Lyrics to "Werner's Last Blues to Blokbuster" from Palace Songs' Hope
In the old town when I last came around things were not so obvious she was not parading as she had.
Werner, he whispered to me, "Marriage is bliss, It's something I've skirted around But that I don't plan to miss."
O Blokbuster O Blok Waiting to know Waiting to see Waiting to go I was waiting for thee
But stuck in a corner She was seen stumbling over there-- "I washed my hands of him But he thought I was washing my hair." Unrecognizably red I slipped through the seam; Out on the street there was no time To pause or look back.
O Blokbuster O Blok Was waiting to know Waiting to see Waiting to go Waiting for thee
It's better to be So far off from thee Where I recall you pleasantly Where I can feel free. Now I wander aimlessly No light on in the hall No friendly step a-steering me No guiding hand at all.
Chandelier, Kazemer's Bar and Grill (formerly All Country Bar), Pulaski, VA
Jim Dandy's Muffler Shop, Pulaski, VA
Two poems by Louis Jenkins
Library
I sit down at a table and open a book of poems and move slowly into the shadow of tall trees. They are white pines I think. The ground is covered with soft brown needles and there are signs that animals have come here silently and vanished before I could catch sight of them. But here the trail edges into a cedar swamp; wet ground, deadfall and rotting leaves. I move carefully but rapidly, pleased with myself.
Someone else comes and sits down at the table, a serious looking young man with a large stack of books. He takes a book from the top of the stack and opens it. The book is called How to Get a High Paying Job. He flips through it and lays it down and picks up another and pages through it quickly. It is titled Moving Ahead.
We are moving ahead very rapidly now, through a second growth of poplar and birch, our faces scratched and our clothes torn by the underbrush. We are moving even faster now, marking the trail, followed closely by the bulldozers and crews with chain saws and representatives of the paper company.
Violence on Television
It is best to turn on the set only after all the stations have gone off the air and just watch the snowfall. This is the other life you have been promising yourself. Somewhere back in the woods, ten miles from the nearest town, and that just a wide place in the road with a tavern and a gas station. When you drive home, after midnight, half drunk, the roads are treacherous. And your wife is home alone, worried, looking anxiously out at the snow. This snow has been falling steadily for days, so steadily the snow plows can't keep up. So you drive slowly, peering down the road. And there? Did you see it? Just at the edge of your headlight beams, something, a large animal, or a man, crossed the road. Stop. There he is among the birches, a tall man wearing a white suit. No, it isn't a man. Whatever it is--it motions to you, an almost human gesture, then retreats farther into the woods. He stops and motions again. The snow is piling up all around the car. Are you coming?
Valley Harvest Ministry (burning bush?), Dublin, VA
In the Suburbs --Louis Simpson
There’s no way out. You were born to waste your life. You were born to this middleclass life
As others before you Were born to walk in procession To the temple, singing.
Men at Forty --Donald Justice
Men at forty Learn to close softly The doors to rooms they will not be Coming back to.
At rest on a stair landing, They feel it Moving beneath them now like the deck of a ship, Though the swell is gentle.
And deep in mirrors They rediscover The face of the boy as he practices tying His father’s tie there in secret
And the face of that father, Still warm with the mystery of lather. They are more fathers than sons themselves now. Something is filling them, something
That is like the twilight sound Of the crickets, immense, Filling the woods at the foot of the slope Behind their mortgaged houses.
Orange Chairs behind Master Chef, Pulaski, VA Blue Door, Pulaski, VA Peak Creek Mercantile, Pulaski, VA
At Fourth and Main in Liberal, Kansas --William Stafford
An instant sprang at me, a winter instant, a thin gray panel of evening. Slanted shadows leaned from a line of trees where rain had slicked the sidewalk. No one was there-- it was only a quick flash of a scene, unplanned, without any connection to anything that meant more than itself, but I carried it onward like a gift from a child who knows that the giving is what is important, the paper, the ribbon, the holding of breath and surprise, the friends around, and God holding it out to you, even a rock or a slice of evening, and behind it the whole world.
How the Real Bible Is Written --William Stafford
Once we painted our house and went into it. Today, after years, I remember that color under the new paint now old. I look out of the windows dangerously and begin to know more. Now when I walk through this town there are too many turns before the turn I need. Listen, birds and cicadas still trying to tell me surface things: I have learned how the paint goes on, and then other things--how the real Bible is written, downward through the pages, carved, hacked, and molded, like the faces of saints or the planks ripped aside by steady centuries of weather, deeper than dust, under the moles, caught by the inspiration in an old badger's shoulder that bores for grizzled secrets in the ground.
Reunion --Charles Wright
Already one day has detached itself from all the rest up ahead. It has my photograph in its soft pocket. It wants to carry my breath into the past in its bag of wind.
I write poems to untie myself, to do penance and disappear Through the upper right-hand corner of things, to say grace.
I've been reading Sam Shepard's Cruising Paradise: Tales. It's uneven, great at times and at other times kind of gimicky. I haven't read Buried Child or True West, probably Shepard's most celebrated writing, but I love this scene Shepard wrote for Wim Wenders' Paris, Texas. If you haven't seen the movie, you may want to watch all of it before viewing this scene, but the scene can stand on its own...a little poem to love and misunderstanding.
at dusk from the island in the river, and it's not too cold,
I'll wait for the moon to rise, then take wing and glide to meet him.
We will not speak, but hooded against the frost soar above the alder flats, searching with tawny eyes.
And then we'll sit in the shadowy spruce and pick the bones of careless mice,
while the long moon drifts toward Asia and the river mutters in its icy bed.
And when the morning climbs the limbs we'll part without a sound,
fulfilled, floating homeward as the cold world awakens.
Ask Me --William Stafford
Some time when the river is ice ask me mistakes I have made. Ask me whether what I have done is my life. Others have come in their slow way into my thought, and some have tried to help or to hurt: ask me what difference their strongest love or hate has made.
I will listen to what you say. You and I can turn and look at the silent river and wait. We know the current is there, hidden; and there are comings and goings from miles away that hold the stillness exactly before us. What the river says, that is what I say.
Snow --David Berman
Walking through a field with my little brother Seth
I pointed to a place where kids had made angels in the snow. For some reason, I told him that a troop of angels had been shot and dissolved when they hit the ground.
He asked who had shot them and I said a farmer.
Then we were on the roof of the lake. The ice looked like a photograph of water.
Why he asked. Why did he shoot them.
I didn't know where I was going with this.
They were on his property, I said.
When it's snowing, the outdoors seem like a room.
Today I traded hellos with my neighbor. Our voices hung close in the new acoustics. A room with the walls blasted to shreds and falling.
We returned to our shoveling, working side by side in silence.
But why were they on his property, he asked.
Snow --Charles Wright
If we, as we are, are dust, and dust, as it will, rises, Then we will rise, and recongregate in the wind, in the cloud, and be their issue,
Things in a fall in a world of fall, and slip Through the spiked branches and snapped joints of the evergreens, White ants, white ants and little ribs.
In the long journey out of the self, There are many detours, washed-out interrupted raw places Where the shale slides dangerously And the back wheels hang almost over the edge At the sudden veering, the moment of turning. Better to hug close, wary of rubble and falling stones. The arroyo cracking the road, the wind-bitten buttes, the canyons, Creeks swollen in midsummer from the flash-flood roaring into the narrow valley. Reeds beaten flat by wind and rain, Grey from the long winter, burnt at the base in late summer. -- Or the path narrowing, Winding upward toward the stream with its sharp stones, The upland of alder and birchtrees, Through the swamp alive with quicksand, The way blocked at last by a fallen fir-tree, The thickets darkening, The ravines ugly.
Elegy --Dylan Thomas
Too proud to die, broken and blind he died The darkest way, and did not turn away, A cold kind man brave in his narrow pride
On that darkest day. Oh, forever may He lie lightly, at last, on the last, crossed Hill, under the grass, in love, and there grow
Young among the long flocks, and never lie lost Or still all the numberless days of his death, though Above all he longed for his mother's breast
Which was rest and dust, and in the kind ground The darkest justice of death, blind and unblessed. Let him find no rest but be fathered and found,
I prayed in the crouching room, by his blind bed, In the muted house, one minute before Noon, and night, and light. The rivers of the dead
Veined his poor hand I held, and I saw Through his unseeing eyes to the roots of the sea. [An old tormented man three-quarters blind,
I am not too proud to cry that He and he Will never never go out of my mind. All his bones crying, and poor in all but pain,
Being innocent, he dreaded that he died Hating his God, but what he was was plain: An old kind man brave in his burning pride.
The sticks of the house were his; his books he owned. Even as a baby he had never cried; Nor did he now, save to his secret wound.
Out of his eyes I saw the last light glide. Here among the light of the lording sky An old blind man is with me where I go
Walking in the meadows of his son's eye On whom a world of ills came down like snow. He cried as he died, fearing at last the spheres'
Last sound, the world going out without a breath: Too proud to cry, too frail to check the tears, And caught between two nights, blindness and death.
O deepest wound of all that he should die On that darkest day. Oh, he could hide The tears out of his eyes, too proud to cry.
Until I die he will not leave my side.]
23 January 2008
--Aforementioned two headed calf and a couple more shots from Harmon's Museum in Woodlawn, VA.
I took this shot a few months ago at Harmon's, a western store and museum between Galax and Hillsville, VA. It's an interesting place. The museum is in a back room-- to get to it you have to walk through stacks of Wrangler cowboy jeans and Carhartt jackets and such. The main attraction is a stuffed two-headed calf in a glass case. For the most part, the rest of the museum is dedicated to the Civil War and the mining wars of West Virginia.
...I've struggled for the last few minutes thinking of what I'd like to say about some of the tensions in this photo and its context in the museum, but I can't get my thoughts clear, so I'll let the photo say whatever it may say, which is probably better.
He thought he kept the universe alone; For all the voice in answer he could wake Was but the mocking echo of his own From some tree–hidden cliff across the lake. Some morning from the boulder–broken beach He would cry out on life, that what it wants Is not its own love back in copy speech, But counter–love, original response. And nothing ever came of what he cried Unless it was the embodiment that crashed In the cliff's talus on the other side, And then in the far distant water splashed, But after a time allowed for it to swim, Instead of proving human when it neared And someone else additional to him, As a great buck it powerfully appeared, Pushing the crumpled water up ahead, And landed pouring like a waterfall, And stumbled through the rocks with horny tread, And forced the underbrush—and that was all.
After the leaves have fallen, we return To a plain sense of things. It is as if We had come to an end of the imagination, Inanimate in an inert savior.
It is difficult even to choose the adjective For this blank cold, this sadness without cause. The great structure has become a minor house. No turban walks across the lessened floors.
The greenhouse never so badly needed paint. The chimney is fifty years old and slants to one side. A fantastic effort has failed, a repetition In a repetitiousness of men and flies.
Yet the absence of the imagination had Itself to be imagined. The great pond, The plain sense of it, without reflections, leaves, Mud, water like dirty glass, expressing silence
Of a sort, silence of a rat come out to see, The great pond and its waste of the lilies, all this Had to be imagined as an inevitable knowledge, Required, as necessity requires.
Over on listuniverse.com I found a list of 10 great Bob Dylan live performances, and it prompted me to make this list of the best Bonnie "Prince" Billy live performances on youtube. Obviously there aren't as many live BPB videos on youtube as there are of Dylan, so I had a fairly small pool to work from, and the pool got even smaller when I considered sound/video quality. Nevertheless, I believe I found enough stuff to make a quality list. Feel free to comment if you know of any good Bonnie videos that I missed or if you'd like to take issue with my rankings. Enjoy!
1. Strange Form of Life, Conan O'Brien Show, September 19, 2006
A hard way to come, into a cabin, into the weather
I put this one at #1 because of the sound/video quality and the overall performance. It features Matt Sweeney on lead guitar, Jim White (of the Dirty Three) on drums, "party til you puke" Andrew WK on piano, and Paul Oldham, the Bonnie Prince's brother, on the other guitar. I believe I prefer the male backing vocals on this version to Dawn McCarthy's backing vocals on the album. Not sure.
Update: This video was available when I made the list, but now it's unavailable. Oh well, I suppose it's fitting that my #1 vid isn't available. That seems to be how things work (or don't work, as it were) with me.
2. Same Love That Made Me Laugh (Bill Withers Cover), Amersterdam, 1999
Want you think before you start rolling down, because once you start you can't make it stop
This performance captures much of what initially drew me to Oldham's music. To me, his voice doesn't just convey vulnerability and doubt, it is vulnerability and doubt. Don't get me wrong, I don't necessarily think Will Oldham is filled with doubt and vulnerability. He may or may not be. I don't know him. It has more to do with inhabiting the song a certain way. "Like a rose that's soft to touch, love has thorns that hurt so much" isn't exactly the most original line, but Oldham manages to make the emotion real even if the line is cliched. The song can be found on More Revery, a covers album by "Bonny Billy."
3. I See A Darkness, Green Man Festival, Wales, August 20, 2005
i hope that someday buddy we have peace in our lives together or apart, alone or with our wives and we can stop our whoring and pull the smiles inside and light it up forever and never go to sleep my best unbeaten brother, this is not all I see
This is a beautiful performance of the title song from I See A Darkness. After listening to it a few times, I'm tempted to move it up on my list. Like many others, I became aware of Oldham's music through Johnny Cash's cover of "I See A Darkness" on his American III album. Cash's cover is great, given added pathos by his age and, now that he's gone, the listener's knowledge of his proximity to death. But Oldham's darkness is more ambiguous, a darkness that includes not only death but existential doubt and uncertainty--the darkness that Beckett's characters both long for and attempt to escape. Which makes Oldham's appeal to friendship all the more moving.
4. Good Bye Dear Old Stepstone, Daytrotter Sessions, 2007
Goodbye dear old stepstone, goodbye to my home, god bless those I leave with a sigh
This one was recorded live at the Daytrotter studio along with three other songs. If your interested, you can go to daytrotter.com and download the songs from their archives. According to Bonnie, “Bascomb Lamar Lunsford learned this song in 1904 from Miss Lela Ammons of Robinsville, North Carolina. I learned it from Lunsford’s recording.” Oldham's straightforward, understated performance captures the spirit of the Lunsford version. I can imagine some musicians, say Will Sheff of Okkervil River (who I like, by the way), adding some affected emotion to his vocals. I think Oldham gets more emotion from the song by playing it straight. It's the difference between, say, the quiet and restrained (but emotionally powerful) final scene of Robert Bresson's Au Hazard, Balthazar and the maudlin acting in PT Anderson's Magnolia (of course, to his credit, I believe Anderson intended his characters to be self-absorbed people with artificial emotions).
all around, oh all around, it's kept together by moving all around
This is probably my favorite song from I See A Darkness. It's hard to say why. I suppose it's because I identify with the desperation in the song, unfortunately. I also like the idea of movement keeping things from falling apart. That's how I think of my photography at times--movement, and a way to keep things whole.
6. No Gold Digger, Cuba, mid 90's?
The horns died down and thunder cracked, as I rolled over on my back
Technically, this one probably shouldn't be included on a best of Bonnie "Prince" Billy list since the performance predates Oldham's BPB moniker. The song, "No Gold Digger," is from Arise, Therefore, by Palace Music, which came out in 1996. I'm not sure of the exact date of this performance, but I believe it was in the early/mid 90's. A few years back, Audioslave or some other group claimed to be the first to play live in Cuba, but Oldham and his crew beat them to it. Some of the Cuba recordings are on a cd by Havanarama, a band including Bob Arellano, Will Oldham, Paul Oldham, Pete Townshend, and Dave Pajo. The sound quality of this video isn't great, but it's a cool version of the song that differs quite a bit from the album version. The intercut footage of the man in a straw hat dancing around with his bottle of rum is also great.
7. Strange Form of Life, Tel Aviv, Israel, 1-31-2007
"A strange form of life, kicking through windows and rolling on yards."
If this video had better sound quality, i would have probably moved it higher on my list. This version of the song is pretty similar to the one on Conan, but I believe I prefer it to that one--it's looser, funkier...stranger. The brown suit and pink shirt are also pretty classy.
8. Beast For Thee, April 14, 2004, Orlando, FL
"I will toil for years and years, give you muscle tone and tears"
I'm putting this video above "Bed is For Sleeping" because I attented a couple of shows--one in Asheville and one in Wilmington--during this tour (the Summer in the Southeast tour). The album this song appears on, Superwolf, hadn't came out yet (it was released in Jan. of 2005), so during the shows I heard several songs, including this one, for the first time.
That summer was a tumultuous one for me. I finished up grad school in May, I was nervous about finding a job, and (most significantly) my marriage of 3+ years (8 year relationship) was falling apart. Overall, it was an extremely stressful, depressing, summer...one that I'd mostly like to forget. Attending the BPB concerts was one of few things from that summer that I don't mind remembering.
On the way home from the show in Asheville, at about 4 in the morning, a black bear lumbered out from the fog and stood in front of my car for a good 10 minutes. Although I don't usually give much credence to signs, I kind of felt like that moment had some overarching significance. I half expected the bear to speak to me, to give me some advice that would straighten out all my troubles, but he (or she) just stared dumbly at my the hood of my vw, then shuffled back into the thick fog and underbrush. Maybe that was the message. In any case, the moment is forever etched in my mind as part of the overall experience of my first BPB concert.
9. Bed is for Sleeping, March 2007 Seville, Spain
"Where are you going, and why are you leaving? I'm left on this walkway, to swallow my grieving."
Not much to say about this one. Another nice performance. It's probably better than the video above, but lacks the personal connections.
10. Love Hurts (with Dawn McCarthy), 11-5-2006, Portland, OR
I'm young, I know, but even so
This is a pretty straightforward cover, similar to the Gram Parsons/Emylou Harris version. I've heard versions of this song by the everly brothers, roy orbison, gram parsons, and nazareth, but I wasn't sure who wrote it, so i looked it up on wikipedia. Turns out it was Boudreaux Bryant. I've alwasy liked this song. It makes me feel nostalgia for those tumultuous, but in many ways wonderful, adolescent years (and probably nostalgia for many things that didn't happen). I also associate it with Dazed and Confused, one of the best movies about teens.
all photos, the ez way laundrette, pulaski, va, usa
josh and i made another trip to pulaski the other day to take photos and scavenge the thrift stores, but we were both hungry so before roaming around we stopped off at the ez way to get a snack/drink from the vending machines (check out the zinger photos on josh's blog). my dad gave me a washing machine yesterday (i think i pulled a muscle in my back lugging it inside my trailer home), otherwise i would consider driving 30 minutes to do my laundry at the ez way. it's my kind of laundromat--clean, quiet, usually empty, classic country spilling from invisible speakers, and a separate vending machine/video game room with retro table/chairs and a lethal weapon ("how about it, jack, would you like a shot at the title?") pinball machine.
the whole place has a very 70's vibe to it, so it wasn't a huge surprise that the vending machines carried the elusive hostess golden cupcakes. as anyone who frequents laundromat vending machines knows, hostess cupcakes are a classic, and the golden cupcakes are a rare find. in fact, they aren't golden--more of a mustard orange/yellow that, to me at least, is quintessentially 70's--the washed out color you might see on a 1972 dodge dart swinger in a stephen shore photo. despite the odd color, which makes it exceedingly obvious that you're consuming something entirely artificial, the cupcakes are delicious, from the tepid yellow icing to the billowy meringue at the center. moreover, retro is in...everywhere i go i see vintage clothing, retro furniture, et cetera, so eating the cupcake made me feel kind of hip, like eating a jade leopard.
since classic country was the preferred music at the ez way, i'm including this video of the possum, george jones, playing "the race is on" on the porter wagner show. my favorite tune from the possum is probably "just one more," (i'll admit i'm a sad...uh, man) but I couldn't find a video of it, so you get something more upbeat. if anyone knows where I can get a snazzy jacket like the one porter wagner is wearing whilst introducing the possum, let me know. have a nice day!
Bill Callahan performing "Feather by Feather" at Emo's in Austin, TX in 2003. I saw Callahan perform at the Grey Eagle in Asheville, NC back in September and it was great. I've wanted to post one of his live performances on my blog since attending that show, but the sound quality on most of his stuff on youtube does him a disservice. This one, though, is impressive. And if you're interested in hearing more, the other songs from the show are on youtube.
This shot is from a Chinese restaurant near my house where I sometimes go for lunch. One day last week I brought my camera and snapped this between bites of moo goo gai pan. The song/video is Dinosaur Jr. covering The Cure's "Just Like Heaven." I like the puppets.
Lyrics to "Werner's Last Blues to Blokbuster" from Palace Songs' Hope
