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Cocktails Outside The Tardis

Those songs to me don’t exist, you know?

“So What” or Kind of Blue–

I’m not going to play that shit; those things are there.

They were done in that era,

the right hour, the right day, and it happened.

It’s over; it’s all on the record.

–Miles Davis

Last night I attended a benefit / premiere for a film written by a friend-of-a-friend. Given a choice, I’d have hunkered down and dealt with some difficult book revisions. But these were unavoidable circumstances that required both my presence and a game-face, and so I resolutely strapped on the old public persona and drove myself downtown.

Normally, most social obligations are easily survived: The trick is to understand their ritualistic context and not mistake them for communication. Social obligations are a kind of profane high mass–dependent on all parties knowing when to respond, when to stand, when to sit and, yes, when to take the wafer–because in most instances we really are breaking bread. And if there’s one thing all those Jesuits taught me, it’s how to cruise effortlessly through ceremony on undetectable autopilot.

But social obligations involving time-travel force me to disengage automatic; they make me keep my eyes on the instrumentation and improvisationally react. Put another way, a social obligation involving time-travel is a genuine bitch–faux communication that insists I remain in the moment and also be hair-trigger, like an adrenaline-flushed cast member of Who’s Line Is It Anyway? It forces me to be fully engaged in my own boredom instead of having a carefully disguised out-of-body experience in which muscle-memory passes watercress sandwiches while I’m light years away with, say, Tilda Swinton. How else to explain this? It’s like having a tooth filled with not quite enough Novocain–the constant anticipation of discomfort is as bad (or worse) as the discomfort itself.

But I’m getting ahead of myself with this time-travel thing. I’m referring to social forced marches with people from one’s past who have no connection to one’s present. Archeology, but with light hors d’oeuvres. The benefit / premiere meant wading waist-deep into a cast of characters from what actually is another life–or as close to one as possible without playing the reincarnation card. And, difficult as ever, nostalgia is among the many things I don’t “do.” This, however, isn’t simply a taste call–I really don’t have access to my previous selves, and, in truth, I’d be profoundly disturbed if I could readily tap into a 13-, 21- or 35-year-old edition of myself.

The usual conceptual model we use to explain ourselves as we meander down the corridor of time is metaphoric evolution. It allows us to be as we were even as we’re changed. It’s an integration model: Nice. Comforting. Continuous. But is this most-favored model the only one? What if moving through time is, well, disruptive? What if time doesn’t slowly accrete a coral reef around us? What if time is a mutagen? Faced with time, what if we’re more reasonable versions of Goldblum’s BrundleFly, and not Tandy’s Daisy Werthan?

This is why I absolutely avoid official reunions and carefully gauge all other social gatherings for their potential reunionosity. Again, It’s not merely the need to conjure-up a one-inch deep, road-company version of Former Me–it’s that I no longer have the script.

Fittingly, I once observed Tom Baker, the actor most famous for portraying the timelord on Doctor Who in the 1970s, interacting with fans decades after his last show. He politely but very uncomfortably was wearing someone’s scarf for a photograph and, as this was happening, someone else was asking him about an obscure plot point is the eighth episode of the third season. And I understood completely: The brittle stance, the furtive look in his eyes as he pretended to remember; the layer of courtliness that was designed to disguise the desire to be somewhere–anywhere–else.

Last night, I stood there with a rictus smile, holding a drink and pretending to remember an obscure photo shoot for a magazine cover I genuinely didn’t remember, even though I’d designed it. And I must have been good, because more than one former associate from 20 years ago gave me that most horrifying of complements–Hey, man, you haven’t changed! Can you imagine? Two-decades of stasis packaged like it was a good thing.

The irony in that meeting of Tom Baker and his fans is that the Doctor doesn’t remain the same–he literally regenerates into someone else. Which is as disruptive of one’s past as it gets. And last night that conceit certainly would have come in handy–me simply shrugging and reminding my former associates that this is my sixth regeneration; that I’m no longer a mid-80s editor-in-chief. Or a ’90s-style publisher. Or a columnist. I’m the equivalent of David Tennant, the current Doctor, and not Tom Baker–and I would have loved to point out that Tom left the set years ago.

But the one thing that has remained constant throughout the years are my manners. Though you’d never guess from the snarky blather here and there across the InterWebs, my manners are sterling. (Think Hannibal Lector without all that nasty serial-killer stuff–even though I do frequently wish I could eat the rude.)  And so last night, I posed for photos and attempted to answer questions about the eighth edition in the third volume of the magazine. I even managed to maneuver around all the last names I’d forgotten.

And all the while, I kept playing with the car key in my pocket–the thing that would open the door to my own German-made TARDIS parked outside, ready to whisk me back into the present after my breathtaking escape . . .

The Dull Ache of Dormancy

Excerpt From A Work-In-Progress

Shopping-cart vibration of ancient gurney wheels. Slap-back, metallic echoes off linoleum and old cinderblock. Rustle of swarming emergency techs and fragments of bad news: pressure-dropping tumbles through probable-pneumothorax. This is how she reenters your life: In a pool of unstaunchable blood, as patient-to-three and move-it-people collide and intertwine. She’s fading right in front of you; back, yet slipping away. And you want to sayHold on, but the irony stops you dead . . . .

“Ready, then, to tidy up?” The voice seems to come from everywhere. And though you’d like to answer No, the car-wreck curiosity is irresistible. Turning away is useless because you’re already rubbernecking–even though this freakish accident happens to be your own.

In a swivel chair on an oriental rug, you’re waiting for playback and remembering Steppenwolf: Well, you don’t know what we can find / Why don’t you come with me little girl? But on a different kind of magic carpet ride–one that’s the opposite of escape. The dimmed halogens at the edges of the studio spill a tarnished light down the walls, yellowing the acoustic panels before smudging into shadow. This, even as the fixture above your chair blazes at maximum setting, containing you and the ivory-handled cane in a cone of glacial light . . . .

In the hotel, at the window, you stare at the inlet and then past it, to the mountains, ice and sky beyond. At True North and unfettered possibilities. Standing here, now that she’s behind you; staring, even as she makes her oblique way south, toward the narrow selection of unacceptable futures that put everyone at risk but her. Aside from a wrung-out bitch or whispered lover, what more is there left to say? . . . .

“Standing by for ‘Post-Modern Pop Song;’ digital transfer of original mix, yes?” The Engineer makes this question an announcement, his voice omnipresent between the monitors. Squinting through the Arctic light and beyond its glare on the control booth window, you see him silhouetted against the halogen-glint on all that gear for re-polishing your past: Business-brisk, in service to the entertainment industry and bathed in the glow of his professional tools. Apart from a terse Let’s do it, then, what more is there left to say?

And now you want a cigarette–for the first time in many years. Recording studio. Engineer. Hidden dread before playback. Making music means chain smoking–or at least it did. It’s Proust’s madeleine-and-limeflower tea, but turned inside out: Circumstances have conjured up a sacred object from the past. And though you try, you can’t shake the desire because in addiction there is no gone. Absence there becomes abstinence; the dull ache of dormancy. Lou Reed materializes then, fading up with some mid-chorus advice: You’re still doing things I gave up years ago–which are true words in a truer song . . . .

“Ducky, there’s no irony in being a doctor who smokes. We all do things that just aren’t good for us; quite indefensible stuff, really.” Julia shrugs and glances at the Silk Cut, her own indefensible thing. “Someof these behaviors are as blatant as this, but the less obvious ones areno less damaging.” Cigarette glow at her lips again, and more blue-gray smoke as she contemplates you. Then, after a long moment’s hesitation: “Well, Darling, just look at yourself . . . .”

You’re beginning to adjust to the disconnectedness at the heart of Studio World: A perpetual twilight between the centuries that might be anywhere. And yes, the time frame could be narrowed a little by identifying the modules and racked MIDI units. But the spartan trend in component design makes everything an echo of Jonathan Ive. Which is why the concept of Where is useless: The hardware’s international minimalism has eliminated any sense of “here.”

But all of this is academic because you don’t know the tech–at least not like you did: Well, after all, just look at yourself. And so you lean back in the chair: Surrounded by speakers, wanting nicotine and free-floating in a cloudy pool of maybe 10 years. It occurs to you that your resurrection fantasy had always been much more specific than this–even as the details of how you came to be here begin to soften and smudge.

You’d written the hit song for a successful film. Except in reality you hadn’t . . . .

The Narcotic Blessing Of Forgetfulness

Excerpt From A Work-In-Progress

Though Beatrice doesn’t live at the end of the world, this is beginning to seem a technicality. Because so far it feels like you’re driving through an early Springsteen album: leather, denim and baseball caps inside too many tricked-out cars. And the endless succession of skinny kids hanging around on every corner; like that one, with his upended bike, kneeling next to the ratcheting gears. The town exudes a civic pride in being a kind of Wayne’s Worldsimulation, and this guarantees the wink you’ve been waiting for is never going to come: each one of these chop tops is aspirational instead of a John Waters reference, and you’ll need to think hard about that tonight, with scotch and a long journal entry . . . .

Something never thought about; something almost forgotten: The whir of a push mower and the play of sunlight on leaves that will be gone in three years’ time. Which makes you what? Seven years old? Or very close to it.

Your father’s mower whirring in the front yard, under the canopy of limbs that will soon be diseased. But all the memories of him have been too-long packed away, and so you have to make do with impressions: He’s conjured up as short, with darkish hair; in a white tee shirt, inappropriate pants and the smudgy suggestion of work shoes. All of this Sears-Catalog neat; it’s almost conceptual clothing. Because you can’t recall if he sweats while working out there–or if he perspires at all. Which, it now becomes clear, is also the reason you’ve parted and combed his hair.

Another season’s whirring, across a less-shaded lawn, as the last elms in the neighborhood begin their rapid decline. The kitchen’s still there; it can still be imagined, complete with its strange dimensions: too narrow and too long and then all at once wide in a way you remember as momentary. It’s where the savage intimacies of the family had most often been exchanged; collisions leaving many more scars than that dangerous drawer full of loose German knives. In the kitchen the family had been too distant and at the same time much too close; it had been a place where acceptance widened-out, only to narrow and close ranks again. The dining room, however, has become theoretical–as detail-free as the interchangeable dinners that had marked each holiday and celebration. Reduced to an essence half a lifetime later, this room’s revealed to have been the kitchen in a chandeliered Sunday Best; where weekday dictates and intolerance had been served up on good china. But its mislaid appearance has also faded these uneasy memories: the narcotic blessing of forgetfulness, though late, has at last arrived.

Still later, on a stifling night long before there’s any air-conditioning, a spray truck whirs past your tight-shut window, fogging yellow-lit neighborhood streets. This last-ditch rescue of the trees comes at the songbirds’ expense, because the insecticide kills many more robins than the number of elms it saves. The Midwest, however, is equal parts of momentum and determination–there once something is put into motion, no price seems too high to pay. Which isn’t surprising, because a comfortable rut is the most costly thing of all.

And then your father’s mower, blades glinting in the bright sun, trims around the new birch, avoiding the stakes. But the whirring this time is your childhood receding, leaving you earthbound, stranded and ten.

Wires and stakes, three sets of them; a new beginning secured in this stark new world. With the elms now gone, what was hidden is revealed: A ruler-straight horizon below a featureless sky. The kind of flatness that makes it seem you can see the neighboring states. But seeing forever is of little use when there’s nothing to be seen: The town is bordered on all sides by regressions of itself; either countless other identical places, like the result of facing mirrors, or greener, simplified versions of a single, industrial sprawl. Urban and rural are cinched together by the Rust Belt’s psychogeography: Outside of the townships–out among the cows–the only thing that changes is the population count. The scenery shifts, but can never avoid the grim context of the region. The feel of heavy manufacturing thrums, even when it can’t be seen; an analog of the locust drone that had once throbbed throughout the elms.

Hand clippers are used to trim those places the mower is too big to reach, and with practice, you’ve become adept at keeping the lawn from obscuring the stakes. With the elm trees gone, the town is exposed; it’s like that scientific toy from last Christmas–the scale-model man with all his bones and organs showing through clear-plastic skin. You’re beginning to see the town’s inner-workings, all the stuff that’s meant to be kept out of sight. And though too young to to do anything about it, you start to realize you want to get away. For one thing, the car worship is like weekday church, and the truth is you’ve never believed. But your friends had killed time watching from corners, shouting out models and years. And so at those intersections you had learned politeness; learned the benign dishonesty of manners, discovering that smiling could be a disguise for your deep and abiding disinterest. There’s also the bullying of those smarter or different; something shrugged-off like the weather. It’s tolerated in the kids because their parents also do it, with dismissiveness instead of scuffling. Getting good grades and reading books are invitations to be called a faggot. But the teachers won’t help because they’re unwilling to battle willful ignorance that’s generations deep . . . You’re wasting your life in this insular town, caught up in its rituals, repetition and rules. Because after you’re done faking all of that interest, after the hallway hassles over ruined grade curves, what’s left of your day is further splintered by narrow, ceremonial patterns: hymnals, baseball and frequent house arrest for asking unanswerable questions. So yes, now that the elms are no longer here, you can see things you want to leave behind. Is it possible staking the new tree to the ground is to prevent it from trying to escape? To keep it from pulling up its burlapped root ball before that becomes impossible? To guard against the birch floating away from this flattened desolation, to where its paper-curled presence has a chance of better fitting in? Standing here staring at the endless horizon, you feel a similar tethering: You may not live at the end of the world, but this is beginning to seem a technicality . . . .

The Inescapable Key Of Me

About a week ago on Twitter, I shared this epiphany: “Since I revise responding to the endless reading aloud of passages, the novel’s “definitive” unpacking is my accent and cadences.” And since then, I’ve continued to think about this in terms of consequences and implications. I suspect the pondering is because, for me, vocalizing / revising is an atypical workflow in a writing career lengthy enough to deserve a Doctor–Who regeneration.

Please note I said “atypical,” and not “unprecedented.” Over the years, I’ve certainly read passages aloud–especially In those faux Hollywood moments when I’m trying to nail elusive prose while staring into a deadline. But not consistently; not without fail; not to the extent that the final revision is always the version that yields the most successful recitation. At the same time, I feel that when the novel is finished and I move on to a new project, chances are good I’ll revert to, well, a  quieter way of working. My sense is that this book has chosen its own workflow–art, like leaking water, will find its own way through any wall. There’s no doubt new work will establish its own idiosyncratic, creative conduit–which I admit looking forward to, since the current stream of required throat lozenges is unexpected overhead in my writing.

But what I haven’t been pondering during the past week is why I’m writing the book in this manner; the tangled psycho-dynamics of that, while probably a therapist’s payday, might kill the work dead in mid-sentence. It’s better–and safer–to limit myself to the how and what of my current approach.

And to these ends, let’s first consider singer/songwriter Lou Reed–but not for his edgy material, dodgy early behavior or later French deification. What’s germane to this discussion is his famously limited vocal range. Reed’s voice and material mostly exist in a neat one-to-one relationship: three-chord, world-weary rock is performed by an insouciant, three-note voice. Well and good, but what I want to know is if soaring arias exist inside his head–impossibly high notes that the limitations of his voice filter out during the composition of songs. Even more importantly, is right-for-his-voice necessarily synonymous with right-for-his-vision? Is “Perfect Day” what Reed wanted to do, or simply what he could manage? And, ultimately, does this parsing matter in terms of assessing the song?

I’m thinking about Reed a lot these days because my own limited voice is the sole determinant of what remains on the page. Final revisions are being made based on the ease of my recitations. Let me say this again in a different way: I’m not further polishing images, I’m not further tweaking structure, and certainly I’m not fucking with wayward leitmotifs. I’m revising to improve my comfort when reading the material aloud. And this isn’t a way of obliquely saying I’m refining sentence meter because that was dealt with in the mists of time on much earlier drafts. What seems to be occurring is an adjustment of long vowels and the honing of emotional ambience in ways I can’t explain.

On occasion, superior instances of “pure” writing have been discarded in favor of less-crafted passages that better suit my voice. Which leads back to my wonderment about how Lou Reed writes–if he could sing like Pavarotti, would we have a different “Perfect Day?” And–critically–would it be a somehow truer version? If I had the accent and cadences of a Jeremy Irons, would the book be locked down differently? And if so, would the unquestionably more emotive version be any more authentic?

Another issue I keep thinking about is the affect of a vocalize / revise approach on open textuality. Consider again our old friend, Reed–there are not a lot of cover versions of his back catalog; something usually ascribed to the extreme nature of his themes. But I don’t think this is the main reason that other artists ignore his songs. For a two- or three-octave singer, there’s not a lot of room for interpretation in narrow-range melodies. Annie Lennox doesn’t sing “How Do You Think It Feels?” for reasons beyond the lyric’s portrayal of paranoid drug addiction. I’ve worked hard to create an openness in the novel’s text–encouraging a variety of emotional entries into the work and a wide range of interpretations. But if the final revision is thoroughly tied to my flawed and ragged voice, have I not implicitly suggested the ‘real’ interpretation of the book is my own recitation? If I let myself think too long about this, it becomes a real quandary.

All of this too-sensitive-to-live, artistic dithering has been front-and-center because I’m thinking about blogging an excerpt from the book. And in choosing which part to unleash on the world, there’s a temptation to select a sequence that’s less tied to my voice–except, of course, there aren’t any. This, in turn, suggested a post like this might be interesting–a public confession and presentation of my writing as a kind of visible-gear, Lexan clock. I thought it might philosophically prepare the way while the chosen excerpt is readied.

This is why I’ve decided to share an advance paragraph and, to make a probably unwise point, also provide its audio file–me, in Spector-ish, monophonic glory, letting you know whatI intended, even if it runs counter to what you might have taken away. In short, clarifying and suicidal simultaneously. For maximum impact, I suggest reading the paragraph before you listen to it.

And that’s it–back to the work itself, instead of this Prince-Hamlet posturing. After all, downstream of a few hundred-thousand words, the book can only be what it is–sounding, of course, like the odd wisdom of the De Niro character in Deer Hunter . . .  

——————-

Another season’s whirring, across a less-shaded lawn, as the last elms in the neighborhood begin their rapid decline. The kitchen’s still there; it can still be imagined, complete with its strange dimensions: Too narrow and too long and then all at once wide in a way youremember as momentary. It’s where the savage intimacies of the family had most often been exchanged; collisions leaving many more scars than that drawer full of loose German knives. In the kitchen the family had been too distant and at the same time much too close; it had been a place where acceptance widened-out, only to narrow again. The dining room, however, is only theoretical; it’s now as detail-free as those interchangeable dinners that had marked each holiday and celebration. Reduced to an essence half a lifetime later, this room’s revealed to have been the kitchen in chandeliered Sunday Best; where weekday dictates and intolerance had been served up on good china. But its mislaid appearance has also faded these uneasy memories: The narcotic blessing of forgetfulness, though late, has at last arrived.

[restore audio link]

The Thrum Of Brooding Strings

First things first: I hate the effing squirrel. And thinking about this once more, it occurs to me that I’m pissed at his relatives too–each one of those fast-learning, extended family members without benefit of cute nicknames. But let’s be clear; Chewy–the name I’ve given my squirrely nemesis–is only incidentally cute. Because it’s as literal and descriptive a nickname as I’ve ever managed (and if not the king of nicknaming, I’m certainly the prince-consort of the practice).

Chewy, he chews things–all manner of things: the tops of stockade fences, the edges of roof gutters and the associated down-spouts, terra-cotta pots, railroad ties, adirondack chairs, garden hoses, the lids of plastic trash cans, begonias, entire flats of pansies, the occasional lupin, and especially jack-o-lanterns. But, remarkably, he ignores the impatiens–which are seemingly squirrel Kryptonite.

And as long as we’re in waist-deep background, there are three other things to understand about Chewy: First, the locust-cum-termite behavior isn’t a seasonal thing, and it’s certainly not squirrel-business-as-usual: Big C is a non-stop gnawer without precedent. And I should know, because prior to the Coming of Chewy, both my house and I had managed to peaceably coexist with countless generations of squirrels. Second, Chewy is a genius–at least among his scatterbrained peers. But that’s not accurate: Chewy is an Evil Genius; he is the Moriarty of squirrels. Third, the other members of his circle, the ones who also live on my property, are learning from the little bastard. It’s one thing to have a gifted squirrel breaking bad, but quite another when he shows a talent for teaching. It’s a bit like one of those deliciously creepy sci-fi moments, when it’s determined that somehow the perimeter has been breached, and the deadly virus has spilled into the outside world. In my case, it’s Chewyvirales Omnivorous–unstoppable and eating through a neighborhood near you . . . (Cue the dark, brooding string arrangement.)

Throughout this year, Chewy and I have been playing chess with my house and landscaping. For instance, this past autumn I set out a pumpkin, and Chewy’s countermove was to start to gnawing on it. I then turned the ripped skin toward the house and poured half a bottle of tabasco over it. Chewy’s response was to signal his approval of Southwestern cuisine by tunneling inside the five-alarm pumpkin and then out through the top–pretty much the way James Caan tackled that vault in Thief. Prior to this, in the spring, Chewy bit through my garden hose and I repaired it with duct tape. The next morning he returned and, to make a point, once again chewed through the hose, about six inches down from the repair. After a week of this parry-and-thrust over my right to water the flowers, the hose had morphed into 50 feet of duct tape, which made me conspicuous in the front yard–as if I’d forgotten to put on my tinfoil gardening hat.

Then in summer, some coyotes emerged from the park and claimed my backyard as part of their temporary territory. Transfixed, I watched them in the moonlight doing their collective and surprisingly cliched Coyote Thing, and the next morning I dutifully informed my pet-owning neighbors. But even in mid-Paul-Revere, I kept thinking, well, if Chewy doesn’t realize Wile E. and his family have moved in, then, well, youknow–Nature Sadly Taking Its Course; a briefly violent National Geographic Moment. After which I’d have a moment of silence for the late Chewy T. Squirrel, PhD, and then go off to confidently purchase a new garden hose.

But as noted, Chewy is a genius. Within four days, the coyotes had disappeared. County animal control said that it had nothing to do with it, that they had planned to swing into action at week’s end. It was assumed Wile E. and family had simply returned to the park, but oddly, no adjacent neighborhoods subsequently reported seeing them. And the next time I saw Chewy–gnawing on a cast-stone relief hanging on the fence–he gave me this weirdly knowing, Tony Soprano kind of look; a hey-I’m-just-a-member-of-the-rodent-family-but-I-don’t-think-they’ll-be-back-because-it’s-kind-of-dangerous-out-here-if-you-know-what-I-mean stare. For weeks afterwards, every time I saw an overpass under construction, I’d stare at its newly poured concrete supports and wonder about the coyotes.

Given my history with Chewy, you’d think any cartoonish, Acme Company misfortune that might befall him–oversized sticks of bright-red dynamite; chunky, hurtling anvils; that can of paint that makes a solid wall of rock look like the entrance to a train tunnel–you’d think that this sort of assisted intervention of fate vis a vis Chewy would be something I’d welcome. And just three months ago you’d be right.

But what if the aforementioned Fate-With-Assistance wasn’t cartoonish? What if it was disconcerting, brutal and sad? Because here’s the thing: The oak trees around here have stopped making acorns. Let’s hover on this point so we’re completely clear about this: There are no acorns. Not fewer acorns, Not smaller acorns. There are no acorns at all. The oaks (and hickories, too) have simply stopped making nuts. They’ve ceased to propagate. Thousands of trees, all at once, all in one season. You can literally walk through miles of oaks and not see a single acorn.

If you’re waiting for the proverbial second shoe to plummet, forget it. No one understands why the oaks and hickories have shut down nut production en masse. And yes, of course scientists have mumbled their way through various esoteric theories–but, bottom line, there is no answer. Na-da. Frankly, this has spooked me–which in itself should be cause for alarm, because I don’t easily spook. The situation is beginning to feel like a particularly disturbing episode of Fringe playing out in Real Life. I keep thinking about frog die-offs and honeybee hive collapse syndrome and, unavoidably, the apophenia clicks in.

I’m not saying the disappearance of acorns is a portent, but the problem is that no one can assure me that it’s not. And so we arrive back at that deliciously creepy sci-fi moment; when it’s determined that somehow the perimeter has been breached, and a mysterious something has spilled into the outside world: The sudden and complete disappearance of acorns–inexplicable, and possibly moving toward a neighborhood near you . . . (Will you cue the dark, brooding string arrangement, or should
I?)

In these circumstances, the brutal, natural equation is succinct: Take away acorns and squirrels die. They starve, but before that, they do crazy, desperate things to get food–things that make Chewy look well-behaved and reasonable. And while there’s no love lost between him and me, I find his starvation unacceptable. Because deep down I can’t shake the feeling that this isn’t just Nature taking its course; it’s the unintended consequences of thoroughly crappy human interaction with the planet. It isn’t about the not-me of coyotes or the third-party agency of the Acme Company. It’s about us.

And so these days I’m feeding the squirrels–you’d probably be shocked to know how many unshelled peanuts I’m distributing. These days, even though I still glare at him, Chewy is getting room service care of yours truly. I wish I could say that a dramatic and suitably seasonable life lesson is lurking in this story–like Scrooge’s transformation or the Grinch turning the sled around–but I can’t. I still genuinely hate Chewy and, come spring, when it’s time to plant flowers and use garden hoses, I plan on hating him even more. But right now, it’s about evening-out the Zen. Because as much as Chewy has fucked around with my house and yard, there’s no proof I haven’t been complicit in his starvation–which is a much worse way of screwing him back. Thus, for the next few months I’ll be busy with peanut delivery as I trying to ignore his triumphant, sneering little face.

Small steps. It’s best, I think, not to squint too far into the future. Because if I push the predictions past spring, chances are I might end up thinking about next fall and whether there will be acorns. Which, of course, no one can say with certainty anymore. How strange it is to write that.

Zipless Caffeine

A few days ago my coffee-maker went to kitchen appliance heaven, and in retrospect, the gurgling finale of that final pot sounded exactly like a death-rattle. This could have been a huge problem because coffee is my drug, my life, nectar for my creativity, and the fuel that I convert into words. Indeed, post-coital coffee has always made more sense to me than a cigarette. So yeah; the sudden absence of a coffee-maker could have been massively problematic in a DTs / detox sort of way: Me, fetal-positioned in a corner, imagining coffee beans swarming across the walls. Indisputably nasty business.

But the thing is, I never much liked my recently deceased coffee-maker–in truth, it’s annoyed me for two years now. (Yes, I actually wore the thing out in 24 months, so you’re right in slightly stepping away from me.) It was a brushed-chrome Cuisinart with retro-cool Thomas Dolby gauges: vague ’30s Modernism with a Steampunk undercurrent. And, of course, this is the problem–even now, after having pulled the plug on the Cuisinart, I’m still describing it in terms of aesthetics, which is more than a little dodgy since it should be all about the distillation of a caffeine-delivery system.

I admit it, Dear Visitor–I was seduced: I should have been thinking about how it would function on the chosen countertop location. I should have anticipated whether the inherent demands of the thing would rankle over time. But I didn’t. Its glowing, brushed beauty spoke to the lizard-brain that routes around the assessment of good industrial design. There in the showroom, I fell victim to its siren song; it was like a tall, slim blonde making deceptively interesting conversation. I was smitten. I boldly picked it up and took it home with me, where we spent the weekend together. And, come Monday, well, it was still there on the counter and, still infatuated, I saw no need for it to keep its box and styrofoam packing.

Over the next two years, however, I began to learn that most cliched of lessons–that sometimes beauty is only chromium-skin-deep. The Cuisinart set the agenda–my interactions with it demanded I move it to the edge of the counter, even as I struggled with what turned out to be a too-short power cord. The hinged top was always banging into the microwave suspended above it. The thing also required that water be poured in from the top and just next to its right side–in the ensuing months, I became resigned to wiping up the counter every other pot. And then there was the daily cleaning of the mesh coffee grounds basket and also the quarterly changing of the water filter (because the Cuisinart insisted on practicing Safe Brewing ). To be fair, the coffee the Cuisinart made was very good, but ultimately not good enough to out-weigh my daily, awkward dance with it.

Looking back, I’m certain there was no commitment problem on my part; during our first weekend together, I’d been very clear about what I was looking for–excellent coffee with minimum effort–Zipless Caffeine, if you will. And the Cuisinart had kept a diplomatic silence that seemed to signal agreement, even as the halogen lights from the range hood glinted provocatively across its Dolby-esque dials, distracting me with the desire to sing a few choruses of “She Blinded Me With Science,” or maybe even “Leipzig.” I guess that, despite what happened later, we’ll always have that weekend of infatuated coffee-making . . .

But now the Cuisinart is gone and, as grim as this sounds, it’s probably for the best. Had it not expired, I’d have dumped it. Harsh, I know, but true. We were only going through the coffee-making motions, the Cuisinart and I. It was becoming progressively difficult and I was increasingly impatient and, yes, ogling other coffee-makers. Sleek, low-maintenance beauties that wanted what I wanted: toe-curling, hair-tossing, shudder-inducing Good Coffee. And why not? I’m still young enough; my coffee-drinking days certainly aren’t behind me.

Caution, though, is indicated. I’m determined not to get into a rebound relationship. I want to play the field for a while; check-out my options. It’s hardly surprising, then, that for the near-term, I’ve gotten back together with an ex-coffee-maker. In the recycling bin, the housing of the Cuisinart was hardly cold before I’d loped down to the basement to reconnect with my old Chemex. The Chemex and I had been together for quite a long time in my youth; we’d even gotten experimental with our coffee-making–how to say this discreetly?–the roasting and brewing practices of Other, Exotic Lands sometimes entered into our sessions . . .French Breakfast, need I say more?

So yeah, the Chemex and I currently have a good thing going: lab glass, unbleached filter paper, boiling water, fresh-ground beans. End of story. Good for the Chemex and certainly good for me. We’ve established an open relationship, meaning I can have dalliances with other brewing systems, while it’s free to participate in any basic lab work it wants and even more exotic things, like heating milk for mashed potatoes. Though I’ve no idea where all this going, I can see always having a little Chemex on side–I’m anxious not to repeat the quiet desperation of the past two years. Sorry, Cuisinart, but I’m so over you . . .

David, Bryan Or Hugh: A Meditation On Hair

Theauthorandhishair

For that handful of visitors who may wonder why I’ve opted to use an avatar here, this bit of iPhone self-portraiture should neatly explain everything. Try to ignore my look of trepidation and let’s have a soul-searching discussion about my hair, shall we? It is not an inexpensive cut and yet everyday it looks like David Lynch, Bryan Ferry and Old-School Hugh Grant are all fighting for domination of my scalp . . .

This is not some seasonal anomaly, some low-humidity Winter Thing; this is basically what it looks like all year ’round. Horrifying as this may seem, the cut is remarkably consistent: It looks like this as I make my entrance at a dinner party and it also looks like this after I’ve accidently turned the leaf blower on myself while attaching the cord. So clearly, one of these circumstances is getting the not-so-short, hirsute end off things. I’m either turning up to dinner with leaf-blower hair or getting lawn debris to the curb with an inappropriate haircut. If only I know which one it was.

But I’ve digressed; sod the consistency of thing. The problem is that it clearly needs to make up it’s mind: Lynch, Ferry, or Grant; just chose, for god’s sake.

Sincere apologies for this post; 20 minutes ago I didn’t know I’d be writing this. But loping back to my office with a fresh cup of coffee, I passed by a print under highly reflective glass and it suddenly seemed the right time to confront my Hair Problem. Because admitting there’s a problem is always the first step to fixing it. But until then, I’ve made a mental note not to lose my avatar file–all indications are that I’ll be using it in the foreseeable future.

The Nature Of Nature

Prior to settling into my recent season of doctors and campaigning for Obama, I was on extended holiday in the American Rocky Mountains. Being Otherwise Engaged on multiple fronts is the reason for the lack of posts to this blog and also accounts for a recent sense of intercut reality. The past few months have smudged together in interesting and surreal ways: impressions of myself holding a kind of meta clipboard containing hybrid medical/political/revision questions (Does your family have any history of internal bleeding while convincing uncommitted voters to go Democratic in a perhaps-too-confusing and staccato flashback sequence?). That sort of thing. The culmination of this oddly recombinant period was waking up in the recovery room demanding assurances that (a) Obama was still president-elect and (b) fucking Chapter Seven remained finalized . . .

But back to the vacation: It worked liked a charm–much-needed distance was inserted between me and the book (especially fucking Chapter Seven); despite appearances, I actually feel recharged, though slightly worse-for-wear.

And since I can already sense the uncomfortable shifting, you have my word that this isn’t the preamble to an endless sharing of holiday snaps (As you can see, this picture of the Rockies is slightly bluer and less hazy than the previous vista of mountains–but a lot grayer and more distant than the range in the next shot). Rather, I’d like to explore a variant of that Arthur Conan Doyle passage about a mute canine:

“Is there any point to which you would wish to draw my attention?”

“To the curious incident of the dog in the night-time.”

“The dog did nothing in the night-time.”

“That was the curious incident,” remarked Sherlock Holmes.

In my case, the curious, attention-worthy incident is the non-inspirational nature of–er–nature: All the splendor had absolutely no affect on my writing. There was, of course, the obligatory amount of Wonder, Scale and Taking-of-Breath. As a civilian, I respond to nature (though I suspect in a more clinical way than most people), but as an artist, well, not so much. However, this still seems too cagey, so know this: In terms of art, I’m completely disinterested in the natural world.

With the exception of Turner, my appreciation of painted landscapes is entirely technical; minus my fascination with brushstrokes, composition and light, Monet haystacks would die in their amped-up attempts to Make Us Notice The Literal And Spiritual Benefits Of Rural Life In A Way That We Would Otherwise Entirely Miss (And So Thank You, Claude). I remain unmoved by landscapes in the same way I patiently wait for Springsteen songs about The Myriad Aspects of Blue-Collar Life That We Would Otherwise Entirely Miss (And So Thank You, Bruce) to finally end. In each instance, the very obvious has been made epically intense. And, because of the narrowing affect of the obviousness, it’s also about mind-numbing redundancy. (Pop Quiz 1: Explain how “Thunder Road” is in anyway different from”Born To Run” with the exception of tighter focus. Pop Quiz 2: Thematically differentiate three of Monet’s haystack paintings. See what I mean?)

My disinterest in Artistic Nature extends to other disciplines. In most cases, I’d rather saw off my leg with a dull butter knife than read pastoral poetry. Again, it’s the sheer predictability–despite all the passionate attempts to find the new, surprising and oddball detail-cum-angle. I getit–mainly because I got it: a long time ago, reading 400-year-old poetry. Nature is Big. I am Small. Natural Metaphors for What Is Churning In My Soul are somehow more resonant for being externalized (though no one really explains why nature-as-mirror is inherently better than self-examination). Nature is Authentic, whereas Civilization Is Artifice.

(Full disclosure: I have been a hypocritical enabler. At one point, I critiqued some pastoral poetry as a politely down-played but huge favor. What I still remember is the dumbfounded respect of the writer–as if it took special intelligence to discern that, yes, geologic time was being used as a metaphor for a relationship; that, um, Things Change Just Like In Nature. Whatever. My critique was in no way brain surgery, and yet I was deemed Yoda-like for the “insights.” However, the real reason for my carefully chosen, seemingly Zen-like advice had much more to do with me being too polite to explore the author’s psychological reasons for projecting personal feelings onto geological forces. The resulting deflection, disguise and avoidance produced the opposite of truth, which, I finally realized, had been the unconscious intent of the pieces.)

For me, nature-based art is inescapably hackneyed in terms of theme; the metaphoric natural world has been stripped-mined of meaning. Which places it in the same relationship to me as the Blues–so rigorously ritualized in both form and topic that any relatively recent stuff can only be significant in terms of bravura performance. (And, as I learned in my season critiquing pastoral poetry, talented nature poets are as rare as Glenn Gould caliber pianists–journeyman versification of cliched beaches/clouds/flocks of birds/rain/waving grass is as deadening as a cocktail-lounge piano player vamping his way through predictable pop standards.)

All this is a very circuitous way of saying that I inserted myself in the Rocky Mountains to get away from my writing, and not for inspiration. Artistically, I thrive in big cities and interstitial neighborhoods: Fringe-dwelling urban neurotics–my inescapable tribe–give me the ideas and energy that make the words flow.

In this Age of Palin, where “elitist” is the new sneering code word for being smart–dismissive of intelligence in the same way “faggot” denigrates gays– Blue-Collar Authenticity is all the rage. And, being noble savagery with a new coat of political paint, Blue-Collar Authenticity is especially shrill if the Proudly Uninformed also happen to live near equally Authentic Nature (cough–Alaska–cough). My problem is that I don’t see authenticity in the leading of a patently “low-information” life, and the Rockies are no more or less authentic than Manhattan. (And with a scotch in me, I’ll probably confide that Manhattan is actually more impressive, being the product of human aspiration and design rather then entropy and tectonic plates.)

I also went on a walkabout through the mountains because I’ve been forcing myself to do things I otherwise wouldn’t: Ranked absolutely on my personal Things To Do Before I Die list, the Rockies don’t even figure in the top 100. Which made them a perfect choice because they were sufficiently outside both my desire and comfort zone to be perversely intriguing.

Which leads to the dodgy matter of productive masochism–the Rockies were also chosen to address my incapacitating fear of heights; the kind of terror that can literally freeze me in place and screw my eyes shut. However, limping across the tundra above the timberline at the edges of precipices is in itself still giving me nightmares. Thus, despite my intentions, the trip’s takeaway did not have the edifying, arc-to-a-moral of after-school specials: I in no way mastered my fear of heights. After-the-fact and much closer to sea-level, I can see no benefit in the experience. I’m still as neurotic about heights, but now also struggling not to become completely agoraphobic. So much for self-improvement . . .

The more successfully diverting parts of my journey mostly had to do with the region’s wildlife. Episodes with bear, mountain lions, elk, and moose were satisfying encounters with the Other Than, and, being on foot, were also dangerous enough to underscore my view of Nature as brutal entropy in glamorous drag; a serial killer with a deceptively charming surface. For me, Nature is Tony Perkins in a lushly Technicolor version of Psycho (to best convey all those sunsets)–really nice right up until you step into the shower.  Just like mountain lions are majestically nice right up until you find yourself surrounded by scat embedded with feathers, smell the ammonia waves of cat piss and slowly–very slowly–look up (do not turn your back, do not crouch and do not run) . . .

Not that there’s anything wrong with this. Perkins the Mountain Lion is merely doing (or attempting to do) what Perkins does. Perkins has an admirable purity going for him: Birds gotta fly, fish gotta swim, Perkins gotta eat me (though mind the iPhone, Perkins; I waited in line too long for it to end up embedded in tomorrow’s scat). Perkins’ big-cat life is a perfectly straight through-line from his jaws to the pulsing carotid in my neck. He is without nuance–just like the natural world that surrounds him.

And here, at last, is what I like about Nature: Its lack of agendas. Paradoxically, however, this is also why I have no artistic use for it: Going hand-in-hand with my preference for large cities is a fascination with humanity’s bedecked selfishness. Perkins doesn’t have a string of divorces behind him, and to rationalize them, he’s not reading Smart Predators, Stupid Choices; Perkins has no passive carefully wrapped around his tooth-and-claw aggression; Perkins doesn’t network or politick; Perkins doesn’t manipulate, he merely pounces if the opportunity presents itself; and in the twilight of his big-cat years, Perkins will be guiltless about his savage, red-meat life–there will be no mid-life crisis and, thank god, he will not reimagine himself as a vegetarian. All this makes me want to hang-out with Perkins (albeit at a safer distance), but not write about him.

Each of us is our own spin doctor–we have a deep need to remain the hero of our respective lives, and so we’re constantly riding the gain of self-serving rationalization. Our life-narratives are naturally sloppy things because lurking just below the careful civility and sociality is a Perkins-esque through-line that passes from desire to possession, and it severs anything caught in the middle–particularly the through-lines of others. Happiness; stability; lifestyle; love; material things; spiritual satisfaction; validity; freedom; the perfect job; the perfect family; brain-melting sex: Take your pick–each ultimately arrays itself along the line between desire and possession. Though we will never admit it, there’s often a single degree of separation between us and the mountain lion–we’ve merely learned to lie to others and ourselves.

Be it ever so grim, this is what I write about–our endless streams of often conflicting self-narratives and our endless patching of the frequent holes in their logic and decency. Hero-as-martyr, hero-as-victim, hero-without-a-choice, hero-annointed by destiny: After-the-fact and by necessity, there are many ways to explain the unavoidable and often subtle carnage we cause–the feathers in the scat we leave behind. Marianne Faithfull once sang, ‘Beyond a certain age, every artist works with injury,’ and I’m inclined to agree with her.

I’ve never believed in objectivity, even as child; I’m simply not wired that way. But as I’ve grown older, even the idea of varying degrees of tarnished truth seem increasingly less likely. Perhaps it’s simply occupational disease, given the daily struggle with my book, but I’ve come to see that we’re all just our latest self-revisions, the momentary sum of our constantly morphing delusions. Let’s put this another way: Though I ought to know better, I sometimes introduce new material in these late revisions of the novel–and doing so forces me to pour through the earlier sections, tweaking for continuity or consistency in metaphors. Like a stage magician, I work backwards from the latest effect. And, I think, this is what we all do with our lives–it’s the real function of memory, which is why recollection is the central subject and driver of the book. We are constantly adjusting the past to account for the present; the only parameters being preservation of personal continuity and our status as indisputable hero of the our respective stories.

And so, yes, when it came to taking a break from the book, I temporarily inserted myself into an agenda-less world. See it as a much needed exile from my material. A day spent tagging along with a herd of elk didn’t resolve into fire-illuminated, furious scribbling in a Moleskine. Remarkably, it didn’t even result in many photographs–probably fewer than 30 shots for my entire time in the Rockies. Being artistically unmoved by Nature doesn’t preclude briefly intense and intimate interactions, but they’re inherently fleeting and intensely private; pulling out a camera usually felt as out-of-place as it would be during lovemaking. Roy Batty says this in Blade Runner:

I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time . . . like tears in rain . . . Time to die.

Roy’s last-moment epiphany is an understanding that memory is both self-defining and ephemeral; a cupped handful of experience that inevitably slips through the fingers and back into the coursing stream of reality. And this is pretty much how I felt about all those sunsets, waterfalls and mist-filled valleys: You people wouldn’t believe what I saw; their significance is too personal to be pixelated as a digital image. Better to allow them to slip back into the rush of time . . .

She Blind-Sided Me With Search Strings

I have a first-cup-of-coffee tradition that I try to observe every morning: The search for a delaying tactic to keep me from entering Writing Mode; something that prevents me from wading waist-deep back into The Book while my caffeine level is optimized. Today I decided it was of utmost importance that iGoogle, Popurls and Inquisitor for Safari match each other–as in each service being the same shade of gray. Before any further manuscript revisions were possible, it suddenly seemed somehow reasonable that a cross-service, monochromatic harmony had to be established. I figured this would buy me at least 30 minutes before I had to start channelling The Author–and I was right. (Since I’ve been writing the book, I’ve discovered in myself a hitherto unrealized-but-inspired talent for delaying tactics. Who knew? And so yes, matching my Google home page to both my news aggregator and expanded function search pop-up seemed whacked even to me–thrilling so, in fact; the sort of behavior that would cause friends to cross to the other side of the street on mere suspicion of the project.)

Anyway, after some geeky dicking about with the appearance preferences of Popurls, chromatic parity was established with Inquisitor. Which meant that I’d only need to find a complementary gray theme for Google and my sad little plan for temporary desktop domination would be realized.Mwah-ha-ha. Or something like that–whatever a procrastinating, bush-league Dr. Evil might say in similar circumstances. Thus I zipped up to the Google theme directories where I eventually settled on Chroma Pencil Lead as the gray that would make writing once again possible.

But that’s not what this post is about; it’s just writerly backstory. I already know I’m eccentric, so there’s no need to solicit your feedback concerning my various tics. Rather, I want to share what I stumbled across during my latest instance of Putting Off Writing: A Sarah Palin theme for Google, the major portal to the world’s assembled knowledge and opinion. Here, have a look:

(If I were you, I’d want more proof this isn’t some kind of joke, so please take a moment and visit the theme in virtual situ.)

My cat has become impressively adept at miming WTF? and in this case, I second that emotion. The massive cognitive dissonance of linking Palin (a) to knowledge of, well, any kind, and (b) to inherently divergent opinions is best conveyed by this simple thought experiment: Imagine Fred Flintstone and Dino as mascots for Cincinnati University’s School of Paleontology. Like Gloria Foster said in The Matrix, ‘it bakes your noodle . . .’

Full disclosure: I just took down my Obama lawn sign; I’d left it up for a full post-election week as a sort of motionless victory dance. However, my horror at the Palin Google theme has little to do with politics or partisanship. Palin, the the Far Right’s Mean-Girl Chauncey Gardner, has declared war on The Smart–here carefully defined not as the opposite of Dumb, but, rather, as the rejection of Willful Ignorance. (Or, in the manner of “Low Information,” that appalling, politically correct description of those who won’t pull themselves away from television reality shows, let’s simply say that Smart can seen as the state of being “Informed.”) And so it follows that Smartness transcends political party. Which explains why Christopher Hitchens, Colin Powell, Andrew Sullivan, Chris Buckley,et al fled in horror from Rick Davis’ Eliza Doolittle. She might as well have farted at a dinner party–which, come to think of it, she metaphorically did. Repeatedly and at all sorts of gatherings. This is also why, even though she’s been sent packing back to Alaska (interesting expression, that, in the context of the  $200,000 worth of costuming), the Smart continue to bang on her as if she were Chuck Barris’ gong. Which explains why I’m here in the front of the line, happily clutching my
mallet . . .

But back to the point: The Palin Google theme. After I spot-treated the stains on my shirt from the coffee that shot out of my nose when I first came upon it, I admit I was confused. Truth is, I still am. How exactly is one to understand this theme? Is it meant to be taken literally? Is the user of iGoogle supposed to acknowledge Palin’s oddly blank smile even as he or she searches for quantum mechanics or atheism or–ulp–evolution? Is a user of Google (which also delivers a constant stream of complex “mainstream media” news) really expected to accept that the Magic Eight Ball of politicians (Unclear, Ask Again Later–when I have new index cards) has somehow morphed into the Cassandra of Search (Here are the top two monographs on the Constitutional definition of the vice presidency)?

“Ironic” is my default setting, it’s nothing I can help. So I’m always thrown by its potential absence. However, the only way I can make sense of the Palin Google theme is to see it as a web designer’s ongoing joke. As what the first art director of Wired once called a “mind grenade.” But in this instance, the brilliance is that the conceptual grenade keeps exploding with each new search–be it smart or stupid. The coffee-out-the-nose thing happens whether I ask Sarah about the latest advances in astrophysics or speaking in tongues, albeit for different reasons. In other words, pretty much like my reactions to her answers during the
campaign . . .

Lucinda Williams’ World Without Baggage

There’s a handful of recording artists who never disappoint–well, make that almost never–and Lucinda Williams is long-time a member of this exclusive club. Since her self-titled third album, she’s never let me down. Even when the roots contingent bitched about West, I appreciated what she was doing and admired how she pushed past the genre stances that had endeared her to fans. And, given the polarizing affect of West, the country-rock regrouping of Little Honey, Williams latest release, is its least surprising attribute. In a way, it recalls World Without Tears–a similar retreat into the tried and true after her more experimental Essence. But where World Without Tears left Williams’ considerable songwriting talents intact, she arrives at Little Honey without the baggage that’s provided the inspiration for her best work.

There’s a fine EP buried in Little Honey–but unfortunately, there’s also that other 40 minutes of music . . . The songs neatly fall into four categories: Lucinda In Love, Lucinda Dispensing Advice To Other Pop Stars, Lucinda Classics Old and New, and, well, a Lucinda/Elvis Costello comedy routine. Even though it physically hurts to admit this, the problem is that most of the new material is the stuff of B-sides and bonus tracks.

The quality of the Lucinda-In-Love material suggests that Paul McCartney was right all those years ago–it’s a world filled with love songs that are indisputably silly. And while I’m pleased for Lucinda these days, there’s good reason why great art rarely (if ever) flows from Being Happy. BecauseHappy has few nuances and it also lacks drama–which is bad news if you’re trying to write four-minute lyrical narratives that evolve across their verses and recontextualized choruses.

The tracks where Lucinda Dispenses Pop-Star Advice are problematic in two ways: First, she’s not exactly the poster girl for smart music-business moves, and second, apart from silly love songs, is there anything more boring than dispatches from the echo chamber of rock stardom? “Running On Empty,” “Tenth Avenue Freeze Out,” “How Do You Sleep?”–we get it. Fame Has A Price, aka It Hasn’t Been Easy. I’m never sure what to make of this type of song, because beneath the graphic, salacious details, lurks all the complexity of a Lifetime Network movie. The brilliance of Amy Winehouse’s “Rehab” is her undermining of self-pity–which is why Little Honey will never displace Back To Black at the top of my frequent-play list.

“Jailhouse Tears,” the Lucinda-And-Elvis Standup Routine, amuses on the first two or three listenings, after which the song begins to irritate in the manner of any novelty number (even if you appreciate the implicit Tammy-and-George joke).

The good news is that the remaining songs keep Little Honey from totally disappointing. They comprise a powerful, virtual EP anchored by the heartbreaking “If Wishes Were Horses.” There’s also the infectious, radio-ready “Real Love,” the somber “Heaven Blues,” and “Tears of Joy”–the one silly love song that transcends itself.

Another plus is the paradoxical fact that Little Honey is a near-perfect set of recordings: the live-in-studio production is superlative, the band’s playing is spectacular and William’s vocals are among her best. The impressively austere black-and-white art direction is also excellent. If only the lyrics consistently rose to the level of the production, performances and package.

The final problem of Little Honey is its numbing length. Most classic, vinyl-age pop records weighed-in at somewhere between 34 to 42 minutes. And just as the three- to five-minute capacity of the 45 codified length expectations for singles, 40-something minutes still seems “right” for a set of studio pop songs, even in a digital age. A version of Little Honey less self-indulgently long would have eliminated the water-treading redundancy of “Little Rock Star,” “Rarity” and “It’s a Long Way To the Top:” At 42 minutes, chances are are good that only one of the three would ended up in the collection. Pop Darwinism would have rightly eliminated the weaker two. (Similarly, the ratio of love songs would also have been beneficially pruned.)

But despite all this criticism, I suspect that Little Honey will easily out-sell the more adventurous and experimental West. Which is a shame, since Williams will be encouraged to write even sillier love songs, more navel-gazing rock-star ballads and–worst of all–commit comedy again. And me, well, I’d rather have gone farther down the path that produced “Are You Alright?” and “Learning How To Live,” instead of having to brace myself for Lu and El doing a twangy cover of “I Got You Babe” while broadly winking at one another. To paraphrase something else from West, ‘I don’t want to wrap my head around that . . .’