Paul Auster's Winter Journal

If I was able to transform my writing to that of another author, few names would be placed higher than that of Paul Auster.  I was first introduced to Auster’s works by chance when I spotted The Brooklyn Follies on a library shelf, and have since devoured an additional dozen or so books of his, each as unconventional as the last, and each entirely compelling.   

Auster’s most recent book, Winter Journal, is a memoir, but not in the traditional sense (nothing Auster writes can be considered traditional), and the result is a great read, if for no other reason that it twists a tired genre into something odd and thought-provoking.

First and foremost, he makes the unusual choice to chronicle his life in second person.  The book begins:

You think it will never happen to you, that it cannot happen to you, that you are the only person in the world to whom none of these things will ever happen, and then, one by one, they all begin to happen to you, in the same way they happen to everyone else.

And it continues.  Throughout the book, the word “I” doesn’t appear except in direct quotations.  Using the second person is an interesting technique for an autobiography, but I was surprised at how natural it felt.  Auster’s wife is, in fact, not my wife, but when he writes “Your wife was calm, you remember...and even your little daughter was calm” it works somehow, maybe even better than if he’d used the first person, for it breaks down the normal barriers between author and reader.  Just as Auster inserted himself as a character in his novel, City of Glass, in Winter Journal, he’s inserted the reader.

The book forgoes the chronological expectation of a memoir, and instead describes a nonlinear history of Auster’s physical body: the injuries it sustained, the physical pleasures, the scars – both mental and physical – it endured.  At various points, Auster describes the different sensations and actions that his body (and all of our bodies) have experienced:

Your body in small rooms and large rooms, your body walking up and down stairs, your body swimming in ponds, lakes, rivers, and oceans, your body traipsing across muddy fields...

He spends 52 pages identifying the twenty-one permanent addresses his body has lived in, ten pages describing the plot of a movie he identifies with (and he does it so well that I feel I’ve already seen the 1950 film, D.O.A.), and a page and a half listing the countless activities of his hands (“brushing your teeth, drying your hair, folding towels, taking money out of your wallet, carrying bags of groceries...”).

Unconventional?  You bet.  But so much more interesting than a play-by-play of his life. 

As the title suggests, Winter Journal is from the viewpoint of a man who’s entered a new phase of his life, a man who recognizes the ever-nearing finish line and who devotes time to reflection.  We follow him along a car ride home when he takes a careless left hand turn that nearly kills him, his wife and his child.  We witness the aftermath of the deaths of his father and mother.  The prostitutes he patronized.  The failed first marriage.  The boy who dies from a lightning strike before his very eyes.   None of this is done linearly.  Auster writes in a stream of consciousness that has the potential to bewilder, but instead engrosses.

The most compelling pages occur midway through the memoir, when Auster describes the aftermath of his mother’s passing.  On page 124, he writes of a phone call from a cousin:

It is as if she has trained herself not to breathe while she talks, to spew forth entire paragraphs in a single, uninterrupted exhale, long outrushes of verbiage with no punctuation and no need to stop for an occasional intake of air.  Her lungs must be enormous, you think, the largest lungs in the world, and such stamina, such a burning compulsion to have the last word on every subject.

What follows is a heart-wrenching conversation, as his cousin trashes the memory of Auster’s mother, who died just two days earlier.  The episode highlights a good rule to those who are related to gifted writers: be careful what you say, because your Last Word on a subject is sure to be trumped in a more lasting (and more public) way.

If Auster’s techniques are unconventional, the language he uses is entirely accessible, writing very much as he speaks (check out this interview with Terry Gross on NPR’s “Fresh Air" - he's got a terrific voice).  The result is an interesting read from a man whose gifts are so far-reaching, it’s enough to lead an aspiring author to call it a day.

Ben Folds Five in Chicago

Ben Folds Five are twelve years older since their last tour, but the trio didn’t miss a beat on Sunday night at the Chicago Theater, filled to approximately 80 percent capacity (the band had just performed in Chicago last June).  Supporting their first album since 1999, the band leaned heavily on material from their first two albums, including several surprises that kept even the die-hard fans satisfied.

Occupying only half the stage, Ben Folds, Darren Jessee on drums, and Robert Sledge on bass, ripped through six songs from The Sound of the Life of the Mind, the most effect being “Erase Me” and “Draw a Crowd,” both of which fit in relatively well with the older material.  Folds admitted that they were in a sense rehearsing “Do it Anyway” for the next day’s performance on The Colbert Report, but despite this being the strongest song from the new album, it fell a bit flat live.

I tried prepping my three kids for the concert by playing songs I expected Ben Folds Five to play, but I couldn’t have foreseen “Missing the War,” “Selfless, Cold and Composed” and “Emaline,” and although the inclusion of these lesser known tracks might have made the show more difficult for the uninitiated, it was highly satisfying for long-time fans.  The most surprising inclusions were the Darren Jessee-penned “Magic,” a heartbreakingly beautiful song from The Unauthorized Biography of Reinhold Messner, and “Landed,” the only song the band performed from Ben Folds’s solo era.

The distinctive backing vocals that defined the band’s sound in the 90s were tight and on key, so much so that I wondered if some auto-tuning might have been employed at the mixing board.  Either that, or Jessee and Seldge they’ve gotten stronger as singers over the last decade.  It was a pleasure watching Jessee go about his business without fanfare on his minimalist set, though his cymbals were too loud and shrill in the mix, and Sledge, a bit more stocky than back in the day, looked especially happy to be back on stage with the band, and it was hard for the audience not to feed on the good vibes.

When someone from the audience requested “Rock this Bitch,” Ben began an impromptu composition that addressed the request, guiding his bandmates by announcing the chord changes.

The crowd-pleasing “Army” finished the regular set before the band returned with “Best Imitation of Myself” and “Underground,” two of the best tracks from their first album, and “1 Angry Dwarf and 200 Solemn Faces” ended the evening to a standing ovation. 

I am not a big fan of the new album, and I think the show highlighted how much stronger and more relatable their first two albums of material are than their second two.  Lyrically, little of the new album makes a lot of sense.  It’ll be interested to see if Ben revisits these songs with any regularity in the future either with the Five or as a solo artist, or if they’re relegated to a 2012 time capsule.

Joe Jackson Wows Milwaukee

In the liner notes of Joe Jackson’s  Live: 1980/86, Jackson reveals his philosophy of live performing: artists should play what keeps them excited because an audience will inevitably see through a half-hearted concert.  It’s a mindset that – for the four Jackson performances I’ve attended in years past – never failed to satisfy.  Currently promoting his tribute album to Duke Ellington, Joe Jackson once again wowed an appreciative audience on Saturday night at the Pabst Theater in Milwaukee, blending old and new seamlessly, often with surprising instrumentation and arrangements.

Beginning the evening with a solo performance of Ellington’s “It Don’t Mean a Thing (If It Ain’t Got that Swing)” before segueing into his own “Be My Number Two” (but only after a false start after pressing the wrong patch on his keyboard), Jackson then welcomed his stellar band, including violinist Regina Carter, long-time Jackson percussionist Sue Hadjopoulus, Nate Smith on Drums, guitarist Adam Rogers, Jesse Murphy on bass and Allison Cornell on keys, vocals and viola.  The result was a refreshing mix that effectively wove traditional and well-known with eclectic and obscure.

The audience, ranging in age from the very young (a 9 year-old sat in front of me) to moderately old, some of whom may have been there to simply check out a band playing Ellington tunes, were as appreciative of the lesser-known selections as they were of hit songs like “Steppin’ Out,” “You Can’t Get What You Want,” and “It’s Different for Girls.” The set list that spanned over a half a century never stalled, indicating that even alongside the classics of Ellington, Jackson’s catalogue contains examples of well-crafted songs.

The band looked to Regina Carter to tackle many of the improvised solos, though Jackson, sitting down at a keyboard and sporting a tan blazer, proved capable of handling intricate piano runs, especially during the Ellington pieces. His singing was also surprisingly strong, though he did briefly flub the lyrics to “Is She Really Going Out With Him” and “Real Men” before quickly getting back on track.  

Allison Cornell beautifully sang lead vocals on several songs, and bassist Jesse Murphy – taking place of Jackson’s usual bassist, Graham Maby – played upright and tuba on a few numbers.  The most surprising arrangement was the first encore, when Murphy stood alone with his tuba, leaving the audience to consider the possibilities.  Then he started the familiar opening line of “Is She Really Going Out With Him” with Jackson supplying the harmony on accordion, and the audience sang on cue as if they were hearing a traditional four-piece rock group.  There aren’t many artists who could get away with the dismantling of familiar arrangements with such well-received results.

The show’s highlights, which stirred the audience into a mild frenzy, were the tracks from 1982’s Night and Day, including “Another World,” “Target” and Jackson’s long-time ending number, “A Slow Song.”  Jackson nailed the high note on the latter perfectly, and at various points throughout the song, band members exited the stage, leaving Jackson to finish the concert the way he began – as a solo artist playing the piano.  During the final standing ovation, Jackson bowed and appeared to be genuinely moved, grateful to still be performing after so many years for such open-minded audiences.

Ben Folds Five reunite: an album review

There’s no rule that says lyrics have to make sense, rhyme or be singable.  But it sure doesn’t hurt.  On the first Ben Folds Five album in thirteen years, Folds pursues the lyrical trend he telegraphed in a 2008 Time Magazine interview:

I always want to push the barrier a little bit with lyrics. In songs we're supposed to say, "Girl, uh huh, you done me wrong, you did." But you've got to break out of that.

Break out of that he did, first with Nick Hornby providing the lyrical content for 2010’s Lonely Avenue, and now in The Sound of the Life of the Mind.  Although it’s the first album since 2005’s Songs for Silverman that sounds like it was recorded by a live band, the lack of lyrical flow and hooks keeps the long-awaited reunion from being a more celebrated event. 

When I see Ben Folds perform this Sunday night in Chicago, will anyone in the audience sing along to “Michael Praytor, Five Years Later”:

Good morning, mirror
Break the change to me
I tried to stay too close to see
That there's a pattern in the tiles
And a fool who marks the miles
It was long hair
And this time it was no hair

Poetic?  Debatable, I suppose, but not good lyric writing.  Even drummer Darren Jessee’s lyrical contribution to the album, “Sky High” has lines that are too complex for their own good.  This is rock and roll, after all. 

As for the music, by the time the last Ben Folds Five album was released in 1999, they’d already begun to abandon the sound of their first two releases: the slightly out-of-tune harmonies, the raw energy and edginess – these were smoothed out on The Unauthorized Biography of Reinhold Messner in a more finely-produced collection, so much so that I thought it would be their break-through album, the radio-friendly release that finally finds mass appeal.  It didn’t, but the smoother production remains thirteen years later, making this collaboration sound more like another Ben Folds solo album than a reunion of an old band.  I suspect that live performances of these tracks will invite an edginess on stage that wasn’t captured in the studio.

All three musicians are highly skilled, and Ben Folds is still an insanely talented and smart guy, so the album has its moments.  The opening track, “Erase Me” offers tight Queen-like harmonies (and a line that Folds’s four ex-wives must find either amusing or infuriating: New bio, you’ve gone solo, drawing mustaches on our wedding photo), the distorted bass of Robert Sledge is great to hear again, and Sara without an H is back (on the title track penned by Nick Hornby), this time fleeing her pedestrian friends in favor of going to school to pursue knowledge and beauty.  Coming closest to the signature Ben Fold Five sound is “Draw a Crowd,” which offers one of the few hooks on the album:

Oh, if you’re feeling small, and you can’t draw a crowd
Draw dicks on a wall

The best tune on the album, “Do it anyway,” finally has a lyric that makes sense along with a tight rockabilly pattern reminiscent of the Old 97s. 

So tell me what I said I’d never do
Tell me what I said I’d never say
Read me off a list of the things I used to not like but now I think are OK

On “Away When You Were Here,” Folds sings about a father who died when the narrator was still a boy, and imagines what life would be like had he lived:

You’d have lost that weight
You’d have gone so straight
You’d have made my wedding day
You’d have saved my youth from that point of truth
You’d have kept those wolves at bay

It’s a well-executed lyric.  I wish there were more of these on the album.

A Poem: Where We End Up

I dream of an outdated map

that highlights the location of a friend who lives nearby

but the friend hasn’t lived nearby in over twenty years.

The weight of this realization leads to dry tears

the kind only shed in dreams

but when I awake they’re the real deal.

And now begins another day, too early, too isolated.

They say the world is smaller than ever

but to me it is still too vast, too expansive.

I live in a place where many people have lived all their lives

and down the street are high school buddies

whom they see regularly.

Most of my high school friends don’t even live in the same time zone.

Geneva.  Munich.  Portland.

Might as well be Mars.  Jupiter.  Saturn.

We see each other once every year or two

only to return to the daily grind.

The modes of communication available to us now,

signals that traverse great distances in seconds

are underutilized.

Or unused entirely.

A man of God recently said to me, “It is not what you have or what you do.

It’s where you end up.”

Well then, let me offer a little prayer

for the finish line.

I hope we all end up living on the same block.

There I go again.  Dreaming.