Do Fear the Reaper

 

We’ve been driving around a lot since we arrived, and I’ve learned that Boston rock radio stations have two basic settings: a) songs which belong on a mixtape somebody made for your high school reunion: when you hear them for the first time in a long time, they have kind of a thrilling, guilty-pleasure quality to them, but after multiple listens within a narrow window they become horrifically tedious; and b) songs from a band called “Aerosmith.”

Setting a) includes tunes like “Back in Black,” by AC/DC.  As a red-blooded American male, I shamelessly concede that the hi-hat-plus-muted-power-chord count-in before the triumphant opening Emaj always gets my motor running, but by the time the third solo rolls in, and Brian Johnson is pummeling you with his umpteenth “HEY HEY HEY HEY HEY,” you realize there’s a reason you don’t spin this record at home so often.

Same goes for tracks like “Livin’ on a Prayer” and “Eye of the Tiger.”  They possess a certain loin-tugging allure, but after hearing them for the tenth time in a single weekend, you’re ready to steer your car into Fresh Pond.  “Cum on Feel the Noize,” “The Final Countdown,” “I Want You to Want Me:” the list goes on and on.  Or rather, it doesn’t, because the list only has a few dozen songs on it.

Don’t get me wrong: these are all great rock performances (okay, maybe not “The Final Countdown”).  And far be it from me to doubt the magnetism of Robin Zander or the charisma of Rick Nielsen.  The point is not that these aren’t good songs; it’s just that IMHO there are other songs worth spending time with.  And it makes me wonder about the mentality of the supposed listener.  Are there really people out there whose aren’t interested in hearing anything recorded after the first Bush administration? 

Of course, it’s not called commercial radio by accident.  The playlist is curated purely and specifically to lubricate the wheels of commerce – to keep the listener engaged long enough to make it to and through the next batch of ads.  Classic rock targets demographics (Boomers and older Gen Xers) who spend a lot of money.  And I imagine that, by delivering a steady infusion of songs which those demographics associate with their teenage years, the program directors are seeking to push certain buttons.  Buttons which might be labeled “freedom,” “fun,” “sex,” “drugs,” etc.

Still, those listeners have other choices, especially nowadays.  So why is that a market like Boston can still support a good half-dozen classic rock stations, even when a gazillion other songs are only a Bluetoothable phone swipe away?  I suspect that some people simply like to be reminded of what it felt like to be 16, especially while sitting in a mind-numbing commute.  Nostalgia for lost youth is good business.

As I put my top ten list together for 2020, I realize there’s an undercurrent of music snobbery going on here.  As if, by faithfully sitting through a bunch of albums made by people who are closer to my daughters’ ages than to mine, I demonstrate my superiority over the guy who Pavlovianly cranks up the volume at the opening bars to “Love in an Elevator."  A strong case could be made that the same quest-for-lost-youth/fear-of-death is motivating both of us.

More importantly: rest in peace to the lead guitar player for the first band I ever saw live, and who pretty much single-handedly redeems any classic rock playlists he's on.  Thankfully, he's on all of ‘em.

 

My listening schedule was truncated this year by our move to the US, but I still managed to cobble together a Critics Poll ballot for 2020. 

 

Top Ten Albums of 2020

 

10. Kiwi Jr. -- Football Money

You listen to this and you realize that Pavement took themselves much too seriously.

 

9. Andy Shauf -- The Neon Skyline

Linear narrative indie folk rock.  Vocals bear more than a passing resemblance to Paul Simon

 

8. The Beths -- Jump Rope Gazers

Seems at first like a fairly standard power-pop quartet fronted by a woman, and then it occurs to you that she’s singing melodies which remind you of someone, and that someone is Joni Mitchell.  The band is also super-tight. I see that they’re Kiwis, and this year this does seem to be the year for quality releases from ANZAC acts.  The video for “Dying to Believe” is also great.

 

7. Peter Oren -- The Greener Pasture

Indiana baritone sings about horses and cows, which you might expect, and about humanity and technology, which you might not.  The subjects collide beautifully in the album cover art, a cattle ranch envisioned by Sim City, and by “Don’t Eat Their Feed,” which is not actually about hormones and antibiotics in cattle feed.  Or is it?

6. Sarah Walk -- Another Me

This feels like it’s not at all my genre, mainly because I am not a lesbian, but I found this irresistible.  I love her singing voice, and she employs a nifty trick of riding on the same note with the vocals while chords are changing underneath (this worked pretty well for John Lennon).  Tim Merle’s drumming is also outstanding, even though he only plays on like 2 songs.

5. Morrissey -- I Am Not a Dog on a Chain

I understand that we are supposed to disapprove of Morrissey now, because of things he’s said about Brexit or something.  I'm sorry to say I haven’t been paying attention to all that, but I can say that when it comes to how one should consider mass media, or one’s mortality, the Moz is still worth a listen.

 

4. Poppy -- I Disagree

Like the demonic love child of Mr. Bungle and Girls’ Generation.  At first glance, she might seem like she’s trying to ride in the slipstream of the latest Harley Quinn major motion picture release.  But the songs are really good, and the backing band is really, really good.  Not something I’d listen to on a quiet, rainy Sunday afternoon, but this demands attention, in the same way a carjacker demands attention. 

3. Silvana Estrada -- Lo Sagrado

I want to call this deconstructed Mexican music.  The elements are there – female vocalist in Spanish, acoustic guitar, cowbell, horns – but played and arranged in a way that lets something extremely special breathe through.  And the songs are gorgeous.  And the guitar player (who evidently plays a guitar with like 26 strings on it) is amazing.  And the drummer is incredible.  The album is not called “The Sacred” for nothing.

Postscript: the day before we left Switzerland, I was giving a ride to a young brass musician to whom we had given a washing machine and some furniture that we wouldn’t be taking with us.  We struck up a conversation, and, upon hearing that he was Mexican, I put this on the car stereo.  After a few bars, he said, “Ah I know her.  Silvana was my brother’s girlfriend for a while at music school.”  Mundo pequeño.

2. Elizabeth Cook -- Aftermath

Evidently this woman has been singing at the Opry for two decades, but this is closer to Kula Shaker than Roseann Cash.  Overdriven vox, tight-but-not-uptight backing band, and lyrics that sound like they’ve been written by someone with some actual Life Experiences.

 

1. Tame Impala -- The Slow Rush

This isn’t my favorite Tame Impala album.  It might not even be my second-favorite.  But Kevin Parker’s grooves have a way of insinuating themselves into your consciousness, and in retrospect, it seems inevitable that an album about time a would end up on top in 2020.

 

Bonus content for all you lovers out there: my notes on the listening schedule below. Caveat emptor. 

* = recommended

 

070 Shake – Modus Vivendi

I didn’t realize until side 2 that the artist was a woman and not a man, and it forced me to recalibrate my assessment of this.  Initially I was thinking this was ersatz The Weeknd with a strong 808s and Heartbreak influence, which it still is to some extent.  But for some reason the story of betrayal and relationship-collapse lands differently when it’s a woman singing about it.  The converse was true when Leo Marochioli covered “Poker Face.”

 

*2ndGrade – Hit To Hit

GBV meet the Minutemen, with a nod to Real Estate up the Turnpike.  Melodies which climb to the top of the water tower to gaze at the landscape, before unzipping the backpack to get at the mixed beer cans individually smuggled out of their parents’ fridge.

 

Angela Aguilar – Baila Esta Cumbia

She’s got a great voice, but the rich, creamy sauce of horns, strings, and accordion are laid on a bit too thick for my taste.  Listening to Francophone radio over here, one often encounters accordions, and these meetings typically don’t go well. 

 

* Ingrid Andress – Lady Like

This comes up as “country” on Apple Music, and there’s a wisp of pedal steel on the opening track to orient the listener just in case, but this does not get bogged down in genre stereotypes (she in fact decries the shortcomings of drinking one’s problems away, which is especially welcome).  High-quality singer-songwriter stuff in which every relationship is complicated, which hard-hitting couplets like: “Love me or don’t / But you can’t do both”

Fiona Apple – Fetch The Bolt Cutters

I tried like seven times to listen to this during the course of 2020, and for one reason or another I never made it past the third track. 

 

* Vanessa Carlton – Love Is an Art

One of those female singer/songwriters whose vocals are recorded with that technique that allows you to experience every glottal stop as if you were inside her glottal.  She grew on me over the course of the album, and I think she’s at her best when she’s channeling her inner Tori Amos.  The piano playing is very good, too.

 

Gus Dapperton – Orca

Kind of like the Early November, but after all the distortion pedals had been confiscated.  All those emo guys are really theater kids at heart.

 

Lana Del Rey – Violet Bent Backwards Over the Grass

You won’t find this on Apple Music, because it’s not music per se.  Del Rey released a book of poetry this year, and this is her reading it over a bed of incidental, reverbed-out electric piano, through what sounds like an iPhone in her backyard, where the whoosh of traffic and/or the ocean can also be heard.  I happened to read a lot of Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes this year, and with those two as a reference, Del Rey’s poems are a bit hit-or-miss, but I’m sure her fans are devouring this like those chocolate-covered açai berries from CVS.  

 

* Lupe Fiasco & Kaelin Ellis – House

Like the ultra-smart guy in your freshman dorm who talked about the cosmos and was stoned a lot, but who was still a really sympathetic character.  Hyper-intelligent and -observant rapping about metaphoric dinosaurs and shilling on the Internet and covid, over somniferent beats.  Guest starring architect and designer Virgil Abloh, who squeezes every last drop out of the “soul/sole” homophone,

 

* Carly Rae Jepsen – Dedication Side B

In CRJ’s world, romantic relationships aren’t at all complicated.  And I suppose there’s a certain point in every romantic relationship in which things are bright and pleasant and optimistic and you can’t imagine why it wouldn’t stay like that forever, and during those times it’s best not to think about it too much and just enjoy it while it lasts.  An interesting contrast to Ingrid Andress. 

 

Tkay Maidza – Last Year Was Weird, Vol. 2

Quality singing and rapping from an Australian by way of Zimbabwe, or vice-versa.  She hits her stride around mid-album, topped by the barn-burning “Shook.”  Brimming with talent, but I fear she has nothing much to say, and there should be a one-per-album limit on ending a couplet with “tetris.”

 

Megan Thee Stallion – Good News

It’s “of a piece” with “W.A.P.,” though the album doesn’t quite reach the raunchy glory of the single, and a full-length becomes extremely tiring.  Her producer’s incessant employment of her vocal quirk of saying “aaah” like there’s a tongue depressor (or, um, something) jammed into her throat becomes anxiety-triggering after a while.

 

Mildlife – Automatic

Psychedelic, groovy, experimental – all qualities which would normally float my boat.  And yet: trying to impersonate Pink Floyd, much less Tame Impala, is not the sure thing one might think it is.  These guys can certainly play, but I got the feeling, somewhere between the flute solo and the Al Jarreau guitar/scat bit, that they were showing off.

 

Roisin Murphy – Roisin Machine

I was happy to see everyone’s favorite insane Irish disco queen back at it, evidently with some strong label support.  I really wanted to love this, and there are some bright moments (“Kingdom of Ends,” “Gamechanger”), but too often this sounds like standard-issue EDM.   

 

* Nas – King’s Disease

Like Philip Roth in his last decades, Nas has nothing left to prove to anyone, yet he still delivers high-quality stuff that you want to engage with.  My only gripe is with the production, which sounds a little tinny, but it could have been a headphone issue.  Also, as a gout sufferer myself (it runs in the family), I appreciate Nas’s advice on the lemongrass and cherries. 

 

* Open Mike Eagle – Anime, Trauma and Divorce

Deft rapping over backwards-sounding backing tracks.  “WTF Is Self-Care?” an early front-runner for funniest song of the year.

 

The Proper Ornaments – Mission Bells

I listened to this while taking one of the cats to the douane to pay the fee that his breeder should have paid when he (the cat) originally entered Switzerland from Slovakia where he was born, without which we wouldn’t be able to take him to the US in 9 days, a scenario I don’t even wish to imagine, and which was probably not the ideal set of conditions for listening to this album.  Some interesting chord changes, but I believe the artist you are looking for is The Clientele.

 

Caroline Rose – Superstar

Mostly keyboard-driven, mostly danceable pop music.  The Apple Music notes say this is some sort of concept album, but it mainly reminded me of the music I used to hear through my gay neighbor’s door in the mid-90’s.  Great bass playing though, although I can’t find who’s playing, despite extensive googling.

 

Troye Sivan – In A Dream

Like the love child of Justin Bieber and James Blake.

 

Soccer Mommy – Color Theory

Young indie-ish singer-songwriter who strains to hit the high notes now and then, but is otherwise fine to have on while you’re cooking dinner.  “Yellow is the color of her eyes” is a great song.  She’s right to let those chord changes go on for 7 minutes.  Good candidate for should be sent to the minors, etc.

 

The Streets – None Of Us Are Getting Out Of This Life Alive

I first need to get over my need to grammar edit the album title: to change the “Are” to “Is,” and to delete “Life.”  Mike Skinner is back on the horse, with some bumping electro keyboard and trademark ambivalence about phones and the people who use them.  He sounds a little tired, but don’t we all at this point.   

 

The Strokes – The New Abnormal

What does one do when the denim and swagger starts to wear thin?  Retreat to 80’s synth and guitar sounds perhaps, or try to sing like Bono?  I feel like they may be onto something with the last couple of ballad-y tracks, but it felt like a slog to get there.

 

Taylor Swift – Folklore

A convincing Liz Phair impersonation, from the laid-back throatiness of her delivery to the carefully placed f-bombs.  This being Taylor Swift, I’m not sure if I totally buy the casual act, but the songs are certainly good enough.  Oh, look, she just dropped another album this year as well.  I suppose one can only make so much sourdough. 

 

Devon Williams – A Tear in The Fabric

Back in the mid 90’s when I was playing in a band in New York City, we would usually be booked with four or five other acts, each of which would get around 45-minute sets.  One night I remember there was another band playing which was clearly filled with music school guys: they were all very good at their instruments, and they were a bit older than the rest of us (the bass player was probably pushing 40).  They had a bald drummer, who from time to time would wink at the bass player.  The songs weren’t terribly good, and it seemed to me like there was something very intentional about them, if that makes any sense.  Anyway, for some reason this Devon Williams album reminded me of them.  Fans of The Church and Geddy Lee’s low notes might find this interesting.

 

* Hayley Williams – Petals For Armor

I’ve never really gotten into Paramore, so I don’t feel like I have the proper context to approach this.  Her people seem to have listened to some St. Vincent over recent years, and it sounds pretty damn great in these new Shure headphones I borrowed from my wife.  I’m not sure if she has anything interesting to say, but I recommend this for the drum textures alone.

 

 

Transit

For a moment, it felt like we were on top of things, but by the last couple of days in Geneva our possessions had gotten the better of us.  We did manage to get rid of a lot – friends of one of our musician friends were happy to take the washing machine and a lot of the furniture and appliances – but, inevitably, a few loose ends remained on Wednesday morning at 5 when the taxi came to remove us. 

Geneva Airport was less crowded than the last time I was there back in March, but there was no shortage of check-in tension.  We were flying KLM through Amsterdam, and a few days earlier the Dutch authorities had issued a new regulation requiring a negative PCR test before boarding any plane into the country.  Fortunately, I had received an email from the airline over the weekend, so we were able to scramble and get tested at the private clinic in Champel.  Others, including a group of Irish kids returning from a ski holiday, were not so lucky and were queuing up across the hall to have their flights rebooked.

My main source of worry leading up to the trip was going through security with the cats, which would require me to take them out of their carriers and walk them through the metal detector thing.  Fortunately, my nightmarish images of their clawing their way out of my arms and disappearing somewhere in the bowels of the airport went unfulfilled, and the other passengers were treated to the image of a middle-aged man in stocking feet walking back and forth three times through the metal detector, each time with a different Siberian clutched to his chest.  The cats themselves were basically fine for the rest of the trip, save some complaining and panting from Nocturno the larger male.  I put his carrier on my lap and petted him through a slightly unzipped opening in one of the doors, and that calmed him down a little.

There were maybe ten people in the normally heaving passport control area at Logan.  We handed the documents for L&C’s immigrant visas to the Customs and Border Protection guy in his booth.  These were in manila envelopes that I had picked up at the embassy in Bern a few weeks before, all edges of which had been sealed with packing tape and rubber-stamped with warnings not to open or the applications therein would be invalidated, which lent a silly cloak and dagger vibe to the whole process.  The CBP guys try hard to project a stern and menacing aura (and I’m sure the experience is not at all pleasant for some people trying to enter the US), but they can’t completely suppress their innate American friendliness.  The guys downstairs who gave our bags a final run through the x-ray seemed more interested in admiring the cats than in sussing out any contraband.  I breathed a slight sigh of relief, realizing that I would not have to explain the sourdough starter and kombucha scobys in plastic bags deep in my suitcase.

We took a taxi to the apartment we had rented, sight-not-exactly-unseen, but only seen through a YouTube video.  The driver took us up 93 and around Cambridge, along the Mytsic River and then along 16 which snakes alongside Alewife Brook.  These are not the prettiest parts of town, especially in the grey sogginess of winter.  L&C commented how everything looked like a movie to them.

Rob the property manager, well-groomed and wearing a property-management-branded mask and a dark necktie, was waiting for us when we arrived.  We trundled bags into our apartment, which felt bigger than in the videos.  We released the cats and showed them where the litter was.  Later we would take an Uber back to the airport to pick up the rental car.  We could have done this right when we arrived, but the idea of dealing with the shuttle bus and another line at the rental car place after 14 hours of travel was too daunting. 

It was already dark as we drove back into town.  I opted to go the longer way, over the Longfellow Bridge and through the middle of Cambridge.  Still disoriented with jet lag, we realized we were hungry, so I stopped by the Clover in Kendall Square.  For the uninitiated, Clover (officially Clover Food Lab) is a chain of healthy fast food joints started by a Harvard MBA, with a highly optimized user experience and killer rosemary fries.  As we pulled up, the seating area was empty, and a lone person puttered in the kitchen area, so I thought for moment it might be closed.  The door swung open though, and I entered a makeshift vestibule, walled off with three big plexiglass screens in a half-hexagon.  The young woman on the other side explained that they were only doing pick-up service, but that we could order online, and she pointed me to a QR code taped to the door.  We ordered and paid for our food from my phone, and the website told us that it would be ready in 7 minutes.

8 minutes later, we ate our food – chickpea fritters and hummus and Japanese sweet potatoes and egg and eggplant platter and ginger soda – sitting in the parked car.  I felt the stress and anxiety of the long day of travel displaced by, for lack of a better term, fun.  Fun that America, with its market-honed ability to comfort and gratify, is especially good at enabling.  Fun which I know in the longer-term can lead to some dark and unhealthy places.  But that night I chose not to think about it so much, and I reached into the compostable bag for another handful of fries.

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