Fionn Regan – Be Good Or Be Gone
Nora: “The’ agony I’m in since he left me has thrust away every rough thing he done, an’ every unkind word he spoke; only th’ blossoms that grew out of our lives are before me now; shakin’ their colours before me face, an’ breathin’ their sweet scent on every thought springin’ up in me mind, till, sometimes, Mrs Gogan, sometimes I think I’m going mad!” [Art by Santiago Rusinol, words by Sean O’Casey, music by Fionn Regan.]
Like, wow.
Karen O, Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross – Immigrant Song
In its beginning, in its poverty, “Immigrant Song” tells us of droning back alley sounds, their violent subtleties, and raiding rhythms lugubriously stylised with thrilling drums and pedal driven guitar. It’s an entrance theme for the boxer, the momentarily fallen, and the certain-to-be triumphant. The song is character building, playing on O’s vocals strikingly abating the rash inflections of the instrumental – the music itself an unexpected battle, with Karen’s sturdy pronouncements prying away the intractable instrumentation and its flailing complete ownership; the war then descending, spiralling head bound towards conclusions of gigantic guitar notation. “Immigrant Song” runs spritely along with brash dynamism. [The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo.]
On the back of a cartoon coaster — in the blue TV screen light — I drew a map of Canada (Oh Canada!), with your face sketched on it twice. [Blue.]
The Blue album, there’s hardly a dishonest note in the vocals. At that period of my life, I had no personal defenses. I felt like a cellophane wrapper on a pack of cigarettes. I felt like I had absolutely no secrets from the world, and I couldn’t pretend in my life to be strong. Or to be happy. But the advantage of it in the music was that there were no defenses there either.
— Joni Mitchell, Rolling Stone, 1979.
Begrudgingly, he thought, the scenery in Java is impressive. There’s waves of trees interrupted frequently by babbling brooks with smooth, gray rocks to step across. It’s gorgeous to look at.
But he would have preferred a postcard. Slipping in his muddy, wet sandals, he lurched along the path toward, allegedly, a waterfall a few kilometers outside of Sentul, a rich suburb of Jakarta. He spent most of his time in Indonesia trying to get away from the people, an abrasive, caustic race. It wasn’t the mildly racist cat-calls or swarming, shameless merchants he was avoiding; she said no.
He wanted to be alone, on the planet if possible, but the only one in eyesight would do. The kids weren’t making it any easier. Two prepubescent boys with slender brown limbs followed him into the jungle, shouting “Mister! Mister!” They were explaining that any small donation and they’d gladly show him the way to the waterfall (the path was clearly marked). Just any amount would do. He told them to go home, that they were not needed. After half a kilometer of babbling on next to him, watching him stutter across rivers and slip when the path became steep, the kids gave up, calling out “Watch and see if your motorbike gets ruined” over their backs as they turned away. They could have the damn thing. He just wanted isolation.
He looked up, savoring the quiet. The sun — searing, brilliant — meant he would have a burn on his forehead and face.
He’d been pulling the covers over his head at night. He couldn’t bare to be exposed. Unfortunately, in this climate, that meant he woke up sweating in the heat of night, terror in his chest and loneliness in the air around him.
He sympathized with ostriches.
He arrived at the base — where a tractor and bulldozer sat on rich brown soil, waiting to create a more accessible road — took off his clothes and waded into the pool at the bottom. The rocks were mossy and uneven, which made for slow going. He fell more than once. But eventually he reached the cascading water, the roaring descent, and shoved himself under it. It repelled him — down and away. He could feel the tiny beads on his skin form one gigantic, insurmountable force — shoving, shoving, shoving. But fuck nature; he pushed back into it, unsteady on his feet, and screamed at the top of his lungs, his face pointed upward.
When his eyes and nose stung too much to continue and his voice was hoarse, he turned around, gathered his clothes, and walked back.
Along the way, his feet brushed up against the prickles of malu grass on the side of the path. Malu means ‘shy’ in bahasa; when touched, the tiny blades fold up against themselves as if huddling from danger. Terlalu malu means ‘too shy,’ and he said the words aloud, savoring their cadence. He knelt down and stroked a piece with his finger, watching it cower.
What malu grass and ostriches would never know, could never understand, he thought, was that the best way to hide is to run away. [Skin of Evil.]
TW Walsh – Puppy Dogs Need Haircuts Too
My barber had a mullet.
I picked the barbershop because it had those old-timey colorful swirling poles out front. On my way in, I nodded at the guy sitting out front. He did the little Indian head wobble. I’m still not used to that. It’s a completely neutral expression. He wasn’t nodding that I should come in, he wasn’t making any value judgement about my existence, he was just letting me know he registered my nod. It can be unsettling.
I walked on by and sat down in the furthest chair, where a beefy Indian man with a mullet hovered. He was alright. Trimmed the areas I wanted, gave me roughly the length I asked for (last time I went to an Indonesian barber and asked for “three centi” he left me with three millimeters), and even nipped the random patch that grows above and to the side of my left eyebrow with the straight razor.
He clipped my nose hairs.
But when I leaned forward to stand up, he pushed me back down into the chair. My haircut experience was just starting. He held a bottle upside-down a foot and a half above my head and squeezed with one hand, massaging the oil into my hair with the other. He did this longer than I thought the contents of the opaque white bottle should last. He switched to a purple bottle briefly, which made me smell all pretty, before returning to the first one. All the while he massaged my head, squeezing down the back of my head into a V at my neck. Then he used both hands, pushing his palms together until I thought the top bit of my skull would blow open.
After a bit of that, he started yanking on my ears. First he’d pull the top down, leaning in close so he could hear the unnatural *squish* noise it made. Then he’d pull the lobe up. It hurt. I think my ears are made differently or something; it felt like he tore something along the top where it attaches to the rest of my head.
I knew the next move. They do it in Indonesia too – put one hand on your jaw and the other on your temple and pull suddenly until your neck cracks. I waved my hands in front of me. “No. No need. OK. No.” He just did the head wobble and said, “Free free free free free free.” He drowned out my protests. “Free free free free free free,” and *yank*. It didn’t hurt till the next day, when my entire upper torso and neck hummed with a low pain.
I paid — about 5 USD — and left. I couldn’t wear my helmet on the way back because there was too much grease in my hair, which I eagerly rinsed out in the shower, strings of glob down the drain.
[T-Dub.]
Blackout Beach – Deserter’s Song
I’ve been saying the Jesus Prayer lately.
I picked it up from Mitchell, a character in Jeffrey Eugenides’ novel The Marriage Plot, who got it from Franny, a character imagined up by J.D. Salinger, who nicked it from The Way of the Pilgrim. It goes:
Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me, a sinner.
Like everything passed down through centuries of jumbled church doctrine, it’s somewhat obscured. The original reads: Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner. But Mitchell says it my way, and that’s what I started uttering under my breath every time I ride my motorcycle or stress about the future or wonder if she likes me too or brush my teeth or notice my tan in a mirror.
At first it was clunky. The cadence didn’t work for smooth repetition. But it somehow sleeked out to become an operable mantra, and I’ve been saying it frequently for a few weeks. Mitchell says the prayer “at moments … when the inner tranquility he’d been struggling to attain began to fray, to falter.
“Mitchell liked the chant-like quality of the prayer. Franny said you didn’t even have to think about what you were saying; you just kept repeating the prayer until your heart took over and started repeating it for you.”
Mitchell latches onto that idea because he doesn’t like the words. I like it because I still have qualms with prayer in general, and mystic bullshit feels preferable to materialistic petitions, especially at this time of year.
I had been playing badminton for about two hours. I’m disgusting when I exercise. I sweat far more than is socially acceptable; if I don’t wear a headband, the salty discharge stings my eyes so bad I can’t see. My clothes, thoroughly soaked, cling to me, letting off a nauseating odor of bad eggs and ass. I pulled my left hand through my beard and flung a handful of sweat onto the court beside me, murmuring the Jesus Prayer.
I don’t know everyone’s name, but I’ve been coming too long to ask now. I just say hi and smile my stupid white smile and it’s never a problem. In my head, my partner’s name was Betty. She’s married to Gray Pants (people tend to wear the same clothes), who was in the middle court playing with Uncle Tony, who looks a lot like Chi Yuan’s mom’s friend, Tony. (It’s not racist to say they look alike if you can actually tell Asians apart.) Betty and I were playing Doris, this highly competitive bitch I take exceptional joy in shellacking, and Tetric. I’ve asked Tetric, an overgrown high schooler who shoots from the elbows, his name several times, but he just giggles through his braces and I still can’t make it out.
We should have won, but I could’t break out of a fugue. I kept repeating the prayer. It filled my head like a haze. Usually keeping score clears my brain, but in this case the numbers became futile flashlight beams strobing in the thickening fog. My legs were rubber. I continually forgot whether it was first or second serve (I absolutely loathe when others do this). I swung my racket and struck only air, the birdie falling lightly beside me. All the while, on the chapped edges of my lips, on the tip of my pulsating heart, the Jesus Prayer purred metronomically, a sentient mind of its own.
We lost, 15-13.
