing and opening eyes and raising of thumbs), and the Assassin tries to blend in with the rest of the Investigators and throw them off the scent.   Much deduction, arguing, intrigue, play-acting, etc. ensue.  On Christmas Eve, while I cooked roast pork and red cabbage, Lydia and the kids played one game in the kitchen which exploded in riotous shrieks and laughter when Sarah, who had been feigning anger that her sisters were ignoring her clues, was revealed as the Assassin.  We also played some Fury of Dracula, another game where one player is Dracula and the other players pursue him all over Europe (good for one’s eastern European geography), and Dead of Winter, another outstanding and tense co-operative game, because it wouldn't be Christmas without a zombie apocalypse.    

On the 26^th, I drove the girls to the airport for their flight back to Boston.  We exchanged misty-eyed hugs at security.  I was sad to see them leave, but brimming with joy and gratitude for the time we had spent together.

Later that evening I learned that, on Christmas Day, a woman I work with killed herself and her two young children, ages 4 and 1 ½.  The three of them were found on the sidewalk in front of a parking garage tower near Northeastern University in Boston.  Her SUV, doors open, child seats inside, was found on the top floor.  The news reports called this a “murder/suicide,” which I suppose is technically correct, but those terms didn’t make it any easier to process what had happened.

I found myself asking questions about the mundane details of the day itself, an exercise that becomes more horrific and heartbreaking the deeper you go.  Was there something playing on the car radio as she drove over?  Did she say anything to the kids on the way, perhaps a story to put their minds at ease, knowing what the real purpose of her trip was?  Did they talk about the toys that Santa had brought that morning?  As she circled up the parking garage ramp, the parked cars on each floor becoming sparser as she climbed, did she have second thoughts?  When she exited her car on the garage roof, did the cold brace of air on her face trigger a moment, however fleeting, of consideration?  Did she say anything to her children, a brief word of comfort or love, while leading them to the roof’s edge? 

Morbid curiosity like this is at worst fuel for sensational media coverage and gossip, and at best an irrational rescue fantasy.  As if by mentally inserting myself into the horrible moments leading up to their deaths, perhaps I may say or do something to change the outcome.

There is no “sense” to be made here.  None of the “motive” cards in Deception: Hong Kong ("Power," "Money," "Jealousy") remotely capture whatever might lead a human being to such an act.  Talking about brain chemistry and mental health awareness only gets you so far.  As I try to process this, I find myself retreating to broad, somewhat clumsy theological terms.  There are seeds of both immense light and utter darkness within every single one of us.  And darkness, from within or without, can overwhelm the strongest of us.  I do believe, based on faith and experience and probably my own good fortune, that light does prevail in the end, and I pray that this is an idea I will be able to hang onto whenever I may find myself surrounded by darkness in the future.  One never knows.

Last Sunday at church, the opening prayer talked about the new year, and about how being in church offers hope, comfort, strength, and vision as we make resolutions about who we will be and how we will live.  Near the end, our minister Laurence talked about “not taking refuge in a cozy personal faith,” something that I think I (along with a lot of so-called Christians) are susceptible to.  It’s convenient for me to chalk up the horrors of Christmas Day in Boston to the metaphysical struggle between good and evil, light and darkness.  That way, I can put my mind at relative ease, and we can all get back to work.  It’s another thing entirely to testify to that light: to try to, however humbly, be a source of light for other human beings.

James 2:14-18 is worth thinking about, when it comes to making January resolutions:

“What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if someone claims to have faith but has no deeds? Can such faith save them? Suppose a brother or a sister is without clothes and daily food. If one of you says to them, ‘Go in peace; keep warm and well fed,’ but does nothing about their physical needs, what good is it? In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead." 

Autumn Leaves / Late Capitalism

from October 20, 2019 – Cambridge, MA

Writing is wonderful because it forces you to pay attention (i.e., appreciate) things, and because, through the act of writing about your experience of something, it becomes in some ways richer and more concrete.

Writing is also awful because all the richness and complexity and mystery of experience is crammed into the confined space of one’s writing ability and vocabulary.

* * * *

The Geneva 20k is in a couple of weeks, and today I ran the last of my long runs (13 miles) before “tapering” which I’m not sure if you’re supposed to do for a 20k like you do for a marathon, but which is the best part of training for a marathon, so I’m allowing myself to taper.  I left the apartment around 8am, after the sun had risen and the temperature had warmed up a bit. 

This weekend is the Head of the Charles regatta, or I should say the BNY Mellon Head of the Charles, as it’s now sponsored by a bank, or, per its website, “The Investments Company for the World (sic?).”  There wasn’t much evidence that anything special was going on up near the Longfellow Bridge, but as I moved west of Mass Ave and the river started narrowing, the telltale signs of the “Head of the Chuck” started to appear.  A village of sponsors’ tents: Yakima roof racks, Peet’s Coffee, food trucks including something calling itself the “Butter’d Lobster Experience,” and, gilding the lily, Brooks Brothers.  Middle-aged couples wearing worn baseball caps and sunglasses, torsos warmed by fleece and goose down.  I lost count of the number of school lacrosse jackets I saw – each with lax sticks crossed above the wearer’s heart.  Exeter, Dartmouth, a few schools I hadn’t heard of but had compounded names (i.e., “The X and Y School”) which sounded old and rich.

The Head of the Charles is known in some circles as the signature autumn event in Boston, and today was tailor-made: leaves in golden mid-explosion, crisp air warmed by acutely angled rays of sunlight.  Part of me can appreciate and enjoy all this, and applaud the kids in the boats, rowing away, working as a team, etc.  But the symbolism here hits you dead in the face: a celebration of (overwhelmingly white) wealth and power, cheering itself on as the next generation straps itself in (facing backward) to the vessels that will carry them along the calm waters, while they execute repetitive, uncreative motions to power the machine. 

By the time I got back to the Mass Ave Bridge, they were preparing for the “8s,” and the wide part of the river was dappled with dozens of boats.  From a small inflatable dinghy out in the middle of the river, a woman with a bullhorn was trying to keep them all organized in the staging areas as they approached the starting line.  The sight of all those boats on the water was truly impressive, in the way that I imagine the ships approaching Normandy on D-Day must have been.

Breakfast in Paradise

I slept all the way to my alarm at 6am, which is somewhat unusual with the time difference, but an almost perfect execution of my MO for westbound transatlantic travel: ~2 hours of sleep on the plane, and then 5-6 (in this case, 6.5) hours here.  Even more unusual was my resisting the pull to blearily scroll through the iPhone (other than a quick check to see if Lydia had sent me a message overnight; she hadn’t, perhaps unconsciously knowing my intentions not to look at it).  Instead I got out of bed, opened the blinds to the still darkness over the construction site out the north window,¹ and retrieved from the fridge the bowl of oats and chia seeds and dates and cocoa and almond milk that I had stirred together the night before, loosely following a recipe from the latest Gwyneth Paltrow cookbook we bought on eBay.² 

Appropriate that the chapter of Merton’s Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander that I read over breakfast talks about the dawn: “Here is an unspeakable secret: paradise is all around us and we do not understand.  It is wide open.  The sword is taken away, but we do not know it; we are off ‘one to his farm and another to his merchandise.’  Lights on.  Clocks ticking.  Thermostats working.  Stoves cooking.  Electric shavers filling radios with static.  ‘Wisdom,’ cries the dawn deacon, but we do not attend.”

This followed a passage in which Merton describes the daybreak at his hermitage at Gesthemani: mainly the first cries of the waking birds, at “the most wonderful moment of the day…when creation in its innocence asks permission to ‘be’ once again.”  In my case, the role of the birds would be played by the construction workers, emerging from the darkness in neon safety vests, porting hardhats and lahge coffees from Dunkin’.  They’re here as part the tsunami of biotech gentrification which continues to crash tirelessly over this part of Cambridge, so they (and certainly I) would technically fall more on the side of merchandise than wisdom, in Merton’s terms.  Still, I also find this the most wonderful moment of the day, and in the rhythm of their walk and the hum and grind of the machines and the black/blue sky I think I still catch at least glimpse of paradise.    

¹ Both windows in this apartment face north, so probably a useless qualification

² I know how this sounds, but trust me her cookbooks are really good