the summer of his disconnect: a fiction
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Maybe he shouldn't have listened to the new Guy Clark album, especially after fasting all day, atoning. It made him want to lock the door and sip whiskey, and he hadn't touched hard liquor in a few years. There's a lot of whiskey on the Guy Clark album. A song called 'Hemingway's Whiskey' (that should be a brand, he thought). And one where Clark contemplates having scrambled eggs and whiskey for breakfast. And a third one where some woman is compared to whiskey. Clark's voice even sounds like whiskey to him; it burns a bit, but in a cool way, in a dark it's-quarter-to-three way. Even when Clark was young, he sounded pretty worn and weary, and now, well:
But he didn't have a drink. That was a nowhere road. And what was the point of cleansing himself of his sins (what sins? Selfishness? Laziness? Impatience? Evasiveness? Is Evasiveness a Sin?) if he was going to start that whole cycle again? The summer had been especially bruising, but he was determined to tough it out.
'It doesn't matter how much it hurts/You got to tell the truth/Some days you write the song/Some days the song writes you'
This was the trifecta of rejection: One woman decided that the long-distance thing just wasn't working (meaning: for her). Another, who was always ambivalent anyway, put the ultimate kabosh on the 'friends-plus' concept. And another simply vanished. Like, completely, without even a text-message of explanation. That's not even counting the married ex who wants to stay married, and the woman who turned up four months pregnant with her boyfriend's kid, thus foiling any plan (such as it was) to get her romantic attention. That was just July through the end of September. So it was a good thing that the early days of autumn dropped some distractions in his path
New novels by Lorrie Moore and Nick Hornby. Movies by the Coens and Ricky Gervais. And music: not only Clark, but Rosanne Cash's 'The List,' and Miranda Lambert, finally. The Avett Brothers. Why, he wondered, was the most impressive current music so vintagey-sounding? The Low Anthem, The Gaslight Anthem, Nellie McKay? He looked at the Grammy ballot, was baffled by most of the entries in the Rock and Pop categories, but actually couldn't decide among all the good things in Americana and Contemporary Folk: Dylan, Fogerty, Steve Earle (plus his son Justin Townes Earle), Lucinda, Wilco, Levon, Raul Malo, Elvis Costello, Neko Case, Tift Merritt, Patterson Hood. NARAS calls this stuff 'American Roots.' Is that where all the real songs are?
On the last night of September, he listened to Rosanne sing some songs that her dad told her were important. 'Sea of Heartbreak,' 'Girl From The North Country,' 'Long Black Veil.' He remembered something that Dylan was supposed to have said, that the world doesn't need any new songs, that if nobody ever wrote another song we'd be fine, because there are already enough songs. Maybe that was a joke. It had to be, right? Because Dylan keeps writing them.
And there's something about hearing new songs. Guy Clark might have made him want to drink whiskey, maybe in that bar on Avenue B* where he used to go with his friend who, on nights when she was pleasantly buzzed, would come back to his place and mess around. He never knew what kind of mood she'd be in, and he never expected anything, but that was always a nice surprise. Why go drink there? To wallow? Where was he, oh, yeah: maybe Clark was a bad influence, but those goddamn songs, molded so beautifully out of life's big lump of unmanageable clay.
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'There's no rhyme or reason,' Clark sings, 'Ain't a damn thing you can do. Some days you write the song, some days the song writes you.'
18
MOG it up!
Comments (5)
After being in his head these last two minutes, I feel like drinking a glass of wine. Thanks to you, him and Guy Clark. Your fiction shows promise.
Thanks, Spike. I stuck to red wine also.
Nostalgia is a curious thing. Not sure I like it that much, but I do find myself thinking back, on music, and places, and friends, and lovers. And I like remembering living on Avenue A and going to the Baltyk for the russian pierogis and listeing to the Pretenders and Nick Lowe and the Clash, all adding up to a point in time. And I won't talk about the girl...
I really liked that! Very nice
Trite as it sounds, it was still true for me as well: Manhattan is the World Capital of Complicated Relationships.