the island, part 4: masher
This is the fourth in a song-by-song series about why I chose FULL FORCE GALESBURG by The Mountain Goats as the one CD I would take to a desert island. Previous installments are available here.
Why the fuck is there no guitar here.
Well, of course, I'm on a deserted island with limited foodstuffs, a ramshackle cabin that is bearing the brunt of repeated storms with limited resilience, a wall full of batteries, and one CD boombox. There is no reason there should be a guitar here.
There is also no reason there should be one boombox here, but here we are.
I try to remember how my hand made the positions. I was never any good, but maybe I can change that. I remember stories about the two basketball teams, one who practiced shooting free throws and the other who sat on their asses and visualized successfully shooting free throws, and how they wound up doing about the same after some time.
Just maybe, I could come off this island a fucking guitar wizard. Not that that's what I want. What I really want is to understand the music of "Masher", the fourth song of FULL FORCE GALESBURG, which shouldn't be very hard to do, but I would need to hear the notes of the strings resonating, experiment. Wonder why it is that that slight melodic twitch injected in the chord strikes me so. Wonder what magic it is of resonance or neuroscience or whatever that causes me to get swept away, feel wistful by the simplest of tonal variations, something a dozen people I know could figure out in .234 seconds after hearing it, probably dismiss as an insignificant throw away moment. Maybe something most people don't hear. Or don't care if they do.
Huh, it's in 3/4. Or 6/8. I'd say 6/8, but I always get in arguments as to which is which, so it's probably 3/4.
I could whittle a fret board. Now that I've learned to sharpen the knife against the rocks, it's not a huge problem. The frets would just be guides, of course, and the strings wouldn't exist. But I could potentially learn to fret like a motherfucker.
And then come back and play chords that are horrible dissonant clusters, since I couldn't hear them. Or maybe just move between D, C, and G really fast. Those, I know.
It's funny, when your set of tools is small the possibilities can suddenly seem unlimited. I think back to living in Auckland, in my room, with a computer that's simultaneously miraculous and outdated, a guitar, years of watching and listening and reading options, thirteen different sauces in the fridge -
any of which I would kill to have at the moment, by the way -
and feeling at times like nothing made me feel alive. And now a carving project has unlimited potential.
Maybe I will develop a whole new line of art. Maybe I will be the first expatriate Kiwi of Ukrainian-American descent to develop a tropical mode of carving that somehow uncovers a sense of life, in the Christopher Alexander sense, that was heretofore unknown to wood artisans.
Wait. There's two guitars in "Masher". Shit. This is how inattentive of a listener I am to guitar details normally. Good luck figuring this out.
Then again. What else do I have to do?
I find a good piece of driftwood amidst the washed-up rubble from the storm last week, and start carving.
Most of June I spent in jail again
I do not mean jail exactly
I could write songs. More songs - I've written songs, but I've rarely shared them. I'm not sure if this is a regret.
If it is, I certainly have larger ones.
I think I chose a bad piece of wood, big knot in it, not amenable to carving. I toss it in the burn pile and grab another.
Something I love about John Darnielle's lyric writing is that the narrative is alluded to with economy but never fully spelled out. I never succeed at accomplishing this when I write, it's always too literal. I can open my brain, dream, cast about for vague allusive phrases.
Would any be better than "I do not mean jail exactly"? I guess I could reflect that it took something like 6 years and 150 songs to get to the point of writing this album.
I know every inch of the coastline now. I run. I never ran before, but it's worth a try. Every inch of beach. I can start on one side in the morning and watch the sunrise, then climb across and have bananas for lunch in the vegetation atop the hill in the middle, then clamber down and watch sunset on the other side.
So many variations. So few variations.
I do not mean jail exactly.
If I could say anything, what would I say?
I am losing control of the language again
There's a specificity of writing that I love when it's attained, when something is highly specific, almost to the point of being hermetic, but also universal. "Masher" gets it more often than 99% of songs in the world, but doesn't always get it for me in the same way a lot of other Goats songs do. The stuff about the squirrel in the tree and the neck tilting back to make a rainbow (which may be a squirrel or may be a woman, I can't quite tell) is kind of pretty but I don't really get it on a gut level the way I do with some things.
(Like losing control of the language. That, I know.)
But it doesn't matter, exactly, because everytime that guitar moves up just a little bit on the second bar of the main riff, I feel swept away.
Back at home, I was feeling near the end of the line. Houston, Portland, Auckland, I'd sequestered myself increasingly far away, repeatedly uprooting myself, gaining opportunity but losing belonging, forced to regain it by half-measures and then lose it in another move. Sometimes I would think I could retreat along this past, somewhere that I'd been, and somehow simultaneously hold on to the opportunity and retrieve the sense of belonging.
And then I would visit the scenes of my past, and realize that nothing was the same, that my single friends who I went drinking with in Portland had become largely coupled home-owners more concerned with pro-creation than an Old 97's show. And that whatever I have left behind is changing in ways, vanishing.
Most of the things I used to hold on to
Most of the things I used to say to you
Most of the ways I knew around the local roads are disappearing daily
And while it may not be impossibly specific, as I watch the sun fall out of the sky and voyage through the places I knew in my mind, and imagine what might be left on my return, it certainly feels universal.
Night, I lie in bed with my new fretboard in my hand. This is not a euphemism. When I say I spent a lot of time in bed playing on my fretboard, you should not chortle.
D, C, G. Something about the leafy wet substance that gathers in gutters during Portland winters. So close, so far away.
I think of a friend of mine's story, of Ron Wood teaching him to play "Paint It, Black" in a dream. And he got up, and still remembered how to play it. So he picked up his guitar ...
... and it was all wrong.
There's something there, too. There's something in everything, something to say if you know where to look. And you know what you want to say.
What is it that I want to say?
I don't know. The memories turn and churn, and I lose control of the language, and I drift to sleep, wondering what the hell the title "Masher" means.
---------------------------------
VIDEO #4 for people who don't give a shit about the Mountain Goats: a live performance from Neu!
Why the fuck is there no guitar here.
Well, of course, I'm on a deserted island with limited foodstuffs, a ramshackle cabin that is bearing the brunt of repeated storms with limited resilience, a wall full of batteries, and one CD boombox. There is no reason there should be a guitar here.
There is also no reason there should be one boombox here, but here we are.
I try to remember how my hand made the positions. I was never any good, but maybe I can change that. I remember stories about the two basketball teams, one who practiced shooting free throws and the other who sat on their asses and visualized successfully shooting free throws, and how they wound up doing about the same after some time.
Just maybe, I could come off this island a fucking guitar wizard. Not that that's what I want. What I really want is to understand the music of "Masher", the fourth song of FULL FORCE GALESBURG, which shouldn't be very hard to do, but I would need to hear the notes of the strings resonating, experiment. Wonder why it is that that slight melodic twitch injected in the chord strikes me so. Wonder what magic it is of resonance or neuroscience or whatever that causes me to get swept away, feel wistful by the simplest of tonal variations, something a dozen people I know could figure out in .234 seconds after hearing it, probably dismiss as an insignificant throw away moment. Maybe something most people don't hear. Or don't care if they do.
Huh, it's in 3/4. Or 6/8. I'd say 6/8, but I always get in arguments as to which is which, so it's probably 3/4.
I could whittle a fret board. Now that I've learned to sharpen the knife against the rocks, it's not a huge problem. The frets would just be guides, of course, and the strings wouldn't exist. But I could potentially learn to fret like a motherfucker.
And then come back and play chords that are horrible dissonant clusters, since I couldn't hear them. Or maybe just move between D, C, and G really fast. Those, I know.
It's funny, when your set of tools is small the possibilities can suddenly seem unlimited. I think back to living in Auckland, in my room, with a computer that's simultaneously miraculous and outdated, a guitar, years of watching and listening and reading options, thirteen different sauces in the fridge -
any of which I would kill to have at the moment, by the way -
and feeling at times like nothing made me feel alive. And now a carving project has unlimited potential.
Maybe I will develop a whole new line of art. Maybe I will be the first expatriate Kiwi of Ukrainian-American descent to develop a tropical mode of carving that somehow uncovers a sense of life, in the Christopher Alexander sense, that was heretofore unknown to wood artisans.
Wait. There's two guitars in "Masher". Shit. This is how inattentive of a listener I am to guitar details normally. Good luck figuring this out.
Then again. What else do I have to do?
I find a good piece of driftwood amidst the washed-up rubble from the storm last week, and start carving.
Most of June I spent in jail again
I do not mean jail exactly
I could write songs. More songs - I've written songs, but I've rarely shared them. I'm not sure if this is a regret.
If it is, I certainly have larger ones.
I think I chose a bad piece of wood, big knot in it, not amenable to carving. I toss it in the burn pile and grab another.
Something I love about John Darnielle's lyric writing is that the narrative is alluded to with economy but never fully spelled out. I never succeed at accomplishing this when I write, it's always too literal. I can open my brain, dream, cast about for vague allusive phrases.
Would any be better than "I do not mean jail exactly"? I guess I could reflect that it took something like 6 years and 150 songs to get to the point of writing this album.
I know every inch of the coastline now. I run. I never ran before, but it's worth a try. Every inch of beach. I can start on one side in the morning and watch the sunrise, then climb across and have bananas for lunch in the vegetation atop the hill in the middle, then clamber down and watch sunset on the other side.
So many variations. So few variations.
I do not mean jail exactly.
If I could say anything, what would I say?
I am losing control of the language again
There's a specificity of writing that I love when it's attained, when something is highly specific, almost to the point of being hermetic, but also universal. "Masher" gets it more often than 99% of songs in the world, but doesn't always get it for me in the same way a lot of other Goats songs do. The stuff about the squirrel in the tree and the neck tilting back to make a rainbow (which may be a squirrel or may be a woman, I can't quite tell) is kind of pretty but I don't really get it on a gut level the way I do with some things.
(Like losing control of the language. That, I know.)
But it doesn't matter, exactly, because everytime that guitar moves up just a little bit on the second bar of the main riff, I feel swept away.
Back at home, I was feeling near the end of the line. Houston, Portland, Auckland, I'd sequestered myself increasingly far away, repeatedly uprooting myself, gaining opportunity but losing belonging, forced to regain it by half-measures and then lose it in another move. Sometimes I would think I could retreat along this past, somewhere that I'd been, and somehow simultaneously hold on to the opportunity and retrieve the sense of belonging.
And then I would visit the scenes of my past, and realize that nothing was the same, that my single friends who I went drinking with in Portland had become largely coupled home-owners more concerned with pro-creation than an Old 97's show. And that whatever I have left behind is changing in ways, vanishing.
Most of the things I used to hold on to
Most of the things I used to say to you
Most of the ways I knew around the local roads are disappearing daily
And while it may not be impossibly specific, as I watch the sun fall out of the sky and voyage through the places I knew in my mind, and imagine what might be left on my return, it certainly feels universal.
Night, I lie in bed with my new fretboard in my hand. This is not a euphemism. When I say I spent a lot of time in bed playing on my fretboard, you should not chortle.
D, C, G. Something about the leafy wet substance that gathers in gutters during Portland winters. So close, so far away.
I think of a friend of mine's story, of Ron Wood teaching him to play "Paint It, Black" in a dream. And he got up, and still remembered how to play it. So he picked up his guitar ...
... and it was all wrong.
There's something there, too. There's something in everything, something to say if you know where to look. And you know what you want to say.
What is it that I want to say?
I don't know. The memories turn and churn, and I lose control of the language, and I drift to sleep, wondering what the hell the title "Masher" means.
---------------------------------
VIDEO #4 for people who don't give a shit about the Mountain Goats: a live performance from Neu!
Labels: the island, videos for people who don't give a shit about the Mountain Goats.
3 Comments:
I guess I could reflect that it took something like 6 years and 150 songs to get to the point of writing this album.
This is a level of intimacy with the Mountain Goats that the casual fan, like me, can only glimpse with your help. But I totally get what you're saying (at least I think).
Listened to the Houston Redux MG stuff. Really dug it too.
Good stuff again Doug. Although I think island Doug is getting a bit looney with that bed fretting.
Neu! rocks a lot harder than I expected they would live...
Yeah, thought it was weird that you put in the Neu! video since I had driven to and from the rock n roll club with Neu!'s Fur Immer (Forever) on the player just before reading this post.
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