The Devastationalist Manifesto

This is from A General Theory of Love (2000) by Thomas Lewis, Fari Amini and Richard Lannon (M.D.s all). They are talking about how memory stores and shapes love, guiding our romantic choices in mystifying ways:

A scientific theory of memory is therefore a map of the soul. Every such diagram must attempt to delineate the mind’s Dark Continent: why do people possess emotional knowledge that leaves no conscious trace?

A lover tests the combination of himself plus serial others like a child juxtaposing jigsaw pieces until a pair snaps home. Love’s puzzle work is done in the dark: prospective partners hunt blindly; they cannot describe the person they seek. Most do not even realize, as they grope for the geographical outline of a potential piece, that their own heart is a similar marvel of specificity.

So, what makes your little heart go pitter-pat? Me, I’ve always been a voice man.

Which brings us to the forever incomparable Chrissie Hynde, standing steadfast and unblinking in the midst of this blazing conflagration from the Pretenders’ shamefully underrated second album. This particular song, incidentally, also makes a good answer to the question (should it ever come up), “Was James Honeyman-Scott really that good?” (The sheet music might even read: “Duet for girl and electric guitar.”)

The English Roses (Chrissie Hynde)

The Pretenders

[Click to play, right-click to download MP3. Doesn’t always work with Mac/Safari.]

Just before it rains 

And the wind whips ’round the balcony
And the sky closes
On the English roses 


And she’ll be pacing
‘Round and ’round and ’round and ’round her room
But these storms always find her
To remind her

To the endless sky 

Of pink over grey 

She looks for an answer 

But it’s too late

Maybe it’s true
Some things were just never meant to be
Maybe not

This is a story 

Of fruit cut from the vine 

Forgotten, left to rot 

Long before its time 


This is a story 

About the girl who lived next door 

Looking for someone to hold

A wish made on a star 

Brought her here tonight 

In the courtyard she waits 

A thousand broken dates 


But she holds the hymnal 

Where so carefully pressed 

Is the English rose
She laid to rest

It’s only a story 

Flowers in full bloom 

Bouquets in every room 


This is a story 

Of fruit cut from the vine 

Looking for someone to hold

I finished only one book while on the road this summer, Harriet The Spy, but Harriet proved to be a most enlightening traveling companion — the perfect book at the perfect time. And, as it turns out, arguably the best book I have ever read about writing and living and what it really means to grow up.

11-year-old Harriet is a spy and a writer. Her meticulously honest observations fill notebooks. But Harriet’s cozy and well-ordered world falls to pieces when first, her nanny moves out, and then her very private notebook is discovered by her classmates. These events effectively mark the beginning of the end of Harriet’s childhood.

As things spin wildly out of control, Harriet falls to pieces — she has to start learning quickly how to reconcile the demands of her muse with the demands of everyday life. This is a letter Harriet receives near the end of the book from her former nanny, Ole Golly — the kind of wisdom we should all be so lucky to have someone impart to us at any age:

Dear Harriet,

Now in case you ever run into the following problem, I want to tell you about it. Naturally, you put down the truth in your notebooks. What would be the point if you didn’t? And naturally those notebooks should not be read by anyone else, but if they are, then, Harriet, you are going to have to do two things, and you don’t like either one of them:

Another thing. If you’re missing me I want you to know that I’m not missing you. Gone is gone. I never miss anything or anyone because it all becomes a lovely memory. I guard my memories and love them, but I don’t get in them and lie down. You can even make stories from yours, but remember, they don’t come back. Just think how awful it would be if they did. You don’t need me now. You’re eleven years old which is old enough to get busy at growing up to be the person you want to be.

No more nonsense.
Ole Golly Waldenstein

The song below was recorded at Stuart’s, in San Francisco. At the time I was hanging out a lot with a girl known as The Travel Agent. She only listened to old standards, mostly on this musty AM radio station whose call letters I forget. We would listen as we drove around, and I would always turn it up for the Jo Stafford version of “You Belong To Me.” (The Travel Agent’s favorite was “Swinging on a Star.” When the song goes, “Or would you rather be a fish?” she would always unfailingly answer back, “Um, how long do I have to decide?”)

You Belong To Me (Pee Wee King/Redd Stewart/Chilton Price)

[Click to play, right-click to download MP3. Doesn’t always work with Mac/Safari.]

“Peculiar Way” is from a batch of songs recorded back in the 90s at Kris Woolsey’s apartment in the West Village. In those pre-Garageband days, if someone got their hands on a decent four-track machine you simply had to take advantage. I forget who left the device at Kris’s house, or why, but its very presence in his living room demanded from us a long day of single-malt recording. I think we worked on 3 or 4 songs, new stuff of his and mine that we wanted to whip into shape.

The skeleton of this song came from a bunch of scratch cassettes I made in Florida, at my grandmother’s house, during one of many New-York-nervous-breakdown sabbaticals. I wanted it to foretell of a life-changing encounter, but in reality my life wasn’t changing that way and the song never got finished.

The nominal chorus came later, separately, and was a more characteristic expression of drunken resentment. I thought this provided a nice, truer-to-life counterpoint to the imagined epiphany. So, at Kris’s, with the help of a few tumblers of Laphroaig, I simply stitched the pieces together. And not completely successfully, I might needlessly add. (The All-Girl Band only played this song once, at a Coney Island gig where some poor kid got shot on the Boardwalk and we had to make our getaway dash in a loaner Humvee.)

But the song made more sense to me balanced out like that, despite the slapdash needlework. Occasionally you meet a person whose brief appearance in your life is both decisive and abrupt — someone who simply bowls you over, as instantaneous and elemental as a tidal wave. When the wave recedes (often carrying away many things you thought irreplaceably dear), the effect can leave you feeling disoriented and traumatized, or reawakened and revitalized. And more to the point, sometimes all of the above.

Peculiar Way

[Click to play, right-click to download MP3. Doesn’t always work with Mac/Safari.]

What is peculiar ’bout the way
You came to me
Is I had nothing more to say
And suddenly

Knocked my eyes wide open
Like a castle by the sea
You knocked my eyes way out of focus

And then a most peculiar thought
Occurred to me
Going against all I’d been taught
And suddenly

Knocked my eyes wide open
Like a castle by the sea
You knocked my eyes way out of focus

You thought I was too drunk to remember
All the little lies that I was told
But the simple fact is I remember
Every single one
Every single one

People have been asking me when I’m going to post something about Halifax, but I’m not sure what more I can say other than I felt very much at home there, something I rarely feel in The Rotten Apple anymore.

Halifax is a spectacular city (er, I mean “regional municipality”) — historic, cosmopolitan, grimy, gorgeous, soulful and maybe even a little dangerous. Everything New York used to be but mostly isn’t anymore. The downtown is teeming with delicious food, used bookstores, music venues, public gardens, old Victorians, old stone and red brick buildings, a couple of colleges, and some very intriguing people. And it stays open late. All this surrounded by the Atlantic and a huge, ancient, and very active port. (Yeah, I know it’s not perfect — the global corporate revolution has certainly made its incursions even there, and a fair amount of tourist crap abounds, especially down around the “seaport” area.)

And I know we’ve talked before here about “geographical cures” and the very true and unavoidable fact that “wherever you go, there you are.” But a human being is just a coalescence of energy, in a constant state of flux and exchange with the energy of his or her environment. So it makes sense to me that certain kinds of environments would provide more spiritual resonance to some people than others, and that there are other kinds of environments which impose energy exchanges that are spiritually harmful to all.

The song below I wrote specifically for Amanda — her voice, her sensibility — and this version appears on her new album, Union Square. (We ended up finishing the song together, and she wrote about half the verse lyrics.) A song of romantic searching, yes, but there’s a problem: once you’ve reached a certain point of of Devastationalist stasis, is the disturbance worth the effort to go on looking? Put another way, if home is where the heart is, then where do you belong when you’ve got no heart left?

Show Me a Place (Shelley/Thorpe)

Amanda Thorpe

[Click to play, right-click to download MP3. Doesn’t always work with Mac/Safari.]

Never wanted anything
And everything was fine
As long as there were cigarettes
And another glass of wine
Nothing in the world out there
Could ever bother anything of mine
I found a place so high
I’m never coming

Down into the wishing well
Is where I cast my eye
I saw my own black silhouette
Reflect against the sky
I stood and watched the pennies fall
Leaned against the cold stone wall
I made a wish so wild

Won’t you show me a place
Like the one in my mind
Where the days are sweet and long
In the green, green grass
With my hand in yours
Where the noise turns into song

Expectations crystalize
They’re scattered all around
I see them lying everywhere
Like my pennies on the ground
But I can’t hide from you
The light keeps shining through
I found a place so high
I’m never coming

Down into to the depths behind
The walls I built inside
The things I never wanted
The things I never tried
Everything was in its place
Everything was once so safe
I hold the glass so tight

Won’t you show me a place
Like the one in my mind
Where the days are sweet and long
In the green, green grass
With my hand in yours
Where the noise turns into song

Sometimes, the the best things you can do while you’re on the road are things you would ordinarily do at home anyway. In our nation’s capital over 4th of July weekend, we delayed a side-trip to Annapolis because we could not tear ourselves away from this year’s epic Wimbledon men’s final (which lasted over five hours including rain delays). We had no choice but to just sit there all day on the couch, glued to the wide-screen TV.

McEnroe was beside himself in the booth, and it was clear that this was one for the ages. Afterwards, when he went down to the locker area to interview the players, McEnroe was completely lit up by what we had all just witnessed — the ferocious and transcendent quality of the tennis on display, even up to the bitter end. He was gushing like a little kid.

Eventually he asked Federer, who was ever-gracious in defeat (one gets the impression that Federer and the equally gracious Nadal actually like and respect each other) if there was any consolation in knowing that he had just participated in what was arguably the greatest final in Wimbledon history. Federer smiled a kind of sick, sad smile and I don’t even remember what he answered. But in any case it was clear that the real answer was “no,” that there was no consolation at all in fighting that hard only to come up a whisker short.

And I thought of the many equivalent sporting events I’ve seen over the years, and I’ve always had the exact same feeling as Johnny Mac — that when you play in one of those it should offset the disappointment of losing. It should be more than enough just to have engaged in such a thrillingly high level of competition. That’s certainly how I would feel if it were me. (I am perhaps a bit too comfortable in seeing things from the loser’s perspective.) But of course to the Federers of this world, it’s not nearly enough. Champions play to win; it’s part of what makes them champions. Yet another stunningly obvious life-lesson I had never quite figured out before.

To help me sort it all out later, I was thankful for the company of Harriet The Spy:

I WILL NEVER FORGET THAT FACE AS LONG AS I LIVE. DOES EVERYBODY LOOK THAT WAY WHEN THEY HAVE LOST SOMETHING? I DON’T MEAN LIKE LOSING A FLASHLIGHT. I MEAN DO PEOPLE LOOK LIKE THAT WHEN THEY HAVE LOST?

And to top it all off, an aptly themed romantic melodrama from the Nightmares playbook.

Perfume

The Nightmares

[Click to play, right-click to download MP3. Doesn’t always work with Mac/Safari.]

Hear the glasses clinking in the air
When I reach for one, well it’s not there
I light the room with candles one by one
I’ll burn a lot more things before I’m done

I was stranded, a dirty roadside
Stuck out my thumb and caught a ride
Ended up in an old saloon
The ceiling fans whirled me across the room

They sang, all that’s left of you is just a little perfume
All that’s left of you is just a little perfume

Well, I heard you were asking Danny how I was
That’s very kind, thank you very much
I do the crossword puzzle in the New York Times
But I can still remember different times

I was frightened, a dirty roadside
Hit my knees and there I cried
Later on I was in your room
The bottles on the dresser played forgotten tunes

They played, all that’s left of you is just a little perfume
All that’s left of you is just a little perfume

All that’s left of you
All that’s left of you dear darlin’ is the smell of your perfume

Wherever I travel, people always ask me if there are any brilliant new Devastationalist musicians I can recommend, preferably someone they don’t already know about. That’s easy. I always say Natalie Robin.

I first stumbled across Natalie and her music while playing MySpace hopscotch. Irresistibly, the headline quote on her page read:

“If you hate yourself, you’ll love my music.”

The songs she had posted at the time were spellbinding, and they swirled around and around in your head like good, strong red wine. And despite their woozy, hallucinatory qualities, the songs were rendered with impeccable precision.

And so for the next few months I raptly followed her new song postings (and the sudden, erratic, dead-of-night deletions) along with the general melodrama and self-deprecation of her elliptic commentary. It was by far the most Devastationalist thing going, and it was all the more impressive in that she made the songs all by herself on an old four-track in her bedroom in her parents’ house (I think she’s 23 or 24): writing the unflinchingly honest songs, playing all the instruments with alarming sophistication, singing the intricate vocal arrangements.

I’ve never met Natalie (she lives in the East Bay), though we’ve corresponded. She comes across as too bright and too vulnerable for her own good, occasionally extremely funny, more often shy, moody, prickly, eccentric, and harder on no one than herself. (You know, the usual stuff.)

The song below didn’t last very long online, and I’m glad I grabbed it before she took it down because it’s my favorite, an anthem of utter disillusionment. It’s hair-raising in its quiet intensity, chilling at its denouement. And it’s also insane the depth of things you can hear echoes of in this song (from Aretha to the Velvets). But I’m going to refrain from playing rock critic — you can listen for yourself. Then pay a visit to Natalie’s MySpace page and leave a comment gently encouraging her to get into a proper recording studio immediately.

Man and Himself (Natalie Robin)

Natalie Robin

[Click to play, right-click to download MP3. Doesn’t always work with Mac/Safari.]

Let me swallow your pride for you
‘Cause thats always been something you dont think that you need to do
And until we are buried under the earth
We settle for better, but mostly for worse

And if you were who you think you are
You’d be the only person I know that has it all
And if you were who you think you are
Things would be different and I wouldnt stall
To be near you

Let me follow the lines for you
‘Cause you think that you’re too good to stand here with the rest of us fools
And until you are gone from the touch of the sun
You settle to be the person you’ll never become

And if you were who you think you are
You’d be the only person I know that has it all
And if you were who you think you are
Things would be different and I wouldnt stall

Driving into Portland, Maine the other night in a torrential downpour I couldn’t help but be reminded of my first visit to Portland, years ago. Kris Woolsey’s grandmother lived there, and his nuclear family was convening for a long weekend at her house in the woods.

We flew up on the renegade 80s airline, People Express, armed with a couple of fifths of Stolichnaya. I remember we had to wait for over an hour on the runway while President Reagan conducted some of his nasty business at Newark Airport, so I was passed out cold before we even took off. I don’t recall Kris’s family being too overjoyed to meet me.

It was a strange and tense weekend, and I kept pretty much to myself and my guitar. After everyone went to bed, I would raid the liquor cabinet and talk on the phone with my girlfriend, Mary, back in New York, then stay up all night reading. And somewhere in there were a few too-bright-and-too-early canoe trips and other awkward lake-style adventures. (I think things loosened up a bit after Kris’s family left, and we were just hanging out with his grandmother, who was cool. I remember her showing us the harbor and all the little islands that dot the Casco Bay, and even then I was awed at the sight.)

Anyhow, the flight home was even worse than the flight up — a huge, terrifying thunderstorm and an interminable delay. We sat nervously sipping Manhattan after Manhattan in the little airport lounge there, staring out glumly as waves of water crashed against the windows and I silently prayed for the flight to be cancelled. I was sure we were all going to die.

Airport Lounge

The Nightmares

[Click to play, right-click to download MP3. Doesn’t always work with Mac/Safari.]

Airport lounge in Portland, Maine
Our flight’s been held ’cause of pouring rain
Pouring rain

Thunder and lightning but it’s warm inside
Everybody’s going for a little ride
Little ride

I wish I could be a little stronger
And I wish I could stay a little longer

Everybody had another round
So they’d be prepared if the plane went down
Plane went down

Finally got our clearance, so we filed on board
I was thinkin’ ’bout the harbor, thinkin’ ’bout the lord
‘Bout the lord

I wish I could be a little stronger
And I wish I could stay a little longer

Around the time that the splendidly unsettling documentary Grizzly Man was released, Werner Herzog gave an interview to Psychology Today where he scoffed poignantly at our cultural tendency to overuse rational introspection as a means of trying to understand those things which, to his way of thinking, are only apprehensible through non-rational means:

Do you have any formal interest in psychology?

I loathe psychology as one of the major faults of our civilization nowadays. There’s something not right about this amount of introspection. I can only give you a metaphor: When you move into an apartment, you cannot start to illuminate every last corner with neon light. If there are no dark corners or hidden niches, your house becomes uninhabitable. Human beings who are trying to self-reflect and explore their innermost being to the last corner become uninhabitable people.

Let’s not forget that psychology isn’t just about introspection; it can shed light on other people.

No, you can understand others by other means. By dint of compassion, you understand other people, and there is a concordance of hearts. That is something different. Move away from psychology and engage in concordance of hearts.

I think that last bit especially is stunning, and true. And even though I believe our society is not nearly introspective enough, I think I know what he means. The act of examination cannot help but alter the thing which is being examined, often to its detriment. And too often, especially when whatever is under examination has been created (and is perhaps being ever-so-delicately maintained) by non-rational forces, rational observation simply destroys, in its blundering way, the thing which is being observed.

Also, because our world is so parodically self-conscious, it does sometimes seem like there’s a whole lotta introspection going on. But self-consciousness and introspection are not nearly the same thing, and what mostly ends up passing for introspection under contemporary circumstances is a fun-house mirror loop of quick-fix, self-help schemes that actually enable one to avoid the arduous process of genuine, non-excessive self-reflection in the pursuit of spiritual growth.

And here are the Mystery Dates again, coming down hard, I think, on the side of anti-introspection. This time Danny is singing, as he normally did, recorded live at CBGBs.

Drips

The Mystery Dates

[Click to play, right-click to download MP3. Doesn’t always work with Mac/Safari.]

I know it’s you
In the hotel
It’s a little sad
We could’ve had

When we’re together
It’s not much fun
It’s a little sad
We could’ve had

Drips splash and drips careen
They’re all over my windscreen
I don’t mean for this to sound too mean
But when the drips bash I go out for Visine®

This is the Mystery Dates (Danny Wattenberg singing, me on guitar and singing, Gideon Rosen — who, incidentally, makes an excellent case against epistemic relativism here — on keys, John Fousek on drums, and the long-lost John Travis on bass), from a cassette of a demo that was produced by our Mamaroneck homeboy Peter Denenberg. I think this song is about being romantically involved with someone who is becoming accustomed to breathing more rarefied air than you could ever hope to provide. (I also think it’s the only time I ever sang lead in the Mystery Dates.)

I wrote the verse and chorus after a drunken week on Martha’s Vineyard, besotted with a girl called Laura Resen, which accounts for the semi-pun in the chorus. I remember Gideon at rehearsal fancifying and fussing around with the basic chords I brought in. Later on he and Danny came up with the bridge part — maybe the whole band contributed to the bridge, I don’t remember — but it’s definitely Danny’s words and melody.

Wicker & Palm (Mystery Dates)

[Click to play, right-click to download MP3. Doesn’t always work with Mac/Safari.]

You got a nice house with wicker and palm
And a chandelier
You got a nice house but I’d change a few things
If I had to live there

Reasons, they’re not so clear now
But they’re happy, happy at home
I’ve got nothing to fear now
‘Cause I’m happy, happy at home

Winter’s coming to this place
Now let’s prepare
Storm doors, storm doors
Can’t predict the weather here
How come there’s no Maypo
For my breakfast, dear?
Casey’s come back from the Cape
But she’s not like I knew her
Not like I knew her

Mike Tyson, who, despite his insane and destructive public image, has always been an extremely honest, thoughtful and eloquent spokesperson for Devastationalism, was the subject of an article in last week’s Sunday Times. The piece concludes with Tyson talking about his sobriety and his ongoing struggle for some of that elusive peace of mind, with a rather stunning example of obiter dictum:

“I just say I’m not getting high today,” he said. “I’m not promising them I’m not getting high tomorrow. I’m trying to figure it out. I’m in an abysmal world trying to figure it out.”

On an eerily similar note (insane and destructive yet honest, thoughtful and eloquent), Philip K. Dick’s last completed novel (published shortly after his death from a stroke in 1982), The Transmigration of Timothy Archer, opens with this paragraph:

“Barefoot conducts his seminars on his houseboat in Sausalito. It costs a hundred dollars to find out why we are on this Earth. You also get a sandwich, but I wasn’t hungry that day. John Lennon had just been killed and I think I know why we are on this Earth; it’s to find out that what you love the most will be taken away from you, probably due to an error in high places, rather than by design.”

“Get me to the nearest Barnes & Noble!” right?? The story is told in the first person by Angel Archer, a narrator of such charm and charisma that Dick claimed in interviews that he literally began hemorrhaging and had to be rushed to the hospital upon completion of the novel, he was so distressed to be separated from her after the book’s long gestation and writing process.