In Defense of Jack Johnson

So.  Jack Johnson just released another album.  From Here to Now To You it's called.  Debuted at number 1 on Billboard and everything (granted, debuting number 1 in the internet-download age ain't nearly as impressive as it used to be--on a side note, I still think breaking the cultural-hegemony of corporate-produced pop is for the best, but that's a topic for another day).

Yet there's been a curious lack of, well, anything, about it--no reviews, retrospectives, articles, promotions, nada.  Apparently the war has been both won and lost: If you already like him, you probably got his new album; if not, well, this ain't what'll finally win you over.  Jack Johnson is simply one of those things that's always around now, in the background.  It's not like he's going to release some psychedelic prog-rock masterpiece, so he's nothing to get worked up about, or even backlashing against, apparently.  He conquered the music charts just in time for everyone to quit caring.

Not that I don't get the collective shrug that greets every new Jack Johnson release nowadays: you can only hear so many High School guitar students strum out "Flake," or hear "Bubble Toes" in so many Starbucks, before you start to roll your eyes and tune him out.  "All his songs sound the same!" is a common complaint.  And it's true, he doesn't stray very far from his laid-back beach-vibe (though to an Ocean child like myself, decrying Jack Johnson's beach vibe is like complaining that ice cream is delicious).

And it's not like I listen to him much anymore myself; he's not nearly as eclectic or innovative as, say, Andrew Bird or Sufjan Stevens.  At some point he just sort of became the background music of my college years.  But then, I guess that's exactly why I feel this need to defend a musician who probably doesn't need defending (it's not like anyone's attacking): he's always been there for me.  Brushfire Fairytales came out my freshman year of college; On and On during my mission; In Between Dreams during my BA; Sleep Through the Static start of my MA; To The Sea end of my MA; and I like to think it's not coincidental that his latest came out start of my PhD, in the nick of time, to calm me as he always has at times of great upheaval in my life.

But he doesn't just calm me, you see: I maintain that his music is genuinely meditative, and not in that cheap stoner "we're all just drops in the ocean Man" sort of way.  He's not only quiet, he's nuanced, coloring his music with subtle shades of meaning and affectation that require a calm mind to even notice, let alone appreciate (which is perhaps why it "all sounds the same" to some busy people).

Moreover, there is an intense undercurrent of melancholy that runs throughout his music--whether or not you're a fan, you're missing the whole point if you just treat him as bubble-gum pop for a frat party or a mid-brow coffee garden or weed-filled music festival.  Chillaxing escapism his music is not.  Quite the contrary.

Take for example the aforementioned "Flake" and "Bubble Toes", songs that really do get overplayed, such that you've perhaps forgotten that "Flake" is about an irresponsible man burdened by his shame for letting down his lover yet again, or that the sprightliness of "Bubble Toes" is based on "feet infested with tar balls and scars."  Consider this: there is a dark history behind every upbeat Jack Johnson melody.  Any good vibe he delivers is hard-earned.  His beautiful women all have scarred feet.

And those are just the hits from his debut Brushfire Fairytales.  "Fortunate Fools", "F-Stop Blues" and "Losing Hope" dominate the track listing; "Posters" features an unloved drunk who "has the nerve to say he needs a decent girl"; a million people die on "The News" tonight, and his Mother's only comfort is to lie and say the news ain't real;  album-closer "It's All Understood" features haunting ghosts, religious doubt and loss of faith; "Mudfootball" is upbeat, "but only because we thought/that everything good always would remain."

Brushfire's intro "Inaudible Melodies" has the deeply cynical lines "Dust off your thinking caps" and "We are only what we hate."  This UC Santa Barbara film student pleads with everyone to "slow down" so that film frames can catch you, and insists that "silent films are full of sound";  maybe I've been studying too much Post-Structuralism and New Media theory lately, but this idea that meaning and sense lies within the absences and silences, between notes, between frames, is deeply Wittgensteinian, even Derridian, and suggest that Johnson is more than just another faux-profound  surf-bum.

"Times Like These," the opener for his 2003 album On and On, I think captures the deep malaise of post-9/11 America better than the Foo Fighters song of the same name and time.  In one throw-away lyric, "God bless these ones/not those ones/but these ones," Jack Johnson contains the entire weary rhetoric of Arab-Muslim and American-Christian extremists shouting at and bombing each other.  When everyone is screaming, Jack Johnson intuitively understands that a hushed whisper can be the most menacing of all. 

The rest of the album is no cheerier: he lambasts environmental destruction at the hands of corporate-imperialists (as only a native Hawaiian would understand) in "The Horizon Has Been Defeated."  This quiet man considers screaming in "Traffic in the Sky," traces the webs of blame in a school-shooting in "Cookie Jar", and warns that "Taylor's gonna run away."  He laments that "Things were so much simpler when/stars were still just the holes to heaven."  In the deceptively low-key album closer "Symbol in my Driveway," he cautions "I have a light-bulb full of anger/and I can switch it off and on," as he wonders "how pathetic" and "how destructive" we can be, for "They've got us fooled."  Johnson was years ahead of much of America in comprehending the Iraq War.

He cheers up on In Between Dreams, but not completely: on "Sitting, Waiting, Wishing," he casually articulates what every young person in love hates to learn, "That just because you love someone/don't make them love you."  He openly asks "where did the good people go."  ("And we thought this was low...") He "needs this old train/to break down."  The doctors give his friend "two weeks to live/I'd give him more/if I could," but he can't.  Even in the sappy love song "Do You Remember," a tree house burns down, of which he's got a photo "that I don't like to look at." 

What's more, his cheerier mood doesn't last: on Sleep Through the Static, released near the end of the grinding drag that was the Bush administration, he croons, "All at once/the world can overwhelm me/there's almost nothing that you can tell me/that could ease my mind."  He delivers the saddest money line of all: "Sometimes it feels like a heart is no place to be singing from at all."  That tone of dread pervades the entire album, even at its most gorgeous.  Again, Johnson nails the zeitgeist without even trying. 

To The Sea cheers up...somewhat...for again, the opener sounds like a happy surf song, until the lyrics declare: "You and your heart/shouldn't feel so far apart," asking "Why you gotta break it and make it feel so hard," deriding this "broken king" who "Lays in the sun/like pieces of broken glass" and "loses the fingernails in your hand."  It's only a happy song if you're not paying attention.  Same goes for almost every other song on this album.  Jack Johnson understands, as every Ocean child does, that going to the sea isn't an escape, but a confrontation--a therapeutic one yes, but still a confrontation. "You don't love," he sings to the sea, "But oh, you don't hate."

I haven't heard the new album yet (I anachronistically still insist on purchasing music, but also refuse to pay outrageous new-release prices--if nothing else, Jack Johnson has taught me to be still and wait).  But I'd be lying if I said I wasn't excited to hear from this old friend, from this man who's understood all along the deep tragedy that's rooted in every genuine smile.  I promise I'm not proselyting, if you didn't already like him, this ain't what'll convert you.  But I would like him to not be dismissed quite as indifferently as he's come to be.  Don't be fooled by his laid-back vibe: his feet are all covered with scars.

The Flattening Effect of Facebook Photos

So you take a European vacation or some such, and you post pics afterwords of all the iconic shots: Stonehenge, Big Ben, the Louvre's glass pyramid, your arms outstretched like you're holding up the Leaning Tower...and your lunch.  That's right, you have your lunch, long eaten and forgotten, sandwiched between Versailles and the Colosseum.  And when one later clicks through your facebook album, the most famous structures on Earth are given the same face time as your spaghetti.

Suddenly, the Notre Dame cathedral that took over a century to complete is no different than a pasta some bored French chef threw together in 15 minutes for the tourists; the Eiffel Tower is now on par with a chicken breast; and the Vatican, that centuries-old seat of power and home to some of mankind's greatest art, is given no greater due than a gellato that melted before you finished it.

This is the peculiar flattening effect of facebook photos: there is no inherent hierarchy, no clear separation between the ephemeral and the eternal, between the silly and the sublime, for all is functionally equal on a web-browser. 

This can be a problem; for example, when I lived in Utah, I occasionally saw facebook pics of summit-climbs to Mt. Olympus, and those by the same people who posted pics of Ensign Peak's mere 20-minute trail, or of City Creek mall, or of a giant sandwich.  Unconsciously, hiking Mt. Olympus became equivalent in my mind to mall-walking or eating a foot-long.  So, when I did finally tackle Mt. Oly, I was grossly unprepared psychologically for that punishing ascent.

And when I at last crested the peak on that last wearying rock-scramble to the top, I finally realized that when people post pics of themselves a-top Mt. Oly, they were in fact bragging--and justly so!  But the facebook pics hadn't communicated the immensity of that mountain--facebook photos have this strange leveling effect, of making the highest achievements and the most mundane minutiae feel the same.  On facebook, graduating college is no bigger (or lower) a deal than Friday night drinks; pics of weddings and funny cats read the same; a cancer-scare and a paper-cut both get "liked". 

I don't post nearly as many pictures as I used to.

Nauvoo Revisited

Once, there was a Catholic nunnery in Nauvoo, IL, the Mississippi river-town founded by Joseph Smith after the Mormons were mobbed out of nearby Missouri.  Nauvoo at its height rivaled Chicago, but soon dwindled to just another podunk, blink-and-you-miss-it Midwest town after Joseph Smith was murdered and the Mormons were mobbed out of America altogether, to settle Utah instead.

That nunnery was bought out by the LDS Church a couple-decades ago, renamed the Joseph Smith Academy (or JSA), and was used to host a semester-program for BYU students studying early Church history.  The program reached its zenith after the Nauvoo Temple was rebuilt in 2002; I myself did a semester there (while a young, drifting college student) in 2005.  We were all repeatedly reassured of what a blessing it was to be there, how the Lord had guided us there, etc.--but unlike other BYUs, this one actually lived up to the hype.  The communal atmosphere of the classes and cafeterias created a sense of egalitarian United Order I haven't encountered since; I rank that semester second only to my mission for sustained Spiritual experiences; and I formed at least a couple friendships there that are still strong today (a feet remarkable when I consider all my other friendships that have forged and faded in the years after).

But then suddenly, without warning, the whole shebang was shut down a year later; this program that had been billed as a blessing in the lives of hundreds of students that fulfilled Prophecy and etc, was terminated without fanfare or explanation, and the JSA was torn down.  An empty field fills its former spot, with nary a line of foundation or a stray-pipe to indicate that a building had ever been there. 

I revisited Nauvoo recently, for the first time since '05, which was a heady experience in and of itself; just contemplating the sheer volume of places visited, people known, knowledge gained, and things I've seen and done in the intervening years, only to at last loop back to where I was while still a wandering young man, was near enough to plunge me into a minor existential crisis.  But the kicker was walking around that empty green field, trying and failing to visualize where the JSA was, or even looked like, and having the sober realization that a place celebrated with such enthusiasm less than a decade ago has since disappeared so completely.

We forget how quickly and thoroughly things can disappear, that the reason places like Stonehenge and Rome and Monte Picchu impress is because they did leave us a pile of ruins in the moonlight; most places leave nothing.  The Hittites were once treated as mythical (they receive no historical mention outside the Old Testament), until archeological evidence was finally found in the 19th-century. 

And what of the many, many places that aren't even mentioned in the Bible?  How many Empires and Peoples have risen and fallen without a trace, or even a memory?  The 18th-century writer Joseph Addison wrote, "look into the Bulk of our Species, they are such as are not likely to be remembered a Moment after their Disappearance.  They leave behind them no Traces of Their Existence, but are forgotten as tho' they had never been."  The JSA is no exception.

Perhaps it's fitting that the JSA should vanish without a trace here; Nauvoo is the city of disappearance.  I mentioned earlier that Nauvoo rivaled Chicago?  We have the 19th-century historical records to prove it, and good thing too, for if you visited Nauvoo today, you'd have no possible conception that such was ever the case.  Here you do not find ancient, abandoned log cabins enveloped in overgrowth; here there be no creaking ghost-town ruins haunted by a few stubborn locals; no scattered house foundations or toppled-brick-walls or weed-covered-pavement indicate that this was once a thriving metropolis.  Only a dozen or so brick-buildings, carefully preserved as museum pieces, still stand from Joseph Smith days.  If it hadn't been for Mormon-tourism, this town doubtless would've withered away into the wind a long time ago. 

And that's just a town from less than 200 years ago, one that rose and fell since the birth of the United States, a country that, historically speaking, is still brand-spanking new.  What of towns that are far older?

Mormonism itself is peculiarly preoccupied with disappearance; the Book of Mormon quotes Isaiah in describing itself as "the voice of a people speaking from the dust."  It claims to be the sole surviving relic of a Pre-Colombian civilization that thrived somewhere in the ancient Americas, but was then wiped out as though it never existed.  "Where is the archeological evidence of these Nephites!" decry the Book of Mormon's critics; now, whatever else may be your reason for accepting or rejecting the Book's historical claims (not to mention its spiritual), the demand for hard artifacts is frankly laughable.  Archeologists know we're lucky to get, say, a single arrowhead, or a piece of pottery, let alone a city of rubble.  The sprawls of Nauvoo vanished without a trace in less than 150 years; the JSA in less than 10.  What then of a nation that disappeared 1,600 years ago?

I don't think we moderns are any more secure.  How many of you have, say, a zip-disc from just the 90s?  How many of you could access it right now, with the computers you have?  Accelerated obsolescence may leave us obsolete in the end. What if a nuclear strike, or an EMP bomb, or even an unusually large solar flare, knocked out all our electronics?  Would we still have access to the "cloud?"  How appropriate that we named the final resting spot of all human data after something that fades and vanishes without a memory!  Oh vanity of vanities, all under the sun is vanity!  Our days are as grass, which today is, and tomorrow is cast into the fire. 

These are the thoughts that sifted through my mind, as I walked through that grass field in front of the reconstructed Nauvoo Temple.  "Everything dies honey, that's a fact," sings Bruce Springsteen, "But maybe everything that dies, one day comes back."  Maybe we are all surrounded by places that whisper from the dust, if we could but strain our ears enough to hear 'em.  Most places disappear so completely, that only God can reveal them.

On Unconcious Racism in Sports Commentary

A few months ago, a friend told me that his Dad, an avid sports-fan of several decades, noticed an intriguing trend: when commentators praise a white athlete, it's typically for his "work ethic," while if it's a black athlete, it's for his "natural athleticism." These praises reinforce many racist stereotypes, viz. that black people lack work-ethic, and are better fitted for hard physical labor than white people, etc.

Now of course, to succeed in pro sports, you need both, e.g. Lebron James may be an absolute freak of an athlete, but he still had to work as hard as Jordan to make those talents bloom; Cal Ripken Jr. may hold the record for most consecutive games played, but he still needed a throwing arm stronger than 99.9% of the population just to make those games.  Many naturals wash out in the minors due to slacking; and it's a proverb that many college work-horses flounder in the pros due to lack of physicality.  Black or white, you will not make it in sports unless your hard work is married to intrinsic ability.

Hence, it's all the more fascinating that these two factors are segregated along racial lines in sports commentary!  This stereotyping is all the more insidious because it's probably unconscious.  What say you?

Kurt Vonnegut on the Necessity of Deconstructing the Story

"As I approach my fiftieth birthday, I had become more and more enraged and mystified by the idiot decisions of my countrymen.  And then I had come to pity them, for I understood how innocent and natural it was for them to behave so abominably, and with such abominable results: They were doing their best to live like people invented in story books.  This was the reason Americans shot each other so often: It was a convenient literary device for ending short stories and books.

"Why were so many Americans treated by their government as though their lives were as disposable as paper facial tissues?  Because that was the way authors customarily treated bit-part players in their made-up tales.

"And so on.

"Once I understood what was making America such a dangerous, unhappy nation of people who had nothing to do with real life, I resolved to shun storytelling.  I would write about life.  Every person would be exactly as important as any other.  All facts would also be given equal weightness.  Nothing would be left out.  Let others bring order to chaos.  I would bring chaos to order, instead, which I think I have done.

"If all writers would do that, then perhaps citizens not in the literary trades will understand that there is no order in the world around us, that we must adapt ourselves to the requirements of chaos instead.

"It is hard to adapt to chaos, but it can be done.  I am living proof of that.  It can be done."
(Breakfast of Champions, pg. 215).

September Song: Requiem on a Cassette-Tape

For some reason, one of my earliest memories is of riding in a red Isuzu pick-up truck with my Dad out into the pasture adjacent to our little blue house in Port Angeles, WA.  At the time, my Dad still had some dark hair for he was still in his 30s, an age that just seemed impossibly distant to my 5 year old self.

I have no idea why this memory has stayed with me, but I remember as we drove, Dad sang along softly, almost more to himself, to a cassette tape of Willie Nelson's "Stardust."  (I think the song was "Georgia on my Mind.")  I wondered, even at that young age, what could move a man to sing to such forlorn lyrics.

Well, that red Isuzu is long gone, and we long ago left P.A., and 30-something no longer feels like such an impossible age, and I no longer wonder why men sing sad songs.  Moreover, I now know that "Georgia On My Mind" is originally a Ray Charles song, "Stardust" a Nat King Cole; it was jarring the first time I heard Frank Sinatra sing "All of Me", for I'd long assumed it was a Country song.

It took me years to realize that Willie Nelson's "Stardust" is nothing but Tin Pan Alley covers and pop-standards from Willie's youth.  That is, this album, so thoroughly drenched in nostalgia for me, was also drenched in nostalgia for Willie Nelson.  Perhaps that's why I still have that cassette-tape.

For somehow, improbably, impossibly, through all the other things I've gained and lost throughout the years, through all my many moves and purges, I've still kept a hold of that Willie Nelson cassette, a tape that's older than me.  I listen to that cassette regularly, religiously, every September, for Track 6 "September Song" was always my favorite song on it.  It's music for getting older, for remembering, for slow-dancing and loving while you still can.

But it's broken my heart, I've heaved a heavy sigh, for I may finally have to throw that tape away (or at least retire it); for as the songs on the album itself implicitly warn, all things must pass, this cassette not excepted--half the songs on it now have this high-hiss on it, as the tape finally becomes too warped and worn-out to be listenable.

Oh, I'm not afraid of losing the music, I already own "Stardust" on CD and MP3, it's not a hard-to-find album; on the contrary, it is today considered one of Willie Nelson's all-time classic records (and that's saying something).  "Stardust" has been certified 5 times platinum, and was ranked #257 on Rolling Stone's 500 greatest albums of all time.

But my affection for this album isn't just for the gentle arrangements, and my memories of it aren't just limited to my 5-year-old self: I have fond recollections of popping it into the Dakota in High School, the Taurus in college, the Sebring in Grad School.  I've played it on dates, on long drives alone, in the middle of the night.  It has positively moved me to tears at moments.

But now (if you'll excuse my melodramatics), though the music abides, this tape is but one more leaf to fall from the autumnal tree.  And now, as we start September and stare down the barrel of another Fall, enjoy with me one more rendition of Willie Nelson's "September Song"--I've still never heard the original recording of it, and I hope I never do--and  grab the one you love and slow-dance with me among the autumn leaves.