My introductory paragraph for these things is always a little summary of how the month went for me and my tendency to assess 28-31 days based too much on how the last week of it went. Understandably that can weight things pretty heavily in one direction or another. This month especially so, because for reasons I’ll talk about at the end of this post, if I did that this would be one of the worst months for me of the year.
To temper the recency bias, I always go through my Instagram story archives to see what else happened that month. While the worldwide news is about as bleak as any of us have ever experienced November was, for me personally, OK.
Some examples: thanks to social media, I was able to send over $1,400 in kitchen toys and money to the domestic violence shelter where I volunteer at the beginning of the month. We also kicked off our annual refugee family sponsorship and were assigned a little family from the Democratic Republic of Congo where over 6.2 million people are currently internally displaced and at constant threat of violence. Loki Season 2 was good. I saw a vermilion flycatcher for the first time in my life; little guy was a pretty lost wanderer who ended up several states away from its range. Instead of basking in Arizona sunshine, it hung out in Utah Lake State Park for a bit. We managed to catch glimpse of him on a rainy, dreary day after we’d given up and had started walking back to the car.
If I were to summarize November, then, it would be that impossibly bright little fellow standing out against a backdrop of gray drizzle. Late fall rainstorms bring back some of the tough field work days I had when I was a field biologist. Staying warm and dry while out in the elements for 12 hour days wears you down. That kind of day-to-day survival is wearying by itself, even if you don’t have a job to do. A nice little bird or wildlife interaction in those cases goes a long way. And that’s with the knowledge of a comfortable hotel to return to every night. I can’t wrap my head around what it feels like for people who have lost their homes, either to a crippling world economy or as the result of relentless unceasing cruel bombing. Finding moments of wonder and beauty and peace from outside elements becomes increasingly vital.
It might feel like turning off your phone and going for a little hike and seeing a little bird is irresponsible. As if any second we spend not worrying about someone who is hurting is one wasted. We’re told that we should witness suffering and put it somewhere in our hearts. That’s true. But our hearts are big and many-chambered. So while there’s a room in there for those overseas whose pain we can do very little to soothe, there should also be a room for those in our communities who we can help a lot.
There are women and children in my neighborhood who are scared, too. Whose lives may be at risk this very minute. Them, I can help. Even if my contribution is small it is measurable. A family who fled horrible institutional violence is finally safe and I am currently sitting next to a pile of warm clothes, toys, blankets, and appliances to remind them how glad we are that they are. One of your mammalian heart’s four chambers should be for your friends and family; give them a thoughtful gift this Christmas. And then leave a nice little room for yourself. Fill that with bright and lovely things and don’t berate yourself for doing so. Because if every room in your heart is filled with darkness anger and fear, it will cease to beat.
Now I have to talk about music. Whew. One thing I love about artists is that they have to make stuff. They can’t stop. And because nobody can stop making art, it means that any given moment there is something new or new to us that serves as a reminder of why we keep getting out of bed on rainy days. If you create, and you worry that what you’re making today is frivolous, know that there’s a boy who had a sad November and you made it a little nicer.
The Albums
The Sunset Tree, The Mountain Goats
A perfect distillation of beauty amid pain is this album. It’s about the singer’s life growing up in an abusive home. It’s sad and angry and gorgeous. Listening to it made me better at understanding the pain of people I try to help. This is the most I’ve ever listened to The Mountain Goats before, and what I knew of them was pretty much just the bridge from “No Children.” It’s a great bridge. There’s something about this combination of lyrics, music, and vocals that I think a million other bands are trying to duplicate but can’t. I have nothing bad to say about it.
Laurel Hell, Mitski
Those of us with the privilege of safely being able to take a life pause may have picked up hobbies during COVID lockdowns. Mine were in no particular order, yo-yo, macarons, and briefly chess. In that time I hope we did a lot of thinking and reanalyzing what society even means. Mitski did. In her words, Laurel Hell is "soundtrack for transformation, a map to the place where vulnerability and resilience, sorrow and delight, error and transcendence can all sit within our humanity, can all be seen as worthy of acknowledgment, and ultimately, love."
It’s unequivocally gorgeous. I always listen to my top five again in the last day or two of the month. I was cleaning the kitchen and cooking when this album came on. And sometimes I had to stop and just sit and listen. I love it.
Epic Garden Music, Sad Lovers & Giants
You ever have that experience where you hear the first notes of music, the just-so mix and distortion of the instruments, and then the vocals come on and you’re just angry? Not because they’re bad, which is an experience I’ve had many times this year, but because they’re perfect? And you’re mad because it’s on an album that came out forty years ago and you’re just hearing it now? It’s happened to me twice now. Once with Kate Bush’s Hounds of Love and now with Sad Lovers & Giants’ Epic Garden Music. I grieve for the teenage version of me who would have made both of these albums his entire personality. And I rejoice for 44 year old me who now has them in his life.
Songs in the Key of Life, Stevie Wonder
I’m not sure if I’ll do a January retrospective of this whole experiment, but if I do Stevie Wonder will be the annual equivalent of a lifetime achievement award. All three of the albums I’ve listened to by him were in the top five of their months. All were part of Wonder’s “classic period.” And for whatever reason never picked as the album of the month. And all while still being what I consider unmitigated works of genius. Songs in the Key of Life is also near-perfect. And I find myself in the position of having to justify to myself why I didn’t pick it as the number one album while also maintaining that of all the artists I’ve listened to this year Wonder is the best one. And I guess that’s the distinction. I have this weird internal process for picking the album I buy each month and so I hope everyone understands that the 12 albums I buy aren’t the top twelve albums I listened to that year.
All of that is to not diminish at all the record I bought, because in spite of everything the best album I listened to this month was indisputable and the easiest pick I’ve made all year.
It’s
Jagged Little Pill, Alanis Morissette
There’s a moment in “You Oughta Know” where following the familiar barn-burner chorus it gets so quiet. It’s just a single guitar strum repeated, and there’s a distant-sounding snare drum with simple beat. Then Morissette’s voice comes in with some building oohs. I’ve passively listened to this song a million times but never paid attention to this moment before. The bridge kicks in and the way it delivers on the tension created before. By the concluding line “Well, can you feel it” I’m in a puddle.
It is for my money one of the most perfect moments in a song ever made. I watched a video of Morissette play it as the surprise guest during Pink’s Sofi show and it just makes me grateful that there is music. I’m so glad people get moments like these. That Pink and Alanis had that time on stage and got to hear from a massive audience how much their songs mean to them. And that people got to jump and scream and cry and see something that rare happen.
This isn’t an album I grew up with. I weirdly never owned it. I should have and today I fixed that.
From The Vault
This post took me longer than any other one has so far and it’s because I’ve been leading up to something I want to do but have dreaded doing. It’s the thing this whole post has been about without saying it outright.
It’s sad.
I want to tell you about my friend Jason. We met in 5th grade. He was the new kid. Like many of my friends at the time, we first bonded over our love of Nintendo. I remember the first time I went to his house and we played “Yo! Noid” on a tiny TV on the floor in his brothers’ shared bedroom. Those Irish triplets, each one year apart from the other, became the core of my friend group for the next six years of school and early adult years afterward.
Jason and I worked together at the Newgate Mall second-run theater for a while, where he caused consternation with my assistant-manager cousin for never tucking his shirt in. He was there when a group of bullies stopped us one day while walking home from school. They stole my scooter and kicked me in the face. We skipped every high school assembly and played “sting,” a hacky sack game where if you messed up the order you had to run because the next person who caught it could throw the crocheted, beaded ball at you as hard as they could. Jason could throw it hard.
For years we would play a game he invented called “steal the flag tag” every day after school. Other junior high students walking past would make fun of us for running around playing our complex game on a playground when in their minds we should have outgrown that kind of thing by then. We played football games on the church chapel’s lawn, the cement sidewalk being our first down line. Even though he was small, Jason was impossible to tackle.
As we grew up and I had a family and moved away, we drifted apart and our lives got so different. Over the following years we met up from time to time for lunch and in spite of our diverging paths it felt like old times. Those old times were important. There was an 8 to 10 year period in there where I don’t think I went 3 days in a row without spending the bulk of one of them with Jason.
I was kind of a weird kid in junior high especially, and it would have been so easy for me to have not found other weirdos. I can see an alternate scenario where I was a loner, but I wasn’t. I never was. I had so much fun and felt accepted and I could always walk or ride my bike down to those brothers’ house and find someone to sit on a couch and play Playstation with.
It’s impossible to separate the music I treasured as a kid from J. We called him J. He introduced me to Nirvana. I can remember hearing Pearl Jam’s Ten on his CD player, the first I’d ever seen. I saw Soundgarden with him. And Weird Al Yankovic. We were in a band together briefly, though I never learned an instrument other than a few notes on the bass and could only sing a couple of Tool songs because my voice was the only one high and nasally enough. We drove around after work listening to music because nobody else was up on a school night. Once we got pulled over by a police officer because our behavior was suspicious. He thought we were drinking or smoking pot but we were just listening to Rage Against the Machine and seeing if any of our friends’ window lights were on.
Jason died two days before Thanksgiving. He was 44. I found out when I met up with his brothers to play disc golf on Black Friday, which has been an annual tradition for years now. It ruined November.
The album I picked is Duran Duran’s The Wedding Album. J was mostly a 90s grunge kid but for whatever reason this 1993 comeback from the 80s legends appealed to him and he played it for me and I really liked it to. And because I liked Duran Duran I checked out their back catalog, then The Cure, which became my favorite band. I explored other 80s stuff to the derision of my classmates and found Oingo Boingo, and The Violent Femmes, They Might be Giants, and Depeche Mode. I explored around in more decades and found Pink Floyd. J didn’t like any of it, even though he was to blame.
The Wedding Album has two of the best songs ever made on it. And it has some duds. And it’s flawless.
I am so sorry for your loss, Matt. J sounds like an incredible friend,- a rare gift that I am happy your childhood was blessed with. Am sending Loving and Healing energy your way. Blessings.
I'm so sorry to hear about the loss of your friend, Matt. Sending you all the healing vibes in the world, and am thinking of you and his family and loved ones.