7 pm, work’s over, the subway platform’s stinking, boiling & rattling with jackhammers, a train arrives, it’s full and clearly seatless, I let it pass, another comes, haggard curds of humanity ooze out, I slip in fast and gratefully sink into seat, I settle in, air conditioning washes me, & I exhale.

And inevitably it’s happened: I find myself directly facing or seated beside some reeking, twitch-gripped, leering, sweating, muttering man or woman (usually man) on my hourlong subway ride home. Sometimes I get up and move, sometimes I don’t. If I don’t, it’s because I’m kept rooted by inertia, pride, masochism, exhaustion, or an abiding hope that the squirmy gremlin that’s unsettling me to the spine is just some normal schmuck who’s suffering from indigestion and/or my own warped & mottled outlook on fellow humans.

Would it help to survey faces before I take my seat? No — the sly dogs, they surprise me. They muster just enough poise & discipline to look like average, work-day-defeated middle-aged sighing subway-serfs like me — until the doors close, at which point the facade’s gone and they triumphantly collapse into the truth of their nail-biting, eye-darting, crack-jittery, randomly-cackling writhey selves.

I remember a 20-something to my left, staring at his filthy nails, picking them with clicking noises, looking at everyone around him intently, otherwise dressed neatly & normal-seeming; occasionally, in the midst of his disturbing spasms (fits that suggested some kind of allover-body itch), rubbing his shoulder into mine, and soon doing so deliberately, in what seemed like almost sexually physical appeal.

I remember a humid, damp-browed crone sitting next to me at the Port Authority 1 stop, cocooned in a black puffy nylon coat in the middle of spring, immediately setting her witch gaze on me as I sat and read the paper, saying, over and over again in what would’ve been a rich & sensuous slavic accent had the circumstances been different, shaking her head for dramatic effect: “It’s no good, NO GOOD what you do to yourself.” Stare, pause, headshake, repeat.

And I remember an old, bearded homeless man who would sporadically stamp his foot HARD on the floor, an enormous black & bulging garbage bag held protectively at his side like some alien, orificeless, insensate beast-pet. He’d utter something gnomic, vaguely threatening, stare out the window, and then petrify, remaining absolutely still. Time would pass. Hope would arise in our hearts, tentatively. Until FUCKING SLAM the next thunderous heel crashed down, more violent muttering, splintering conversation into dead shards. That loveliness lasted from 59th to 125th.

Oh, and lest I forget one vital detail, it was obvious to all seated nearby that gorgonzola-stuffed mackerel-carcasses were jammed deeeeeeeeep in the pockets of his sweatpants.

But where is my compassion? Where is my empathy? Here are people trapped in dire straits, whether streetlocked, disabled, mentally-disrupted, emotionally-taken-apart. They mean me no harm. They are suffering more than I am, ever will perhaps, ever could. And yet here I am, privileged & whining about having to occasionally endure them. What the hell is wrong with me? They deserve a handout, or some compassion, not a wordy web-post.

I used to excoriate myself in just such a way for my recoil, disgust, irritation. I used to really lay into myself for failures of understanding around these kinds of encounters. But gradually I started accepting and owning my responses, and realizing that empathy doesn’t preclude frustration. New York, after all, poses pretty serious social challenges to some of us: we’re thrust into each other cheek & jowl, from dawn to dusk, wedged & pressed & forced to accept the kind of proximity that doesn’t come second nature to us introverts and/or transplants (I’m from the south). Most of the country (for better or worse) lives at a remove from others: sprawl is the rule, not the exception. New York, on the other hand, for all its splendor & beauty & opportunity, is a goddamned fetid warren of flesh, and you can’t get away from that aspect of it if you live, work & love here. You’re going to run smack into it, in all its vast array, in all its bewildering catalogue of souls.

So, given what we have to face, is it so wrong to have our reactions? What’s more New York than being blunt about what thrills us, annoys us, delights us, disgusts? All this compress of skin & face is burden, and if it ease it at all to allow ourselves mutter & groan about that compression’s occasional extremities — someone deranged, lecherous, menacing, reeking, explosive, insulting, insinuating, deranged, invasive; whether rich or poor, black or white, male or female, young or old — then why the fuck not? We can & should have our understanding, compassion, awareness of everyone’s circumstance — AND we can be gagging, fuming & ready to switch cars the next time a gorgonzola-pants lumbers near and starts stomping imaginary roaches.
   
C. Way/ SnailCrow.com © 2008

Sonic Youth - ‘Hey Joni’ (zipped)

“Hey Joni” is one of my favorite tracks from Sonic Youth’s “Daydream Nation”. It’s a record of bone-sculpted terror, and this song is among those sawed sharpest.

It’s not just the cut’s sound — lacerating sheets of guitars — that gives it such depth and impact, it’s also the lyrics. The weight & power of the text is typical of Ranaldo: violence, startling imagery, criscrossing emotions, overlapping themes (think “Skip Tracer”, “Pipeline/ Kill Time”). The song’s words settle and expand, layers of color & flavor revealing themselves over the song’s duration, shades of emotion ripening, popping out, furtive then brash then hiding again.

To begin with, there’s that urgent, liberating refrain: “Hey Joni, Put it all behind you.” There’s the current of nostalgia throughout, weaving the song together with silver cord: “I remember our youth, our high ideals / I remember you were so uptight”. Then there’s the contradictory plea to ignore the past and simply focus on the Now: “tune out the past, and just say yes” ; “Now it’s all behind you.” There’s the narrator’s desperate search for meaning: “tell me Joni, am I the one to see you through? / In this broken town can you still jack in and know what to do?” There’s the murky promise of mysterious violence: “that time in the trees, we broke that vice”, “shots ring out from the center of an empty field / Joni’s in the tall grass”. Finally, there’s that troubled rural backdrop of an “empty field”, of “tall grass”, of Joni “jumping off that truck,” blighted and creepy like something out of Dorothy Allison. So much packed in each line, Ranaldo’s poetry dense & blossoming with each noise-saturated measure of music.

And then there’s Joni — who is she? What does she want? She emerges from the
song as some kind of blithe dreamchild, unconcerned with time or memory while the speaker pushes, pries, tries to figure her out:

“She’s not thinking about the future
She’s not spinning her wheels
she doesn’t think at all about the past
she thinking long and hard
about that high wild sound
and wondering will it last?”

Joni is just Joni, she’s just life & blood and bone, living in the wild violent now, dancing in empty fields while gunshots shatter stillness, careless of past or future, dervishing with blank & unreadable expression. The speaker takes his confusion to her, throwing her his urgent “Hey Joni, when will all these dreams come true?”, his questioning at times feeling hungry and justified, almost indignant, at other times nonsensical & pathetic when compared to Joni’s carefree immediacy, her pure pulsing being.

Joni is sound and breath and blood, all impact and abrasion, all beautiful undoing, a “snap of electric whipcrack”, a “sailboat explosion,” embodying the rasp of sound the song wraps the words in.

And what about that sound? Well it’s much easier to talk about words than music. Sound, like wine or food, has a way of making even the most earnest attempts to corral it in words sound like pure, vulgar charlatanry.

So I’ll just focus on a moment instead: Ranaldo’s “kick it” at 2:56, rousing and raw, the guitar taloning and scraping up great seas of stone, Ranaldo having to shout above it, Steve Shelley’s drums attacking right after, battering every beat in 2/2 time all through 3:22, manic and scraping, & sweet Joni’s spirit shooting through it all like a comet.
   
Sonic Youth - “Daydream Nation”
(Click to buy from Insound.com)
   
C. Way/ SnailCrow.com © 2008

It broods in the glass, when I bring the lip of glass under my nose, warmth rises first, thick and sudden, then odor: musky blend of mustard, onion, damp root vegetables. This wine is an owl, old & noble, with ratfur stuck to its talons.

It fills the mouth aggressively, fruit-bitterly, with cherries, prunes, chili. Flakes of chocolate. It bristles & sulks all over the inside of your mouth.

This is a wine that works you into the soil, holds you there in the rooty rich damp, until you feel a hum and churn fill you, created by:

beetles,
bones,
gnarled roots,
flinty secret minerals waiting for light.

   
C. Way/ SnailCrow.com © 2008

2006 Domaine Bourillon Dorleans Vouvray

Peach held in the Pouch of
Mouth, a Ripe secret,
Like warm Gems palmed
in Pocket,

Fruit opening
as if by Molars’ edge
to sweet-sharp Bloom
in Throat

   
C. Way/ SnailCrow.com © 2008