Puddles of My Podcast - Episode 18

Well, my Puddlers, its going to be another heatwave weekend, so watch out for those psychopaths as they emerge out of the woodwork trying to stay cool.  And since it is going to be such a hot weekend, what better thing to do than to wade in some Puddles of Myself- er, rather Yourself.

Anyway, like I promised (I always live up to my promises) we have a podcast up this week.  In this Episode 18 of Puddles of My Podcast, I welcome basketball enthusiast as well as the bassist and singer of the Tony Castles, Paul Sicilian.  In this latest installment, Paul and I discuss LeBron's Decision, the NBA Finals,  playing the clarinet, Paul's musical history, the legacy of Dwyane Wade, the best Celtic of all-time, the genesis of the Tony Castles, their upcoming album and tour with the Tom Tom Club, and 2010 NBA Predictions.  This podcast was a few months in the making so please sit back with a cool glass of water or beer in front of a fan or air conditioner and feel cooled by the sound of two grown men talking about basketball and music.

Live From New York...

It's ridiculously humid!  Seriously, I have to go on record and say that this is one of the best weather New York summers of all time - granted it is only my third REAL one.  I mean its hot, our apartments are sweltering, the average amount of sweat is up, power is running low, people are burning LeBron jerseys, we are definitely reaching classic summer psychopath levels here - you have got to love it.

Anyway, the reader comments are rolling in about my LeBron column and I just want to thank you all for doing so.  Keep up the comments and continue to let me know what you think.

Tomorrow, me and my associates will be submitting our sketch material to Saturday Night Live for consideration.  Here are a few synopses for your brief reading pleasure:

1. A teacher who literally has a stick up his ass conducts class.
2. The matriarch of a family - used to eating from a trough - doesn't know what plates are.
3. A husband has been lying to his wife about knowing famous people.
4. A fourth, tone-deaf Wilson brother joins the Beach Boys in the studio.
5. A racist guru delivers his wisdom to unsuspecting pupils.
6. A commercial for old fashioned duck sauce.

Do any of those topics interest you?

Now, to clear the backlog of items with a few links:

- I am planning a podcast this fall with the Indian writer Chandrahas Choudhury.  You can check out his blog here.  Chandrahas has one novel out called Arzee the Dwarf  and has just finished editing a collection of Indian fiction called A Traveler's Literary Companion. He is a friend of my friend, the artist, Janelle Sing and he is coming to America in the fall. Stay tuned for that and get acquainted with his work in the meantime.

- Another podcast I am planning is with the guys who run the bookstore, Book Thug Nation, on North 3rd Street between Berry and Wythe. I have met one of the guys, Corey, who runs the store at a party at my apartment and he definitely knows his stuff. I have heard a lot of good things about their collection and I will be stopping by this week.  They do readings and other kinds of events so hopefully you will be hearing about a reading that I will be doing there in the near future.

- First news from the Walkmen's new album, Lisbon.  A new track, "Stranded" has been released through NPR radio.  It seems like the Walkmen are taking up right where they left off on You and Me and are even looking to enhance and polish their sound if ever so slightly.  I am looking for a very brooding and wistful end of summer/fall listening to an album's worth of these songs.  Who knows, maybe I'll write about it in about four years.  But you need to check this song out for now.

- Finally, my current, upcoming reading list:

1. Finish Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf (classic Domino toolbox book)
2. All the Kings Men by Robert Penn Warren (classic Domino toolbox book that I just wrote about and in the process reminded myself that I need to re-read it.
3. Rabbit, Run by John Updike (talked into by this New York Times article. Updike reminds me of me).

Alright, my Puddlers, stick with me.  Enjoy my sports writing and I swear we are going to have another podcast up here this week. Too much basketball talk to cover that if I can't get a guest I may just literally podcast myself to get it off my chest.

It's just Puddles of Myself.

LeBron is Burning

Well, my Puddlers, I am sure that you have all been waiting for me to weigh in on all things basketball in the wake of “The Decision.”  I was at a party the other night and someone asked me to give my opinion of “The Decision.” I went into a long discussion of the different theories of basketball and what this means for the league next year, when the person I was speaking to asked:

 “But what do you think of the actual delivery?”

The only way I could respond was to say the following:

“Well, I consider myself a history buff, so I have to say that the TV special was the worst thing of all time.”

Now, of course that is hyperbole, but – is it?

I am going to split this post up into my play-by-play account of watching “The Decision Special” with my own thoughts on the actual decision itself and what it means for basketball as well as the legacies of Dwyane Wade, LeBron James, Kobe Bryant and Michael Jordan.  So, lets get to the night of “The Decision” shall we?

9:00

- “The Decision” begins with an introduction laying out the fact that LeBron James is about to make a decision.  There is a strange voice narrating that makes me sweat.  Oh, wait, my apartment is literally 99 degrees, that’s why I’m sweating

- Jon Barry compares waiting to LeBron James to the movie Trading Places when they wait for the crop report.  This is nothing like that. LeBron James was not part of two rich men’s elaborate $1.00 bet in order to switch places with a pompous rich stock broker.  Although, the rise and fall of the MSG stock on the day before and the day of “The Decision” does have some tie-ins.

- Mike Wilbon, Jon Barry and Stuart Scott go through the relevance of LeBron James’ decision to Cleveland. Depressed city. Depressed fans.  The city will die if he doesn’t come back.  Classic sports stories that deserve to be aired on national television.

- Stuart Scott narrates the failures in LeBron James’ career. Wait, if the entire show is going to be like this, well, then this IS my kind of “Must See TV.” Anything to make people remember Wade is better.

- Camera shows LeBron preparing in the gym of the Boys and Girls club. Wow, reminds me of wrestling a lot.  I really hope we see a chair shot tonight. LeBron chooses Cleveland, then rips off his shirt, revealing a Heat jersey (my sources say) gives Jim Grey a chair shot and puts on sunglasses while his NEW music plays.

- Stuart Scott goes through the free agent signings so far. A lot of bad deals. Tons.  This is the NBA.

- We come back to the studio and Jon Barry says that Chicago is the best situation for LeBron.  Young, talented point guard, great defensive center, good low post scorer, nice complimentary role players.  Duh.

- Chris Broussard says that LeBron will pick the Heat.  Chris Broussard made his name during the past two weeks. He has had all the inside and breaking news and has been right about basically all of it. He is the one who really cashed in.

- Jon Barry and Michael Wilbon discuss the makeup of an NBA team when you have three stars as opposed to one star.  They discuss the merits of staying with one team.

- There is a graphic of LeBron James in different jerseys of the teams that have been courting him.  I think he does look good in the Nets and the Bulls jerseys.

9:18

- Broussard with a great line, “My heart says Cleveland, but my sources say Miami.” This man MADE HIS CAREER this past week.

- There are more delays and graphics before we actually go to LeBron.  I have seen so many multi-colored graphics depicting the U.S. and how they are voting about LeBron this week.

- Now we get to see old high school clips of LeBron.  Yeah, we know.

- We get a replay of LeBron’s first NBA game in 2003.  I mean they are really toturing Cleveland fans right now.  I’m getting slightly uncomfortable and now it’s not the stifling heat of my apartment.

- Finally, we are kicked to Jim Grey and LeBron.  Jim Grey makes a limp joke about LeBron’s powder and then asks the obvious joke question, “What’s been going on?”

- This pre-Decision interview is completely bizarre.  Jim Grey is so out of touch.  He is just stringing a TV audience and a tortured fan base along. Is this journalism? What is this?

- I caught a shot of the little kids in the back who are watching. It’s so surreal.  Jim Grey references Barack Obama’s desire for LeBron to play in Chicago.  Mr. President, I love you, but for these next two years, please keep your nose out of the NBA and other sporting events. Just stick to the multitude of political problems we have – thank you.

- LeBron claims he made his decision this morning.  He says his mom helped him make the Decision.  Oh, mom buffer.  This is going to be bad.
- LeBron says he changed his mind in his dreams. Dreams? DREAM TEAM? SPOILER ALERT?

- Jim Grey is just a master at dragging this interview out.  However, to be fair, this whole situation has been dragged out entirely too long.

- LeBron James: “I just want to be in the best opportunity to win.”

9:27

- Grey asks the question.

- LeBron James: “Next year, I will be taking my talents to South Beach where I’ll be playing for the Miami Heat.”  There it is!  LeBron breaks everyone’s heart on live, national television. Ohio is snapped in two.

- Biggest double cross since the nWo. This OOZES of wrestling. There have been rumors of this conspiracy since the 2008 Olympics.  The meeting on the beach was rumored and it came true.  The actual decision came true.  LeBron James, Dwyane Wade, Chris Bosh; Hulk Hogan, Scott Hall, Kevin Nash.

- In this instance, the LeBron/Wade competition and legacy has totally shifted.  I would have loved them to be on different teams.

- I gotta say that the post-Decision speech was very articulate.  It’s probably the best he could do after all of that.

9:31

- We go back to the studio.  Broussard is gone? Oh, getting a raise and his own show?  He NAILED the 2010 Free Agency period.

- Reaction shots: In Miami they are happy. In Cleveland, they are sad. Right before they show the reaction, Jon Barry goes, “Oh, no.” This is classic trainwreck TV.

- Back to LeBron James in the gym.

9:38

- My head is spinning. I am so confused legacy wise.

- LeBron says championships are championships.  Really interesting. He is feeling his mortality at 25.

9:44

- LeBron is doing well in his interview with Michael Wilbon.  I do buy what he says about great players making others better.  OK, Bulls  had some GREAT roleplayers when Jordan played.  But there were literally a ton of scrubs on each era of championship teams. Jordan and Pippen made a lot of those guys better.

- Wilbon wants to talk turkey.  How much money in the contract?

9:48

- They are burning LeBron’s jersey in Cleveland.  That is an image we will always see for years to come.  Iconic. Yes. Terrible. Yes.

9:56

- We get one more moment with LeBron.  He says that he hasn’t turned on his phone since the Decision.

- Stuart Scott says Cleveland is devastated. LeBron makes the point that he is going to be taking less money. Ok, notes.  But, come on – one hour, back-stabbing TV special? That ain’t no pay-cut.

- Jon Barry is asking hard-hitting questions about sharing the ball.  LeBron says that they will all probably have less points per game.

- LeBron makes one mistake by not using himself as being downgraded.  He says, “I’m not going to down-grade D-Wade, D-Wade isn’t going to downgrade Bosh.”  We’ll give him a pass after this extra brutal hour.  That was terrible for everyone.

- Wilbon asks the Olympic conspiracy question. LeBron says it was in the making. Yes!  I knew that one NBA conspiracy theory was right. He calls it a “dream come true.”

- The one fan question we get is, can LeBron beat Obama in HORSE? ARE YOU SERIOUS? NOOOOO! MR. PRESIDENT!! Why?  I blame Obama for everything. For The Decision.  What a softball for LeBron to hit out to end the show.

10:05

- I thought this ended at 10:00? Oh, Lebron makes the announcement of the charity donation figure.  There is good in this after all. And that philanthropic gesture segues us fluidly into SportsCenter for some over-analysis.  This is the American Dream.

So, that was my play-by-play of the night as it happened.  I have had quite a few days to ruminate on what occurred on July 8, 2010 when LeBron made his decision to move to the Miami Heat from the Cleveland Cavaliers. As you all know, I love the NBA, so I believe that this was one of the best things that could happen to the NBA.  Although, the league is in danger of a lockout after the 2010-2011 season, this makes the storylines heading into the 2010-2011 season more interesting than they could have been otherwise.  Sure, the common sense side of me says that if LeBron had gone to Chicago to play with Rose, Boozer, Noah, Deng, and Gibson, he would have been a much more natural fit and their roster would have been extremely deep.  They would have become the favorite to win the East and most likely the NBA Championship, except that they still don’t really have the size to match the Lakers.  The East would have been interesting because the Bulls would have been a great team; Bosh and Wade and the higher-quality free agents they could have signed in Miami would have been a great team; the Celtics, getting the band back one more time, this time with a full season of chemistry and a Rondo who knows he is the best player on the team, are a great time looking to avenge their loss; the Magic are a spurned team that is feeling overlooked; the Hawks are headcases that are talented and can excite; the Bucks are quietly better; the Knicks might make the playoffs.  All of these things are exciting storylines and they are just happening in the East. In the West, you get Oklahoma City looking to stake a claim as the second best team; the Mavericks looking to capitalize on the end of Dirk’s prime; the Lakers looking to three-peat; and now that Stoudemire and Boozer and other free agents have moved East, the West is suddenly even more wide open than it has been in the past.

Yet, LeBron chose Miami. He chose a storyline with more drama – such an abundance of drama that it feels completely manufactured as if it were some kind of storyline concocted by Vince McMahon or Eric Bischoff back in the nWo days. So, you get all of the above terrific NBA storylines (the Bulls are still going to be a damn dangerous team with Boozer and now Korver and possibly Reddick for Rose to drive and dish too. Plus, they will play even better defense, and they weren’t bad at all at the end of last year), plus the intrigue of the Heat.  The fact that these three stars are looking to conduct what is the equivalent of an NBA science experiment.  They are basically putting forward the thesis that the Secret of Basketball (as Bill Simmons said) is knowing your role on the court, filling that role, and playing unselfishly. So far, they have all said the right things. They are sacrificing money, they will sacrifice numbers, they will make each other better and round out each other’s games, they will raise the games of the teammmates around them.  Other players are going to be tempted to take less money to play with them (Udonis Haslem made that decision today, Mike Miller is pending). The way they even fill out the roster is going to be an intriguing story.  Who will be the rest of the players on this team? They only have five players as of today. Can they make Mario Chalmers a serviceable to better than average NBA point guard by taking so much attention and pressure off him that he can just focus on his outside shooting and defense and eventually get overpaid when he forgets that Wade, LeBron and Bosh made him better than he was.  Can these three guys make players who are over the hill seem relevant and vibrant again by setting them up to succeed? Can they make a rookie a household name?  This is all stuff I want to find out as an NBA fan. I want to have these theories proved to me.  That anyone can thrive if they play with talent and if that talent plays unselfishly and within the roles of the team, within the perameters that allow for success.

Now, we get to the actual nitty gritty. To what I want to talk about.  I have been an unabashed Dwyane Wade fan and out of this whole situation, Dwyane Wade has emerged as the winner.  Even as recent as this past spring, it was looking like there was no way to stem the tide on the public’s perception of LeBron James as the best player in the NBA, as the most talented, and the fact that he would forever overshadow Dwyane Wade, who was in most cases his equal and in some areas his superior: most importantly in the category of championships.  Now, after one night, LeBron James has forever put himself beneath Dwyane Wade in the spectrum of the NBA and its greatest players. Wade will always have one more title than LeBron and people will always wonder why LeBron would want to have played with Dwyane Wade.  In the subsequent days since the Decision, we have seen the trio on TV and in public and Wade always appears at the center with LeBron and Bosh flanking him.  Wade is better known as a finisher and his game is the closest we have seen to Michael Jordan’s.  LeBron has always been praised for his passing and his well-rounded game, the fact that he contains so much Magic Johnson in him.  He has never had that killer instinct to take over a series that M.J. had or that Kobe has.  You could never picture him turning a series on its head, like Wade did in the 2006 NBA Finals  or dominating a series like Michael Jordan in the 1993 NBA Finals, both against teams that were better (Kobe has still never really done this). So, by choosing to play with Wade, by joining forces, LeBron has in some way acknowledged that he would feel more comforable facilitating. I am not saying he will be a Pippen role, it will be something we haven’t seen before, but he will not be the killer.  I usually agree with Bill Simmons about teams needing an Alpha Dog who will take the lost shot, and I think that this team will have an Alpha Dog (Wade) but I think they will redefine how limited those roles are.  They will still keep the structure that leads to success, but they will change how we view it. I think Simmons has gotten a little carried away in his naysaying of this Decision and how the Heat are going to proceed. And if he reads this and puts me in my place, I would be more than happy.

I am not going to harp on LeBron for seeking help.  I don’t want to compare him to Jordan or compare Wade to Jordan or compare Kobe to Jordan (he would like that too damn much). I don’t want to do it because now, I can finally, truly see, how unique of a HUMAN BEING Michael Jordan was.  Not just a basketball player.  He had some kind of psychological disorder of competitiveness.  I know that most players back in the 80’s and 90’s were more competitive and antagonistic towards each other, but Jordan (as we have seen in his HOF speech) took it to another level. His ability to raise a conflict, to create a challenge at the expense of whoever was in his way or even in his peripherary was extraordinary and also frightening. I was watching old footage of Jordan recently and realized there was no way to compare him.  Even Kobe on his best days, even if he wasn’t a dick, would never make us say his name the way people used to say “Michael Jordan.”  LeBron had the chance, I’ll admit – even more than Wade.  However, it is an different era and LeBron isn’t like Michael Jordan – no human being really is and I argue they shouldn’t be.  Michael Jordan’s ability, his name, his drive and nearly insane desire touch something within us that is hard to define, it gets at a part of human nature that not all of us want to know, that part of us that wants to succeed no matter what it costs and to make others feel foolish for even trying to stop what was inevitable.  It is a powerful force and element of the human soul and sometimes I don’t understand how he was able to personify it with such athletic beauty and grace.

Howcver, besides Jordan’s singular ability, we live in an era of basketball that is very much informed by the AAU culture of organized, nationwide, youth basketball.  Many of these players have known each other in some way or another since they were younger.  They are friends, they have grown up friendly and want to remain that way. Wade stayed at LeBron’s house when the Heat and Cavaliers would play each other.  That would have never happened in the past with Michael or Charles or Larry or Magic.  In a league that has over-expanded, where too many players have set the precedent of playing for a paycheck or for deferring to players who are better than them, where roleplayers hardly ever seek out the moment to help support the star, these stars would rather trust each other for the bulk of the work rather than wait around for a team to fit into place.  We would all rather work with our friends rather than strangers that we can’t trust.  So, I don’t blame any of these guys. Sure, those of us that love sports and that love the history of sports want our stars to seek out greatness.  Charles Barkley has criticized this decision.  Charles Barkley never won an NBA title and was a terrible defensive player and a bit of a headcase himself. I love Charles Barkley, but he is wrong in many ways.  However, judging Charles because he didn’t win a championship is wrong because championships aren’t everything, because they are very often born of circumstance and organization and things beyond the control of the player. The player or players can seize their destiny when they have the chance and very often Charles couldn’t, but he wasn’t often put in a situation to do just that.  However, championships do make up most of what a player’s legacy is.  Now, LeBron, Wade and Bosh have taken control of their destiny. They have chosen to give up individual accolades; they have given up the chance to carve out an individual identity in the historybook of the NBA; they have decided to make their reputation on themselves as a team, as three players who wanted to bring themselves to the championship at the cost of what it might mean to them as players – this is the ultimate gesture of team and that’s why I want to watch.  They have the talent, they have the situation they want.  The players will come to play with them.  Riley will get them the roleplayers.  It’s just up to them to deliver on their word and all the posturing it took for them to get their ideal situation. 

They should be able to do it, because they don’t have the shadow of Jordan looming over them – no one should anymore. 

Advantage Nadal

There are only two teams in sports that I will lose my mind over: the Philadelphia Eagles and the University of North Carolina Tar Heels.  I can’t even relay to you how many hours I have spent yelling at various televisions in public or in private when these teams are playing a game on TV.  I grew up in Philadelphia, so I became a die hard Eagles fan.  Over the years I have been pulled in at their attempts at success only to be repeatedly disappointed and tortured by their defeats. It is a cycle that has defined my sports fandom. I became a North Carolina Tar Heel fan because, at the age of seven, my father took me to an event known as the 1993 East Regional Semifinals aka the Sweet Sixteen.  We went to the Meadowlands to watch Virginia take on Cincinnati.  The game ended and I enjoyed my second live basketball game. As I moved to get up, my father stopped me and said, “Hold on.  There’s another game.”  My budding sports fan’s mind couldn’t believe it.  Then, the North Carolina Tar Heels took the floor in their Carolina Blue uniforms.  Eric Montross and Donald Williams were the stars of the team.  They beat Virginia that night and my dad and I didn’t get home until one or two in the morning.  I was hooked on the North Carolina Tar Heels and watched as they went on to win the 1993 NCAA Championship.  My love of these two teams, their players, their traditions – one successful, the other torturous – have been unparalleled throughout my life.  I have screamed horrible things at Cowboys and Giants fans.  I literally hate Duke University and every player that played there (unless they redeem themselves with gritty play in the NBA).  I will never admit that the Cowboys, Giants or Duke Blue Devils ever have a superior team – they always suck and get lucky.  And that has been the story of my sporting passion.

I realized recently, that slowly a third figure was emerging as a figure where I could direct my sporting passion and frustration toward.  Shockingly, this figure emerged in the sport of tennis. I sport I had for the most part always overlooked and even in some cases frowned upon as I was growing up.  However, in part due to this man, my opinion has changed on the sport entirely.  That man is Rafael Nadal.  And, in the most underrated sports story of the year, he has become my third favorite athlete/sports team to root for – perhaps of all time.

How did this happen you ask?  Well let me start in the spring of 2008 when I moved to Williamsburg, Brooklyn.  My roommate was a big tennis fan and as we entered the peak of tennis season with the French Open and Wimbledon, I began to sit and be patient and watch tennis matches with him.  We watched as Nadal won his fourth straight French Open in 2008.  I had seen Nadal play before, but I never paid very close attention.  However, as I watched the 2008 French Open unfold, I realized that he had all the attributes that I enjoyed in an athlete: drive, toughness, determination, grittiness, a bit of magic, passion and the essence of the underdog, the unwillingness to ever give in.  I say “the essence of the underdog” because Federer was then and in many ways still is seen as the best player in the world.  Federer was one of the reasons I did not like tennis.  He seemed to win too easily, he seemed smug (I have since come to find out that he is one of the greatest champions and nicest human beings, but I remain skeptical) and content with himself – in other words, he represented everything that I do not like in other people or in the world.  There was something substantive to Nadal.  He was Spanish and I love the Spanish culture.  He had long hair and played hard, so hard that everyone questioned if he could keep up his pace.  He was like a Romantic poet, like Keats or Shelley, someone who may just die at 25 or 26 because they are too damn explosive for this world.

Then, we came to Wimbledon 2008.  In my personal life, Wimbledon came on the last day of one of the best Fourth of July weekends I have ever had in my life.  Quite possibly the best, though this past one has risen very close to that level. As I watched the match at my kitchen table with friends of mine who were staying over, we suddenly realized that we were watching history.  We were watching quite possibly the best tennis match of all time.  You had Nadal and Federer with two contrasting styles, but both with the same desire to win the match.  This was on tennis’ biggest stage.  There was the drama of the rain that continued to threaten.  There was Nadal jumping up two sets and then Federer coming back.  There were the rain delays and then the match entered a fifth set and everyone began to wonder if the darkness would set in and that the match would have to be concluded on Monday – the fortnight plus one.  My friends and I also had the added drama of catching a train back to the city.  As the match went on, we let one train go. The match continued and we decided to let a second train go.  The match continued and we needed to make the third train or else we wouldn’t have a ride to the station. So, we sat in anticipation as the fifth set carried on into tiebreak.  Nadal and Federer went back and forth.  The match stretched closer and closer to the five hour mark. Finally, as the darkness was just about to envelop the edges of the stadium, and that iconic green court would have turned to a murky purple and grey, Nadal forced Federer into the net, collapsed on his back and screamed up into the evening air, his all white uniform standing out against the gloaming.  Federer cried (of course) as Nadal held up the Wimbledon trophy. Then, my friends and I grabbed a train to head back to the city and our overheated apartments.

Nadal kept the hits coming as he won the Gold Medal in the 2008 Olympics while Federer bowed out early.  Everyone began to question Federer’s dominance as Nadal rose to number one in the world.  However, I watched Nadal lose to Andy Murray at the U.S. Open and felt that first burning in my chest that some injustice had been done to my man.  Murray wasn’t better, he must have cheated.  Murray sucked and he got lucky.  Those were the thoughts that ran through my head.

When the tennis season resumed in February 2009 for the 2009 Australian Open, I found myself genuinely excited to watch.  And, when Federer and Nadal were to face each other once more in the final, I had to stay up all night.  I had been out at a show and been drinking, but I kept myself up at least long enough to watch the epic first set of that match.  The first set lasted nearly and hour as Federer and Nadal went back and forth. Nadal came out strong, but then Federer took control of the set, only to have Nadal come roaring back. They each made impossible shot after impossible shot. I sipped on late night beers just to keep my engine going, but I could barely keep my eyes open. Finally, Nadal won the set and I was able to stumble to my room and fall asleep in the four in the morning darkness. But not before I streamed coverage of the match on my computer.  I woke up the next morning to the terrific news that Nadal had won in four sets. He had certainly pulled even with Federer and was looking to leave the former smug champion in his rearview mirror.  As the spring came, I was anticipating another glorious summer of Nadal, who I all of a sudden realized I was a fan of.

However, Nadal injured his knee in the French Open when he lost to Soderling, which allowed Federer to win the French Open – the one tournament he had never won before.  That was followed by Federer defeating an ever-so-earnest Andy Roddick in the longest Wimbledon Final of all time.  We had to watch Roddick make self-deprecating jokes after playing the best tennis of his life and still losing to an off the charts smug looking Federer. I had to watch Federer in his gold and white jump suit as he was coronated “The Best Tennis Player of All Time” with the Most Grand Slam Tournament Championships of All-Time.  It made me sick. And I realized that that sensation, that sickness was the same emotion I had only reserved for the New York Giants, the Dallas Cowboys and the Duke Blue Devils.  I wanted blood.

Nadal tried to come back at the U.S. Open but fell meekly to Del Potro in the semifinals on a strange grey September day in New York.  Then, after I waited with a shocking amount of anxiousness for the 2010 Tennis Season, Nadal had to retire against Murray at the Australian Open.  The floodgates opened for the pundits – “this is it for Nadal,” “his knees couldn’t keep up,” “his game isn’t like Federer’s,” “he’ll still go down as one of the best.”  I couldn’t stand all of this, because I knew that he had more in him.  I knew that Nadal would not be denied.  He was an underdog, he was tough, he had a passion for the game that seemed to extend outward to life; in short, he reminded me of a young me.

Fast forward to this past June.  Nadal smokes Soderling in the French Open Final after Federer had lost to Soderling in the Quarterfinals.  It’s Nadal’s fifth French Open and seventh Grand Slam Championship.  Nadal is healthy.  He is ready to head to Wimbledon and win another title there.  He cruises through the first two rounds but goes five sets in the third.  Then, on June 12, the day the U.S. lost to Ghana, I woke up to find Nadal struggling against some guy named Petzschner.  He was down two sets to one and it looked like Petzschner was going to win the match.  I was slightly hung over and I was livid. My apartment was boiling hot and I just lost it.

“God damnit! Come on, Nadal! This guy looks like Tom Jane! You can’t fucking lose to him!”

Nadal fought back to tie the set, but then Petzschner pulled ahead again.  The pillows started flying across my living room.  However, Nadal composed himself (through a trainer break) and came back to win the set and tie the match at two sets apiece.  He was back in it and he had the mental edge. Heading into the fifth set, you knew that Petzschner was done.  And he was.  Petzschner had come so close to defeating Nadal, he had used all the essential tools to beat Nadal (strong serve that forces Nadal back on the baseline, attacking the net to keep him off-guard, for Nadal thrives on keeping his opponents off-guard with off-speeed shots), yet he couldn’t finish it off.  Nadal cooly won the fifth set 6-4.  He was into the quarters to play Soderling. I knew he’d beat Soderling after the confidence Nadal displayed at the French Open and as I followed the game tracker at work I was pleased to see he did.  I was also pleased to see that Federer lost .  The head boss at my office noticed I was following the matches.

“Did he lose?” He asked me.

“Federer?” I hid my nerves.

“Yes.”

“Yeah, Berdych beat him pretty cooly.”

“I can’t believe it. And Nadal?”

“Beat Soderling in straight sets.”

“I play so much tennis,” he said. “That I don’t watch tennis.” He chuckled and walked away in his finely tailored Italian suit.

Nadal was even helping me score points with my boss.  So, I knew that when he faced Murray, a player who had Nadal’s number in the past, that he would win.  And, following at work again, I was pleased to see my prediction come true.  Nadal beat him in straight sets.  Just outworking him and taking all the advantages that Murray gave him and also allowing Murray to beat himself.  I knew that Nadal would beat Berdych in the Wimbledon Final.

I woke up on Sunday morning with a house full of people.  We had partied by my pool the night before. As people staggered in and sat around the kitchen table with my family and I and our bagels and the hot, black coffee, we all watched as Nadal, once again cooly beat his opponent in straight sets.  He had won his second Wimbledon Title.  Reading about the match afterwards, Berdych said that Nadal was not playing his best, but that he just couldn’t use the opportunities to beat him.  It was then that I realized Nadal had become what Federer once was – the man that lets his opponent beat himself; that, even is he is not playing his best game, will not be beaten, becaue his opponents are so aware of the opportunity they have to beat the best, that they end up forcing their own mistakes and give the match away.  This was the trademark of the Federer era and it will be the trademark of the Nadal era.

As I look forward to Nadal trying to win the Career Slam at only 24 years old at the U.S. Open in September, I can’t help but think of how much he’s been through.  His knees have constantly been questioned.  He witnessed his parents’ divorce last year.  He suffered humiliating defeats and forfeits, yet at 24 years old, he has 8 Grand Slams to Federer’s 16.  Federer had only 5 by the time he was 25.  We will see if Nadal has to rack up all of his championships while he is young and if his game will not hold up over time.  However, I love Rafael Nadal.  And I do not doubt him for a second.  His serve has improved, his backhand is devastating and he is rounding his game out to keep the pressure off his knees.  He is in amazing shape and he defeats his opponents mentally by first defeating them physically.  He is a machine that can’t be stopped or slowed down. You see his opponents getting tired when they are up 2 sets to 1.  But Nadal never slows down.  You know he’s going to win.  He’s doesn’t suck and isn’t lucky like Federer is.  In Nadal, there is passion, there is grit, there is always that underdog essence.  And most of all, he wants to beat Federer because he wants to be the best.

That’s why I love him. He’s got me as a fan now and there will be plenty of expletives and thrown household objects to come.

Short Week

I know that I've been laying on some heavy blog posts recently, but I suppose I've just had a lot on my mind for whatever reason.  I use this blog space as a means of articulating it.  And, if you don't like it, just remember that if Tolstoy were alive now that he would be using a blog to articulate his own rambling and misconceived ideas about the universe, time, love and friendship. Besides, its the basketball offseason anyway, there will be plenty of basketball posts in the upcoming months that will drive you crazy and bore you to death - especially after the LeBron's Choice Special airing on ESPN at 9:00 PM tomorrow night.

This is a short week and I am actually very busy these days.  I am going to give you a Nadal column tomorrow evening and I would like to get a podcast up on Friday, but I don't think that its going to happen.  We have a few good ones coming up that just need to get done, but I urge to all you listen to the Lauren Gidwitz podcast, which is just gold in my opinion.  As well as this podcast, which is one of the most underrated and one of my favorites.

Before I leave you to take on my other projects (podcasts, revising my second novel, submitting sketches to Saturday Night Live), I just want to wax poetic briefly on the Fourth of July.  This past weekend I had a bunch of friends come to my parents home on Long Island to watch my father and I roast a lamb on his birthday, July 3.  Now, they also were able to swim in the pool and avoid the heat of the city, which is crucial.  However, it was a very happy occurance for me to have so many people I cared about in the same place and enjoying each other's company and the lucky fortune that I have been able to stumble across in my life.  It was a day where a lot of people were  united and even reunited.  The next day, a few of those guests stayed and I was able to show them the beauty of Long Island in the summer and on the Fourth of July, as I took them to my friend's humble, amazing and cozy apartment on Thatch Meadow Farm in the town known as Head of the Harbor.  There, we raked for clams at low tide in Head of the Harbor, watched dogs swim and huff with their heads above the salt water, we sailed on a Hobi-Cat sailboat while tugging a canoe, we swam, we watched the sunset surreal colors of purple, pink and then eventually that graceful periwinkle grey of the evening. Finally, the fireworks went off all along the horizon on the harbor, some exploding far out over the sound, some just over our heads from the shadows of some secluded wealthy lawn.  As a fire burned and our clams cooked on a pot with beer, garlic and butter, I watched the reflections of the fireworks in the water.  I thought about how there is nothing that I am more thankful for than these privileged glimpses of nature and natural beauty that I was able to grow up with and now show my friends; the people that I love.  I thought about the sound of fireworks over a body of water on Long Island and how, no matter where you may be sitting, if you sit by a body of water on Long Island, in the summer, while the heat of the day slowly turns to night, that there is the sound of chatter and the slight shimmer of gold forever in the air.  I thought about how that lasting sensation and image is always riding somewhere deep in my gut, and is always searching to be given word in different representations, objects and perceptions. 

All this, while the smoke of a summer long gone, floats away, like the dying of our conversation in the adjacent room.

That last line is from some funny idea I have for a very eloquent and elegant novel called The Adjacent Room. Sounds pretentious, no?

Anyway my Puddlers, no matter how serious I may get, there is always a joke, there is always gold around the corner.  So stick with me.  I will not let you down.

Friends 2

I’m going to write about Rafael Nadal winning Wimbledon another evening during this brutally hot week.  For now, there are other things I need to address, but there is something elemental about his struggles and achievement in all of this – at least I suppose so.

As someone who has spent the majority of his youth trying to understand the  impossibility of friendship rather than comprehend the fathoms of love, I again found myself, the day after the Fourth of July, staring into the azure blue of the deep end of my childhood pool and cleaning dirt and mulch from the shimmering bottom.  This isn’t to say that I never enjoyed cleaning my pool – in fact I always have loved it in some strange way.  I’ve loved it because you can stand outside in the heat, away from your neighbors and listen to the radio in private.  You can become the shrieking heretic in “Sympathy for the Devil,” or the snide hipster of “Like a Rolling Stone,” and then when you’re done, you can jump in the pool, submerge the heat and the sounds of the radio, only to emerge once more, pleasantly surprised by the heat of the air and the slick feeling of your hair as you push it or flick it back on your head.  Then, if you choose to, you can get out and touch the soles of your feet to the bricks that your parents paid for to surround the pool.  Or, if you choose to, you can simply float.

Jay Gatsby was shot in a pool, but I was never anything like him, though I did think I could’ve made an admirable Nick Carraway.  What I always admired about the whole mess that led to Gatsby’s demise, besides the idea of creating an image of yourself and building an identity in America, was the illusive notion of friendship that Nick Carraway seemed to identify with the Gatsby.  This idea was recently resuscitated with an almost equal level of eloquence by Joseph O’Neill in his novel Netherland.  These are both novels about men who are lost and who are able to find out truths about themselves by making acquaintances with two different criminals.  Gatsby is by all means a high level bootlegger and gambler as we are led to believe, while Chuck Ramkissoon runs an intricate but low-level Caribbean “lottery” throughout New York City. These narrators, Nick Carraway and Hans, are both looking to make an identity for themselves in New York, and have lost touch or have chosen to the lose touch with the places they came from. For Nick, that is the Midwest, for Hans it is London and his native Netherlands. Hans actually has a wife that he is estranged from, where Nick Carraway looks for love with the distant, independent, and modern female tennis player (see, I told you Nadal was in here!) Jordan Baker.  Because their love lives are unreliable, they look to notions of friendship they find in unreliable males.  Both Hans and Nick are able to find the sensations of masculinity in male friendship in both Gatsby and Chuck Ramkissoon: feeling privileged to be in the other’s company, the sense of adventure of moving about in the world with the other, the sense of sharing a similar desolation, the ability to drink a beer in the sun and share a private moment.  However, each one is left grasping at what their friendship meant or could have done after their “friend” has been murdered in each story.  Nick Carraway tells us in the beginning of The Great Gatsby that he wants no more “privileged glimpses into the hearts of other men.”  That, in essence, is what male friendship boils down to.

These similar tropes have been seen in the work of Jack Kerouac, whom I think in the 21st century should be madatory reading for elementary school boys instead of Treasure Island and that kind of book.  The Duluoz Legend of Keroauc’s mind’s eye represents the what should be the new “adventure book.”  Kids know about all the dirty things earlier now anyway, why should they not read about unbridled enthusiasm and driving across the country, climbing mountains, driving in cars, when they are young and are forced to be driven around by their parents.  No one wrote better about a fall day coming home from school and eating peanut butter crackers with milk than Kerouac anyway.  He was a maudlin and unapologetic nostaligist.  And, he often depicted the search for friendship in the cast of characters in one’s life better than most writers in any medium.  You may find him amateurish and by all means he certainly is, but even in the most amateur of technique, or brutish sensibilities, we can find the truths of the world.  The friendship between Kerouac and Neal Cassidy as it was fictionalized or marginalized by Kerouac’s work is something that should be admired as the representation of a relationship between two people in this world, two friends, two men trying to make sense of the years and whims that rose up within them and without them.

So, because of novels like these, I spent much of my youth looking for that kernel of truth in friendship, in male friendship that would answer me some kind of question.  What does it truly mean to be a friend to someone?  How does one get by when those friends have to travel and move on to do the different things with their lives?  What happens when our adventures end? Do our adventures ever end? Is it even possible to love somebody else?  These are the questions that the illusive search for friendship can raise up in your mind.  And I spent much time cleaning my pool and thinking about these types of things.  I found myself doing the same thing the day after this past Fourth of July because I had a variety of friends staying at my home from different levels of life: elementary school, junior high and high school, college, and post college.  Some of them knew each other very well, some of them knew me very well, some didn’t and vice versa.  Yet, we all got along and had a memorable time.  The kind of time that sticks to your memory and leaves the details there, so, that even if you are one who loses tracks of the details to distinct places and “times” easily, you would be able to recall the year, the light and perhaps who was even there.  And of course, when it was all over, when the beer and other litter had been dragged to the curb, I was there cleaning the pool, thinking about all that had happened and all of the fun that had ended.  The radio played and the mercury in the temperature inched closer and closer to 100 degrees – ambition echoed hollow In my gut and I just wanted to be finished with it all and be able to swim.  I wanted to run out into the shade and the swaying of the trees and the heat.  After that, I didn’t know what I wanted to happen – I just wanted that.

Then, a song I had been longing to hear came on the radio.  It was “Mother” by John Lennon, from Plastic Ono Band.  I, thinking of friends, of course thought of The Beatles and about how stories end and how we move on as I have written about before.  If you have listened to Plastic Ono Band it is all about moving on and how we do it in the different areas and through the different traumas of our lives.  I grew up loving the album, because when I was younger, I related to John Lennon more than any of The Beatles just like most kids do.  You gravitate towards John Lennon because he was the “smart one.”  All the Beatles were funny, but he had the quickest and most biting wit.  He made the bold statements.  He was the leader.  You don’t think about the finer shades that you do the longer you spend with the Beatles: “Paul was the most melodic,” “Paul was the most natural musician,” “George’s songwriting was held back just look at All Things Must Pass,” “I agree with George’s pragmaticism and spirituality more than with anything harsh that John had to say, or simple that Paul had to say.” When you are young, you love John Lennon, because that is what time has taught us about the Beatles.

And I loved John Lennon on Plastic Ono Band because he said all the bold things, because he screamed in his John Lennon way and because he made hooks out of the syllables in his verses in that singular John Lennon/Beatles/mostly John Lennon way (just listen to “Mother” when he says “Sooo, ayyyyyeee”).  However, I loved it the most because no matter what I was going through, I could listen to it and feel clean again.  It was like getting a haircut for your soul.  That image seems demeaning, but the sentiment is true.  Whenever you go for a haircut, you go for that feeling of newness, of freshness. “With this haircut, I’m going to do something. I’m going to impress someone. Something’s gonna be different.”  Whenever I put on Plastic Ono Band that is the intent that I have. From the refrain of “Mother” when Lennon says “So, I/I just have to tell you/Goodbye, goodbye” to the thrilling coda when he screams “Momma don’t go/Daddy come home” you know that he is losing the demons and  whatever yours may be, you can lose them to with his screams and with the hypnotic piano and drums. Then we get to “I Found Out” where John tells whoever is listening that “I’ve seen the junkets/I’ve been through it all/I’ve seen religion from Jesus to Paul/Don’t let them fool you with dope and cocaine/No one can harm you/Feel your own pain.” And of course he throws the double entendre in there with the loaded word “Paul,” making you think just a little bit harder about what he means because he is saying it with such conviction.  As the album veers from harsher commentary to the brooding slower numbers such as “Love,” “Working Class Hero,” and “Look At Me,” you get the ultimate sense of someone stripping themselves to the essentials.  There are no comments on what friendship is or what love is, besides to say that “Love is real/Real is love.”  This effect is refreshing since there is no overarching statement leading you in a direction.  Love is real, is merely an indicator of a feeling.  Because even John probably didn’t even know what it was that he was calling his love with Yoko Ono at that time.

Then, of course we get to “God,” which has always been one of my favorite songs of all time because it doesn’t let you get away with anything.  Now, many people may call this song merely self-important sermonizing, but I can’t stress how powerful I used to find this song and how necessary I still find it.  How often to you address a statement to God that could be addressed to the earth or to something more definite, when all you are doing is trying to measure out the amount of pain or confusion you are feeling?  How often to you place meaning on a false idol of any kind, God or anything else?  When John lists through the names of all the things he doesn’t believe in anymore, all the icons that he is tearing down, it is timeless in a careening way of never letting yourself get consumed in the things that you have consumed your time with.  It is an exercise in separation, in distance and in seeing something from a new perspective.  When punk music came around, they did the same thing, in a less eloquent and less conscious way.  They wanted to tear down icons because it looked cool, not because it trapped them.  This is all the stuff of James Joyce.  There should be no nets that trap you.  All our Elvis’, our Zimmermans, our Kennedys, and our Beatles need to be overthrown at every turn because they are wait rein is in to saying “we can’t.” Those images and icons, while showing us what is possible, also indicate to us that there is something that we can’t or shouldn’t do or that we aren’t capable of doing, but we are always more than capable.  So we have to get rid of what we’ve already known from time to time, we need to start over again to remember that there is only us in the end and that’s all that there ever was to begin with.  That is the haircut that allows us to see what we’ve been consumed with better than we’ve ever been able to see it before.  That allows us to understand what our love is; what the feelings of friendship we are longing to define are.

This was supposed to be a manual on cleaning pools, but now its about cleaning something else.  I guess what it’s all about is realizing that the Midwest of your youth never really existed, that no matter how many books you read, how many words you learn, you’ll never come upon that word known to all men, you’ll never truly understand how to describe the impossibility of friendship or the fathoms and blue shades of love.  All you can do is remember all of the things that brought you to a certain point and then try to forget them all, try to forget the way you saw them so that you can see them in the way that they really are.  Because in the end, its all about what you can accomplish and very often you can’t accomplish much without other people, but with them you can often lose yourself by forgetting what’s important or forgetting how you see them. So, you have to get a haircut from time to time – alter that identity and those identifications, if ever so slighlty, in order to keep chasing what you’ll never be able to fully capture.

Actually, this was a pitch for a new TV show called Friends 2.

Summertime Clothes

I don’t have John Williams’ novel, Stoner, in front of me at the moment, so I will lack the ability to provide you with all the quotes that I want to share.  However, there is one poignant quote that I was able to track down.  It is somewhat lengthy, but it sums up a lot of things in general:

“He had come to that moment in his age when there occurred to him, with increasing intensity, a question of such overwhelming simplicity that he had no means to face it. He found himself wondering if his life were worth the living; if it had ever been. It was a question, he suspected, that came to all men at one time or another; he wondered if it came to them with such impersonal force as it came to him. The question brought with it a sadness, but it was a general sadness which (he thought) had little to do with himself or with his particular fate; he was not even sure that the question sprang from the most immediate and obvious causes, from what his own life had become. It came, he believed, from the accretion of his years, from the density of accident and circumstance, and from what he had come to understand of them. He took a grim and ironic pleasure from the possibility that what little learning he had managed to acquire had led him to this knowledge: that in the long run all things, even the learning that let him know this, were futile and empty, and at last diminished into a nothingness they did not alter.”

Now, this is not the most upbeat quote that you could pick out. And Stoner is not itself a novel that is filled with humor or anything terribly upbeat.  But there is a truthfulness to it, a kind of simplicty and an inevitablity that you can’t argue with and that you have to eventually account for.

I am always going to associate Stoner, oddly enough with sensations of summertime.  One of the reasons I am going to do this is because I read the book during the high heat of this past June. I read it sweating on the Union Square 4,5,6 platform; I read it with an aggravating headache at the Lorimer L stop; I read it drinking water and coffee simultaneously on the rooftop out of my kitchen window on luxurious summer Fridays; I read it in my bed, sweating again, but listening to the whirr of my fan and the whish of cars along the road outside.  Stoner as a novel is more than just summer.  Its pages actually remind one more of the end of summer, the kind of weather we have refreshingly felt this past week along the avenues of the city and I’m sure elsewhere.  That thrilling morning chill when the sun is still very bright and you know that the heat of the day is simply lurking in the shadows of the homes and buildings that surround you, possibly in the grass and the dirt and will reveal itself in the stretch of the afternoon until it finally disappears into the cool and dew of the night – that time when you pull out a sweater or sweatshirt and wear it on your bare chest, perspiring only lightly. Stoner does all seasons.  But the concern here, the concern with summer is that Stoner offers such a view of detachment from one’s life that it seems so out of step with the things we feel in the summertime.  Usually, summer is a time for getting grass stains on your shirts.  Letting those dripping ice cream streaks run down and plummet to the knitted tops of your socks;  running blackfooted on grass and pavement; allowing the sweat to stick to your skin and the smell of dirt to linger on your fingertips and fingernails.  Sand and salt live in our hair in this vision of a popularized summer.  Stoner on the other hand is a tale of a man who finds his life being lived for him as he goes along.  Sure he participates in a marriage, a career, an affair that could be called love, and a passion for literature that he supposes rings true, but in the end he is left grasping at what has been truly palpable in his life.  That is not what we want to think about in summer.  In summer we want to think about staying up all night; we want to think about swimming in the ocean; we want to think about love and drinking coffee early in the morning and surprising ourselves at how good that can feel when everying this quiet and hot.

So how can Stoner help us in the summer? Well, it can give us memories of reading its direct and poetic prose for starters.  However, it can also cause us to remember to take hold of our lives at every moment. A passion may be stirring in your gut and you may be told by someone who is older and presumably wiser than you what that exact fire is supposed to be, but you don’t necessarily have to listen.  You can decide what the definition of your own passion is.  You may be intrigued by a quiet, charming girl at a party and you may want to make her your wife.  And perhaps you do.  And perhaps you try at that marriage and it doesn’t work, even though you have a child.  That doesn’t mean you have to listen to that institution of marriage and remain within its walls.  You don’t have to let life define you.  You don’t have to give in to a career when true love is calling to you.  You don’t have to turn your back.

Maybe I missed the point of the novel and maybe things like a career, the institutions of live, and the advice of older people are all vital and important.  But why I want to dwell on this, is because William Stoner is the second character that I have encountered in fiction that so attracted me due to the sort of disconnect that was so apparent in that character.  The first was Jack Burden from All The King’s Men by Robert Penn Warren.  Jack Burden’s world was vastly different than William Stoner’s.  Jack Burden was involved in the political game of 1930’s Louisiana.  Jack Burden knew humidity and heat, he knew how to dig in the dirt – he knew how to find the kind of things that stuck to people.  Jack Burden helped Willie Stark become the governor of Louisiana and he was good at digging up dirt and making it stick, yet he did it with such a detachment, with a wave of the hand that said “that’s just the way life is” that I was always so intrigued.  It made the posture of sticking your hands in your pockets seem like a defense mechanism against all that was complicated and band in the world – because with your hands in your pockets, you could just walk away from Pandora’s box, you could let it all fall to hell and not give a damn; only breaking a sweat if you pulled your one hand out to grasp a flask of whiskey in the humid Louisiana night.  Jack Burden wanted to care about things, which William Stoner  very well wanted to do as well.  Perhaps the first person narration helped Jack Burden’s case a little bit more.  For in the end of All The King’s Men, after everything has come down, Jack Burden understands how to return to his life. He has recaptured what is important to him, something that he had forgotten a long time ago, or perhaps never even truly known, and made it palpable. He is able to pursue it. And, as he so famously does, he becomes one with the mist with Anne Stanton amid the pines in Burdenville.

All The King’s Men reeks of summer and it always will.  The heat of the highway is captured as perfectly as it has ever been captured in that novel.  And you will get no better feelings of nightime in the summer than when Robert Penn Warren describes driving on the road at night and soon images of a spiderweb and the inevitability of actions in life come to the page and you start thinking about those late nights that you drove in the summer, smelling woodsmoke after a western rain, or in the orange light of sand lined streets, or away from the fair where the merry-go-round and ferris wheel lights blinked and spun as if they could tell you something you felt you already knew.

Blitzen Trapper reek of summer as well – at least I think they do.  And like Stoner, even if they don’t, my experience of their new album Destroyer of the Void has been filtered though the season of summer.  I’ve digested the album just as the summer entered the beginning of its strongest phase.  I did the same with Blitzen Trapper’s first big album, Wild Mountain Nation, which was actually their third album.  I listened to that album along the playing fields of Brewster Academy, revelling its mix of slide guitars and eccentric Pavement noise workouts.  Then, in 2008, there was Furr.  That album came at the end of the summer and it worked perfectly.  It was more focused on the rustic element of their sound and featured infectious folk rockers with playful lyrics and raucous grooves alongside memorable folk melodies and neo-murder ballads.  This latest album Destroyer of the Void has them expanding on that sound and adding a level of lushness that hasn’t been a part of their palette so far.  However, the two songs I want to tie together are two of their best piano ballads, that were actually recently compared by Pitchfork in their review of the album.  “Not Your Lover” is off Furr and is very much a Neil Young styled piano song.  Pitchfork said that this song was inferior to the newer “Heaven and Earth” off Destroyer of the Void.  I disagree.  “Not Your Lover” is definitely a poignant song about a guy sleeping next to his lover and realizing that while he is asleep, he’s not her lover anymore.  This is an endlessly fascinating idea of who we become when we are asleep.  It’s very much in line with Finnegan’s Wake because when we go to sleep we leave those realities and identies of our waking life behind and we can theoretically enter the heads and dreams of people we don’t even know, we can even become a part of that great unconscious story of history.  Certainly our identity as a lover is taken away, because when we are asleep we are alone and we indulge in those fantasies we have of who we can be.  This is all interesting stuff to be sure, but a line can be very neatly drawn from this song to After the Goldrush-era Neil Young. “Heavan and Earth” is a different beast.  Again, it is a piano ballad, but it hooks you in with a repetitive chorus/chant that introduces you to the song.  It then leads you on a vision of simplicty that I find to be very in tune with much of the writing that is found in Stoner or even in All the King’s Men. Lines like, “Over the Western World/Shadows fall under the kind and dying trees we call together/Still to feel the breeze/To shatter all these waking dreams we’ve told ourselves/To keep us free and clean.”  Again we are entering this play of dreams and the waking life.  The things that keep us free and clean are our dreams, because we can just take off and become bandits every time we hear the song “Isis” come on and forget about our jobs and whatever the hell else we are supposed to care about and go on and be clean and free of all those things.  The waking life is that life that keeps our identity in check, it is what defines us as lovers or as friends – it is what enriches us and attaches us to the earth. So, like the singer of Blitzen Trapper (I don’t know the names I just like the music) says in the song, “Heaven and Earth are mine, says I.”

So, we have Blitzen Trapper, we have All the King’s Men, we have Stoner and we have summer. On the surface, they don’t all seem to have anything to do with summer.  But, summer is that most tortured of seasons.  Not just because its so hot and because the days can stretch on forever and lead to a certain boredom and malaise.  Its because its so fractured.  You start off summer full of a crazed excitement because the weather is fantastic and you have to get outside for every hour of the long day; you have to drink refreshing cocktails; sit outside and eat; you have to go to all those places before they close up for the fall, before it gets too cold.  Then, summer, disturbingly, yet peacefully comes to an end with those fall breezes sneaking in and reminding you of something, at first school, but then you realize it is something more than that, because it always reminded you of something more than that when you were in school.  Summer is about escape, but its also about getting dirty, about feeling the earth on you more than you ever have during the past year. Its about sleeping contendedly with your shorts in a heap on the floor, grass and dirt stains all along the seat; its about drinking on rooftops and not giving a damn about the morning, because the stars look so good sitting in place up there.  See, all these things reek of summer.  And we are individuals whose lives are shaping themselves in front of us. And we can take part in that life whenever we want to, we can grip it and make it in our image.  Even if we don’t know exactly what that life is going to be.  Because, like Robert Penn Warren wrote in All the King’s Men, “the end of man is to know.”

Two For the Price of One?

I'm trying to concoct a longer blog post for you all this evening at the moment.  However, in order to hedge my bets I decided that in case the internet craps out, or in case I run out of time to post something before I pass out from beer stupor, that I would get something quick up for you.  Right now I am toying around with a feeling that has to do with music of the summer, Blitzen Trapper and the novel Stoner by John Williams.  I'm going to furiously scribble away at that right now.  However, in the meantime, I am going to leave you with a song that I recorded with David Stern of the Sanctuaries and Erik Gundel of Motel Motel two distant summers ago.  Let's hope that we recreate the magic in order to achieve a dream of mine: creating my own song medley.

Stay tuned: