5 December 2011
“I was still falling in love when she said farewell.”
• • •
Prologue
The title for this week’s Newsletter is borrowed from a band called Dawes. They have a fine collection of songs with the same title: Nothing Is Wrong. I think it’s great—the name. It doesn’t hurt that the music is great, too.
The phrase “Nothing is wrong” is said three times during the song “So Well”. It is said nowhere else on the album. This song—it’s so wonderful. It has three distinct narrators: an old tailor, a boy, and a lonely musician. Each discusses the pain of the world, and how unbearable all of this. But there is a woman named Marie that unites them all in happiness. She’s sweet and gentle. All she has to do is smile. She reminds them, wordlessly, that “nothing is wrong”. Isn’t that lovely?
I know someone who makes me feel like nothing is wrong, too. I have my very own Marie.
• • •
Below the title, I have decided to omit any corporate sponsorship this Newsletter receives. Let’s take a break from that. Instead I have given you a line, which is also from “So Well”, which, remember, is on Nothing Is Wrong. (Had you forgotten?)
When I first heard that line, it hit me like a sledgehammer. I coughed. I was fortunate to not have any liquids in my mouth, or I would have sprayed them all over the place.
See, beyond the beautiful wording and sentiment, there is great pain hidden away. It is understood by those who have loved foolishly.
I have loved foolishly. I guess that’s why I liked it so much. Can you tell?
• • •
Before we continue, let me just say that it’s important to like things that are good. Dawes is good. Dawes is a band from Los Angeles. They sing about how sad it is to be from Los Angeles. They sing of broken hearts—and of the rotten things girls do, and the rotten things guys do, too. All of it is beautifully painful. It is a serrated knife wreathed in roses.
Of the three bands that I have trumpeted as being Worth Your Time, Dawes is probably the least accessible. Deer Tick and Delta Spirit are easier to get into, I think. My God, though—Dawes are a collection of talented musicians. Taylor Goldsmith, the lead singer—I want to hug that guy and tell him that, really, nothing is wrong. He’d probably start crying and tell me I’m mistaken. I would say, “I know. I just wanted to make you feel better.” Then I’d hug him again.
So give them a chance. Don’t listen to them when you’re tired, though. You’ll fall asleep.
If you’re sad, they’re a brown microfiber blanket and a box of incense. If a girl has recently ripped your heart out, they’re your best friend, and they care about you.
It’s important to like things that are good. Why aren’t Deer Tick, Delta Spirit and Dawes the biggest bands on earth? Sadly, it’s probably because they’re phenomenally talented.
How’s that for having an opinion?
• • •
Incidentally, the lead singers from each band formed their own band. When I found this out, I damn near exploded. They’re called Middle Brother. So far they’ve released one self-titled album. Good God. This album. Please obtain it legally. Pay for it. You have my highest recommendation.
There are ten songs on Middle Brother. At first the order goes Deer Tick/Delta Spirit/Dawes. Each song is distinctive of the person who wrote it. It’s actually quite brilliant.
Taylor Goldsmith, of Dawes—his songs are caustic as hell. That guy had a string of really bad girlfriends or something.
• • •
Are you sick of me shoving music down your throat? I’m sorry. Like I said several issues back, when discussing The Future by Miranda July—God damn it, you’ve got to give these things a chance. Practically no one else is, in the grand scheme of things.
If you’ve been around for awhile, you’ve realized that most people like dumb bullshit. They don’t even really know what they like or, more importantly, why they like it. This is how one ends up liking dumb bullshit.
Is it dumb bullshit if it isn’t one of the three bands I’ve talked about enthusiastically? Does it make you wrong to dislike one or two or all three of them?
God, no. Not at all.
But: Have you ever listened to something that someone else liked, and though you didn’t particularly like it—it didn’t catch you or something—you still recognized that the musician(s) behind the work were talented, and that you could understand why other people like it? My hope is that the true artistry behind the songs and albums I share are recognizable, even if it isn’t your thing. (Incidentally, “true artistry” is a screamingly funny thing to say. I’m sorry.)
I’m not asking you to have a (music-induced) heart attack or anything. I just want you to listen to something. If you like what you’ve heard, donate ($) to keep these bands going. (Buy their albums). For God’s sake, go see The Future! These things matter! If we don’t do something about it—if we don’t buy Dawes albums or see films written and directed by Miranda July—we’re going to be hooked up to some singular hive-mind consciousness and told to like dumb bullshit. (Maybe this is already happening!)
Hey, man, I’m just the trumpet-blower.
• • •
“I was still falling in love when she said farewell.”
God damn.
The best sentences are written simply. I believe that. If you arrange a combination of words just right, a sentence can have the effectiveness of an M777 howitzer. It can blow you to bits.
And thank God for that.
• • •
This is Issue 009 of The Starsailor Newsletter. This is the future. (Hah!) We’re here, we’re alive, we’re awake. We’re doing things that other people aren’t. We’re sending out a mass email of gibberish and self-indulgent self-loathing to the best people on planet Earth.
Take my hand. I will take you to places you don’t want to go. And then we’ll both laugh like hell about it.
• • •
Chapter I:
“I Want To Be Lonely With You”
I am 1,500 miles away from anyone who would possibly want to spend Thanksgiving with me. I spent Thanksgiving alone.
I’m not sore about it or anything. As I told Matt Stites just the other day: “I knew what I was in for.” I was eating a clementine when I told him that. He asked me what I ate for Thanksgiving. “A clementine,” I said.
• • •
I got plenty of phone calls, though. Some told me their Thanksgiving wasn’t all that great, while others told me it was downright awful. Most everyone else just said it was “okay” or “good enough”. I liked those people the best.
My sister called me just before midnight. She was furious that I hadn’t paid $300 to fly home for a holiday that lasts twenty-four hours. I explained to her that it would have been wasteful for me to avoid feeling lonely for the amount of money. And anyway, I said, it’s just one night. I’ll get over it, I said. Missing out on Thanksgiving was a side-effect of moving to Texas, which in itself was the best thing that had happened to me all year.
“Yeah,” she said, “but you still should have spent Thanksgiving with us.”
“I’m all right,” I said. “Really, it’s not big deal.”
She told me what Thanksgiving was like in Tennessee, where she had driven to visit our father. She said it was practically perfect, as far as Thanksgivings go. “Except for the fact that, you know, you weren’t there.” It wasn’t flattering to hear that. She was angry about it.
“Jeb came,” she said. Jeb is our brother. Whenever he shows up to anything it’s a complete catastrophe. It is hell on earth. See, he loves alcohol. He also loves rolling around and crying while it’s in his body. Though when Jeb is intoxicated, rolling around and crying is the most mundane thing that can possibly happen.
He brought his baby and his wife, both of whom I have never met. He had wine in his system, and so was a horse’s ass for the duration of his trip.
At some point I came up. My father told him about my plans to move to Austin. He said the same thing everyone says when I tell them I’m moving to Austin.
“Austin?” he said. “What the hell is in Austin?”
If I had been present, I would have asked him just what the hell is in Baltimore. “Sadness,” I would have said. “And a whole lot of the damn stuff.”
• • •
So while a dozen or so people I know and love were happily eating meals together on the East Coast, I was somewhere in Austin, Texas, sitting at my computer eating a citrus fruit and pounding away furiously at keys to save my soul. I ripped myself open and let it pour out. I wrote Issue 008 of this fine Newsletter. In it, if you’ll remember, I discussed my cats. I thought out loud about my old life, now dead.
I sent a message to that girl I know—the one who won’t see or talk to me, or remember my name or my face or anything. I wished her a happy Thanksgiving. I told her I missed my cats so much, and that I hoped she was well. I sat in a chair in the living room and felt completely rotten from the inside-out. I wanted to jump off a building. There was a pain in my chest. It hurt to breathe.
She never replied.
• • •
Chapter II:
“Baltimore Blues”
I have a plane ticket in my name. The plane I am to board will take off at 5:05 p.m. central standard time, and land in a different timezone at 10:25 p.m. This is all happening on the 20th of December. What a nightmare that’s going to be—to go home. For I will again be forced to ride the Light Rail home—if I can’t find someone who wishes to drive all the way up to Baltimore to pick up my dumb jerk self. (Steph Malpass—call me! I . . . may need your help that night. Save me from the Light Rail!)
And then it’s Back To Baltimore. I have to repaint my apartment and pack and clean. I have to get out of there forever. I will do my best to never visit Baltimore again. Steph, did you hear that? That means you absolutely must move to California. And then we can be neighbors.
I will, as they say, “make a weekend” out of repainting that apartment. I will invite my brothers Jason Long and Daniel Lama up to Baltimore. I will tempt them with promises of love and laughter—and beer and wine. Together we will rid my walls of blue and red—turn them white again.
And then I can finally rid myself of all this pain, this intense mental anguish that has embedded itself into my brain like a railroad spike. I don’t even want to look at that apartment again, much less that city. But maybe I can tolerate a weekend of it. Maybe the motivation to abscond from that wretched doom-swamp of tyranny and misery will make all the pain go away—at least for a little while.
• • •
Yes, and then it will be Christmastime, for God’s sake, and I will have no choice but to descend upon Northern Virginia. I will see my family, and they will asks me all sorts of questions about Austin, and of happiness and love and employment and so on. I will say, “You’ll see, you’ll see.” And I’ll love them, of course, because that is what I am programmed to do—as their son or grandson or brother or cousin or nephew or whatever. “I love you all,” I’ll say, “but please: less interrogation.”
May I say something? Christmas truly depresses me. Look: I am aware this is a common sentiment. Or you may even think, perhaps correctly, that you’re not surprised at all since everything depresses me. But I’m not even talking about crass commercialism or familial bickering. Christmas day—my God. I usually just drive around in the rain. It always has to rain on Christmas day in Virginia. I go to people’s houses and I say stupid things and I sometimes get presents from the parents of friends who love me. Maybe that last part isn’t so bad. Still—the rain. The rain really kills it.
And my mother, God love her, she won’t let me slip by without any presents. She wants something for me to open. I think that’s nice—but I also don’t really want anything ever again.
I’ll usually give her a list of a few books I want. I’ve done that again this year. My uncle is always saying, “You can never own too many books.” So I have said “Yes!” to this. I have asked for books and more books.
I have also asked for a new pair of Adidas Sambas, because lord knows my old ones are old as hell. I’ve been walking all over the world in these dumb things for damn near three years now. (My uncle, as far as I know, has never recited an adage involving shoes.)
• • •
My sister has already set up the Christmas tree. She sent me a picture of it. It had some sort of strange filter on—so the tree looks pristine and faded and nauseatingly romantic. It’s a little jarring, because the beauty of the picture disguises a great truth about Christmastime in my mother’s home: it is utterly mundane. No one ever happy on Christmas day, because no one wants to wake up at 5 a.m. and open gifts.
My sister, see—she still likes the presents to be placed under the tree after she’s gone to bed on Christmas eve. We’re not one of those families that starts piling things under the tree the day after Thanksgiving (which is when she put up the tree, don’t you know). No, she insists on the illusion of Santa Claus. She insists on being surprised. And like a seven-year-old, she still wishes to wake up before the sun has risen. The rest of us follow her demands because we’re terrified of the repercussions.
Yes, and I go to sleep around 4 a.m. on Christmas eve (or rather, Christmas day), much as I do every night. I get precisely an hour of sleep before I’m dragged upstairs to gingerly remove wrapping paper from books for the next hour. I take my damn time. I make a cup of tea. I schmooze. I’m a laid-back guy on Christmas day.
She is the opposite. She makes towering stacks and eyes them greedily. Her ravenous carnage is over within minutes. She then complains of my imminent departure to the great West to see my dear cousins—and my dear aunt and my dear uncle.
• • •
On driving West: Every Christmas I drive the fifty miles to the Village of Berries. My aunt and uncle’s home is asylum from the cruel nonsense of the world. I go there to drink tea and to have fine conversations with wonderful people. There is no insanity to speak of. Everyone is calm, and everyone loves me.
As is the custom, I will take my grandmother with me. We are great friends. She and I will discuss how upset we are that we have to go on living in such a world. She tells me every year that because she’s survived for so long and endured so much, she hopes to “graduate” from life with a Ph.D. “I deserve one, anyway,” she says. “I had to put up with World War II, for Heaven’s sake.”
“Yes,” I say. “And I’ll graduate with a degree in Czech film.”
• • •
This year we’re spending Christmas in Williamsburg, Virginia. I haven’t the slightest idea why. I anticipate a roaring good time, though. I have no reason to believe that time spent with my dear cousins won’t be the best use of my time.
We are staying in a hotel. I love staying in hotels. I plan to takes baths and wear comfortable socks. I will order room service, and jump on the bed. I will turn on the heat and transform our room into an oven. Hooray for Christmas! Hooray for me.
I think everyone is going to end up being so happy when all is said and done. And I will be happy, too—until I have to leave for Baltimore again.
Hooray for Baltimore.
• • •
Here is what I will not miss about Baltimore:
1. Death
2. Despair
3. Unbearable loneliness
4. Gray skies
5. Panhandlers
6. Post-apocalyptic neighborhoods filled with derelict factories
7. Shitty pothole-ridden streets
8. Living in a city that has no money
9. $2-an-hour parking (see previous)
10. Constant reminders of my former life
11. Weeks of rain
12. Feeling like a wet cardboard box every waking hour
Really, it’s the best decision I’ve made in years.
• • •
Chapter III:
“I’m Sad You’re Leaving, But I’m Happy I Still Get To Know You”
There was a gallery opening on 51st St. the other night. It was in an apartment. I thought that was neat.
See: I get invited to these things sometimes. It happens. Usually I’ll go. I decided to go this time, because Chantal’s paintings were going to be hanging on the wall. That seemed like a good reason to go.
As it happened, my dear brother Jason Long was in town. He was visiting Austin to determine if he wanted to make it his home, much as I have. I brought him along hoping he would be convinced. I told him there he would find art and great people and warmth and laughter and talking—and free beer. He didn’t care about the beer. He can’t even drink the damn stuff.
“Still,” I said, “it’s going to be a good time.”
The show started at seven, but we didn’t leave until close to eight. I told him it would be better if we showed up an hour late. “That way,” I said, “people will really think we’re something.” I was of course lying. I also had no idea what I was talking about.
• • •
I lead my friends to the opening. I knew where it was because I had been there the day before with Chantal.
The thing is: In addition to being a gallery space—as I have said—the place we were going was also the home of two perfectly wonderful human beings named Jade Abner and Donnie Carver. It was in an ugly late-1960s barracks-style building up on 51st and Guadalupe. The exterior disguised an otherwise charming place to live.
When we arrived, there were a few people milling around outside. They had Lone Star beers in their hands. My eyes lit up. “Lone Star,” I said to everyone. No one heard me. “They have Lone Star.”
The door to Jade and Donnie’s apartment was wide open. I walked inside with a confidence in me I did not know existed. The room was full of nicely-dressed young people. I reached into a large cooler filled with ice and scooped out a Lone Star. I cracked it open with great aplomb. It fizzed to life. I shuffled around from piece to piece. There were books on women and artists blocking the entrance to the kitchen. There was a computer set up with looping videos. There were envelopes pinned to a wall.
Chantal had two paintings hung on the wall across from the kitchen. I knew both well. They looked fantastic side-by-side. My heart sank into my chest a little. I was proud of her.
I saw Chantal from across the room. She was wearing her brown boots, which meant she was in “galley opening mode”. She was talking and laughing and cradling a Lone Star like it was her best friend. She probably felt pretty awkward.
I approached her at some point—once I was on my second beer. “Um,” I said. “Hey.”
“You look miserable,” said Chantal.
I protested: “No, no! I’m fine. I just don’t know too many people.” I was all alone, after all; I had abandoned the group I had come with.
When I did see friendly faces, I tugged at their shirts from behind. Krista Norman was the first recognizable human being I noticed. I tugged. “Hey!” I said. “Hey, girl.”
“Ryan!” she said. She smiled.
And then there was Karina Eckmeier, who was wandering around the room taking pictures. She waved to me. She neglected to give me hug—and she always hugs me. She was too busy for hugs. I was happy to see her. I ended up in some of her pictures. In most of them I look like the dumbest jerk you’ve ever seen.
I didn’t feel hollow inside at all, which is how I usually feel. I was loving and affectionate. I let everyone know just how happy I was to be there.
Jade Abner and I shook hands, and I think I gave Allie Underwood a hug. I was getting drunker and drunker as the night went on, so the details are hazy. I know for a fact that I hugged Donnie Carver. “Welcome,” he’d said. “Thanks so much for coming.”
“Oh, Donnie, it’s really no problem,” I said. I hugged him again. We hugged like brothers.
• • •
When the lights began to swirl, and the ceiling began to lower, and the voices became louder and louder still—I found myself sitting on an apple-red couch near the kitchen. I had a beer in my hand and my eyes were buzzing with human electricity. In front of me was a mass of smiling happy people, each of them fitted with a beer the same as mine. I felt the warmth of the room I was in. It felt foreign and welcome.
To my right were fifty or so envelopes addressed to various artists and curators. They had been prepared by Allie Underwood, the girl I maybe hugged. A woman with black hair and bangs approached me.
“Did you smell the envelopes?” she said.
“No,” I said. “I can’t really smell anything right now.”
“Oh, well, you should smell them, whenever you get the chance. They’re scented with perfume.”
“Well, I’ll be damned.”
“Yeah. I love your shoes.” She was referring to my red Adidas Sambas, which are often the envy of everyone in the room. I had worn them on purpose. I wanted to be a red-hot jerk.
“You know,” she said, “I’m old, okay?” She didn’t look old at all. In fact she looked no older than me. “But when I was in, like, eighth grade—let me tell you, Adidas Sambas were the thing. Anyone who knew anything about being cool wore those things.”
“Oh, come on,” I said. “You’re not old. For God’s sake, how old do you think I am?”
“Twenty?” she said. “Maybe twenty-one?”
“I’m twenty-three,” I said.
“Holland,” she said. “My name is Holland.” She extended her arm. “I’m twenty-six.”
• • •
Chantal joined me on the couch. She sat on the arm. She asked me how many Lone Stars were sloshing around in my stomach, and I told her it was somewhere around four or five. “Five,” she said. “You’ve had five.”
“Yeah, it’s probably five,” I said. I smiled. Chantal shook her head and took a sip of her fourth.
We had a long conversation about something or another. Chantal told me my eyes were unfocused and dull. I laughed and felt my cheeks. They were red and warm.
And Jason was somewhere around me, looking at the envelopes on the wall. He informed me at some point that he needed to run away and piss on a tree. I told him I didn’t know why he felt the need to tell me, but I wished him well all the same. I followed him outside. He darted off down the row of barracks and turned right. He disappeared. I shrugged and felt drunk and stupid.
• • •
I went back inside and said good-bye to everyone. I tugged at Krista Norman’s shirt. “So long,” I said. And I waved at Karina Eckmeier, and nodded at Jade Abner. I hugged Donnie Carver and told him I loved him. He thanked me for taking out the trash earlier. I told him I didn’t remember doing that.
And I tugged at Chantal’s sweater. I told her we were off to Cheer Up Charlie’s downtown. I told her I didn’t know why I was going there, but that I had been asked to go along, and so I would. She said, “Okay.” She said, “I’ll see you soon.”
I hugged her. I opened my mouth and a torrent of stupid sentences came pouring out. She told me to be careful. I promised I would. My eyes were still humming. I ambled out the door and through the rows and rows of barracks-style apartments. I sucked in a lungful of fresh air and let it slowly leave out my nostrils.
The backseat of the car made itself welcome to me. I sat down and rested my head against the window, watching the streetlights as we headed downtown. “God damn,” I thought. “God damn, god damn.”
I was in Austin, Texas—awake, and alive, and happy to be anywhere at all. Nothing was wrong.
—R.
