I'm late this year in acknowledging the ninth anniversary of my first White weekend. I was in Florida visiting family, so it slipped my mind. I'd like to say it was because the visit was so much fun, but it wasn't. My 48 year old sister, who has Down Syndrome, is in the advanced stages of Alzheimer's. She lives at home with my 76 year old parents, whose lives now revolve around caring for her. Just before Christmas last year, my sister had a seizure in the middle of the night and apparently aspirated while she was lying unconscious, which led to pneumonia. While in the hospital, she wasn't allowed out of bed for fear that she'd fall. She falls a lot, it began happening a few years ago and was one of the first signs of dementia. The hospital staff didn't want to fill out all the paperwork that would be required if she fell, so they kept her in bed for almost two weeks. When my parents brought her home to continue recovering from the pneumonia, she got out of bed a couple of times, and fell a couple of times. Despite having a physical therapist come for a month of sessions to work on her strength, she's been in bed ever since.
Understand what this means-- She can't get up and walk to the kitchen for meals, or to the bathroom. She can't even stand up to get into a wheelchair. She has to be fed in bed, and as for the bathroom... I spent my recent visit helping my parents, who have their own health issues, change my sister's diapers. My sister is not only sedentary, she's massively overweight. And yet, when it's time to roll her around to clean her up and change her disposable underwear (and often the sheets as well), she suddenly has the strength of three people and it's like she's auditioning for a role on G.L.O.W., Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling.
So this is how my parents live these days, an endless, exhausting round of feeding, cleaning up, washing up, working with a temporary nurse and occupational therapist to try to figure out how to get permanent help paid for by Medicaid because they don't want to put my sister into a care facility and they can't afford to pay for help. Oh, and while I was visiting, my brother called and told us he'd been laid off (again) and he couldn't come visit because his car was broken down.
I came home from Florida to my quiet, shabby, comfortable apartment in Maryland and have had trouble sleeping because I feel guilty that I have the luxury of getting into bed at night knowing that I can sleep without interruptions and then get up the next morning to drive to work at a job that pays me a decent living. And that on the weekends, I can go out and do fun and interesting things without worrying too much about what it costs, or having to take care of anyone but myself and a pair of cats. I shouldn't have much to complain about, should I? And yet how can I go happily about my life knowing what my family is dealing with? We're not a close family and expressions of affection are strained, but just because I don't feel close to them doesn't mean I can't recognize that they didn't ask for their lives to end up this way. So the sense of obligation is strong. I feel guilt that I'm not doing more for them, but then the obligation smothers me and what more can I do, anyway?
All of that aside, it feels lately like a chapter in my life is ending and I've no idea how the next one might develop. Going down the Jack White rabbit hole nine years ago was the beginning of this chapter that seems to be closing-- Nothing's changed as far as my addiction to Jack's music goes, but the peripheral stuff is definitely shifting. I made a lot of friends through his music, and now, lately, it feels like I'm losing many of them. A couple of them died, others became friends with other people, some are taking breaks from social media, and some maybe weren't really friends to begin with. Considering how much of the fun of new records and tours from Jack revolved around making plans with and seeing all of these people, feeling that I don't have these friends to talk and plan with anymore has diminished my excitement about the recent announcement of a new Raconteurs album and a potential tour.
I'm self-aware enough to realize that my own behavior is part of the problem-- Any hint of rejection makes me withdraw. It's been the pattern throughout my life, from elementary school on. I make friends, something happens to bring those friendships to an end (changing schools, changing jobs, moving, disagreements, whatever), I end up alone until some other impetus brings some new people into my life to try to connect with. I've never mastered the art of reaching out. My hermit crab shell fits too tightly. I keep feeling like I need to make more effort to maintain the connections with some of these friends that I feel slipping away, but some of the times when I've tried to do that... it hasn't worked. So instead of reaching out, I step back, back to the familiarity of being on my own.
And I really thought all of this 17 yr old "woe is me" emo angst would've been done with by the time I reached middle age.
Showing posts with label Ugly As I Seem. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ugly As I Seem. Show all posts
February 13, 2019
February 15, 2017
Mea Culpa
I was annoyed at being made to feel like an asshole, and so I became that asshole. And now I can't stop crying long enough to put on makeup for work. Who wants to actually be the asshole they can sometimes turn into? It's embarrassing and frustrating when we're confronted, as we rightly
should be, and reminded of how easily we slip into that role and how hard it is to catch ourselves. How do we deal with it when it happens? Do we let the embarrassment inflame things further, or do we turn away and wallow in regret? If the latter, at what point does regret turn into just plain self-pity? Because self-pity is just another form of being an asshole.
How to regret without wallowing. Gotta figure that one out sometime.
How to regret without wallowing. Gotta figure that one out sometime.
January 25, 2016
A White weekend: Six year anniversary
I have an anniversary coming up in two weeks, but circumstance caused me to celebrate early. Six years ago, I found myself stuck at home during a historic blizzard and spent the hours indoors developing a musical infatuation. This weekend, the mid-Atlantic was hit by another blizzard of record-breaking proportion and I've been stuck at home for four days so far. I've spent these hours re-exploring that old infatuation and what it's come to mean to me.
Anyone who's familiar with this blog surely knows that I'm talking about the music of Jack White. I wrote about that weekend six years ago and he's been a predominant subject here ever since. On the surface it looks like an obsession but, really, it's grown into something else. Sure, I'm still infatuated with Jack. He's an endlessly fascinating personality and his music moves me in a way no other musician's ever has. But in following his work, I've begun to look at a bigger picture surrounding him and his music. He and the company he created, Third Man Records, have become symbols for me of a way to look at the world, primarily art and music, but also culture and society.
For a while now, I've been wearing a silver ring on my lefthand ring finger, a set of three bands that look like bones. I've never told anyone why, but this anniversary seems like an apropos time to talk about it. The ring is a symbol for me, just like a wedding band is a symbol for anyone who's married. As in the film Elizabeth, when Cate Blanchett's Queen Elizabeth proclaims to Lord Burley, "I am married. To England.", I also feel married to something rather than someone, to an ideal rather than to a person. (Though I am actually kind of married to Jack, seeing as how I was at the San Francisco show in 2014 during which he decided to marry every woman in the audience in the middle of the song Blunderbuss. But it was the night after he'd sprained his ankle on stage and he was probably high on Vicodin and for all I know he had it annulled two days later without bothering to tell the couple thousand of us.) That ideal I feel wed to may walk around wearing the form of Jack White, but I see so much more now when I look at him. I've read and been told enough about him, and observed a bit myself, to know the man is way too human to ever qualify for sainthood or keep his balance on any pedestal. But I also see him continually striving to grow, and to make the world a better place in his own way, on his own and with the help of the people he's brought into his organization. Whether it's his New Year's Day advice in the Vault chat room, his inquisitiveness about history and art and science that he shares with his fans through all of the projects he's involved in and things he mentions in interviews, his constant urging to remember the romance and ingenuity of the past while admiring the innovation of the future, the efforts by Third Man Books partners Ben Swank and Chet Weise to spread culture and beauty through poetry, or the many charity drives organized (there are four links in that string of words, click on 'em all) by Third Man Records, that striving is what inspires me. It's the one thing we can all do, regardless of our talent or ability or circumstance, we can always try to grow and be better-- Better at art, better at whatever it is we do, better human beings with a wider field of vision and curiosity and awareness.
Bob Dylan said in Last Thoughts on Woody Guthrie--
...You'll find God in the church of your choice
You'll find Woody Guthrie in Brooklyn State Hospital
And though it's only my opinion
I may be right or wrong
You'll find them both
In the Grand Canyon
At sundown
He wasn't talking about Woody in those last lines, or in any of the lines of that poem. He was talking about what Woody represented to him. I'm no poet like Dylan, but I understand exactly what he meant about Woody because it's very much the way I've come to feel about Jack. When someone creates something that moves us, or begins an organization or movement that inspires us, what that person represents can become something that's both incorporated within them and totally separate from them. Look at Martin Luther King Jr or Abraham Lincoln. On a much smaller scale, look at Woody Guthrie and, more and more, look at Jack White.
Of course, running underneath and through it all is the music. And there's so very much of that to celebrate, not just this weekend but every single day...
Anyone who's familiar with this blog surely knows that I'm talking about the music of Jack White. I wrote about that weekend six years ago and he's been a predominant subject here ever since. On the surface it looks like an obsession but, really, it's grown into something else. Sure, I'm still infatuated with Jack. He's an endlessly fascinating personality and his music moves me in a way no other musician's ever has. But in following his work, I've begun to look at a bigger picture surrounding him and his music. He and the company he created, Third Man Records, have become symbols for me of a way to look at the world, primarily art and music, but also culture and society.
For a while now, I've been wearing a silver ring on my lefthand ring finger, a set of three bands that look like bones. I've never told anyone why, but this anniversary seems like an apropos time to talk about it. The ring is a symbol for me, just like a wedding band is a symbol for anyone who's married. As in the film Elizabeth, when Cate Blanchett's Queen Elizabeth proclaims to Lord Burley, "I am married. To England.", I also feel married to something rather than someone, to an ideal rather than to a person. (Though I am actually kind of married to Jack, seeing as how I was at the San Francisco show in 2014 during which he decided to marry every woman in the audience in the middle of the song Blunderbuss. But it was the night after he'd sprained his ankle on stage and he was probably high on Vicodin and for all I know he had it annulled two days later without bothering to tell the couple thousand of us.) That ideal I feel wed to may walk around wearing the form of Jack White, but I see so much more now when I look at him. I've read and been told enough about him, and observed a bit myself, to know the man is way too human to ever qualify for sainthood or keep his balance on any pedestal. But I also see him continually striving to grow, and to make the world a better place in his own way, on his own and with the help of the people he's brought into his organization. Whether it's his New Year's Day advice in the Vault chat room, his inquisitiveness about history and art and science that he shares with his fans through all of the projects he's involved in and things he mentions in interviews, his constant urging to remember the romance and ingenuity of the past while admiring the innovation of the future, the efforts by Third Man Books partners Ben Swank and Chet Weise to spread culture and beauty through poetry, or the many charity drives organized (there are four links in that string of words, click on 'em all) by Third Man Records, that striving is what inspires me. It's the one thing we can all do, regardless of our talent or ability or circumstance, we can always try to grow and be better-- Better at art, better at whatever it is we do, better human beings with a wider field of vision and curiosity and awareness.
 |
| Thank you to the unknown person on Tumblr who captured and posted this. |
Bob Dylan said in Last Thoughts on Woody Guthrie--
...You'll find God in the church of your choice
You'll find Woody Guthrie in Brooklyn State Hospital
And though it's only my opinion
I may be right or wrong
You'll find them both
In the Grand Canyon
At sundown
He wasn't talking about Woody in those last lines, or in any of the lines of that poem. He was talking about what Woody represented to him. I'm no poet like Dylan, but I understand exactly what he meant about Woody because it's very much the way I've come to feel about Jack. When someone creates something that moves us, or begins an organization or movement that inspires us, what that person represents can become something that's both incorporated within them and totally separate from them. Look at Martin Luther King Jr or Abraham Lincoln. On a much smaller scale, look at Woody Guthrie and, more and more, look at Jack White.
Of course, running underneath and through it all is the music. And there's so very much of that to celebrate, not just this weekend but every single day...
September 19, 2014
Confessions of a Jack White junkie, part 7: Strike three, Boston, yer outta there!!
The roller-coaster hit a trough this morning as I headed north on 95 past Baltimore on the way to Boston. I'd been cranky and argumentative in internet conversations the previous evening, but became truly ugly as soon as the car got into rush hour traffic. Things came out of my mouth directed at other drivers that could've made a sailor not just blush but cower. I know how easily I become ugly like this, it's a trait that runs through both sides of my family and it used to be much more constant in me. Discovering both Buddhism and Stoic philosophy several years ago helped me to learn to watch for it, but ten hours of sleep in four days could lower anyone's resistance to irritation and I'd also woken up this morning with the early symptoms of a cold. So while that couldn't excuse the stuff that kept going through my head, it at least explained why it was happening. Seeing myself become this way reminded me all over again why I identify so strongly with the song I'd requested from Jack that first night in San Francisco. While the song is not specifically about these things, the title alone always reminds me of the pettiness, selfishness, rage, jealousy, and condescension I struggle with so frequently, much of it driven by a shadow need for recognition and attention that I've only recently truly acknowledged. I queued up the White Stripes' Get Behind Me Satan and set I'm As Ugly As I Seem on repeat from the Delaware border all the way into New Jersey, letting the softness of that voice and guitar soothe me as much as possible (live version from the Stripes' appearance on KCRW's Morning Becomes Eclectic, since the album version doesn't seem to have been slapped up on YouTube)-
"I'm as ugly as I seem, worse than all your dreams could make me out to be..." While listening to that song and the rest of that album did calm my road rage, it also caused me to begin wallowing in self-loathing as a response to the anger. When I look at myself in that state, all I can see is a bitter, vicious hag and who could love themself in such a form? But it was too early in the day for wallowing and tears, my makeup had to last all the way through that night, so Satan and Ugly were replaced with Lazaretto and Black Bat Licorice in an attempt to perk up both my mood and energy.
One of the main things I've learned from Buddhism is the concept of right thought, part of the Eightfold Path, which is not about controlling emotions and thoughts but about catching ourselves before we react habitually in unconstructive ways, taking the time to look at the situation we're in to see if it warrants such a reaction or if the reaction is really being driven by other things going on in our own mind. Stoic philosophy takes a similar tack. I think most people think of stoicism as being a grit your teeth, grin'n'bear it sort of attitude, but the philosophy is similar to Buddhism in that it requires you to look at your actions and reactions and think about them. One of my favorite quotes from Marcus Aurelius is one I should have tattooed inside my eyelids, so that all I'd have to do when I needed to be reminded of it would be to close my eyes--
Do not disturb yourself by picturing your life as a whole; do not assemble in your mind the many and varied troubles which have come to you in the past and will come again in the future, but ask yourself with regard to every present difficulty: 'What is there in this that is unbearable and beyond endurance?' You would be ashamed to confess it! And then remind yourself that it is not the future or what has passed that afflicts you, but always the present, and the power of this is much diminished if you take it in isolation and call your mind to task if it thinks that it cannot stand up to it when taken on its own.
I have no problem with being angry, anger can be constructive. But the sort of irrational rage I let loose in the car this morning is not. I can accept it in myself to a small degree, but I have to constantly watch and be ready to reel it in when it goes too far.
Self-loathing is just another habitual negative response that's no more constructive than those directed outwardly. Another tenet of Buddhism is compassion, not just for others but for ourselves. We have to be just as understanding and patient of our own weaknesses as we should be of those of other people. Such weaknesses are something to work on, not something to condemn. We need to work on them because these emotions are all very productive, they breed tremendous amounts of negativity. But they're not constructive, you can't learn anything from them. Unless you can catch yourself, step back from them, and observe them.
Whoa, wait a minute... What's going on here? For a moment there I almost forgot that I'm supposed to be an obsessed Jack White fan-girl, er, I mean junkie. Who do I think I am getting all verbose about philosophies and stuff? Gotta get back to the program!
And snideness is yet one more unconstructive reflex. Oops. So anyway, I was heading north on 95 to Boston today to meet up with Sharon and see Jack fucking White perform at the Bleacher Theater at Fenway Park. Made it through the morass of interchanges that are the NJ/NYC area to find myself admiring one beautiful Art Deco bridge after another along Connecticut route 15 and then the hints of color in early-changing leaves along I-90 in Massachusetts. And there was a whole 'nother cast of characters joining Sharon and I today, people we'd not seen since Jack's Blunderbuss tour two years ago. So I had much to look forward to.
One of the coolest things about the Lazaretto tour is how Jack's mapped it out to coincide with his recent dive into baseball. From attending games to taking batting practice to visiting museums of the sport, to throwing out the first pitch at a Tigers game in Detroit, it's obvious that he's gone deep into the history and minutiae of baseball the way he seems to with everything that interests him. So it had to be a huge deal to him to perform at Fenway Park in Boston, one of the few historic ballparks left. When I scored my ticket, I half jokingly said to anyone who would listen that, at the end of Seven Nation Army, I wanted Jack to jump off the stage of Bleacher Theater, lob a left-handed homer with the Kay (he didn't have to make it over Fenway's scoreboard, dubbed the Green Monster, though it'd be an extra thrill if he did), then run the bases. I would scream my throat raw if he did something like that. But it was not to be. I should have been tipped off early that the night would not be at all what I anticipated when Sharon and I grabbed a pair of hot dogs on the concourse. Most bland dog I've ever eaten. The minor league ballpark in Frederick, Maryland has better hot dogs than Fenway.
An incident with the tour photographer on the concourse after we'd finished our dogs left me again feeling embarrassed that I'd barged in on Sharon's thing. She's been to twice as many shows on this tour as I have, in part because she has a job that allows her to coordinate business travel with show dates. Not everyone has such a convenient situation. But she's also admitted to putting herself into debt with all this travel and is incredibly single-minded about doing what it takes to get up there on the rail, so while I'm ridiculously envious of her I also admire her dedication. We've been great partners at the shows we've been to together, accomplices with a common goal. We've had tons of fun in line and very emotional experiences together in front of (and on) the stage. But as I see her being acknowledged by Jack's crew, demon jealously keeps rearing up and making me make comments I shouldn't to try to feel that my dedication lives up to hers. It's that need for recognition and attention that I mentioned above. But where anger-driven feelings make me picture myself as a vicious hag, these feelings of jealousy cause me to see myself as a petulant little child. I can't deny that the silly little fan-girl in me is pining for Jack to to see and acknowledge my devotion. The rational side of me understands that's never going to happen. Not only is it never going to happen, it doesn't need to happen. Life will go on and be just as fulfilling without it. I've been in one-sided relationships before, in which the other person expected me to share their interests but didn't share mine and in which it felt I was loved for how I made that person feel rather than for myself. I swore I'd never be in a relationship like that again and, in fact, that's part of what led to my recent Facebook friend list clean-up-- I don't even want "friend"ships in which I comment on other people's posts and they never comment on mine. And yet here I am with Jack, in the most one-sided sort of relationship anyone could ever hope to have. Incidents like the one this evening, the ones that have left me feeling embarrassed for my attempts to connect, make me wonder why I bother. But who am I fooling? I know exactly why I keep reaching out, babbling incessantly in the Third Man Vault, on message boards, here in a public blog, needing to be right in front of him at shows to be seen as well as to see-- Because the fan-girl addict will never give up wanting to be acknowledged. She and the rational side battle over this, but the rational side often ends up indulging her because it realizes that we've rarely in our life been so swept up and moved by anything as powerfully as by Jack's music. When a tour's going on... forget about it. The rational side may as well go take a nap.
And I know that I'm not alone in this craving. The majority of fellow fans I've spoken to want to meet him, even if it's just for an autograph or hand-shake. There are always people at shows hovering by the tour bus, waiting for an opportunity. What's behind this craving? I tend to shy away from hanging by the tour bus, I've had that experience before with rock stars I admired and it was anti-climactic, so I have trouble understanding why such brief and often hectic encounters are so important to people. And I'm honestly not even sure that I want to actually meet Jack. As I said, I've had that opportunity with other people like him and it's never once turned out the way I imagined it might. A couple of the experiences have been decidedly negative. I got to know one of my dearest friends when she stumbled across my blog and contacted me with a story of how she and her grandson had written to Jack and received a letter from him in reply. She's shown me this letter and it's a beautiful thing. It's brief, but he made the effort to touch on every subject they'd written to him about. While I'd be amazed if he would remember writing that letter, to me something like that is a much more meaningful connection than the five-second hand-shake, "Your music means so much to me", "Thank you very much" encounter by the tour bus. For some people, though, that five seconds is all they need to be thrilled right down to their socks.
And what I'm talking about here really applies to any musician, actor, athlete, or celebrity that people revere. Why do we all need this so much? Is it an altruistic impulse, do we want to be able to give these people the gratification of knowing that what they do is meaningful (might have to question that in the case of some celebrities) and touches people ? Or is it a more selfish desire to have our own existence elevated by their acknowledgement? I've seen people in the Third Man Vault chatroom who've gotten a response from Jack in chat gush after he'd left that, verbatim, "I'm so excited, Jack White knows I exist!" Is the motivation for this need some combination of the altruistic and selfish? Is it an individual thing, varying from person to person? Interesting stuff to think about.
Getting back to the show... I was initially very upset about my seat in Bleacher Theater, all the way over at the end of the first row far from the side of the stage, and concerned about being on a step with nothing in front of me to hold onto for balance as I danced and jumped about. Not to mention being all alone and far from my friends, who were all one section over and spread around. Ended up rocking my ass off anyway, despite only being able to see drummer Daru Jones from the back and bass player Dominic Davis barely at all. And I watched Jack all night trying to engage the group of people directly in front of him, a bunch who sat for much of the show, who kept leaving to get beers, and some of whom several times stood up and turned their backs to him while talking to their friends. I kept wanting to run down the row and shake those people, to make them turn around and realize what they were missing. I don't know what else he was seeing in the crowd, but that group definitely caught his attention. At least once, he stepped to the front of the stage and stared fixedly at them, much like he stared down the camera man at Merriweather Post Pavilion two nights before. And I know from Cleveland just how penetrating yet impenetrable that stare is, but it seemed lost on that group (I later found out they were apparently some of the owners of the Red Sox and their wives). And it seemed that they weren't the only part of the audience with better things to do, because he didn't even bother to invite the crowd to sing on any of the songs that are perpetual crowd sing-alongs-- Not on Hotel Yorba, not on Hello Operator or Steady As She Goes, not even the line in Seven Nation Army about the Queen of England and all the hounds of Hell. But the most unbelievable thing, for me at least, was when it came time for the Seven Nation Army chant. This is the chant that can be sung even by people who have no clue who Jack White is because they've heard it in stadiums and via television broadcasts of sporting events for the last several years. But could Boston pull it off in their own venerated sports stadium with Jack and his Kay guitar there on the stage right in front of them? Fuck no. I heard two repetitions of it and then it died away. Jack stood in front of his amps with his guitar, waiting for the response that most audiences wait all through the show to be able give to him, and Boston couldn't muster it. He didn't even bother to clap and gesture for the crowd to join him as he usually does, didn't bother to spur them on, just finished the song, then thanked the crowd, stressing over and over that through the night it had been "Just you and me! Just you and me!!" I couldn't tell whether there was sarcasm in his tone or if he was trying more obliquely to let them know that they'd not held up their end of the arrangement or if, bizarrely, he'd felt a connection despite the lack of one that I'd observed.
Through it all, even though I'm not sure he or the band saw me at all, I danced and sang and jumped and cheered as usual (and only fell off of my precarious spot on the ledge a few times), feeling like a wallflower at the prom, dancing by herself and watching the Prom King have a lousy experience with the cool kids, just knowing I could show him a great time if only he'd come over and ask me to dance. But alas, it wasn't to be. I continued dancing by myself and he continued to be stuck with the kids who were too cool to clap. During the break between sets, I suddenly heard a voice over my shoulder say "We've been watching you and you know how to enjoy a show! We want to dance with you!!" I turned around to find two young girls whose seats were two rows up and across the aisle who'd hopped down and squeezed in next to me. I said that if security would let them stay, it was cool with me. One of them was convinced that we'd be able to get down into the empty VIP section in front of the stage when the show continued, and I didn't bother to tell her I doubted it highly. Sure enough and sadly, security chased them back to their seats when Jack and the band came back for the second set. I would have enjoyed their company.
This is the most subdued performance of Hardest Button that I've experienced yet, fourth song to the end of the show. Fiddle player Lillie Mae Rische is more animated than Jack is.
Compare that to this bit of the ending of Lazaretto, four songs from the beginning of the show--
The difference in his energy is notable and, again, weird to me. Jack's typically the opposite, amping up himself and the crowd more in the second half of the show than the first. And yet despite the weirdness of the crowd response and its seeming effect on his energy, this was not a bad show. And I certainly hope that the musicians on stage got something out of it. Just like at Cleveland, the negative aspects were balanced by many high moments--
Each of the band members emerged one at a time from a door in the Green Monster and headed from there to the stage, with Jack making his entrance last. It was a brilliant idea. Wish this person had caught his entire jog across the field, with the pouring of about half his bottle of champagne onto the grass.
One of my favorite moments was a version of Black Bat Licorice that could've been re-titled Black Bat Gibberish, and I do not mean the word gibberish in any derogatory way. Jack started inserting mostly unintelligible verses in between the regular ones, causing me to throw up my hands as I tried to sing along and yet giggle at the same time. It reminded me very much of the second show at Roseland Ballroom back on the Blunderbuss tour, at which he pretty much completely lost the lyrics of the first song and flubbed another one shortly into the set, but then later in the evening made up an astoundingly beautiful song on the spot. And, dammit, I love this song in any form, it's one that just speaks to me. Loved the slight twist to the final line-- "Whatever you feed me, I'll feed you right back. But it will do me no good."
Did I say something about snideness being unconstructive...? Just never you mind, I hope Jack never removes his King of Snark crown. He uses it so delightfully to make a point.
But despite these moments, there was still that seeming lack of connection with the crowd. My buddy Steve, seeing him for the second time this tour, said he thought Jack was just tired. But Sharon and I have seen him at so many shows and this felt different. I mean, the man played on a sprained ankle with more energy than he displayed at some points in this show. Was he, like me, just exhausted? Or was he getting a vibe from the crowd similar to the one I picked up? Hell, for all I know, he had the flu that night. But when Sharon and I found each other after the show, we looked at each other and said "What just happened?" One of us said almost immediately that it was like Radio City Music Hall and the Detroit Fox all over again. After the backlash from Radio City, it's possibly not likely that Jack would ever cut a show short again (though he's ballsy enough that you never know). And his tour manager mentioned in the pre-show announcement that this show at Fenway was being recorded, so we wondered if that was why he pushed through, only giving up at the very end when he didn't bother to encourage the audience to participate in Seven Nation Army. It was an experience I never would have thought I'd have at one of his shows.
Interestingly, there's this video of Seven Nation Army that makes it sound as if the upper reaches of the audience were much more responsive than the folks down front. There's the chant, however faint. Like Radio City and the Detroit Fox show, perspective on this one might depend on where you were in the crowd and what you have to compare the experience to. So now I really don't know what to make of the night.
To be continued in Miami. And this is where it began- Introduction.
"I'm as ugly as I seem, worse than all your dreams could make me out to be..." While listening to that song and the rest of that album did calm my road rage, it also caused me to begin wallowing in self-loathing as a response to the anger. When I look at myself in that state, all I can see is a bitter, vicious hag and who could love themself in such a form? But it was too early in the day for wallowing and tears, my makeup had to last all the way through that night, so Satan and Ugly were replaced with Lazaretto and Black Bat Licorice in an attempt to perk up both my mood and energy.
One of the main things I've learned from Buddhism is the concept of right thought, part of the Eightfold Path, which is not about controlling emotions and thoughts but about catching ourselves before we react habitually in unconstructive ways, taking the time to look at the situation we're in to see if it warrants such a reaction or if the reaction is really being driven by other things going on in our own mind. Stoic philosophy takes a similar tack. I think most people think of stoicism as being a grit your teeth, grin'n'bear it sort of attitude, but the philosophy is similar to Buddhism in that it requires you to look at your actions and reactions and think about them. One of my favorite quotes from Marcus Aurelius is one I should have tattooed inside my eyelids, so that all I'd have to do when I needed to be reminded of it would be to close my eyes--
Do not disturb yourself by picturing your life as a whole; do not assemble in your mind the many and varied troubles which have come to you in the past and will come again in the future, but ask yourself with regard to every present difficulty: 'What is there in this that is unbearable and beyond endurance?' You would be ashamed to confess it! And then remind yourself that it is not the future or what has passed that afflicts you, but always the present, and the power of this is much diminished if you take it in isolation and call your mind to task if it thinks that it cannot stand up to it when taken on its own.
I have no problem with being angry, anger can be constructive. But the sort of irrational rage I let loose in the car this morning is not. I can accept it in myself to a small degree, but I have to constantly watch and be ready to reel it in when it goes too far.
Self-loathing is just another habitual negative response that's no more constructive than those directed outwardly. Another tenet of Buddhism is compassion, not just for others but for ourselves. We have to be just as understanding and patient of our own weaknesses as we should be of those of other people. Such weaknesses are something to work on, not something to condemn. We need to work on them because these emotions are all very productive, they breed tremendous amounts of negativity. But they're not constructive, you can't learn anything from them. Unless you can catch yourself, step back from them, and observe them.
Whoa, wait a minute... What's going on here? For a moment there I almost forgot that I'm supposed to be an obsessed Jack White fan-girl, er, I mean junkie. Who do I think I am getting all verbose about philosophies and stuff? Gotta get back to the program!
And snideness is yet one more unconstructive reflex. Oops. So anyway, I was heading north on 95 to Boston today to meet up with Sharon and see Jack fucking White perform at the Bleacher Theater at Fenway Park. Made it through the morass of interchanges that are the NJ/NYC area to find myself admiring one beautiful Art Deco bridge after another along Connecticut route 15 and then the hints of color in early-changing leaves along I-90 in Massachusetts. And there was a whole 'nother cast of characters joining Sharon and I today, people we'd not seen since Jack's Blunderbuss tour two years ago. So I had much to look forward to.
One of the coolest things about the Lazaretto tour is how Jack's mapped it out to coincide with his recent dive into baseball. From attending games to taking batting practice to visiting museums of the sport, to throwing out the first pitch at a Tigers game in Detroit, it's obvious that he's gone deep into the history and minutiae of baseball the way he seems to with everything that interests him. So it had to be a huge deal to him to perform at Fenway Park in Boston, one of the few historic ballparks left. When I scored my ticket, I half jokingly said to anyone who would listen that, at the end of Seven Nation Army, I wanted Jack to jump off the stage of Bleacher Theater, lob a left-handed homer with the Kay (he didn't have to make it over Fenway's scoreboard, dubbed the Green Monster, though it'd be an extra thrill if he did), then run the bases. I would scream my throat raw if he did something like that. But it was not to be. I should have been tipped off early that the night would not be at all what I anticipated when Sharon and I grabbed a pair of hot dogs on the concourse. Most bland dog I've ever eaten. The minor league ballpark in Frederick, Maryland has better hot dogs than Fenway.
An incident with the tour photographer on the concourse after we'd finished our dogs left me again feeling embarrassed that I'd barged in on Sharon's thing. She's been to twice as many shows on this tour as I have, in part because she has a job that allows her to coordinate business travel with show dates. Not everyone has such a convenient situation. But she's also admitted to putting herself into debt with all this travel and is incredibly single-minded about doing what it takes to get up there on the rail, so while I'm ridiculously envious of her I also admire her dedication. We've been great partners at the shows we've been to together, accomplices with a common goal. We've had tons of fun in line and very emotional experiences together in front of (and on) the stage. But as I see her being acknowledged by Jack's crew, demon jealously keeps rearing up and making me make comments I shouldn't to try to feel that my dedication lives up to hers. It's that need for recognition and attention that I mentioned above. But where anger-driven feelings make me picture myself as a vicious hag, these feelings of jealousy cause me to see myself as a petulant little child. I can't deny that the silly little fan-girl in me is pining for Jack to to see and acknowledge my devotion. The rational side of me understands that's never going to happen. Not only is it never going to happen, it doesn't need to happen. Life will go on and be just as fulfilling without it. I've been in one-sided relationships before, in which the other person expected me to share their interests but didn't share mine and in which it felt I was loved for how I made that person feel rather than for myself. I swore I'd never be in a relationship like that again and, in fact, that's part of what led to my recent Facebook friend list clean-up-- I don't even want "friend"ships in which I comment on other people's posts and they never comment on mine. And yet here I am with Jack, in the most one-sided sort of relationship anyone could ever hope to have. Incidents like the one this evening, the ones that have left me feeling embarrassed for my attempts to connect, make me wonder why I bother. But who am I fooling? I know exactly why I keep reaching out, babbling incessantly in the Third Man Vault, on message boards, here in a public blog, needing to be right in front of him at shows to be seen as well as to see-- Because the fan-girl addict will never give up wanting to be acknowledged. She and the rational side battle over this, but the rational side often ends up indulging her because it realizes that we've rarely in our life been so swept up and moved by anything as powerfully as by Jack's music. When a tour's going on... forget about it. The rational side may as well go take a nap.
And I know that I'm not alone in this craving. The majority of fellow fans I've spoken to want to meet him, even if it's just for an autograph or hand-shake. There are always people at shows hovering by the tour bus, waiting for an opportunity. What's behind this craving? I tend to shy away from hanging by the tour bus, I've had that experience before with rock stars I admired and it was anti-climactic, so I have trouble understanding why such brief and often hectic encounters are so important to people. And I'm honestly not even sure that I want to actually meet Jack. As I said, I've had that opportunity with other people like him and it's never once turned out the way I imagined it might. A couple of the experiences have been decidedly negative. I got to know one of my dearest friends when she stumbled across my blog and contacted me with a story of how she and her grandson had written to Jack and received a letter from him in reply. She's shown me this letter and it's a beautiful thing. It's brief, but he made the effort to touch on every subject they'd written to him about. While I'd be amazed if he would remember writing that letter, to me something like that is a much more meaningful connection than the five-second hand-shake, "Your music means so much to me", "Thank you very much" encounter by the tour bus. For some people, though, that five seconds is all they need to be thrilled right down to their socks.
And what I'm talking about here really applies to any musician, actor, athlete, or celebrity that people revere. Why do we all need this so much? Is it an altruistic impulse, do we want to be able to give these people the gratification of knowing that what they do is meaningful (might have to question that in the case of some celebrities) and touches people ? Or is it a more selfish desire to have our own existence elevated by their acknowledgement? I've seen people in the Third Man Vault chatroom who've gotten a response from Jack in chat gush after he'd left that, verbatim, "I'm so excited, Jack White knows I exist!" Is the motivation for this need some combination of the altruistic and selfish? Is it an individual thing, varying from person to person? Interesting stuff to think about.
Getting back to the show... I was initially very upset about my seat in Bleacher Theater, all the way over at the end of the first row far from the side of the stage, and concerned about being on a step with nothing in front of me to hold onto for balance as I danced and jumped about. Not to mention being all alone and far from my friends, who were all one section over and spread around. Ended up rocking my ass off anyway, despite only being able to see drummer Daru Jones from the back and bass player Dominic Davis barely at all. And I watched Jack all night trying to engage the group of people directly in front of him, a bunch who sat for much of the show, who kept leaving to get beers, and some of whom several times stood up and turned their backs to him while talking to their friends. I kept wanting to run down the row and shake those people, to make them turn around and realize what they were missing. I don't know what else he was seeing in the crowd, but that group definitely caught his attention. At least once, he stepped to the front of the stage and stared fixedly at them, much like he stared down the camera man at Merriweather Post Pavilion two nights before. And I know from Cleveland just how penetrating yet impenetrable that stare is, but it seemed lost on that group (I later found out they were apparently some of the owners of the Red Sox and their wives). And it seemed that they weren't the only part of the audience with better things to do, because he didn't even bother to invite the crowd to sing on any of the songs that are perpetual crowd sing-alongs-- Not on Hotel Yorba, not on Hello Operator or Steady As She Goes, not even the line in Seven Nation Army about the Queen of England and all the hounds of Hell. But the most unbelievable thing, for me at least, was when it came time for the Seven Nation Army chant. This is the chant that can be sung even by people who have no clue who Jack White is because they've heard it in stadiums and via television broadcasts of sporting events for the last several years. But could Boston pull it off in their own venerated sports stadium with Jack and his Kay guitar there on the stage right in front of them? Fuck no. I heard two repetitions of it and then it died away. Jack stood in front of his amps with his guitar, waiting for the response that most audiences wait all through the show to be able give to him, and Boston couldn't muster it. He didn't even bother to clap and gesture for the crowd to join him as he usually does, didn't bother to spur them on, just finished the song, then thanked the crowd, stressing over and over that through the night it had been "Just you and me! Just you and me!!" I couldn't tell whether there was sarcasm in his tone or if he was trying more obliquely to let them know that they'd not held up their end of the arrangement or if, bizarrely, he'd felt a connection despite the lack of one that I'd observed.
Through it all, even though I'm not sure he or the band saw me at all, I danced and sang and jumped and cheered as usual (and only fell off of my precarious spot on the ledge a few times), feeling like a wallflower at the prom, dancing by herself and watching the Prom King have a lousy experience with the cool kids, just knowing I could show him a great time if only he'd come over and ask me to dance. But alas, it wasn't to be. I continued dancing by myself and he continued to be stuck with the kids who were too cool to clap. During the break between sets, I suddenly heard a voice over my shoulder say "We've been watching you and you know how to enjoy a show! We want to dance with you!!" I turned around to find two young girls whose seats were two rows up and across the aisle who'd hopped down and squeezed in next to me. I said that if security would let them stay, it was cool with me. One of them was convinced that we'd be able to get down into the empty VIP section in front of the stage when the show continued, and I didn't bother to tell her I doubted it highly. Sure enough and sadly, security chased them back to their seats when Jack and the band came back for the second set. I would have enjoyed their company.
This is the most subdued performance of Hardest Button that I've experienced yet, fourth song to the end of the show. Fiddle player Lillie Mae Rische is more animated than Jack is.
Compare that to this bit of the ending of Lazaretto, four songs from the beginning of the show--
The difference in his energy is notable and, again, weird to me. Jack's typically the opposite, amping up himself and the crowd more in the second half of the show than the first. And yet despite the weirdness of the crowd response and its seeming effect on his energy, this was not a bad show. And I certainly hope that the musicians on stage got something out of it. Just like at Cleveland, the negative aspects were balanced by many high moments--
Each of the band members emerged one at a time from a door in the Green Monster and headed from there to the stage, with Jack making his entrance last. It was a brilliant idea. Wish this person had caught his entire jog across the field, with the pouring of about half his bottle of champagne onto the grass.
One of my favorite moments was a version of Black Bat Licorice that could've been re-titled Black Bat Gibberish, and I do not mean the word gibberish in any derogatory way. Jack started inserting mostly unintelligible verses in between the regular ones, causing me to throw up my hands as I tried to sing along and yet giggle at the same time. It reminded me very much of the second show at Roseland Ballroom back on the Blunderbuss tour, at which he pretty much completely lost the lyrics of the first song and flubbed another one shortly into the set, but then later in the evening made up an astoundingly beautiful song on the spot. And, dammit, I love this song in any form, it's one that just speaks to me. Loved the slight twist to the final line-- "Whatever you feed me, I'll feed you right back. But it will do me no good."
Did I say something about snideness being unconstructive...? Just never you mind, I hope Jack never removes his King of Snark crown. He uses it so delightfully to make a point.
But despite these moments, there was still that seeming lack of connection with the crowd. My buddy Steve, seeing him for the second time this tour, said he thought Jack was just tired. But Sharon and I have seen him at so many shows and this felt different. I mean, the man played on a sprained ankle with more energy than he displayed at some points in this show. Was he, like me, just exhausted? Or was he getting a vibe from the crowd similar to the one I picked up? Hell, for all I know, he had the flu that night. But when Sharon and I found each other after the show, we looked at each other and said "What just happened?" One of us said almost immediately that it was like Radio City Music Hall and the Detroit Fox all over again. After the backlash from Radio City, it's possibly not likely that Jack would ever cut a show short again (though he's ballsy enough that you never know). And his tour manager mentioned in the pre-show announcement that this show at Fenway was being recorded, so we wondered if that was why he pushed through, only giving up at the very end when he didn't bother to encourage the audience to participate in Seven Nation Army. It was an experience I never would have thought I'd have at one of his shows.
 |
| All show photos by David James Swanson |
 |
| Yes, there were moments when this show felt more like other recent ones, with that infectious smile. |
 |
| And there I am, next to Lillie Mae Rische's right shoulder |
To be continued in Miami. And this is where it began- Introduction.
February 8, 2010
A White weekend.
My Facebook status on Saturday morning read, "White (snow) outside the window, and White (Jack) coming out of the speakers. One in massive amounts is definitely preferable to the other." For those of you who haven't heard, a record-setting snow-storm hit the mid-Atlantic region beginning this past Friday. Total snowfall ranged from 2-3 feet and created a three-day, housebound weekend for the majority of the population. I told everyone at work last week that I'd be out and about by Sunday, and damned if I wasn't. Spent over two hours digging around the car, then waited for the snow removal company to come with a skid loader to haul away the piles that the plow had left behind my parking space. A few spun wheels later and my little Civic was out for a quick trip to the grocery and video stores.
I was out of the house again at 8:15 this morning for a dentist appointment (the only one who hadn't canceled on them by that point) and had a ball surfing the car over the compacted-but-churned 3 inches or so that was on most of the roads. And, as much as I'll hate the stuff when I have to commute to work through it tomorrow, I must admit that the deep, untouched, virginal white snow, sparkling like a donut covered with little icy sprinkles, was achingly beautiful.
My only fear, of course, was those folks who are either so scared they shouldn't be on the road, or so obliviously, arrogantly cocky that they put the rest of us in jeopardy. I feel for the former, and give them as much room as I can. The latter, though, deserve little patience and I can't help but hope for them to have an accident. Not one serious enough for them to get hurt, there's really no malice to this wish. Just bad enough to damage their car and make them piss their pants. That's the only thing that will teach them the common sense necessary for driving in this weather.
Though there was one guy in a massive pickup truck who was actually passing and weaving through traffic in places where the snow and slush narrowed the usual two full lanes into one and a half. He might actually need a concussion and a broken arm to learn anything.
To pass the otherwise snowbound hours (and hours and hours) at home, I surfed the 'net for info about and videos by Jack White of The White Stripes/The Raconteurs/The Dead Weather/It Might Get Loud/Who knows what he'll be doing next?-fame and developed myself a full-fledged new musical infatuation.
I mentioned once before that I'd been wanting to get into The White Stripes for a while because it's obvious that there's just something about Jack. But I had no clue as to the levels of complexity, whimsy, and just plain raw talent in this guy. As always, it took the right song at the right moment for it all to sink in and grab me. The tune that did it is one from his project before last, The Raconteurs. It's a torchy number tweaked with some backwards-output sections that put it in a league apart from the traditional blues that White apparently loves. But the big surprise to me was Jack's voice. As usual, that's the hook for me. I had initially considered his high-register, often nasal vocals to be interesting, even cool, but most of the White Stripes tunes I'd listened to were too quirky to pick up on his emotive abilities. Blue Veins has emotion in spades, with Jack's voice expressing tension, adoration, and a subdued passion:
Even better, if you've got the time, is the band's live performance of the song, which includes not only Janis Joplin-esque vocals but also the dramatic guitar playing that made White a top-pick for the It Might Get Loud documentary:
Amongst the many gems I found on YouTube this weekend is this version of Wayfaring Stranger that he performed for Cold Mountain (both the novel and film are favorites of mine):
Another is Jack's tribute to the most awesome bluesman you've never heard of, Son House, whose Grinnin' In Your Face is apparently White's favorite song. Like Blue Veins, the guitar work in this jam takes the blues to a level guys like House could never have dreamed of:
And, of course, there's the crunchy, gut-shivering riff in Seven Nation Army that made the Stripes a household name:
For a musician of this sort to then turn around and cover a song like Conquest and make it cool is nothing short of genius:
So, now it's Monday afternoon and I've only got a handful of hours left to fully cement this new obsession (Edit: We were hit with another blizzard Tuesday and I spent another two days on YouTube. Obsession cemented). While I'm off doing that, I'll leave you with a final treat, one that I find beautifully moving. I hope you enjoy:
As Ugly As I Seem
I
Am as ugly as I seem
Worse than all your dreams
Could ever make me
Out to be
And
It makes me want to scream
When it's Halloween
And the kids are all laughing at me
The rogue
Is a bank
He's never broke
But worth as much as a joke
That no one is laughing at
Can
You believe some things are not
Appealing as a spot
On the ceiling of my childhood bedroom
And
Count these dreams you can't imagine
But none of them match the vision
That you had decided for me
You
Want to take away from me
Things that are mine
And it's not your right
I bet that you wouldn't expect a fight
Can it be
That I don't
Want what you want
And the only thing I could care for
Is a place in a home that is safe and warm
Safe and warm,
safe and warm,
safe and warm
Judge
Yourself if you feel the need
Just let me alone to be
In search of the truth myself
There
Is a drop of blood on the ground
And it seems to me
That it's not my kind
And I can't be sure if it's yours or mine
I
Am as ugly as I seem
Worse than all your dreams
Could ever make me
Could ever make me
Could ever make me
Could ever make me
I was out of the house again at 8:15 this morning for a dentist appointment (the only one who hadn't canceled on them by that point) and had a ball surfing the car over the compacted-but-churned 3 inches or so that was on most of the roads. And, as much as I'll hate the stuff when I have to commute to work through it tomorrow, I must admit that the deep, untouched, virginal white snow, sparkling like a donut covered with little icy sprinkles, was achingly beautiful.
My only fear, of course, was those folks who are either so scared they shouldn't be on the road, or so obliviously, arrogantly cocky that they put the rest of us in jeopardy. I feel for the former, and give them as much room as I can. The latter, though, deserve little patience and I can't help but hope for them to have an accident. Not one serious enough for them to get hurt, there's really no malice to this wish. Just bad enough to damage their car and make them piss their pants. That's the only thing that will teach them the common sense necessary for driving in this weather.
Though there was one guy in a massive pickup truck who was actually passing and weaving through traffic in places where the snow and slush narrowed the usual two full lanes into one and a half. He might actually need a concussion and a broken arm to learn anything.
To pass the otherwise snowbound hours (and hours and hours) at home, I surfed the 'net for info about and videos by Jack White of The White Stripes/The Raconteurs/The Dead Weather/It Might Get Loud/Who knows what he'll be doing next?-fame and developed myself a full-fledged new musical infatuation.
I mentioned once before that I'd been wanting to get into The White Stripes for a while because it's obvious that there's just something about Jack. But I had no clue as to the levels of complexity, whimsy, and just plain raw talent in this guy. As always, it took the right song at the right moment for it all to sink in and grab me. The tune that did it is one from his project before last, The Raconteurs. It's a torchy number tweaked with some backwards-output sections that put it in a league apart from the traditional blues that White apparently loves. But the big surprise to me was Jack's voice. As usual, that's the hook for me. I had initially considered his high-register, often nasal vocals to be interesting, even cool, but most of the White Stripes tunes I'd listened to were too quirky to pick up on his emotive abilities. Blue Veins has emotion in spades, with Jack's voice expressing tension, adoration, and a subdued passion:
Even better, if you've got the time, is the band's live performance of the song, which includes not only Janis Joplin-esque vocals but also the dramatic guitar playing that made White a top-pick for the It Might Get Loud documentary:
Amongst the many gems I found on YouTube this weekend is this version of Wayfaring Stranger that he performed for Cold Mountain (both the novel and film are favorites of mine):
Another is Jack's tribute to the most awesome bluesman you've never heard of, Son House, whose Grinnin' In Your Face is apparently White's favorite song. Like Blue Veins, the guitar work in this jam takes the blues to a level guys like House could never have dreamed of:
And, of course, there's the crunchy, gut-shivering riff in Seven Nation Army that made the Stripes a household name:
For a musician of this sort to then turn around and cover a song like Conquest and make it cool is nothing short of genius:
So, now it's Monday afternoon and I've only got a handful of hours left to fully cement this new obsession (Edit: We were hit with another blizzard Tuesday and I spent another two days on YouTube. Obsession cemented). While I'm off doing that, I'll leave you with a final treat, one that I find beautifully moving. I hope you enjoy:
As Ugly As I Seem
I
Am as ugly as I seem
Worse than all your dreams
Could ever make me
Out to be
And
It makes me want to scream
When it's Halloween
And the kids are all laughing at me
The rogue
Is a bank
He's never broke
But worth as much as a joke
That no one is laughing at
Can
You believe some things are not
Appealing as a spot
On the ceiling of my childhood bedroom
And
Count these dreams you can't imagine
But none of them match the vision
That you had decided for me
You
Want to take away from me
Things that are mine
And it's not your right
I bet that you wouldn't expect a fight
Can it be
That I don't
Want what you want
And the only thing I could care for
Is a place in a home that is safe and warm
Safe and warm,
safe and warm,
safe and warm
Judge
Yourself if you feel the need
Just let me alone to be
In search of the truth myself
There
Is a drop of blood on the ground
And it seems to me
That it's not my kind
And I can't be sure if it's yours or mine
I
Am as ugly as I seem
Worse than all your dreams
Could ever make me
Could ever make me
Could ever make me
Could ever make me
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