Simon and Garfunkel, "The Boxer"

I saw The Graduate as an impressionable teenager and, much like the hero of (500) Days of Summer, I misread it on first viewing. I didn't see in the ending (which is famous, by the way, though I won't spoil it for anyone who hasn't seen the film yet) all the uncertainty with adult life that the characters Ben and Elaine faced, as they fled from everything they'd known previously with at best a brief idea of who the other person was. The songs of Simon and Garfunkel dominated the soundtrack (the propulsive, mostly instrumental version of "Mrs. Robinson" that played as Ben drove up and down California looking for Elaine was hard to get out of my head when I was driving, primarily because my first car didn't have a working radio), and while I was familiar with their stuff, I wouldn't say that I was a fan necessarily. I liked "The Sound of Silence," and "I Am a Rock" was good, but a lot of their stuff sounded a little cheesy to me. It was probably their folk leanings (they had been caught up in that movement thanks to early Bob Dylan, but once he went electric so did they) which sounded wispy and a little wimpy to a kid who rocked out to the Who. But gradually, over the years, I developed a grudging admiration for the work of Paul Simon, with and without his white-boy-Afro-ed partner in crime.

"The Boxer" is one of those songs that I discovered thanks to a friend, though I'd been aware of it before. It's funny how, when you care about someone, sometimes you raid their cultural preferences for things that you might like yourself, either to ingratiate yourselves with them or because you genuinely feel drawn to that particular artifact. I'd bought a Genesis best-of under the sway of this new acquaintance (who had simply mentioned once that she like Phil Collins), but I was hesitant about going in for S&G in all their close-harmony glory. I made the call to pay for the "best of" CD if I ever came across it used, and so when I did see it in a record store I had to put up or shut up.

I have mellowed in my musical tastes as I've gotten older, and the guy who listened to punk rock exclusively was never really "just" listening to the Sex Pistols or the Clash (I seem to remember that guy also having a hidden affinity for ABBA, too, though he would probably deny it out of some misguided sense of machismo). Simon and Garfunkel didn't really do it for me as a teenager, aside from the context of Dustin Hoffman wondering if Anne Bannecroft was trying to seduce him, but now they seem just right.

And while I have other songs that are my favorites ("Kodachrome" and "Me and Julio Down By the Schoolyard" stand out solo-Simon-wise, for example), I do like "The Boxer." Whether it's just because a certain someone likes it or because I came to identify with the narrator of the song as events have transpired in my life, I can't say. But if a song moves you, it moves you. It is what it is.

The Who, "Behind Blue Eyes"

If I haven't said it before, I'll say it again: for my money, the Who are the greatest rock band of all time. Sure, there's the Rolling Stones (I was late to the party on that one, their post-1978 work for the most part has been more miss than hit but I acknowledge the greatness of that period between "Paint It, Black" and "Start Me Up"), and a little band out of Liverpool that happen to be my favorite recording group of all time. But in terms of melting your face with music, I can't think of anything better than the windmill theatcrics of Pete Townshend, the unbridled glory and fury of Keith Moon behind the drum kit, the deceptively restrained bass lines of John Entwistle, and the ear-piercing soul of Roger Daltrey. A better band there never was when they were at their peak (roughly 1966 to 1978, when Moon took one trip too many and ended up gone before his time).

I was a convert to the Who when I was in high school, I got into their Mod period from the early Sixties pretty heavily. I liked the smart fashions they wore (their 1965 look is less ridiculous than the way a lot of bands dress now), and I desperately wanted a Union Jack jacket like Townshend wore in many of the publicity photos of the band from that era. I was hesitant to embrace the later "stadium rock" incarnation of the band, the era that provided countless opening-credits songs to various offshoots of CSI, but you can only resist the awesomeness that is Who's Next for so long. But it was on that album that I encountered the one Who song I will never embrace to my bosom, no matter how much time passes. And I have no idea why that is.

I think I've talked here before about songs I love from bands I hate or dislike; "Behind Blue Eyes" is the song I hate from a band that I love. I'm not sure why it is, necessarily. It could be the "Stairway to Heaven" factor, where a song is celebrated for the explosiveness at its end but also contains a lengthy build-up section that goes on and on (kinda like foreplay...ooh, Freudian territory there) and just leaves me unsatisfied. Perhaps it's the identification with a villain as the narrator of the song (the tune came from the abandoned Lifehouse rock opera, a follow-up to Tommy that was ten times as ambitious and therefore unlikely to be realized), but I have read books and listened to songs and watched movies where the main guy, the guy we are supposed to root for, is a bad egg. Alex in Clockwork Orange comes to mind, and I love the moral ambiguity of the movie (resolved too easily in the book, in my opinion, by the onset of maturity) in which the hero's evil acts are somehow less so compared to the machinations of the state. So really, it can't be that. Why do I hate it so?

The answer might simply be that I do, the same way that "A Quick One (While He's Away)," the live version that the Who did at the Stones' "Rock and Roll Circus" and which later turned up on The Kids Are Alright is my all-time favorite Who song. Sometimes you can over-intellectualize why you respond to something or someone the way that you do. Sometimes it's just a matter of catching it at the right time; perhaps if I'd been more receptive of the themes in The Godfather (or hadn't seen the last movie in the trilogy first, thanks to that one year we had HBO legit), I'd be able to call it my favorite movie of all time (it isn't; the answer seems to change year to year but overall the original Star Wars trilogy could probably claim that title in my heart of hearts). But The Godfather to me is a great film, just not one of my favorites.

"Behind Blue Eyes" is the story of the villain of Lifehouse, how he's been pushed to his dastardly deeds because people perceive him as evil, and he has to live up to it. In that sense, he's more in line with Pinky Brown from Brighton Rock, a killer who's reluctant to do so because the wages of sin weigh him down. In the movies where the bad guys know they're bad guys, you always come away rooting for their downfall. But in the movies where the bad guy is a Hans Gruber from the original Die Hard (his greed more than anything defines him as evil, but other than being a killer he's quite charming and you almost want to root for him to get away at least), it's harder to seperate yourself from the moral abyss. In Star Wars, of course, Anakin Skywalker was simply trying to protect the woman he loved from his nightmarish vision of her death in childbirth; you could argue that the evil he does was rooted in a noble cause. Bad guys like that fascinate us not because they're evil, but because they don't know they're doing evil, not until the last minute. Sometimes an actor likes to ham it up as the bad guy (God love him, Anthony Hopkins literally sunk his teeth into the Hannibal Lector role), but the bad guys that remain in the mind long after, the ones that are truly troubling, are the ones you feel a little sympathy for after it's all said and done. Maybe that's why "Blue Eyes" draws my ire: I can see why the bad guy is the bad guy, even if I deplore his actions.

Real life, of course, is more complicated; you have bad guys for sure (Hitler springs to mind, hard to find anyone who ever mistook him for a wounded soul. He was just evil, greedy and morally evil), but sometimes the good guys aren't so squeaky-clean. If you follow sports at all, you know this for a fact. Lance Armstrong is simply the most recent in a long list of sports stars who sold a counterfeit image of "wholesomeness" that was so far removed from who they really are. Maybe that's why I hate "Blue Eyes," because it doesn't make it easy to hate the villain, because when you hear it in his own words, you begin to understand. That's what the bad guy wants, of course; that's how he can ultimately win. The old line from Donald Sutherland about the Devil in Paradise Lost applies here and in other narratives of violence and death: the most interesting character is the bad guy.

Chuck Klosterman has written a whole book on the subject of bad guys, I'm gonna buy it eventually (probably the weekend, after I get paid), and I'm guessing he goes into way more detail about the nature of villainy in his book than I can get to in one blog entry. But I thought I could lend my voice to the discussion, via the song I hate the most from the band I love above all others save the Beatles. Because sympathy for the Devil is easy to avoid when you're younger and more naive about how the world really works.

The Sounds of Summer

A quick look at what's on the radio lately:

Pink featuring Nate Reuss, "Just Give Me a Reason" - this is about the most overplayed song right now, it's decent but doesn't really bear up well to repeated listens. I can't shake the feeling that Nate is the voice of the Fairy Dad on "Fairly Oddparents" (I have cousins who watch Nick and Disney religiously, so I know more about kids's show than any thirty-three-year-old without kids should). Someone I know has this as a ringtone, so every time I hear it I look to see if someone's phone is ringing.

Robin Thicke featuring Pharrell and T.I.. "Blurred Lines" - I have to say, this is my favorite radio song so far this summer, it's very reminiscent of "Got To Give It Up" by Marvin Gaye. I understand there's a version of the video where the hot models are topless. Alas, I am much too puritanical to look for it...

Bruno Mars, "Treasure" - First time I heard this, I thought "are you fucking with us, Bruno?" I couldn't take it seriously. But I concede that I'm warming up to it. Imagine if the future of music had been Billy Ocean's "Caribbean Queen."

Mumford and Sons, "I Will Wait" - Remember when this band was new, and you couldn't wait to hear their new stuff? Yeah, that's over now.

Macklemore and Ryan Lewis...no, not even gonna pretend I can talk about them. They're the Vanilla Ice of this generation. Trust me, one or both of them will be in a reality show with Verne Troyer before it's all said and done.

The Lumineers, "Ho Hey" - They're the Mumford and Sons of 2013. I hated this song for a little while last month, but it's slowly won its way back into my heart. The follow-up single ain't too shabby either.

Emeli Sandie, "Next to Me" - Another song that would be decent if not overplayed to death. It's on pace to be this year's "Somebody That I Used to Know"

Taylor Swift, "22" - We get it, you're twenty-two. Shut the fuck up about it.

Florida Georgia Line featuring Nelly, "Cruise" - Can we all agree that this is the worst goddam song ever? Not even "worst song of the year" or "worst song of the century." Just awful, awful.

Vampire Weekend, "Diane Young" - To end on a positive note, this is not even the best song on the album (I think "Hannah Hunt" might be even better), but it's a start. Ezra Koenig and company are welcome in my CD player anytime.

Ed Sheeran, "Lego House"

When I think of Ed Sheeran, I think of Van Morrison. It's hard not to, the physical resemblences are hard to miss: both are red-headed Irish guys (Morrison was born in Ireland, Sheeran is English-born but of Irish descent), Ed looks like a young Van facially, and both are singer-songwriters. Superficial, yes, but pop music is nothing if not superficial at least on the surface (I feel like that last thought could have been culled from Yogi Berra).

The dude shot to fame with that song about the crack whore (yes, if you pay attention to the lyrics, it's a lovely tune about crack addiction), but I like his follow-up single "Lego House" better, especially the music video that combines the actual music video his record company made (starring Ron Weasley) and a fan-made video out of, well, Lego animation. It's kind of a trip.

It's one of those songs that gives you hope, in a landscape dominated by Train and Nicki Minaj and Taylor Swift (all artists who, while not necessarily terrible, are a little overplayed on the radio, as I'm sure Mr. Sheeran will be before I finish typing this sentence). It's a song that you can actually relate to, that isn't about partying all the time but about the fragile nature of interpersonal relationships. Because you know what? Those can break down at any time.

Facebook is both a blessing and a curse, in that you can share everything about yourself with total strangers but you can share everything about yourself with perfect strangers. I've seen it numerous times and been guilty of it myself, enough to feel like privacy is almost more of a choice than a right in the digital age. We live in a time where you are almost expected to divulge everything you're thinking or going through on social media, and while that can be healing it can also lead to places you don't want to go. You can vent about someone or something that "did" you "wrong," and you'll feel good for about five minutes until you realize that the other person or entity might see that, and you have to deal with the repercussions. That's why I've backed off talking so much about personal things on Facebook or other social media, unless I have the assurance of anonymity that is all too rare in the information age.

Suffice it to say, a friendship is broken, and in the past my efforts to fix it would've led to simply more hurt feelings and the all-too-common occurance of an absence in my life where once there was a presence that I might not have realized could be gone. Just because you're hurt doesn't give you the license to take it out on who hurt you, even if (like I said) it makes you feel better for about five minutes. The world can be a crazy, scary place, and if you're lucky you can have people in your life that will see you at your worst and still be ready to call you a friend. This has really gotten away from the song I was talking about, but that's how these things go sometimes; you start off in one direction then you go down a side street. I think that's what makes music so important to me and others like me, it helps bring you to places you might not otherwise go. As I've heard "Lego House" on the radio or seen the video on TV this past month, I've been more than happy to let it wash over me, clean out the areas of my brain polluted by my own self-doubts and recriminations over actions that hurt someone I care about and for which I am truly sorry.

So I'd like to think that, when I hear this song again (and it's beginning to get regular rotation, so it's a certainty), I'll feel that same sense of regret tinged with happiness for what once was and could have been. I don't know what the future holds, but I look towards it anyway. And Ed Sheeran, whatever else he does with his career (he might have the longetivity of a Van Morrison, or the brief flicker of so many other bright young songwriters before him), has left me with a song that I can listen for and to when life seems overwhelming, and that's a good thing.

The Decemberists, "Grace Cathedral Hill (Live)"

Some people have church; I have bookstores.

I realize some people will find that blasphemy, but it's true; my place of worship is amongst a row of dusty old paperbacks or brand-new hardbacks that someone read once, or bought for a friend who didn't want it, or just wanted to give back after enjoying said book and hope that someone else would find it amongst the stacks of other volumes and give it a try. There are few such places where I feel like I can spend hours (literally; ask anyone in my family who's ever made the mistake of accompanying me to Books-A-Million or a thrift store in the past, they'll testify to that) just roaming around, looking for something in particular or nothing in general. It's pretty damn relaxing too, if you're in good with the owner of a small bookshop and they let you use the restroom if you have to.

Every Saturday, it seems, I go out early to enjoy a day hitting up various locales in the greater Clemson/Anderson area. After a long week at work or in my personal life, it's my own mini-vacation. Sometimes I have a book in mind that I'm looking for, but more often than not I'm just winging it, seeing what's out there and hoping to stumble across something that will divert me for a few hours, entertain me or educate me (or both). I've been a reader for as long as I can remember, it's one of the things I got from my mom. And it's something that I wonder about sometimes.

To be a reader, a real dedicated reader of books (not just fiction, but non-fiction, essay collections, science books, sports books, and so on), you have to be comfortable with being alone for large chunks of time. Readers are not necessarily social creatures. We tend to hide away from fun, natural light, and conversations. We're happiest, it seems, thrust into a fictional world that only exists on the printed (or electronic) page but which comes alive in our vivid imaginations. Bookstores, however, almost force us out of our shells, because we have to be polite when we ask someone who's standing between us and that Graham Greene novel we want to move out of our way. Or we could just wait till they move on to the James Patterson section, whatevs. To each their own.

The Decemberists seem like a "literary band," which is a nice way of saying "educated douchebags with guitars," because most bands are just douchebags with guitars (tell me you don't die a little inside when you read about how Keith Moon was an abusive prick away from the drum set or that Jim Morrison really believed his poetry was good. Tell me that doesn't make you re-think celebrity hero-worship). But I like what I've heard of them, and "Grace Cathedral Hill," the live version off their live album, made me think of this topic when I was driving to work today. There's a difference between being lonely and loneliness, and to me bookstores (be them big chain places like BAM, where I'm more likely to cruise around the pop-culture or sports sections, or the little neck-of-the-woods places like McClure's or McDowell's) are ways of being alone together, with fellow converts to the religion of the printed word.

McClure's is in Clemson, off the main drag and full of goodies in all the subjects I love. Back when I needed money, I'd take in books there for sale or donations, and sometimes I still see books that I had to part with (or was all too happy to be rid of, in some cases) still on the shelf, waiting for a second (or third, or fourth) home. It's usually a good way to kill time if I have a particularly brief lunch and still have time before going back to work. McDowell's is more for the weekends, because it's in Anderson and way past the mall (which has BAM now). It's this little house just off the highway, a co-worker told me about it and when I found it I was in reader-heaven. It's literally stuffed with books, you can't turn around without finding more than you thought could be in a particular section. If the term "book-gasm" doesn't exist, it should to describe both McClure's and McDowell's. And no, I wasn't paid for those endorsements.

Of course, there are other book-buying areas out there; I sometimes stop at a spot just before you get into Anderson, it's more geared towards mystery-book readers and so, but their tiny non-fiction section has yielded some wonderful finds (and I was a little miffed when I saw a copy of Inherent Vice, which I'd bought new elsewhere, there on the used fiction shelf last weekend). If I have to go to Easley for any reason, I usually stop in a place that's next to the railroad tracks. Odd thing is, every book I've bought there usually ends up unread and donated elsewhere (the trend began when the owner was kind enough to let me use the facilities and, common courtesy being what it is, I bought a copy of The Guns of August even though I'd read it, just to be nice. Ever since, when I get home with a book that I bought there, I automatically lose interest. I don't know why). There are chain bookstores, of course: BAM, which used to be in a shady strip mall in Anderson before it moved into the Mall and got nicer (but I miss the old, seedy location); and Booksmith, in Seneca, which has been more of a lurking destination than a buying one (though I occasionally do feel like committing to a purchase).

You might think I'm wasting gas and money, and you could be right. None of the books I've bought and read have led me to a higher-paying job, a relationship with a beautiful woman who finds my Monty Python-quoting hilarious, or much else that I might want. But until any or all of those things do occur, I can always get away from my troubles for a few hours every Saturday, whether I buy anything or not. Religious experience? Perhaps.

Fun., "Carry On"

There are songs that you like because they're sad and you (as a reasonably well-adjusted and happy individual) can laugh them off because, well, it's not about you. Then there are songs that you hate because they're so damn cheery and you're miserable enough without being reminded that somewhere, in some place, someone is having way more fun than you. Then there are songs that, when you're in a lousy mood but not in a cutting-my-wrists-to-Radiohead way, can promise that, whatever the trials and tribulations you go through, tomorrow is just around the corner. And sometimes, they come from the most unlikely sources.

Fun. were not much "fun" to my ears after being subjected to the far-too-many-times-on-the-damn-radio frequent airplay of "We Are Young" (a song that until recently I still didn't like, though time has passed and I appreciate the song a bit now that it's not every damn where). I wasn't too sure about "Some Nights", though I thought it was weird using Civil War imagery (as a "War Between the States" aficionado, I do like a good ole fashioned shoot-out between Blue and Gray). But their most recent single, "Carry On," kinda hits for me right now.

I won't go into it here, because some things are not fodder for "Trevor's gonna blog about it!" Some things just are, and as Jimmy Buffett once said, it's my own damn fault. But anyway, I can say that, in the past, I have had many, many, many crappy times where music has helped me through, and this is one of thoses.

While I won't talk about the specifics of what I won't talk about (trust me on this one), I will generally allude to the growing sense of unease as I pass from my early thirties towards something that I grew up believing was supposed to be "grown-up life." When I was young (no, that wasn't a cue for that song), I thought that age brought maturity, responsiblity taking over for fun times, the assurance that somewhere out there was a life that you could live and look back on and say "that was like a movie." Perhaps it was the Reagan Era's version of "Good Feelings," that as long as you had money and stuff you'd be alright. I know people who still cling to those notions, and while I don't begrudge them much their money or stuff, I do know that often times happiness doesn't come with a price tag (at least not an actual price tag).

But as I've gotten older, my "wiser" quotient seems to fluctuate between Obi-Wan Kenobi and Anakin Skywalker as a punk-ass wannabe Jedi. And when I fuck up, my go-to response of humor doesn't quite cut it anymore. At least not with the people who matter.

Bad times, yes, but they will pass, maybe not today or tomorrow, but they will. I think my worst time as a person was after I got fired from my library job. I didn't have a breakdown per se, but anyone who knew me back then would probably say I was "worrisome" at the least. But I got up each morning out of bed, went looking for a job, found two jobs, and have managed somehow not to screw up majorly. A little here and there minor screw-ups, but nothing major.

I would say to anyone reading this, if you're down and weary: this too will pass. I think it's fair to say that bad times exist to remind us to cherish those fleeting "good times" we have, those that get us through when everything seems against us or we're not sure what to do because nothing has seemed to work so far. It's not what happens to you but how you deal with it that defines you. Granted, I'm pretty crappy at dealing with some things (there I go, alluding to "it." No, I won't say what "it" is). But I'd like to think that I can do better. I'm working on it, reading lots of books about how to live. Two of them by Phil Jackson, of all people (if you haven't read Eleven Rings or Sacred Hoops, do so now. Though a lot of Hoops is covered by the first few chapters in Rings, you still get a good reading experience). Perhaps I can make amends someday, perhaps not. But I will carry on.

Talking Heads, "Once In a Lifetime"

Last December, we were all eyeing the calendar nervously, awaiting the 21st like a lot of people eye an upcoming high school reunion if they've never managed to leave their parents' basement and the best job they can manage is assistant manager at Sewage Control: with dread. I want to say that I was calm, cool, and dismissive of such madness, having lived through Y2K with nary a scratch. But there was a small part of me (the part that still gets spooked by old episodes of "Unsolved Mysteries") that thought "uh oh, what if this is the end?" So I made a list of things that I wanted to do in case the world didn't end, in the thought that, if it did, I wouldn't have to.

Stupid fuckin' Mayans...

One of the things I wanted to achieve (and I believe I wrote about it here before, so excuse the repetition) is to purchase and read Moby-Dick in its entirity. Thanks to the fact that the Mayans couldn't find their ass from a hole in the ground, I set out on December 22 for the nearest Books-A-Million to get a full-on, Penguin-edition-with-intro-from-Nathaniel-Philbrick copy of "The Mobes" (as I like to call it...no, not catching on? Okay) and start pounding away at all 625 pages of it.

Last weekend, not this past one but the one before, I finished the damn thing...and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

"Moby-Dick" of course is a story of boy meets whale, boy tries to kill whale, all but one crew member perish (hey, if you didn't know how the story ends, your cultural education is sorely lacking. It's like being shocked at the end of Titanic. "What do you mean, they hit the iceberg?"). It's also one of the best double-entendre titles in all of literature. And, as a Bachelor of the Arts in English, I have plenty to say about it. Read on, if you want to hear:

First things first, don't skimp on the el cheapo versions if you want to experience Herman Melville's story. Go for the ones that are big and thick (no pun intended). As someone who's been a lifelong reader, I love the feel of books, the way that you have a sense of accomplishment when you get past a certain point in page-count for the day or in terms of where you are in the story. I'm sure someday I might splurge for a Kindle or something, but so far I'm good with the old-fashioned version of books. You can't dog-ear a tablet.

Secondly, the story itself: sure, the ship sinks in the end, but the voyage it (and you) goes on is worth all the overlong examinations of just what whales are and what they mean. Ishmael, the main character, is probably one of the weirdest but most endearing narrators in all literature; he's just a guy in need of a job (with perhaps an unhealthy obsession with sperm whale anatomy) who signs up for the Good Ship Lollipop of possibly Satanic captains with their own unhealthy obsessions with sperm whales (and their own anatomy). He kinda disappears as a main character midway through, and even seems to be unusually aware of things that, if he were simply as he presents himself (a crewman on a whale boat), he would have no way of knowing about. But it's a novel, not a non-fiction story, and you can kinda do whatever the hell you want in a novel. As long as the reader is willing to follow along.

The language of the book can be daunting if you have no previous exposure to nineteenth-century literature (I honestly think that, if I didn't already have an appreciation for Jane Austen and one or two of the Bronte sisters, I would've been hopelessly lost). Melville has a lot to say (about six-hundred pages' worth), and sometimes I had to take a break from the book because I needed a rest (thus why it took me almost five months to finish). But it's one of those books that you can put down for a time and pick back up with very little lost in terms of finding your way back around. For such a thick book, the chapters themselves (when it's not Ishamel telling you more than you ever wanted to know about what's inside a sperm whale, for instance) are pretty short, almost alarmingly so; I'd start a chapter on one page, turn to find it concluding well before the end of the next page, and wonder what the hell happened. But you get used to it once you really get into it.

So my review (and thus, the reference to the Talking Heads song in the title of this essay): reading "Moby-Dick" can definitely disorient you by being possibly the most difficult book you'll ever read. But do try and pick it up at least once or twice, and stick with it if you can. I doubt I'll ever feel the urge to read any more Melville, but "Moby-Dick" does stand up as being a classic (and not just in the way that Mark Twain defined a "classic" as a book that everyone agreed deserved the title but no one bothered to actually read). Put aside some time for Ahab, he'll lead you to ruin but you can always come up for air. It really is a once-in-a-lifetime experience, and you can impress friends at parties.

Assuming that the parties you go to are attended by fellow English majors...