On Silence and Tea

“In a world of noise, confusion and conflict it is necessary that there be places of silence, inner discipline and peace. In such places love can bloom.” – Thomas Merton

“Ann Perkins: You’re stranded on a desert island. What is the one thing you bring with you? 

Ron Swanson: Silence.” – from Parks and Recreation.

[In answer to the question What do men want?]: “Food, sex, and silence.” – Chris Rock

1

There’s nothing but the sound of my fingers. The dog is sleeping noiselessly, though soon he’ll fall deeper into dreams and whimper as he chases the phantom rabbits that are as real to him as the ones outside.

I’ve intentionally silenced my phone and opted not to dial up the usual music that accompanies my wayward stabs at writing: Miles Davis, Bill Evans, Jim Hall, Wes Montgomery, Eric Dolphy and other jazz legends, as well as living heroes like John Zorn and Bill Frisell, that is when not droning on some doom metal or Japanese noise. I tell myself often that this music serves a purpose, frees some creative impulse or distracts the part of my brain that finds fault with every emerging word. Listen to Monk soloing. Precise but not perfect. Something uniquely off there. Let your words flow with similar abandon. If you make a wrong note, fuck it—hit it three more times.

But the music is less a distraction from my inner critic than it is a way of sheltering from thoughts that might need exploring. I get lost in the music for stretches, even think of other music I wouldn’t mind hearing, spend too much time curating a playlist for writing, time I should be writing. What’s lost is serious interrogation. I have a topic in mind, but how deeply do I want to explore it? Not very—I’m just humming along with the tunes and writing whatever.

Not today. No music in the background. The phone is set to silent, but it buzzes whenever I get a call, so I shut it off. Doing so feels transgressive. Unreachable! How freeing! But. . . What if there’s an emergency? What if I miss something important? Common questions that plague me on the rare occasions when I power down my digital tether, though really, how often is there an emergency? I have no children to overbearingly parent. No real need for connection to anyone, at least for the next few hours. And, at risk of sounding insufferably old, what the hell did parents do before iPhones? How did they muster the faith that their children would be fine absent the technology to track their every movement?

2 

Here I am, in silence. Rare in the 21st century.

Thomas Merton wrote more, and more beautifully, about silence than I can, so I will use another of his many quotable lines to illustrate the topic’s importance: “The world of man has forgotten the joys of silence…which is necessary, to some extent, for the fullness of human living.”

To some extent. Might’ve been stronger without the qualifying clause.

Of course, finding silence is easy for a monk. It’s part of the gig. But those of us who foolishly chose careers over callings are bound to some forms of necessary distraction. True, but when did we bind our personal time with our jobs? When did having a home office become normal? Why do I check my work email after 5:00? Why does sleep elude me without a podcast playing less than two feet from my ears? Why is it so difficult to find silence?

Lest I draft a screed against modern technology and all that, let me simply state that while I am techno-suspicious, techno-critical, and definitely techno-exhausted, I am also techno-addicted. I’ve tied too much of myself with the gadgets at my disposal. No different than most of us. The iPhone, the laptop, the expectation of ceaseless internet access and the promise of never again being bored—I have welcomed these tools even as I lamented what they were doing to me and to the culture at large.

Which is why silencing these devices is so fucking satisfying. A small rebellion. Against whom exactly? Mark Zuckerberg surely won’t notice. But I nevertheless feel a giddy thrill at ignoring the internet, Spotify, all the people in my world who might be texting or calling. Not many, really, but they expect me to answer them immediately, because the instruments with which we communicate privilege immediacy, not reflection.

3 

In the silence of this room, I have occasion to reflect. Or not. I may simply do what people pay a lot of money to do in the 21st century: be present. Not sure what that means, other than being still in a quiet room and trying not to think thoughts beyond those presenting themselves, none of which are risking profundity.

People pay money to do this? Feels like a racket. 

4 

Silence has yielded no insights.

Start again, this time putting the blame on me: in silence, I have discovered nothing of note about myself or the world. No insights here. At best, an assortment of unconnected ruminations:

·      If the world is mostly water, as am I, will Nestles soon own me?

·      Do dogs read the world with their noses?

·      Is the myth of my grandmother being a great cook more important than the truth (she was just okay)? Do we need myths more than truth?

·      Who is more real: the me I am when I wake and have little patience and motivation and concern other than being left alone for five more minutes of sleep or the composed me who is a lot nicer?

·      Is “ballet” a French word for “little girl torture”?

·      Do I do my students a disservice by leaving extensive comments on their work?

·      Why do I feel like I’ve failed every time I step into a department store?

·      Do I miss smoking cigarettes or do I simply miss lighting them with my Zippo? Should I carry a Zippo just so I can light people’s cigarettes for them?

·      Who decided it was wise to let a little drummer boy to play drums for a newborn?

·      Is there any value in silence, really?

Notice these are all questions. Silence has given me nothing concrete. Perhaps this is the value of silence—the understanding that nothing is certain, that all we have are enquiries. We’ll never know anything, which is maybe why silence is so fucking scary. Too much space for uncertainty.

5 

I drink tea because I like it, but I made the switch from coffee years ago because coffee hurts my stomach. Tea is gentler. And the caffeine comes on subtly, not like the mainline shot of coffee and espresso. It suits me, plus I get to drink a lot of it. I can’t abide moderation, and immoderate amounts of coffee are no good for anyone.

I used to drink coffee on the run to work. I snuck a cup between tasks, reheated old coffee and added sugar to make the stale swill palatable. Coffee was about speed and consumption. Get the drug into my system so I can get through my day.

I am definitely addicted to tea, as failure to consume two cups of Scottish Breakfast or Earl Grey by 1:30 PM will result in a headache. But unlike coffee, tea affords time for contemplation and slowness. I know that my morning cup will not be drinkable until the bag has steeped for ten minutes, twice the time the directions on the box suggest, but weak tea makes me sad. In the time the bag is releasing its magic into hot water, I sit in bed and play with my dog or I sit at the dining room table and thumb through a book or, sure, scroll through social media and check emails, but tentatively, never with commitment. I sometimes close my eyes and try to just be without doing a goddamn thing. Ten minutes. Not very long, but ten minutes of inactivity is a miracle. No one expects anything from me during these stolen minutes. I expect nothing of myself. The world is waiting with all its attendant horrors, but they’ll keep. Ten minutes come and go, and then I get to drink the tea, slowly, because it’s still hot and there’s no rush.

I carve out time for this morning ritual. Except when I don’t. When I oversleep or have to hustle to get out of the apartment earlier than usual, I get a cup to go, never good. Drinking tea while commuting ruins the pleasure of savoring and calmly stepping into the day.

My late morning/early afternoon second cup is trickier, as I am almost always at work at this time, but my classes are over early and I have time to enjoy a quiet cup in my office as I think about grading papers or answering emails. I am again buoyed by the quiet ritual of waiting for the tea to brew and the paced ingestion. I find that I am a better person when I drink tea than I was when I guzzled coffee. Not exactly Zen, and certainly tea revels no real profundities, not even the toss-away thoughts listed above, but I don’t feel complete without my daily tea ceremony, essential as so much of modern life is about fragmentation: six internet tabs open, three conversations happening over three mediums, lingering emails waiting for answers, omnipresent awareness of debts and bills to be paid, chores to be done, preparations to be made, to do lists, to be read piles—it’s a lot. Taking some time at the start, middle, and conclusion of the day is the only way to keep from losing my shit.

6 

I chose to live in Chicago, third largest city in one of the larger countries on this small planet. Large means people; people means noise. I know this. I knew it then and I know it now. And I know as well that I don’t always like people and that I only like the noise I like, be it the organized noise of my favorite music or the sounds my dog makes as he’s repositioning his body into a more agreeable ball or the click clack my two fingers moving across this keyboard. Occasionally, I respond fondly to noise that is not of my choosing— just now, the laughter of someone walking outside my apartment, signaling a sort of honest joy, proved infectious. But I know that, at any moment, some fucker will decide to drive their car loudly down the street, probably that prick with the Corvette from down the block, midlife crisis on vulgar display, making sounds that remind us just how far from nature we’ve fallen.

7 

Increasingly, spaces for silence are fading.

Yesterday, I made the decision to leave my apartment because someone suggested that doing so every now and then is a good idea. I went to a café in a nearby trendy neighborhood for tea and an hour of reading. No laptop, minimal phone usage, just me and a book. But every café is contractually required to play music at volumes rivaling dance clubs. I can’t imagine how people have conversations with that much racket. Actually, I can, because the people at the next table were speaking in competition with the soundtrack. Needless to say, I got no reading done.

Surely there are plenty of quiet cafés. I chose poorly. And I could have gone to a library, though even libraries are less bastions of silence then they once were. I might have walked to the lake and sat by the water and read my book, but that would hardly take me away from humans and their noises. By which I do not simply mean their mouths. It’s one thing to use the vocal chords, but the standard issue human comes with smart phone and an endless playlist that they feel compelled to share with every ear in the vicinity. And if they’re not playing dreadful music, they’re having dreadful conversations with some distant pal who they’ve put on speaker so we can hear both sides of the chat. Gee, thanks.

I remember the first time I heard someone on their cell phone, half their conversation on the Red Line, the noise of the train necessitating speaking louder than the young woman may have liked, for she confessed the following to the entire train car: “YES, MOTHER. FINE. YOU WANNA KNOW? THREE, OKAY? I’VE SLEPT WITH THREE GUYS SO FAR, OKAY?”

8 

When I drive, often with the windows down, I play music. When I come to a stoplight, I turn the volume down a touch because the car next to me has the windows open as well and they may not appreciate Slayer or Pig Destroyer or Naked Raygun. No one’s perfect. The hip hop on my Spotify playlist is locked firmly in the 1990s, and while there’s plenty of opportunity to turn up the bass, I don’t possess speakers capable of making the annoying BOOM that most Chicago drivers believe is a status signifier.

9 

I will cop to what anyone reading this has surely been thinking: I sound very much like a grumpy old fucker. The sentence “If it’s too loud, you’re too old” was on repeat during my youth, mostly echoed by my aunts who loved to throw parties where the turntable spun and the speakers were tested. Not to mention one side of my family seems to operate at full volume speaking as if on 1x speed. I’ve inherited these tendencies, and have felt a sort of shame when one of my non-Italian pals has pointed out how much I run my goddamn mouth. One friend did so, the result being a resolution to speak less, listen more.

What have I heard? Lots. Too much.

10 

The misunderstanding of John Cage’s “4’33,” the famous score with no notes, is that it is a silent experience. In fact, the idea of background noise—shuffling of clothing as one adjusts in their seat, birds chirping, lips accepting a sip of wine—vary depending on performance, but those small sounds become part of the composition, always different each time it’s played. This is why someone complaining on social media about students protesting outside a music school were ruining “4’33” are ludicrous.

Silence is not the absence of noise so much as the stillness of life. Well, no. . . not that either. The slowness of life? Maybe. Maybe I’m full of shit, but there does seem to be a link from silence to slowness. Slow music is not silent, but if you grew up (like me) listening to speed metal, you regard Metallica’s Black Album as damn near quiet. The Cowboy Junkies’ Trinity Session is a quiet record for all its music.

Silence requires slowing down. I might go for a run in a quiet part of unspoiled nature and still hear sounds that would diminish were I walking. Pausing in this quiet room, giving the keyboard a break, I hear only my dog make a pleased groan as he stretches his small body, followed by the crack of my ankle as I move my foot. These old bones make plenty of small noise, enough to pepper my sought after quiet, none of which bothers me a whit. We live with small sounds, ambient noise, the whispers of being alive. Even the very distant sound a plane flying far over my head melts nicely into my still morning. None of this is disruptive.

11 

I wrote another 500 words on the subject of silence, noise, tea, dogs, walks, cafés, books, meditation, politics, and a wayward jaunt into anti-natalism that makes the above comments seem amiable. It was a lot more to add to an already stuffed blog post (2,687 words as of this sentence). Best to cut that noise and end this thing on a quiet note, the best way of doing that being empty space, so consider this:

 Profound, right?

Revisiting Van Halen

If anyone asked me, between 1984 and 1986, what I wanted to be when I grew up, I would’ve said, “Eddie Van Halen.” After 1986. . . probably still, but the 5150 album and ascent of Van Hager lessened my love for the band, if not its guitarist. Hammy Cigar was not as flamboyant or fun as Diamond Dave, and Roth’s solo record Eat ‘em and Smile, a few slices of cheese aside, served up plenty of Steve Vai/Billy Sheehan fretboard wizardry. (Not to mention the production is superior to any of the post 1984 VH records. Firing Ted Templeman was clearly a mistake.)

Eddie was my hero. No one played like him. Nothing sounded like his guitar. He was a game changer. I’d endure shitty Hager songs if it meant I’d get another guitar solo to obsess over. Until just after OU812 when I tuned out. By then, I was well into heavier music, thrash metal mostly and sloppy punk. And then I found REM and The Replacements and The Pixies and that was the end of my 80s big rock interest.

But the 14-year-old boy still lives within me. I’ve never been ashamed of my love of those first six VH records, even if confessing so raised the eyebrows of my indie rock pals who were too cool for swaggering rock and quicky guitar instrumentals. Oh well. . . their loss. But I never replaced my VH records with CDs, save for Fair Warning, always my favorite, and when I moved out of my mom’s house, I left the turntable and all those records behind. Who knows what became of them.

This week, because I watched one Instagram video of Van Halen in their prime, I’ve been bombarded with several more clips of the band. And watched most of them. Feels like time to revisit the great six pre-Sammy records with very fresh ears. Happily, they still satisfy, though some of the tunes stand out while a few elicit groans. Here are my thoughts, for whatever the fuck they’re worth.

Van Halen (self-titled first record)

My least favorite, always. Still. Some bangers, sure, but why bother with “Runnin’ with the Devil” or “Ain’t Talkin’ ‘bout Love” (so many apostrophes, guys) when the radio plays them consistently? And “You Really Got Me” (not even my favorite Kinks’ song, not by 10 miles) never got me as much as the killer “Eruption” that kicks it off. Really, there were only two tracks I got excited to revisit: “Little Dreamer” (underrated!) and “I’m the One,” an absolute banger. Some of Eddie’s best playing. Even the cheesy “shoobie doo wah” chorus still charms after all this time. I mean. . . these guys were killer and they knew it, and Dave understood his role: cut through Eddie and Alex’s big rock with some of that Song and Dance Man schtick he’d abuse on “Crazy from the Heat.” “Atomic Punk” sounded better than it did when I first heard it, evidence of my evolving taste.

Skipped tracks: “Jamie’s Crying.” So am I. So are we all. “Feel Your Love Tonight” just sucks. I mean, “I’m the One” is basically the best “Let’s fuck, already!” song on the record, so I don’t need the poppier version. And yeah, “Ice Cream Man” has a ripping, shredding solo from Eddie, but it veers too much toward cornball territory for me.

Overall: Solid introduction and a promise of better things to come.

Van Halen II

A big step up, but I don’t know if others would agree. Fewer tracks get classic rock radio play, and the cover of “You’re No Good” isn’t as scintillating as “You Really Got Me.” Plus, I’ve read enough interviews with Eddie to know he hated covers. (He’d be more upset over Dave singing “Dancing in the Streets” over his keyboard pattern years later.) But I like the weird stuff, always have, because I’m contrarian asshole at times but, damnit, radio play ruined a lot of good songs. So yeah, I like the deep cuts that populate this one better than the chestnuts on the debut.

Stand outs: “Somebody Get Me a Doctor,” “Bottom’s Up,” “D.O.A.” and “Spanish Fly,” which I always preferred to “Eruption.” “Out of Love Again” is fun if not essential and “Women in Love…” (complete with ellipses for some reason) is a fine pop song that seems better today.

Skipped tracks: “Dance the Night Away” which isn’t bad, but I’ve heard it enough and “Beautiful Girls” which I truly dislike. Too up, too goofy, Dave unfiltered (not always a good thing).

Overall: Overlooked late-70s gold.

Women and Children First

Van Halen enters the 80s! Their best decade, for certain, and this their first great record with only one song I never cottoned onto, but let’s start with the gems.

“And the Cradle Will Rock…” More ellipses! Also the first sign of Eddie the keyboardist, though you’d hardly know it what with all the effects. When I first heard this song, it cracked me up. It’s supposed to be funny, right? I think? Upon re-listen, I’m still laughing. Ditto “Everybody Wants Some!!” (double the exclamation points for double the swagger). But “Fools,” with its bluesy trills turning to sludgy guitar riffing, really (pun alert!) got me. There’s something funny about Eddie flying over the fretboard and then paying an absolute caveman riff. Love it.

More stand outs: “Romeo Delight” has the quintessential Van Halen lyric: “I’m taking whiskey to the party tonight and I’m looking for somebody to squeeze.” That’s the band’s early catalogue in a nutshell. “Tora! Tora!” and “Loss of Control” were always my favorites because they so closely resembled metal. They continue to kill, as does “Take Your Whiskey Home.” Great song, that one. The last tracks are disposable, but I’ll keep “Could This Be Magic?” (more punctuation!) because I’m a sucker for Eddie playing clean or acoustic.

Skipped track: just “In a Simple Rhyme.” Never liked it. Always felt like radio pandering. Pass.

Overall: great record, weirder, sloppier, feels like the band is already tiring of hits and willfully trying to challenge listeners, a tendency that would come to full fruition next.

Fair Warning

The best. Tops. The one I’ve listened to the most. Short. Like, really short. But better to say a lot in a small space than overstay your welcome, and this one packs a lot in nine tracks, two of them under two minutes each. My before-mentioned contrarian nature predisposes me to love this one most, as the critics were not exactly on board, and even the fans noted the dark turn. Sure, a lot of the songs are about women—this is Van Halen, after all—but not the usual frat house Kiss bullshit. Here we have fallen prom queens doing porn and one song that certainly feels like it’s a little bit about pimping. The one oddity among these is “So This is Love?” an upbeat banger cradled by some solid Alex/Mike rhythm that positively swings. “Mean Streets” has that Eddie slapping-his-guitar-like-a-funk-bass intro and great riffing. “Dirty Movies” is my least favorite, but damn. . . Eddie plays slide! And Michael Anthony’s bass is all over this record, finally asserting himself among the other three big personalities.

Stand outs: “Unchained” is a classic. “Push Comes to Shove” has what might be Eddie’s best guitar solo. “Sinner’s Swing!” is both possessive and exclamatory and fucking kills (though it should be “Sinners, Swing!” since Roth says at the jump “Alright you sinners, swing!”). “Sunday Afternoon in the Park” is straight out of a Dario Argento film and deeply unsettling. People hate it. I love it. “One Foot Out the Door” ends the record so quickly I’m amazed the label let them keep it on. Come to think of it, I’m surprised the last two tracks made the cut, but I’m so happy they did. It’s a record that gets better with age. You can sense Eddie’s frustration, Dave is reigned in (as much as that was ever possible), and Mike and Alex get to show off some chops.

Skipped tracks: None! All essential!

Overall: Their best.

Diver Down

I ignored this record for years. I bought it, liked parts of it, but it felt slapped together, a mish-mash of covers and middling material, a stepdown after Fair Warning and warm up for the coming MTV fame. But damn, there are some forgotten surprises on here.

Stand outs: “Cathedral” (which I also prefer to “Eruption”), “Intruder” (which is maybe my favorite VH instrumental), “The Full Bug” (a dirty, stupid, fun song), and “Big Bad Bill (Is Sweet William Now).” Regarding the last song, it’s their best cover. Unlike any other they’ve done, a touch of irony via swinging throwback featuring some great clarinet work by Jan Van Halen, father of Alex and Ed. And it’s just fun, goddamnit. Roth always said he got along with Jan the father and not the brothers Van Halen. Knowing that, I imagine Papa VH keeping the beefing youngsters in line while laying down some fantastic solos.

And then there’s “Secrets.” Oh wow, I slept on this fucking song. Have not heard it since high school, completely forgot it existed. I’m sure my 14-year-old ears rejected the clean guitars (save for the obligatory, possibly unnecessary solo) and lighter fare, but it’s a delight. Under-appreciated little ditty that gets no love. Too bad.

Skipped tracks: “Where Have all the Good Times Gone” is fine, but it, along with “Dancing in the Streets,” does little for me. Skipped “Little Guitars” mid-way through as well, through I’m on the fence with that song. I neither love nor hate it. “Happy Trails” is campy, and I’ve heard it enough. Besides, listening to the boys pretend they get along is not very convincing.

Overall: I used to bash this one a bit, but it’s a happy pleasure. I get that after the middle records, they wanted a breath of joy. I’m not going to shit on them for that.

1984

If the debut was Van Halen staking their rightful claim as the next important rock act and Fair Warning was a step onto some darker terrain, 1984 is the pivotal record that changed the band forever, it having the most hits with Roth, the memorable videos, and the stratosphere launching gravitas that they’d never find again. Roth split after this one, which anyone might have seen coming what with his endless MTV antics and (second pun alert!) unchained ego, and the band enlisted Sammy and landed on adult contemporary island. The end of an era while being the first record a lot of us kiddies spent our allowance money on. After seeing that “Panama” video, nothing was the same for me. I spent the next two years memorizing the previous records and waiting for the next release from my favorite band that would inevitably disappoint, however much I tried to like it. I saw them on the 5150 tour, of course (my first concert, thanks, Uncle John), but I could only imagine how much better the show would’ve been with Roth. Oh well. Stars burn brightest before they die, right?

Stand outs: “Panama,” “Girl Gone Bad,” “House of Pain,” “Drop Dead Legs,” and yeah, “Hot for Teacher,” which to this day smokes. Fucking guys firing on all cylinders.

It occurs to me that all songs save for “Jump” and “Top Jimmy” are about women (though “Top Jimmy” has that silly ending), and not many of them are, um, progressive, which says much about the 80s, rock music, and the culture in which I was raised. Here’s to the sensitive alternative singers and punks like Ian MacKaye who helped erase some misogyny from my mental space, but I can listen to these tracks and chuckle at some of what Roth is spewing without feeling the need to defend every eye-rollish locker room lyric.

Skipped tracks: “Jump” (VH’s “Stairway to Heaven”—I never need to hear it again) and “I’ll Wait.” I suppose I prefer guitar Eddie to synth Eddie. Sue me.

And that’s it. All I want to focus on. Skipping the Sammys, never even bothered with the Van Halen III nonsense or reunions. Six albums. . . plenty. More than most bands pull off, so there’s no need for me to lament what followed. Plenty of people like the later stuff, and good for them, seriously. And while we’re wrapping up, lay off Wolfgang! The kid is a great musician and deserves none of the shit the old “fans” throw at him.

Talking at the same time

1

“We bailed out all the millionaires

They’ve got the fruit, we’ve got the rind.

And everybody’s talking at the same time.”

Tom Waits sang these words in 2011. He was talking about the bailout of the big banks. Who remembers that?

I do. I also remembering walking into the Dank Haus bar and seeing one of my friends wearing a shirt with the old commie hammer and sickle that read Bankers of the World, Unite!

People were pissed then. They’re pissed now, but I wonder if the anger is the same. I am of a generation that gets laughed at when we talk derisively about capitalism that’s different from the ways this generation talks about capitalism. I still find “selling out” gross. Gen Z is mad that the system is rigged against their ability to sell out.

2

The idea that we’re all talking at the same time, the tile of that Tom Waits song, has more to do with the nature of the internet. The culture where everyone has a voice. But in all of that talking, who remembers anything? What sticks? We forgot about the financial crisis pretty quickly. The scary days of 2008 seem quaint now. That was when old W. was exiting and before Obama and way before anyone paid this much attention to Trump. Some of the same people who might’ve worn those hammer and sickle shirts wax nostalgic about W. One said to me, “At least he wasn’t a complete buffoon.” No, just a war criminal.

We’re so quick to forget that the bankers and the deregulation brought the economy to its knees and that during the Bush administration much of the country seemed okie dokie with torture, and it hurts my middle-aged brain. We’re talking at the same time, not listening, not remembering.

People seem to have forgotten that Trump steered a mob of angry, misinformed assholes into the Capitol Building to cause mayhem. Among a lot of other shit. People my parents’ age seem to have forgotten that it was easier for them to buy houses when they were twenty-two than it will ever be for any twenty-two-year-old ever again. People seem to have forgotten that the reason for this has everything to do with the same greed and deregulation that corrupted the 1980s and bled into the 21st century.

3

I seem to have forgotten that it’s no fun getting preached at.

4

What is gained from talking at the same time? The internet was supposed to democratize information and kick aside the gatekeepers blocking entry based on market whims. Where does a writer like, oh, I don’t know, me find an agent or editor willing to look past my lack of commercial appeal? Where is the record label willing to take a chance on today’s David Bowie or Devo?

(Okay, I know—there are plenty of innovative artists out there finding platforms and distribution. But still, perhaps it has to do with my middle-age brain again, but the Billie Eilishes, however much I can see value in what they do, still seem less innovative or subversive than a lot of the music that clearly inspired them.)

Some of us who thought that culture was atrophying in the 1990s were excited by the internet. (I wasn’t, but I’m perpetually grouchy.) The oddballs would have space to make their oddball art and share their oddball ideas. And, for a brief period, that seemed to be the case, but capitalism always wins. And now we have social media and algorithms and Amazon and all the ways the corporations can continue commodification. But there are voices, like we’d hoped. So many. Too many?

We went from democratizing culture and art to overwhelming it. Now I remember why I never had children.

5

Quick review of the last paragraphs: not the whimsical tone to which I aspire.

6

All at once, everyone says the same thing at the same time. How many people have said what I just said already, and probably much better?

Harold Bloom wrote about the anxiety of influence, but that’s not what I’m talking about. Not exactly. Still, there’s something to the idea that we worry about repeating or emulating the ideas of the past, evidence of our lacking imaginations. That is, we creative fuckers have this worry. What to write post-Hamlet?

Actually… is the anxiety of influence still a thing? So many books by so many writers writing the same story, more or less. Or at least using the same narrative template. Anxiety or emulation?

7

What is lost when we all use the same talking points? My conservative pals are currently patting themselves on the back for pointing out that liberals have decided to uniformly call Trump and J.D. Vance “weird.” As if their accusations that Harris is a “DEI candidate” or has a strange laugh are not evidence of their lockstep. As if they don’t use the same buzzwords and quote the same FOX or OAN bullshit verbatim. I think often of this Joseph Brodsky quote: “By failing to read or listen to poets, society dooms itself to inferior modes of articulation, those of the politician, the salesman or the charlatan.” Goddamn right.

Far be it from me to suggest that modern culture is somehow unique in its trends and uniform vernacular, but there is a worry that when so many voices talk at the same time and make undeviating points, a certain reluctance to adaptation sets in, not to mention a binary us v. them mentality. And we all know how boring binaries are. This has always been the case, sure, but the tools of today’s (being very generous with this next noun) discourse may accelerate our worst tendencies. God knows I’m a bigger asshole online than in person.

If we’re all talking at the same time, and, in the process, forgetting the not so distant past in favor of the emerging immediate, and if we’re also replicating the same words, phrases, and, thus, ideas, how can that be good?

Okay, forget “good.” That’s vague anyway. I’ll instead use a different yet similarly soft word: How can that be interesting?

8

This is a long way—with too many sociopolitical pit stops—toward lamenting the monoculture that I saw in the 90s, especially when swing music became a trend, that seems all the more prevalent now that we have quicker means of sharing the same stuff. Maybe this has something to do with Taylor Swift being named one of the greatest guitarists of all time, which I recognize is ridiculous and truly of the moment but nevertheless boils my metalhead Gen X blood. Maybe this is the old man in me reacting to a culture that is not his own, which old men have done since forever. Of course, this is one of the pleasures of aging, so don’t begrudge me.

But fuck that. That’s not entirely what this is. This is me being every bit the Postmanian I am and thinking back to not only Amusing Ourselves to Death but also Technopoly, texts whose relevance only increases with each passing iPhone iteration.

Permit one more political rant.

When Biden stepped down, I had mixed feelings. Mixed partially because I was happy he was moving aside if it helps a democrat win in November (vote blue no matter who, folks, because voting is harm reduction) but bummed because of the catalyst: that shitty debate performance. Forget that Biden has been a fine president in the sense that he has passed a lot of legislation and accomplished as much as I can expect from that incredibly flawed office. Forget that his foreign policy is, to put it mildly, not awesome, but domestically I have few complaints. I was never inspired by the guy, and I wouldn’t want to hang out with him (though we could chat about Seamus Heaney), but he did what should be a boring job in a boring manner. Because that’s the job.

But he sucks on TV. And he’s old. So… NOPE! Can’t have that.

As Neil Postman pointed out, television altered the image of the president into something closer to that of a Hollywood celebrity. And it cheapened political discourse. Postman had similar concerns about the internet, which he voiced before his death in 2003. If only Neil were alive today.

Say what you will about Trump (and I have plenty to say), but the guy understands TV. He knows how to work a room. Neither of those last points should be considered complimentary or valued greatly. At least in regard to political acumen or ethical substance. And sure, the gig has always required being something of a spokesperson possessing some polish. But would Taft get elected, as fat as he was? FDR hid his disability. No way he could have hid that today. Would Biden’s lifelong struggles with stuttering have affected him as adversely in the era where print was the dominant media?

There may be a valid reason why the people we elect to high offices of representation should possess movie star charism and polish. Hope is important, or so the Obama 2008 campaign told us. But in the aftermath of 2008 were a lot of people who felt Obama let them down because they expected more than even he promised. They expected that particular movie star president to deliver a Hollywood happy ending. And I can’t solely blame the interest or the media for that one, but a culture shaped by a specific idea of a specific narrative can only be disappointed by reality.

9

Narratives I was raised to believe were true or at least correct:

The American Dream is measured by wealth and fame.

Meritocracy is real.

The United States is the sole land of the free, the moral center of the world, and the only country that should be allowed nuclear weapons.

Christians are correct (Catholics more so).

People are poor because they lack strong work ethic.

Home ownership will always be a guarantee of financial stability.

Sexual assault is as much the victim’s fault, if not entirely, because what were they wearing and why were they there?

Boys will be boys, but girls are either virgins or whores.

Gay people exist for straight people’s ridicule.

The rich deserve their wealth. They earned it.

Socialism is bad. (Quote Barry Crimmins: “I learned that in public school.”)

Rock and roll is the apex of music and culture, and the best of it came from the 1960s and early 70s.

(That last one is a sticking point for us Gen Xers whose parents exported their culture onto us so successfully. I remember my stepdad asking me why I was listening to Led Zeppelin and telling me how he never would have listened to his parents’ music. That was when I started listening to punk and metal.)

10

One of the things I ask of my ENG 102 students is that they identify and interrogate narratives. Each of the narratives listed above is pretty fucking interrogatable. But I don’t know that I was smart enough to interrogate and abandon them when I was my students’ age. It’s a lot easier accepting popular narratives because they are so often repeated, and anything becomes law if it’s repeated enough.

Here’s another one: if you’re a Chicagoan, you don’t put ketchup on a hot dog. It’s just a thing here. Except it’s really not. It’s nonsense. And yeah, ketchup is kinda gross and hot dogs are not so sacred they can’t stand some leniency when it comes to condiments and individual taste, but the narrative that one just doesn’t do that here is pretty much iron clad.

A benign example, sure, but you get the point: in the grand scheme of things, who fucking cares what people put on hot dogs? But try going to the Weiner’s Circle and putting ketchup on your hot dog. See what happens.

In the same manner, often inconsequential matters get elevated. But worse, very consequential matters get misunderstood, misrepresented, and are all too often unaddressed because doing so would go against the popular narrative. Why examine rape culture when it’s easier to buy into the popular narrative that women should keep their legs crossed and stop teasing men?

Narratives become so intransigent because they are repeated. Because the culture says the same thing often at the same time. No smaller collection of voices has a fucking chance.

Dear Goodboy

Dear Goodboy,

Well, here we are—that time of year again. Have to start doing things you won’t like, namely getting up extra early to take you on the first walk of the day, and I know you know what that means: shortly after we’ve traipsed through your choice grass patches and past your favorite smelling bushes, I’ll start cleaning sleep off my body and cooking breakfast and making tea and arranging the apartment so that the things I don’t want you reaching are unreachable. And you know what that means.

Yes, my boy, I’ll be leaving for a few hours. I know, I know. Why, you’re asking. You don’t get it. What’s the point of leaving, aside from walking through the neighborhood and sniffing things and peeing on them? What else is there? And look at everything in here? Food. Water. Comforts. Pillows. Blankets. Artificially controlled environment. Remember how hot it was last week? You really want to venture out into that?

I know, and you’re right. It sucks. If there’s anything I know for sure in this giant chaos of an existence, it’s that things are better with you. Life these last months has been perfect. Wake, walk, make breakfast and coffee for mater, see her off to work, then it’s back to bed for a few hours of sleeping (for you, sometimes me) and writing (sometimes me) and reading (often me) and watching reruns of TV from my youth that you’re fairly indifferent to, though you never judge, do you? And when the writing goes poorly, you’re don’t have any critical feedback, just kind words: Chill—it’s fine. Just try again tomorrow. Take a nap with me.

Yeah, working is better with you nearby. Everything is. So why do I plan to leave tomorrow—and the day after that and the day after that—for so many hours? Why? Well, boy, I have a job, and that job affords me a nice stretch of time over the summer to stay home and be with you, but eventually they expect me back at work. Knowing that many people leave their dogs at home every day year-round hardly offers consolation, I know, but try to remember that were it not for my job, we’d not have had all these weeks of relaxing together. I’m trying to keep that in mind as I gear up for another sixteen weeks of standing in front of young people and saying things and facilitating discussion and whatever else I do all day long. (I won’t bore you with the details, boy.) Unlike most people, I don’t make claims that my job is any more important than it is, though I do know that there are worse things a person could do for money, and that, at its best, my job is noble or at least well-meaning in intent and sometimes in execution. But yeah, hardly offers much solace.

And I also know that you’ll sleep through most of the hours I’m away, but that hardly helps because I also know that you sleep better on my lap. Right? Yeah. I knew it.

How to explain money to you. I mentioned it earlier, but I saw the way you looked at me. Confusion. No idea what it means, right? I could try, list all the things you need and enjoy. Food, especially. You like it, right? Not just an imperative—you enjoy eating. Sadly, that costs money. No one is giving us food without expecting something in return. What’s that? Oh, yeah. Right. You eat things off the ground. I know you think that if you walk long enough and sniff everything, edible material will present itself. And you’re not wrong, but a lot of that stuff is bad for your belly, boy. You don’t know that. I do. And I’ll tell you, it sucks to know that, to have to pull you away from that half-eaten chicken wing some asshole thoughtlessly discarded on the sidewalk. Anyway—back to your food, the kind you have to eat, the good kind, not the trash on the sidewalk: it costs money, so I have to go back to work tomorrow and earn that money. Otherwise, we’re out on the street, boy, where there’s only scraps of garbage to eat and no shelter from the elements, and no thick blankets to hide under when it thunders and no end of worries. So yeah, food and shelter are necessities. So it’s off to work I go.

But know this: I’m coming home. In a few hours. And when I do, we’ll immediately go for a walk. And I’ll feed you. And we’ll snuggle. And play. And we can get back to bed and reading and sleeping and you can scratch at the blanket when you get cold and I’ll let you under and we can sleep like that for hours before tomorrow when I’ll have to leave you. And again the day after. But I’ll come home tomorrow. And the day after as well. And no diversions between work and home—no stops at the bar or unnecessary delays. I prefer the food at home. And the company. Nothing is as good out there as it is in here with you. I’ll leave, sure, but I’ll spend the day trying to get back home. And when I do, I know how happy you’ll be to see me. Which always feels nice, but the nice is nothing compared to the lousy of leaving you.

Dave Grohl, the Last Rock Star. Thank God.

 Look, I’m no fan. I admit that up front. So take from that admission that this will not be an essay of praise, but I will try my damnedest not to let this devolve in pure trash talk.

To begin—I watched a clip of Dave Grohl and that other guy from the Foo Fighters, the one who died, on Conan O’Brien’s show talking about how stupid the name of their band is. Which it is, but hey— some of us like stupid names. Even the best rock band of the late 80s, The Pixies, had a stupid name. The real reason I watched the clip was because the video title hinted that Dave would shit talk Nirvana’s old drummers. I expected (hoped?) that Dave might say a word against the Melvins’ great Dale Crover, my favorite drummer in rock history. (Yeah, I factor Bonham into my estimation.) Dale Crover was in Nirvana more as a fill in when they were without a permanent drummer, and he did play on a few tracks from Bleach, but, as we know, Dave Grohl was sitting behind the kit for the rest of their short career.

Grohl said nothing about Crover. Smart man— Crover is a monster wielding both power and subtly on those skins. Not that Grohl is a bad drummer, but. . . he’s no Dale Crover. Which is what I believe Kurt Cobain never let him forget, the Melvins being Cobain’s favorite band and the guys he looked up to/modeled Nirvana after. But I would have understood some shit talk; how often can one hear “Play more like Dale” before resentment sets in. And if you’re now that famous, whereas the Melvins remain a cult favorite, why not use your position for ego boosting?

Credit Grohl that he left it alone, and before I turn this into more of a Dale > Dave essay, let’s get on to what really concerns me.

I was thinking about how many people I know who love The Foo Fighters. And how little I care for that band. I am aware that me simply not liking a band in no way makes them “bad.” Again, I’m clearly in the minority, as Grohl is a bona fide rock star who plays stadiums and has his music in movies and commercials and all over terrestrial radio and streaming playlists. He’s a rock star, but what does that mean?

I’m wondering if being a rock star is even a thing anymore. The biggest names in the music world (that I’ve heard of, at least) are named Taylor or Beyoncé or come from South Korea. None of them play with I would call rock music. If you asked the Boomers in my life, they’d lament that a certain museum in Cleveland features pop acts and rappers, not what they’d call rock and roll. And they’d be (mostly) right, but again, so what? Well, if we’re going to make genre distinctions, then what remains of rock and roll or the shortened, and to my thinking, more malleable genre “rock”?

A Google search of “rock bands 2023” yields this list: Greta Van Fleet (never heard of her), Blink-182 (not as punk as they or their fans think they are), Metallica (certainly no longer metal), Imagine Dragons (I can, but I have no idea who they are), The Lumineers (folk, right?), Red Hot Chili Peppers (not rock, or funk for that matter, or punk or. . . what the fuck is that band?) and, yup, Foo Fighters. Despite my limited knowledge, these are surely big names, one of them definitely a rock band. Maybe the biggest in the world. Helmed by little Davey Grohl with Pat Smear by his side. Pat Smear! Of the Germs. So there’s an actual punk rock veteran in the band. But Dave Grohl is no Darby Crash, and this is no punk band. This is a rock band. The kind that makes songs for the video game Rock Band.

A rock band is a platonic ideal. Or aims to be. These days, we use the term “rock star” to describe a good parking spot. But the genre is hardly ancient (despite what the sagging visage of Keith Richards might lead one to conclude). And we humans have a notoriously poor grasp of history (we Americans— even worse), so to most of the living, the term “rock star” is imbued with a sense of timeless importance, cultural relevance, and a charmingly roguish cache of influence. Or not. Come to think of it, do the kids— the part of our population that really matters— give a goddamn? I don’t think any of the students I work with care about the Foo Fighters or rock and roll or rock stars. They love pop icons, they like something akin to rock music, but they are not thinking of rock stars the way my uncles thought of Aerosmith or the way I worshipped Eddie Van Halen. They may wear Ramones and Led Zeppelin T-shirts, but Gen Z doesn’t seem to care about rock music. I dare say they’d disparage Keith Moon’s hotel destroying antics. Such an asshole! Why didn’t he lead young people to voting polls like Chance the Rapper or spend an hour signing autographs like Taylor Swift?

Of course, there are still plenty of asshole musicians acting like spoiled idiots. They tend to do things like make it rain in the club or flaunt their wealth on Instagram, a post-Reagan era manner of demonstrative excess. But the chaotic, shambling mess on stage whipping his dick out or shooting heroin is a rarity if not a memory. At least in stadiums. If rock is alive, it’s in smaller venues, where, I’d argue, it’s always belonged. There may be nothing worse than a big outdoor stadium rock show. The fucking worst. But the old, dirty, small, chaotic clubs are still around and still letting a lot of great (and not so great) bands set up their gear and tear through three-chord RAWK! God bless these clubs. As if the tone of this essay were not enough of a giveaway, let me confess that I am of that age where I no longer frequent these establishments, but I pass the Metro and the Riv and the Bottom Longue and I see the names of bands on the marquees and think, Ah yes. Rock is not dead. Just rehoused. Or rerehoused? For while the rock never left the clubs, the bigger names did. (A guy who worked at the Vic once told me, “We get ‘em on the way up and on the way down.”)

I’ve heard Grohl tell the story of visiting Chicago and seeing Naked Raygun and having his mind blown or ass kicked or something somethinged. Stands to reason— Naked Raygun were one of the best bands around, still a favorite in the Francone household, dare I suggest the best band to come out of Chicago. They were punk, or at least punks liked them. But they were a band that played clubs, not arenas. Thank god. They were local heroes, not rock stars. They sang “What poor gods we do make,” and it made sense. Punks were never meant to be worshipped. They were no different than the audience, which is why part of the club experience involved jumping on stage or singing into the microphone when the band stuck it into the crowd. Punk’s ethos was always DIY. Anyone could do it. Grab a guitar. Bash out some chords. Give voice to your passion. Do it small, cheap, fast. Break away from the bloat of mid-1970s prog and overly theatrical shows. Sure, you can love and worship Bowie— he was a rock star, my favorite. But punks were the children of rock stars. The angry, funny brats who didn’t see value in aping Led Zeppelin. And who the fuck wants to sit in nosebleed seats and endure 20-minutes of “Whole Lotta Love” when the Ramones could give you a tighter set at CBGBs?

Come to think of it, was punk a reaction against mid-70s rock star bullshit or was it a return to rock’s core values?

Dave Grohl has some punk DNA, maybe. He played in Nirvana, a kinda punk band or a band that represented the next stages in what was already a genre that moved on. By the time grunge came along we were way past post-punk much less punk, which had morphed into hardcore. (Ah, sub-genres.) Grunge had the same elements: fifth chords, loud drums, plucked root notes on the bass. It felt a little sloppy. (I still recall fondly a friend’s reaction to the end of “Serve the Servants”: “I hate when bands don’t know how to end a song.”) It may have even felt vital at the moment (oh, to be young again), but it wasn’t too different from 70s garage rock mixed with Black Sabbath doom. The remnants of that short-lived and glorious time when I was fashionable (easy enough when dressing like shit becomes a fad) are a handful of bands that skirted along the grunge borders and offered up mostly uninspiring listener-friendly fare (Hello, Pearl Jam). Of course, the Melvins, often credited as the ur-grunge band, are still around though they never accepted being classified as grunge alongside Tad and Mudhoney. But I digress.

So yeah, back to whatever point I was aiming at. Grohl may claim some indie rock cred because he played drums for a band that started off underground, though shortly after he joined they became the biggest fucking band in the world. Which is fine— I’m not critiquing Grohl for his lack of indie-punk credibility. But it’s hard to see him as ever being anything other than a rock star in the sense that his first band was huge and his follow up is even bigger. And it only takes listening to his music to know that he was made to play unexceptional but undeniably pleasing rock tunes. And good for him. I suppose the world needs a few of them, though hopefully better than “Monkey Wrench.”

(Okay, I will say that “Everlong” is a solid tune. Great riff, melody— just a good song. But that’s about the only one I like.)

Actually. . . do we need rock stars? Nah. They had their time, and the best of them were of a moment (the late 60s-mid 80s) when such antics (hotel trashing, losing your mind on coke, bloated excess) was lamentably tolerated, but we’re older now, hopefully smarter. Not to mention there’s little to rebel against when you’re pulling in that kind of cash. The Stones, the Who, I love their music, but Jesus, fellas, give it a rest. Let the pop icons dominate. They’re supposed to be big and shiny. But rock? It’s always been best when it was dirty, raw, sweaty, a little unpolished, slightly underproduced, very dangerous. Rock and roll, to quote the Secret Chiefs 3, “is a thing that needs to die.” Or at least shuffle back to the small clubs.

Failed or Abandoned?

It’s been a year or so since I wrote on this blog. Because:

1. I’ve been writing other things that may or may never see the light of day but are better than this blog, or worse I guess, but that’s not for me to decide.

2. I’ve been busy on my other project: JABBER.

3. Blogging is passé, I suppose, at least in comparison to Substack, which all my writer friends seem to be on, though I can’t get it up to bug anyone with my own Substack newsletter. Chalk it up to the midwestern in me.

In an effort to justify the existence of this website and this page on it, I’m resurrecting old, failed, or possibly just abandoned writings that were supposed to be something. Seems right to start this series (?) off with an old poem draft from 2020 that stops abruptly and which I’ve made no effort to edit or expand. Let it live and die here. This may also be the last poem I’ve written or tried to write, having been busy committing the offense of prose for some time now.

Anyway, here it is in all it’s unfinishedness:

The dog has ceased twitching, shifted from dream to awake without, I imagine,

noticing the difference

but he’s giving me that look right as I’m midway through this YouTube celebration

of Ciaran Carson’s life and work

my favorite poet died just over one year ago, Derek Mahon following almost to the day

not unlike when

each of the Ramones died as if someone said “1-2-3-4!”

I find the video on my phone, plug in the earbuds I don’t enjoy

that have woven into my every day,

fish the bags and keys and dance

over the dog too stoked by the thought of good smells

to not be underfoot.

We’re outside—I’ve missed two beats, am suddenly at the start

of this poet—whose debut collection has been on my shelf

the better part of this year—reading “Gallipoli”

and I want to say I’m back in D.C. in 2007

listening to the man on stage bring the house down

reading the lines at an accelerating pace

until the devastating last words (though

when I listened, years later, to a recording of the event

Carson read slowly, letting every syllable

have its moment, patient, like his poems)

but that’s for the Frank O’Hara copycats

of which I am one, though not today—I am not transported

to a smoky jazz club—Lady Day is long gone.

I’m walking my dog in Chicago.

The streets are not as I would like.

I’d hoped for a quiet walk through the fall colors

and to enjoy the online celebration

while my dog searches for

the perfect place to shit.

But garbarge trucks and

FedEx vans and

Amazon Prime deliveries

are making too much noise.

I can’t hear

even with my earbuds in

and my dog hates the hiss

of the truck as it creeps along

our block, and the music from

the trucks is not to his taste.

He’s changed routes three times already

zig-zagging, sniffing, catching a start

from the clatter and the laughing

Loyola University students out

without wearing masks

even though we’re still deep

into this pandemic. I give

wide berth as they pass,

don’t want their COVID, their

marijuana stink, their

laughter to drown out

whatever poem we’re on—something

from “On the Night Watch” I think.

And we get to Devon

the street that separates
one neighborhood from another

the one I live in

not quite better

the one to the south

possessing better smells

or so says my dog

who’s outright insisting

we cross this busy road

unaware that more trucks

are ready to cut us in two—

where’s his fear now?

And here we are in Edgewater.

Flower pots and front porches

that’ve seen easier days,

VOTE signs in the postage stamp lawns,

suspicious women eyeing me—

or is it my dog?

It’s him—he’s setting up

to piss on some shrub

that she likely devoted days

to keeping alive, and here

is this beast of the Earth

ready to do as he pleases

right on the green

having already claimed 

a dozen fronds and patches of grass

so I know he’s dry, try to explain

to the woman now directly

leering at me that there’s nothing

he’ll let loose that’ll upset her shrub

but that’s no consolation.

We beat it back the way we came

after sufficient

 And so it stops. After sufficient what? Clearly, I had something in mind. No idea what, it being 2+ years since I wrote it. And yeah… nothing so great here, though the old Vince— the one who spent hours editing his poems— would have found some lines or phrases to to revise. Alas, we hardly knew him.

On Libraries

Two Doctors, Columbus Ohio Public Library

Maybe 1984? I don’t remember when, just that I’m a kid, a youngin’, rugrat, pudgy little weirdo who has maybe read a comic or two before, but Dad decides a trip to the library is a good idea, mostly because he wants to exchange whatever he’s read for another book. And yeah, I know there are these places called libraries—each elementary school I’ve attended has one, but they’re places where we play more than read books or do anything serious, except for the library in the Catholic school I went to from first to third grade. They didn’t have a library, or maybe they did? There was that room with a few books and a desk, but it was nothing like the library at my next school or my current school, Wilkins Elementary, where I’m currently enrolled yet on reprieve, this being summer.

I spend summers with Dad because he and Mom are divorced, the best thing to ever happen in my young life not because the divorce ripped our family apart and took me and Mom and the big brother to the Chicago suburbs and left Dad in Ohio, no, I love Dad and don’t want to be away, but, you know, what would they have been if they’d stayed together? A train wreck, right? Fuck if I want to wake up to fighting parents who don’t understand that sound travels the short distance from the kitchen to their child’s bedroom.

So there’s Dad taking us into this place with rows of books and desks, like the school library but bigger, and he’s telling me and the big brother that we can check out whatever we like, encouraging us, really, Go ahead, pick out something, and I find a book on Vincent Van Gogh who I’ve decided I’m interested in because we have the same name, though all I know, and all I want to read about, is that this madman cut his ear off. Tomorrow I’ll skip to the end of the book and look for that, because he must’ve cut it off late in life— can you even survive that? Won’t you bleed out? I’ll be let down when little of this book discusses the gory self-mutilation, focusing instead on brushstrokes and shadows and things I know nothing of, but I’m getting interested, maybe I should become a painter?

The big brother is getting a book on sports. Dad’s is about some president who’s dead by now. He assesses the three texts as we check out and says, “Well, this is a paradox,” and I don’t know the word but I’ll look it up later and wonder if this is the right context, if a synonym might’ve worked better, but no, I’ll not think that because I’m a kid and what do I know? Instead, I’ll ask another adult, “What’s a paradox?” and they’ll answer, “Two doctors.”

A is For Addict. Bridgeview Public Library

Though I’m too young for it, I’ve seen this movie A Clockwork Orange and found a book by the same name in the Waldenbooks at Chicago Ridge Mall. But I decide that living a few minutes from the Bridgeview Public Library has its advantages, one of them being I don’t have to sacrifice my allowance money, which I’ve not really earned, to the corporate mall bookshop, though I’m too young to care about class warfare and am not engaging in critiques of capitalism or anything so academic, no, I’m just looking for a free book that might be as good as The Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, the book my stepdad told me was a lot of fun, and he was right, read it, read the next few books in the series, the so-called trilogy that is now up to four books, another coming before the author kicks the intergalactic bucket. A Clockwork Orange should be as fun, right? If the movie is any indication, yes, indeed, absolutely.

The librarian is not thrilled to explain the Dewey Decimal System, really just how to find the card with the call number and how to use that breadcrumb to find the hiding Hansel and Gretel, mixing metaphors maybe? Sorry. Ahem.

There is it, at last, after missteps and distractions and near-giving up, I see the book by Anthony Burgess, nice and clean but smells musty, a scent I’d soon be used to, maybe even fond of, though it’ll someday cause conversation with cohabitors about the stink of old books clouding up the air in here, what the hell?

According to the intro to the book, the author was not fond of the movie version. And there’s a last chapter in this novel that the movie ignored. Suddenly I get what the teachers have been saying, that the book is always better, that there’s more to discover in pages than what celluloid has to offer, the director and producer and actor having stepped on the text. This shit is pure! What a rush. I’m hooked.

Cynical Bastard, St. Laurence High School Library

I’m mistaken for someone with a similar name, odd considering no one else has my name, but she’s old this woman in the library, and so when she asks me to assist her, I ought to be a “nice little lamb,” as my English teacher calls his students, but I’m not in the mood and am already concocting some bullshit about being late to class. Have I responded too roughly? Apparently so, but she thinks I work here, is, yep, mistaking me for some student employee whose last name is not really that close to mine, maybe we share the first five letters, an honest mistake— she’s new.

However sassy or otherwise my refusal, it makes no difference, because I’m in hot water, doesn’t matter that she made the mistake or that I may have been busy and late to class (not really). No, what matters is that I’m rude to an adult, a superior, not a Brother or Teacher, but someone nevertheless above me, which is pretty much everyone at this school. So later, when Brother M. catches me in the hall and chews me out, which I suspect he’d like to literally do (or is that figuratively? Not sure, but he wants to get part of me in his mouth, fucking perv, ass grabber), well, I’m a little taken aback and try to explain that she thought I was he, not me, not a kid using the library to study, no, she thought I worked there, but he’s not having it.  

“You don’t speak to her that way,” he says, then calls me a “cynical bastard,” and I have to ask Mom what that word means. “Cynical,” not “bastard”— I know that word.

The Way of All Texts, Moraine Valley Community College Library

I don’t think there will ever be a library I’ll love more than this one, where I’ll spend more of my free time, this fountain in the basement floor is a perfect place to sit and read most of Prizzi’s Honor and a lot of The Godfather— I’m into mafia books at the moment— and none of them books I’m supposed to be reading for class, none of them being “classroom appropriate.” Except for Vonnegut, who I’ve just discovered and who my comp teacher likes, so much so that he asked me, “Which class is that for?” when he saw me reading Slaughterhouse-Five, and when I said, “None,” he was impressed, and yeah, it felt good because I’ve never impressed a teacher before. I’m doubly floored that this comp teacher, Mr. S., has gone and incorporated Slaughterhouse-Five into the lecture, because he loves the book enough to have ready-to-go thoughts, which makes me realize that teachers sometimes just riff, improvise, ad-lib. This is the most informative and perhaps destructive moment of my training, as I will often do exactly that: riff, improv, ad-lib when teaching my comp classes, not always a good idea.

Years later, when I’m an adjunct instructor at this very same junior college, the library will not seem so grand. I’ll not find the fountain, and the stacks will have diminished. The whole place will seem more sterile, the result, no doubt, of renovations but also, sure, because computer screens are eating up some of the space once dedicated to books. The way of all flesh, right? And texts.

Don’t Belong, John T. Richardson Library, DePaul University

My girlfriend has a job at the library. I like this building, but I’ve not been in it much, preferring to spend the trimester smoking cigarettes and drinking malt liquor like the young idiot that I am. She does neither of these things. She likes staying in, going to bed early, reading shitty books by the likes of Jude Deveraux and not taking an interest in the Kerouac and Orwell and Bukowski (so many dudes) books that I’m digging, edgy shit, man!

She works late (for her) and I escort my gal from library to dorm, a short walk but she’s worried, this being the big bad city. Sometimes I go up to her room. Most nights I leave her safe and sound at the door and then I find my friends and we drink malt liquor and smoke cigarettes and talk about Kerouac and Orwell and Bukowski (and Godard and Polanski and Fuller) and think we’re smart, that no one has ever had these brilliant thoughts before. But we’re idiots. And none of us has been in that library, most of all me.

If I spent any time in that library I’d notice that my girlfriend has made fast friends with a blond-haired, blue-eyed, possibly British grad student who also works there, who has more than charmed her, who she’ll not leave me for so much as think about when we’re together and I’m boring everything but the pants off her. And we’re soon to go kaput, which surprises neither of us, but, you know, never a great feeling. It’s okay, though— I don’t belong in this relationship, this school, certainly not that library.

Solace, Schaffner Library, Northwestern University

Word on the street is that it’s not long for this world, another casualty of the pandemic, though I’m sure the axe has been sharp for some time, this being not the biggest library on either campus, but that’s maybe what I like about it, that and the little room on the second floor where I worked as a tutor, a quiet space near the stacks with a window overlooking a courtyard and a computer to write my poems between tutoring sessions. As a grad student intern who’s been tasked with making a mock-book of international poetry for this big ol’ anthology, I roam the bigger stacks in Evanston and pull Milosz and Szymborska and a few other Polish poets (the editor has his preferences) along with the cursory Celan and my latest discovery, the superb Amichai. I’m awash in poems, my own stabs and the polished gems that’ll comprise this book I’ll have a small hand in birthing, the education in international writing is better than the one I’m paying for.

Years later— I can’t let go of the gig, so it’s back to Schaffner until I can get some semblance of a career going, though I suspect that I could stay in that room on the second floor, among the smaller but no less significant stacks with the view of the courtyard, indefinitely, typing wayward poems in the minutes before my next tutee arrives panic-faced with no idea what the professor wants from them.

Anything, Saltzer Regional, Chicago Public Library

I come here on my lunch break and read and then, because the time moves too quickly, eat a fast sandwich while driving back to work. I come here on my lunch break because it’s beautiful upstairs at the long table with the big clock and the feeling that I could be anything.

Get Off My Lawn, Murray-Green Library, Roosevelt University

I walked to the back of the library as an undergrad who’d taken more than a few years off. I was an “adult” and more receptive than ever to the idea of a quiet space full of books, though today, even more adult, employed as lecturer and Faculty Coordinator of Writing Tutoring at this very same school that took me in after desultory years of fucking up, I can’t help but lament the space sacrificed for activities and computers and offices and things other than the old stacks, though some remain, sure.

I’ve made it a point to take my class here, to show them that yes, we still have a library with books and that there are wonderful things and wonderful people here, that they should make the library part of their routine. One of the students expresses grief at the “dead trees”— “All I see is a destroyed forest,” he says, and I ask if he prefers to read on his computer screen, which no one can possibly prefer, but he says he does, though adds that he only reads when he has to, no shock and not anything for me to waste time on, seeing as that is hardly a new problem. But I’m tempted to lecture that books hold a certain value that he’ll not get elsewhere, that libraries are important places, that they represent more than dead trees and dead writers and dead ideas, that they don’t actually represent any of that, that they represent community and scholarship and thought and emotion and life and love and war and hate and discourse and rhetoric and exploration and engagement and humility and desire and tradition and radicalism and socialism and capitalism and egalitarianism and a lot of other isms and that he should see a library as the effort to preserve these things as well as a place to work, study, think, laugh, socialize, mobilize, organize, antagonize, and maybe even better himself and melt into the collective betterment of the fucking world. I succumb briefly to this temptation. An old man shaking his fist. Hoo hum.

On Cynicism

Once upon a time, I was a high school student. In that time, there was a misunderstanding between me and one of the Christian Brothers who “taught” us boys. It’s too stupid to get into now, but I bring it up as a means of introducing today’s theme: cynicism. Basically, I said something that caused a grown man charged with educating me to say: “You’re the most cynical bastard I’ve ever met in all my years.”

I had to ask my mother what “cynical” meant. I don’t remember her definition precisely, but it made me feel both bad and weirdly proud for having merited such a negative adjective. I’d never been the most anything in all of anyone’s years before.

 A quick search on Google offers the following synonyms: skepticism, doubt, mistrust, suspicion. Slightly deeper inspection of Google offers reassurance that the ancient Greek Cynics sought an existence in harmony with the nature of the individual, one free from material concern. Considerably more noble than the contemporary definition: “a general distrust in others.” While I think I see how the word evolved (devolved?) from the ancient Greek usage to the criticism Brother Whatshisname lobbed my way, I won’t detail that here. Doing so would only betray my lack of philosophical erudition.

I have embraced cynicism. There’s an old adage: scratch a cynic, find a romantic. I get that. A cynic is only distrustful of people and the world because they’ve been burned. They never lost sight of how things should be; they just understand the improbability of anything changing for the good. Small movements toward better things, sure, but overall? Nah. At best, “improved means to an unimproved end,” as old Henry David said. Which is why whenever anyone trots out a new gadget, the cynic will logically conclude that the world is about to get faster, and a lot of rich people will get richer, but the mantra that “We’re making the world a better place” will seem ridiculous when coming out of the mouth of a Silicon Valley zealot. Don’t trust those fuckers.

But here’s the thing: there’s a limit to cynicism, hopefully discovered as the cynic matures. And cynicism is not an excuse for nihilism, or for sitting on your ass and doing nothing. And maybe it took me longer than it should have to reach this point, but I think I’m there. Here’s how I know.

Comedian Eddie Pepitone tweets: “Maybe SNL will have Kate McKinnon sing a song to the people of Ukraine tomorrow! That should fix it!” My first response is to smile. Kinda funny. Immediately after recognizing the humor, I feel rotten. What the actual fuck, dude? Yeah, she dressed like Hillary Clinton and sang “Hallelujah” after Trump was elected, and I guess it didn’t really do anything concrete. But fuck man, don’t we need some goddamn symbolic gestures? And what would we have SNL or Facebook posters or anyone else without any actual power do? Keep it light? Ignore the shit show? Get on with toothless, uninspired sketches? Post more snarky edgelord jokes that are surely not going to “fix it!”  

Okay, there are times when celebrities make well-meaning gestures that come off tone deaf or are just plain unnecessary, maybe even insultingly clueless (Hello, Gal Gadot), but Jesus H. Fuck, are we so goddamn cynical we can’t understand the drive to express human responses to tragedy?

Perhaps I’ve grown up. Perhaps, as a college instructor, I’ve spent too much time with Gen Z, the so-called “woke” youngsters who Boomers tell me need to lighten up. Or perhaps Pepitone’s joke was even more useless than the celeb preening he was satirizing. Did it accomplish anything more concrete than Kate McKinnon singing to the people of Ukraine? Did it actually make things worse instead of better? Arguably, yeah, it kinda fucking did.

I doubt 2022 will see me lessen my cynicism. I’m on my way to being an old fuck, meaning that my ways are set and I am set in them. Not to mention I’ve seen the ways of people long enough to not have much faith in them. But I see also the need for catharsis, and yeah, when Kate McKinnon sang that song after Trump won, well, it got to me. It felt necessary. It communicated the feeling a lot of us had that week, that things were fucked, that our country had somehow elevated the worst expression of our worst tendencies to the highest office, and that everything was off, upside down. And it was hard. Damn near devastating. And I’m sure others, those primarily affected by a Trump presidency and his horrific rhetoric, felt it more than I did. Maybe small, symbolic gestures don’t fix things, though they might offer comfort. But please, Eddie, shit on that. How edgy!