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Closing and Opening

Twelve months ago I separated myself from my family. In that time I have had my 35 year career as an international aid worker come to an emphatic close. I have been and continue bed-surfing and residence hopping as one does when you leaves a marriage suddenly. My 18 year old daughter does not talk to me. Thankfully, my 22 year old son, does (though he did keep to himself for several months). I have found that the age pension with a bit of taxi hacking meets my daily needs quite adequately. I have returned to driving cab for a second time, after spending a year between MA and potential PhD, driving the icy roads of Minneapolis for Blue & White taxis. I have had my license suspended for running too many red-lights and am on enforced leave until July 8. That is fine by me, because in early March, while still tending a broken heart over so much loss and change, I nearly killed myself, two lovely young women passengers and the driver of the car that smashed into my taxi as I did a careless U-turn.

The most significant change I have made over this time, is to embrace the fateful decision to no longer be (just) a weekend blogger, novelist and retro-fitted writer. Rather I am placing that long-echoing call at the centre of my retired life. Beginning a new adventure is what some people call this. I’ve heard it called Fool’s Errand, too.

And in a little less than three weeks I will be heading back to India, the land of my birth and first 18 years on a sort of ritual pilgrimage. I am going so I can feel the wind blow through the ‘cobwebs of my mind’, feel the heat burn the detritus of the professional salary man, and let the sounds, smells and sights of that fabled land wash over me wave upon wave.

Why do I tell you these things?

Though I’ve not met you in the analog sense, some of you have been fellow travelers and kindred spirits. And you have always wished me well. I have not been entirely dedicated to my blogging in the period under review and it is always good to explain oneself. Given where I’ve paused to catch my breath at this point in time and space I am inclined to direct my creative energies towards a memoir. As a way to make sense of some of old, chipped and stained pillars that have held up my world for as long as I can recall: India & my missionary-kid childhood.

I am daunted, excited, confused, compelled and called by, about and to this. I’ve not been to India since 2012 and not been to the places on my itinerary for between 62 and 19 years. So I’m looking forward to whatever awaits.

I may post a bit along the way but look forward to having your good wishes as I depart. As a small gift here is a mixtape of World Fusion which just so happens to be heavily colonised by South Asian sounds.

WF2

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Close Ties: Rodney Crowell

Country music is all about beer (crying in it; drinking too much of it), Mama cryin’ and Daddy prayin’, adultery,  trains and murdering your girlfriend.   And lately, pick-up trucks.

Rodney Crowell’s album Close Ties (2017) is a country record that is about none of that.  Or if it is, it is taking those things and skinning them alive. It is the testament of a fully matured man. A man who has pulled off the road to a lookout to behold a not always scenic landscape.

Crowell grew up poor in East Houston, moved to Nashville in the early 70s where he wrote a slew of hits for others, released a few albums, produced several more for his then wife Rosanne Cash and by the end of the ‘80s was one of the faces of the so-called ‘neo-traditionalist’ country set.   Guy Clark, Emmylou Harris, Townes van Zandt and Steve Earle were peers and friends.

In 2017, Crowell was sixty-seven years old.  In those years he’d

been lied on, spied on, cried on, tried on, taken for a ride you bet
Fracked, cracked, smacked jack, what you see is what you get
I’ve been spit at, hit at, quit at, shit at, shouldn’t hurt a bit at, what I’m trying to get at

and had somehow transformed all that into a record that reveals adults inhabiting adult relationships more confusing, messy and meaningful than anything their younger selves thought possible.

He sings about taking too much and giving not much. Taking love for granted. And about the sort of love that disappears but never really dies.

With faith beyond religion, we search the great unknown
Free fall into darkness, someplace we’ve never gone
I’m tied to ya
I’m tied to ya

I know a guy, someone I’m just getting to know a bit better, who finds himself kneeling on the bloodied battlefield of Love. To one side stands the woman he married but pushed away. To the other is the woman he loved beyond imagination who has pushed him away.  He tells me he can’t imagine being squeezed for another drop but can’t stop wishing for their hands to massage, pummel and prod him.  Especially those corners of him that haven’t seen the light of day for years. Maybe ever.

The first time I saw her she threw me that smile

Pure angel of mercy east Texas style

A poet in gingham, an assassin in jeans

The most near perfect woman I’d ever seen

She was hardly routine

He’s trying to find signs of who he is in the things he’s done.

Life without [her]
Troubles me in ways hard to express
As she withdrew I grew distant and judgmental
A self-sure bastard and a stubborn bitch
Locked in a deadly game of chess
The upside of my status a cut above the rest

His marriage was a constant battle. His love affair an unexpected oasis.   

The last time I saw her was close to the end
I cried like a baby for the shape I was in
No lipstick or powder to soften the tone
The most worthy opponent I’ve ever known
Was already gone

That second to last line describes both women, he says.

And then Crowell cruelly, or perhaps mercifully, reminds us

It ain’t over yet
You can mark my word
I don’t care what you think you heard
We’re still learning how to fly
It ain’t over yet

And what isn’t over yet?  Our love? Our prideful ways? Our cluelessness? Our life? All of the above. And more.

These are songs that only a man who has marched his demons up the hill and back down again could write. And sing.  Crowell, the singer is every equal to the songwriter.  He has an uncanny talent of delivering cutting self-criticism as well as the bitter tears of the jilted without self-pity or indulgence or pleading.   This comes, you’d think, from that place every pilgrim hopes to reach, where the storms of life neither seduce nor reduce you.  That place where parental approval, manly accomplishment and perfect love are finally stripped naked.

But I don’t care anymore about the fortune and the fame
I was better off before I tried to make myself a name

Close Ties is really a break-up album. A man breaking-up with the masks he has worn, the roles he’s played, the sins he’s denied committing.  A man whose world is so shaken and crumbly he sees ghosts everywhere.

I don’t care anymore who does what and why

I was better off before when I was just another guy

I see why my friend keeps listening to it. Because Crowell is expert at bringing to life the oldest of all break-ups—love.

When you walked out on me, it tore my heart in half

And I hid behind a laugh

As I became a slave to shame I cursed your name

God Damn you, rot in Hell

Can you forgive me Annabelle

He is full of regret and clarity.  But there is precious little calm here and not much confidence he won’t keep offending.  This record is a tale of how many ways a brokenheart feels horrible.

Right about now it gets quiet around here, what with nightfall in the wings
The floorboards creak and faucets leak, but it’s the emptiness that sings

 The wind grows chill and then lies still
Forty miles from nowhere
At the bottom of the world

Yet, in the end, full of hope.

I won’t deny that I believe these things you say are true
I’ve seen the way you gauge each distant star
As long as I can be myself and still be there with you
I’ll go anywhere you ask me, near or far
I’m tied to ya
I’m tied to ya

Close Ties