I’ve Not Been Reading: Against Happiness
I was unable to make it past the first thirty-some pages of this ridiculous little book. Eric G. Wilson seems to confuse people’s behavior in public and in company with their innermost thoughts and private lives. Because people overwhelmingly try to be cheerful, impersonal good sports who make small talk around the water cooler at work, Wilson has written a book about how Americans have doped, numbed and otherwise blinded themselves to all the horrors of life, as well as the benefits of good old contemplative down time. Apparently, when someone says, “I’m fine,” Wilson takes them at their word, and assumes that’s all there is to them, and Against Happiness is written at about that level of understanding. I do think that American culture is overly averse to and avoidant of pain, so I was expecting to be the choir for this book, but the author’s observations of human behavior are entirely surface-level and generalized, and his arguments are condescending and shallow. Wilson writes as if he were a 14-year-old Goth. He also seems to have no sense of humor or self-awareness. To wit:
Look at what sort of people this culture is creating. I have seen them. You have too. They haunt the gaudy and garish spaces of the world and ignore the dark margins. They tilt their heads to the side, feign bemusement, and nod knowingly. They clinch their eyes in looks of concern. They blink a lot, bewildered.
In my experience, this is how people look when they’re hoping you’ll go away and leave them alone, so it doesn’t much surprise me that Wilson observes it in everyone.
Wilson cites a statistic saying that 85% of Americans say they are generally happy, which he takes as a further condemnation of our doped, forced cheeriness – particularly amusing to me, as usually you hear social criticism about how Americans are so entitled and dissatisfied that they are never happy with their lives, that no matter how much they get what they want, they are always wanting more.
“Aren’t some of us so smitten with the American dream that we have become brainwashed into believing that our sole purpose on this earth is to be happy?” asks Wilson in his introduction.
Well, no. Not really. I mean, I might say that we overvalue personal happiness. I would certainly say that we demand too much to make us happy (although, that 85% statistic makes me think twice). But I don’t think even my shallowest acquaintances would go so far as to say the purpose of life is to be happy. And anyway, what is meant by “happy” in that context? People say they just want to die happy, but I think they mean by that to die with a sense that they’ve lived fully, loved well, had some good times, and did the best work they could. Or whatever – they could mean anything, but Wilson doesn’t care what people mean, apparently. He’s constructed quite the chipper straw man for himself to lecture. Later, he himself describes truly experiencing sorrow as in itself “something akin to joy,” but apparently, he doesn’t credit other people who say they are “happy” with meaning anything beyond vapid, superficial cheer. What Wilson fails to acknowledge is that being content and happy with your life does not mean you don’t experience pain, suffering, heartbreak or existential struggle – those things are all a part of a good life, though it’s unlikely you’d bring them up much at a cocktail party.
He also contradicts himself constantly (at times within a single paragraph!), and often employs the royal ‘we.’ Frankly, I’m amazed I made it as far as I did.
Also, a request: could some psychiatrist please take aside all the thinkers and writers, pundits and journalists in America and explain to them that depression (even mild depression) is not the same as sadness, and that SSRIs are not uppers? It’s true we are an over-medicated country, which is undoubtedly harmful to our health (and certainly our pocketbooks), but antidepressants are not happy pills. They don’t make people high, or give them a boost, or make it to where they don’t feel pain or sorrow. The only thing more widespread than the prescribing of SSRIs is apparently a complete and total misunderstanding among the public of what they actually do, what they’re for and how they work. In fact, Wilson is careful to differentiate between (a) depression as an interchangeable term for melancholia and (b) clinical depression in his introduction, but he goes on to assume that the vast majority of those medicated for depression are simply blue. Well, possibly, but that’s a giant, sweeping assumption, and Wilson should provide some basis for it. Rather, he assumes everyone agrees that this is true and proceeds to mention ‘happy pills’ about five times a page. But antidepressants are not painkillers any more than they are uppers – they don’t work that way. You could argue that we drink too much, smoke too much weed, but Wilson doesn’t mention this (at least not in the first 40 pages). He specifically says that it’s not his intent to romanticize clinical depression, but then he rues the possible loss of “half-cracked geniuses.”
Now, look, obviously a lot of great artists, writers and the like have suffered (and usually, eventually died) from terrible psychological conditions, and it’s no new thing to muse over whether, had so-and-so been medicated, we would have been deprived of such-and-such great work of art or literature. But if it were a choice between a medicated Virginia Woolf and Mrs. Dalloway, the decision would be Virginia Woolf’s, not ours. She might have made a valid choice either way, but simply because she was capable of great writing does not mean that she owed it to us at the expense of her life. If she’d had the option to staunch her depression at the risk of blocking her creativity, that would be her choice and we couldn’t make it for her. And Wilson would be a real asshole to criticize Woolf if she chose her own health (and yes, happiness) over her productivity…unless he were similarly possessed of crippling depression and fervid genius and so knew whereof he spoke, but judging by this book, I doubt it’s a choice he’ll ever face.
I’ve Been Reading: Don’t Get Too Comfortable
Attention, male writers: unless you particularly plan to alienate your readership, try not to cram a bunch of pointless derogatory comments about women into the first ten pages of your book, unless that’s really what you’re all about. I’ve noticed this with a number of books lately – I’ll get all alienated in the first chapter, and decide not to read the rest, and then keep going only to find the entire rest of the book totally devoid of casual misogyny. It’s so weird! I noticed this in Lost Cosmonaut, and now here in David Rakoff’s book of humorous essays, Don’t Get Too Comfortable. In the first essay, “Love It or Leave It,” about applying for citizenship during the latter Bush administration, on page 2, we have:
After twenty-two years, it seemed a little bit coy to still be playing the Canadian card. I felt like the butt of the joke about the proper lady who, when asked if she would have sex with a strange man for a million dollars, allows that yes she would do it. But when asked if she would do the same thing for a can of Schlitz and a plastic sleeve of beer nuts, reels back with an affronted, ‘What do you think I am?’ to which the response is, ‘Madam, we have already established what you are. Now we’re just quibbling about the price.’
On page 7, Barbara Bush the Younger is described (to absolutely no point whatsoever) as “W’s liquor-swilling, Girl Gone Wild, human ashtray of a daughter.” Particularly gratuitous, as Rakoff’s real beef is with Barbara, Sr. (page 8: “Stupid fucking cow.”).
Admittedly, on page 8, we do have a derogatory physical description of a man: “The hairy-knuckled, pinkie-ringed lawyer for a Vietnamese fellow behind me….” No mention of the man’s genitals, of course, or sexual appeal or lack thereof, but still, not exactly a flattering comment. But then on page 9, we’re back to women, describing a “Russian woman in her early forties” who has the misfortune to be standing on line nearby:
She wears painted-on acid-wash jeans, white stilettos, and a tight blouse of sheer leopard-print fabric. The sleeves are designed as a series of irregular tatters clinging to her arms, as if she’s just come from tearing the hide off the back of an actual leopard. A really slutty leopard.
It’s safe to assume that leopard was also female.
But here on page 9, we also have our first woman appear without being described physically, or with any tossed-off, irrelevant sexual slurs attached to her person. This is Agent Morales, who interviews Rakoff for citizenship. Then, by page 11, we’re on to Rakoff’s friend, Sarah (who, based on her introduction as “a self-described civics nerd,” I’m assuming is Sarah Vowell), and nobody describes their friends as pointless and/or distasteful vaginas, so we’re in the clear.
And that’s it, for the rest of the book’s 222 pages: no more offensive comments about women, at least not that reached out of the pages and slapped me, like these first ones. In fact, I really enjoyed the book after page 10. The essays were tart, well-written, observant and entertaining. Why the packed in slurs up front?
So, the moral here is: writers and editors (whether male, female, gay, straight or other): when you have your manuscript all ready for publishing, go through at least the first twenty pages or so, with an eye to how you describe or comment on any women mentioned, as contrasted with how you describe or comment on any men. If you note that every, single woman you bring up is described as a slut, a bitch, a stupid bimbo, a nag, or has been physically detailed for no specific reason (ugly, fat, wart-faced, saggy-boobed, clothes too tight, past her prime, sex on legs, etc.), and that every man is described in terms of his personality traits and actions, then think about whether or not you genuinely want half the population to toss you and your book right out at that point. Because not all readers are as patient as I am. A lot of women won’t make it to page 11. And I’d like to think some men wouldn’t either.
I really don’t direct the above rant particularly at David Rakoff. His is only the most recent book I’ve read to follow this off-putting pattern. But really, Don’t Get Too Comfortable is great otherwise. Rakoff is a sharp and articulate social satirist, and his targets aren’t the easy ones. If there is a unifying theme to these essays, I would say it is what we desire and what we buy, and why, and what we tell ourselves about it, with occasional diversions into the weird and often unpleasant things people like to do for fun. He has drawn a bead on class hypocrisy, and conspicuous consumption. He covers foodies, high fashion, fasting, plastic surgery, cryogenics and Puppetry of the Penis. He goes along on a Playboy shoot, attends a midnight scavenger hunt in Manhattan, forages for edible plants in Prospect Park and works as a pool boy at an upscale resort. He waits outside the Today Show, visits Martha Stewart’s crafts department, and shadows the director of the mystifying Log Cabin Republicans.
Fun stuff, all. With the above-mentioned caveat, I’d recommend it.
Lookit: Deer!
After my Bonnaroo adventure, I spent a week camping with my family in The Great Smoky Mountains National Park. One night, two deer came right up to our campsite. I took a bunch of terrible pictures of them (between the low light and the campfire smoke, they looked more like disembodied eyeballs in amongst the trees), but this one isn’t too bad. There are two of them there, just above the kids’ heads:
Can you see them?
I’ve Been Reading: The Disappointment Artist
The essays in Jonathan Lethem’s The Disappointment Artist are all very well written, and interesting, more or less. But yet, something about them bothered me, and I think I put my finger on it right around the time Lethem mentioned that when he was a kid in Brooklyn, he used to ride the subway every day to his performing arts school, with his friend and classmate, Lynn Nottage. Many of the essays in this book concern New York City, and life in New York City. The rest are meditations on books and movies.
Lethem was raised by a well-known painter. His mother died when he was 13. He lived in a commune for part of his upbringing. He spent his childhood surrounded by his parents’ Bohemian friends, and went to an arts high school in New York with a bunch of other students who have gone on to be known names. They were raised in an interesting place by interesting people, and taught from a young age that they were bound to be interesting themselves. In the same way as some people are raised in wealth, others are raised in art, and all these writers, playwrights, actors, etc. were to the manor born. There’s nothing wrong with Lethem’s writing or what he’s writing about, and it’s not like he’s never left New York – why, he went to Bennington, then lived in California! – but yet, I was bored by his well-written meditations on the various movies, writers and filmmakers that shaped him, as well as his experiences in a Brooklyn not sufficiently long gone to be so nostalgic about (Lethem was only about 40 when this essay collection was published).
You do not have to live an interesting life in order to be an interesting writer. Perhaps you have to live an interesting life to be an interesting personal essayist, however, or, barring that, at least be really funny. Certainly, you can write great fiction no matter how narrow and dull your circle, and Lethem has mostly been feted for his novels, none of which I’ve read, although I plan to at some point. Reading these essays, however, made me feel like I was sitting in a grad school MFA workshop listening to everyone read essays about being graduate MFA students, and reminiscing fondly about those long-ago days when they were but callow undergrads.
John Leonard in the New York Review of Books:
I’m glad to learn from The Disappointment Artist that Lethem’s father is more interesting than Dylan’s was; that his mother, unlike Dylan’s, didn’t abandon her boy out of narcissism; that Jonathan, unlike Dylan, has siblings. And I am sorry that none of us can fly, besides which we’re opaque. But it is time this gifted writer closed his comic books for good. Superpowers are not what magic realism was about in Bulgakov, Kobo Abe, Salman Rushdie, or the Latin American flying carpets. That Michael Chabon and Paul Auster have gone graphic, that one Jonathan, Lethem, writes on and on about John Ford, while another Jonathan, Franzen, writes on and on about “Peanuts,” even as Rick Moody confides to the Times Book Review that “comics are currently better at the sociology of the intimate gesture than literary fiction is,” may just mean that the slick magazines with the scratch and sniff ads for vodka and opium are willing to pay a bundle for bombast about ephemera.
But all of it makes me itch. Welcome to New Dork! We have been airpopped and multimediated unto inanity and pastiche.
I’ve Been Watching: The Wrestler
What’s the deal with professional wrestling? Darren Aronofsky’s film doesn’t really answer this question, but it does provide a wrenching character study of one wrestler, Randy the Ram (Mickey Rourke), as he ages past professional relevance. Randy has no money, few connections, and very poor health. Brought low by a heart attack after a particularly taxing (and gruesome) bout, he reaches out to his crush, Pam (Marissa Tomei), a stripper and single mom. Pam convinces him to contact his estranged daughter (Evan Rachel Wood), and he does so, briefly managing a heart-breaking and ultimately futile reconnection.
The Wrestler is particularly about the life of its main character. Beyond that, it is about the desperate fates of those who make a living entirely off their physical bodies. Randy is famous, but not rich, and as his body fails him, his entire personhood crumbles. Pam, who, contrary to Randy, earns money but not respect by using her body, finds her situation ever less lucrative as she ages. When Randy steps away from the wrestling ring, he loses his identity and his self-worth, constantly insisting that strangers address him by his working name. Conversely, Pam struggles to detach herself from her profession. She objects to forming personal alliances with customers who think of her as truly embodying her working persona, Cassidy, and is only herself when outside the club, with those who have no idea what she does.
Like many films, this one crams all its most difficult to watch scenes into the first half hour or so, and many viewers probably won’t make it past them. I never understand why films do this – they barrage the audience with visual pain before earning its interest or trust, and then ease off into 45 minutes to an hour of quiet, lovely character study once everyone’s parents have huffed to bed in disgust. Mostly, this film is all about the acting: Rourke, Tomei and Wood are excellent, each one of them somehow managing to constantly telegraph intense and wringing inner pain without being too overdramatic.
The question I am left with after watching this movie is, why the hell does anyone enjoy wrestling? The Wrestler won’t enlighten you there, but you will find out why suddenly everyone enjoys watching Mickey Rourke again.
I’ve Been Watching: The Hudsucker Proxy
Tim Robbins stars in this early Coen brothers effort, as Norville, a hapless mailroom attendant who is installed as president of Hudsucker Industries when their president unexpectedly throws himself through a window. Norville is meant to be a placeholder, a patsy meant to drive stock prices down for the execs (led by Paul Newman) to purchase before pulling the company out of decline, but unexpectedly, Norville’s seemingly stupid great idea – a circle drawn on a piece of paper – turns out to be a winner.
The story follows the usual drift of such tales: corrupted by wealth and power, Norville becomes what he once provided a foil to, only to receive his comeuppance and repent in time for Christmas. There is of course a woman, a fast-talking, unsentimental reporter (Jennifer Jason Leigh), who becomes ever more pure of heart as Norville is corrupted. This being the Coen brothers, what is interesting about the film is not the plot or thematic material, but rather the many, often surrealist, cinematic details that reference and tinker with the archetypes and stylistic choices of movies of this period (’40s) and genre.
I’ve Been Watching: Lonesome Jim
Jim (Casey Affleck) returns home for his quarterlife crisis. Resignedly ensconced in his parents’ Indiana home, he proceeds to be generally disgusted with his ever-cheerful mother (Mary Kay Place); to nudge his jealous brother, Tim, into attempted suicide; to become duped by his Uncle Evil into framing his parents for drug-smuggling; and to woo Anika (Liv Tyler), a nurse and single mom. Think Garden State without all the whimsical details and indie music.
Had this movie been made as an undergrad film student’s final project, I’d actually have been impressed. Since it’s directed by Steve Buscemi, however, I have to say, it’s not very good at all. There are some funny moments, but mostly the dark humor is awkwardly timed and unoriginal. Jim’s grand realization seems to be motivated more by the movie reaching the 60 minute mark than by anything that happens between the characters. And Casey Affleck (who granted is supposed to be completely flat of affect in the part) has less charisma than Kevin Costner starring in a biopic of Keanu Reeves (or vice-versa). Overall, there’s nothing really new here: the movie is about as unremarkable as quarterlife crises usually are.
Role of the Judiciary
The underlying dynamic here illustrates why it’s always been a mistake to try to draw a contrast between gay rights groups’ efforts to secure equality through the courts and to secure equality through the political process. The fact of the matter is that the political process simply isn’t very friendly to minority rights claims even when the claims themselves are reasonably popular. Repealing Don’t Ask Don’t Tell has become a majoritarian position, but the Obama administration would still prefer to avoid the headaches involved in working to repeal it. At the same time, if a court case were to order the administration to end this policy, it’s abundantly clear that there would be no critical mass of political support for trying to put it back in place.
Either way, the basic fact of the matter is that the political system is biased toward doing nothing. The mere fact that a majority is prepared to support claims of equality doesn’t mean that political leaders want to expend time and energy making our clunky legislative mechanics produce laws reflecting that fact. Under the circumstances, people with just claims to make on their own behalf are wise to pursue those claims through all available avenues including the judiciary.
(emphasis mine)
Ramesh Ponnuru, linked to by Yglesias, on the Ricci decision:
Judicial restraint has also been absent. That virtue is best understood as a finger on the scales, tipping judges in close cases against invalidating the actions of Congress or state or local governments. To invalidate laws without a strong argument that the Constitution requires doing so is precisely what conservatives usually mean by “judicial activism.”
(emphasis mine)
So…wait, what?
I’ve Been Watching: Hideous Kinky
Julia (Kate Winslet) takes her two daughters to 1970s Morocco to live a more interesting life in this movie, based on the book of the same name by Esther Freud. Freud was a daughter of one of the billion mistresses who begot children by the painter and asshole, Lucian Freud (son of Sigmund “Women Are Aliens” Freud). None of which has much to do with the movie, but I think it’s interesting.
Julia arrives in Marrakesh with the vague idea of seeking spiritual enlightenment. Her sister has married a local man and converted to Sufism, and she encourages Julia to visit a Sufi sage in Algeria. While Julia works up to this journey, she and her girls await a never-arriving check from their long-removed father, sell rag dolls in the market, and take up with a charismatic street performer, Bilal.
Julia wants to live an exotic and authentic life with her kids, but is willfully deaf to their protests at being dragged along on her adventure. Bea, particularly, wants to go to school and keep to a regular routine, but Julia is unable to stay in once place, journeying with Bilal to his home village (where it becomes quite clear to both girls that Bilal has abandoned his wife), then taking up with a pair of wealthy expats. When Julia finally decides it’s time to make her pilgrimage to Algeria, the expats promise to keep Bea so that she can attend school meanwhile. Reluctantly, Julia leaves her eldest child, and sets off with Lucy.
Winslet’s Julia is a type-perfect illustration of a hippie true-believer, both selfish and loving, neglectful and caring. She worries constantly about her daughters’ safety, but she is unwilling to understand or admit that what she herself wants can be harmful to them. She is both Earth Mother and adolescent. Even if the acting weren’t so good, Hideous Kinky would be worth watching for atmosphere alone: the beautiful Moroccan setting, rich with desert colors, is lingeringly shot throughout.
I Have Been to Bonnaroo, and Lived to Tell the Tale
Around midnight on Wednesday, June 10th, just past the Tennessee border at Bristol, a stopped line of cars stretched over the horizon line. But this stopped traffic jam differed from most: in amongst the impassive truckers, the drivers and passengers of these stopped cars were partying. They were also nearly all in their 20s, dressed in ragged, summer clothes. Their cars had license tags from across the 50 states. Though none of them knew each other, they wandered in and out of the stopped traffic, laughing, shaking hands, sharing cigarettes. Car stereos were cranked, beers were cracked, kids danced in the median, in the emergency lane, on the roofs of their own cars. An unknowing observer might think this midnight traffic jam was the best, most hilarious thing these strange motorists had ever seen. What could explain this peculiar occurrence (and why would so many people, for that matter, be traveling into Eastern Tennessee)?
One word: Bonnaroo.
These motorists were all Bonnaroo attendees, Phishheads and hipsters on their way to Manchester, still a good six hours’ drive South. At 7:00am the next morning, the campsites would open and all of these kids would be there. For them, the party had already started, right here on I-40 behind a tipped semi in the middle of the night. And me, my roommate, Sara, and her boyfriend, Chris, were right there in the midst of them.
I am not the sort of person to attend a music festival. In fact, I am the sort of person to go to some trouble to avoid attending a music festival. In the case of Bonnaroo, however, I had every reason to go. My good friend Emily lives in Manchester, Tennessee, where she works as an assistant District Attorney. She was able to get the three of us free tickets, and offered to put us up in her house. We would not have to camp in the crowded campsites, or wait in any of the myriad long entry lines. My roommate’s boyfriend, Chris, is the sort of person who would go to a great deal of trouble to attend a music festival, particularly Bonnaroo, and my roommate, Sara, is the sort of person who would happily go to a music festival if other people were going, and I am the sort of person who will join my friends for an adventure especially if it doesn’t cost me anything and everybody else takes care of all the arrangements, so there you go. My four-day Bonnaroo adventure had begun.
[Incidentally, if I may digress for a minute, Sara and Chris are from upstate New York and Long Island respectively. Neither had spent any substantial time in the American South (Florida doesn't count), and had never been to Tennessee at all. The first thing they pointed out, as we drove the rather isolated stretch of road from the interstate to my parents' house, was the sheer number of churches we were passing. This would prove to be a theme throughout our trip. I had known I'd grown up in the Bible belt, but not until it had been pointed out to me with fresh eyes was I sufficiently impressed by the sheer volume of churches on every block in Tennessee. There are thousands of them: Baptist, Methodist, Adventist, Presbyterian, Evangelical, Echolalian, Pentecostal, Church of Christ, Church of God, Church of Jesus (plus a spicing of Catholic, Mormon, Lutheran) -- not to mention all the Firsts, Seconds, Thirds, Southerns, Orthodoxes, Reforms, 2nd Days, 7th Days, Juniors, Once-removeds and so on and so forth splinterings of each of these. The South is indeed incredibly diverse in its offerings of traditional, white Protestant churches. If you were to do a church crawl, you'd be passed out on grape juice and oyster crackers before you'd made it out of your own neighborhood. End of digression.]
Thursday
As we approached the tiny town of Manchester, we saw a policeman with a sign directing Bonnaroo traffic to the shoulder. Obediently, we queued up in a long line of cars stopped there. I phoned my friend to see if this was really necessary, and she directed us to continue on several more exits. As we drove to the exit where she’d said she’d meet us, we passed four other exits, each with a traffic barrier up, and at least a hundred cars stopped in a line behind it. These were festival attendees waiting to be admitted into the campgrounds. We felt very slick to drive past them all.
We met Emily in the parking lot of the Manchester Seniors’ Center, and she led us to her new house – an enormous three bedroom with two huge porches on five acres of land for the monthly rent of freaking nothing. Us New Yorkers wept.
‘Do you want to go see my new puppy?’ Emily asked me, while Sara and Chris got situated.
Emily has never been a dog person. She likes cats. We’ve had long debates verging on arguments about this, so I was surprised and delighted to hear a dog was in the offing. Her next door neighbors’ Boxer had mounted their Great Dane, and a litter of puppies resulted, and Emily had her pick of the four that were left. We went next door to look at them. There was shit all over the yard, and kibble all over the porch. The Great Dane was the size of a small pony, and very affectionate. The runt of the litter, Pee-Wee, and Freckles, a gray polka-dotted male, ran up to jump all over us. Two black puppies remained on the porch, one lying across the kibble pile, the other peering suspiciously at us. Emily was trying to make her mind up between Pee-Wee and Freckles. Her neighbor told her she had a day to decide, because they were taking them to Nashville on Saturday to try to sell them. Then, Freckles stepped in some shit and flung it around on us, so we left.
It was time to prep for Bonnaroo. Emily took us all to the special tent where each of us was outfitted with a neon green and hot pink fabric wristband, and then Emily led us to a place we could park without having to wait in the insane line at the main gates. Sara and Chris wanted to go straight in to Bonnaroo, of course, but Emily needed to wait to meet up with her little brother and his friend, who were getting in later. As I’ve mentioned, I’m not really a concert goer, normally. I was moderately excited about seeing a few bands I actually had some familiarity with, but none of them were playing Thursday, so I decided to wade in rather than dive, and thus spent my first night at Bonnaroo with Emily, her boyfriend, Jason, her brother, Michael, and his friend, Jeff, drinking margaritas on the porch of a nice Mexican restaurant (strangely attached to a seedy strip motel) in Tullahoma. I don’t remember what was playing on the speakers, but I think it was a mariachi band.
Friday
Okay, Friday! Bonnaroo day, for real this time. I woke up with a will, slathered myself in sunscreen, put on my hat. Sara and Chris were making bacon, eggs and toast for everyone (minus Emily, who’d had to go to work). My friends were pretty speedy that morning, anxious not to miss certain things at Bonnaroo, and the three of us were soon driving to the staff lot. Chris was working two nights at the festival (he shoots music events for a living, mostly), but hadn’t managed to get his staff wristband yet, for complicated reasons. He did have his parking pass, though, and hoped that would be enough. It wasn’t. An unsympathetic skater girl at the entrance flat denied us – everyone in the vehicle must have staff wristbands to enter the staff lot. We parked in the back field again, and hiked up through the fields and into the sprawling camp grounds.
Bonnaroo camping spreads for miles in every direction. No matter how crowded you imagine it might be, it is shockingly moreso. There were tents and RVs in every direction, with tarps arranged into impressive compounds, there were oily hippies everywhere, teenagers, middle-aged heavyset guys, trailer trash, hipsters, college kids, so on and so forth times a billion. Also, an unending supply of white boys with dreadlocks or Afros. We wound our way through the sprawling campsites, and at each turned corner, a new limitless vista of RV roofs and tent peaks and Porta-pots rolled out to meet the sky. Above it all were colored balloons with numbers to try to let you know where you were, and there were also street signs erected at intersections (1st and 2nd style, familiar to NYers), but none of this was really of much help. The ground was packed dirt and mud and the sun was bald and scalding.
Sara and Chris had gotten caught in a horrid downpour the night before. It began around midnight, and was accompanied by a fierce wind that drove sheets of rain into your eyes and blinded you. They’d had to fight their way back to the car; they’d thanked their stars they’d brought trash bags to wear. Bonnaroo is legendary for its storms, and nearly every year, it is a mudpit by the second day. You are advised to lose your shoes and get filthy, as it’s really impossible to walk otherwise. We got lucky, however: the Thursday night storm was the only one we’d see that weekend. Still, it was semi-muddy, and by the time we reached the main gate, I had flip-flop-flicked mud stripes up my calves.
When we reached the main gates, we glommed onto a mob of people that was slowly oozing its way through the checkpoints a good stretch ahead of us. The sun beat down, the crowd pressed around me. I began to think there was really no way I could do this. I thought I’d have to go back to Emily’s and stay there, and began to be amazed at my inability to make it through even the initial entrance to what was meant to be a four-day 24-hour marathon of fun. I was wearing a tank-style sundress with a bra-top tank top under it, and flip-flops, a half-bottle of SPF 55, and a small-brimmed sun hat, and sweat was pouring down the backs of my legs and puddling up in the dirt. I have this problem, especially in summers. Apparently, at least 95% of my body’s total sweat glands are located along the bottom curves of my butt cheeks. There’s no way to win with this, loose skirts and pants alike each presenting their own drawbacks. Sitting down, however, is worst of all. I need an antimacassar for my ass.
So, I was soaked, hyperventilating and claustrophobic (I tend to panic in crowds, which makes me extremely unsuited for things like living in New York City, and attending Bonnaroo), but I had committed to this experience, so there was nothing for it to remain upright until I passed out. Eventually, I got to the gate, where a youth glanced into my purse and waved me through.
It took me some time to get my bearings, but eventually, I determined that Bonnaroo is arranged in three complexes.
An eagle eye view of the grounds.
The main gate gave on to the field leading up to the main stage, What Stage, which is the biggest, and has the biggest field in front of it. To the right of mainstage is a long line of food vendors; along the back of the mainstage field is a long line of Porta-Pots and a misting tent; where these two lines intersect is entry into Centeroo. Centeroo has a mushroom fountain at its middle, which at sporadic times throughout the day, spouts a muddy font of water from its top for folk to bathe in.
The refreshing fountain.
There are more food vendors and Porta-pots, there’s stations for refilling water bottles, there are souvenir stands.
Food vendors.
To the left of Centeroo (if you’re facing it from What Stage) is Which Stage, the second biggest stage, with a medium-sized field in front of it. On past Which Stage and Centeroo, the Cinema Tent is off on its own a ways to the left, and then there are sort of two fields with This Tent and That Tent on opposite sides. In between these, there’s a little adobe hut serving as a Post Office, and the Comedy Barn, and these head back toward a relatively empty area that features a ferris wheel, a Silent Disco (where everyone dances with head phones), some sort of tent always playing metal, The Other Tent and a few picnic tables. Between This Tent and The Other Tent, there’s a big empty stretch with a lot of sculptures around – fireflies on long sticks whose butts light up, big egg things hanging from a tree, a cutout castle, a metal dragon, a giant metal snowman full of fire that can be ignited by jumping on him in the right way, and also in the midst of all this, a little burlesque stage off to the side.
Fireflies, with ferris wheel behind.
This is probably not a very clear or accurate description of the Bonnaroo grounds, but it is accurate in that all of this is sort of a hodgepodge of similar sites – tent, stage, Cajun food, funnel cake, line of Porta-pots, tent, Porta-pots, installation, frozen lemonade cart, repeat – and it’s too confusing and bothersome to orient oneself, really – I adopted the system of just wandering until I ran into wherever I was trying to be.
We first lined up at the back of the crowd in That Tent to see The Dirty Projectors. I had no familiarity with this band at all, I couldn’t see anything, and I have to hear something multiple times before it makes any lasting imprint in my mind, so I can’t really tell you anything about the band, other than that I liked them at the time (this shows you about how good a Bonnaroo correspondent I am going to be – Rolling Stone, here I come!). David Byrne came out and joined them for the final song, and I don’t remember that, either (mostly because I couldn’t see any of it). What I do recall was that when we first tacked ourselves on to the back of the crowd, we were maddeningly close to the shade cast by the tent, and I felt it was a matter of personal survival that I worm my way into that shade. Luckily, the crowd kept moving up by stages, as people left the tent for other acts, so before long, we were under the cover, and I felt a lot better about everything, despite still being packed firm as brown sugar.
The Dirty Projectors.
We caught about the last half hour of The Dirty Projectors show, and after that, Chris wanted to see the Don Hertzfeldt show at the Cinema Tent.
Don Hertzfeldt is the animator whose short, Rejected, was nominated for an Oscar awhile back. If you have not seen Rejected, google and watch it now – it’s great. Chris is a big fan, and played it Wednesday morning before we left, and I thought it was hilarious. Hertzfeldt is a master of Kafka-esque humor; his films are full of simple characters neutrally experiencing the myriad unpleasantnesses of life, plodding through repetitive banality, only to be blindsided by meaningless and inexplicable chaos and horror. Chris is such a Hertzfeldt fan, he was even wearing his Rejected T-shirt.
Incidentally, I feel like there’s some joke about how it’s lame to wear the T-shirt of the band you’re going to see to their concert, but I think now that this must be outdated humor – there were all kinds of people wearing T-shirts of the bands they were seeing at Bonnaroo, and I doubt these folks would fail to be hip. Of course, perhaps it’s now cool to wear the T-shirt of the band you’re going to see ironically. Or, maybe these people were attending the shows of other bands at the same time as the band on their T-shirt was playing! Wouldn’t that be hostile? (I don’t have any T-shirts with bands on them, but I do have one with David Bowie’s face on it.)
We headed over to the Cinema Tent, and Chris got in the short line, while Sara and I went to refill our water bottles. The line at the refilling station, however, wasn’t moving at all.
Long ass water line.
Eventually, we noticed various other lines forming perpendicular to the one we’d originally gotten on, so we gave up on the water bottles and went to stand in the cinema line, where Chris had befriended a couple of stoned boys from Florida who both looked like stand-ins for That 70’s Show. We all stood there in the line and talked for a long time. It was still extremely hot. After we’d stood there for awhile, a tiny freckled orange-haired girl passed out and started seizing from the heat. She came around and seemed alright (though very embarrassed) and was led into the tent for some ice water. Then, a giant foam Butterfinger came around handing out mini-Snickers.
No, just kidding! They were mini-Butterfingers, of course! We all refused them initially, but when the Butterfinger told us they were cold, we all took them. At long last, the rope was pulled back, and we all filed into the dark, heavily air-conditioned cinema tent, which had rows and rows of folding chairs facing a screen.
We watched all manner of Don Hertzfeldt films. I enjoyed them, but then I started to feel really light-headed, even just sitting there in the air-conditioned dark. I ate a ProBar I had in my purse, and felt better. Don Hertzfeldt opened a Q&A after the screening (and after that, Chris managed to get his T-shirt autographed), but I cut out at that point, because the Yeah Yeah Yeahs were performing at Which Stage. I really love the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and was especially excited for this show. I am dimly aware that maybe the Yeah Yeah Yeahs aren’t cool anymore, is that right? Or perhaps they’re just thought of as really white, I don’t know. At any rate, I love them, and I really like Karen O’s voice and style and think she’s bad ass. When I arrived at Which Stage, I saw a little stand of bleachers that not many people seemed to be occupying, so I thought I’d sit on them, but they were for VIPs. As far as I can see, this is an excellent reason to spring for VIP tickets – people in the bleachers were actually able to watch the shows at both the stages (although I don’t think they had any enhanced vantage point in the tents). Otherwise, Which Stage was a packed, frying pan of a field. I started out relatively close to the stage, by the area where the cameramen perched, but so many people ended up pressed in on top of me that I had to withdraw. I was verging on panic attack again, and anyway, I couldn’t see anything, so there was no advantage to being closer. I have never been in a packed mob trying to see something up front without some six foot dude slipping around me with a polite ‘Excuse me,’ only to stand right in front of my face, as if I were standing there for some purpose unrelated to the performance onstage.
Right as I was planning my escape, Emily called and said she was to the left of the bleachers, so I fought my way back through the crowd and then all the way across to the right of the bleachers, which was no little trouble, let me tell you, and after I’d realized my mistake and fought my way back across to the left of the bleachers, I at last found Emily (and Jason), and we proceeded to squint at the stage. Very far away, a tiny Karen O was cavorting in front of an enormous blue eyeball. She wore a kimono, which she eventually dropped to reveal a romper and what appeared to be yellow striped tights. For some songs, she put a white drapey shawl-thing on her shoulders; other times, she took that back off. I think it was the wrong venue for this band, really – the music overwhelmed the vocals, and Karen O seemed to be struggling to fill up the space with her voice and her dancing. It was kind of stressful to watch, and I didn’t feel included at all, so before the end of the performance, we left in search of beers, shade and arepas.
Karen O, with eyeball.
One of the main problems with Bonnaroo is that the great amount of musical acts they are able to offer by running five stages simultaneously means you are bound to have to decide between many bands you really like. Nearly all of the bands I actually knew something about all seemed to overlap. I would have liked to catch Grizzly Bear – I have heard a couple of their songs and liked them – and I could have caught the end of their show, but I was sort of burnt out on concerts by this point (having seen half of two). Instead, we rode the ferris wheel. We stood in a brief line with a dad and small boy. The dad told us all about himself without prompting (this turned out to be true of many Bonnaroo attendees), and told what he obviously felt was an impressive story about his earlier visit with a woman (whose name I didn’t recognize, but who was obviously one of the musicians performing at the festival) who he’d gone to high school with, and who’d come out of her dressing room to say hi to them in — ‘Tell them what she was wearing, son?’ ‘A bra!!’
The ferris wheel yielded an eagle-eye view of just how vast Bonnaroo’s camping grounds were. These photos are all of different directions:
Camping...
...and more camping...
...and yet more camping...
...and three guesses.
The Bonnaroo attendance was around 75,000 this year. Manchester’s population is less than 10,000 (related side-note: if you google ‘Manchester, TN,’ the Bonnaroo website is the third result, after the city’s official web page and its Wikipedia entry; this is especially entertaining, because the Bonnaroo website does not have ‘Manchester’ in its title or description).
When we alighted from the ferris wheel, the sun had more or less set. Emily was torn between seeing Lucinda Williams and Ani DiFranco; she settled on Lucinda Williams, which I was happy about, because I could go with her, whereas I probably would have had to find something else to do if she’d gone to see Ani. I’d never seen Lucinda Williams before, but really enjoyed her entire set at This Tent, although again, I have no memory of it now to describe it for you. I can report, however, that she wore a black tank top and a black cowboy hat, and her muscly arms clenched at the guitar in the way of all cool folksinger chicks. I know this, because there were a great many mud puddles in This Tent, forcing large gaps in the crowd which increased visibility. Emily and I had had several $6 beers by this time, and toward the end of Lucinda Williams, we had to pee most desperately. We held out, though, and made a mad rush for the Port-a-Pots once the set had finished.
The Port-a-Pots are one of the more unpleasant Bonnaroo experiences. It was entirely necessary to use them multiple times each day – even if you opted not to drink beer (which is not something I can commit to when I have long periods of unoccupied time in close proximity to beer), you had to stay hydrated in the heat, so there was really no avoiding Port-a-Pot usage, and they were indeed foul. We learned after the first day to bring our own tissue packs, as TP was often out, and to bring Wet Wipes, as the hand-washing stations were not adjacent to the Port-a-Pots in any way and were sometimes impractical to get to immediately – and you did want to clean your hands immediately upon exiting, even if you didn’t touch anything but the door handle. I am forever grateful to my mother for teaching me to hover from a young age, ensuring muscular thighs and reliable balance that will enable me to emerge unscathed from any foul bathroom situation. Of course, the ideal thing is to have a penis.
Port-a-pots.
The Beastie Boys were headlining Friday night at What Stage, so we headed over there to meet up with all our friends. What Stage was already impassibly crowded. We crawled along the edge of the fray, by the food tents, and hovered there, dancing back and forth to avoid the converging streams of travelers with giant plates of fried potatoes and ketchupy hot dogs and slopping cups of beer, and Emily called her brother. He and Jeff were in the thick of it, and suggested we fight our way out to them, which we weren’t really sure about. Sara and Chris met up with us, and we expressed our reluctance to penetrate the crowd (or, really, to listen to the Beastie Boys). After hovering there for about half a song, we headed out into the now deserted other quadrants of Bonnaroo and Sara spread a sheet she’d brought out on the ground. At some point, Chris left to go get ready for his shift (he was shooting Public Enemy and then Paul Oakenfold, from midnight to 4:00am), and Michael and Jeff joined us (they weren’t overwhelmed with the Beastie Boys), and we drank a great many $6 fresh blended fruit drinks mixed with $0 vodka, and really had a merry old time.
At some point, we all split up, and decided to go wandering around. Sara, Emily and I found a performance of some sort that went into intermission just as we arrived. We spread out our sheet and watched some women in striped thigh-highs and bustiers and a couple of giant, fat guys with affected Cheech-type accents ape a sort of Weimar-era circus act type thing, where different performers reclined on nail beds, and then piled bricks and women on top, and that sort of thing.
A lot going on here.
Then, there was some hula-hooping, and soon after, Emily, Jason, Sara and I left. When we got back to Emily’s, I took a badly needed and tremendously appreciated shower, ate some trail mix, and collapsed into bed. Chris and the boys wouldn’t get back until well after daybreak.
Saturday
‘Oh, fuck,’ was my first thought upon waking Saturday morning. ‘I have two more days of this.’
It’s not that I didn’t enjoy the concerts or anything. It’s just that I was quite sure I wasn’t interested enough to sustain this for two more full days. I suddenly felt extremely foolish for deciding to attend a four-day concert in the first place (however free the tickets). I am not a concert goer. It’s never once occurred to me to go to a concert without a friend extending an invitation. Before Bonnaroo, I had been to one Tori Amos concert, two They Might Be Giants concerts, two Indigo Girls concerts…and I’m pretty sure that’s it. And at least two of those weren’t so much concerts as they were free summer outdoor events. Bonnaroo 2009 is the most concert I’ve ever gotten in my life thus far!
Luckily, there was quite a lot of fooling around the house to be done before we made our way back to the festival grounds. First of all, Emily and Jason had settled on Freckles, and brought him home. We sat out on the back porch playing with the puppy, who was already 28 pounds at 12 weeks, and had paws the size of clay pigeons. He also had the loose skin and knock-kneed awkwardness of all puppies and kept rolling adorably off the porch and then straining at hopping back up, like a little kid coming out of the deep end.
What's that, Freckles?
Oh, ha, ha, ha, you are too much!
He also took every opportunity to make a break for his childhood home, inconveniently located right next door complete with mom, dad and remaining siblings. Emily wasn’t quite sure what to do about that, but decided that when we left, she would put him in a horse stable she happened to have handy on her massive property.
Also, Sara made French toast for breakfast, and Emily cooked bacon in a pot. I did not know such a thing was possible, but you can just cut the bacon in half and throw it in there.
Eventually, it was time once more for Bonnaroo. I rode with Emily, Jason and the boys, Sara and Chris having gone on ahead. We parked in day parking this time, as the massive lines had only persisted for the initial days of the festival, and so we had a shorter walk. The line at security was far shorter today, as well, likely because it was nearly 5:00pm by this time. Apparently, Jimmy Buffet had made a surprise appearance at noon that day, but we’d all missed it.
Emily wanted to see Jenny Lewis at That Tent. I called Sara, who had spread her sheet out at What Stage and was waiting to see Wilco. When I reached her, she was in a great spot just behind the scaffolding where the cameramen were, the fencing around which scaffolding even provided a small scrim of shade. The sun did not feel as intense, and it was nice sitting there, with a beer and a bit of personal space. Eventually, Wilco played, too, and they were really good. Um…fast? I don’t have a damn clue how to describe music, frankly. Why am I even writing this?
Wilco
One thing I was really disappointed about was the relatively chill atmosphere at Bonnaroo this year. I had heard so many tales of bad acid trips and other drug-related freakouts, and I was really looking forward to seeing some crazy shit go down. No luck, though. We did see this dude dancing at Wilco, though:
Woo!
Oh, yeah!
I love you, Phish!
From 7ish to 8ish, both Elvis Costello and The Decemberists were playing, and this was a tough decision for me. I ended up wandering by Elvis Costello (at That Tent), who Emily said played an absolutely rocking show (she was up front for the whole thing), but for the couple songs I caught, he sounded particularly hoarse, and looked sweaty and uncomfortable, and it started to make me feel stressed about things.
Elvis Costello.
I then went over to This Tent, where The Decemberists sounded really awesome. I have some awareness that The Decemberists aren’t supposed to be cool anymore now, either, is that so? I don’t know. I guess I have a great fondness for super-white bands that were hip exactly 2.5 years ago. Anyway, I haven’t heard much of their stuff since Picaresque, so I don’t know if they’ve added new members, but the woman was singing a lot more than she usually does, and she sounded fantastic – it also sounded like maybe there were additional women singing? I don’t know; as usual, I couldn’t see the stage at all. I actually quite like Colin Meloy’s weird, HomestarRunner-ish-sounding voice, but I know a lot of people hate it, so maybe he’s trying not to dominate the vocals so much anymore. They also seemed to have a ton of really awesome visual things going on – I saw lights, and the tops of various props and things, and maybe costumes? – but I’ll be damned if I could find any spot to catch so much as a glimpse, so eventually, I gave it up and wandered over to the field and sat there for awhile, just listening and thinking.
I assert my personal space, pissing off some girl.
Before long, I started to feel lonely and worried, so I called everyone trying to figure out where I could meet up with someone. Luckily, Emily and Jason were eating, so, as I was starving to death, I headed over to where they were, at a picnic table by the ferris wheel. I inhaled a giant mound of red beans and rice, topped with a barbecued chicken skewer of at least two chicken’s worth of chicken, and immediately felt stuffed and remorseful. Sharing the picnic table with us were a chubby, long-haired couple from some Midwestern place, and the guy was quite stoned and happily monologuing about their trip and what all they’d seen so far.
‘Are you talking with your mouthful?’ interrupted his girlfriend. ‘Here, take my plate.’ They wandered off through the misting tent.
By this time, it was 8:30 or so, and almighty Bruce loomed ahead. Frankly, the three of us were ready to leave. Emily apologized several times throughout the trip for being such a party-pooper and wearing out on everything quickly, but I was massively relieved she had finally aged to my usual level of constant exhaustion. I’ve never been an endurance partier; I’m more of a social sprinter. I don’t think I could have made it had I had to spend a full, round, four days of solid, participatory Bonnaroo attendance.
But anyway, even wet blankets have to see Bruce Springsteen. Well, not ’see,’ of course, but ‘be within earshot of,’ at least. We headed over to What Stage, which was Beastie Boys Part Two. Sara still had her spot she’d had for Wilco earlier, but we didn’t see how we could get over there. Michael and Jeff joined us at this point, and we added ourselves to the edge of seated people, which kept encroaching further and further into the pedestrian lane by the food stalls. We then spent a good thirty minutes getting stepped on and waiting for Bruce to appear. Some giant, bald, blue collar guys flopped down in front of us. Two of them immediately laid down and went to sleep, but the third (wearing a flesh-toned Spandex shirt, camouflage shorts and a bandana) struck up a conversation with us, about how he slaves all year for the man, just waiting for Bonnaroo, where he can cut loose and just enjoy himself, talk to people, be outdoors. He then sampled a bottle of coke and Peppermint Schnapps that one of us was drinking, and was very impressed. ‘Y’all are wild!’ exclaimed dude. ‘I like y’all, y’all are crazy.’
Bruce took his sweet ass time about coming onstage. He finally started around 9:30 or so, and we stayed for a few songs. I didn’t recognize any of them. I happen to be very familiar with the Tunnel of Love album – in fact, I could probably sing all the songs on it from memory right now. The reason is that Tunnel of Love was one of two tapes my dad possessed when I was a kid (the other being Bonnie Raitt’s Love In the Nick of Time), and we would listen to it on a loop whenever we took a car trip somewhere. Other than that, however, I am only familiar with the big Bruce hits everybody knows.
Bruce Springsteen, and his E Street Band.
A closer view of Bruce.
Bruce, after the crowd thinned out some.
To me, Bruce sounded really old and tired and raspy. Sara and Chris report, however, that he played an amazing set, and that it was really long, and in the middle he opened it up to requests and just played whatever people wanted for, like, seven songs.
But I didn’t see any of that, because, as you’ll surely be shocked to hear, Emily, Jason and I left after two songs. When we arrived back at Emily’s house, we found that Freckles had escaped from the stable and returned to the bosom of his family. I had another thoroughly satisfying shower and went to bed.
Sunday
Sunday morning, I awoke to find Emily and Jason once again acclimating Freckles to the porch. Freckles’ dad, the boxer, had followed them back and was standing around suspiciously, scrutinizing his son’s new gig. Once he’d decided what he thought, he lifted his leg and pissed all over the grill. Freckles’ new owners, meanwhile, gave him a giant red meat bone and were vigilant in refusing dad access to it, and that was pretty much all it took for Freckles to rearrange where his loyalties lay. Shortly, the neighbors came by with the mom and two of the siblings, and Freckles pranced around with his bone, displaying everything he’d managed to come into. The puppies turned on each other, suddenly rivals. This drama, with its underlying implications, would have been depressing, except it was enacted by puppies, so it was fucking adorable.
Sara and Chris had not gotten in till after daybreak again, but they’d managed to stop by Wal-Mart, and when they got up, they made pancakes and bacon. (Yeah, that’s right, bitchez! We had bacon three mornings in a row, cause that’s how we roll.) We did try to get moving relatively quickly that morning, because Emily really wanted to see Erykah Badu at 3:30, and Chris wanted to enjoy his first day not having to stay focused and alert to work at midnight. We had a frenetic time getting out of the house, with people running in and out. Emily and I started to leave, then she forgot her wristband (which, by the way, a word on the wristbands: they were meant to be irremovable, but as soon as we got them, everyone else started tugging at theirs so that they could get them on and off. I, on the other hand, tugged mine as tight as it would go, and so was stuck with it all four days. The tails of it were pretty long and between the mud, and the puppies, and the Porta-Pots, and the spilling beer, and the breakfasts with syrup, I was really ready when it finally came time to cut the damn thing off.), so we went back, and then Michael and Jeff were almost ready, and then we might as well take Jason’s truck, and so forth. Eventually, we were on the way, and well before 3:30, Sara, Emily and I were on Sara’s sheet at the same general spot as before, waiting for Erykah Badu to appear.
Today there was no shade, and it was very, very hot. I had worn knee-length denim cut-offs for some reason, and they were soaked with sweat. The sun was so intense, I found it necessarily to reapply my SPF 55 before the concert had even started. Bonnaroo is a very communal sort of festival – you’re offered all kinds of things by those around you, and are supposed to reciprocate in kind. By the time my 55 got back to me, it was empty. Still, the sun. Still, no Erykah. Her band and back-up singers came out one by one, and finally, she appeared, in sunglasses, skin-tight jeans, stilettos, and a hoodie with the hood up. I got heatstroke just looking at her. This time I actually could see the stage, which was a new experience for me, but I still can’t describe the music, although I do remember it, being somewhat familiar with Erykah Badu. Anyway, she was great, to the point where the concert seemed really short to me, which is saying something, as all concerts seem interminable to me, even if I’m really enjoying them. I had actually intended to cut out early, because Andrew Bird was playing at Which Stage, and I’m a big fan of his, but we still managed to catch a few songs. I have some vague awareness that Andrew Bird is recently cool, yes? Which makes me really proud of myself, because I have liked him longer than most people. I saw him open for The Magnetic Fields at a concert at Chicago’s Old Town School of Folk Music (hey, there’s another concert I forgot about!), and thought that he was great. I also liked The Magnetic Fields a lot, but I’ve since gone off them because I read an interview where Stephin Merritt talked a lot about how the lyrics to songs shouldn’t mean anything and none of his do. Which, I know that most music fans don’t really care about lyrics, but I am a verbal person, and I really listen to lyrics. And the thing is, whether you do or don’t care about them much, if you’re a musician and you do choose to have lyrics (you don’t have to have them at all, and lots of bands mostly don’t have them), then shouldn’t they be necessary? Why would you put anything in your music that you don’t really want there? If you are going to have lyrics, commit to them at least is all I’m saying. Anyway, I think Which Stage was too large a venue for Andrew Bird; again, I didn’t feel included.
Andrew Bird.
After that, Emily was ready to go. Phish was headlining that night – we had missed them on Friday and we liked it so well, we thought we’d miss them again. I kind of wanted to hear Neko Case, though, so we headed over to This Tent, where Emily and Jason got involved in a game of frisbee with some folks, and I chased the moving shade. Michael and Jeff joined us shortly, and after awhile Neko Case started to play somewhere over behind the mob of people, but we were pretty much depleted and we left.
And that, more or less, was my Bonnaroo experience. I enjoyed it, although I think I personally would have benefited more from one solid day of bands I really liked, as four days was just too much for me. And I would have liked to be able to actually see some of the bands. But if you want to go to Bonnaroo, I definitely would recommend getting free tickets. Also, a lot of people camp around the festival site, but I would recommend staying in a giant, comfortable nearby house with hot showers, a washer-dryer and a puppy. That’s what I did, and it worked out really well. Also, I’d suggest having a big breakfast cooked for you every morning, because it really helps get you through the first half of the day. Just a few suggestions.
Au revoir!
I’ve Been Reading: You Remind Me of Me
Troy Timmens is a hard-luck soul. His ex-wife was a hard-core drug addict, and ran off, leaving him with their son, Loomis, a steady, serious, well-behaved little boy. Troy supplements his income working as a bartender with a modest amount of drug selling. When he’s busted one night, his son is given to his mother-in-law, Judy, and he’s placed under house arrest for a year. Judy despises Troy and will not allow him any contact with his son. Troy fears he will not be able to regain custody.
Jonah Dolye is a much harder-luck soul. As a small boy being raised by his ancient grandfather and mentally ill mother, Nora Doyle, Jonah is severely mauled by the family’s Doberman. Years later, after his mother’s suicide, Jonah moves to Chicago with few job skills and fewer social skills, to earn a degree and try to make some social connections. When he fails on both counts, he hires an agency to locate his half-brother, given up for adoption by his mother in the ’60s, in hopes that the biological link will somehow provide him with family.
Dan Chaon’s You Remind Me of Me is about connections, both forged and forced, and about the difficulty of jolting our lives out of a track. It is a very good book, particularly in the carefully drawn characters, but after finishing it, I was struck with how little humor there is in it. At all. Not that that’s a bad thing, necessarily, but it’s just surprising to me – you rarely see a book that so steadily refrains from even a single moment of wryness or sarcasm. Both Jonah and Troy get one hard knock after another, but neither of them ever displays a tint of self-aware levity about it all. Chaon’s book questions whether nature or circumstances contributes more to our fate, but perhaps the biggest shared characteristic of Troy and Jonah is their utter inability to step outside themselves for a minute.
I’ve Been Reading: The World Below
Finding herself divorced for the second time, Catherine Hubbard quits her job as a schoolteacher in San Francisco, and returns to her grandmother Georgia’s long-abandoned Vermont house to lick her wounds. Cath, whose mother killed herself, grew up at her grandparents’, and she has fond memories of their idyllic marriage and peaceful, uncomplicated lives. Holed up in the old house, Cath reads through Georgia’s old diaries and discovers that the roots of her grandparents’ relationship were not as innocent and simple as she had assumed. Georgia had a secret that so defined her and her options in her own time, that it is positively infuriating and heartbreaking to read in our time, and the perceived simplicity of her life was a result of the smothering narrowness of her options. As Georgia’s story unfolds, Cath learns that peace and placidity are only achieved through stern determination.
If you wonder how Cath feels or what she thinks about any of this, she will tell you: in great detail and in great length until there is not a single shade of thought or emotion left for you to intuit. This narrator explains, explains, explains. In The World Below, Sue Miller leaves no chance for even the most obtuse reader to miss a single aspect of her point, and as a result, the book exhausted me. I felt like I had been forced to listen to a very loquacious person tell me a five-minute story over several hours. While Georgia’s story is interesting, the majority of the novel is Cath nattering on and on about herself, until you begin to wonder why you ever made friends with this woman and when you’ll ever be able to get off the phone. The novel is rich, with an impressive structure, artful parallels and careful details; unfortunately, Miller’s narrator won’t shut up long enough for the reader to appreciate them.
I’ve Been Reading: His Illegal Self
Peter Carey’s His Illegal Self is the story of Dial, a young woman on the verge of accepting an assistant professorship at Vassar, who, through a combination mix-up and framing, finds herself fleeing to Australia with the son of a wealthy and notorious family she has accidentally abducted. Dial and the boy, Che, find refuge in a primitive hippie commune in the outback. They live there for years, as Dial tries to reconcile herself to the direction her life has taken, and Che struggles to discover who his real parents are.
Set against a backdrop of the chaotic activism and political turbulence of the ’60s and ’70s, the book focuses on a quieter and more remote – but no less fraught and significant – conflict between individuals. Unfortunately, Carey often employs a sort of odd, self-conscious muddling tone – in such passages, he seems to be willfully obscuring his meaning to make it seem more significant, and he’s inconsistent with it, so that the tone becomes extremely jarring and distracting. I ought to give some examples of what I’m talking about here, but sadly, I’ve already returned the book to the library. Despite the confusing style, however, His Illegal Self is a unique and beautiful novel about the basis for human connections, about what makes people family, what makes them belong to one another.
I’ve Been Reading: The Last Novel
David Markson’s The Last Novel is a 200-some page book consisting entirely of factoids about various artists of all kinds and their failures, periods of stagnation, tragedies, thwartings, impoverishments, loneliness, setbacks and deaths. At the back of all this is a protagonist, a novelist who’s about done with writing, but he is only seen in relief, framed by the endless parade of trivia. Amazingly, the book is a roaring good read despite its total lack of story or overt presence of character or conflict. Or perhaps I just loved it, because reading about the failures of great and miserable geniuses is one of my keenest pleasures. Apparently, this book is the last in a trilogy, but I don’t feel I lost anything by starting with this one.
I’ve Been Reading: The Lazarus Project
In 1908, a Jewish immigrant, Lazarus Averbuch, is shot to death by the Chicago chief of police. In the present day, Vladimir Brik, a Bosnian-born writer living in Chicago, secures a grant to travel to Eastern Europe to investigate Averbuch’s death. Aleksandar Hemon’s The Lazarus Project follows the stories of these two men. Averbuch’s death sets off a citywide investigation into the anarchic activities of the Jewish community. Averbuch’s unfortunate sister, Olga, is left behind to be relentlessly hounded and abused by investigators and reporters, while she tries to secure a dignified burial for her brother’s body.
Meanwhile, Brik engages the services of a Bosnian photographer, Rora, and heads East to spend his grant money and, if not discover the truth about Averbuch, to hopefully learn about his own roots, his own feelings of rootlessness. Hemon’s novel is not the first to feature descendants of American immigrants delving into their ancestors’ shadowy histories in hopes of assuaging their own feelings of cultural displacement. It is also not the best. The flashback sections featuring Olga’s terrible story make for a good book, but the sections featuring Brik seem pointless and uncertain, although Rora is a hilarious character, and I always love to recognize Chicago locations in literature (there’s a scene set in the Kopi Cafe!). I’m not sure why the critical reception for this book was so overwhelmingly positive. I enjoyed reading it, but it left no impression on me.
I’ve Been Reading: Amsterdam
I have now read two books by Ian McEwan, and while I found Atonement so accomplished a novel that I didn’t see the point in my ever trying to write anything ever again, Amsterdam, I’m sad to say, is less intimidating an achievement. Vernon Halliday, newspaper editor, and Clive Lenley, famous composer, meet at a past lover’s funeral. Molly Lane has died of a slow and undignified disease, and the two old friends agree that they will each euthanize the other before he could come to such a pass. All the various elements of Amsterdam hang together properly, but there’s no flesh on the skeleton – the plot is predictable and unconvincing, the characters are wooden and uninteresting, and while the novel was published in 1999, the social satire already seems outdated and irrelevant. It’s not that the book is bad, exactly; it’s just that it isn’t great. I still think, however, that McEwan is too good a writer for me to hope to emulate on any level, and still plan to read all of his other books.
I’ve Been Reading: Lost Cosmonaut
Have you heard of Tatarstan, Kalmykia, Mari El or Udmurtia? Daniel Kalder bets you haven’t. In his travelogue, Lost Cosmonaut, he journeys to all four of these small republics in the wasteland of Southwestern Russia in search of nothingness. For Kalder (and for the reader), these locations’ complete and total lack of anything of interest makes them bizarrely fascinating travel destinations.
For the first dozen or so pages of Lost Cosmonaut, I found Kalder to be an annoyingly central narrator, but once he gets into the book, his tone becomes less forced and show-offy, and the rest of this travel narrative is as witty and informative as it is bizarre. Russia is one of the few countries that hard-core travelers will dissuade you from exploring – “Seriously,” they’ll promise. “See Moscow and St. Petersburg, but that’s it.” – and as such, I’ve always been curious about it. Thanks to Kalder, I now know that out there in all the bleak vastness, there are indeed some oddities scattered about: embalmed babies, a “city” built entirely for chess, mail-order bride warehouses, pagan rituals, and earnest community theater.
On Credit Cards
This Times article on how credit card companies work, and how they are now changing, is fascinating and well worth the read:
Luckily for the industry, small groups of executives at most of the large firms have spent the last decade studying cardholders from almost every angle, and collection agencies have developed more sophisticated dunning techniques. They have sought to draw psychological and behavioral lessons from the enormous amounts of data the credit-card companies collect every day. They’ve run thousands of tests and crunched the numbers on millions of accounts. One result of all that labor is the conversation between Santana — a former bouncer whose higher education consists solely of corporate-sponsored classes like “the Psychology of Collections” — and the man from Massachusetts. When Santana contacted the man last month, he was armed with detailed information about his life and trained in which psychological approaches were most likely to succeed.
(via Lone Gunman)
See also this post:
One model is that the credit card companies are lying to you – they think of you less as an individual to have a dynamic risk factor dynamically assigned to you, and instead as part of a portfolio to have a specific rate of return extracted from. So they have statisticians and psychologists not to create a credit risk, but instead to figure out who is likely to pay what when, and use that to keep their returns very high. Quants to study how much they can squeeze from someone – not too much, but not too little. So it is less about the awesome part of markets, the price information and the convergence and feedback, and something more feudal.
(via Yglesias)
He goes on to do all the maths, but I went blank at all the numbers.
Frankly, as the type of person who always pays my bills the very same day I get them in the mail, I’m quite sure I’d always pay my balance off each month if I had a credit card (I never have had one), so I’m probably not a desireable customer for credit card companies. They don’t realize that about me, though: almost every single day last year, I received a credit card offer in the mail, from my bank, Washington Mutual. I actually called them to tell them to stop it, and the woman straight up told me that I would continue to receive them until I signed up for a card and there was nothing anybody could do about it. Little did she know! Since the collapse of the general economy and WaMu’s absorption by Chase, I have yet to receive one single offer. Which is all well and good till I want to buy a house. But then, it’s looking highly unlikely any of us will be buying houses in the future, so whatevs.
