(12/2006)
My spouse loves that Country Music. Not just Country, but "Young" country. What does young mean. Does it mean they put the stars out to pasture before they get too unappealing to the youngest, spendiest demographic? Does that mean that the Willies and Johnnys and Lorettas and Dollys of the future will fade to nothingness before they can have the second, third and fourth acts of their careers as their namesakes did? I have to say I don't like the "young" stuff too much. About the youngest star I can really listen to is Dwight Yoakam, who happens to have made is debut album north of twenty years ago. So I'm somewhat out of it.
So when I tell you I did some analysis of Country you'll forgive me, perhaps, if my studies are prejudiced by the older artists.
I figured out what Country Music has to say to me. It only came clear to me when I started thinking of the songs as part of a literary canon that should be studied with the nose held, in much the same was I held my nose whilst wading through "Classical" English Literature, such as the Bronte Sisters and whoever wrote Frankenstein.
The lament features a person with a "steady heart", known as "Me", paired tragically with someone who likes to go off dancing and cheating while poor Me cries; this person is known as "You". You makes Me feel like crap by Me can't help coming back again and again, or letting You in the door late at night even though You might smell like cheap perfume and alcohol, because Me can't live without You. Me even tried to live without you; this was folly for a "steady heart", incapable of the same neglectful lifestyle that You relishes.
Me may be a steady heart who can't live without You, but Me is no fool. Me even tried to go out with He or She for a while but the thought of You spoiled any effort to find new romance. For some reason He was boring and unattractive to Me, and even though He offered Me the world, You got in the way of Me's new love without even trying. He was patient and tried hard to understand the spell You held over Me, but ultimately that made Me find He even less attractive. Where Me found a She to love, there were a number of different reactions. Sometimes She was boring just like He; other times She was even more neglectful than You, causing Me's heart to be broken twice over.
My research has found, then, that Me is not just a "steady heart" but that Me loved You because of how callous You could be. You might have some words to say in defense of all this alleged mistreatment, but alas You was the silent one in every case, so research yielded no results. In the popular case of a duet, both voices inevitably sing the part of Me, causing the listener great disappointment to discover there are two Yous out there; that they are equally selfish and uncaring; and that they will not be allowed to speak for themselves, most of the time.
December 31, 2006
Showing posts with label sex. Show all posts
Showing posts with label sex. Show all posts
Saturday, December 30, 2006
Wednesday, November 08, 2006
Food & Sex (1986)
It's Saturday afternoon. I am some person living at some college trying to think of something to do with myself. This is odd because I spend the majority of my time trying to figure how to get dona all that I have to do. Next week is Thanksgiving. I will be going home and trying to get money from members of my family. That is a college student's favorite past time: money grubbing.
And once he has the money it is squandered on odd unnecessary things like alcohol or movies or expensive fast food. Then he goes back for more. He finds it easy to believe that some sort of satisfaction may come from going out and spending this money. Again and again, he is proven wrong but that never stops him. It is a perverted cycle of the human mind.
I was talking to Dan today about orgasms.
"You figure half the people in the world," I said, "they think only about getting food because they don't just have it given to them the way you and I do. The other half, the people who already have food, they spend most of their time thinking about orgasms. And everything they do is in some way at least indireclty related to that pursuit."
"Yeah." Dan had toothpaste dripping from his chin. "That's about the size of it."
And once he has the money it is squandered on odd unnecessary things like alcohol or movies or expensive fast food. Then he goes back for more. He finds it easy to believe that some sort of satisfaction may come from going out and spending this money. Again and again, he is proven wrong but that never stops him. It is a perverted cycle of the human mind.
I was talking to Dan today about orgasms.
"You figure half the people in the world," I said, "they think only about getting food because they don't just have it given to them the way you and I do. The other half, the people who already have food, they spend most of their time thinking about orgasms. And everything they do is in some way at least indireclty related to that pursuit."
"Yeah." Dan had toothpaste dripping from his chin. "That's about the size of it."
Saturday, October 07, 2006
Fascinated (fiction excerpt)
(11/1991)
Are we alone?
The separation is complete.
All the others have gone.
Take off my clothes with that nutty roommate's records playing in the other room. The record has repeated itself about a thousand times this afternoon.
Just let it go on and on. We are fascinated with one another but you are fascinated with me in a different way. You see me as one sees a book about the back woods of America where people still think naive thoughts such as "there will only be one real love for me." And I am fascinated with you the same way a person from the back woods is fascinated with any eighteen year old woman with her own credit cards and an apartment in Manhatten who comes along.
Someone even told me that a singer who had had an affair with you two years ago, when you were sixteen (!) wrote a song about your hair. It was who? He must be fifty!
It was all in the spirit of the city of no sleep, the city where you can get a hot dog and a bottle of bourbon at four in the morning and catch a film festival on Christmas day that goes all day and night. It is all true. New Years in the square, what is that square called? And those magazines, inspired by the artist who did the crazy Elvis Presley with big six-guns. What do I know? Where I come from the whole town closes down the day before Christmas and people look at you like you are crazy if they see you on the street.
I am simply baffled.
The night is dreadful in the city. That is my advantage. At the age of eighteen I have seen two hundred thousand stars burn up in the sky. One time, a thousand in one night. You cannot believe me and I have to show it to you. But you got too cold and I had to take you home.
Standing in the field, wanting to ignore his almost unbearable physical attraction to her, she tried to turn their minds to a more neutral subject, to the strange, rusting machinery which formed tangled shadows in the dim light of the crescent moon.
"What do you think that thing is for?"
"I grew up on a farm. I never worked on one."
"What the hell do you do on a farm if you don't work?"
What the hell you do is you make the day go by without getting stung by one of the yellowjackets in the nest over the back porch or getting butted by the Ram, who is named Raymond. He will give anyone a healthy respect for what the world believes to be a timid and fluffy creature who habitually runs from the wolf, the dog, or whatever else crosses its path. Raymond is neither timid nor fluffy, and he frequently stands up to any creature who cares to offer a threat to his dominion of the yard in front of the carriage-house.
He has all the demeanor of a drill sergeant, with perenially short hair and angry face bearing down on all who face him.
Raymond's fiery disposition is appreciated and imitated by all the other species in the barnyard, though he remains the most ominous through the constant threat that he may at any moment charge, not stopping until his head has impacted severely on another living creature. Each of the begrudgingly coexisting creatures has his own trademark mode of attack, and the young children have all learned the hard way to know the warning signs of an impending assault.
(Raymond went after dad)
(written 11/1991)
Are we alone?
The separation is complete.
All the others have gone.
Take off my clothes with that nutty roommate's records playing in the other room. The record has repeated itself about a thousand times this afternoon.
Just let it go on and on. We are fascinated with one another but you are fascinated with me in a different way. You see me as one sees a book about the back woods of America where people still think naive thoughts such as "there will only be one real love for me." And I am fascinated with you the same way a person from the back woods is fascinated with any eighteen year old woman with her own credit cards and an apartment in Manhatten who comes along.
Someone even told me that a singer who had had an affair with you two years ago, when you were sixteen (!) wrote a song about your hair. It was who? He must be fifty!
It was all in the spirit of the city of no sleep, the city where you can get a hot dog and a bottle of bourbon at four in the morning and catch a film festival on Christmas day that goes all day and night. It is all true. New Years in the square, what is that square called? And those magazines, inspired by the artist who did the crazy Elvis Presley with big six-guns. What do I know? Where I come from the whole town closes down the day before Christmas and people look at you like you are crazy if they see you on the street.
I am simply baffled.
The night is dreadful in the city. That is my advantage. At the age of eighteen I have seen two hundred thousand stars burn up in the sky. One time, a thousand in one night. You cannot believe me and I have to show it to you. But you got too cold and I had to take you home.
Standing in the field, wanting to ignore his almost unbearable physical attraction to her, she tried to turn their minds to a more neutral subject, to the strange, rusting machinery which formed tangled shadows in the dim light of the crescent moon.
"What do you think that thing is for?"
"I grew up on a farm. I never worked on one."
"What the hell do you do on a farm if you don't work?"
What the hell you do is you make the day go by without getting stung by one of the yellowjackets in the nest over the back porch or getting butted by the Ram, who is named Raymond. He will give anyone a healthy respect for what the world believes to be a timid and fluffy creature who habitually runs from the wolf, the dog, or whatever else crosses its path. Raymond is neither timid nor fluffy, and he frequently stands up to any creature who cares to offer a threat to his dominion of the yard in front of the carriage-house.
He has all the demeanor of a drill sergeant, with perenially short hair and angry face bearing down on all who face him.
Raymond's fiery disposition is appreciated and imitated by all the other species in the barnyard, though he remains the most ominous through the constant threat that he may at any moment charge, not stopping until his head has impacted severely on another living creature. Each of the begrudgingly coexisting creatures has his own trademark mode of attack, and the young children have all learned the hard way to know the warning signs of an impending assault.
(Raymond went after dad)
(written 11/1991)
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