|
Post by skepticatfirst on Apr 14, 2016 0:44:02 GMT -5
I promised to look at some leftover lines, open questions, songs that mention familiar themes but don't seem to be connected to the story ... Names: Jesse and Halleluiah
Early in this thread I connected the identification of Mary with Mary Queen of Heaven, and the two important prayers addressed to her: the Ave Regina Caelorum (Hail, Queen of Heaven) and the Regina Caeli (Queen of Heaven). The Ave Regina Caelorum ( wikipedia) "is said ... through Wednesday of Holy Week," and begins: The Regina Caeli or Regina Coeli ( wikipedia) "is sung or recited ... during the Easter season, from Holy Saturday through the Saturday after Pentecost," and begins: The fact that the one opens with Queen of Heaven ... Jesse ... and the other with Queen of Heaven ... Halleluiah ... seems very unlikely to be a coincidence. The use of the masculine name "Jesse" (as opposed to the feminine name "Jessie") for a girl is very unusual; after "Gideon" and "Mary" the natural thing to do is to try to explain this by reference to the Biblical figure of Jesse, but there's almost nothing to work with there. These prayers, on the other hand, let us connect both Jesse and Holly to Mary as the central character of the story, which is after all what she is. The times when these prayers are sung seem to be significant, too: The Ave Regina Caelorum ("Queen of Heaven ... Jesse") is sung through Wednesday of Holy Week; the last time Jesse sees Charlemagne is in fact "Wednesday night" [CF] shortly before "Easter" [HaRRF, BCrosses]. The Regina Caeli ("Queen of Heaven ... Halleluiah") is sung beginning on Holy Saturday; Holly reappears on the Saturday night [NS, CSTLN, HSL] on which the "Easter mass" [HaRRF, BCrosses] takes place. In general, "Halleluiah" is the chant before the proclaiming of the Gospel, and is also especially used after Easter/before Pentecost. The allusions in the names "Gideon" and "Mary" are so crisp that I'm inclined to think I'm missing something more for Jesse and Halleluiah (true for Charlemagne, too). But having brought them in under Mary's queenship and connected them both to Easter is a good start. So I'll leave it at that. Holly's contagionLong back we noted how the "did a couple favors for some guys who looked like Tusken Raiders" line at the end of The Swish implies that Holly picked up an STD blowing gangsters for money. I didn't realize until recently that there are actually three references to contracting STDs on AKM: - "scabby sores" [PJ]: suggests herpes - "tangled up in crabs" [Knuckles]: suggests crabs - "Tusken Raiders" [Swish]: suggests warts, i.e. gonorrhea The fact that Swish ends on a note of foreboding makes it sound like something more than crabs, anyway; but the ambiguity is there, and it's pretty sharp. Nice touch. HaRRF lines There are a bunch of lines here and there that I don't think I ever went back and covered, but the ones that stick in my mind as really deserving a comment are two from HaRRF: The priest just kinda laughed, the deacon caught a draft The priest is Gideon, presiding over the crucifixion / Easter mass from the water tower. There are a few ways to argue that "just kinda laughed" fits Gideon's style, following his last words "Hey hey, Providence," etc. As in MoC, the deacon is the Narrator. Per wikipedia, the ministry of the Catholic deacon involves proclaiming the Gospel (Deacon of the Word) [CSTLN]; the deacon may also preside at funeral rites not involving a Mass ("we heard the deacon's hopeful eulogy" [MoC]). This is another view of the Narrator as Peter, who caught a draft on Pentecost and then led the proclaiming of the gospel (Acts 2:1-31). St. Louis had enslaved me, I guess Santa Ana saved me, St. Peter had me on the queue, the St. Paul saints they waved me through - "St. Louis had enslaved me": a reference to St Louis Park, just west of Uptown, where Methodist Hospital (with the clinic for "maxing out on medicine" [SPayne]) and the Cityscape Apartments are located. - "I guess Santa Ana saved me": as written [liner notes], I think a reference to the Santa Ana winds (Didion writes about them too), suggesting the same "mighty wind" of Pentecost that the deacon caught, above. - "St. Peter had me on the queue": a reference to the fact that her admission to heaven was delayed, pending her resurrection. - "the St. Paul saints they waved me through": there's the baseball ref to the St. Paul Saints, with the third base coach waving her through to home; w/r/t the story, it's her friends down in the St. Paul party pit who've brought her back. Open questions
There are a million questions that are still open, of which the following are almost a random selection --- they're things that I happened to jot down along the way. - I've said that I'm sure "took a couple photographs" [CatCT] refers to Holly's booking, with mug shots, after the crash; but what's "and carved them into wood reliefs" about? Carving wood reliefs goes nicely with "going through the program" [CatCT] in the previous line, but it seems like there ought to be a story reference as well. - What's the exact meaning of "Hey hey, Providence, you gotta fall in love with whoever you can" [SK]? Gideon says this to Mary right after she declares her love for Charlemagne, and right before he switches Charlemagne's body with his own; probably, then, it's an allusion to the fact that he's about to make the physical body she loves disappear forever (though the real Charlemagne will still be there, inside a new body). I could be happy with this reading, but would like to be more certain that I'm not missing something else. - There's muzzle's question about the meaning of "That dude from your crew, who was always awake / I'm pretty sure I know how he did that" [R&T], since it's clear that the Narrator can't know how he (Gideon) did the body-switching trick. Again, I don't have a slam-dunk answer for this, but it could after all just refer to the thing that was named in the first half of the sentence, namely Gideon's apparent feat of staying up for 16 days in a row with no sleep [Knuckles, R&T, TL; also SS, GoaH]. (It was done by having two "Gideons," Charlemagne and the real Gideon, both looking like Gideon and sleeping in shifts for two-plus weeks.) - Many of the song names are carefully chosen, with important meanings or big aha's attached to them (212-Margarita, The Swish, Banging Camp, Stevie Nix, Spinners, etc.). But there are several names that I absolutely don't have a clue about: Chips Ahoy!, Saddle Shoes, Criminal Fingers (a Revelation Records reference?), 40 Bucks (yes, "two twenties from her dresser," but why elevate this to the name of the song?). I'm sure there are satisfying things to unlock here, I just don't know what. For that matter, why is Stevie Nix spelled "Nix" and not "Nicks"? I don't believe Craig wastes opportunities, or does things randomly ... Other songs
Instead of a thorough breakdown of the leftover songs, here's a smattering of observations: For Boston
Early on I wondered if the townie with the diamond in the dishtowel was Charlemagne, before he left Lynn with Holly. But "she lost her new phone" [FB] puts paid to that idea; Jesse's still using a "message machine" [Magazines] by the time we get to the tail end of the main story in 2004. (There were cellphones in 2004, and the Narrator metaphorically describes Charlemagne after the crucifixion as a kid who "just can't find his phone" [AE]. But Charlemagne left Lynn in 1993; definitely no cellphones back then.) Separate VacationsCharlemagne's a royal name, he's from the east coast, he pulls street corner scams, he's working in a restaurant and bar down by the harbor, and we know that Jesse regards herself as his daughter [CF]; so "some blue blood dude down at the harbor / He called me his brother, he tried to sell me his daughter / These east coast kids are such tricky talkers" sounds an awful lot like him. "These guys with no shirts" would seem to be the Skins, too (see wikipedia "Shirts and skins," link). But none of what's actually described as happening here is recognizable from the story we know. TouchlessThe whole idea of going "touchless" seems to take inspiration from Mary and the Noli Me Tangere ("don't touch me") theme; "You gotta watch what you wish for." Teenage LiberationThe things that happen at the different ages (if indeed the numbers 17/19/23/29 are ages) all appear to be about Charlemagne ("He took one good swipe at his wrist but he missed so he lived" would be Charlemagne taking a swipe at Charlemagne's Ghost, for example). And the girls of the choruses all sound like Mary ("These senior class chicks, they're the easiest to kiss / They got nothing to lose and they know it" would be an ambiguous description of her at prom on the one hand, and at the crucifixion on the other). But the ages don't correlate at all with the actual story. Girls Like StatusGLS is a very strange song which is full of lines that could be understood to apply to either Holly or Mary, on the one hand, and to either Charlemagne or Gideon, on the other. Probably of all these songs this one most deserves a line-by-line breakdown (not least in order to pay proper respect to the astonishing Krokus/Locust rhyme), but there doesn't really seem to be any new information about the story in it, so I'm going to leave it aside for now. Two Handed Handshake
The line "girls, you gotta try to be nice to one another" appears to be owed to Willy Vlautin's novel The Free, see the 2015 Flood interview with Craig ( link): Spectres
Spectres is an incredible song. There's a lot there that sounds like it's coming from the Narrator remembering an earlier life in the Twin Cities, maybe the crucifixion in particular ("this fantastic opportunity / to let the light shine down on me"), and grieving for his dead friends ("let us grieve for dead celebrities"). Even if the song isn't about the characters of the story, "Projectionists and publicists" is some kind of homage to Gideon, the projectionist of Charlemagne's Ghost and publicist of his Gospel. "The ragers and the clever kids" could describe the Skins ("theirs was a rage" [OftC]) and Charlemagne's friends ("clever kids screwing with some new device" [NS]). "Found dead on dirty mattresses, bleeding through the bandages" sounds darkly like a final end for Holly/Mary. "All we really want / is to be in magazines" describes Jesse [SM, Magazines]. "I guess we all got pretty close to the roles we chose to play" is obviously an accurate description of their experience at the crucifixion itself. There are two tantalizing lines in the song that I don't quite understand. One is "I guess we all got pretty close, I swear I saw him right by 7A"; what is 7A? And "they're covering the carcass, they're bleeding and remembering"; are the "office girls" somehow connected to Holly/Mary? What do these lines mean? --------------- There are lots of questions left, and things to improve, and details to pore over. But I think I've finished what I set out to do here. We saw Still Alive Carl just last night, and he's still alive. I don't want to jinx it or screw with it or say anything else about it, good or bad. But he's still alive, and that's a big statement. Writing up this whole thing really did end up being easily 10 times the work I thought it was going to be; working on it every single day (mostly late at night instead of sleeping) has been exhausting, and writing the thing at the end to ask for him has been difficult to do in a way that is hard to explain. But I think the work really is finished, and so I can stop writing now. (The rule about listening still holds, but that I can do.) I'll still come back to the timeline posts and try to make those as solid as possible, if I think of anything I've missed. And I'm happy to talk about other people's ideas, or to answer questions about anything I wrote that wasn't clear. If I have another good aha-moment I'll add it on. But I believe I'm done with the compulsory part of the thing I've been doing here. Sincerely, thanks to everyone who's been reading this all along (and to anyone who finds and reads through it later, for that matter). This'll be the last ask, but I'll still be very grateful for any positive thoughts or prayers for Still Alive Carl. Thanks very much for the support up to this point. Looking forward to catching a Hold Steady show one of these days too.
|
|
|
Post by skepticatfirst on Apr 13, 2016 1:54:04 GMT -5
ACT III (end)
Summer-Fall 2004
Jesse, following the advice she got from "Mary" (really Holly in Mary's body [212M]) moves, finally, to New York City (see notes).
Fall-Winter 2004
Holly (in Mary's body) begins to experience precognitive visions of things right before they happen, and also nighttime visions of Charlemagne as Christ [BCrosses].
Christmas 2004
Holly, in Mary's body, goes home to Mary's house (her own aunt and uncle's house [BBlues, MINTS, HSL]) for Christmas; she seemed distant and different [OftC].
Winter 2004/05 - Spring 2005
Holly, wearing a crucifix again, is sleeping in a storage space by the airport, and no longer talks about anything except her visions [TOT].
Spring - Summer 2005
Holly sells her crucifix and moves into a house on the south side with "new friends" from the drug-dealing gang world [LID].
The Narrator moves out to New York City [CSTLN]. With his (new) band, he begins to spread the gospel of Charlemagne, as it was brought to him by Gideon [CSTLN].
Summer-Fall 2006
Two years after leaving the Twin Cities for NYC, Jesse still can't settle into a new relationship; she's still feeling "phantom pains" for Charlemagne, and fear of the boys in the bars who she thinks murdered him (Skins = the other "spinners").
2006?
Holly (in Mary's body), still talking only about her visions, calls up Charlemagne (in Gideon's body) and asks him to come see her; despite his doubt whether the crucifixion was ever necessary in the first place, and despite having a pretty good idea where it's going to lead ("In the end I bet no one learns a lesson"), he agrees [Weekenders].
Christmas, 200X
The Narrator returns to the Twin Cities after some years, bringing a new girlfriend home for Christmas, and has an encounter with Shepard and the Skins [IHTWTDFY].
Years later
A girl named Sarah leaves the Narrator (if indeed it is the Narrator) after a long relationship [Oaks].
Jesse's still in NYC, much older, still alone, and still hung up on Charlemagne [JaJ].
NOTES ON DATES ---------------------------
From Spinners, we know that Jesse's in the "big city" with "inbound trains" (namely NYC, where she's always wanted to go [Magazines]) two years after leaving the Twin Cities ("she's two years off some prairie town"). It seems clear that she left soon after the trial ended in 2004, which sets the events of Spinners in 2006.
Holly begins to experience Mary's visions at some point after the trial; within the year, according to TOT ("it got bad around March or April, then I thought it got better" [TOT]), this leads to an advanced state of dysfunction, in which she's sleeping in a storage space and no longer talking about anything except her visions. Her visit to Mary's house for Christmas [OftC] must take place before this progression is too far along.
Holly's move from the storage space by the airport [TOT] to the house on the south side [LID] takes place before the Narrator moves out to NYC, but the move to NYC was not so long after the crucifixion that he couldn't plausibly fudge the date later ("I'd already moved out to New York City" [CSTLN]). This last point seems to place all these events within a year of the crucifixion.
A 2006 date for the Weekenders phone call still feels about right, regardless of when the Chips Ahoy! outing takes place (see the earlier discussion about a possible "4 years or so" interval between the two). But without a fixed interval between those two events, that date is just a guess.
I'm going to go over these timeline posts and make edits/improvements as needed, but otherwise the timeline's now done. There are definitely a few loose ends still to tie up, but let me have a look at that with a fresh eye tomorrow. Thanks for reading along, and for thinking of Still Alive Carl.
|
|
|
Post by skepticatfirst on Apr 11, 2016 22:59:45 GMT -5
ACT III (continued)
Summer 2004 - Trial
The trial of "Gideon" (actually Charlemagne, in Gideon's body) for the murder of Charlemagne begins.
Trial day 1 - testimony of "Holly"
Our first view of the trial comes while Holly (in Mary's body, but still disguised outwardly as Holly in order to answer her subpoena [SiM]) is on the witness stand. The prosecutor asks her about her travels with Gideon [DLME], while Charlemagne silently prays to her not to say something that will convict him ("don't let me blow up" [DLME]). Finally the prosecutor asks what happened to Charlemagne, and to his relief she gives a noncommittal answer [DLME], just as he'd asked Mary to do some weeks before [KP].
On the way out of the courthouse, Holly (with the Narrator, who is no longer disguised as the new kid, in tow) is confronted by Jesse, who's trying to find out what happened to Charlemagne [212M]. Holly "[doesn't] say a thing ... just [wipes] at her nose and she [winks]" [212M], deliberately avoiding speaking, and continues on her way [212M]. The Narrator stays after to apologize for her behavior, and to explain to Jesse who she is [HaRRF]. He uses Holly as an object lesson to drive home Charlemagne's warning about the St. Paul hoodrat life [compare HaRRF liner notes with CSongs]. When Jesse mentions that Holly looks like Mary, he tells her she's crazy [SPayne]. This is the last we ever see of the outward appearance of Holly.
Trial day 2 - testimony of "Mary"
In the interval between the first and second day of the trial, Holly (in Mary's body) does away with the Holly disguise and, looking like Mary again, contacts Mary's family. Returning to court with the protection of Mary's father's lawyers [OftC], dressed "immaculately" in Keds and a turtleneck sweater to cover her neck tat [OftC, HM, by implication in YLHF], she "takes the stand and she swears she was with him" [OftC]. With that, Charlemagne is acquitted.
Outside the courtroom, as before, she meets Jesse, who (thinking she's Mary) asks her what happened to Charlemagne, if "Gideon" didn't kill him [212M]. Under the implied influence of Mary, still present deep inside her own body, which is after all Mary's ("one drop of blood" [OftC]), Holly replies, jealous and misleading, that she believes Charlemagne is really dead [212M]. She tells Jesse to go to New York, and to leave a message for her there when she and "Gideon" will supposedly be coming through town [212M].
Outside the courthouse, Holly smokes and thinks bitterly of the real Gideon, falling dead from the water tower, unnoticed and hardly mourned [OftC].
Later
Still in Minneapolis, Holly (always in Mary's body, with Mary's voice) receives a phone call from Jesse [212M]; she advises Jesse to get back out there, to go drink and fall in love [212M, Spinners].
Tomorrow, the aftermath. Thanks for reading, and for thinking of Still Alive Carl.
|
|
|
Post by skepticatfirst on Apr 10, 2016 21:10:07 GMT -5
ACT III (continued)
Summer 2004 - Sunday after crash
Holly (in Mary's body, which in turn is still disguised as "Holly" for the benefit of the Skins) stumbles out of the wrecked car and into the mall ("walking through the crystal court" [PP], "found me in a florist" [SK]). She has shattered glass in her hair and broken heels [HaRRF]; she gets blood on the stereo [BBlues] and on the sidewalk ("Sunday morning, sidewalks splattered" [NS]). But the fact that she doesn't get taken to the hospital immediately shows that she's not injured; the blood is from her stigmata. When the cops arrive, they find her in a florist [SK].
The Narrator gets out of the car and follows her into the mall ("saw her walking through the crystal court" [PP]), then gets arrested with her (shown by the fact that they are taken to the station for questioning together).
Charlemagne also leaves the car, but rather than following the others, flees the scene. (The others learn of his departure when they hear from the cops that the car was found empty: "I guess we met a couple bona fide angels" [NS] announcing that Jesus has left the tomb [John 20:12].) While fleeing, he is stopped by the cops ("I got stopped by the cops and they found it in my socks" [YLHF]); having found the drugs hidden in his socks [YLHF, CiS], they pick him up and bring him into the station also.
At the police station, Holly-in-Mary and the Narrator are sequestered, that is, placed in separate rooms, for questioning [SiM, CSTLN]. The cops are tired from parading "every townie in town through the station" [OftC] since the "murder" last night, and wired from the cigarettes [CSTLN] and coffee [SK]. They ask the Narrator what kind of car she drove ("a new Mustang" [SiM]); this may have been the tipoff that Charlemagne had left the car by the time the cops arrived [NS].
Despite being separated, the Narrator and Mary (still present somewhere deep inside her body) make a "connection" [AE] that lets them get through the "sessions" [AE] without slipping up; they are cleared for release.
They are booked, and mug shots ("a couple photographs" [CatCT]) are taken. This might have happened at the time they were brought in, before the interrogations; but it seems that Holly-in-Mary crosses paths with Charlemagne-in-Gideon during the booking ("it was those two same kooks from that one stupid photo shoot" [SK]), which would suggest that it happens after they learn that he wasn't in the car when the cops arrived [NS]. It may also be that she identifies him ("it was those two same kooks") at this time; he's brought into the station on the simple grounds of having been holding something in his socks, but by the end of the session, they've identified him as Gideon, and have charged him with murder.
At any rate, Charlemagne-in-Gideon is also questioned [HSL] and attempts to bluff his way through the interrogation ("this is the end of the session" [HSL]); but, "bleeding from the holes in his story" [HM], he ends up being arraigned for murder, and is held pending trial. This happens before Holly-in-Mary and the Narrator leave the station, since Holly (as his former associate) is subpoenaed to appear to testify at the trial [SiM].
Holly-in-Mary and the Narrator "walk on back" [HaRRF] from suburban St. Paul down Larpenteur to Hennepin and over the Grain Belt bridge, where Holly sees "bright new Minneapolis" [PP] for the first time since 1997. The Narrator seizes the moment for one last attempt to get through to Mary, and kisses her [PP]; but from the response he gets ("don't turn me on again" [HaRRF], "I think that all those things I did / were just momentum from the Party Pit" [PP]), he can't tell if he's being put off by Holly or Mary ("And I'm pretty sure we kissed" [PP]), and he gives up.
Finally, maybe with a stop by their place on Hennepin along the way, the Narrator gets her to Methodist Hospital [AE, FN]; they check in together, but (after maxing out his medicine) only he checks out; she stays in to get cleaned up [AE].
NOTES -----------
I'm an idiot, ha. The image of the forking road on the cover of Separation Sunday album always made me think of "Separation" as Charlemagne fleeing the car wreck and abandoning Mary for good. But I just realized that there's another "separation" on this same Sunday that is *explicitly called* a separation, namely, the sequestration of Mary and the Narrator in their respective interrogations: "they tried to separate our girls from our guys" [CSTLN]. Obviously Craig could be referring ambiguously to both events with the album title. But the sequestration is a much stronger identification.
This is just another example of something I've experienced over and over while unpacking this story. It's like feeling your way through a huge dark room full of furniture; even when you figure out that there's a table in one corner, you have to keep coming back over and over to figure out what's on the table, how many chairs there are, whether there's a chandelier above it, etc. Every single detail is a chance to get something wrong. And there have been hundreds, literally, of these details that all have to be sorted through one by one. It leaves me in this weird position of having a lot of confidence about the analysis in general, and at the same time being certain that there are still plenty of things, like this, that I've just missed. It's exciting as hell to see something you've been blind to, but holy shit is it a lot of work to get there.
Tomorrow, the trial. Thanks for reading along, and for remembering Still Alive Carl.
EDITS ------ Added note that, at the time of the crash, Holly is in Mary's body, but Mary's body is still disguised as "Holly"
|
|
|
Post by skepticatfirst on Apr 9, 2016 22:48:39 GMT -5
ACT III (continued)
Summer 2004 - Saturday night, car ride
The Narrator (disguised as the new kid), Holly ("come to" in Mary's body), and Charlemagne (now in Gideon's body) flee the scene of the crucifixion for the parking lot. Holly jumps into the driver's seat of Mary's car ("she stole it fast" [MoC]), while the Narrator and Charlemagne pile in from the sides [BCrosses]; they drive out into Lowertown [MoC] and from there onto the parkways [foreseen in OftC].
Holly's initial pleasure at finding herself resurrected ("climbed the cross and found she liked the view") quickly gives way to an urgent question: where's Gideon ("an old connection") to take up their old trade of sex ("wrapped her mouth around" and "real soft girl") for some meth ("what would you prescribe") [CC]?
Holly disposes of the crucifix [MoC] to open the way for Gideon, her "vampire" supplier.
Then the clusterfuck: Holly sees Gideon in the car with her, just as Charlemagne sees Mary, who he's been waiting years to get with. They come together with "legs wide open" [NS] from her part and "sure do kiss" [SK] from his --- only to discover, each of them, that the other is somebody else: Mary's body is inhabited by Holly's soul, and Gideon's body is inhabited by Charlemagne's soul. (The fact that there's a separate body and soul for each gives us the "boys and girls" theme, plural; she is "seeing double" [CatCT], "kicking it with chemists" [SK]; he's "kicking it with cousins" [HSL], and so on.)
Charlemagne is horrified to discover that Holly suddenly wants him ("funny bit of chemistry / how a cool car makes a guy seem that much cooler" [MoC]), but that it's pure pavlovian drug-seeking on her part ("I've had kisses that make Judas seem sincere" [Citrus]).
Holly is horrified to discover that she has no leverage over Charlemagne to get what she wants ("you know they're already taken" [FN]), that in fact he's going to deliberately withhold speed from her until she comes down ("friends from going through the program with me" [CatCT], "diamonds in the drain" [A&H], "speed shooters coming down and driving around" [CiS], and his later attempt to take it back "we'll hook it all up / there's fields of speed ..." [DLME], etc.).
Charlemagne's discovery that it's Holly he's with turns into a real search for Mary ("trying for a vision quest / we opened up three buttons" [MoC], "looking around for something that just died" [MoC], "deacon's hopeful eulogy" [MoC]); among other intoxicants that aren't speed, he gives her Feminax [MoC] and apparently peyote ("buttons" [MoC], "serotonin" [A&H]), but the main thing he gives her is wine ("Sonoma" [MoC], "drunk" [SBS], "bottles" [SK], "drinking" [HSL], "drink some more" [PP], "alcohol" [A&H], "wine" [R&T]), because --- ironically --- wine is what Mary always drinks/drank [MM, YGD, MN, LID, SPotC, Spinners, R&T] in anticipation of this moment as the "Wedding at Cana" between Mary Magdalene and Jesus [R&T].
Holly, realizing that the Gideon in front of her is really Charlemagne, realizes too that the boy who died falling from the water tower cross was Gideon, and tells the others so ("she cried and she told us about Jesus" [FN], "same kooks can't fly" [SK], see later "one townie falls" [OftC]).
Seizing the wheel again in a despairing detox spiral, Holly takes them on an insane ride ("a few hours circling the city" [MoC], "wrong way down 169" [HH], "trying to hook up with an entrance/exit ramp" [CiS]) that ends at the HarMar mall in suburban St. Paul [CSTLN liner notes, PP], one of the malls where Gideon sold meth once upon a time [SN]; "running out on residue" [CC], she crashes the car into the entrance of the mall ("crashing through the vestibule" [CC], "crashed into the Easter mass / with her hair done up in broken glass" [HaRRF], "made a scene by the revolving door" [PP], etc.).
Amazing how much detail there is even in these short episodes, now that I boil it down to a "short" summary. I'll do a timeline of the aftermath of the crash, arrests, and interrogation tomorrow. Thanks for reading and for thinking of Still Alive Carl.
EDITS ------- Added mention of Charlemagne's penitent promise to "hook it all up" during the trial [DLME] as evidence of his deliberately withholding speed during the car ride.
|
|
|
Post by skepticatfirst on Apr 8, 2016 22:59:21 GMT -5
ACT III (continued)Summer 2004 - Saturday night, crucifixionThings kick off early when they get down to the Party Pit [LA]. As usual, there's drugs and the sound of music coming down from the Ambassador above [OftC]; in fact, Charlemagne and the others are counting on the effect of the drugs and alcohol to dull the Skins' critical faculties, and so to help sell their performance ("pass out," "blackout" [OftC], "blacked out" [SS]). There's dancing [SS, HSL, arguably SiM]. The party continues until darkess falls. From on top of the water tower, Gideon turns on the projector. Charlemagne's Ghost appears at the fenced edge of the clearing [HM, SPayne], eerily lit [BBreathing], dancing [SS]. Mary, still disguised as Holly, walks up to Charlemagne's Ghost at the fence. He stops. The Narrator-as-new-kid runs up and begs, "Don't do it!" [BCrosses] She leans into the fence and kisses Charlemagne's Ghost [SPayne, BCrosses]. In the silence, the clicking and hissing of the projector can be heard [SBS, FN; by comparison, Citrus]. Charlemagne's Ghost says, "I still love you, Judas" [BCrosses]. The real Charlemagne, disguised as Gideon, runs at the Ghost with his knife drawn. The Ghost drops to his knees, arms out like Christ [SS]. The Narrator is all wrapped up in the show when he hears Mary (disguised as Holly) say, "I love you too" [HaRRF]. Charlemagne-as-Gideon slashes at Charlemagne's Ghost, releasing a hidden bladder of blood from his jacket sleeve as he drives the knife home ("She saw him gushing blood right before he got cut" [BCrosses]; "except for that blood on his jacket" [OftC]). From above comes Gideon's voice: "Hey hey, Providence: you gotta fall in love with whoever you can!" [SK] The projector runs out of film, bathing the actors below in bright light [HSL, SS]. Charlemagne-as-Gideon, the Narrator-as-the-new-kid, and the rest of the Skins fall backward in terror [R&T, ABlues, metaphor of the Apostle Paul in CSTLN]. Mary (still disguised as Holly) remains standing, her stitched and bandaged hands pointing up to the light, bleeding [BCrosses, AE, SS]. On this night, Gideon, the magician, performs several related tricks: the special-effects projection of Charlemagne's Ghost is one, and the publication of the urban-myth gospel of Charlemagne is another (see Craig's comments about urban myth and magic, and Spectres' opening "projectionists and publicists" --- "spectres" being ghosts). Now he performs a third, the trick of Gideon's Conversion: he switches his body for Charlemagne's [HSL, CSTLN, KP], so that Charlemagne, standing in the bright light of the projector, really finds his soul in Gideon's body, and Gideon, on top of the water tower, is really in Charlemagne's body. Holly, gone for seven years since her death at Gideon's hands during her baptism, comes to in Mary's body [SN, CC, HaRRF, CSTLN]. This may be another of Gideon's magic tricks, or it may just be that Mary is "confused about the truth" [SN]; uncertainty about this point will persist until the very end of the story [Weekenders, etc.]. The implication is that Mary, 33 years old [SN], bleeding from holes in her hands under the light of the projector cross [BCrosses, AE], dies for Charlemagne's sins [A&H, ABlues]. Gideon, in Charlemagne's body, stabs himself and falls from the top of the water tower to the ground, dead. Only Holly sees him fall; he leaves the knife behind him. (See "Falling on the floor just like Saul on his sword" [R&T], "he burned a hole in me eventually" [A&H], "we thought John Berryman could fly / but he didn't so he died" [SBS], "she cried, and she told us about Jesus" [FN], "when one townie falls in the forest, does anyone notice?" [OftC], "they can't find the weapon" [OftC], and "drop dead Fred" [Knuckles].) He too, having "climbed up on that cross" [A&H], and having taken his own life with "the sword in his side" [BCrosses, see A&H], dies for Charlemagne's sins; without a body, the rumor of his death would never have been believed ("she said words alone never could save us" [FN], "words won't save your life" [SBS], etc.). Tomorrow, the timeline of the car ride. Thank you as always for reading, and for remembering Still Alive Carl.
|
|
|
Post by skepticatfirst on Apr 7, 2016 21:02:46 GMT -5
Working out the finer points of the timeline last night took forever, and I forgot to put in the filming, the coaching "if they ask about Charlemagne," "Angel I didn't say goodbye" ... adding all of those now. In general I'm going to be touching up all the timeline pieces as I remember things.
ACT III (continued)
Summer 2004 - Saddle Shop
On Friday evening, fifteen days before the crucifixion (see notes on timeline): Charlemagne, disguised as Gideon, and Mary, disguised as Holly, "rejoin" the Skins after a supposed interval of seven years, bringing with them the Narrator, disguised as the "new kid" [BCrosses]. Their plan is to wait [Smidge] until the Skins go down to the Party Pit again, so that they can go along and stage the crucifixion; in the meantime it's a terrifying, but effective, place for Charlemagne to hide from the Skins [AHfA].
When they meet with the Skins, they try to arrange to stay in Mary's room at the Ambassador [SS], but end up sleeping at the saddle shop near Lyndale and Lake instead [SS, GoaH].
The real Gideon joins them at the Saddle Shop, in order to be on hand when everyone heads downtown. He and doppelgaenger Charlemagne avoid detection by sleeping in shifts; this leads to the impression that Gideon is "always awake" [R&T, see also Knuckles, MPADJs, TL].
Avoiding detection is a full-time job. Even with the stitches [SS], Mary's hands are a constant threat to give them away; both the Narrator ("keep your bandages clean" [SS], "tell her we need sterile gauze" [AHfA]) and Charlemagne ("bleaching out the bloodstains" [GLS]) have to keep after the bandages. Charlemagne and Mary (sleeping together as Gideon and Holly; the Narrator is sleeping on the couch [AHfA]) sleep on navy sheets [NS] to avoid visible stains; Mary's strict no-touching rule is in effect, leading to a galactic case of blue balls ("everybody's coming onto navy sheets" [NS]).
Life with the Skins proves to be an insane roller-coaster of drugs and trafficking and street fights; by the time the fifteen days are up, the Narrator is a wreck, "throwing up" from the drugs and "almost [dead]" from the violence [AHfA, SS]. Like in RP, Mary loses patience with the Narrator's complaining about getting the life he's chosen ("Now Holly won't say hi to me" [AHfA]).
As was the case back in the summer of 1996 [BBreathing, SPayne], the Skins come out of these fights the worse for wear [LA; probably HH also].
After a particularly bad street defeat, Shepard shows up [LA, SS] and leads the whole gang downtown on the crosstown Lake street bus to the Party Pit. Charlemagne, Mary, and the Narrator ride along on the bus [LA]; the real Gideon drives down ahead of them in Mary's car, and is seen (dressed like Charlemagne in the film) by the Narrator in the parking lot above the Pit [SS].
NOTES ON TIMELINE -----------------------------
For once the timeline is really simple. The time they spend with the Skins is specified as sixteen nights [TL], or the intervening fifteen days [SS], between the Friday night they join up and the Saturday night of the crucifixion [NS, CSTLN, HSL]; see also "A couple motels and a couple saloons / They can eat a couple of weeks up" [GoaH].
Everything that happens is either a specific event at the beginning or the end of that period, or else a description of the general state of things during the duration.
Going to get some sleep tonight; will start blocking out the crucifixion timeline tomorrow. Thanks for reading this far and for thinking of Still Alive Carl.
|
|
|
Post by skepticatfirst on Apr 7, 2016 4:39:58 GMT -5
ACT III (continued)
Summer 2004 - Gideon's apartment
Mary, desperate about the coming crucifixion [R&T] and deeply jealous of Jesse [ABlues], drops a dime on Charlemagne to both the cops and the Skins ("someone must have said something" [RH]). Both come looking for him, forcing him to run.
Mary gives Charlemagne a ride to Gideon's apartment on Columbus [OftC]. He tells Gideon what Mary has told him, and asks for his help [RH].
Mary returns to the Ambassador (implicit from the Narrator's account in The Ambassador, as well as from the combination of CF and ABlues; see notes on timeline below).
Gideon talks with Charlemagne about leaving the Twin Cities ("tried to duck out" [RH]), but he can't/won't abandon Jesse to the harbor bars ("cause the kids at the shows / they'll have kids of their own" [SPositive]; implicit also in the SBS allusion "stuck / like a sneaker in the Mississippi mud" [RH]).
Gideon comes up with the idea of using the Pepper's Ghost trick to fake Charlemagne's death [BBreathing, Ambassador].
On Wednesday night (the first during his two-week stay there; see notes below), Charlemagne goes out looking for Mary; he checks the Uptown church where they met a few days earlier [ABlues]; later Jesse sees him driving around down in St. Paul, in a car (Mary's) which she knows has a gun in the glovebox ("Walter" [CF]; see notes below).
The Narrator joins Charlemagne and Gideon at the apartment on Columbus. He tells Charlemagne where Mary is, and proposes taking war to the Skins with an violent assault on the Ambassador [Ambassador, see also HSL]. Gideon reveals that he has a non-violent solution in mind, and convinces them to follow his lead instead [Ambassador, BBreathing, CSTLN, CatCT, HSL].
Gideon films Charlemagne, camouflaged like a townie in sweatpants [ABlues, SS] and dancing, for the Pepper's Ghost sequence in the crucifixion [SS]. The sequence ends with Charlemagne saying "I still love you Judas" [BCrosses], then kneeling [ABlues] with his arms out like Christ [SS].
Gideon shaves both Charlemagne's head and his own [RH, SS, HSL], so that they look alike, and Charlemagne disguises himself as Gideon.
The cops show up at the door of Gideon's apartment, but don't find Charlemagne; they think he went out the window in the back [CF].
On another night, the Skins come by the restaurant and ask Jesse where Charlemagne is [CF].
The next day, the cops stop by while Jesse is opening up the restaurant, and tell her about Charlemagne's disappearance [CF]. She wants to get together with him, to get their stories straight, but that's not going to happen --- from a distance, Charlemagne thinks, "Angel, i didn't say goodbye but i'm already gone" [Smidge] --- and her threat to leave will come true [CF]. Like her, though, he fervently hopes she's all right [Smidge].
The friends spend their days and nights working on the projector [Ambassador] and a ladder for the water tower in the Party Pit [CSummer].
Mary joins them (implicit from BCamp, etc.). Charlemagne takes her to the "doctors" to get her stigmata stitched up [RH], which will help her pass herself off as Holly without getting caught (see notes below). She disguises herself as Holly, among other things by wearing a cross necklace [BCamp].
Charlemagne and Holly, with the Narrator in tow, meet in the theater to prepare for joining the Skins: getting in character, reviewing the Skins' way of doing things, practicing their slang [BCamp]. He also coaches her for the eventual investigation which they expect to follow, after they pull off the staged murder: "If they ask about Charlemagne / Be polite, and say something vague" etc. [KParties].
NOTES ON TIMELINE --------------------------------
From CF, we know that Jesse saw Charlemagne for the last time driving around on "Wednesday night," and that the cops tell her that he's gone later that same week.
We also know that the crucifixion takes place on a Saturday [NS, CSTLN, HSL], and that Charlemagne and the others were with the Skins for a period of sixteen nights [TL] / fifteen days [SS]; that means they joined the Skins on Friday night.
If we assume that Charlemagne's disappearance is the same day he joined the Skins, then a ton of things have to happen between Wednesday night and Friday morning (see the discussion of constraints below); the nights and days of preparation described in Ambassador and CSummer make that impossible, I think.
So either "Wednesday night" really means "last Wednesday night," or else Charlemagne shaved his head and so disappeared as much as a week before he joined the Skins, giving him and the others plenty of time to prepare. The latter account is preferable, and that's what I'm going with above.
------
I hit a knotty problem in this section; what's written above reflects the solution, but it involves a correction to something I said earlier, so I'll include the details in my notes here. The problem involves a few moving pieces:
1) We know that Charlemagne spends two weeks at Gideon's apartment before the cops show up and he disappears [OftC, CF]. This is a short window. We know that it ends with Charlemagne (head shaved, disguised as Gideon) and Mary (hands stitched and bandaged, disguised as Holly) attaching themselves to the Skins [BCamp, SS, AHfA, etc].
2) Right before Charlemagne shows up at Gideon's apartment, he and Mary visit "the doctors," who doubt what he says about the blood, until they see the stigmata [RH]. Given that we see her in disguise with her stigmata stitched up just two weeks later, the obvious implication would be that she's there getting stitches.
3) Right after Charlemagne goes into hiding at Gideon's apartment, Jesse sees him driving around (apparently in Mary's car; maybe she left it parked up on Hennepin?) with "Walter" (the "gun in the glovebox" mentioned a few weeks later in [CiS]; they refer to it as "Walter" either because it's an actual Walther PPK or P99, or because it's named jokingly after, say, Bond's gun) "looking for" something [CF]. Charlemagne's description of himself as "searching in a dirty storefront church" [YLHF] must refer to this same "looking for" something. In fact, it was in that "dirty storefront church" that Mary, a few days earlier, told him "now you know you can't know where I live" [ABlues]. The very strong implication is that it's Mary he's looking for.
4) This is also the time that he, the Narrator, and Gideon are debating whether or not to settle things violently with the Skins [Ambassador, BBreathing, HSL, CatCT, CSTLN]. In The Ambassador, this debate about a violent response is explicitly set in Gideon's apartment, and explicitly set against a backdrop of Mary's "pretty much living in" the Ambassador.
5) This entire chain of events was set in motion by Mary's decision, when down in the Ambassador, that she had to break the pattern [R&T]; when she arranges to meet Charlemagne in the "dirty storefront church" she tells him explicitly that "she's sick of all the sucking up" [ABlues], that is, sick of "pretty much living in" the Ambassador.
Points (3) and (4) are entirely consistent with each other, except for the weird detail that Charlemagne doesn't know where Mary lives ("you can't know where I live" [ABlues]); that seems hard to believe in its own right, plus the Narrator knows that she's "living in" the Ambassador [Ambassador]. But it's the same word, "live" versus "living in," perfectly explicit. In fact, the Narrator is talking to Charlemagne when he says this, informing him of something which he apparently didn't know. So maybe we take that at face value.
Points (3+4) can be reconciled with (5) easily enough; Mary could be sick of the sucking up and still be living there, especially in view of her meth dependency [R&T, etc.]. There is no evidence that she herself is present in Gideon's apartment; she drops Charlemagne off there [OftC], and then the next we see of her is when she meets him and the Narrator in the theater right before they join the Skins [BCamp]. So far, no problem.
But if we want to throw (2) in with (3+4+5), now we have a problem. The stitches are needed for the Holly disguise ("keep your bandages clean" [SS, see also AHfA, etc.]) precisely because the Skins know Mary very well --- her "living" down there is all about getting high, fucking, and bleeding ("blood on the bed" [SPayne], "She was pretty much crashing there / The space between the skin and all her blood" [Ambassador]). So she can't get stitches and then go back to the Ambassador.
I've been looking at this from all different angles to try to figure out which constraint can be lifted, and I think the best answer is to point to the deliberate ambiguity of the RH evidence and conclude that the doctor visit actually comes late in the two weeks, right before Mary's BCamp reappearance, and therefore after she finally leaves the Ambassador for good. This seems consistent with the descriptions of "running" in RH, some of which clearly include Gideon (POV character of RH), and therefore also belong to the two-week window.
Sorry to clutter the timeline by hashing this all out in public --- if I hadn't committed to the misstep earlier I could have just presented the consistent reading without comment. But it's only by forcing myself to write this down that I'm finding the problems in the first place ...
More timeline tomorrow, in any case. Thanks for reading, and for thinking about Still Alive Carl.
EDITS ----- added HSL ("cutting off all my hair") as evidence of Gideon shaving his/Charlemagne's heads in the apartment added note about filming Charlemagne for the Pepper's Ghost trick [ABlues, SS, BCrosses] added SPositive ("kids of their own") as evidence of Charlemagne going through with the plan for Jesse's sake added note about Charlemagne's "angel i didn't say goodbye but i'm already gone" [Smidge] added note about Charlemagne's coaching for the eventual investigation that they expect to follow the staged death [KParties]
|
|
|
Post by skepticatfirst on Apr 6, 2016 0:39:07 GMT -5
Oh man, you're right ... taking his words literally, he's talking about the characters, but now that you point it out, the four years between albums makes it much more likely that that's what he's referring to. Good catch. So then I have to go back to saying that we don't know exactly when Chips Ahoy! takes place. I do still think it must be some time before Jesse shows up; Charlemagne must be totally in love with Mary by that point, or he would have just left town with Jesse (he's only sticking around because of Mary). I'll go back and edit that in the timeline soon. No worries about Stevie Nix, I didn't really give an answer on that point earlier. And I'm glad for a chance to clear things up, especially after having had to work out so much of this on the fly. (Again, just for context: Holly is the POV character in the song; "you" is Gideon; "she" is Mary.) My reading of the verse about the garbage dump is that Mary, the speaker in that verse, goes through this progression: -> she hears the guys on the front lawn making a Stevie Nicks joke about Gideon (because of the magician cape) -> she tells him "you don't remind me of Stevie Nicks so much as Rod Stewart" (passion, etc.) -> she adds "actually, Rod Stewart had an urban myth attached to him, too," then her eyes get wide, the same way the music gets weird, and she says the line about the garbage dump, with the implication that there's an urban myth attached to Gideon also. (Remember, too, Craig's 2005 MAGNET interview line about Stevie Nix in which he explicitly links "urban myth" to something that happens "magically," which brings the connection full circle; we are meant to understand that Gideon's authorship [CSTLN, BBreathing, etc.] of the urban myth of Charlemagne's crucifixion is one of his magic tricks.) Early on I had understood this to refer to a generic urban myth about a murder. Now, realizing that there really was a body at the crucifixion, I see it rather as a specific allusion to the "theater" in Slapped Actress --- that is, the party pit, where Gideon projected the film of Charlemagne's Ghost onto the screen of the fence (and then killed himself, in Charlemagne's body). As for "garbage dump" ... maybe that's poetic license in Mary's vision, or maybe there really was a dumpster under the water tower back in the day, but if there's a real-world referent for it I'm missing it. (It's true too that Craig needed something that rhymed with "stomach pump" ...) This is another place where we're left to doubt, knowing what we know from the end of the story, whether this was really precognition on Mary's part, or just a vision without any necessary connection to the future. After all, it was she who years later brought Charlemagne to Gideon ("she gave him a ride to some kid's house in Cleveland" [OftC]), so that he could use his magician's skills to help stage the crucifixion as she'd seen it. In other words, it was all done at her prompting. Was it destined to happen anyway, or was it all a product of her actions? Does that make sense? -------- ACT III (continued)May 5, 2004Gideon is taken to the hospital (probably Methodist) by some unspecified "they" and forced to detox [HSL, RH]; he finally comes back to himself for the first time since being jumped in at the metal bar, almost eight years prior. End Spring 2004Standing by the window of her room in the Ambassador in the still hours of the morning, Mary finally decides that she has to take the situation into her own hands [R&T]. The "records and tapes" framing makes it sound as if her decision is connected to the Narrator's plea in MPADJs, but whether that's true or not, she resolves to try to save Charlemagne by deliberately staging the crucifixion scene from her vision ("right song at the right time"), even if doing so means her own death ("Self Destruction" [RH]). The next day, Mary calls up Charlemagne and asks to meet him back Uptown [ABlues]. Wanting to let him feel the power of what she sees, she takes him to a Pentecostal "dirty storefront church" [YLHF] and, while the congregation rolls on the floor in holy frenzy, tells him for the first time about the crucifixion, and her vision of him as Christ [ABlues]. From her comments at the end of the song, and the events that follow in RH, it's implied that she tells him of her plan to save him as well. This seems to take place on a Sunday (church scene), not that we're likely to be able to pinpoint which one. NOTES ON DATES ----------------------------- Working backward from the crucifixion to the spring of 2004: The crucifixion happens on a Saturday night [NS, CSTLN, HSL] in summer 2004 [CSummer, BBreathing, SS, JaJ] (just to repeat, after going through all the songs and thinking through the weather implications, I now think "summer" is literal and "Easter" is metaphoric, not the other way around). It comes after fifteen days [SS, TL] of running around in disguise with the Skins, which in turn follows "two weeks" [OftC] hiding out in Gideon's apartment on Columbus. That means that RH takes place 29 days before the crucifixion. RH in turn refers to a few earlier events with date implications: one, a period of "running" in which Charlemagne describes visiting "doctors" with Mary to get stitches for her hands; two, Gideon's "touchdown" at the hospital. HSL states that Gideon's "touchdown" occurred on the "Cinco de Mayo," which looks like a literal reference to May 5. As for Charlemagne and Mary, there's a short period after ABlues and before RH that we don't know much about, except for the running and the stitches. Prior to that, we're explicitly told that ABlues takes place after the end of spring. Finally, ABlues seems to describe Mary acting immediately on the plan she formulated in R&T. That wires everything up from springtime to the crucifixion. I have the feeling I've forgotten some constraints, so let me just leave it at that for now; I'm not sure we can do much better than to file it all under Spring or Summer 2004 anyway. More tomorrow. Thanks again for remembering Still Alive Carl.
|
|
|
Post by skepticatfirst on Apr 5, 2016 1:17:28 GMT -5
ACT III (continued)
Fall-Winter 2003/04
Commiserating with each other in their rivalry over Charlemagne, Mary and Jesse develop a kind of hostile friendship ("sick together" [212M], "friend" [YLHF]).
Mary confronts Charlemagne about getting with Jesse; he denies it, recriminating with her instead [YLHF].
Jesse takes advantage of a show played by a favorite band to let Charlemagne see that she's doing drugs with the music boys again, but wakes up alone and sadder than before [40B].
Jesse and Charlemagne meet to listen to records in her room again [WCGT]; she was all cheerful innocence when they did this back in the summer [HH], but now that "pure and simple love" doesn't sound so simple to her any more. For his part he sees that it's heaven; still he can't let go of his thing with Mary.
Spring 2004
Charlemagne is still stuck on Mary, and a year and a half or so after the events of Chips Ahoy! is still trying to figure out if she feels anything ("Diane Lane kept me sane through the spring" [ABlues]).
Jesse's angry now, but neither she nor Charlemagne can quit the situation [BCig]; she threatens to leave for New York without him [Magazines], but won't actually go. It's clear to him that she's going to go back to the boys in the harbor bars for real this coming summer [HJ].
Last summer, Charlemagne and Jesse used to be able to go to parties and pretend that they'd never met [Smidge]. Now they're a known item, and boys are dissing him on her message machine [Magazines]. (It won't be long before she gets a visit from the Skins, when they're looking for him [CF].)
Jesse begins to get involved with Charlemagne's dealing in the restaurant ("She's got a bandolero belt filled with Kamikaze shooters / She touches every table in a total eclipse" [Smidge], "She's the pistol at the party" [BCig]). Again, he sees that things are taking a bad turn; something's got to give.
Mary, deeply unhappy with the situation with Charlemagne, has a vision of him speaking to her after the crucifixion which she's foreseen; in the vision, he needs her and thanks her for saving his life, but he also calls her "Sapphire" [YS]. Whether it's because these visions of him are actual episodes of long-range precognition, or because they lead her to get "confused about the truth" [SN], the name "Sapphire" foreshadows the fact that she won't be simply "Mary" in that future.
Mary and Jesse drag the Narrator and Charlemagne out to a party; when they get there, Mary wants to head straight for the room in the back where the heavy drugs are, and she and the Narrator end up having a fight about it [MPADJs, RP]. Unlike in past fights [HM, CSunrise], this time he says something that she hears and remembers --- namely, that by passively getting high and watching her visions ("records and tapes" [R&T]), she's living the life of a DJ; but it's her life, and she needs to take the risk of making her own music. It's a conversation that plants a seed for later, when she finally decides what to do about the impending crucifixion [R&T].
NOTES ON DATES -----------------------------
The Spring 2004 timeframe is mentioned in Ascension Blues ("through the spring"); it's at the end of the spring, we're told, that Mary finally takes action to get out in front of the crucifixion that's coming in summer 2004. There are a few crises leading to that point that have to happen not long before [MPADJs, RP, YS]; the events of Hurricane J and "now"-era Smidge also clearly take place in the runup to summer 2004, and the angry episodes described in Magazines/BCig seem to belong to the same late stage.
Everything else that comes after the baseline of summer 2003 but isn't clearly as far along as the crises of spring 2004 I've dumped in the "Fall/Winter 2003-04" timeframe, which simply covers the gap between them.
More timeline tomorrow. Thanks in the meantime for remembering Still Alive Carl.
|
|
|
Post by skepticatfirst on Apr 3, 2016 22:16:19 GMT -5
ACT III (continued)
Summer 2003
The summer of 2003 establishes a kind of baseline for the lives of the Narrator, Mary, Jesse, and Charlemagne [TSPotC], before things get crazy again.
Jesse and Charlemagne are working together in the restaurant in St. Paul; she's waitressing, he's bartending and dealing from behind the bar [SM, CSongs, Magazines, HJ; see also later CF].
Charlemagne and the Narrator are making extra money delivering party stuff [TSPotC, 40B].
Jesse spends a lot of evenings drinking with Charlemagne and the Narrator at their place up on Hennepin [TSPotC].
Jesse and Charlemagne go out to parties together ["used to"-era Smidge]; sometimes they spend the night together [Magazines]; sometimes they go to her place to get high, listen to her records, and fuck [HH, WCGT].
Charlemagne repeatedly warns Jesse away from the St. Paul harbor bars [BCig, HJ] where the Skins hang, like the Ambassador. He does his best to persuade her to leave for New York [CSongs, Magazines], to follow her dream of being in magazines [SM, Magazines; not about Jesse, but see Spectres].
Jesse wants to go to New York, but is waiting for Charlemagne to come with her [CF, HJ]. She tries different approaches to tempt or provoke him to give in: fucking his brains out [BCig, YLHF], fighting with him to get him to "chase her to the lights" [TSPotC, Magazines], even threatening to get, and getting, with the same music boys from the bars that he's trying to keep her away from [40B, HJ, WaW].
Charlemagne won't give in and leave with Jesse because of Mary [CA, ABlues], but he gives in to her prompting for sex [BCig, YLHF], and from his end (thinking of Holly) prompts her for kisses [HH, HJ, Magazines].
Mary is spending more time down at the Ambassador than up on Hennepin [TSPotC], but she comes up to see Charlemagne, and to party with him, the Narrator, Jesse [TSPotC; MPADJs and RP are part of this pattern, but I think come a little later].
The Narrator spends a lot of time with Mary, especially in the back of the theaters, just drinking and talking [TSPotC, AE].
NOTES ON DATES -----------------------------
Summer 2003 is the "everything that I showed you this summer" [HJ] summer with Jesse, as detailed in the last post; the events above that don't involve Jesse directly nevertheless explicitly take place at the same time.
A lot of the detail above describes a baseline pattern of doing certain things. Some of the songs cited are part of that pattern, but also describe later developments (thinking of HJ, Magazines, Smidge, CF, MPADJs, RP, ABlues). So we'll cite the same songs again a little later in the timeline, too.
Thanks for reading along, and for thinking of Still Alive Carl.
|
|
|
Post by skepticatfirst on Apr 2, 2016 23:09:49 GMT -5
It's really satisfying to go through and try to nail down the timeline, but it's taking more work than I thought. Here's the next piece: INTERVAL (between summer 1997 and winter 2002/03)The Narrator, Mary, and Charlemagne move from Nicollet & 66th to a new place up on Hennepin [TSPotC]; technically, Mary lives there ("I knew that she would leave" [TOT]), but she spends a lot (most?) of her time "crashing" down at the metal bar, that is, the Ambassador [Ambassador; see also TSPotC, ABlues]. The Narrator continues to play shows, and to fall deeper into addiction [SM]. ACT III - 2000's dates; up on Hennepin; crucifixion Summer 2002 or earlier (see notes) Charlemagne and Mary go on a weekend date to the OTB, win huge on the fifth horse in the sixth race, and spend the whole next week getting high [CA]. Weekenders ("another weekender") suggests that this happens more than once. Winter 2002/03 ("last winter" [SM]; see notes below) The Narrator plays a show high out of his mind, and wakes up with Jesse, who, targeting the rhythm guitarist, had finagled a backstage pass from the band's publicist [SM]. The Narrator plays another show, a benefit [BCig, Magazines, JaJ], at which he introduces Charlemagne and Jesse. Charlemagne takes one look at this "beautiful" [HJ] little "roughly twenty years old" [CSongs] "speed shooter" [SM], sees Holly all over again [HJ, CSongs, etc.], and tells her she has to clean up [SM, CSongs]; she in turn sees the father figure she's been missing, and falls in love [40B, BCig, CF, Magazines]. They fuck [BCig] and begin seeing each other / working together at the same St. Paul restaurant, her as a waitress, him behind the bar [SM, CSongs, Magazines, HJ, CF]. NOTES ON DATES ----------------------------- The Jesse timeline rests on three main data points: - Seeing that Jesse's getting tired of waiting, Charlemagne predicts that "Hurricane Jesse's going to crash into the harbor this summer" [HJ]. This doesn't happen, however, because the crucifixion happens first. This puts the exchange in HJ at some point after summer 2003 but before summer 2004 (the summer 2004 date of the crucifixion is established by the combination of SN and R&T, which make Mary 17 in summer 1988 and 33 at the time of her "death"). - In the same exchange, Charlemagne also tells Jesse, "forget all the things that I showed you this summer" [HJ]. By extension from the last point, he must be referring back to summer 2003; the suggestion is that this is the only summer they've spent together, that this was when all the essential development of their relationship happened. Which means that they got together sometime in the runup to summer 2003. - Jesse reports that she was heartbroken "last winter" [SM], and then met Charlemagne. By extension from the above two points, that would have to be the winter of 2002/03 (this would in fact make her "twenty years old" [CSongs] when they met; the "roughly" is for the implicit comparison to Holly). The Summer 2002 date for Chips Ahoy! is a guess, but a reasonable one. First, at 2:30 of the audio segment of the 2010 NPR interview (link), Craig says that it's "4 years or so" between the events of Chips Ahoy! and the events of The Weekenders. There's at least a year of distance between the crucifixion and the conversation in Weekenders; given the number of things that have to develop in that time (the later events of OftC, plus the events of BCrosses, TOT, LID), two years seems like a much more likely figure. That would put Chips Ahoy! two years before the crucifixion, or summer 2002. If it's more than a few months after that, then we have Jesse on the scene, which means a Charlemagne and Mary idyll spending "the whole next week getting high" is much less likely. These calculations aren't certain by any means, but I think they're soundly formulated. EDIT: muzzleofbees points out that the "4 years or so" referred to by Craig is probably a reference to the time between the respective appearances of BAGIA and HiW, even if he's speaking about the characters, and I agree. So we don't have a no-earlier-than date for the events of CA. We still have a no-later-than date, however; Charlemagne must be completely in love with Mary by the time Jesse appears, or he would simply go with her to New York in order to get her out of St. Paul. That means the events of CA take place well in advance of the winter of 2002/03. More tomorrow. Thanks for reading, and for remembering Still Alive Carl. EDITS ----- Modified "Summer 2002" dating for CA to "Summer 2002 or earlier"; see timeline discussion above
|
|
|
Post by skepticatfirst on Apr 1, 2016 22:10:20 GMT -5
OK, back to the timeline. The first part of the timeline, from the very beginning of the story, is found here ( link). As with the first part, my intention is to make this a reference document, and I'll update it with corrections/clarifications as needed. (There's a lot to go through, too, so I'm going to do it over a few days.) Picking up after Holly and Gideon get high, fuck, and leave her 19th birthday party together [MM, MoC]: Summer 1996Still showing signs of having been beat up by the Skins, Charlemagne scrambles to establish a new source for his dealing. Holly's gone, but Mary stays by him (as does the Narrator, keeping an eye on her); impressed by her fidelity as she drives him across town from one sketchy mall encounter to another, he begins to fall in love [SG]. Summer 1996 - Spring 1997Holly and Gideon travel around the Upper Midwest [DLME] with the Skins, selling drugs on the malls, counting the money in the motels [SN, CatCT]. Their life together is openly mercenary; she fucks him [FN], he pays her back in speed. But over the course of the winter he becomes less reliable about holding up his end of the bargain [HaRRF]. Summer 1997Sometime before Holly's July birthday, Gideon breaks away from the "fenced in" [SN] life of the malls and motels, and heads down to the camps by the banks of the river in St. Paul. Holly, already having had to struggle to "get paid" [HaRRF] for some time, draws a line in the sand and refuses to fuck him. Gideon, offering to baptize her under the pretense that it'll get her high as hell, drowns her in revenge [BCamp]. Holly dies [SN, HaRRF, etc.]. Gideon disappears, going off to work at the tire shop on the lower half of Columbus between 28th and Lake, and living in an upstairs apartment on the same half-block [SPayne, Ambassador, CF, HSL, SS]. Having left the Skins, he'll let his hair grow and become a "hesher" [SS]. This is the end of "Act II." NOTES ----------- In discussing the baptism earlier I'd originally said that it happened in the spring of 1997. The two constraints on the date are that it has to be after she's spent the winter trying to get paid [HaRRF], but before her 20th birthday in July ("teenage" [MoC], "sophomore" [OftC]). Spring 1997 works for that, but in working through the crucifixion I realized that late-night outdoor partying in Minnesota pretty much has to happen in the summer. So here I'm correcting the date to summer 1997, but before her July birthday. To fill in a little more of the background: we know that she was born in July of 1977, because she was named for the storm during which she was conceived (see HJ; Charlemagne's worrying about Jesse precisely because he's identified her with Holly), namely Hurricane Holly, which blew on October 22, 1976. It has of course also to be after her 19th birthday party, since that's when she ran off with Gideon in the first place. We'll continue with "Act III" tomorrow. Thanks for your thoughts for Still Alive Carl in the meantime.
|
|
|
Post by skepticatfirst on Mar 31, 2016 23:33:52 GMT -5
The Weekenders is a truly amazing song, so I'm going to go through the whole thing here, to get it all in one place. It's the last we see of Charlemagne (in Gideon's body) and Holly (in Mary's body); it might be that JaJ and IHTWTDFY, or Oaks, come later in time, but it feels right to wrap it up with this one. There's a 2010 NPR interview with Craig ( link) that has a linked audio component ( link) in which he talks about both Hurricane J and the Weekenders. I really should have included this when talking about Jesse early on, but I forgot about it ... I'll include something of both below, the part about Hurricane J just because the line "kinda stuck in this one thing" is such a great piece of evasion, and the part about The Weekenders because it's relevant to the timeline: The interesting bit in that second quote is the information that it's 4 years or so since Chips Ahoy. We don't know when exactly Chips Ahoy is (2003?), and it's sort of annoying to pin calendar dependencies on something totally outside the songs themselves. But this is more or less what I would have guessed if I had to put a number on it; it can't be too many years after 2004, but there's got to be some distance from the events of the car ride and the trial. Anyway, on to the song. The POV character is Charlemagne (in Gideon's body, but he's on the phone so that doesn't matter); the "you" he's addressing is Mary, while "she" is Holly. (One could argue that she's claiming to be Mary again in order to try to get him to come see her, but I don't think that's right; rather, he addresses her as Mary as a statement of his hope, if not faith. She's in the "the only thing she talks about is TV" [TOT] state; I don't think she's capable of trying to trick him in this way, at this point.) The song takes place some years after the crucifixion, car crash, and trial, and after Both Crosses. From Both Crosses, we know that Holly (in Mary's body) at some point begins to experience both (a) the flashes of precognition and (b) the crucifixion visions that Mary used to have. We noted that Charlemagne, hearing about this, has begun to doubt whether (a) and (b) aren't two completely separate things: the precognitive flashes happen a few seconds ahead of time, while the crucifixion visions, if they ever were predictive, came years before the actual event, and now are still happening after it's already past. (There are other differences; the precognitive flashes can happen during the day, for example at the OTB [CA, Weekenders], while the crucifixion visions seem only to happen at night [MN, SPayne, BCrosses].) In other words, he's doubting whether the crucifixion visions ever were a vision of the future in the first place. At any rate, at this late date, Charlemagne gets a call from Holly (in Mary's body), asking him to come see her. (Like the call Mary dreamed of in Yeah Sapphire, it's a case of "I was just about to call you when you called": she's the one who called him, but he's been thinking they could pull another weekender, too.) As if announcing something new, she confides to him that she can see things before they're happening, but insists that he keep it a secret. This is the point at which the song begins. There was that whole weird thing with the horses. I think they know exactly what happened. I don't think it needs any explaining. I'm pretty sure I wasn't your first choice. I think I was the last one remaining. I wish we hadn't gone and destroyed it. 'Cause I was thinking we could pull another weekender. If you've still got a little bit of clairvoyance. Having heard about her seeing these things "right before they're happening," Charlemagne begins to talk his way through a complicated response. It doesn't really need to be a secret, he says: there was the whole weird thing with the horses, for one thing. He thinks the Narrator and the others know exactly what happened, that it doesn't need any explaining. After all, she was with the Narrator before he himself ever showed up; he must have figured out about the precognition thing too. Implicit in this is a huge accumulation of uncertainty, insecurity and distrust. He doesn't know that he was *always* the object of her visions; as far as he knows, her interest in him only goes back as far as his interest in her (the SG era); her previous lovers, he assumes, must have been the objects of the same level of worship. What's more, he characterizes himself as her last choice among the three, taken not so much because she wanted him, as because he was the last one remaining. He couldn't get it together with Holly after the reservoir because he believed her sudden receptivity was just a drug-addicted response to the appearance of Gideon; now he's learned that Mary's visions are also some kind of hardwired reflex, not necessarily related to reality at all. How's he supposed to know what the truth is? Still, she's hit him where he's weak. He's a lover [CiS], but he's also an incorrigible small-timer; the "weekender" scam was the greatest thing that ever happened to him, and he can't forget it. He wishes they hadn't gone and destroyed it (the fact that he formulates the thought this way confirms that he's thinking the faked crucifixion was unnecessary, "a grave mistake" [BCrosses] based on a confusion of the crucifixion vision with the precognitive flashes). Cautiously, he admits he's been "thinking we could pull another weekender / If you've still got a little bit of clairvoyance." I remember the metal bar. I remember the reservoir. You could say our paths have crossed before. He remembers the visions, as opposed to the clairvoyance (note the parallel between this verse and "I remember the OTB / The five second delivery" further down), and how they seemed to be related to the clairvoyance --- how she foretold both the metal bar incident, in which he was almost killed (we see her sharing this prediction with the Narrator [CSunrise]), and the reservoir incident, in which he was "crucified" [YS, BCrosses, etc.]. He says "you could say our paths have crossed before" --- "you could say" in the sense that it happened in her visions. So if it has to be a secret. Then I guess that I can deal with it. You and I both know it's a negative thing. In the end only the girls know the whole truth. He's thinking about the weekenders: and yeah, he's got qualms, but he'll find a way to get over them. If it has to be a secret, then he guesses that he can deal with it, even if it is a negative thing ("staying positive" is a Charlemagne mantra [HJ, ABlues, Weekenders]). It's true he doesn't have a clue whether any of it is true or not, but, hey ... "In the end only the girls," Holly/Mary, "know the whole truth." There were a couple pretty crass propositions. There were some bugs in the bars. There was a kid camped out by the coat check. She said the theme of this party is the industrial age. You came in dressed like a train wreck. Of course even if she is telling the truth, he's got reason to be unsure: he remembers very well the tricks to which Mary was willing to stoop to clear Holly out of the way, at Holly's party: - "There were a couple pretty crass propositions": Mary and Holly both propositioned Gideon in exchange for drugs. - "There were some bugs in the bars": Gideon's tattoo flies, trapped in the spiderweb representing prison (noted by Charlemagne during Holly's party [HF]); possible double entendre with other Skins in e.g. the metal bar at the same time. (See also Jesse's "Tavern wine and tiny bugs" [Spinners].) - "There was a kid camped out by the coat check": Gideon himself, under orders after he "came into the party ... to ... meet [Mary] right back here" [SN] in the entrance to the house, stood "in the corner" [CiS] "camped out by the coat check" [Weekenders], i.e. the "vestibule" [HSL], from which they could easily exit and go "back behind the building" [MM]. -"She said the theme of this party is the industrial age": Holly chose the theme "The Industrial Age" as a play on the 19th century (first steam train 1804) and the fact that it's her 19th birthday ("it's my party" [HF], her "Age" [Weekenders]). She's soon to undergo her baptism and will still be "teenage" [MoC] on her resurrection; she is the "sophomore accomplice" of the crucifixion [OftC]. - "You came in dressed like a train wreck": apart from the Industrial Age joke, Mary came into the party in a white tattered T-shirt ("white swan" [SN], "dirty ... fringes" [MM]), in keeping with her usual manner of dressing, in white [Swish, SN], revealing clothing [HM, BCamp, SPotC, NS, Weekenders]. I remember the OTB. The five second delivery. You could say our paths have crossed before. But yeah, he remembers the thing with the horses at the OTB [CA], and the instant riches of her winnings (see also "five second delivery" of a different kind of instant satisfaction in MPADJs). "You could say our paths have crossed before" then, too. So if it has to be a secret. Then I guess that I can deal with it. God only knows it's not always a positive thing. To see a few seconds into the future. So again, yeah, he's going to find a way to deal with it, even if it's not always a positive thing to see a few seconds into the future. He's insisting on that formulation, because that part, the few seconds' clairvoyance, is the only part that he's sure of. (It's not always a positive thing because it might lead one to think that other ideas were also infallible predictions; they've seen where that leads.) And if you swear to keep it decent Then yeah, I'll come and see you. But it's not gonna be like in romantic comedies. In the end I bet no one learns a lesson. In the end only the girls know the whole truth. In the end I bet no one learns a lesson. In a last concession to his qualms, he extracts a promise from her, regarding her (here revealed) reason for calling: "if you swear to keep it decent" (unlike how things were back in the car, after the crucifixion, with "legs wide open on the opening night" [NS, MoC, etc.]) "then yeah, I'll come and see you. But," he warns, "it's not gonna be like in romantic comedies," where everyone gets a mulligan and they all live happily ever after; "In the end I bet no one learns a lesson." The irony of course is that he's the one, tempted to dive in again by the lure of the world's easiest scam, who hasn't learned his lesson. But, hey ... "In the end only the girls know the whole truth." It's not an entirely happy ending to the story. But it's pretty perfect. So that's it. There are still a few things I want to do: 1. Finish writing out the timeline. Need to get the whole outline in one place for easy reading. 2. Make a list of questions that we left hanging along the way, and answer them. Pretty sure there are a good number. 3. Make a list of questions that I have no answer for (what is the motive behind the choice of the name "Chips Ahoy!"?) 4. Go back and pick up a few smaller passages that we skipped along the way (like the "She said 'St. Louis had enslaved me'" verse of HaRRF ... things that shouldn't be left by the wayside. 5. Take a look at some of the songs that don't seem to be immediately related to the story, but refer to recognizable aspects of it (like Spectres and Teenage Liberation). Obviously condensing everything down to an essential timeline is the most important thing; once that's complete this job is going to feel more or less finished. So I'll start with that tomorrow. Probably it'll be the work of a few days to boil it down out of all the analysis, but we'll see. Thanks in the meantime for reading, and for remembering Still Alive Carl.
|
|
|
Post by skepticatfirst on Mar 30, 2016 23:11:59 GMT -5
We get a view into the Narrator's later story in CSTLN and IHTWTDFY, and apparently also in Oaks. CSTLN paints the picture of a pretty good recovery. We learn that the Narrator finally did leave the Twin Cities for New York: But when St. Theresa came to Holly, I wasn't even at that party I'd already moved out to New York City That's a lie; the truth is that he was at the party (the crucifixion) where Mary "came to" [as] Holly, disguised as the new kid (the fact that it's a lie is also indicated by the statement that "the band," that is, the Narrator, "faked their way through 'Fairytale of New York'" a little further down). But it's the "already" that makes it a lie, not "New York City"; the line assumes an audience who knows that he did in fact move to NYC. It's only the time of the move that's being fudged here. So that's a positive in itself, and on top of that, the mission that he's built on his experiences is a success: We gather our gospels from gossip and bar talk then we declare them the truth We salvage our sermons from message boards and scene reports and we sic them on the youth We try out new testaments on the guys sitting next to us in the bars with the bars on the windows, alright Even if you don't get converted tonight, you gotta admit the band's pretty tight The band's pretty tight all right. Then there's IHTWTDFY. It draws us a picture of the Twin Cities at a later time, when things with the Skins are a little different than they were: - "they finally got some discipline" themselves, instead of showing it to the kids. This is new. - "stocking up like it's World War IV": by itself this wouldn't necessarily be a change from the "militia" theme of Knuckles, etc., but they seem to be taking it to new heights: "They're building a bunker down by the river"; "They got masks for the gas, they're sleeping in their bulletproof vests." - "I guess Shepard came out of St. Cloud with a little ideology": there might have been some ideology earlier, too, but "a view to the future" is a big change from the dejection on the bus described in Look Alive. Shepard having been in St. Cloud looks like a new development too. - "For me, it was mostly the music / A crew to go to the shows with": the Narrator confirms that his days of hanging with them were in the past; the fact that he was hanging with them right up through the crucifixion means that this must come from quite a bit later. - "I saw you look at his shoes, I saw you look at their teeth": the Skins seem to be pretty far along the meth mouth deterioration arc themselves. All of the above just confirms the apparently later perspective of the following lines: So when I brought you back here for Christmas I didn't think we would see them I guess I should've explained Put together with what we know from CSTLN, this is pretty simple: the Narrator met a girl in New York and brought her back home for Christmas. He wasn't thinking about the Skins, but ran into them anyway (when showing her the side of the city that he *did* want her to see), and ended up exposing her to a frightening time. It's not a good sign for the future of the relationship, but we can't say much more than that here. Oaks gives us what appears to be a little more information: Sarah I still think that you are so beautiful might be talking about another girl, but Occam's Razor says don't proliferate entities if you don't have to; at any rate it seems likely that Sarah is the girl from IHTWTDFY, and that what started badly there is ending badly here on schedule. (There are suggestions that it ends in New York; "We spent so much time in this town driving slowly" can't be in the Twin Cities, if he's only back there for Christmas now; and while "call for a taxi" doesn't have to be NYC, it's likelier to be NYC than any place else.) In the 2014 Vulture interview ( link), Tad said about Oaks: Ever since I read that, I can't hear the song any other way, and it's colored my take on the Narrator's fate a little bit, in spite of the ambiguity of the lyrics. There's serious unhappiness ahead for him, if indeed this is him. For myself, I prefer to think about the new page opened in CSTLN; whatever else happens, he's still got that. Anyway, this is the last we see of him. Just the Weekenders left to explain now; I'll pick that up tomorrow. Thanks for reading, and for thinking of Still Alive Carl.
|
|
|
Post by skepticatfirst on Mar 29, 2016 21:56:13 GMT -5
Was listening to Knuckles again today and realized that "people keep calling me Drop Dead Fred" is another clear reference (Gideon=POV character of Knuckles) to Gideon falling dead from the water tower. Yet another piece of "how the fuck does he do that within such tight constraints?" writing on Craig's part, and another lesson for me about how much is left to discover, even after so many times through the songs.
Next stop for the Narrator is Lord, I'm Discouraged (he's the POV character); it's a lot like The Only Thing in that it's about him being worried for Mary, but her deterioration is even more advanced. The basic situation is what it was in TOT --- Mary's body is occupied by Holly's consciousness, but Mary is still in there deep down, and her visions have taken over to the point that Holly's occupation doesn't make much difference; she's barely living in the real world anyway.
The argument for putting the events described here at this point in the timeline are the following:
- it can't be much earlier in the timeline, because she's in terminally bad shape now ("I mostly just pray she don't die") - it's after TOT, because she's sold the necklace ("jewelry") that the Narrator noticed in that song. - she's staying at a place we haven't seen before: it's not Nicollet & 66th (she didn't stay in for days at a time there), it's not Hennepin, it's not the Ambassador, and it's not a storage space by the airport.
Lord, I'm discouraged The circles have sucked in her eyes
The circles under her eyes are called "bruises" further down; on first listen it sounds like she's being beaten, but in fact it's the blood loss from her stigmata that's led to the spontaneous appearance of bruising. (See also "This chick she looked just like Elizabeth Shue / we got bruised" [Swish].)
Lord, I'm discouraged Her new friends have shadowed her life
The only information we can bring to bear on the question of who her "new friends" are is what appears in the rest of this song (after this there's only The Weekenders left, and there's nothing relevant there). The clues are slim:
- she's staying in for days at a time, in a house on the southside where she hadn't been before. - she sold the necklace that she had in TOT. - she's getting visits from a guy from the northside that last five or six minutes.
I hear the staying in for days at a time, and the visits from the guy from the northside, as being a continuation of the TOT situation: like Mary Magdalene in her cave, she's inside receiving continual visits from Charlemagne-as-Christ, in the form of visions that last five or six minutes. That's why she's "sick"; that's where the "sutures and bruises" come in. (Apparently, Charlemagne is living up on the northside now.)
So the idea I had yesterday about the necklace indicating that she's "with" Charlemagne isn't quite right, since she's still "with" him here. But the other part --- about it being a crucifix to ward off the vampire Skins --- is clearly right; we're explicitly told in Banging Camp that that's the case. And I think that has to be the explanation here as well: her "new friends" are drug-dealing gangsters like the Skins; she's back on drugs. (The house fits with this insofar as living there puts her in contact with other people again, unlike her hermit-like life in the storage space.)
Lord, I'm discouraged She ain't come out dancing for some time
More evidence that this is the Narrator following Mary: he's watched her whole progression from being a great dancer on their prom night together ("I didn't know that you could dance like that" [OWL]), to losing a step ("Thought she was a dancer but her steps they made the records skip" [BBlues]), to not being all that interested in dancing any more ("We get to the place and she don't want to dance, she says she's not really into this track" [RP]), to having completely stopped, here.
And I'm trying to light candles But they burn down to nothing
The Narrator is Catholic, as seen already ("Hit the 5:30 mass early Saturday night" [OWL]).
And she keeps coming up with
Excuses and half-truths and fortified wine Excuses and half-truths and fortified wine Excuses and half-truths and fortified wine There's a house on the southside Where she stays in for days at a time
See above about the house on the southside. It's always Mary who drinks "wine," looking forward to the Wedding at Cana that never happens [MM, YGD, MN, LID, SPotC, Spinners, R&T].
I know I'm no angel I ain't been bad that way
The Narrator hasn't been a paragon of virtue, but he hasn't been bad like the gangster dealers.
Can't you hear her? She's that sweet missing songbird When the choir sings on Sundays
He wants to bring her back into the congregation of the Unified Scene ("With the lambs from my dreams looking up at your hands / And your hands pointing up at the lights" [AE]). As noted earlier, the "songbird" may connect her with the "thrushes" of A&H.
And I'm almost busted But I bought back the jewelry she sold
The crucifix necklace; see above.
And I come to your altar And then there's just nothing And she keeps insisting
The sutures and bruises are none of my business
The "sutures" are for the stigmata, like the stitches earlier [RH, SS]; evidently she's kept them since Holly's resurrection ("one drop of blood on immaculate Keds" [OftC]).
We have evidence that the Narrator didn't know about the stigmata back in high school ("Neat, neat, neat 'til her fingers bleed" [OWL]) and the 90's ("Mary got a bloody nose from sniffing margarita mix" [BBlues]); but by the time of their fifteen days among the Skins ("Tell her we need sterile gauze" [AHfA]), and certainly by the time of the crucifixion ("With the lambs from my dreams looking up at your hands / And your hands pointing up at the lights" [AE]) it's pretty clear that he knows what's going on. So it's not that he doesn't understand what the sutures and bruises are about, here; he's just reporting her evasive statements, without further explanation.
She says that she's sick, but she won't get specific
"Sick" meaning heartsick for Charlemagne, like "sick" in 212M ("let me know if you still feel sick / we've been sick together before" [212M]).
The sutures and bruises are none of my business This guy from the northside comes down to visit His visits, they only take five or six minutes
For the visits, see above.
Lord, I'm sorry to question your wisdom But my faith has been wavering Won't you show me a sign And let me know that you're listening?
His words here recall his words to Mary earlier: "So hey won't you show me a sign / if I'm getting through to you?" [AE]. Instead of praying to Mary for intercession with the Lord, he's praying to the Lord for intercession with Mary.
Excuses and half-truths and fortified wine Excuses and half-truths and fortified wine Excuses and half-truths and fortified wine I know it's unlikely she'll ever be mine So I mostly just pray she don't die
He's been waiting for her for forever, but he pretty much knows now that she'll never be his; at this rate he just wants her not to die. And with that note of finality, the curtain falls on the Narrator and Mary. We never see them together again.
We do see more of them individually, however. Glimpses of the Narrator's future life appear in CSTLN, IHTWTDFY, and Oaks, and I'll do a roundup of those tomorrow. Thanks for reading along, and for remembering Still Alive Carl.
|
|
|
Post by skepticatfirst on Mar 29, 2016 0:49:45 GMT -5
In Both Crosses, we saw Holly (in Mary's body), who had gotten cleaned up at Methodist Hospital and kept it together through the trial long enough to help free Charlemagne, begin to fall under the spell of Mary's visions. In The Only Thing, this trend has progressed to the point that "the only thing she talks about is TV," that is, her visions. The POV character is the Narrator; this is the first we see of him after the trial is over. Once you cut her loose. I knew that she would leave. For a while I couldn't breathe. I couldn't even breathe. "You" here is Charlemagne: once Charlemagne cut Holly-in-Mary loose --- when he abandoned her after the car crash on Separation Sunday --- the Narrator knew that she would "leave." It's not certain that Mary was a resident of the place on Hennepin, since the evidence we have pretty much skirts around that question: one time we hear that she shows up there unexpectedly, when they're running low on wine [TSPotC]; another time we hear that she was crashing at the Ambassador [Ambassador]. But it's reasonable to think that she went along with Charlemagne and the Narrator when they moved from Nicollet and 66th, and therefore that "leave" means that she left the place on Hennepin permanently. (From what follows, it's clear that she's still in the Twin Cities; in view of that it's hard to see what else "leave" could mean.) Sure she's still with you But first she was with me. What tangled webs we weave. She said some things I don't believe. She's still with Charlemagne in the sense of being still obsessed with him, even though he cut her loose; but first, says the Narrator, she was with me (referring back to high school [PP, MN, YGD, OWL]). "What tangled webs we weave" assumes the rest of the common saying, "Oh what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive"; the implication here is that their attempt to fake Charlemagne's death resulted in a bunch of unanticipated complications, which after all it did. ("Webs" links these complications with the other webs, the spiderweb tattoo and the milkcrate bars, that appeared as consequences of the kids' descent into trouble.) "She said some things I don't believe": the implication is that she told the disbelieving Narrator about her precognitive visions. The evidence for this is that - "the only thing she talks about is TV" (next verse) - she tells Charlemagne about her precognition twice in this period, once in BCrosses ("she swears sometime she sees these things") and once in Weekenders (right before "there was that whole weird thing with the horses / I think they know exactly what happened"); evidently she really has deteriorated to the point that this is all she talks about. - Charlemagne thinks that the others (including the Narrator) know about her precognition from the thing with the horses [Weekenders], but we don't ever see actual evidence of that, plus he's wrong about "I'm pretty sure I wasn't your first choice" in the next line too. She's sleeping at a storage space by the airport. The only thing she talks about is TV. There are in fact several of blocks of storage facilities west of the Minneapolis airport; they're ranged along the Pleasant Avenue railroad, just east of the Southtown Shopping Center. Her residence there is symbolic of her faithfulness to Charlemagne, which was first established during their trip to the mall in Southtown Girls ("you know that they'll stay" [SG]). In this scene we also get the final mapping of Mary the character to Mary Magdalene of the gospels. According to wikipedia: This "storage space" is, metaphorically, the cave to which Mary Magdalene retired after Christ's ascension. We linked earlier to Caravaggio's painting of her there, showing her neither eating nor drinking, but transported by her visions into a state of erotic ecstasy (see wikipedia); here it is again: It's an amazing line, rich with significance, and with an eerie and deeply affecting sound on top of everything else. "The only thing she talks about is TV" rounds out the image; she's scarcely in this world any longer; all she really sees and talks about are her visions. The only thing that tethers us together Is the thing that most matters at the end of the night. Ashes to ashes and dust in the spotlight. The "thing that most matters" is the same thing that the Narrator is urging Mary to remember in Almost Everything: Forget all the feelings. Remember the sessions. How we made a connection. With the lambs from my dreams looking up at your hands. And your hands pointing up at the lights. The only thing that still tethers the Narrator and Mary together (he's talking about Mary deep inside, now, not Holly at the surface) are their dreams (see below): his dream of the Unified Scene and hers of crucified Charlemagne, the dreams that connected them together both on prom night in high school [OWL, MN, SPositive, MPADJs, SPayne] and years later when sequestered for interrogation [AE, SiM, CSTLN]; the dreams which became real together [AE] under the spotlight of the crucifixion, when she died ("ashes to ashes and dust to dust"; see also "dust in the spotlight" [SA]). Flying all around like a fist in a fight. Tired of always feeling frustrated. The SA connection with "dust in the spotlight" suggests that "fight" here is linked to the crucifixion fight (see also "nurse in the night" linking to coming-to, further down). A fist that's flying around isn't landing; it's over fifteen years since the prom, the Narrator has outlasted everybody, even Charlemagne, and still he can't really reach her. This town was so much fun. When there weren't so much police. We didn't have to watch our speed. A double reference to the fun they had before speed / hard drugs came on the scene (analogous to Gideon's "creeps, the cops and the rock" [BCamp liner notes], where "cops"="police" and "rock"="speed [crystal]"), and also to their car crash and arrest, when she was at the wheel. The implication here is that the Narrator is mentally preparing to leave "this town." He really is tired of feeling frustrated, to the point of letting go of hope. First she's down in Texas. Then she went back to Tennessee. As noted in our discussion of SiM, she left the St. Paul world of violence ("Texas") to return to the state of Grace (Graceland="Tennessee"). What tangled webs we weave. For a while I couldn't breathe. I couldn't even breathe. She's sleeping at a storage space by the airport. The only thing she talks about is TV. The only thing that tethers us together Are these dreams. Repeated from above, but now with his express affirmation: they are tethered together by their dreams. Last night her teeth were in my dreams. In my dreams. Mary's teeth have been deteriorating for a while, as noted in Crucifixion Cruise ("smiling on an abcessed tooth"); it doesn't seem that she's back on speed at this point, but "meth mouth" is in any case a product of the bad nutrition and hygiene that goes with meth abuse, and those are certainly in play, even if she's no longer actually doing the drugs. The Narrator is anxious about her, lost somewhere inside this collapsing body. (Craig confirms that "teeth dreams" are "anxiety dreams" in a few places, e.g. the 2014 Uncut Q&A, link; "anxiety" has of course a particular meaning in the Hold Steady universe: "Maybe our anxiety / lives in the spaces in between / who we really are / and what we want to be / and the things that we let other people see" [Spectres].) It's the thing that most matters at the end of the night. Ashes to ashes and dust in the spotlight. Floating all around like a nurse in the night. Tired of always feeling frustrated. These lines link to "We're dust in the spotlights, we're just kind of floating" [SA] and the "warm water and the nurses just floating" [RH] that preceded Gideon's "coming to." The idea seems to be that the Narrator is hovering around, waiting for her to come to; but it's not happening, and he's pretty sure it won't happen. She's been senseless. She's been sad. "Senseless" and "sad" could refer to almost anything since the crucifixion: "Going to walk around and drink some more" [PP] and "St. Deborah of defeat and depression" [212M], for example. It got bad around March or April then I thought it got better. "Around March or April" clearly means at Easter, which always falls somewhere in March or April; things got bad at the "Easter mass" [HaRRF] crucifixion, and indeed they got very bad. But then she got cleaned up at Methodist, and seemed to be doing all right during the trial --- even putting on a credible impersonation of the real Mary --- before things got bad again. She's been wasted. She's been honest. Again, these could refer to various situations post-crucifixion: "I was fried and out of focus" [SK], "she swears she was with him" [OftC], for example. She's got a necklace. It looks pretty expensive. I'd like to know where she got it. I still think this has to be the cross necklace. Revisiting "I shipped it out from Boulder" [MoC] for a moment --- it's a truly cryptic line, but a) it seems to be something she says in response to Charlemagne opening up three buttons (looking for Mary) and finding nothing there, which clearly links in the cross necklace of CatCT; b) the song ends with "youth services always find[ing] a way to get their bloody cross into your druggy little messed up teenage life," which clearly implies a triumph over her own efforts to get the bloody cross *out* of her life; which in turn pretty much has to refer to the "shipped it out from Boulder" event. I think I bobbled the details of this (specifically, who did the shipping) when I did the MoC overview; let me take it from the beginning to see if I can't at least frame the question precisely. The full necklace timeline would have to be something like this: - Holly rips off cross necklace from schoolgirl on subway, likes how it looks with three open buttons [CatCT]. - Holly gets high with and fucks Gideon, wakes up in the "Rocky Mountain dawn" [MM]; the two of them take off traveling with the Skins between malls and motels, dealing drugs [SN]. It's at this time that Holly's in "Boulder," and she's dealing; if there's ever a time that she could have "shipped it out from Boulder / packed in coffee grounds and wrapped around in dryer sheets," this was it. So, if that's correct, *why* did she get rid of it? - Holly died [BCamp]. - Years later, Mary disguised herself as Holly and hung out with Charlemagne-as-Gideon and the Narrator-as-the-new-kid with the Skins for 15 days; she wore a cross necklace to ward off the Skins [BCamp]. - Holly was resurrected [CC]. - Shortly after the resurrection, Charlemagne looked for the cross, and it was gone. Holly tells him that she "shipped it out" etc. Maybe she's talking about the earlier episode, but in the meantime what happened to the necklace that Mary was wearing as part of her disguise? - After the trial, the Narrator noticed "a necklace [that] looks pretty expensive" [TOT]. Where did it come from? - Later still, the Narrator saw that she had sold the necklace, and bought it back [LID]. Maybe she just needed cash, but maybe there's more to it; if so, why did she get rid of it yet again? And now that I have it out in black and white I think I see a way through this. I think my earlier idea about her mailing the necklace to herself is wrong. The Narrator would recognize the necklace in TOT if it was the same as either the one Holly had worn years before or the one that Mary had worn while with the Skins; in fact, it's really a new necklace. (Which means we also have to answer, why did she get a new necklace?) The answer seems to be in the intelligence we get from Mary in BCamp: namely, that wearing a cross wards off the Skins. So at some point when Holly is with Skin Gideon traveling between motels and malls, she gets rid of it; her purpose after all is to attract him, not to ward him off, so that she can get paid for his affections in drugs. The flip side to warding off the Skins is that, for Mary, anyway, it's an expression of worship of Charlemagne as Christ. She wears it when she's "with" Charlemagne. That gives a plausible significance of the necklace, and a consistent pattern: - Holly wears a cross when she's with Charlemagne. - When she runs off with Gideon, she gets rid of it (in the car, "seeing double" [CatCT] and thinking she's talking to Gideon, she tells him she shipped it out properly packed and wrapped etc., a nod to their history of traveling and dealing together). - When Mary is with Charlemagne among the Skins, she wears a cross. - When Holly comes to after the crucifixion, she immediately thinks of Gideon and speed ("dreaming about an old connection" [CC]), and again gets rid of it. - When, after the trial, Mary's visions come to dominate her body occupied by Holly, she again wears a cross [TOT]. - Later, she gets rid of it again [LID]; maybe she's lost hope, maybe she's begun using drugs again. I'm satisfied with that for the time being; I'll look at Lord I'm Discouraged tomorrow, in any case, and will see if I can't poke any holes in this reading between now and then. Sure she's still with you. But first she was with me. I've been trying to get in touch with her. "I've been trying to get in touch with her" would seem to be inconsistent with knowing that she's sleeping in a storage space by the airport, and listening to her talk about TV. But it isn't, because the girl he's trying to get in touch with isn't the one on the surface, it's Mary, deep inside [AE]: So hey won't you show me a sign If I'm getting through to you. The rest of the song repeats what we've already covered. That went a little longer than expected, but the end is in sight now. Hope it's still readable, and enjoyable. Thanks in any case for thinking of Still Alive Carl.
|
|
|
Post by skepticatfirst on Mar 28, 2016 0:06:00 GMT -5
Rich, for those of us living in dumbass places that don't permit alcohol shipments from out of state, do you know if they've got a distributor? With the name of the distributor I can put in an order through my local liquor store ... It is different distributors for different stats and mostly a mid-Atlantic distribution. What state do you live in? I'm up in Massachusetts (seriously).
|
|
|
Post by skepticatfirst on Mar 28, 2016 0:01:58 GMT -5
I said I was going to do the rest of the Narrator's story first, but as I sat down to write up The Only Thing, which covers the next events in his life, I realized I'm going to need to lay the groundwork for "the only thing she talks about is TV" [TOT] first. And the best way to do that is to go through Both Crosses, to explain what happens to Holly, still in Mary's body, after the trial ends. Both Crosses has a few twists. A few things to keep in mind as we go through it: - The subject "she" is Holly, in Mary's body, discovering that she has visions of things that then come true. - The timeframe is after the trial, when things have settled down (though now they're getting weird again for her). - The POV character is Charlemagne (in Gideon's body, but that's irrelevant to POV). This is sealed by the end of the song, where (a) both the perspective of the speaker and the "you" in "Since you've been up in Massachusetts" must be continued from "I still love you Judas"; (b) "up in Massachusetts" refers to Holly [C&N]; (c) the fade-out can't be anyone but Charlemagne. She says sometimes she sees these things Right before they're happening Hail Mary, full of grace Some nights she swears she feels her face Charlemagne recounts how Holly, still in Mary's body, and some time after the trial, begins to experience the same visions which Mary once had. First, to her surprise, she begins to see things right before they happen ("she says sometimes she sees these things"). Second, at night, lying awake, she experiences the full apparition of Charlemagne-as-Christ ("now she's 4am and she's wide awake"). That it's Holly is indicated by "Hail Mary, full of grace / Some nights she swears she feels her face" --- when she puts her hands up, it's Mary's face she feels. She's known a couple of boys that died And two of them were crucified The last one had enlightened eyes The first guy he was Jesus Christ Holly's known a couple of boys that died, and two of them were crucified: the last was Gideon ("wild eyes" [HSL], "psycho eyes" [Swish], "enlightened eyes" [BCrosses], "said something special / using only his eyes" [BBreathing]), the first was Charlemagne (in his usual role as Christ [SM, A&H, etc.]). That is, first Charlemagne's Ghost was stabbed in the staged crucifixion play; then Gideon switched his own body with Charlemagne's, stabbed himself, and fell from the water tower to his death. Hey Judas I know you've made a grave mistake Hey Peter You've been pretty sweet since Easter break Charlemagne stops to address the actors in the crucifixion directly: - "Hey Judas" is addressed to Mary, who played "Holly" his betrayer at the crucifixion. "I know you've made a grave mistake": despite her certainty about what would happen, Mary kissed him and died, making her a suicide, like Judas [Matthew 27:5]; there's an additional double-entendre suggestion that she's been mistaken about her grave --- perhaps that she's mistaken his grave for hers (but see the discussion at the end). - "Hey Peter" is addressed to the Narrator, referring to his attempts to stop the crucifixion by fighting back [C&N, HSL, Ambassador]. "You've been pretty sweet since Easter break": disinterestedly or not, hopelessly or not, the Narrator has stuck by Holly-in-Mary since then, doing whatever he can to help her [PP, AE, CSTLN, SiM, etc.]. Now she's 4am and she's wide awake She's shivering and smiling "Let's clutch and kiss and sing and shake Tonight let's try to levitate You Catholic girls start much too late Baby, let's transverberate Baby, let's transverberate" He continues with the story, in the present: Now it's 4am, and she's getting the full vision of Charlemagne-as-Christ; the music is haunted-house ghostly but, like St. Theresa (signaled by the description in general and "transverberate" in specific), she's in erotic ecstasy, shivering and smiling. The vision speaks to her, and says: "Let's clutch and kiss and sing and shake / Tonight let's try to levitate." This seems to foreshadow the stakes for Mary: if she gives in to her desire, and touches him ("clutch and kiss"), then she will die ("levitate" as a forecast of "Ascension Blues" [AB] and "ascending into heaven dripping wet" [A&H]). "You Catholic girls start much too late" underscores the erotic context, but also specifically chides Holly ("never gotten laid" [HaRRF]) for receiving him so late. Recall that Mary opened up to Charlemagne about the nature of her visions in the church scene described in Ascension Blues; he does know what's happening, even if he doesn't have the entire history ("I'm pretty sure I wasn't your first choice" [Weekenders]). She saw all the footage right before it got cut She saw all the bodies and she saw all the blood She saw the angel put a sword in his side Baby, that's how we got canonized She saw him gushing blood right before he got cut She saw them put a body in a bag in the trunk She saw the guys coming in from the sides Baby, that's how we get energized He then rewinds the story back to when it was Mary seeing the visions, and describes her vision of his crucifixion. We've been over this part elsewhere, but just to get a complete overview of the song in one place: - "She saw all the footage right before it got cut": the usual metaphor for her vision, but in this case also a double entendre for the actual film of Charlemagne getting stabbed that they made in Gideon's apartment [SS]. - "She saw all the bodies and she saw all the blood": she saw the bodies of the Skins, fallen on the ground, spooked by the appearance of Charlemagne's Ghost [R&T]; she saw the staged "blood on his jacket" [OftC], etc. - "She saw the angel put a sword in his side": she saw Charlemagne disguised as Gideon, the angel of death (see Gideon heralding the plagues before the exodus [CatCT]), stab Charlemagne's Ghost, as Christ too was stabbed in the side during his crucifixion [John 19:34]. But again, Christ was stabbed with a spear, not a sword; the image of an angel with a sword must allude to the angel with a flaming sword who prevented Adam and Eve's return to the Garden of Eden [Genesis 3:24]. - "Baby, that's how we got canonized": Charlemagne refers to Mary's "canonization" as St. Theresa [CSTLN, TSPotC, OWL] who foresaw the incident, and his own "canonization" as St. Paul [CSTLN] during the incident; there's also a "Canon" pun on Gideon's projector, through which he was "converted." - "She saw him gushing blood right before he got cut": again, a double entendre: not just that she saw him gushing blood [HM] in vision, before it happened in reality, but literally, she saw the spurting of the blood before he got cut; the Ghost was never actually cut. - "She saw them put a body in a bag in the trunk": she saw the authorities putting the body in the trunk after Gideon switched bodies with Charlemagne, stabbed himself, and fell from the water tower to his death. - "She saw the guys coming in from the sides": she saw Charlemagne, now in Gideon's body, and the Narrator piling into the backseat of the car, from the sides. - "Baby, that's how we get energized": seems to allude to Holly's frantic driving away from the scene of the crime ("she drove it like she stole it" [MoC]). She said, "You know I'm down to pay for it." She said, "Just grant me some indulgences. I've been mostly dying. I've been mostly coughing. I've been mostly crying. I've been thinking about both crosses." Having seen these things, Mary prayed for an indulgence --- literally, the remission of temporal punishment for sin; she's seen Charlemagne meeting what she believes to be the consequences of his actions, and she's praying that he can escape them. She offers, in fact, to pay for this remission herself, and does, when she dies after the Judas kiss (dying for his sins, like Christ). She says she's willing to pay that price, because she's been mostly dying anyway, mostly coughing, mostly crying, and thinking about both crosses. The lead-in to the song is set up to make "both crosses" appear to allude to the crosses of the "couple boys that died." But those "boys" died on the same cross; the two crosses she's thinking of are Charlemagne's and her own. This is confirmed by the translation "dos cruces," a reference to the famous bolero Dos Cruces ( wikipedia) which tells the story of two lovers kept separated by fate; the "dos cruces" are the crosses on which their loves were martyred. She's willing to die to save him, because the torture of not having him is killing her anyway. She saw the film right before it came out At first she thought Judas might go for the mouth She saw the nails. She saw the hands She saw the crowd. She heard the band The new kid begged them not to do it Jesus just said, "I still love you Judas" Since you've been up in Massachusetts I keep dreaming about dos cruces He continues with the description of Mary's vision: - "She saw the film right before it came out": again, the usual metaphor for her vision, but also a double entendre for the actual film, like "She saw all the footage right before it got cut" - "At first she thought Judas might go for the mouth": a fantastic line in the context of Jesus' betrayal, playing off the idea of Holly as Judas; but underneath it's all sadness, since we know that it's Mary herself who will place the betraying kiss, and that that's as close as they will ever come. - "She saw the nails. She saw the hands": an allusion to the crucifixion of Christ, with the nails through the hands; but it was her own hands she saw, bandaged and bleeding ("And your hands pointing up at the lights" [AE]). - "She saw the crowd. She heard the band": the crowd is the Skins gathered for the party; the "band," as elsewhere, is the Narrator [CSTLN, HSL, A&H, OWL]. - "The new kid begged them not to do it": follows directly after "She heard the band": the Narrator-as-new-kid played his part in the crucifixion play, begging them not to kill Charlemagne. - "Jesus just said, 'I still love you Judas'": Mary-as-Holly kissed Charlemagne's Ghost, identifying him to his about-to-be killer (played by Charlemagne-as-Gideon); the image said "I still love you Judas" (to which she replied "I love you too" [HaRRF]). - "Since you've been up in Massachusetts": an ambiguous reference to the moment when Holly decided she'd had enough of Charlemagne, saying "tell him I'm up in Massachusetts" [C&N], and also to the "Hostile Mass" where Mary died. From what follows, it seems that he's referring ambiguously to both Holly and Mary; he has after all been continually separated from one and then the other for about 11 consecutive years now (fall 1993, when he first met Holly, until the present). - "I keep dreaming about dos cruces": First allusion to "both crosses" as "dos cruces," with the significance described above. This is still Charlemagne speaking; technically the direct quote ends after "I still love you Judas," but his perspective, and the object of his address, continue from it unbroken. I've been thinking about both crosses I've been dreaming about dos cruces I've been thinking about both crosses Fade-out, in which what was originally Mary's line ends up becoming the focus of Charlemagne's own thought (the same thing happens with "it seemed like a simple place to score" in CatCT): like her, he's been thinking about their eternal separation too. So much for the immediate breakdown. But there's something else strange going on here. We're told about Mary's vision of the crucifixion via a jump backward in time. This isn't anything unusual in itself, given how often it happens in other songs; "you know I'm down to pay for it" confirms that these lines relate to a time prior to the crucifixion. But we also know that it was this same vision of the crucifixion that brought erotic ecstasy to Mary [HM, SPayne, etc.]. It's odd, then, that Holly is experiencing the vision ("Now she's 4am and she's wide awake") in the Both Crosses timeframe, well after the crucifixion is over. How can it be a vision of the future, if it relates to an event that is now past? We are explicitly told at the beginning of the song that "she sees these things / Right before they're happening" ...! But on closer inspection, we see that these two statements are strictly separate: - "She says sometimes she sees these things / Right before they're happening"; and - "Now she's 4am and she's wide awake / She's shivering and smiling" etc. Charlemagne has realized something fundamental. He knows very well that her visions of the future are true; he's lived through the Chips Ahoy experience. But if she's still seeing the vision of the crucifixion now, after it's already happened, it can only mean one thing: that that particular vision wasn't a vision of the future. Mary *believed* that it was a vision of the future, as precognitively certain as any of her few-seconds-into-the-future visions of horse race outcomes. But it wasn't. Which means, in retrospect, that the entire production of a staged crucifixion was unnecessary. Which means, too, that she didn't die because of some real and foreordained reason, but just because, as Holly put it, "she got confused about the truth" [SN]. We can ask, too, what sins Charlemagne had committed that so desperately required an indulgence? He was dealing from behind the bar down in St. Paul, but there's no evidence that he stepped on anyone's toes in doing so (unlike back in 1995 when he lost the merchandise and ended up owing the Skins money). In fact, we noted earlier that his protest, "someone must have said something" [RH], pretty much had to be true, given the way the cops and the Skins both came after him without warning or aggravation. In retrospect, it seems clear that Mary herself was the one who "said something"; she was frightened on Charlemagne's behalf, and wanted to force his hand; she also wanted to get him away from Jesse. And that's the reason for Charlemagne's curious insistence on the particular formula of The Weekenders: "God only knows it's not always a positive thing / To see a few seconds into the future." He believes in her ability to reach a few seconds into the future, but he also believes now that there isn't anything beyond that. Her belief that it did extend to the crucifixion vision was a delusion, and one with a very high price attached. "You and I both know it's a negative thing. / In the end only the girls know the whole truth." I'm crashing again but I think I got it all; I'll double-check tomorrow, when we look at The Only Thing. Thanks for reading along, and for remembering Still Alive Carl.
|
|
|
Post by skepticatfirst on Mar 26, 2016 23:53:51 GMT -5
Joke about Jamaica is a tough song. It's a fantastic listen --- that angry crescendo near the end is something the band doesn't do very often, and I still get chills when I hear it coming up --- but it's not a happy ending for Jesse. (If it is the end; but it's the last we hear of her to this point.) They used to think it was so cute when she said Dy'er Mak'er All the boys knew it was a joke about Jamaica She'd always find a ride back home from the bar This is Jesse, wrapped up in the music boys in the bars [40B, HJ, Spinners, etc.]. I'm sure the Zeppelin refs are self-evident, but I'll unpack the Dy'er Maker joke here; from wikipedia: If there's a Finn-style second level of meaning here, it would seem to have something to do with the fact that Jesse never really owned her move to New York; or else maybe it's a joke about Jamaica in Queens. I don't see a compelling case for a particular reading, but I doubt Craig used the title at random. She used to feel so stupid when they'd talk about the music Born into every single tune This feeling stupid is sad, but typical of Jesse: "she mostly trades in adoration" [Magazines]. They used to hum against her lips with their hands on her hips They used to kiss in the car This "used to" era was back in the Twin Cities, when she used to get in the cars looking for Paradise by the Dashboard Lights [CSongs, HJ]; when she moved to New York, she stopped doing that ("She never gets in their cars" [Spinners]). Dancing days, houses of the holy The track Dancing Days precedes D'yer Mak'er on the Led Zeppelin album Houses of the Holy. She's remembering dancing back in the "used to" days in the Twin Cities (= Dancing Days), and the place up on Hennepin where she used to go to see Charlemagne [TSPotC], her Jesus [SM] (= Houses of the Holy). Hot child in the city in the middle of the prairie Flirting with the boys with all her charms Just like in Spinners ("some prairie town"), from the perspective of New York where she now lives, Minneapolis/St. Paul is that "city in the middle of the prairie." First the laugh, then the eyes Then the touch him on the arms Again, in those days it was "Talking loud. Making eyes" [WaW] and "C-9 is for the making eyes" [CSongs]. Then the drinks, they never seemed to cost money Saturday night was a runway that extended into Sunday And sometimes Monday Again, Jesse, partying too late and oversleeping: "she didn’t go to work again" [40B]; "sleeping late" [SBS]. Back then it was beautiful The boys were sweet and musical Again, the music boys in the bars [40B, HJ, Spinners, etc.]. The laser lights looked mystical Messed up still felt magical All of "laser lights" [SPayne, NS], "mystical" [Ambassador], and "magical" [SPayne, MM, Ambassador] are particular characteristics of Gideon, and "messed up" in this context recalls "He got messed up with some messed up magicians" [SPayne]. It seems that she's remembering how the boys in the bars appeared before she learned that they were messed up, before the Skins (as she believes) took Charlemagne from her. Girls didn't seem so difficult Boys didn't seem so typical It was warm and white and wonderful We were all invincible "Warm" is a characteristic preoccupation for Jesse [40B, CSongs, JaJ, WCGT, HJ]. She used to be "invincible," but like Holly in the hospital ("Holly's not invincible" [FN]), she's exhausted now. Tired eyes, trampled under foot Dazed and confused, c-c-c-cocaine blues She hasn't gotten any eye contact tonight A bunch of Zeppelin refs here; the point is that the years of partying and smoking ("don't all the cigs make you tired?" [HJ]) and drugs have caught up with her. She was "gorgeous" [BCig] once, with "boys on board and boys on deck" [Magazines]; now she's not even getting eye contact. The boys are getting younger and the bands are getting louder And the new girls are coming up like some white unopened flowers She's pretty sure that that's where their power is She's not a new girl any more; she's an old girl. If she was only 24 or 25 in Spinners (assuming it took place in 2006), this must be many years later, heavy living or not. Back then it was unified The punks, the skins, the greaser guys The Unified Scene. This comes off like another version of James King / King James / James Dean [SPayne], although it's hard to see a reference to the Narrator, Gideon, and Charlemagne here; the Narrator was arguably a punk, and Gideon was a Skin, but Charlemagne wasn't a "greaser guy" except via the Outsiders view of his role in the stabbing [ABlues, OftC], and Jesse wasn't aware of that. In fact, she never saw the three of them together that we know of. (Or maybe she's meant to be referencing some truth without knowing what she's saying?) Then one summer two kids died One of them was crucified Here's another reference to the crucifixion happening in summer, not at Easter. (I mentioned once already that, with this in mind, I'm now thinking "summer" is literal and "Easter" metaphorical, not the other way around.) "Two kids died / one of them was crucified": obviously, Jesse believes that Charlemagne died by crucifixion. The question is, who is the other kid who died? Craig is going out of his way here to set up an apparent contradiction, on the same album, with "She's known a couple boys that died / And two of them were crucified" [BCrosses]; but even so there must be a candidate for Jesse's second kid. I think process of elimination must lead us to conclude that it's Holly she's thinking of. Consider: - Jesse spoke to the Narrator when she saw Holly at the courthouse [HaRRF]; he spoke to her familiarly, so he couldn't have been disguised as the new kid at the time. She knew that he was alive. - Jesse spoke to Mary both at the courthouse, and then later by telephone, making plans to meet when she'd be in town [212M]. She knew that she was alive too. - Jesse believes Gideon was exonerated by Mary [OftC], and that the two of them planned to go dealing and traveling together [212M]. She knew that he was alive as well. No girl who looks like Holly, on the other hand, is as far as we know ever seen again after her testimony in DLME. (In OftC we hear that Mary went home to her own house for Christmas, evidently looking like herself, even if she seemed "distant and different.") I don't believe we are ever told about this explicitly, but it's plausible that Holly's disappearance was noted, and that she was believed to be dead. This isn't improbable, but unfortunately it remains a pure inference. Now it's so competitive The sleeplessness and sedatives Again, Jesse: "Some nights she's a pharmacist / She's got some pills some in her purse / One to wake you up / One if you're nervous" [BCig]; "She only takes the pick-me-uppers / To counteract all the put-me-to-sleepers" [SM]; "Adderall / Klonopins" [AHfA]. I know it sounds repetitive Every show can't be a benefit It was a benefit where Charlemagne and Jesse first met ("We met at a benefit / It was a pretty big opening" [BCig, see also Magazines]). This is the problem: she's been going to these shows to find Charlemagne again, a new version of Charlemagne; it hasn't happened, but she's been unable to move on. We were kids in the crowd, now we're dogs in this war We were wasps with new wings, now we're bugs in the jar We were hot soft and pure, now we're scratched up in scars We were counting carbs, now we eat in our cars The boys in the band, they know they'll never be stars This is all about the music boys in the bars. The change from "wasps with new wings" to "bugs in the jar" describes the stinging insect Skins, who once seemed young and beautiful, but now seem messed up. Gideon was one of them, a guy with the "hot soft eyes" [FN, see also HSL], who then went and got the spiderweb tattoo of a killer ("scratches" is used of tattoos in YLHF, SK, NS, and even in the version of the Ambassador lyrics that appears in the video "The Hold Steady: Views from Rock Falcon: Teeth Dreams," link; "scars" also refers to Gideon's spiderweb tattoo --- compare Knuckles --- in "you want the scars but you don't want the war" [GLS]). Back then we weren't quite convinced Flyering and stickering The front-row girls were posturing We were all imagining Again, the music kids (see "From kids with stickers on their boots" [THH]). Man, we had some massive nights Some bashes and some bloody fights Back before those two kids died It all comes back to Charlemagne, and that final bloody fight. And that, sad to say, is the last we see of Jesse. The Narrator's later life has some rocky moments too, but at least there's the triumph of CSTLN to set it all off. We've been through some parts of this already, but we'll pick up with the remainder tomorrow. Thanks for reading, and if you've got a moment to spare for Still Alive Carl, thanks for that too.
|
|
|
Post by skepticatfirst on Mar 25, 2016 23:05:51 GMT -5
Rich, for those of us living in dumbass places that don't permit alcohol shipments from out of state, do you know if they've got a distributor? With the name of the distributor I can put in an order through my local liquor store ...
|
|
|
Post by skepticatfirst on Mar 25, 2016 22:56:48 GMT -5
Spinners picks up with Jesse in 2006, after she's followed the advice she got from "Mary" and moved, finally, to New York City. (I know people are leery of the dates, but assuming she left the Twin Cities shortly after the trial ended in 2004, "she's two years off some prairie town" puts us in 2006.)
Before she figures out what's wrong They put another record on.
Jesse's deeply unhappy, but can't quite untangle the reasons why; the music she loves [CSongs, 40B, Magazines, CF, WCGT, HH, etc.] keeps distracting her, but it doesn't satisfy.
She picks it up and she carries the cross.
Somewhere inside, she's still following Charlemagne, who she identified in SM as her Christ [Luke 9:23 (see also Mark 8:34, Luke 14:27)]:
Heartbreak hurts but you can dance it off.
Jesse tells herself that she's been heartbroken before ("heart all hooked up to computers" [SM], "hurts to be heartbroken" [YLHF], "once they hear you've got a broken heart" [WaW]); she tells herself that she can get over it.
Sure some nights she'll curse these clubs She's two years off some prairie town
From the point of view of New Yorkers, Minneapolis/St. Paul is just "some prairie town"; but it's true that it's on the prairie. As noted above, if she left the Twin Cities after the trial ended in summer 2004, "she's two years off some prairie town" makes it 2006 now. She's 24 or 25 years old.
She goes out most every night. She dresses up and she spins around.
Compare "most every night" with "take up his cross daily" [Luke 9:23, above]. She's going out looking for love ("dresses up"), looking to lose herself in the music and dancing. But it's not working.
The same guy buys another round To let her know he's interested.
She's getting plenty of attention, but she still hasn't figured out what's wrong.
The nights go on forever now But the morning comes up quick.
We've already seen that Jesse's prone to feeling one way at night and differently in the morning [Magazines, HJ, 40B, Spinners].
You've got to loosen your grip.
She's got to let go of that cross she's carrying; but she can't.
Never let them tie you up It's a big city, there's a lot of love. Salted rims and frosted mugs. You gotta get back out there.
She's remembering the advice she got from "Mary": "I believe in salt along the rims of the glasses / 'Cause that makes us thirsty / And when we drink / Then we all fall in love." She's taken the advice to heart, not knowing that it was deceptive, not knowing that Charlemagne is still alive in Gideon's body. She's afraid to let them tie her up, because she's still all tied up in him.
Flat champagne and inbound trains.
There's "big city" and "clubs" above, but "inbound trains" is our definite confirmation that she's in New York, now. She's drinking champagne these days, a far cry from their Twin Cities poison back in the day. She tries to let herself go at night, but the morning comes up quick: she wakes up with whomever she's met to find that the champagne's gone flat, and she has to head in to work.
Soft hands and phantom pains.
Phantom pain is pain from a missing or amputated part of the body; she's meeting guys who have soft hands, but they're not Charlemagne. I actually hear this as a sentimental, earnest twist on the Charlemagne-has-a-big-dick subtext of Big Cig, CiS, etc., which you wouldn't think would be possible, but I think it's there, and it works.
Never let them tie you up. It's a big city, there's a lot of love.
Once she's pretty sure it's safe She goes to a different place.
She finds someone, sleeps with him, and flees when the morning comes. She can't go back to the same place, but when she's ready to try again, she goes somewhere else.
Decides she's gonna get some guy Before she even finds him. Then she's got him if she wants him But she cant decide if she wants him. She goes out almost every night. She cuddles up and she spins aside. He comes in, much closer in, to signal he's still interested Some nights are so complicated, soft hands are so frustrated She never gets in their cars
All of the above is clear in the light of what's gone before, except "She never gets in their cars"; she never gets in their cars, because that's for Paradise by the Dashboard Light [CSongs, HJ], and after Charlemagne she's too scared to try for that again.
She's two years off some prairie town. She dresses up and she spins around. Little looks and smaller talk. Heartbreak hurts but you can dance it off.
"Little looks and smaller talk" recalls "Talking loud. Making eyes" [WaW] and "C-9 is for the making eyes" [CSongs].
Once you're out there everything is possible. There might be a fight. There might be a miracle. Loosen your grip, it feels so incredible. Let the city live your life for you tonight.
Once you're out there everything is possible. Even the bad nights they aren't all that terrible. Loosen your grip, it feels so incredible. Let the city live your life for you tonight.
Up until this point, it's hard to forget that Jesse's been deceived, that she finds herself where she is because she's been cleared out of the way by a jealous "Mary" (Holly in Mary's body, with some as-yet unquantified influence from Mary deep inside) and a compliant Charlemagne. But the truth is, Jesse's life isn't over; it's really up to her to get past her heartbreak and find love again. And maybe she can do it. Once you're out there, everything's possible. There might be a fight, like the one that took Charlemagne from her forever. Or there might be a miracle. It's hard to know if she believes he's still alive, thinking this, or if she's telling herself that she can risk falling in love again, and it might turn out OK next time. But there's hope there.
Never let them tie you up. It's a big city, there's a lot of love. Salted rims and frosted mugs. It's a big city there's a lot of love. Tavern wine and tiny bugs. It's a big city there's a lot of love. Never let them tie you up. It's a big city.
The last notes too are hopeful, but she's wavering. "Tavern wine and tiny bugs": even while she's drinking champagne, she remembers the cheap wine of the "taverns" [OwtB] = "harbor bars" [CSongs, HJ, etc.] in St. Paul, and she remembers the boys there with the spiderweb tattoos, and the flies for their kills, like Charlemagne. "Spinners" is a double entendre; it refers to those spiders, too.
All right. Spinners wouldn't be quite so painful if we didn't know that Joke about Jamaica was coming up, but it is, and we'll get to that tomorrow.
Thanks for reading this far, and for remembering Still Alive Carl if you can.
|
|
|
Post by skepticatfirst on Mar 24, 2016 21:17:37 GMT -5
Right, plus there's no guarantee that we even have enough information to string it together (it would have been pretty hard to anticipate the contributions of OftC before Stay Positive came out, and for all I know we could be missing another crucial piece that hasn't been revealed yet). But you give it a shot, and see how far you can get. The constraints are pretty tight, which makes it a bit hard to go wrong, at least.
The last songs with information about the trial are HaRRF and 212M. Rather than describing what's going on up on the stand, they give us some insight into what's happening outside, as Jesse tries to find out what happened to Charlemagne.
How a Resurrection Really Feels ------------------------------------------------
The POV character of HaRRF is the Narrator; he's talking to Jesse. Most of the song he's just filling her in on Holly's story, which we can skip for the purposes of this discussion. The revealing bits of interaction are these:
Her parents named her Halleluiah, the kids all called her Holly. If she scared you then she's sorry. She's been stranded at these parties. And these parties they start lovely But they get druggy And they get ugly And they get bloody. ... Holly was a hoodrat. And now you finally know that. [liner version: "Now you're old enough to know that."] She's been disappeared for years. Today she finally came back.
First, the parties to the conversation:
We know that it's Jesse he's talking to because she's the only one who doesn't know Holly from the 90's, a point confirmed by the liner notes version of the "now you finally know that" line:
Now you're old enough to know that.
which is a clear echo of Charlemagne's speech to her in Certain Songs:
I guess you're old enough to know
We know it's the Narrator because "we all got kinda curious" clearly isn't Charlemagne, and also because 212M, JaJ and Spinners make it clear that Jesse never sees Charlemagne again. (In fact, this conversation takes place while Charlemagne is still under indictment; the Narrator is the only male character who is free to speak to her at the time; see below.)
Second, the setting of the conversation:
"The kids all called her Holly" confirms that he's explaining this long after they were kids, and in fact the rest of the song makes it obvious that this is after her resurrection, after "she's been disappeared for years." The implication of the introduction is that Jesse has run into Holly for the first time, and has asked the Narrator who she was.
The last time we see Holly appearing to the world as Holly is at the trial, when she's responding to the subpoena [DLME, etc.]. On that ground alone, we'd guess that the meeting happened at the trial, and 212 Margarita appears to confirm this; see below.
"If she scared you then she's sorry" implies that the encounter was a strange one; in particular it suggests that Holly didn't actually say anything to Jesse, since the Narrator had to speak for her. The fact is that Holly (in Mary's body, with Mary's voice, but outwardly disguised as Holly) could not have spoken to Jesse, who knows Mary well [TSPotC, YLHF, CF, etc.], without giving herself away. The implication then is that they met outside the courtroom (since Holly spoke at length on the stand when she appeared disguised as Holly); there was some interaction, then Holly broke away, but the Narrator stayed behind to explain to Jesse what happened.
Two other things about this conversation are worth noting, while we're here.
One, the Narrator seems to be using Holly as an object lesson for Jesse. Look, he's saying, she was a hoodrat just like you, and she loved those parties that start so lovely just like you; but those parties turn ugly, and then they turn bloody, and look what happened: Charlemagne got killed. He seems to be picking up where Charlemagne's recurring lecture to her left off, to try to finish the job of warning her away from the St. Paul party world; maybe some part of it is an attempt to explain to her *why* Charlemagne was so concerned for her all these years, but if that's in there it's pretty subtle. (I don't think Wait a While comes from this time frame --- he couldn't possibly be asking Jesse "What happened?" under the circumstances; but the tone the Narrator takes with her here in HaRRF makes it likely, in my view, that he's the speaker / POV character of WaW also.)
Two, the following lines from Sweet Payne appear to come from this same meeting:
And girl, I've seen your friend, she looks nothing like Jada Pinkett I think you got something in those cigarettes
We know that the "I" of SPayne is the Narrator; all the girls smoke, but Jesse is the one who's characterized by her cigarettes [SM, BCig, HJ, etc.].
It appears that the Narrator finished explaining who Holly was, and Jesse commented that "she looks like Mary." To which the Narrator, alarmed, replied, "she looks nothing like Mary, what are you smoking?" I have no idea what about pre-2004 Jada Pinkett makes her a potential metaphor-figure for Mary in this context, but am certainly open to suggestions.
212 Margarita --------------------
212M is sung from Jesse's POV, and tells about her attempts to find out what happened after Charlemagne was (as she thinks) killed. A lot of the song is Jesse quoting Holly (who she thinks is Mary; this is Holly-in-Mary's-body, after she's abandoned the Holly disguise), so to prevent confusion I'm going to double-quote all those lines.
"Some nights it just takes like a smile and a shake"
This is foreshadowing of the end of the song: maybe it's a quote, or maybe just an internalized lesson, but either way, this is Holly-in-Mary's advice to her about getting out there and falling in love again. (And in fact this is what we see Jesse doing later, after she's moved to New York: "First the laugh, then the eyes / Then the touch him on the arms" [JaJ].)
And I've been with the bodies And I've been with the blood
I'm not quite certain what this is referring to: maybe Jesse's been to identify the body of Charlemagne, or maybe she's been to his funeral mass.
And I went with Halleluiah and she didn't say a thing She just wiped at her nose and then she winked
This is her encounter with Holly outside the courtroom, described in HaRRF above (the parallel with her encounter with Mary in the next verse seems to confirm that it's at the trial). As suggested by "if she scared you then she's sorry" [HaRRF], Holly doesn't open her mouth; Jesse asked her "what happened to Charlemagne?" but only got the wipe and the wink for an answer.
And I've been with the cops And I've been with all the squares
This means one of two things: either Jesse's been around to the police and the district attorney's office to try to find out what happened to Charlemagne; or this is back at court, again with the cops and with Mary's father's lawyers (the "squares"), for example. The meeting first with "Holly" and then with "Mary" in the same order that they testify at the trial makes it easiest to suppose that that's where the meetings take place.
And I went with St. Deborah of defeat and depression She put her hand up on my shoulder and then she just kinda stood there
"St. Deborah of defeat and depression" is of course St. Theresa, that is, Mary, her longtime frenemy and rival for Charlemagne's love. The name is a joke on "Debbie Downer"; "defeat and depression" recalls "when we left we were defeated and depressed" [CiS], referring I think to their flight from the Party Pit (Garden of Eden metaphor) after the crucifixion.
... and I just realized that that must be where "he burned a hole in me" [A&H] comes from; we'd already noted that Gideon is cast as the angel with the flaming sword set at the gate of the Garden of Eden [BCrosses]; when Gideon killed himself, he locked Charlemagne out of his body, and their old Twin Cities paradise, forever; thus "burned," from the flaming sword on which he "fell" [R&T]. Nice. Sorry for the detour, that just hit me now.
And she said
"Call me 212 margarita "'Cause I'm green and I'm misleading and I've had too much tequila
Jesse asked the girl who she thinks is Mary, "what happened to Charlemagne?," and this is what she said:
"Call me 212 margarita" - Go to New York (212 area code), like you always wanted to do [CSongs, Magazines, CF], and if you need help there, call me. (In some live recording of the song on youtube, Craig describes taking the name "212-MARGARITA" from an NYC subway ad; it's a memorable number that you can call if you're in trouble, and need a lawyer.)
"Margarita" is a signal that the girl appears to be Mary, see "Mary got a bloody nose from sniffing margarita mix"; of course this is more obvious with "Bloody Mary" below.
"'Cause I'm green": we know that Jesse and Mary have been fighting a jealous war of attrition over Charlemagne for a long time [YLHF, CF, ABlues, etc.]; now it's Holly who's living in Mary's body, but the jealousy ("I'm green") persists --- she wants Jesse completely out of the way, to remove all possible temptations for Charlemagne. This jealousy isn't just Holly's confused desire for Gideon (along the lines of "you know they're already taken" [FN]); "one drop of blood" suggests that, deep down, Mary is exerting some influence, and we'll see confirmation of this in later songs.
"and I'm misleading": she tells Jesse that he's dead, in order to get her to leave; but he's not actually dead.
"And I've been with short tempers "I've been behind the sharp knives "I believe the shots in the distance to be cold hard facts "Ringing out against the radios and the speaker stacks
Holly-who-appears-to-be-Mary tells Jesse that she believes Charlemagne really is dead.
"I've been behind the sharp knives" is truer than it seems, whether you count the Judas kiss, or the instigation for the idea to stage the crucifixion, or any of the ways in which either Holly or Mary, fake or real, prompted the stabbing.
"I believe the shots in the distance to be cold hard facts / Ringing out against the radios and the speaker stacks" is her assertion that she believes her vision to be the truth (falling back on the usual metaphor of radio for Mary's visionary power).
"And I've been with the hoodrats "I've been with all the hangers on "I stayed out till dawn at some raunchy magazine launch "And I hit the open bar and got myself all turned on"
We've already noted a few times that this is a reference to the metal bar incident; starting at the open bar, they moved on to the "strong stuff" and Mary got herself all turned on, fucking, bleeding, "sailing off with cherubim" [SPayne, etc.].
And now I'm
Calling 612 bloody mary 'Cause she's nice and she's spicy and she's my only sure shot at recovery
Then Jesse calls her again, still in Minneapolis (612 area code). ("Bloody Mary" is obviously a reference to stigmata-bleeding Mary; "spicy" is used to refer to Mary in Swish also.) Jesse is still heartbroken (see also Spinners) and doesn't know where else to turn for help getting over Charlemagne (see "recovery" used in the same sense in BCamp) than to Mary, the only other person who's shared her suffering for him.
She said
"Call me 212 margarita. "'Cause I'm green, and I'm misleading, and I've had too much tequila "Leave a message at the Motel 6 "And let me know if you still feel sick "You know I'll [we'll] be in town on a three night stick "And maybe if you're feeling better then maybe we could get some soup together "We've been sick together before
The implication is that this is after the trial, after "Mary's" testimony has gotten "Gideon" off. She's suggesting that she and "Gideon" have gotten back together, & that they've resumed, or plan to resume, his former life of speed dealing, counting money in the motels and selling it on the malls [SN, CatCT, etc.]. Once again she urges to Jesse to move to New York, and says that she and "Gideon" will be coming through town, if she wants to get together (the two of them have been sick together over Charlemagne before); or, hopefully, if she's feeling better by then, they can go out and get some soup instead.
(The "soup" image is funny. It provides a storyline reference for "soup" in Positive Jam, and maybe Craig felt he needed to put it in for that reason; if it has another meaning in this context, an association with feeling better, I'm missing it.)
This is all deception, of course. We'll learn in Spinners that Jesse really does follow her advice and go to New York; but "Mary" and "Gideon" don't hit the road together, and "Mary" never comes out to visit.
"I believe in the bodies "And I believe in the blood "And I believe in salt along the rims of the glasses "'Cause that makes us thirsty "And when we drink "Then we all fall in love"
This is the advice forecast at the beginning of the song: "You gotta get back out there" [Spinners]; go drink some margaritas, get thirsty, and fall in love again.
We're actually done with the trial now, and all the stuff that I wasn't quite sure about along with it. We've left a few questions and provisional readings behind us, but I don't think there are any truly gaping holes or inconsistencies, and certainly the plot outcomes are the right ones for what follows.
Whenever referring to Holly-in-Mary above, I've tried to be clear about whether she's appearing in disguise as Holly (which again is just for her testimony under subpoena), or as Mary; if there's still confusion about that, or about anything else for that matter, I'm more than happy to try to clear it up ...
Just a few more episodes left to cover, dealing with the fates of Jesse, the Narrator, Holly-in-Mary, and Charlemagne-in-Gideon after the trial ends. We've already touched on Jesse's future as told in Spinners and JaJ, so I'll do those next. Thanks for your patience getting through this far, and for thinking of Still Alive Carl.
|
|
|
Post by skepticatfirst on Mar 23, 2016 21:27:00 GMT -5
Shit, sorry about that. I used to try to write these things up early in the morning or at lunch, and then would edit for clarity before posting at night. Last few weeks it's been a lot of writing while falling asleep, which I'm sure doesn't help. You understood it all correctly, except I think for one thing. Let me try going through it in a linear way: - After the crucifixion, there is just one female body, Mary's, inhabited by Holly's soul. So far so good. - There's a steady trickle of evidence to show that Mary is still in there deep down: "how we made a connection" [AE], "one drop of blood" [OftC], even "she got confused about the truth" [SN], which coming from Holly (the POV character of SN) suggests that she too is aware of Mary's presence; we'll see more of this evidence when we get past the trial. But I don't believe there's any evidence that Mary's soul ever takes overt, conscious control again. Anybody talking with this physical girl is always talking with Holly, whether they know it or not. - When she is arrested at the mall, then, it's Holly's soul in Mary's body, *but at this time Mary's body is still disguised as Holly*. Remember, she's just spent fifteen days with the Skins disguised as Holly, setting up her part in the staged crucifixion scene as "Judas." At the end of this fifteen days, they stage the crucifixion, Holly's soul is resurrected, and they drive all night until the crash, at which point she's arrested (together with the Narrator), still wearing her outward disguise as Holly. [see Note 1 below] - She and the Narrator are then sequestered, and she is interrogated. We don't see any of this from her side [see Note 2 below], but we know about it through the Narrator in SiM, AE, etc. The cops believe that they are interrogating Holly; they are after all talking to Holly-the-soul wrapped in the outward appearance of Holly (it doesn't matter if it's Mary's body in between; because of the disguise, she looks like the girl that the outside world knows as Holly at this point). - This means that when she's subpoenaed to testify in the trial, she is subpoenaed as Holly. That is, the subpoena has Holly's name on it, not Mary's. The cops think they are getting Holly on the witness stand. - She checks into Methodist to clean up, and apparently does clean up. It seems evident that she checks in as Holly ("Holly's in the hospital" [FN]). - Some days later, the trial convenes. In DLME, the girl on the witness stand is being asked questions that only make sense if they are being asked of Holly, not of Mary, and the answers are answers that only Holly should be able to give. In other words, the prosecuting attorney believes that the girl he is cross-examining is simply Holly. It is evident that she came back to the courtroom still disguised as Holly. (This all is what I mean by *as Holly*; to everybody who doesn't know better, she's Holly all the way down.) Her testimony doesn't convict Charlemagne (she doesn't "let [him] explode"), but it doesn't exonerate him, either. When the trial adjourns, Charlemagne is still under indictment. - But then, presumably after a few more days have passed, she discards her outward Holly disguise (so that she clearly looks like Mary again), contacts Mary's family [see Note 3 below], and, with Mary's father's lawyers in tow, comes back to court to establish an alibi for Charlemagne. In both body and soul, she's the same girl that testified before, but differently dressed, with different behavior; the only people who don't know that it's the same girl are the Narrator and Charlemagne himself. Everyone else thinks that they're hearing the testimony of someone new, namely Mary. (This is what I mean by *as Mary.*) Note 1: Outward Appearance In short, the only thing you said that (I think) isn't quite right is "I would think the female on the stands always appear to be Mary." It's always Mary's body. But if she's wearing the Holly-disguise she was already wearing when playing Holly for the Skins (in the fifteen days / sixteen nights leading up to and including the crucifixion, car ride, and crash), then she's going to appear to be Holly. Again, Holly and Mary are cousins [MINTS, HSL; see also the kiss in Swish, BBlues], so they kind of look alike anyway; and nobody's seen Holly since seven years earlier, so the disguise just has to be plausible (and consistent, of course). We talked about this some time back, when we first discussed Mary's assumption of the role of Holly in the fifteen-day lead-up to the crucifixion. The funny thing is that when Mary first puts on the Holly disguise, she chooses to go with something skimpy and revealing, because that's what she herself likes to wear [Swish, HM, SN, TSPotC, Weekenders]. We see this when Mary first practices the Holly role before joining the Skins: "besides, it ties her outfit all together" [BCamp]. We see it during the time she's with the Skins at the saddle shop: "she appeared faithless in fringes and feathers" [SS]. And we see it after the car crash: "feverish in stylish tatters" [NS]. When the same physical girl (Holly's soul, Mary's body) shows up at court to testify in response to the subpoena that has Holly's name on it, she's still looking like the Holly who was arrested, sequestered for interrogation, and subpoenaed --- presumably cleaned up a good deal, and not necessarily wearing assless chaps in the courtroom or whatever, but definitely dressed sexy, along with whatever other characteristics (makeup? hairstyle?) of "Holly" were part of Mary's original disguise. When she comes back on the second day of the trial, with the lawyers, to testify *as Mary*, she has to look different; she has to appear to be a different person from the girl who took the stand before. So we're treated to the unusual picture of the girl who is apparently Mary wearing a turtleneck sweater and immaculate Keds --- a true "princess" for the courtroom, but not dressed especially like Mary as we know her. (And she keeps her mouth mostly shut to avoid tipping people off to the fact that she's the same girl on the stand for a second time: "her father's lawyers do most of the talking" [OftC].) Man, I hope that's clear. Does that help? I won't pretend for a second that it's not insanely complicated, or that I don't bust out swearing when I think of Craig saying (in the 2012 Guardian interview, link www.theguardian.com/music/2012/mar/14/craig-finn-interview) "it's not a majorly detailed story – it's a very simple story" (ha ha @#$%). But, you know, anyone can do this at home, and see if they come to a different conclusion. You just have to decide if you think there's a story or not, and, if you do, try to put the evidence together in a way that's complete and coherent and satisfying. That's all I did, and this is where I ended up ... :-P Note 2: Holly's side of the interrogation I should say, we don't see anything of Holly's side of the interrogation as such, but I do think that "It was those same two kooks from that one stupid photo shoot" is a reference to something that happened at the time she was booked. That is, I'm pretty certain that the "photo shoot" [SK] = "couple photographs" [CatCT] = mug shots from the booking at the police station. And shit, you know, now that I think about it, they couldn't possibly subpoena her unless they already knew that they were going to put Charlemagne-in-Gideon's-body (from the cops' point of view, they think they've arrested Gideon) on trial. Which means, I think, that they must in fact have arrested and booked him before Holly and the Narrator are released. So maybe the bookings really do happen at the same time, even if they were arrested separately. Note 3: About Holly-in-Mary shedding the Holly disguise and getting back in touch with her family, and her father's lawyers: there's an interesting quote from Craig in a 2008 NPR interview ( link): Let me add one new thing to round out today: in Killer Parties we get a brief glimpse of Charlemagne back on the stand after Holly-in-Mary's-body-pretending-to-be-Mary, in the turtleneck sweater etc., swears she was with him: If she says we partied then I'm pretty sure we partied I really don't remember I remember we departed from our bodies And we woke up in Ybor City Which is awesome. He's desperate, in a bizarre situation where he's been tossed a lifeline in the form of an alibi that he himself never even tried to plead. All he can do is say that he doesn't really remember, but he's probably pretty sure it's true if she says it's true. Just fucking great. And he adds that "we departed from our bodies." That much, he remembers; it is, we know now, *a strictly literal statement of fact.* Tomorrow we'll pull in HaRRF and 212M and really will wrap up with the trial. Thank you still, sincerely, for reading along, and for thinking of Still Alive Carl.
|
|
|
Post by skepticatfirst on Mar 22, 2016 22:17:45 GMT -5
Holly's appearance on the stand *as Holly* is described in DLME; her appearance on the stand *as Mary* is described in OftC.
The girl takes the stand and she swears she was with him Her father's lawyers do most of the talking
She's sick of the questions, sick of the concept Of justice and fairness, who the hell cares Who gets caught in the middle? She smokes and she ponders this riddle
When one townie falls in the forest, can anyone hear it? When one townie falls When one townie falls in the forest, does anyone notice?
One drop of blood on immaculate Keds Mom, do you know where your girl is? Sophomore accomplice in a turtleneck sweater Dad, do you know where your kids are?
The fact that she's smoking when pondering the riddle means that the "sick of the questions" scene takes place outside the courtroom, when her testimony is already over. (She has reason to be sick of the questions, having already been cross-examined once as Holly.) And the "mom" and "dad" questions are obviously a leap out of strict narration, but the descriptions that go with them belong to the trial context.
That leaves just two lines that describe her testimony:
The girl takes the stand and she swears she was with him Her father's lawyers do most of the talking
and two lines that describe her appearance:
One drop of blood on immaculate Keds ... Sophomore accomplice in a turtleneck sweater
The testimony is dead simple: she swears she was with him. And with that, it's over. Charlemagne (in Gideon's body) is a free man.
The whole Cherry from the Outsiders parallel [ABlues, OftC] turns out to be strictly applicable at the level of appearance: the apparent princess really did end up defending the apparent townie who stabbed her apparent boyfriend. It's just that she's really Holly underneath, the townie defendant is really Charlemagne underneath, and the dead boy is really Gideon underneath. Holly herself knows this very well, and it seems she comes only grudgingly to Charlemagne's defense: "who the hell cares / who gets caught in the middle?" --- that is, who cares about the guy stuck between stations? --- but she does defend him, and he gets off.
"Her father's lawyers do most of the talking" suggests that she didn't speak long enough to tip the courtroom off to the fact that she's the same girl who appeared on the stand earlier, now in Keds and turtleneck.
Holly's a "sophomore accomplice" because she's still 19 years old, having been drowned by Gideon less than a year after her Industrial Age party [MM, HF, SN, Weekenders, etc.], and having just been brought back at the time of the stabbing.
Whether that one drop of blood from her hand fell while she was on the stand, or afterward, we don't know. But this too, like "how we made a connection" [AE], is a sign that Mary is still in there, deep down.
I've already mentioned that "immaculate" alludes to Mary (her birth free from sin via the Immaculate Conception; compare CC liner notes), and that she's apparently wearing the "turtleneck sweater" to hide a tiny neck tat (implied to exist by YLHF).
That's it for OftC. I wanted to try to pull in the rest of the material in KP, HaRRF, and 212M together with the above, but I can't keep my eyes open; let me finish it off tomorrow. As always, thanks for reading along, and for remembering Still Alive Carl.
|
|