EDMONTON EXISTENTIAL
Tight Connections to My Heart
The house is dark. It feels like twilight,
about time to turn on a light or two although it’s not even noon. I’m ensconced
on the front porch enshrouded in a cloud of grey cigarette smoke, watching the
hard pewter rain and listening to the downspouts gargle and spit. A dreary
Monday in May. Pinpointing what year we’re nearly in the middle of seems
somehow elusive.
‘Full Moon and Empty Arms,’ a hit for Frank
Sinatra at the close of World War II and later covered in 1961 by Canada’s Sir
Lancelot, Robert Goulet, is streaming at Bob Dylan’s official web site
(bobdylan.com). His Bobness is the invention of one Robert Zimmerman of Hibbing, MN.
And His Bobness has been ceaselessly reinventing himself for half a century;
Dylan makes David Bowie’s guises appear rational and stable. Or stale.
Currently I think of Dylan as the self-appointed curator of all things Americana, music
certainly, and possibly baseball and heavyweight boxing for all I know. Even
God ponders upon what moves through that mysterious mind. What confounds about
the new song is not that it’s a dusty standard, but the voice. It is not the
croak and growl we’ve either come to tolerate or despise since the start of the
Neverending Tour in the 1980s. His
warm, smooth tone is shockingly similar to ‘Lay Lady Lay’ or ‘Knockin’ on
Heaven’s Door,’ music written and sung over 40 years ago. The forthcoming album
is called Shadows in the Night.
We hosted an impromptu party last Saturday
night. Mostly to welcome Edmonton’s
semblance of spring and her mosquitoes, but if anyone asked why I said it was
Bob Dylan’s 72nd birthday. No easy listening compilations for the
guests. Inspired by ‘Full Moon and Empty Arms’ I made sure Nashville Skyline was in the CD player. That album kicks off with
Dylan and Johnny Cash reprising ‘Girl From the North
Country’ which originally appeared on The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan. (Tangent: I have a lovely bootleg
version of Keith Richards doing this song solo complete with a guitar error and
a quietly whispered “Fuck!” but he keeps going.)
Here in the city, provided the sun ever
shines again, the nights are getting long. Darkness falls around 10 o’clock. A
fitting place for another visit from a north country girl. Neil Young’s new
album A Letter Home comes out
tomorrow (currently streaming at CKUA.com). He covers ‘Girl From the North
Country;’ if Dylan mostly barks and grrs these days, Neil mews and purrs – in
fidelity so low that Alan Lomax’s Library of Congress field recordings of
American rural blues and folk musicians from the Great Depression sound like
Pono remasters.
And then on a day like today, there is
Gordon Lightfoot’s astoundingly blue ‘Early Morning Rain’ which Neil does on A Letter Home and which Dylan covered
years ago on Self Portrait. With
apologies to the Band (‘It Makes No Difference’), Blue Rodeo (any Jim Cuddy
ballad) and Lou Reed (anything, although New
Sensations is surprisingly light-hearted), it was to be my death song. Most
guys think about sex; I thought about suicide. I always heard it standing alone
in the garage and contemplating the orange power cord, the ceiling joists and
the dusty, disused hunter green lawn chair – I would leave footprints when I
kicked it over. I’ve gone to bed a few times with a carving knife or a bayonet.
No matter how much whiskey and beer I’d drunk I couldn’t manage more than a
pinprick between two of my ribs. A dot of blood. I couldn’t grasp the hilt in
my fists and thrust down, twist the blade and churn up my insides. A botched
job would’ve lead to years of embarrassment, or worse, hours of therapy for
such a selfish sin. Maybe it’s not so bad to be an uncommitted coward. ‘Early
Morning Rain’ reminds me of my all time favourite song in the world, the Stones
‘Tumbling Dice,’ in that you can never ever have too many versions.
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