It's almost fall here in the North Carolina Piedmont, a flat place halfway between the mountains and the sea if I'm being simple, but really such a gorgeous and complicated jewel on so many levels. I often get up in the morning before the sun is up, and a couple weeks ago I made a deal with myself that I would spend the time before morning fully rises reading poetry. No phone. I wondered whether just exposing my eyeballs to beauty first thing in the morning might change my perspective on the day. I started with a huge volume of Louise Gluck's collected work. She is such a gorgeous and seasonal writer, and her voice feels like a really important one in the world of words. The next week, I read Frederico Garcia Lorca's poems. To me, Lorca is one of the OGs in terms of color and image and rhythm. Like so:
Green I want you green.
Green wind, green boughs.
Ship on the sea
and horse on the mountain.
With shadow at her waist
she dreams at her railing,
green flesh, green hair,
and eyes of cold silver.
Green I want you green.
Under the gypsy moon
things are looking at her,
and she cannot return their gaze.
That is so good. The repetition of the word “green” is doing such elegant work. It almost reads like a Jason Molina song; I wonder if he knew Lorca's work? It could also be a Hiss song, which it maybe sort of is.
Before I ever learned to play an instrument, I loved words. I've always loved poetry. Just, like, the way it feels. I've always written poetry over in the margins of my life, but now I'm trying to make more of a concerted effort to actually finish poems, away from instruments or musical melody because I love the mystery poetry conjures. More mystery, please. So, I'm sharing a poem that I wrote a couple years ago while on Spain's Costa Brava. In fact, I even found a picture I took of the beach that I wrote it on. It was a beautiful place. There were many fires in Spain that summer; I feel like saw smoke rising as we drove from the beach back to Barcelona. Spain is a good place.
This is the beach. I couldn’t even tell you what it was called. It was very beautiful and the water was the perfect temperature. You can see the diving board coming off the rock on the right side of the picture. We ate potato chips.
I’ve been writing a lot of music. A new Hiss record, I guess I can say. I have to approach that process carefully nowadays in order to keep it real. So I end up writing and recording a lot of music just for myself, knowing in the back of my mind that I’m just easing into…something? I guess? And then occasionally songs will arrive that want to gather with other songs thematically. And then eventually these coalescing songs begin to take shape as some kind of circular emotional narrative. I’m not telling you anything any other songwriter wouldn’t say, I don’t think. Sometimes I’ll record of cover of a song that I love—like the Bill Fox song “Sara Page,” for instance, which I’ve put behind the paywall—and it will move me towards writing something of my own.
Incidentally, I’ve been revisiting this playlist I made many years ago that I called Spring Song and I have to say, it’s one of my fucking favorite collections of songs for this moment in my life. There are so many deep cuts. I mean, that Pastor T.L. Barrett song needs no introduction really, but that Bill Withers tune? Man, that James Gadson groove. That Jorge Ben Jor song! Holy shit, listen to that cuica playing! And really, maybe my favorite tune on that list—Brook Benton’s version of Charlie Rich’s “Life Has Its Little Ups and Downs.” The song is masterfully written, and Brook Benton brings something so grown-up to it in such a perfect way, and with so much pathos. Also, that’s the Dixie Flyers backing him up, the studio group put together by oddball genius Jim Dickinson that played on just a handful of amazing records before Atlantic Records shut them down. That Aretha Record Spirit in the Dark is also them, and there’s an incredible Carmen McRae record where they’re the backing band too. I love music.