Thanksgiving

Thankful for Loudon Wainwright.

If I argue with a loved one, Lord,
Please make me the winner.

It occurs to me that Loudon's story, which is pretty close to mine, isn't true of my Thanksgiving celebrations anymore. I'm thankful for Kate's family, the whole multi-generational, mostly functional bunch, with whom I've been privileged to share the Thanksgiving holidays for the past 28 years.

Walking to Nowhere

Walking to Nowhere, at the Image Journal blog.

The Great CD Blowout Sale, Pt. 1

Over the weekend I tried to unload several thousand CDs via a sale at my house. To answer a question that came up frequently, no, I didn't list the CDs. This is because I'm not inclined to spend several weeks of my life typing out the names of CDs, prices, etc. You had to be there.

And being there was actually pretty fun. I had originally intended to set aside four hours of my Saturday to make this happen. The reality is that people continued to stop by all weekend. I sold about 600 CDs, and made some money. But the best part was interacting with the 50 or so people who stopped by, music fanatics one and all. It was like living the part of Rob Gordon in "High Fidelity," but without the attendant snarkiness.

A woman who runs an online business stopped by and wanted to buy the rest of the CDs. Aside from offering a ridiculously low price on the CDs, I didn't want to deal with her because she knows nothing, and cares nothing, about music. As ridiculous and pathetic as it probably sounds, I want these CDs to go to good homes. So I turned down her offer. I'll probably do Round 2 of the Great CD Blowout Sale on December 11th. You all are welcome to venture to central Ohio and participate. I'd love to see you.

The Wrong Religion

The crazies have had it wrong all along. Obama isn't Muslim. He's Hindu.

The Drive in Fundraising Drives

Okay, you all have heard these kinds of pitches before, so I'll make it short and sweet. There's desperate in Ohio, which might mean financially straitened circumstances, and there is desperate in Cambodia. They are not equivalent. Not even close.

Twenty-five percent of the population -- over two million people -- were executed during the Pol Pot regime. The country has never recovered. There are tens of thousands of orphans in the country, and they face a certain future. Shouldn't that be uncertain?, you might ask. Nope. If the orphans are girls, they are sold into sexual slavery. It's just what happens.

Asia's Hope, run by my friend John, feeds, clothes, shelters, and loves on these kids. It's a grandiose claim -- the hope of a continent, for God's sake -- but knowing what happens with these kids, and knowing what might have happened to them instead, is enough to break my heart and fill me with great, great hope. Enough to fill a continent? I don't know. It's enough, though.

You can help them raise $100,000, which will also considerably raise the hope levels of quite a few kids. Some lucky person will win a new car. It's kind of like playing the lottery, except this time if you lose you're helping kids stay alive, and you're hoisting the grand middle finger of hope to anyone and everyone who would exploit these kids. It's a pretty great deal. You can't and you won't lose.

Robert Gordon - Fresh Fish Special

It wasn't Robert Gordon's fault that he came along twenty years too late. And five years too early. Robert wanted to be Elvis. Not Fat Elvis, either, but the Hillbilly Cat who made all the little girls scream in 1956. But Elvis had already come and gone by the time Robert recorded his 1977 debut album. Sha Na Na had led a dubious rockabilly revival in the late '60s, and The Stray Cats spearheaded their own belated and immeasurably more popular revival in the early- and mid-'80s. Stuck in the middle was Robert Gordon, who was the best of the bunch. Robert hooked up with old Link Wray, who had played guitar with the original rockabillies back in the day, and who had made his own indelible mark on rock 'n roll history in 1958 with his scintillating guitar instrumental "Rumble." Link had the guitar hooks and Robert had the six-inch-high pompadour and the snarl, and off they went.

1978 was a weird musical year. Punk had arrived, but not really. The Sex Pistols and The Clash were still rumors to most people in the U.S. The pop charts were dominated by the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack, Abba, the Johns -- Elton and Olivia Newton -- and schlockmeisters like Debbie Boone and The Commodores. But Robert Gordon detonated this little number in the midst of it. He made me glad to be alive.

Thomas Wolfe, Then and Now

You really can' t go home again. No, really. At the Image Journal blog.

The Annual Political Post

They tell me that Tuesday is election day. Get out and vote, because it's your patriotic duty.

I don't think I will. There's no one I want to vote for except Travis Irvine. In the interest of full disclosure, Travis Irvine's dad is my good friend Mike, and I've hung out with Mike since before Travis was born. Travis is primarily known as a stand-up comedian and independent filmmaker, but don't let that dissuade you. He's funny, and his films are good. Perhaps most tellingly, he's not a politician. Now he's running as the Libertarian candidate in Ohio's 12th Congressional District, opposing Democrat Paula Brooks and Republican Pat Tiberi.

I want Travis to win for a couple reasons. First, I actually like his ideas. Second, it's about time Ohio had a congressperson who, in his late 20s, is trying to make it on his own but still lives occasionally with mom and dad. There's no politician more emblematic of the desperate times in which we live. Paula and Pat point fingers at each other, and try to convince you, the impressionable voter, that the other is at fault. Travis merely says that we're all screwed, and that it might be time to start all over again. Guess who's right?

Nomads

Sometime during the Clinton/Bush administrations, American life changed. We're still living in the fallout of those changes, and I don't know if anyone has yet written the definitive historical analysis of what happened, but I certainly know the day-to-day ramifications. I have far less money than I used to have. It is almost impossible to find a job. And the things that used to matter in terms of stability and planning for the future don't seem to matter at all.

Here's the way it used to work: Go to school. Stay in school a long time. Pile up some degrees because historically the more degrees you pile up, the more money you will earn in your career. Then go to work. Make a couple strategic career changes along the way to bolster your earning potential. Sock some savings away every paycheck, and watch with wonder, year after year, as the cumulative effects of time and compound interest work their magic. Retire at 60, or, if, hard pressed, at 65, and enjoy your golden years in a gated community on a golf course.

I belong to the last generation that bought into this bullshit. The kids know better. It actually worked out, more or less, for the one or two generations ahead of me, and I suspect us Boomers just assumed that this was the way it would always work. But the great unspoken outcome of this recession is not just that the profligate and over-extended have lost their shirts, but that the fiscally conservative -- those who have played the game by the rules -- have as well. What has happened is that we have now lost most of that savings that had been piling up paycheck by paycheck, decade after decade. When the stock market tanks, the more you have, the more you have to lose. This is an incontrovertible law of the universe, like Banks Cannot Go Out Of Business and Anybody Can Write, So What The Hell Is A Professional Communicator?

I and my piled-up degrees and my 28 years of corporate experience interviewed for a job last week. The hiring manager told me that he had received more than 500 resumes for the position. It is almost miraculous that I was granted a face-to-face interview. But here's the kicker. If, by some equally improbable miracle I am actually offered the job, I will be able to work for 6 months. That assumes that the corporate budget doesn't get tweaked in the meantime. Then I get to start the process all over again, 1 vs. 500. And I hate the very terms of the engagement. These people are not my enemies. I know some of them. They are my friends. They are as qualified to work as I am, and just as deserving.

The American Dream? Psssst, here's a secret: it's a Nightmare. It doesn't work anymore because nobody works.

So I was thinking about all of that in relation to yesterday's sermon which, among other things, concerned an old, rich dude named Abraham. Abraham had entered into the golden years, a time when he should have been lounging, single malt Scotch in hand, on the golf course in Dubai, or wherever the hell Ur was. Instead, his life was uprooted. His retirement planning was shot to smithereens by the call of God, and he ended up a wandering nomad, believing in some vague, impossible promise that it was all going to work out in the end.

I'm not ready for retirement, and I hate golf in any case. But there might be some lessons there. So here's what I'm currently thinking the call of God might entail for me. I think I'm being uprooted, and I think that might be okay. I think I'm being called to share my life more and more with other people. As in, you know, living with other people. Our kids are gone, and we now have a housemate, a single woman who moved in with Kate and me about a month ago. It's been great. And I'm thinking that trend is likely to continue, and, if possible, expand. I think it's highly likely that we'll move out of this 4-bedroom, 2.5-bath monstrosity that we no longer need, and that we'll move to a much smaller place that will, I'm sure, still have room for others. I have no idea what that's going to look like. But if this country is changing in the ways I think it is changing, then good old American independence is no longer an option, and it's debatable whether it's even desirable in the first place. I'm fairly sure that for better, or more probably for worse, we're in this together.

And it's okay. Really. Life is going to hell, and I am crazily optimistic about the future.

Contemporvent Growtivation

Regardless of the type of church you do or do not attend, this is pretty funny.

Letting Go and Traveling Light

Here's a wonderful article from jazz critic Terry Teachout (h/t to Christian Hamaker for pointing it out.) It reads in part:

I, too, once felt the mad desire to own every jazz record ever made, and to have them all shelved in chronological order at arm's length from my desk. Today I own just two racks, and whenever I acquire a new album, I get rid of an old one in order to make room for it. Not only has this imperative made me ruthlessly selective, but it has forced me to reconsider my priorities. Time was when I bought records in order to say that I had them. Now I keep them only because I love them.

No doubt the day is almost here when it will be possible for people like me to download the Complete Performances of Everybody to our computers...except that I'm no longer that kind of person. I love Art Tatum, but I don't want to own every record he ever made. I want to own the ones that matter to me, and let the others go. I want to be able to pull a CD or book from my shelves at random and know that it will please me, just as I hang on my walls only paintings and prints that move me deeply.

Why have I come to feel this way? Because I'm fifty-four. Life, I now know, is short, too short to waste, and the actuarial tables leave no possible doubt that most of mine has passed me by. As a professional critic, it's my job--my destiny, you might say--to spend a fair amount of time experiencing art that I don't like. Insofar as possible, though, I don't propose to waste any more of the days that remain to me consuming bad art than is absolutely necessary. Unless I'm being paid to do so, I won't even finish reading a book I don't like, or listening to a record that fails to engage me. I have better things to do, and not nearly enough time in which to do them.

Yeah, buddy. This has been the Summer/Autumn of the Great Purge at the Whitman house. There are several reasons for that. Our kids are more or less on their own now, and we're planning to downsize in the next year or so, and we have to begin the process of jettisoning the accumulated dross that we will no longer be able to store. And I'm unemployed, and frankly the sale of some of that accumulated dross has helped us pay our bills. But in the Age of Everything, there is much to be said for making hard choices. Time is passing, and it cannot be replenished. So I've given away or sold a bunch of books, most of which I haven't even looked at in decades. It's possible that I'll miss that medieval philosophy text book that I haven't cracked open since 1976. But I doubt it.

And I'm in the process of unloading about 4,500 CDs, some of which I've simply given to friends or family who are interested in the music. It's not totally altruistic. In my case, I've backed up the music I'm interested in keeping on a 2 TB hard drive, and then I've backed that up on another 2 TB hard drive. I ought to be good to go forever. But forever, as always, is an illusion. You can't back up a life. It's been good to have that at the forefront of my mind.

Mavis

If all goes as planned, I'll be heading to Chicago for a couple days later this month to hang with Mavis Staples. The interview should later turn into a big feature article for Christianity Today Magazine. I'm like a little kid on Christmas morning.

Can I say, as a married man, that I am in love with Mavis Staples? Open up, this is a raid.

New Music From Aradhna

Superb new music and exquisite cinematography from Aradhna, who, yes, as the trailer states, blend east and west in lovely, heartbreaking ways.

Conjuring the Ineffable

Bill Evans conjures the ineffable at the Image Journal blog.

Ever Thought of Coming Back?

One-man band Kelley Stoltz wins the coveted Brian Wilson Clone Of The Day Award. This is such a great song, and it perfectly encapsulates my current theological views. Fuck the job search. I want the Rapture.

Ramble Tamble

I'm stuck in the house for a few days after surgery, wearing a bandage/dressing on the side of my face that looks vaguely like a French chef hat. But that won't stop me. Down the road I go.

Christians, Meet Culture

Pornographers! They're New! And just as evil.

Happy Fall!

A Glorious Day

There have probably been better days in the history of recorded music. But off the top of my head, I can't think of any. Tuesday saw the release of 5, count 'em, 5, absolutely stellar albums:

Mavis Staples - You're Not Alone
Robert Plant - Band of Joy
Justin Townes Earle - Harlem River Blues
Superchunk - Majesty Shredding
Jamey Johnson - The Guitar Song

Any one of these albums is cause for great rejoicing. But they all could easily end up in my Top 10 list at the end of the year. And, except for the whippersnapper Earle, they all represent the triumph of mature-to-senior artists over the latest callow youth flavor of the month. And give him credit. Justin Townes Earle may only be 28, but he sounds like he spent time hopping freight trains with Woody Guthrie.

Mavis Staples - You're Not Alone

The big news here is Mavis's collaboration with Wilco frontman Jeff Tweedy. Tweedy produces, plays guitar, and contributes the quietly pensive title track, which is frankly better than anything he's written for his own band in the past five years. So he's hardly invisible. Still, for the most part he has the good sense to stay out of the way and let Mavis sing, which she does with her usual grit and fire. There have always been more technically adept gospel singers than Mavis Staples. But no one can match her sense of hope and conviction. It's another late-life triumph for the woman who has been on a roll since she signed with Anti- Records in 2006.

Robert Plant - Band of Joy

It turns out that Raising Sand, Plant's 2007 left-field triumph with bluegrass stalwart Alison Krauss, was just the warmup act. Plant's in Nashville now, and if he shows no inclination to resurrect the titanic blues rawk bluster of his famous Led Zep past, he also sounds considerably more lively and engaged here in the company of superb guitarists Buddy Miller and Darrel Scott. And Patty Griffin, who handles the soulful harmony vocals this time, is a definite upgrade from the sweet but sometimes nondescript Krauss. Featuring great covers of Richard and Linda Thompson, Los Lobos, and Low tunes, and a couple Trad numbers done up in ways you've never heard them, this is undeniably one of the highlights of the year.

Justin Townes Earle - Harlem River Blues

I have nothing to add that I didn't say a couple days ago. For the first time the kid is better than his old man. And his old man remains one of my favorites.



Superchunk - Majesty Shredding

Superchunk defined indie rock in the early '90s, and if they never achieved the mega-success of their Seattle grunge counterparts, they earned bonus points for doing it the indie way. No big labels, no sir, even though they had plenty of chances. What it led to was a handful of great, jagged guitar albums that relatively few people heard. So Mac McCaughan and company are back for the first time in almost ten years, and it's surely great to have them back. There are no great surprises here; the title is entirely accurate. But majestic shredding is always in short supply, and the eleven tunes go for the jugular every time.

Jamey Johnson - The Guitar Song

Jamey Johnson's last offering, 2008's That Lonesome Song, was my favorite country album of the last decade, equal parts confessional singer/songwriter and good ol' boy country outlaw mayhem. He doesn't vary the formula much here, but he surely expands upon it. There are 25 tracks on this long double album. The first CD, dubbed appropriately The Black Album, chronicles a slow descent into addiction and madness. The second CD -- wait for it -- okay, yes, The White Album -- offers some glimmers of hope and redemption in the wreckage. There are more covers this time (great ones from Kris Kristofferson, Mel Tillis, and Keith Whitley), but Jamey's originals can hold their own with the classics. And it needs to be stated that the man has the single greatest voice in contemporary country music. If you like Merle Haggard and George Jones (and if you don't, what the hell is wrong with you?), you'll marvel at the whiskey-soaked soul in these songs of debauchery, heartache, and, incredibly, hope.

Tonio K. and the Metaphysical Boogie

Tonio K. and the Metaphysical Boogie at the Image Journal Blog.