Well look what the wind blew in.
Hi there. I've missed you. But my travels are far from over, so it'll be a while till I'm making regular appearances. This epistle comes to you from Dublin, from the bank of the Liffey, from an internet cafe with bright orange signs and the maddening inability to let me rotate images (you will understand the significance of this later).
It's been about a month and a half since I last wrote. I've been on the road, in the air, over the water. England, Scotland, Northern Ireland, Eire. Friday we leave for Finland.
Jordan's struggling with time and technology, but he's been doing wonderful, wonderful things here. I'm jealous of all of you: I don't get to play the mp3s. (Hi Jordan!)
But I did play Glenn Gould as I stood on Brighton beach at five a.m. I listened to Nick Drake as a bus pulled into Cambridge. John Coltrane in Edinburgh. The Arcade Fire on the northern irish coast.
I've bought some CDs (too many, too few), stuffed them into my backpack. Inexpensive surprises, immediate must-haves... records by Lou Reed and the Flaming Lips, the Go Team and The Frames. A Leslie Feist single. A compilation record benefitting a Leeds animal shelter. I heard Shostakovich's 8th string quartet in England's oldest music room. Bobby Watson gave a master-class. Bodhran and pipes in Doolin, then sitting on rocks by the sea.
It's a good thing, travelling. Clears the blood. You feel lighter, feel the wind stronger. You suddenly find that you can climb mountains, or get lost on them. That a familiar song sounds suddenly better, that Leonard Cohen goes with wine and cheese even miles away from Montreal.
I've met fine, kind people. Readers here (Hi Ross! Hi Matthew! Hi David and Adrian and James), and a few new friends.
On Halloween in Dublin there was fog and firework smoke. Around statues and the Spire you heard bangs, shouts, strange laughter.
Last Saturday was Julian's birthday, and we went to see Joanna Newsom at a red-lit place called the Sugar Club. It was a fine, fine thing. I'll answer some of your questions:
1) Yes, she does!
2) No, she speaks like a normal person. A west coast kinda drawl.
3) Actually, she's a babe.
4) I mean it!
Such superficialities aside, she was a little marvel. She sung and yowled her wise and complicated words, she grinned and bore it, she clapped her hands and played with pluck (ha). Her fingers bounced all over that big ole' harp, they pulled high notes from unexpected places. She sang a killer "Sadie" and an even better "Book of Right On". She sang a new one about "kith and kin," where at least fifteen times she sang her chorus and broke things in our chests: "OH DON'T I MISS YOUR PRECIOUS HEART!?"
She sang the b-side from her new Europe-single (which I couldn't find). She said it was about the USA, and the election, and an impending "crisis". I think she might have cried a bit (and I'm sure she cried a bit more today). It was a song about porpoises in their "snatch of sea".
And then, in encore, there was the following exchange of beautiful absurdity:
Joanna: Oh, I don't know... Any requests?
Random heckler: Play some Zeppelin!
(I expect he was not requesting a spangled, whimsical song about giant balloon-boats.)
Joanna: Ooh. I'll do you one better... (Pause) How many of you have seen the movie The Last Unicorn? Or read the book by Peter S. Beagle?
My own weak, solitary voice: Woo.
Joanna: Well it's a wonderful movie, and the band America did an absolutely beautiful soundtrack. So I'll play a song from that.
She then, in an act most definitely advanced, played the song "A Man's Road," from the animated Last Unicorn movie, which is terrible.
But you know what? Her version was pretty good.
Here is a picture of her, sideways. See how she swooshes.
And so, awkwardly, we're brought to Tuesday.
Ireland is five hours behind central Canada and the american east coast, so we bought biscuits and crisps and stayed up till six a.m., watching the u.s.a. presidental election.
Four more years?
I'm not angry, I'm not even surprised, I'm just disappointed. Disappointed in America, I guess, but really disappointed in humanity. Bush could have been elected anywhere - in Britain, in Germany, in Japan, in India. He speaks the language of human beings in the twenty-first century - the language of surety, of confidence, of 'righteousness'. We invented human rights and the categorical imperative, responsible government and karma, but ultimately we're dazzled by the firmest handshake, the straightest stare, the biggest boom.
Democrats aren't categorically different. They'll be complaining that Kerry was a poor candidate, that he didn't show enough resolve. They wanted him to out-bullshit the president, to repeat the same empty rhetoric. They wanted him not to flip-flop.
But I want a leader who flip-flops. I want someone who changes their mind, who adapts to circumstance, and isn't afraid to revise their thinking. This isn't a quality of Democrat or Republican, Right or Left - it's the quality of those who consider compromise, indeterminacy, the world's smear of greys. Kerry couldn't project W's unwavering assurance -- well, good on him.
Now the Republican White House will go back to its smirks and bargains, its pigeonholes and xenophobia. The Democrats will pull out the tapes, put them up on their screens, and work on mimicking Bush's straight strong stare -- for next time. And America (like the rest of the world) will return to the economics of daily life, of work, of worrying about family; they'll sleep and eat and shop and type, vaguely disquieted, not quite content, and turn to their leaders - their bosses, wives, presidents, - turn to them for that blank and confident look. They'll be reassured that all will be ok, that the scary bits can be eviscerated, that the cancers aren't complicated. And we'll go on, stumbling into sudden hatreds, avoiding eye contact with the people in the street.
I woke up on Wednesday with tight springs in my shoulders. I had slept fitfully, dreaming of red maps. I went out and walked. There were knots of cloud over the Dublin skyline, the newspaper vendors were closed. I had my headphones on and I put the iPod on random. I waited to be distracted from Bush, from my molasses pessimism. I wanted to forget that stuff. I went into Tesco. I bought yoghurt and carrots, put them under my arm. And then outside in the sunlight I was listening to the song "Astral Weeks" by Van Morrison, and even though I was in Dublin not Belfast, the shaker set something loose in my joints, the rhodes lit up in the back of my skull. As I waited to cross the road, waited for the pedestrian light that makes a sound like a laser-gun, I noticed my foot tapping, the birds in my eyes, the guitar that had creaked open my heart and let all that sleepy nonsense sadness out. I noticed I wanted to dance, to dance as I walked, to smile and let the strings throw me, catch me. I swayed a little.
Forget protest songs, I thought. Forget funeral songs. Forget that Van is singing about love or laughter or reincarnation. Maybe if I just played this song for people they'd see the birds and hear the bass, they'd stop voting against gay marriage and start clapping their hands, they'd do good things and not worry about the best things. Maybe they'd open their windows and sing, or break them and run, or stain them, or make them, or stare right through them. Maybe they'd listen, and think, and love, and lean back on the cool glass, the blue sky glass, and use it as a cool and blue sky pillow. Maybe things would change a little, one brave kindness at a time.
There's a song in which a xylophone rings and an electric guitar makes mountains. Win Butler sings, in a big brave voice, that "I GUESS WE'LL JUST HAVE TO ADJUST."
Let's.
---
Tomorrow I leave with Julian for Finland. We will be visiting Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Croatia, Bosnia, Slovenia, Italy. I am trying to buy a CD in every country I visit... If any of you want to recommend Truly Great Albums from any of these places, national classics or should-be-classics, I would appreciate it very much. Folk, singer-songwriter, pop, jazz - you name it. Who is the Leonard Cohen of Zagreb? The Amalia Rodriguez of Slovenia?
I'll try to say hello again before Christmas. Happy winter.
Love,
Sean