Ghosting the Party

The morning I heard the news was a Saturday in September. September 16th. Dad was dead. My sister told me. He had gone to bed with a headache and had never woken up. Very on brand for Dad. A tectonic shift disguised as a banality. I guess He won after all. He had lived in fairly good cognitive health all the way to the end of his life in spite of all suspicions to the contrary. There was one incident where one of his arms started moving on its own (“alien arm” is the “scientific” description of this perplexing condition) but it eventually stopped moving so Dad just chalked it up to “the mystery of old age”. Fair enough. The end is never easy or convenient. The way dad went out it sort of was. Dad was a DIY guy. His death was, while not a suicide, very much a do it yourself, go it alone, don’t warn anyone, just die type of death. Of course, I cried when Morgan told me but I was also sort of proud of him. He didn’t outlive me like his father had done to him. Parents should not outlive their offspring. It’s like living in a world that never really loosens up. No seasonal changes. The Indian summer of a family. Dad wasn’t having it. He always gave me what he could. Never lots of money. Not really any clear direction. What he gave me was an intuition. A sense that he truly believed I could do better than him and that he was rooting for me. That he had taken things as far as he could and now it was up to me. He got out of the way I guess is one way to put it. Maybe this is a sign of true greatness. Do what you’re going to do in life. Have a family. Build a house. Go bald. Build an engine in the living room even. Throw a TV on the ground and kick down a door like a savage. Be unapologetically Christian. Get obsessed with a hummingbird feeder. Be short. Be fine with most people… Then get calm-ish in the twilight years. Maybe have a couple of mini-strokes if you like. Go to the Jersey shore and eat raw oysters for the first time in your life when you’re 70. Let the beard get wild.

Then, when everyone least expects it, get blood on a pillow. And as it settles on one side of your skull and your body begins to cool like the earth’s crust before life, silently slip away. From the room that felt like a cathedral, in the house you built, where you lay motionless.

Bye Dad.

The Absurd Gem

In 2016 Lucy began tweeting. After years of silence on the social media platform she had finally given in to the peer pressure of all the other dogs on twitter and began making her voice known. Lucy was old so her tweets were wise. “Wag and the world wags with you, whine and you whine alone” she tweeted one day. A perennial truth for sure. Lucy was full of insight lifted from the great poets and polished up as doggy wisdom. She was after all sinless and “without guile” so her tweets could be trusted.

When Lucy had been a younger dog she was savagely keen. She seemed to know exactly when the right moment would arrive when all was clear for her to take full advantage of the craziness of a house with four boys and slip out for a leisurely stroll through the neighborhood. Completely unaware of all the narrow brushes with death that a stroll like that would entail. Traversing from street to yard to backyard to back to the middle of the road where cars would stop and wait. Eventually there would be a frantic search at the house and then a search party and then a very worried child would pick her up and walk her scoldingly back home. It seemed that she was becoming a sage. Somehow she knew that things were changing and that at some point she would have to be more than just the family dog. She trained herself. Mainly by occupying her time with tricking her child owners into giving her endless treats. She would do this by going to the back door and intently staring until an unsuspecting child would let her out. She would then exit the house for a one minute pass around the back yard and then return to the door so that another child could let her back into the house and proceed to reward her with a tiny milk bone or dog treat. This process of gaming the system would normally result in a net treat intake of at least 5 to 7 treats per day. Another part of her training entailed a very rigorous napping schedule. There were three couches to choose from in the house where she lived so she would make daily rounds napping on each couch as the sunlight in the room was adjusted by time.

As the days turned to weeks and then years Lucy went from being the family dog to what all pets become if given enough time, the keeper of all family secrets. She heard all the fights, was there for all the meals (especially the holiday meals) and even seemed to develop very personal/different relationships with each person in the family. She was there when Grandma died. She was there for poker night on Sunday and for when it stopped. The birthdays, the girlfriends, the jobs, the late nights, the hidden cigarettes, the jealousy, the mending fences, the crisis, the celebrations. She was there for all of it. A true member of the family. The kind that only gets noticed when they are gone. Of the many family events that Lucy observed there were a few that became permanent imprints and that she alone would be the silent witness to. There was the year that the oldest member of the family made a very grand effort of becoming the worlds most pathetic mid life crisis actor by drinking whole bottles of brown poison and then pronouncing to everyone that he was “fine”. The truth about people who say that they are fine is that they are not fine. Lucy knew this and would communicate to him that she knew by simply staring at him. All during any speech about fineness she would just stare directly at him until he would finally notice and look down at her and say “what”? Once he had said this she knew that he knew, and that he would be going to sleep soon. There was another time when one of the children decided to sneak out of the house in the middle of the night to procure drugs for him and his friends from a neighborhood college student who was in his own words a “moral drug dealer'“. “Only LSD, mushrooms and weed” he would tell his 14 yr old client, “no cigarettes or alcohol”. Those substances were off limits as they did “real harm to the body”. Lucy knew all this but she kept it to herself. She remained what she was. A dog who loved her family. She was always around when anyone wanted to sit in the back yard and cry. Or fall asleep on a couch downstairs. Or not even make it to a couch. Her breath was so rancid in her old age that it was almost like smelling salts, rousing even the most passed out owner so as to make it to higher ground.

The twilight of any life seems quieter, slower. The truth about a dog’s life from a human perspective is that it is short and contained in that life is an image. A whole. An energetic beginning filled with confusion and want. A middle section that can contain comfort and pain, connection and loneliness, and an ending that is the summation of all things, which is of course suffering, and then peace.

One day when it was raining Lucy started to feel different. Bad actually. She hadn’t been able to eat her food that day and the thought of trying to get treats was very unappealing. Most of her owners didn’t notice. They had work and school and other human occupations to divert attention away from her. It wasn’t until night time that her favorite owner noticed. He was her favorite because she knew she was his. The long trip from Alabama to bring her to a new place had been for him when he was 5 yrs old. He never forgot and always treated her with great affection. Allowing her to sleep in his perfectly kept room that even his own brothers were not allowed in. He noticed late in the evening as the first of many seizures started. He pet her head and stayed up with her all night long. Then in the morning there were low voices from everyone talking about her as she lay taking shallow breaths. Lucy felt fear. A new thing was happening to her and she did not know what that thing was. After an hour or so of having a very hard time breathing the oldest owner picked Lucy up and put her in the car. Yay a car ride! Plus all the boys decided to come along. The warm energy of her owners in a moving car made her feel better. After the car ride Lucy found herself in a small room with the oldest owner and all of her child owners. They were all crying and telling her what a great dog she was. Lucy felt very loved by them because she was.

Then I guess it was time. A very thin man with deep lines in his face and a bushy goatee entered the room. He asked the oldest if they wanted more time. The oldest said no. Then the man carefully picked Lucy up and left. The next moments were very confusing for Lucy as she went with the man who smelled like the outside to another room where she was placed on a table and given an injection. And then just like one of her beloved poet inspirations had once said about endings “she could not see to see”.

Jesus is King

the son has risen in the west

"What did you go out into the wilderness to see? A reed shaken by the wind?”

The Nazarene knew.

That day when I sat with him in the main service he drew pictures of super heroes holding the severed heads of their enemies (and friends) on the offering envelopes and passed them to me with expressionless stealth. Folded carefully with the words DO NOT OPEN written across one side, the notes were portals to other worlds…I unfolded the first drawing. It was Batman holding a double sided axe (the widow maker). Blood dripped from one side of the axe. In Batman’s other hand was the recently detached head of his crime busting partner Robin. Still masked. All done in pencil using the Hymnal from the pew rack in front of us as a solid surface for drawing. The absurdity of what he was doing pushed the laughter out of me. Fits and stifles. I think I was able to take in 3 separate drawings before my mother calmly made her way from the choir loft where she sat behind the minister to insert herself between me and the new friend at my side to intervene and save me from folly.

Kanye has released another album. “Jesus is King”. I’ve listened to it a lot. It makes me remember my young self. The religious fervor and solitary certainty. Before smart phones and open source lectures on YouTube. I sort of love the album for this reason alone. It makes me wonder a little bit which one of us is late to the party.

The album is unmistakably Kanye. Horns, choirs, sick beats and some terrible singing (but of course he makes it work) combine for a very enjoyable gospel music record. If you’re “in the light”, its time to say hallelujah. If you’re not you still gotta give the man props. Kanye is what we want from our artists. The amplified version of our suspicions and gut feelings. The magnification of glimpses… Twitter thinks he has changed. I’m not so sure though. For me he is what he has always been. Hubris with style. The white tailored suit (with sweet kicks). The pink polo. The “my life is dope, so I do dope shit” Kanye. He’s still in there. Its just that now his private jet is full of people harmonizing scripture instead of scantily clad ladies and champagne. A variation on form for sure and maybe it’s for the better but he is still the artist. Now he just happens to be a Christian. Its fine. The overall message of the beginning of the album seems to be DO NOT ARGUE WITH YOUR FATHER. Heavenly or otherwise. Also, Chic-fil-a is a family restaurant that upholds the basic values we should all be striving to preserve. Ok… That’s also fine I guess. The real banger award on this album for me though has to be pinned to track 10 “Use This Gospel”. It features a single note piano drone and the skills of none other than the legendary soprano sax crusher himself Kenny G. From the first note the listener is invited on a tour of the Himalayas (peaks only) and when the beat finally drops (and the listener awakens from formless conscious awareness) the song is transmuted into pure gold. Midas has done his work. The album could have been left there but Kanye has one more thing to say. If it were me I would have left it there honestly. He made a pretty bold statement with the 10 tracks, but just in case anyone missed his point he added 49 more seconds. Just long enough to remind all the haters and critics. All the people of other faiths. All the people who don’t get the concept of substitutionary atonement. All the people who don’t know about the jackboots of God. That at the end of the day, or rather at the end of all days a confession will be drawn from your lips. Jesus. Is. Lord. 

Hollywood's Bleeding

The back of his neck looked like an aerial picture I had seen of the Mississippi delta. I wondered how a persons neck could get to look like that. It wasn't just that the skin was wrinkled. It was also discolored in odd ways. The lines looked carved and the texture was leathery. The mans neck told a story. Probably some ball games. Time in a yard on a tractor smoking a pipe. Maybe a few fights. Definitely many years doing some job somewhere. Nothing remarkable. The sun certainly played a major role in the story. The sun may actually have been the main character. This guys neck was just one thing in a sea of things that the sun had baked. My eyes drifted downward to the stack of tiny plastic communion cups placed into the... well whatever that thing is, that is made to hold the cups, right next to where the pencils and prayer cards go, right next to the baptist hymnal, right next to the holy bible itself. Gods word. The dudes ears were a little too big for his head. Thats what I remember really. 

I put the mirror that I had been using to stare at the back of my own head with down on a pile of cords from a left out hair dryer and makeup and pieces of floss. The bathroom counter is a mess.

As I leave the bathroom I get my fake earpods and put on the new Post Malone album. It is my 7th time listening to it from the beginning. I choose to listen to the “Posty's Universe” version on Spotify so that I can hear him talk about some of the songs while marveling at his face tattoos in the video clips. I'm struck by how disarmingly genuine he comes off in his monologues. There doesn't seem to be anything contrived about him. Even the playboy bunny tattooed next to his right eye seems genuine.

Hollywood's Bleeding is the 24 year olds third album. Its pop. Its hip hop. Its rock. Its Motown. The lyrics are simple and observational. Every song has a hard hook. The album is sweet and hopeful (“flossy” in the words of the man himself). Its also a devastating lament. He sings about insta-love and the internet. He says what we all feel here in the west. There's too much, “the world has gone to shit and we all know that”. The album moves me to stare at nothing for what seems to be an eternity.

“I want you out of my head, I want you out of my bedroom tonight, theres no way I can save you, cause I need to be saved too”.

The track “myself” starts playing. As I listen this song becomes the fulcrum of the album for me. It is the part where the artist Post Malone becomes the conduit of something collectively felt. He sings

“Its what it is, its how I live, all the places I've been
I wish I could have been there myself
I made so much, spent so much, but I can't get enough
I wish I could have been there myself”

Its a song about us. How disconnected we are from the experiences we are “having”. Much like Solomon from the Old Testament, Post has denied himself nothing in the way of pleasure and accumulation and has discovered in the empty aftermath the absurd gem of existential longing.

“all of this American dreaming, everybody's sick of believing, lets not give a fuck, till giving a fuck has no meaning”.

Perhaps the most profound aspect of the song is how it refuses to resolve. The ghost hangs. This is in part the power of the whole record. Its not getting at anything. It has no perceivable agenda and like the artist himself is simply a reflection of what is happening. Floss and all.