Thoughts On A Gorgeous September Saturday

Today is the genre of days that I treasure the most: a calm, sunny autumn Saturday with a cool breeze. I think this type of day is the most perfect of days. It is a day for apple picking, going to a college football game, or just sitting on the back porch, as I am doing right now. My wife and children are out of the house, and so I have this rare and treasured moment of solitude.

A day like this is so beautiful that it almost makes me cry because I know there aren't more of them in the year. Much more common are the gloomy, overcast winter Sundays where the walk needs to be shoveled, or the rainy Mondays or those dog days of summer where it gets too hot for our air conditioning to handle.

When I was younger I didn't think like this, of course. I would just got out and enjoy the day. I'd play touch football in the park with my friends or walk in the woods or get together with the gang and have some beers and watch the Huskers game. At age 43 I am suddenly much more aware of the passage of time, and that what I have left is limited. Maybe this is being prompted by my daughters entering the first grade and becoming these new beings completely removed from the babies and toddlers that they used to be. Or perhaps it's because after years of wandering from the age of 22 to 35 I've actually been settled down and not desperate for an extended period. Not so long ago I was the new guy at my job, now I am one of the veterans. Financially I spent years just trying to get by, and then trying to afford all the stuff our kids needed and to establish our new house. My newfound security has given me the time to breathe and the time to think, and that's been a blessing.

With all of those years of struggle over, it is suddenly hitting me in the face that my life is likely at least at the halfway point. If I was ever going to be a highly-regarded historian or recognized writer, that would have happened by now. It's finally time to let the last of those kinds of dreams die. My work as a historian and writer is merely a hobby, but at least it's a fulfilling one.

On this beautiful day, I am feeling okay with that. Age can bring bitterness and narrow-mindedness, but it can also bring wisdom if you take the time to discover it. I know now that anything I write won't last that long anyway. What will last is my marriage, my family, and my students. Every single day that I am with my children and every day I enter the classroom I am doing something vastly more meaningful than anything I else I could ever hope to accomplish.

Calm, sunny, September days like this are truly therapeutic. I hope when I go it's on a day like this so that I can leave this broken world behind remembering what a great place it can be sometimes. I don't know if there's a heaven, but a day like this is about as close as it gets.

Roxy Music, "More Than This"

The temperature dropped today in that very September way that signals the turn from summer into autumn. Autumn has always been my favorite season, and while every seasonal change dredges up memories both personal and musical, the one in September is by far the most evocative to me.

Perhaps it's because I was born in September, and my body is also aware that it has just completed another trip around the sun. It also doesn't hurt that as a teacher I am back in the classroom with a new cast of fresh faces.

Usually this time of year I bust out music that has long served as the soundtrack to this journey, like REM's Automatic for the People album. However, this year I rediscovered a song that is number one on my Top 40 autumn songs with a bullet: "More Than This" by Roxy Music.

I'd been diving back into Roxy after listening to a really good podcast episode about the making of their first record. I am a sucker for 1970s art rock and Brian Eno, so I love those first two albums before Eno split. I never really spent much time with what came after, partially because I just didn't "get" Brian Ferry's schtick. The tuxedoed crooner thing never seemed to work with the context of the music, which I felt was ill-served by the singer's approach.

I decided today to listen to the band's swan song, Avalon, an album an old girlfriend had loved but I could never give myself over to. For some reason "More Than This" really sank its teeth into me this time. It could have been the early 80s synthesizer production done right, the catchiness, or the lyrical theme of resignation, but I think it was the fall weather. It seemed to be the exact right song at the right time, a rumination on the unchanging nature of a world without redemption. As the song goes, "There's nothing more than this."

Seasonal changes are a reminder that nature and world will keep going with or without us. That can be a scary thought, but I find it comforting, even sublime. It was especially sublime to get that message from a song that truly revealed itself to me years after I first heard it. Big things rarely change, but small things can in the best ways. Here's to the small but profound changes.

Comeback Elvis Is The Best Elvis

A couple of years ago one of my daughters was sick and I had to stay home from work to take care of her. She was three at the time, and she liked it when I would show her old clips of musical performances. I was exhausted and a little sick myself, so I decided to cue up a video of the complete center stage performances from Elvis’ comeback special. These performances, where he is clad head to toe in black leather, have more than outshined the big productions numbers from his 1968 special. My daughter was enraptured. I also tried to show her Elvis’ Aloha From Hawaii concert film, when he was in his 70s sequined jumpsuit period. My daughter would have none of it, exclaiming “I want rock and roll Elvis!”

She was channeling a feeling that I am sure was common in 1968. The rock and roll Elvis was back, snarling and sassy, ripping it up on songs like “Lawdy Miss Clawdy.” The years and years of stupid movies and worse soundtracks were over. This was not the smiling lug in a blow-dried haircut romancing a generic starlet with wholesome woo, but a dangerous, sexy molten hot hunk of burning love. Of course, by 1970 he was in Vegas and the fiery spark of the comeback had faded into the ochre tint of black velvet.

This gives his comeback music an elegiac quality, which is perhaps why I find myself listening to it in November, the month when all around is dying. The fall colors are nature’s most beautiful burst before going dormant, much like the comeback years were Elvis’ greatest music period, but came right before stasis and the end. So with that in mind, here are five songs that are not so much a top five but five reasons why comeback Elvis is the best Elvis.

"Don’t Cry Daddy"

“In The Ghetto” is probably Elvis’ most maudlin song, and it is positively cringe-worthy in 2017. Elvis makes the maudlin work better on “Don’t Cry Daddy,” a song sung from the perspective of a man who has lost his wife. (Both songs are written by Mac Davis, which is not a coincidence.) He wakes up in the morning, his son coming to him and giving him strength, telling him not to cry. Elvis was famously close with his own mother Gladys, who died soon after his rise to fame. I don’t think there’s another song where that lingering pain comes out stronger. The hiccups in his voice would be corny coming from someone else, but Elvis makes me believe this song.

"Suspicious Minds"

OK, this one is kinda obvious, but it’s obvious for a reason. Elvis really sank his teeth into this song about a collapsing relation, perhaps because it mirrored his own disintegrating marriage. It still sounds great. I mean, what kind of love song starts with “We’re caught in a trap”? It is a thoroughly adult song, a million miles away from the “That’s Alright Mama” abandon of the Sun years or the aw shucks romance of the movie years. One of the things I like best about his comeback music is that it is indeed so mature in its themes. As I get older it just gets better for that reason.

"Trouble-Guitar Man"

This is the song that started his comeback special. "If you're looking for trouble/You've come to the right place." BAM! Elvis snarls into the camera, blowing away the insipid image he had built in his movies in a matter of seconds. And sure, the jazzy, splashy arrangement of "Guitar Man" and the accompanying production number are very Hollywood, but Elvis is giving the song a rough layer of grunt and sweat. It has the vitality of his youthful music, but also the toughness of experience, a sense of the quiet confidence of an older man. I love it.

"Stranger in My Own Hometown"

This comes from Back In Memphis, the lesser successor to From Elvis in Memphis, which is by far my favorite Elvis album. Nevertheless, it's really good. There's a real groove here and a toughness in his voice and an obvious connection to his own life. He had left Hollywood behind, but obviously felt ambivalent about his hometown of Memphis. It is one of the few times that Elvis really seemed to let his inner life come out in his music. You can hear it in other comeback era songs. 

"One Night With You"

The best part of the comeback special are the songs Elvis plays with his old bandmates, sitting on chairs. It's loose and fun and raw and he is having a hell of of a time, especially on this number. I will never ever forgive Colonel Tom Parker for hiding the lamp of his talent under the bushel basket of godawful movies and their insipid soundtracks.

An Autumn Almanac

Over the past two weeks I've gone from having to put a box fan in the window at night so my wife and I could sleep to cold rain and chilly breezes.  Autumn is falling hard this year after an extended summer.  Autumn has always been my favorite of the seasons, and that witchy and magical moment on days like today when summer gives way to autumn's approach my favorite time of all.  In recent years, however, I have begun to feel less sanguine about it because I am finding it harder and harder to deal with winter.  When the cold rain falls on a day like today I think about the many months of cold and darkness that soon lie ahead, and that thought fills me with despair.  However, I still love the fall over winter's cold, summer's relentless heat and attendant ball sweat, and spring's inevitable allergies.  As I get older I have also learned to appreciate the smaller pleasures in life, mostly since those are the only ones you can count on. These are the little things about fall that I love.

Root Vegetables

I tend to very much orient what I eat towards the seasons, and that means lots of root vegetables in the fall.  One of my favorites is a carrot and rutabaga mash, an orange concoction that makes me feel fulfilled, healthy, and full every time I have it.  Of course, I also go in for turnips and parsnips too.  Give me some root vegetables in my beef stew and a pint of stout and I'm a happy man. I made a big pot of stew last week and it warmed my stomach hours after I ate it.

Halloween

Some holidays are about religious obligations, others about family obligations.  I love Halloween because it is a holiday devoted to fun, costumes, and candy, all things I thoroughly enjoy.  I love the excuse to watch cheesy monster movies and to dress up in costumes and make a fool of myself.  Now that I have children I enjoy the vicarious experience of sharing Halloween with them.  In Halloween I also see the wisdom of the ancients.  After around October 31st, the nights do really feel oppressively long and the sun distant and the icy hand of death closer. We need a day to mock the ghosts lest they get the better of us.

Dark beer

I tend to favor dark beer over lighter varieties like pilsener and IPAs, but in the summer heat it feels weird cracking open a porter.  This time of year, as the skies darken, so do the hues of my brews.  There's nothing like being wrapped in a sweater on a chilly night, sipping on a deep rich brew after a hard day of work.  The rich darkness of porters and stouts just seems so much more nourishing.

Playoff Baseball

I love baseball, and what's better than playoff baseball?  The normally sedate ballparks of high summer are transformed into packed houses full of fans hanging on every pitch.  This post-season, with my Mets in contention, has been even better than usual.

Apple Picking

I grew up in the country and am a sucker for any activity that brings me out a farm.  Now that I have kids I also look like less of a weirdo for going hog wild for apple picking. This year my wife and I had a blast with my daughters picking the apples right off the tree, apples that my wife converted into cans of apple butter so good I have been eating it for breakfast on my toast almost every day.  Apples might be my favorite fruit: subtle and satisfying, the beef stew of fruit, if you will.

Pumpkins

OK OK, I know that pumpkin spice has gotten way out of hand. However, let's not blame the poor humble  pumpkin itself for some people's over-infatuation with nutmeg.  For some reason I find the orange of pumpkins comforting, a bright beacon in a season when night falls sooner and harder and the morning sun gets more sluggish.  Painting and carving pumpkins is just too much fun when you've got twin toddlers like I do.

Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving along with Halloween is a tremendous holiday.  There are no presents or religious rituals, just a gigantic feast.  My wife and I host her family each year, and we enjoy going all out.  I still remember a Thanksgiving four years ago when we prepared the meal for like four days, and the finished product was so absolutely amazing that we dove into the food and wiped it out in about ten minutes in an extreme act of decadence.  It was perhaps the greatest food-related moment in my life, and it was followed by days of eating amazing leftovers.  Holidays should be simple, and they don't get simpler than Thanksgiving.

Raking Leaves

Now that I am a homeowner each season brings its own yard work, be it shoveling snow or mowing the lawn.  I by far prefer raking leaves.  All mindless yard work has a certain appeal to me, since it usually allows me time to think and reflect, which is so rare for me these days.  Raking leaves is also something that my daughters can take part in, which makes the process that much more fun.

Track of the Week: Gordon Lightfoot, "The Way I Feel"

As if by clockwork, when November hit yesterday the temperature dropped and a cold, bitter rain fell.  November is less autumn than it is pre-winter when the trees lose their last leaves and harvest has come and gone.  It is a time when I turn to the warmth of folk music, its simplicity and tradition as comforting as a plate of shepherd's pie on a cold day.  I first established this tradition during my first, brutal winter in Michigan, which seemed to last forever and brought no sunshine or solace.  Right around that time I started listening to Gordon Lightfoot, and first heard his sixties folkie stuff.  I'd known his 70s hits, but was intrigued by the mood of these more spare, less poppy songs.

"The Way I Feel" is among the best of them, and certainly evokes this time of year well with its talk of empty nests, tall oak trees, and loss.  While he later electrified it, I really liked this earlier, moodier acoustic version.  The guitar is dark and ethereal, his voice low and brooding.  It is the sound of a cold whispering wind rattling the dead leaves on a dark November night.