YouTube – Bruce Springsteen & Eddie Vedder – No Surrender
The Boss and Eddie have aged well. Eddie actually looks cooler now than he did 15 years ago.
Just a friendly reminder — Ticketmaster onsale tomorrow morning at 10 for the Pittsburgh show and Saturday at 10 for the Cleveland show. See you there.
Forget about the RIAA push to outlaw music downloading … I’m predicting today that somehow, somebody will run and get elected on a platform of outlawing iPods altogether. I can already see and hear Rudy Giuliani on a podium draped in an American flag shouting something idiotic like, “These mp3s are killing our children! They must be stopped! America must take a stand now against this terrible, musical menace!”
Not to make light of the fact that a teenager died jogging on Monday, but as somebody who will not work out without the benefit of my iPod and some rockin’ indie music, I just don’t see how this qualifies as news.
Ohio.com – Teen killed by car may have been listening to MP3
An MP3 player could have had a role in the death of an Alliance High School student hit by a car Monday.Alliance Police Chief Lawrence Dordea, said that Alison Draves, 15, could have been listening to music on her MP3 (a portable music player) while jogging, might not have heard the approaching car and might have run into its path.
”She had the MP3 strapped to her arm,” Dordea said. ”Why would she have it on if she wasn’t listening to it?”
Because David Berman and his band, The Silver Jews, are so awesome and under-appreciated, I’m going to try to spotlight a great song here from time to time. I’m a little out of practice when it comes to close reading, but the poetry in his songs just sort of screams for interpretation. Here we go with our second installment!
“The Wild Kindness” (listen) – from American Water (1998)
Let me say straight off that this is one of my favorite songs in the whole world, despite the fact that the lyrics are pretty abstract. Berman’s gone and pieced together a song that I think just screams “I’m lonely!” (or more likely, “This is what loneliness feels like!”) without ever raising his voice above a whispered mumble. Once again, Stephen Malkmus lends a hand on backing vocals and probably more importantly, guitar.
Wrote a letter to a wildflower
on a classic nitrogen afternoon.
Some power that hardly looked like power
said, “I’m perfect in an empty room.”
Let’s assume that “wildflower” is a metaphor for a beautiful (if unpredictable) woman and that nitrogen, being a colorless (clear), odorless gas is simply an adjective describing the weather on this particular afternoon. Cool? So, the narrator is separated from his wildflower, writing a letter to her on what I imagine to be a brisk spring or early autumn day — just like today if you’re here in Cleveland. Now letter writing can be a very simple process and take a few minutes or it may, as I suspect is the case with Berman, involve hours of trying to get the words just right and agonizing over every one. Depending on the particular wildflower with whom we’re corresponding, it could take days. I’m imagining the power speaking here at the end of this verse is a nagging voice inside our narrator’s head mocking him that he’s only perfect when there’s nothing to compare himself to.
Four dogs in the distance -
each stands for a kindness, yeah.
Bluebirds lodged in an evergreen altar…
In the pre-chorus here we’ve got an image of four dogs, which doesn’t tell us much. Are they beagles? Pomeranians? Pitbulls? Labs? Not exactly. The narrator gives us little to go on except when he says that these aren’t regular dogs. They’re allegorical dogs. Each one stands for a kindness, see? Well, that really clears things up … Thanks, Dave. Thankfully, dogs are pretty common in culture and literature and we’ve got all sorts of ideas about these allegorical dogs. Lucky dogs, horny dogs, hot dogs, you-the-man-now-dogs, faithful dogs, loyal dogs, etc. You get the picture. All these good (or “kind”) dogs are off in the distance, however. Now, one of the most interesting images in any song, ever, in my opinion … “bluebirds lodged in an evergreen altar.” Traditionally, bluebirds symbolize happiness and evergreens the renewal of life (among many other things, religious and otherwise), so I’m inclined to believe that the combination (they are “lodged” after all) has something to do with staying young and happy forever. Bluebirds are also pair-bonders — ie. they mate for life — but they are also notorious cheaters (at least the female birds). Now we’re getting somewhere …
I’m gonna shine out in the wild silence.
I’m gonna shine out in the wild silence.
I’m gonna shine out in the wild silence
and spurn the sin of giving in.
What’s with this “wild silence” in the chorus. I thought the name of the song was “The Wild Kindness” … Must be something to that. Silence in this verse reminds me of the empty room in the first verse, where our narrator is both perfect and alone. The narrator then rejects the urge to “give in” (or at least says he will). Give in to what? Maybe the pressure to conform to some societal norm that says we humans are supposed to be part of a community. I dunno. Just a guess.
Oil paintings of x-rated picnics
behind the walls of medication I’m free.
Every leaf in a compact mirror (bye, bye, goodbye, bye)
hits a target that we can’t see. (goodbye, bye, goodbye)
New verse, more confusion … oil painting-porn, drug use and more nature images (sorta). The porno-picnic is a nature scene, in its purest sense. In the narrator’s view (“behind the walls of medication”) he’s liberated. There’s a line in the Drive-By Truckers’ “Women without Whiskey” that goes something like “[the bottle] don’t make you do a thing; it just lets you.” The freedom Berman is writing about isn’t the kind of positive thing you were hoping it was. We’re only free “behind the walls.” This business about falling leaves hitting targets is confounding. Maybe the point is that our narrator is extremely stoned. I doubt it. More interesting, is Malkmus first vocal on the track, singing behind Berman “Bye, bye goodbye …” Maybe this is meant to imply that our narrator, in the haze of this trip into the woods, has decided that he’s not going back. The leaves are falling around him. He’s got happy birds, their evergreen altar and picnic porn. He’s shining in the wild silence.
Grass grows in the icebox.
The year ends in the next room.
It is autumn and my camouflage is dying …
Uh-oh. Not in the woods anymore. The trip is finished and the narrator is back in his house, with grass growing in the fridge … I don’t know about you folks, but this just screams “mold” to me. We’re living in squalor. And if there’s anything worse than living in squalor, it’s living in squalor alone. How depressing! “The year ends in the next room” just sounds like the narrator is planning to spend New Year’s Eve alone in the house. The reference to autumn and camouflage dying … part metaphor, part pun? Our narrator is getting older and this act that he doesn’t mind being alone is wearing thin. At least that’s what I’m getting out of this pre-chorus. Go ahead. Argue with me.
Instead of time there will be lateness
Instead of time there will be lateness
Instead of time there will be lateness
and let forever be delayed.
This time around, I think the chorus reinforces that the narrator is getting old. In “How Can I Love You (if you won’t lie down?),” Berman asserts that “time is a game only children play well.” The narrator here is running out of time. He’s late to find a mate. He’s delaying “forever,” which reminds me of “That Teenage Feeling,” where Neko Case quotes a “brave” friend who says that “[s/he doesn't] care if forever never comes ’cause [they're] holding out for that teenage feeling.” Well, Neko’s friend may not care, but Berman’s narrator here sounds pretty despondent. Wait … wait … guitar solo. Oh yeah.
I dyed my hair in a motel void,
met the coroner at Dreamgate Frontier.
He took may hand said “I’ll help you boy (bye, bye, goodbye, bye)
if you really want to disappear.” (goodbye, bye, goodbye)
Here’s a word repeated: “Dye” or “Die” That’s why I think dying camouflage was a pun. Don’t ask what the hell Berman’s point is. I’m just sayin’. The narrator is traveling again, though he’s not back in the forest (yet). He’s at an empty (“void”) motel. The word “void” here was unexpected again, because even though I don’t have hair to dye, I have seen other folks dye their hair in the sink. I was expecting “sink.” OK. Finally a second (or third, if you count the wildflower) character enters the song. Dreamgate Frontier sounds to me like a theme park. Only our narrator meets the “coroner” there. I don’t suppose Disney World has its own coroner. So, this character who deals in death offers to help our narrator disappear, which we decided was what he wanted earlier after imagining oil-painted picnic-porn. Again, Malkmus sings the “goodbye” part under the second half of this verse. Hmmm.
Four dogs in the distance
each stands for a silence.
Bluebirds lodged in an evergreen altar…
Dogs and bluebirds again. Only the allegorical dogs this time represent silence. Or the narrator’s desire to go back into the woods. Or the death of the narrator. Or the end of the song. Yeesh. All reminders that he’s alone. His wildflower is gone — out of reach.
I’m gonna shine out in the wild kindness
I’m gonna shine out in the wild kindness
I’m gonna shine out in the wild kindness
and hold the world to its word.
Ahhh. He’s back in that mental space where he shines … and we finally get to our title “The Wild Kindness.” Whether the narrator is living or dead doesn’t matter at this point. He’s where he wants to be, apparently. And when I think about the world and promises to live up to … well, there’s nothing. Tomorrow is most famously promised to nobody, and the narrator’s self-appointed task to make sure that’s the case sounds about right for a person who eschewed society until they O.D.’d (or didn’t) — intentionally or unintentionally.
The wordplay in this song is much more fun than it probably should be, though that’s just part of what makes Berman so fantastic. I think the narrator probably ends up dead in his hotel void with pink hair and one heckuva buzz, but who knows? More fun next time.
Here’s the Pitchfork review (9.9 out of 10!) of American Water.
