last night

Last night I was at home reading Sarah Vowell’s The Partly Cloudy Patriot which Morgan had just gotten signed at Tuesday night’s reading. The Current turned on in the background for music and I grumbled once or twice about how Mark Wheat seemed to be talking too much. At one point he announced that he was going to be playing a song off the new Atmopshere album that they’ve been hawking quite a bit (and I have been listening to for months – first off a crappy internet copy – then finally off the real deal). The song he said was called “That Night”. I scrunched my face and looked up at the ceiling for a minute trying to figure out which song that was, I’m never an ace at song titles, but I just couldn’t place which one it would be. That is until the familiar sorrowful first lines of music came on followed by the driving beat and those lines of memoriam for the girl who lost her life two years ago in Albuquerque.

I was stunned. I sat there for a minute not knowing how to feel. Maybe it was the chipper way Wheat had announced the song. Maybe it was the fact that this song had struck me as painful. No, it’s not the best song on the album, but it recollects a real moment when a girl was raped and murdered after an Atmosphere show and the honest visceral reaction to this occurring. Of course as all good songs though it is more than just a recollection and reaction – to me it feels like a prayer, a eulogy. It is sorrowful, confused, and angry and private, as private as a song can be on an album that is trying (and doing a decent job) to get national recognition.

When the song was over there was an emptiness unsuccessfully bridged by the next song on the radio. A vacuum which on the album they (I’m going to give Ant credit here) do such a great job at filling with the next song "Get Fly". Redemption I think at the first couple bars.

There is suffering, but there is also redemption.

What are you supposed to do – really?

You wake up startled out of deep sleep near 3:00am on a weeknight to the sounds of “GET YOUR FUCKING HANDS IN THE AIR! GET DOWN ON THE GROUND” Men are shouting and you hear the screech of tires. You in your partially REM state assume it is the police. You don’t even realize that you’re assuming at this point. You wonder what could possibly be going on? A drug bust? They’re catching somebody doing something wrong you guess and opt to stay away from your window and curl up in an even tighter ball against the wall and fall back to sleep.

You mention this to a couple friends, don’t check the papers and of course don’t have a tv so don’t even bother with news coverage. At a staff meeting the following Friday you are asked to share a scary moment with the group at your table (in the spirit of the upcoming spooky holiday). You can think of nothing to relate, nothing that actual scared you that would make for a good story and instead decide to relate of when you were last really startled, a couple of days prior around 3 in the morning. Your table seems overly impressed with your sharing and you quickly feel like and ass upon hearing of a group members memories of daily bombing while living in Iran.

Every so often in the week following it pops into your mind – the loud shouts – then you find this story upon a daily scan of the strib. Was it Tuesday morning you woke up? The proximity of the crime to your window (cracked open for the cool fall air) through which you heard the yells has passed beyond startling to downright scary. You should have called the cops. Your karma is f*’d to say the least.

gone huntin'

Yesterday morning I woke up to an *Urgent* text message from my younger brother Charlie.

"Do you remember Bambi, well i'm gonna kill her if i get the chance to or Bambi's family... In da woods"

I responded with "Never saw bambi. Good Luck!"

Awww fall in Minnesota... nothing like hunting opener to bring my family closer together.