Great Exudations

What a film. I was sitting in the theater and watching previews at the tender age of 15. I don’t recall what we were seeing that night but suddenly the trailer for “Alien” began. It felt entirely different from anything I had seen before or since. I turned to my friend and whispered, “what the fuck was THAT?!” I still can feel it. A work that encapsulates an entire genre. All too rare.

“Let us prepare our minds as if we’d come to the very end of life. Let us postpone nothing. Let us balance life’s books each day… The one who puts the finishing touches on their life each day is never short of time.”

Seneca (4 BC — 65 AD), Roman stoic philosopher

patient: bukowski, charles
exam: ct abdomen and pelvis with contrast
date: better-late-than-never
interpreting staff: charles bukowski

it takes guts

it’s pretty clear from my angle
lying here half naked
with half a heart that doesn’t much move
a little grit and spittle in my left lung
or is that the right?
though it makes no difference to
the smoke and dust trucking in and out

surprised I’ve got any liver left at all
maybe it grows back while you’re
sleeping it off
lots of things can creep up on you that way,
especially if you don’t want them to.

vented my spleen a thousand-thousand times
but it’s still there
and yet I have no right to it
take it, it’s yours.
who’s the fool now?

and would you look at that fat pair!
pair of kidneys, mind you
though I know what you were thinking
and that’s true, too.
my piss runs like a racehorse
on Lasix
wakes the neighbors,
guess they need better dreams.

well I already knew I was full of crap
my dad informed me so,
as did the US postal service,
and they should know.
but it’s nothing a little cheap beer
and chili won’t cure.

it takes guts to look inside yourself…

all the rest, I’d reckon, is standard issue
bones look about as they feel,
brittle as chalk and sharp at the edges.
there’s an old broken rib on the starboard flank
I remember that night
she was a redhead
Milly or Molly
and he wasn’t treating her well
but I tried to,
at least at first.

they’ll say that scars and such
are signs of a life lived in full.
They’re full of it I’ll say,
though I’m lucky
and glad today
to pat myself down,
get up
and walk away.

I think her name was Molly.

Everything has its plan, either way….

I would classify my position on Wilco over the years as “like-hate.” Certain songs, at certain times, rose almost to love-levels, but something was always holding me back. I had long felt their output uneven, a mix of the inspired (some by way of Woody Guthrie) and the insipid. But two other factors come to mind straight away. The first was at one of their shows in the early 00’s at the Auditorium Theater in Chicago, the band’s home town and also my own at the time. After a particularly warmly received song, front man Jeff Tweedy went full “doucher” and said, “if you love us that much then go out and buy our records!” TILT. Not his finest moment, to be sure, and I couldn’t have been alone in my disapproval. Second, fairly or not (the Grateful Dead come in for this sort of criticism so regularly that it’s priced in), is their fan base. How does one discern between true lovers of an artform and those who wish to bask in the reflected glory of local heroes? And while not mutually exclusive, would they have been embraced so fervently in — the necessarily restricted hipster circles of — Chicago had they hailed from, say, Tampa or Tulsa? I have my doubts. Anecdotally, their burnished reputation left more than a few outside of Chicagoland scratching their collective head.

Yet I’ve chugged along, buying (ah-hem!) a good number of their records and also attending 3-4 of their live shows, which were all very good (indeed liked, not loved). And when “Sky Blue Sky” landed, I fell immediately for the catchier songs like “Either Way” and “Impossible Germany.” I also enjoyed the track “Sky Blue Sky,” in part because it reminded me of Badly Drawn Boy. And “Please Be Patient With Me” still sounds like he deconstructed McCartney’s “Blackbird.” But, hey, I love the Beatles and have always been a Macca guy, so let’s just call it an homage… but the CD sat collecting dust with only the few selected tracks vying for space on my iTunes playlists. A sign of the times, no doubt. And it was almost 15 years later that I came to realize that, as the best ones do, “Sky Blue Sky” is outstanding as an album when played in its entirety. It is a truly remarkable work of shifting tones and intensity modulations, of lyrical flights, of feints and attacks, and it all somehow coheres. Not as a concept album, such as “Dark Side of the Moon,” or in the loose story-telling of “Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots,” but as completed mood-arc. And in that way, I would liken the finest albums to a perfect dinner party — with all the ebbs and flows, the fits of laughter, the periods of pitched debate, and the moments of quiet contemplation (in the bathroom when checking your texts!). I’m going on a year, now, of heavy rotation and show no signs of tiring. And isn’t it true that some things we hold most dear are those that we at first rejected or only selectively tolerated. So it’s a convert’s zeal for this album! As for Tweedy and the band itself, I still hold them at half-arm’s length.