Did you have an idol growing up? Maybe you liked Jim Morrison or something. I don't know, a lot of people seem to like John Lennon, or James Bond, or Michael Jordan, or Janis Joplin, or Buffy, or that other girl from Buffy. I don't know. Face your demons. The point is, you had an idol growing up. Mine, was, and is, Burl Ives.
Now, folk singer Burl Ives has faded into obscurity; his newest record sold less than a million copies, and he has been on a perpetual decline ever since he conquered the Communists in the folk scene. We are all, for the most part, satisfied with the amount of music Burl Ives has released thus far, with few exceptions (among which, myself). Why do I idolize Burl Ives? Well, I can relate to Ives in a lot of different ways: Like Burl Ives, my temper is that of a mountain. Slow, measured, and ultimately omnipotent. In addition, his music, like mine, is that of an ocean, washing off the sands of the weak, bleeding the weak sands of their essence over decades if necessary. "Have a holly jolly Christmas," goes the song, literally. "Your trajectory moves ever-lower with the passing of the idle days," means the song. You will probably die if you ideologically, spiritually, or physically cross paths with him. This is not due to a lack of empathy, patience, or imagination. It is because, just as water is a solvent of so many things..., well, to quote one of his songs, "Burl Ives/ Is the neutralizer of so many unfortunate goddamn filthy and weak lives." He just goddamn stands there for twenty seconds when he says the first line, forms his body into the musical break which he fills with the second line, in less than a goddamn second. "Oh my god, how I must Idolize/Burl Ives," means the ninth song on my second album. I am crying with fear and enlightenment just thinking about writing this paragraph, because Burl Ives can hunt me down anywhere. He just knows, man. But I digress.
In addition to my idol, high school for me unfortunately had other obligations. Among which was my friend Nathaniel. Nathaniel was very gifted and spent his time studying the Bible to win Internet arguments, moving the Bible to the fiction section of his local bookstores, and talking about being a vegan, by choice. I mostly ignored him, but he was also my best friend in the world, short of my internal image of Burl Ives. So when Nathaniel started getting into basketball, I became very direct (as opposed to my spacey, nebulous norm) and warned him, with the ice of "A Little Bitty Tear": His shit would not fly on a court of reason, nor on a court of passion. A basketball court is both, and he would surely perish if he attempted to say goddamn half of what he said to me while I was in space. I didn't pay much attention to Nathaniel, because he was mostly the guy I was sitting next to while I wrote guitar music in tribute to my idol, but apparently he was writing pretty well by this point.
"Every time they scorn you," I said to Nathaniel from out of nowhere, "I want you to express your scorn with the fire of your favorite writer. And I want you to post it to that little fucking website you call a blog."
"But what if my favorite writer is myself?" Nathaniel inquired.
"Then that infuriates me, Nathaniel, and I want you to goddamn pray Burl Ives doesn't break you like he broke the auditorium last year. Is that understood?" I firmly attached an unblinking glare.
"Yes, sir." Nathaniel knew not to interrupt me while I was channeling. He knew that I had broken the auditorium, in a fit that could not be called a fugue, so consistent with me was it. He knew all of that, and he obliged my requests. Maybe he was goddamn learning something from me and one of Nashville's finest, Burl Ives, after all.
Every once in awhile I would stop playing and demand to see what he was writing. Dear Lord, Nathaniel's violence to writing was what Burl Ives is to violence! "Intersubjective nightmares of Tracy McGrady", "Channeling (and trivializing) Allen Iverson's shallowest understanding - of self and loathing." They were all like goddamn academic papers about current players and teams. Every day that I read one, I would sit him down, point my finger, and say, "This is a goddamn miracle! Leave my sight, before you corrupt the miracle with the reality of your existence." And he would. And I knew he was writing about me, in between the abstractions and placeholder nouns. What's more, I knew what it was he was writing about me. I was the tyranny of Allen Iverson unto himself. That was me, destroying myself, spiritually. His conception placed me equal to Chauncey Billups' "true face." I was the Bulls front office at sixteen Anno Jordani, as he said. Demons, demons, demons, of me he would write, all were demons! His writing was about me and that time I broke an auditorium. It had to be! I pledged a blood oath with this wall in my house, to show Nathaniel the error of his ways! I was not cruel! I was merely enforcing the truth! And cruelty doth yield for me only but what the truth shall reveal! Motherfucking Burl Ives, where are you?
So I wrote a letter that night, knowing it wouldn't go through, but also knowing it would. The proper channels would be gone through, the conduits would disappear in the face of such necessity, and in due time, and exactly when called for, the great folk singer Burl Ives would appear to destroy Nathaniel at one of his goddamn poetry readings after school.
And he did appear. Clad in one of those red and gold bellhop caps, a beard of snow sustained only by the coldness of his cheeks now adorned a face. It didn't seem to matter that the face belonged to a body, because the body was that of Burl Ives, made redundant by the face. For a moment, his glasses seemed to warm your heart until those glasses shot icebeams at the sun and at your eyes, temporarily blinding you and permanently making you see - that those were not the right glasses to adore the warmth of. The face, as big as ten, led the body into the room where I was watching Nathaniel deliver an elegy to Bill Russell and racism. Burl struck, without warning.
"You know, I actually know Bill Russell - he has the heart of a champion."
"Bur...Burl I-"
"Burl. Ives. is what you meant to say. That is my name, Nathaniel, and I've heard all about you." I smirked. Finally my labors had born fruit. "And you must be Alex."
"Yes, sir."
"I think you're a goddamn coward. I wouldn't have stopped at the auditorium."
"Yes, sir. I know how you feel about "next times" and their non-existence, but I know I have it in me to break a whole mountain if I choose. Trouble is, I haven't chosen to."
"That's a weak goddamn excuse. There are no "next times". Only the here and now. Bow as low as you can, you goddamn coward. I broke a mountain but I would never goddamn bank on that. I broke a fucking mountain and I *will* do it again. Do you hear the difference in tone? Bow."
I could not but do so. I had no recourse.
"Now, Nathaniel, your little friend Alex sent me a pack of your writing. I think you're good. Real good. I like your angle, too."
"Gee, thanks, Mr. Ives."
"Call me Burl. Burl. Ives."
"Thanks, Burl. Burl. Ives."
"A funny one. Not like goddamn Alex there, bowing."
I seethed, but if there is justice, this must be it, and struggled to understand how this could be.
"Here's a fucking list of contacts. If you tell them Burl fucking Ives sent you, you will be a professional, published author in less than five years."
"Thanks, Burl. Ives."
"Now get out of my sight, all of you. Except for Alex."
Lying face-down, I dared not stir. He did not lie about breaking a mountain, and my power could hardly sustain his attack for one second, if he chose to.
"Well done, Alex."
"What?" What the hell could be happening? I had lain like a coward at my idol's feet. There was no hope for me now, physically or spiritually. I was one of the worthless, the so many of the goddamn weak and worthless, that had died like a bubble of soap in an acid storm.
"Get up, Alex." I did. "Now let me tell you what I did there. My designs are beyond the imagination of most, but even though you are a goddamn coward, your knowledge of me completes the picture, so to speak, and you are able to imagine what I will tell you."
"What is it, Mr. Ives?"
"Mama don't want no gin, because it makes her sin. All she wants is brandy handy all the time."
"I'm not sure I-"
"Your friend Nathaniel is going to receive unfathomable fame and fortune for having a scarcely valid opinion that is governed mainly by the lens of fear of interpersonal conflict. This will slowly consume his soul. All his readers will either be exposed as charlatans of critical thought, or will go on to be better and more famous as authors eventually. The charlatans will fucking die, and the rest will be immortal. Like you."
"Thank you."
"But now everyone else has to die."
"But why?"
"Because Burl Ives inhabits a closed universe, and cannot die, so they all must, therefore."
"Oh, okay, Burl Ives."
And then he just stood there for a long time. Then he smiled. I obliged him with the next line.
"'/Is the neutralizer of so many unfortunate goddamn filthy and weak lives.'"
"Thank you Alex. Now let me see your guitar."
"Here, Burl."
My guitar is now broken and is unfixable. Every time I try to buy a new one, wherever it is I go, the clerks look at me with the fear of the omnipresent and refuse to sell it to me. And then they log-on to Nathaniel's new site Free Darko to see if Nathaniel (now named Bethlehem Shoals) has posted an update. Those fucking charlatans at the guitar stores. I hope they all die.
Now, folk singer Burl Ives has faded into obscurity; his newest record sold less than a million copies, and he has been on a perpetual decline ever since he conquered the Communists in the folk scene. We are all, for the most part, satisfied with the amount of music Burl Ives has released thus far, with few exceptions (among which, myself). Why do I idolize Burl Ives? Well, I can relate to Ives in a lot of different ways: Like Burl Ives, my temper is that of a mountain. Slow, measured, and ultimately omnipotent. In addition, his music, like mine, is that of an ocean, washing off the sands of the weak, bleeding the weak sands of their essence over decades if necessary. "Have a holly jolly Christmas," goes the song, literally. "Your trajectory moves ever-lower with the passing of the idle days," means the song. You will probably die if you ideologically, spiritually, or physically cross paths with him. This is not due to a lack of empathy, patience, or imagination. It is because, just as water is a solvent of so many things..., well, to quote one of his songs, "Burl Ives/ Is the neutralizer of so many unfortunate goddamn filthy and weak lives." He just goddamn stands there for twenty seconds when he says the first line, forms his body into the musical break which he fills with the second line, in less than a goddamn second. "Oh my god, how I must Idolize/Burl Ives," means the ninth song on my second album. I am crying with fear and enlightenment just thinking about writing this paragraph, because Burl Ives can hunt me down anywhere. He just knows, man. But I digress.
In addition to my idol, high school for me unfortunately had other obligations. Among which was my friend Nathaniel. Nathaniel was very gifted and spent his time studying the Bible to win Internet arguments, moving the Bible to the fiction section of his local bookstores, and talking about being a vegan, by choice. I mostly ignored him, but he was also my best friend in the world, short of my internal image of Burl Ives. So when Nathaniel started getting into basketball, I became very direct (as opposed to my spacey, nebulous norm) and warned him, with the ice of "A Little Bitty Tear": His shit would not fly on a court of reason, nor on a court of passion. A basketball court is both, and he would surely perish if he attempted to say goddamn half of what he said to me while I was in space. I didn't pay much attention to Nathaniel, because he was mostly the guy I was sitting next to while I wrote guitar music in tribute to my idol, but apparently he was writing pretty well by this point.
"Every time they scorn you," I said to Nathaniel from out of nowhere, "I want you to express your scorn with the fire of your favorite writer. And I want you to post it to that little fucking website you call a blog."
"But what if my favorite writer is myself?" Nathaniel inquired.
"Then that infuriates me, Nathaniel, and I want you to goddamn pray Burl Ives doesn't break you like he broke the auditorium last year. Is that understood?" I firmly attached an unblinking glare.
"Yes, sir." Nathaniel knew not to interrupt me while I was channeling. He knew that I had broken the auditorium, in a fit that could not be called a fugue, so consistent with me was it. He knew all of that, and he obliged my requests. Maybe he was goddamn learning something from me and one of Nashville's finest, Burl Ives, after all.
Every once in awhile I would stop playing and demand to see what he was writing. Dear Lord, Nathaniel's violence to writing was what Burl Ives is to violence! "Intersubjective nightmares of Tracy McGrady", "Channeling (and trivializing) Allen Iverson's shallowest understanding - of self and loathing." They were all like goddamn academic papers about current players and teams. Every day that I read one, I would sit him down, point my finger, and say, "This is a goddamn miracle! Leave my sight, before you corrupt the miracle with the reality of your existence." And he would. And I knew he was writing about me, in between the abstractions and placeholder nouns. What's more, I knew what it was he was writing about me. I was the tyranny of Allen Iverson unto himself. That was me, destroying myself, spiritually. His conception placed me equal to Chauncey Billups' "true face." I was the Bulls front office at sixteen Anno Jordani, as he said. Demons, demons, demons, of me he would write, all were demons! His writing was about me and that time I broke an auditorium. It had to be! I pledged a blood oath with this wall in my house, to show Nathaniel the error of his ways! I was not cruel! I was merely enforcing the truth! And cruelty doth yield for me only but what the truth shall reveal! Motherfucking Burl Ives, where are you?
So I wrote a letter that night, knowing it wouldn't go through, but also knowing it would. The proper channels would be gone through, the conduits would disappear in the face of such necessity, and in due time, and exactly when called for, the great folk singer Burl Ives would appear to destroy Nathaniel at one of his goddamn poetry readings after school.
And he did appear. Clad in one of those red and gold bellhop caps, a beard of snow sustained only by the coldness of his cheeks now adorned a face. It didn't seem to matter that the face belonged to a body, because the body was that of Burl Ives, made redundant by the face. For a moment, his glasses seemed to warm your heart until those glasses shot icebeams at the sun and at your eyes, temporarily blinding you and permanently making you see - that those were not the right glasses to adore the warmth of. The face, as big as ten, led the body into the room where I was watching Nathaniel deliver an elegy to Bill Russell and racism. Burl struck, without warning.
"You know, I actually know Bill Russell - he has the heart of a champion."
"Bur...Burl I-"
"Burl. Ives. is what you meant to say. That is my name, Nathaniel, and I've heard all about you." I smirked. Finally my labors had born fruit. "And you must be Alex."
"Yes, sir."
"I think you're a goddamn coward. I wouldn't have stopped at the auditorium."
"Yes, sir. I know how you feel about "next times" and their non-existence, but I know I have it in me to break a whole mountain if I choose. Trouble is, I haven't chosen to."
"That's a weak goddamn excuse. There are no "next times". Only the here and now. Bow as low as you can, you goddamn coward. I broke a mountain but I would never goddamn bank on that. I broke a fucking mountain and I *will* do it again. Do you hear the difference in tone? Bow."
I could not but do so. I had no recourse.
"Now, Nathaniel, your little friend Alex sent me a pack of your writing. I think you're good. Real good. I like your angle, too."
"Gee, thanks, Mr. Ives."
"Call me Burl. Burl. Ives."
"Thanks, Burl. Burl. Ives."
"A funny one. Not like goddamn Alex there, bowing."
I seethed, but if there is justice, this must be it, and struggled to understand how this could be.
"Here's a fucking list of contacts. If you tell them Burl fucking Ives sent you, you will be a professional, published author in less than five years."
"Thanks, Burl. Ives."
"Now get out of my sight, all of you. Except for Alex."
Lying face-down, I dared not stir. He did not lie about breaking a mountain, and my power could hardly sustain his attack for one second, if he chose to.
"Well done, Alex."
"What?" What the hell could be happening? I had lain like a coward at my idol's feet. There was no hope for me now, physically or spiritually. I was one of the worthless, the so many of the goddamn weak and worthless, that had died like a bubble of soap in an acid storm.
"Get up, Alex." I did. "Now let me tell you what I did there. My designs are beyond the imagination of most, but even though you are a goddamn coward, your knowledge of me completes the picture, so to speak, and you are able to imagine what I will tell you."
"What is it, Mr. Ives?"
"Mama don't want no gin, because it makes her sin. All she wants is brandy handy all the time."
"I'm not sure I-"
"Your friend Nathaniel is going to receive unfathomable fame and fortune for having a scarcely valid opinion that is governed mainly by the lens of fear of interpersonal conflict. This will slowly consume his soul. All his readers will either be exposed as charlatans of critical thought, or will go on to be better and more famous as authors eventually. The charlatans will fucking die, and the rest will be immortal. Like you."
"Thank you."
"But now everyone else has to die."
"But why?"
"Because Burl Ives inhabits a closed universe, and cannot die, so they all must, therefore."
"Oh, okay, Burl Ives."
And then he just stood there for a long time. Then he smiled. I obliged him with the next line.
"'/Is the neutralizer of so many unfortunate goddamn filthy and weak lives.'"
"Thank you Alex. Now let me see your guitar."
"Here, Burl."
My guitar is now broken and is unfixable. Every time I try to buy a new one, wherever it is I go, the clerks look at me with the fear of the omnipresent and refuse to sell it to me. And then they log-on to Nathaniel's new site Free Darko to see if Nathaniel (now named Bethlehem Shoals) has posted an update. Those fucking charlatans at the guitar stores. I hope they all die.
In this piece I wrote myself as an astonishingly unsympathetic protagonist, and Jeremy (the founder of Pearls of Mystery who had really unreasonably disappointed me in the days before I wrote this) as a surprisingly sympathetic antagonist (as Bethlehem Shoals). I shouldn't have given Burl Ives any lines.
ReplyDeleteBut you know what? While this is an awful portrayal of just about everything it attempted to portray, literally or metaphorically, I don't know that I've ever written a more personal and literary look into my own frustrations and occasional feelings of powerlessness. Even though I'm not an angry person, really, this is probably the most succinct examination of all the disappointment I have in other people, and the emotional depths it can drive me to. And it's pretty readable: If it bleeds it leads, and nothing bleeds insulation and concrete more than an attacked, empty auditorium.