Community Gardens

I start by offering up one poem that isn’t mine. It’s by a writer named Carolyn Forche from her book Gathering the Tribes, published in 1976. I think I bought this book in a used bookstore many years ago in Fargo, ND. I knew nothing about it then, but it’s become a book I sort of regularly reach for. The weird thing is I can never find the thing—the feel or vibe or whatever—that I’m looking for in it, but I always find something else that fascinates me. I like her voice. For example:

We slip an old Dodge

tailgate beneath the pots.

The iron swims, a stone lake.

Rhubarb boils down to its strings.

Water hissing in trout.

When we have eaten

we swallow lumped smoke of piñon.

A cloud of stars gathers as if

thoughts too distant for time will snow

this night.

I was eight, you, eleven,

when we agreed to meet here.

There’s a community garden on Portland, Maine’s Eastern Promenade that my family likes to visit in the summertime. Often we’ll bring a picnic there around sunset and watch Casco Bay turn purple. Wine-dark, as Homer called it. He nailed that. I love these times, walking through the gardens. I like that they’re not fancy, it’s a working garden where people are growing things to eat or sell. It feels connected to humanity in a very holy way. More community gardens. I think that’s the vibe.

I’ve been reading a lot lately, or at least holding books in my hands a lot. It’s been tricky to find the proper tenor of what I want to read right now. I think maybe I’m looking for color, freshness, something that feels like it rises up out of these doldrums that we’re passing through. I read Stephen King’s Misery for the first time, and it was amazing, like a big joyful shout (despite the bloody plot, or course). Barry Hannah’s Ray—a very short novel at 113 pages—is totally mind-bending mainly for the way that he seems to reinvent language, almost like he wrote it in a trance. Pure vernacular poetry, and sad. Funny and sad. That’s a great combination.

I’ve also been writing a lot, mostly for a new Hiss record. I’m in that treacherous but interesting phase where I’ve written a bunch of songs, but I’m missing something important still. Learning to surrender to this, still. So I keep writing.

Listening to music has also been a salve these last few weeks, and below you’ll find the latest installment—the second, I believe—of the A Place Where No One Can Find Me Radio Hour. This is a mixtape of songs recorded off my records at home, crackles and all, that are doing something to me right now. Some of them I’ve known forever—like, I remember when that Blonde Redhead record was new—and some of them came into my life recently. Music is good. My usual disclaimer: I realize a single 43 minute and 47 second embedded audio file is unwieldy for most busy lives. I still feel like it does that thing that I’ve always loved about mixtapes better than any streaming service can. Mixtapes take you to that interior place that belongs to the maker; like walking into someone’s room, and they’ve got incense burning and Christmas lights and you’re drinking coffee together. EDIT: Thanks to Brian Pilger, we’ve got a streaming version here:

And the mixtape version here:

Blonde Redhead “I Still Get Rocks Off”

Fontella Bass “Now That I've Found a Good Thing”

Creedence Clearwater Revival “Sailor's Lament”

Van Dyke Parks “John Jones”

Bag-o-wire “Bag-o-wire”

Reigning Sound “Falling Rain”

Vince Guaraldi Trio “Little Birdie”

Rita Lee “Tempo Nublado”

Rance Allen Group “Hot Line to Jesus”

The Rolling Stones “Can You Hear the Music”

Ahmad Jamal “Tranquility”

Jody Stecher and Friends “Leela Leela”

Nairobi Sisters “Promised Land”

Ry Cooder “Rally 'Round the Flag”

More to come, folks. Better git it in your soul. Thank you for reading.

xo

mc

PS: One little thing about serendipity, coincidence, whatever we want to call it; this kind of this happens to me all the time. I got on a plane to Little Rock, Arkansas last week to play my final Hiss Golden Messenger gig of the year. I sat down behind a man that had gotten on the plane early and seemed liked he was trying to be incognito, with his baseball hat brim pulled down very low over his face. “That’s Billy Bob Thornton,” I said to myself. To confirm my hunch, I looked up his Wikipedia page that told me he was from Arkansas. I knew it was him, and I texted many friends to tell them that I was sitting behind Billy Bob Thornton on an airplane.

The plane landed and we disembarked, and I got a good look at the man at baggage claim. It was not Billy Bob Thornton. Not even close. I wish I had a picture to show you how wrong I was.

Anyhow, I played the gig—it was a great one, I thought—and went back to my hotel to catch some sleep before catching an early flight home, and who’s the guest on Steven Colbert’s show? Billy Bob Thornton.

Is the universe trying to tell me something when it does this kind of thing? If so, what? I’ll take answers in the comments.