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Post by skepticatfirst on Mar 13, 2016 22:36:46 GMT -5
Thank you laurenjean! that means a lot, for real.
Muzzle, that's a great catch --- I just checked the Stay Positive liner notes and you're right, it's two sentences with a period between. I still don't know what the second question is. But that should make it easier to come up with a solid guess at it.
Rewinding for a minute from Almost Everything to Party Pit, we get a brief view of the Narrator and Holly-in-Mary traveling between the police station and Methodist Hospital. (Having the context of the whole song is useful for what comes at the end, so I'll start from the beginning; PP isn't nearly as "elliptical" as CSTLN, so this will be shorter.)
Again, the POV character is the Narrator, speaking in first person, talking about Mary. (Who "she"/"her" refers to when he gets to the post-crucifixion has to be asked carefully, but I think the answers are pretty clear in each case; see below.)
I guess I met her at the party pit She said those kids she's with were selling it So we sailed off on some separate trips She got pinned down at the party pit
Again, this is back in high school. The first two lines describe their meeting in summer 1988.
The last two lines describe their separate trips at prom in spring 1989, and her letting him go to return to the Party Pit scene as described in ASD.
I went away to school that fall She stuck around with all those stickpin dolls Sped through the scene until the engine stalled At some suburban shopping mall
The first two lines describe his departure for school in Boston in fall 1989, while she sticks around for school locally (apparently U Minn), in order to stay close to the Party Pit and the townies.
The next two lines look forward fifteen years to 2004, when she crashes the car into the HarMar mall entrance. There isn't any difficulty with who "she" is at that point; it's Holly, in Mary's body, behind the wheel.
I came back to start a band, of course Saw her walking through the crystal court She made a scene by the revolving doors She's gonna walk around and drink some more
The first line resumes from where the the high school story left off, picking things up in spring 1993; the Narrator comes back to the Twin Cities to start a band.
The last three lines take us forward to the crash in 2004. The Narrator saw her walking through the mall ("they found me in a florist" [SK], etc.), where she'd come for the "crystal," after crashing the car through the entrance ("crashing through the vestibule" [CC], etc.).
And when he caught up to her, she said "I'm gonna walk around and drink some more" (again, there's lots of evidence that they've been drinking throughout the car time [MoC, SBS, SK, HSL, PP, A&H, R&T]). In view of what follows in AE, I think this has to be Holly's voice speaking, in a state of almost mindless detachment, or avoidance of her situation; more on this below.
So we walked across that grain belt bridge Into bright new Minneapolis
It seems clear to me that this describes the two of them walking back from the police station, after they've managed to get through their sequestered interrogation and have been let go (with a subpoena).
They're walking because they have no car at this point.
They're crossing the Grain Belt bridge because they've come from a police station in the vicinity of the HarMar mall, and are heading back toward Methodist Hospital (with maybe a stop at the place on Hennepin en route). That route is pretty much a straight shot west on Larpenteur Avenue, over the Grain Belt bridge, west on Hennepin to the intersection with Lake Street in Uptown, and then west on Lake to Methodist Hospital. They're going to Methodist because the Narrator needs his meds, and because Holly/Mary is a total wreck and needs to get cleaned up [AE].
This journey back to Hennepin/Methodist is the same walk referred to in "walk on back" [HaRRF]. More on this in a minute.
It's "bright new Minneapolis" because Holly hasn't seen Minneapolis since her baptism in 1997, seven years earlier.
She said I think that all those things I did Were just momentum from the party pit
Now we get to something more complicated: "She said I think that all those things I did / Were just momentum from the party pit." The implication is that she says this to the Narrator as they're walking back together.
There could be some doubt about who "she" is, given that the Narrator made a connection with Mary during their sequestration. But to my mind, "won't you show me a sign / if I'm getting through to you" [AE], coming shortly after this, excludes Mary as the speaker. This must be Holly's voice.
On the other hand, the statement rings true whether we understand it as coming from Holly or from Mary. I think that's how the Narrator hears it, and how we're supposed to hear it, too.
Coming from Holly, in a wrecked state and barely in control of herself (as shown in her conditioned response to "Gideon," and in the car crash), it sounds like a dull attempt to blame everything on some original cause in the Party Pit. (There's an echo of "the chick blamed the snake" [CatCT] here, and we've already noticed the Party Pit being compared to Garden of Eden.)
Coming from Mary, there's a clear sense in which her whole "sped through the scene" arc *is* literally momentum from that first vision in 1988, when "she got high for the first time at the camps down by the banks of the Mississippi River" [SN], i.e. in the Party Pit.
The Narrator takes it on the chin both ways. On the one hand, all he can get is Holly's mumbled distancing of herself from what's happened; despite trying to get through to Mary, he can't reach her. On the other, he more than anyone is aware that Mary has been on this arc since before they met, since her first high in the Party Pit. He knows it, and has suffered for it.
There's one more line we haven't covered:
And I'm pretty sure we kissed
Seeing all the stuff about high school at the beginning of the song, we might understand this line as referring back to "we kissed in your car" [MN] on prom night. But I don't think that's what's going on here. To fill in the gaps, we should take a brief look at HaRRF, where, thanks to the link between "walked across that Grain Belt bridge" [PP] and "walk on back" [HaRRF], we can connect in something else Holly says at the same time.
Halleluiah was a hoodrat, and now you finally know that She's been disappeared for years, today she finally came back
Walk on back, walk on back
She said don't turn me on again I'd probably just go and get myself all gone again Halleluiah was a sexy mess, she looked strung out but experienced So we all got kind of curious
Walk on back...
Coming from Holly, this sounds like another attempt to distance herself from what's going on. We can understand "don't turn me on again" to mean that she doesn't want to get high again, because she doesn't want to die again (as if she's finally absorbed the warnings of HF and CatCT).
Coming from Mary, the words would have a different meaning. In 212M we hear about her getting "turned on":
I stayed out till dawn at some raunchy magazine launch And I hit the open bar and got myself all turned on
which is pretty clearly a reference to hitting the open bar at the metal bar the night that Charlemagne was beaten, where she stayed up till dawn "sailing off with cherubim" [SPayne]. ("Magazine" here is a bit of sand in the gears; it could be a metaphor for her visions, except that those are pretty much always described with moving media, radio or video; but everything else fits so tightly that I don't see an alternative. It would be nice to have a better interpretation.)
So either Holly or Mary could be saying this. But in either case the question is, *why* does she say it?
The Narrator has followed Mary for years now, all the way down to the very end. He's been there in the dark hour with the cops, and he's finally outlasted Charlemagne. Now they're standing on the Grain Belt bridge, looking at bright new Minneapolis. Things are bleak, but he knows she's still in there somewhere; maybe there's still a little bit of hope. So he tries, one last time, to kiss her.
That's when she tells him, "don't turn me on again; I'd probably just go and get myself all gone again."
And what can he do with that? It's something that Mary *could* say; it could even be a pointed reference to their prom night experience. Or it could just be Holly, detached and withdrawing. There's no way for him to know. All he knows is that he's been rebuffed; all he can say is that he's "pretty sure we kissed" [PP].
"Halleluiah was a sexy mess, she looked strung out but experienced / So we all got kind of curious" seems to hint at something like this happening, too --- the Narrator putting a brave face on the end of his hopes, and pretending to have been merely "curious." I'm not sure that's the right reading; but there don't seem to be cases of the characters wondering about their chances with her after this.
In short, that "Gonna walk around and drink some more," even though it sounds like an anthem, is really a heartbreaker. It marks the moment when the Narrator, having hung on all these years for a last chance, searches for Mary in the rubble only to find she's really gone.
I think the next thing to do is to go through Charlemagne's interrogation and then the trial. I'll think about it overnight but if I don't come up with a better tack I'll probably pick it up with Hot Soft Light. Thanks for hanging in there and for thinking of Still Alive Carl too.
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Here goes
Mar 14, 2016 11:51:51 GMT -5
via mobile
Post by hitchhiker on Mar 14, 2016 11:51:51 GMT -5
Read this over the past few days. Fascinating. Been listening to these jams for the last 10 years and I can't believe how many layers I didn't even consider. And though I'm not on board with some of what's been posited here it's all certainly arguable and interesting.
Two things that I can add:
The language about being pinned: I'm an ER nurse and the telltale indication of opiate use is tiny pupils. What we call pinpoint pupils because they're the size of a pinpoint. Whereas stimulant (coke/meth) use causes dilated pupils.
And the Ambassador is the hotel where RFK was killed.
Thanks for taking the trouble to type this shit out!
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Post by skepticatfirst on Mar 14, 2016 23:54:31 GMT -5
Oh man, that is an awesome catch about the Ambassador ... I never even thought to look it up, but that's 100% an intentional thing --- the Positive Jam framing of the metal bar beatdown is
Some Kennedys got shot while you were screwing San Francisco
So I don't think I ever said this explicitly, but Positive Jam is a mosaic of bits and pieces from the story, chipped out of place and reassembled as an eight-decade retrospective of 20th century America. I was going to go over it after everything else is done, but you've given me an excuse to do it now (plus it'll give me a break from all this end-times shit that's making me cross-eyed). It's a brilliant song, pretty much the cherry on top of Craig's claim to a spot in the American canon, and the fact that it comes at the beginning and not the end is just extra sweet.
Here's how I see it breaking down. It's not a retelling of the story, as such --- the pieces are out of order, among other things --- but all the pieces are recognizable:
Woke up in the '20s and there were flappers and fruits in white suits It was right before the crash, we got thrashed throughout the '30s Queuing up for soup with scabby sores Then they sent us off to war
- "Woke up": the beginning of the story in the Nicollet & 66th period (1990's). - "flappers": jumped-in Gideon: "It had the flaps on the back that kept the sun off his neck" [HM]. - "fruits in white suits": the Barfruit of the "first night" party; Mary in her "tight white rayon slacks" [Swish].
- "the crash": the car crash at the HarMar mall
- "soup": "maybe we could get some soup together" [212M]. - "scabby sores": Holly with herpes: "I did a couple favors for some guys that looked like Tusken Raiders" [Swish].
- "war": the cops vs. Skins: "we got war going down in the Middle West" [Knuckles]
We came back in the '40s and there were wheelchairs, guns and tickertape We poured it on the floor and we made love to the interstates We got shiftless in the '50s, holding hands and going steady Twisting into dark parts of the large midwestern cities
- "came back": the resumption of the story in the Hennepin period (2000's) - "wheelchairs": Mary's cherubim (from Ezekiel): "Everything sparkles and it feels like we're on wheels" [TSPotC] - "guns": "we had a gun in the glovebox" [CiS] - "tickertape": "you're up to your neck in the sweat and wet confetti" [MPADJs]
- "poured it on the floor": the darkening party picture, "bleeding on the floor" [SM] - "made love to the interstates": the car time, crucifixion cruise; "like a hawk out on the highways ... getting with her little hoodrat friend" [MoC].
- "shiftless": "when you can't get your car off the curb" [TSPotC]. - "holding hands and going steady": Charlemagne and Mary's virginal love.
- "twisting": "my one friend got two girls in a twist" [YGD]. - "dark parts of the large midwestern cities": "It was dark along the edges of the city" [SM]
Tripped right through the '60s with some blissful little hippie Some Kennedys got shot while you were screwing San Francisco And the '70s got heavy, we woke up on bloody carpets Got tangled up in gaslines, and I guess that's where it started
- "Tripped ... blissful little hippie": either Mary at the metal bar "sailing off with cherubim" [SPayne], or maybe "So we sailed off on some separate trips" [PP].
- "Some Kennedys got shot while you were screwing San Francisco": Charlemagne and the Narrator getting beat up, and Gideon getting jumped in, while Mary was fucking the Skins (San Francisco was the first reported stigmatic of the Church).
- "heavy": the metal bar; "heavy" in MPADJs and HH, and especially the implicit "heavy" behind "sketchy" [SM] - "bloody carpets": the metal bar; "blood on the carpet" [OwtB].
- "tangled up in gaslines": "the nitrous tanks ... take a hit" [BCamp]. - "started": Holly was the first of the deaths
The '80s almost killed me, let's not recall them quite so fondly Some Kennedy OD'ed while we watched on MTV And in the '90s we were wired and well connected Put it all down on technology and lost everything we invested
- "almost killed me": the metal bar beatdown, again; "where were you when ... they almost killed me" [BBreathing] - "let's not recall them quite so fondly": "don't recall it all that fondly" [Swish]
- "Some Kennedy OD'd": could be Holly drowning, but I am more inclined to map it to Mary "awkward and thoughtful and ascending into heaven dripping wet" [A&H]. - "watched on MTV": watched Mary's visions.
- "wired and well connected": Mary's visionary power: "I'm so well connected / My UPC is dialed into the system" [Swish].
- "put it all down on technology": the big gamble of Gideon's projector ploy. - "and lost everything we invested": Charlemagne pulled off the crucifixion, but lost Mary in the process.
Again, hats off for the Ambassador catch. Funny how I have to keep reminding myself that Craig doesn't waste words, that when something like that shows up there's got to be a reason for it. Really good stuff.
I'm crashing here, so let me pick it up with HSL tomorrow. Thanks for reading along, and for remembering Still Alive Carl.
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Post by skepticatfirst on Mar 15, 2016 23:57:12 GMT -5
So let's get back to Charlemagne. To review what I *think* happened between the car crash and his interrogation by the cops:
1. The car crashed; Holly (in Mary's body) got out of the car and wandered into the mall; Charlemagne (in Gideon's body) got out, traumatized by the "I've had kisses that made Judas seem sincere" experience, and took off. (Basing this mainly on the fact that he's not with the Narrator and Holly-in-Mary when they get picked up, the possibility of "a couple bona fide angels" reporting the equivalent of an empty tomb [NS], and my conclusion that the day of the crash is the best and probably only fit for "Separation Sunday.")
2. "I got stopped by the cops, and they found it in my socks, and I got probed" [YLHF]; probed meaning "questioned" in this case. We know that Charlemagne was in the car with something in his socks thanks to CiS: "We had a gun in the glove box, we had some sweet stuff tucked into our socks, and Jesus Christ in all His glory" [CiS].
Was there something between 1 and 2? The cops found the body of Gideon-in-Charlemagne? Holly identified Charlemagne-in-Gideon in photos? Or maybe she identified the body ...? that's a possibility I hadn't thought of. Still struggling with this part ...
Anyway, Hot Soft Light is clearly Charlemagne-in-Gideon under interrogation. The voice is the voice of Gideon, responding to questions with a nonstop barrage of apparent insanities in the style of Knuckles (and if the statement that begins "Hi, my name's Corey" [HM] isn't excerpted from this same interrogation, it's at any rate part of the same "story"). But, as usual with this kind of thing, we can read the truth under the insanities.
I was not involved up at the Northtown mall As a matter of fact I didn't even know that that's where it happened I was France Ave when they came out dancing, I was Lyndale South, I was kicking it with cousins We were talking about going clubbing but instead we just started drinking
Charlemagne-in-Gideon denies being involved in the crash up at the HarMar mall, promptly demonstrating the "truth" of his statement by naming the wrong mall but appearing to have let it slip by accident.
He then describes himself traveling east along Lake Street, like Gideon "the cowboy on the crosstown bus" --- taking the 17 from the Cityscape Apartments past France Ave South, the Minneapolis border, into Uptown, then switching to the 21 and heading further east; later he'll get as far as Lake and Columbus.
He protests that he was at France Ave and Lake "when they came out dancing": apparently a reference to the Skins dancing at the Party Pit ("that one kid in camouflage dancing" [SS]). Per the "Cheyenne" metaphor, France Ave is where the Wild West begins; it looks like this is supposed to correspond to the Skins in Western wear in the Pit [SS].
Then he was at Lyndale South and Lake "kicking it with cousins" Holly-in-Mary, just like she was "kicking it with chemists" (him! [SK]); a true statement as far as it goes, but impenetrable, plus "cousins" sounds like a ridiculous boast. Lyndale and Lake is the center of the Skins' "silver metal flake" trade [R&T]; it looks like this is supposed to correspond to Holly trying to get him to cough up the meth in the car.
He and "the cousins" were talking about going clubbing, but instead just started drinking; the grain of truth here was that she was asking him for meth ("club" as in the Ambassador), but instead they kept drinking (car-time evidence for wine and drinking generally is in MoC, SBS, SK, HSL, PP, A&H, R&T).
I've been straight since the Cinco de Mayo But before that I was blotto, I was blacked out I was cracked out, I was caved in You should have seen all these portals that I've powered up in
He claims to have been straight since the Cinco de Mayo; the underlying truth here is that Gideon has been straight since his touchdown in "Houston" [RH, Ambassador]. The Cinco de Mayo reference, besides being funny and a really nice touch, could mean a few things. The Houston area is ground zero of Cinco de Mayo celebration in the US, maybe that's intentional. It's also possible that it's the literal date of Gideon's return to sanity. I had been thinking that the "Easter mass" of the crucifixion was really set on April 11, 2004, and that other dates that didn't fit with that had to be metaphorical. Now, after having been over much of the evidence in writing, including a couple of references to "summer," I'm thinking that it's the Easter date that has to be metaphorical. (I'm realizing, too, that drinking until blackout in a park in Minnesota probably can't happen in early April, no matter what.) Which means that May 5 could be a realistic date for Gideon's touchdown.
Before that, he was out of his mind; "blacked out" is used of the Skins at the reservoir party [OftC, SS]; "cracked out / caved in" echoes "Kids on the corner are cracking and caving in / Turning over and turning other kids in" [HM]; but that was then; now, they're not getting anything out of him.
We hear of two "portals" where Gideon "powered up":
The first, referenced in the lines above, is the "vestibule" [RH] where he saw Charlemagne left to bleed to death before he got jumped in and lost his mind [YGD].
The second, referenced several times in the lines below, is the entrance "by the coat check" [Weekenders] where he was camped out until Holly joined him, and they got Rocky Mountain High together.
We started recreational It ended kinda medical It came on hot and soft And then it tightened up its tentacles
Charlemagne generalizes, truthfully but unhelpfully, about how things got to this point: what was recreational drug use at first led to a variety of medically bad outcomes.
The most obvious interpretation of these lines is signaled by "tentacles": the thing that came on hot and soft was speed, most memorably via Gideon ("soft" [MPADJs, SN, and by implication Knuckles]; "hot" [A&H, FN]) at Holly's party; then it tightened up its tentacles, evoking the Skins as "the bloodsuckers and the parasites ... they hitch onto their host" [ASD].
But Gideon, Charlemagne, and Holly have all taken individual trips from recreational to medical by this point in the story, and all of these seem to be alluded to in the course of this song. See the list beneath the "vestibule / hospital" lines below.
I wasn't there I was blind, high, I was scared I was lake and Columbus, I was cutting off all my hair I was unfurling a flag of defiance aimed at my guidance guy
Back to the present and the question of the mall crash: Charlemagne-in-Gideon insists again that he wasn't there, and goes on to list a series of other things that he was doing, all true but elliptical accounts of recent events.
He was "blind, high, and scared": the St. Paul road-to-Damascus moment when he was blinded and terrified, and in that moment converted: the old Charlemagne was dead, and he was resurrected / born again as Gideon.
He was "Lake and Columbus, I was cutting off all my hair": this is Gideon's apartment on Columbus Avenue, where Charlemagne had been staying [CF, alluded to in Ambassador, SPayne], and where he got his head shaved [RH].
He was "unfurling a flag of defiance aimed at my guidance guy" until the hot-soft-light moment of conversion, like St. Paul defying Jesus until the road to Damascus (see "I only bow down to the jetset" [ABlues]).
So this is it This is the end of the session I ain't gonna be taking any more questions I think my attorney's gonna second that notion
Here Charlemagne's story is revealed to be the response to a police interrogation (compare the Narrator in SiM: "I'm getting pretty sick of this interview"); but there are holes in it [HM] --- maybe specifically the "hole" in his own dead body [A&H] --- and he's not going to get off that easy.
The band played screaming for vengeance And we agreed, this world is mostly manacled It started ice cream social nice It ended up all white and ecumenical
He returns to a description of the crucifixion:
The Narrator ("Peter" here, wanting to strike back against the Skins [BCrosses], see below) advocated that they "take them by surprise" [Ambassador] for "Revenge" [C&N], but they agree instead to restrain themselves, that vengeance is not for this world.
The crucifixion party itself started "ice cream social nice" (see the "Ice Cream Castles" [A&H] and "parties they start lovely" [HaRRF] descriptions of the same event); but it ended up "all white and ecumenical": "and then it went white" [SS] in the light of the conversion of St. Paul; "ecumenical": St Paul is the figure whom Christ chose to preach the gospel to the ecumene/oikoumene, the inhabited world --- in this case, to spread the legend of Charlemagne's death, and the gospel of the Unified Scene.
There are guys, there are guys, there are guys, there are guys With wild eyes when they ask to get you high There are girls, there are girls, there are girls, there are girls That will come to you with comfort in the night
He makes another allusion to Holly's party, this one more explicit:
Gideon, with his "wild eyes" [HSL] ("psycho eyes" [Swish], "enlightened eyes" [BCrosses], "hot soft eyes" [FN], "said something special / using only his eyes" [BBreathing]), offered to get Holly high (see also the baptism incident, where he offered "high as hell and born again" [BCamp]). Holly, in exchange, brought Gideon "comfort in the night" [MM].
This is the "Boys and Girls in America" bodies versus souls theme as viewed through this song: Charlemagne, being Gideon only in body, couldn't get her high; Holly, being Mary only in body, couldn't bring him comfort [SK, SBS, etc.].
The band played sabbath bloody sabbath You thought it was stoney and adorable It started in the vestibule It ended in the hospital
He remembers the Narrator's proposal for revenge ("Sabbath Bloody Sabbath," which also puts the crucifixion on a Saturday night [NS, CSTLN, HSL]) again, and how "you" (which must be Mary) thought it was "stoney and adorable." The poor Narrator is getting the sweet-guy brushoff, see "Hey Peter, you've been pretty sweet since Easter break" [BCrosses]; "stoney" is a pun on "Peter" (the "rock" on which Christ would build his church).
He notes again that "It started in the vestibule [and] ended in the hospital": with this he could be referring to any or all of the following episodes: - Charlemagne: from metal bar vestibule ("left to bleed to death" [RH]) to hospital ("the ER" [SN]) - Gideon: from metal bar vestibule ("lost his mind when they jumped him in" [YGD, RH]) to hospital ("some hospital" [RH]) - Holly-in-Mary: from mall vestibule ("a scene by the revolving door" [PP]) to hospital ("in fact she's in the hospital" [FN]) - Holly: from vestibule of her house ("in the corner" [CiS] by the "coat check" [Weekenders, MM, HF]) to her baptismal death [CatCT, BCamp] and eventual recovery in the "hospital" [FN].
There are nights, there are nights, there are nights, there are nights Where it all comes on a little bit too bright There's a cross, there's a cross, there's a cross, there's a cross And in the center there is a hot soft light
He concludes with a final description of the night of the crucifixion, the bright light of the projector, and his own conversion.
I guess there were only a few minor things in there that we hadn't already been over, but it's good to get it all in one place, and I really need to be thorough now. Navy Sheets is another song that's a mess, but that's a good place to find something unexpected, maybe we give that a shot tomorrow. In the meantime, thanks for remembering Still Alive Carl.
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Post by skepticatfirst on Mar 16, 2016 22:42:57 GMT -5
Had a little aha today about Constructive Summer, specifically that opening couple of lines:
Me and my friends are like The drums on "Lust for Life"
The song is about the Narrator and Charlemagne and Gideon "[putting] it back together" after having fallen out years back. The metaphor here is that the two beats of the drums on Lust for Life start out on the same pulse, then fall out of sync before finally coming together again. Made me happy when it hit me.
I said I'd get into Navy Sheets, but it's a bit of a mess and I think I'm too tired tonight to do the whole thing. Let me just set out the difficult passages as kind of a problem statement for tomorrow, and leave it at that.
I think "I'm not really sure we were lovers / Or if it was just some kind of car crash" makes Charlemagne the POV character (via the apparently obvious reference to the situation with Charlemagne and Holly in the car time). "Left home virgins" too points to Charlemagne, since he's the only one of the three guys who left someplace (Lynn, MA) to come to the Twin Cities.
But if that's right, it makes "I guess we met a couple bona fide angels" difficult. It seems clear to me that this is an allusion to the cops who, kinda fat, and fatigued from "parading every townie in town through the station" with no luck ("no one says nothing and they can't find the weapon" [OftC]), appeared to the kids as the two angels [John 20:12] announcing that Jesus' tomb was empty. But then, how could they announce to Charlemagne himself that he was not in his tomb? Also, how did Charlemagne go to the cops as part of a "we" --- who was with him?
The other thing that's really difficult are the "navy sheets" themselves. Navy is usually the darkest color in which bedding and is available, so that's the color the kids would use if they were trying to conceal the bleeding of Mary's hands. Maybe, possibly, this is something they actually did during the final two weeks among the Skins, when they split a bed (compare AHfA "sleeping on your couch"), but couldn't touch (hence "everybody's coming" on the sheets). But "Everybody wants to suck on something sweet" seems distinctly to belong to Holly in the car time. The only alternative I can (barely) think of is that "navy" has something to do with the cops themselves, in their navy-colored uniforms.
I can't keep my eyes open. Sorry for the very short post but I have to sleep. Any thoughts or suggestions about the above gratefully received. Thanks for reading along and thank you for thinking of Still Alive Carl.
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Post by skepticatfirst on Mar 17, 2016 22:48:15 GMT -5
Writing this stuff up while crashing is not very effective, and I missed a couple of important things about Navy Sheets last night: - "Left home virgins" can't have anything to do with Lynn, MA, because it's followed by "came back vampires" (Charlemagne never goes back to MA). But I'm still pretty sure this is Charlemagne; he and Mary/Holly are the ones who "found out Virginia really is for the lovers" [KP], and both were resurrected (raised from the dead) via the crucifixion. "Everybody wants to suck on something sweet" is clearly a description of Holly in the car time, trying to trade sex for drugs, but it also plays on "vampires"; and of course Charlemagne's with her. - The idea that "I guess we met a couple bona fide angels / But they all seemed kind of fat and fatigued" refers to a couple of cops is confirmed by CSTLN: the Irish cops of Algren's Chicago "seemed tired last night." I think that's better than speculation. I guess we met a couple bona fide angels But they all seemed kind of fat and fatigued And now we're trying to match the mouth to the screams Match the heads with their dreams Charlemagne describes the aftermath of the car crash. Having been picked up for questioning by the cops, he and apparently somebody else were sequestered and interrogated by a pair of them; the cops were kinda fat, and fatigued from "parading every townie in town through the station" with no luck ("no one says nothing and they can't find the weapon" [OftC]), but to the kids they appeared as the two angels [John 20:12] announcing that Jesus' tomb was empty. Exactly how that works isn't clear. Now they're answering questions about what happened that night, and the confusion of their answers isn't entirely feigned: Mary's confused about being either Holly or herself, and about Charlemagne appearing to be Gideon. Charlemagne himself isn't totally sure which of the two girls he's with. - "And now we're trying to match the mouth to the screams": Holly screamed (cf. "There were screams" in the "video" version of the reservoir scene, as seen by Mary [C&N]) - "Match the heads with their dreams": Mary dreamed it (cf. "I swear there must be something in your dreams" foreseeing the reservoir scene [YS]) Everybody's searching out the softest seat All dolled up for the funeral feast Everybody's stabbing at the biggest piece Clever kids kissing on a bleak retreat In the confusion of bodies and souls, Charlemagne-in-Gideon is "everybody" (cf. "all those sequencer and beats boys" [FN], or on Holly's side "multitude" [MoC]): - "Everybody's searching out the softest seat": I think this is a referece to Charlemagne trying to fit the role of Gideon (Gideon=soft [Knuckles, SN, MPADJs, HSL, etc.]; compare the reference to the rest of the audience that night in "stadium seating" [SA]) - "All dolled up for the funeral feast": they're all in disguise, Charlemagne-as-Gideon, Mary-as-Holly, in jeans and fringes and feathers [SS], for the crucifixion scene - "Everybody's stabbing at the biggest piece": Charlemagne-as-Gideon stabbed at the ghost-of-Charlemagne image - "Clever kids kissing on a bleak retreat": The "complicated kisses" [SK] of Mary/Holly and the ghost-of-Charlemagne, in the bleakness of Swede Hollow (the Party Pit) Now I'm not really sure we were lovers Or if it was just some kind of car crash Now we're trying to find a DNA match To match the heads to their hats Charlemagne isn't really sure what happened after "it went white" [SS]; in particular, he's not really sure, despite the "complicated kisses" [SK], and perhaps because he couldn't take it all the way [SK], that he and Holly-in-Mary were lovers ("the night with the fight and the butterfly knife was the first night she spent with that one guy she liked" [OftC], but "if she says we partied, I'm pretty sure we partied, I really don't remember; I remember we departed from our bodies" [KP]); what he vaguely remembers is the car crash ("sped through the scene until the engine stalled at some suburban shopping mall" [PP]). Now that they've departed from their bodies, with Charlemagne in Gideon's body and Holly in Mary's, they're literally trying to match up the actual underlying kids with their physical appearances (the heads to their hats). Everybody's reaching for the sharpest knife Legs wide open on the opening night Everybody's bathing in the laser lights Clever kids screwing with some new device More memories of confusion at the crucifixion: - "Everybody's reaching for the sharpest knife": Charlemagne as Gideon wields the knife [OftC] for striking the ghost-of-Charlemagne image. - "Legs wide open on the opening night": the "screening" of the crucifixion film is described in analogy to the film Opening Night [SA]; it was the "first night she spent with that one guy she liked" [OftC], only he didn't consummate [SK]. Holly has come to, wants drugs, and, seeing "Gideon" before her, opens her legs for their old exchange. - "Everybody's bathing in the laser lights": They're all bathed in the lights of Gideon's special effects. - "Clever kids screwing with some new device": Gideon has built a Pringles-can projector to project the image of Charlemagne's ghost from the top of the water tower onto the clearing below. Sunday morning, sidewalks splattered Feverish in stylish tatters Didn't this used to seem like glamour? I remember when it mattered Can't get over what's transpired Left home virgins, came back vampires Belt it out like back scratch choirs We're either dead or really tired He goes on to describe the immediate aftermath of the car crash, when the sun came up on Sunday morning: the sidewalks were splattered with Mary's blood (from stigmata, rather than injuries); she was feverish with withdrawal symptoms and general ill health, wearing the tatters of her Indian fringes outfit [SS]. He remembers the time when all this seemed glamourous, the time when it mattered. He can't believe everything that's happened since then, how they left home virgins (could be a reference to Charlemagne and Holly early on, or more likely to Charlemagne and Mary prior to the crucifixion, per "Virginia really is for the lovers" [KP]) but came back vampires (of course they've been in disguise among the vampire Skins at the saddle shop and then the Party Pit [SS]; more specifically, Charlemagne and Holly have come back from the not-quite-dead, like vampires, and she, drug-seeking, is looking to "suck on something sweet"). They can "belt it out like back scratch choirs," unnaturally rising again ("text scratched into her lower back ... Damn right you'll rise again" [YLHF]); but they're either dead, or really tired (this last is an allusion to Gideon appearing to never sleep during the last 16 days prior to this point [Knuckles, R&T, TL, OftC, SS, NS]). "Sunday morning": this is probably Separation Sunday --- the kids crash into the mall, with Holly-in-Mary at the wheel; Charlemage might have separated from them by the end, but at any rate he was there at the beginning ("we met him at some suburban St. Paul mall" [CSTLN]) and then he was gone ("So we walked across that Grain Belt bridge" [PP]). This is the only explicitly "Sunday" candidate in the canon. There might be something else after a Saturday/Sabbath, or unnamed, but this is it for Sunday. Everybody's coming onto navy sheets Everybody's coming onto navy sheets Everybody wants to suck on something sweet Everybody's coming onto navy sheets He closes with two more statements about "everybody" in the crew, and the transition from virgins to vampires: - "Everybody's coming onto navy sheets": a search of bedding at online department stores confirms that navy is the darkest of the typically available colors (sometimes you see black, but navy is a standard offering). During this interim, Charlemagne-as-Gideon and Mary-as-Holly are constantly keeping after the bloodstains of Mary's stigmata to protect their true identities ("the Wild West begins right where your body ends, so keep your bandages clean" [SS]; "He's bleaching out the blood stains" [GLS] from the bandages, or from her white clothing; "The sheets stain but the sins wash away" [SK]). The dark sheets are meant to hide the blood while they try to blend in with the Skins, sleeping together but not touching. - "Everybody wants to suck on something sweet": They're all vampires in the sense of being drug-addicted, too; Holly wants to trade sex for drugs like in MM, but it's not working for Charlemagne, and she's not getting speed out of it, either. OK. The questions are still open, but at any rate we've got the song broken down. I found something else today ... at lunch I was reading the Flood interview with Craig from October 2015 ( link), where he talks about Joan Didion's book Democracy: as a highlight, he mentions that the book includes So RFK is definitely something that's been on Craig's mind; I think that's further evidence that the Ambassador link to RFK is a good one. (In fact, the later PJ line: "some Kennedy OD'd while we watched on MTV" has to be an echo of Didion's "watching Robert Kennedy getting shot on TV" as described by Craig here.) More props to hitchhiker. I need to do at least Stuck Between Stations and First Night before moving on to the trial, so maybe I'll give one of them a shot tomorrow. Both are a lot clearer than Navy Sheets, so that should make for more interesting reading. Thanks still for hanging in there, and for thinking of Still Alive Carl.
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Post by skepticatfirst on Mar 18, 2016 23:34:42 GMT -5
First Night is another great song. Like the rest of BAGIA, it turns on the theme of the characters' sadness as they try to get together, with their bodies going one way and their souls another.
The POV character is the Narrator, by process of elimination; he's describing the time after the crash, having left Holly-in-Mary at Methodist hospital (as described in Almost Everything).
Charlemagne shakes in the streets Gideon makes love to the suites Holly's not invincible, in fact she's in the hospital Not far from the bar where we met on that first night
The Narrator describes Holly's confusion as she struggles to distinguish Charlemagne from Gideon:
- Charlemagne's the one who shakes in the streets, "high as hell and shivering and smashed" [MoC]. - Gideon's the one from the motel suites, "making love" to her as they traveled [CatCT, SN] (Charlemagne, by contrast, isn't really into sex with her now [SK]).
Holly herself is in Methodist hospital (not far from the Uptown bar where the Narrator and Gideon and Mary first met her and Charlemagne [Swish, BBlues]), getting sorted out for her addiction after the crash [AE]. Charlemagne pulls street corner scams Gideon's got a pipe made from a Pringles can Holly's insatiable, she still looks incredible But she don't look like the same girl we met
Again, from Holly's perspective, struggling:
- Charlemagne is the one working the corners [CiS, etc.]. - Gideon's the one with a pipe made from a Pringles can [SK].
Holly is still desperately addicted ("insatiable" cf. "can't get enough" [SPayne]), but now this has an overtone of sexual frustration also [see SK]; unlike before, she wants Charlemagne [MoC, NS], but now it's not her he's into. She still looks incredible, the Narrator notes ("I'm still pretty into you," he says, speaking to her in the hospital, trying to reach Mary underneath [AE]). But she doesn't look like the same girl we (Narrator, Mary, and Gideon) met at that first party so many years ago; it's Holly's spirit, but she's inhabiting Mary's body now.
On that first night She was golden with bar light and beer On that first night She slept like she'd never been scared
On that first night [Swish, BBlues], there was an aura of innocence around the real Holly: she was golden with bar light and beer; in those days, she slept like she'd never been scared (back before the parties got ugly and bloody [HaRRF]).
And then last night She said words alone never could save us And then last night She cried and she told us about Jesus
(So there's something here that I had missed earlier, before buddymo's point about habeas corpus put me on to Gideon's suicide. But now that I'm convinced he switched bodies with Charlemagne and then killed himself, it's pretty clear that there's a darker meaning to these lines.)
And then last night --- like in SBS, "that last night" is the night of the crucifixion and car ride --- Holly said "words alone never could save us," then she cried and told us (the Narrator and Charlemagne) about Jesus. That is, she told them, "Gideon's plan to save us with just a rumor, without evidence of a crime, could never have worked; there had to be a body, and so he (Jesus) killed himself." It would appear from this that she saw Gideon fall (consistent with her OftC reflection "if one townie falls in the forest, does anyone notice?"), and that she might have been the only one who did. It's not clear whether she identifies Jesus with Charlemagne, whose body lay there dead, or with Gideon, who she seems to have understood to be behind the sacrifice.
There's a second reading here per which she's saying that "talking" to Jesus, "talking to the guys with the hot soft eyes," isn't enough for salvation, both in the old sense that he can't hook her up with speed like he (the real Gideon) once did, and in the new sense that he's not really into her sexually; she wants him now, but that isn't happening [NS, MoC, SK, etc.].
Holly's inconsolable Unhinged and uncontrollable Because we can't get as high as we got On that first night
Holly's desperate and out of control (see her state in AE), literally because they can't get as high as they got on that first night [Swish, BBlues]; they're back on the simpler stuff, not speed, and it's no longer working ("dead receptors" [OwtB]).
Boys and girls in America Boys and girls in America Boys and girls in America Boys and girls in America
Don't bother talking to the guys with the hot soft eyes You know they're already taken Don't even speak to all those sequencer and beats boys When they kiss they spit white noise
The Narrator reflects on boys and girls in America, and hears Holly telling them about Jesus: "Don't bother talking to the guys with the hot soft eyes," that is, the seeing-double chemists Charlemagne-in-Gideon (Gideon's eyes "wild eyes" [HSL], "psycho eyes" [Swish], "enlightened eyes" [BCrosses], "said something special / using only his eyes" [BBreathing]); "You know they're already taken," that is, they're in love with Mary and out of reach. "Don't even speak to all those sequencer and beats boys," again Charlemagne-in-Gideon (Gideon the special-effects actor/producer); "When they kiss they spit white noise" --- the kiss in the crucifixion screening, when "it went white" [SS], was the clicks and hisses of the film projector, the static of being stuck between stations.
That's some pretty satisfying songwriting, and enough for tonight. Tomorrow I'll do Stuck Between Stations. Thanks for reading along and for remembering Still Alive Carl.
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Post by skepticatfirst on Mar 20, 2016 0:18:57 GMT -5
Any discussion of Stuck Between Stations has to begin with the Kerouac quote that sets the theme for BAGIA: Craig's gloss on the quote in the 2006 Pitchfork interview lays particular emphasis on "souls" ( link): Every song on BAGIA is about this theme (Craig affirms this in several places, for example the 2006 interview for The Fader, link): - Chips Ahoy! is about Mary and Charlemagne having a sad time together in soul but not in body. - Hot Soft Light is (among other things) about Charlemagne finding himself caught in the trap of Holly and Gideon's drug-for-sex exchange, when he thought he was getting together with Mary. - Same Kooks is about Holly and Charlemagne in Mary and Gideon's bodies, respectively, failing to get together. - First Night is about Holly's lament, having tried to get together with Gideon and discovering that he and Charlemagne have switched. - Party Pit is about the Narrator reaching for Mary and not being able to tell whether he's talking to Mary or Holly. - Massive Nights is about the Narrator getting with Mary's body only to learn that her soul is with Charlemagne. - Citrus is about Charlemagne's lament, having tried to get with Mary and discovering that she's Holly. - Southtown Girls is about Charlemagne coming around from Holly to Mary, but still stuck ("two-sided tape it gets way too sticky") between them. And then there's Stuck Between Stations, a major reflection on the theme from the POV of the Narrator. There are nights when I think that Sal Paradise was right Boys and girls in America, they have such a sad time together Sucking off each other at the demonstrations, making sure their makeup's straight Crushing one another with colossal expectations, dependent, undisciplined, sleeping late The "I" of the song is limited to reflecting on Kerouac, and later ("we") to reflecting on Berryman; this certainly sounds like the Narrator, and the fact that at least some references to "he" later on appear to refer to Charlemagne tends to confirm this. As we mentioned earlier, this first verse has a ton of material in common with Magazines, and there are other elements that seem to allude to Charlemagne and Jesse; but we could read some of this as referring to the other characters also. It's probably best to read this first verse as building up to universality through ambgiuity: - "There are nights ... sad time together" reminds us that Jesse "isn't always funny in the night" and that "then you'll probably fight" [Magazines]. - "Sucking off each other / making sure their makeup's straight" clearly sounds like Jesse's "Second dates and lipstick tissues" [Magazines]. On the other hand, the Narrator and Mary actually went down on each other at prom [YGD, MN, OWL]. - We don't know what the "demonstrations" are but they probably belong in the rhyming list of "celebrations" and "dedications" where Jesse "gets pretty wasted" [Magazines]. - Jesse and Charlemagne are "crushing one another with colossal expectations," namely the pressures of their respective father/Holly complexes ("I hope you'll still let me kiss you" / "daddy issues" [Magazines]). But there are expectations even more colossal, for example Mary identifying Charlemagne with Christ, or the Narrator identifying Mary with the Queen of Heaven (the double meaning of "crush" appears in MN as well). - "dependent": could be read as referring to Charlemagne and Jesse: "this little tryst is hard to quit, so we just sit here and live with it" [BCig]; but Holly and Gideon are stuck in an even more pernicious pattern of sex-for-drugs co-dependence. - "sleeping late": "She stayed out too late again ... She didn’t go to work again." [40B] She was a really cool kisser and she wasn't all that strict of a Christian She was a damn good dancer but she wasn't all that great of a girlfriend He likes the warm feeling but he's tired of all the dehydration Most nights are crystal clear but tonight it's like he's stuck between stations On the radio The Narrator turns from the general case of BAGIA having a sad time together, to Charlemagne-in-Gideon and Holly-in-Mary specifically. Charlemagne is stuck in the inter-channel static between Mary and Holly, Mary's body and Holly's soul: "She was a really cool kisser and she wasn't all that strict of a Christian": Holly is a really cool kisser; that was a key aspect of her/Charlemagne's virginal relationship as kids [Swish], and this appears again during the car ride: "two kooks can't come but they sure do kiss" [SK]. (Again, all the kissing with Jesse is connected to Charlemagne's projective identification of her with Holly [HH, Magazines, JaJ, HJ].) She's not a very strict Christian, either; she likes the cross because it looks good on her chest [CatCT]. So on the one hand, he's with Holly. "She was a damn good dancer but she wasn't all that great of a girlfriend": Mary is a damn good dancer [HM, YGD, SBS, CA, OWL]; in drawing a picture of her deterioration, even BBlues and RP give evidence of her having once been a dancer. And she hasn't been such a great girlfriend, given that for years she's been pretty much living/sleeping with the Skins, instead of with him. So on the other hand, he's with Mary. "He likes the warm feeling but he's tired of all the dehydration": Charlemagne likes the warm and wet feeling of "teenage heat" [TL] and physical intimacy with Holly ("warm" is a Jesse theme as well [40B, CSongs, TL, JaJ, WCGT, HJ]); he likes the warm feeling of being drunk; at the same time he's tired of the dehydration from so much drinking, apparently wine-drinking in an attempt to recover Mary (see "we drink and we dry up" later [SBS], and again there is car-time evidence for wine and drinking generally in MoC, SBS, SK, HSL, PP, A&H, R&T). "Most nights are crystal clear but tonight it's like he's stuck between stations": Most nights Charlemagne knows where he is, but now he's stuck in the static "Twin City kiss" between the two girls, like two stations on the radio. (There's a long note about "white noise ... between channels" in Hunter S. Thompson's Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, which is definitely referenced in C&N, and possibly also in BCamp.) This is clearly going to run long, so let me stop there and pick up the rest of it tomorrow. There's a lot going on here, plus it's a hell of a song and really deserves the detailed treatment. Thanks for reading along, and for thinking of Still Alive Carl.
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Post by skepticatfirst on Mar 20, 2016 22:33:47 GMT -5
Picking up where we left off, at the third verse. Having set up the basic problem, the Narrator launches into an illustration of it using three different figures at once, ambiguously: Charlemagne, the poet John Berryman, and Jesus. There's a twofold Biblical allusion here. The first is to Luke 4:9-12: after 40 days fasting in the desert, Jesus was taken up to the pinnacle of the Temple of Jerusalem by the Devil, who tempted him to throw himself down, saying that the angels would rescue him. Layered under this is a second reference to the garden of Gethsemane, when again Jesus has the option to call on "twelve legions of angels" to save him, but goes to the crucifixion instead. (We've seen lots of references to the second episode, in which the Narrator urging a violent response to the Skins is compared to Peter defending Christ with violence [HSL, Ambassador], and there's an apparent reference to both episodes in "think about his security" [DLME]). In both cases, Jesus could use words to save himself, but doesn't. Instead, he dies. So the three illustrations go like this: The Devil and John Berryman, they took a walk together And they ended up on Washington talking to the river He said, "I've surrounded myself with doctors and deep thinkers Their big heads and soft bodies make for lousy lovers" Berryman: realizes that he's become all mind and no body, and a lousy lover. Charlemagne: is also there in spirit but without his body, and, being hung up between Holly and Mary, is also a lousy lover ("Same kooks can't come but they sure do kiss" [SK, etc.]). Jesus: is the Son of God but in a mortal body, in which he's been born because God loved the world; he must die in that body in order to save the world. There was that night that we thought John Berryman could fly But he didn't, so he died She said "You're pretty good with words, but words won't save your life" And they didn't, so he died Berryman: "that night": "his last night on earth" before suicide (see Finn quote below) Charlemagne: "that night": the night of the crucifixion and car ride Jesus: "that night": the night in the garden of Gethsemane (overlaid on the pinnacle of the Temple) and the crucifixion Berryman: "fly": his leaping from the Washington Street bridge into the Mississippi. Charlemagne: "fly": the attempt to escape [see RH] / his body (inhabited by Gideon) leaping from the water tower ("Same kooks can't fly because their wings are clipped" [SK]). Jesus: "fly": the option to call on the angels and escape / the option to call on the angels and leap from the Temple. Berryman: "words": poet, but being a doctor and deep thinker won't save his life. Charlemagne: "words": rumor of his death, but spreading a rumor alone won't save his life [FN]. Jesus: "words": the power to summon the angels, but his purpose is to die; this won't save his life. Berryman: "died": "stuck" [RH] in the mud of the west bank of the river, between St. Paul and Minneapolis. Charlemagne: "died": crucified / fell from the water tower. Jesus: "died": crucified. Yeah, he was drunk and exhausted, he was critically acclaimed and respected He loved the Golden Gophers but he hated all the drawn-out winters He likes the warm feeling but he's tired of all the dehydration Most nights were kind of fuzzy but that last night he had total retention The ambiguous parallel between Charlemagne and Berryman continues; Jesus is removed from the picture (but something else is added; see note on this below). Berryman: "drunk and exhausted": he was an alcoholic, in a losing battle with depression (see Finn quote below, and also wikipedia). Charlemagne: "drunk and exhausted": he's been driving around drinking [MoC, SBS, SK, HSL, PP, A&H, R&T] in the car after the crucifixion. Berryman: "critically acclaimed and respected": Pulitzer prize, etc. Charlemagne: "critically acclaimed and respected": Holly's into him now, "cool car makes a guy seem that much cooler" [MoC]. Berryman: "loved the Golden Gophers": taught at the University of Minnesota. Charlemagne: "loved the Golden Gophers": loved Mary, who stayed in the Twin Cities for school, apparently at U Minn; had loved Holly "golden with bar light and beer" [FN]. Berryman: "hated all the drawn-out winters": struggled with depression, and killed himself in January. Charlemagne: "hated all the drawn-out winters": "last winter there was weather, and his eyes they iced right over" [CiS]. Berryman: "warm feeling / dehydration": again, an alcoholic, in a losing battle with depression. Charlemagne: see notes on this line above (yesterday's post). Berryman: "last night he had total retention": see notes on Berryman's "last night on earth" below. Charlemagne: "last night he had total retention": his epiphany and conversion under the hot soft light of the projector. Yeah, these Twin City kisses They sound like clicks and hisses We all come down and drown In the Mississippi River So, the Twin City kiss is the kiss under the water tower, the "complicated" kiss between Mary/Holly (Mary before and Holly after) and Charlemagne/Gideon (Charlemagne's ghost embodied by Gideon's projector). It's a Twin City kiss because the bodies and souls on either side are split in two. It sounds like clicks and hisses because of the noise of the projector. And it's connected to death by drowning in the Mississippi because of Holly/Mary on the one hand (Holly baptized and drowned, and Mary ascending into heaven dripping wet) and Charlemagne/Berryman/Christ on the other (leaping from the bridge into the river, and leaping to death generally). And the Mississippi divides the Twin Cities between which he's stuck, too. We drink and we dry up and now we crumble into dust We get wet and we corrode and now we're covered up in rust We drink and we dry up and now we crumble into dust We get wet and we corrode and now we're covered up in rust This is a description of Charlemagne-in-Gideon and Holly-in-mary in the car: they're drinking a lot and getting dehydrated; they're fooling around, it's warm and wet, but they're corroding ("I can feel the whole scene starting to corrode / when we're fooling around on the frontage roads" [DLME]). They're crumbling into dust, they're covered up in rust; they're stuck between stations. One more quote from Craig that's useful when looking at this song is the 2015 Spin interview ( link): There's a lot of good stuff here; when Jesus disappears from the Charlemagne/Berryman parallel in that fifth verse, it seems to me that Craig slips himself into it in his place: Craig: "drunk and exhausted": "writing a lot when I was hungover." Craig: "critically acclaimed and respected": obviously true. Craig: "loved the Golden Gophers": example of "my hometown, which I was already prone to singing about a lot." Craig: "hated all the drawn-out winters": likely enough to be true. Craig: "warm feeling / dehydration": "my artistic stuff is drying up." In adding himself in he seems to draw out the lesson of the others' experience: the body and soul are both important; spiritual types like artists (and religious figures) might be inclined to despise the mortality of the body, but the body is as important as the soul. There's a reconciliation to the mortal conditions of art, there. It really is an unbelievable song, so stacked that I feel almost silly trying to tease out the different elements running through it. But I can stop there. Not quite sure what I'm going to take on tomorrow, there are a few things to choose from. In the meantime, thanks for reading, and for remembering Still Alive Carl.
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Post by skepticatfirst on Mar 22, 2016 0:23:19 GMT -5
Going over these last several songs has been useful for me, especially after finally seeing what happened to Gideon. There were a few things in them that I had missed (the evidence that Holly had seen Gideon fall, for example, in "Same kooks can't fly because their wings are clipped" [SK] and "She said words alone never could save us ... She cried and she told us about Jesus" [FN]). It's also helped, by process of elimination, to focus my thinking on the rest of their interaction with the cops. The fact is that there's very little left, just a few details about the trial itself. And unless I'm forgetting something, those details are limited to fragments scattered across just five songs: DLME, HaRRF, 212M, OftC, and KP. The first bit we see is when Holly, appearing under subpoena [SiM], takes the stand *as Holly* (as opposed to her later appearance *as Mary*, when she supplies Charlemagne-in-Gideon with an alibi). This first appearance is described in Don't Let Me Explode. Note that the POV character of DLME is Charlemagne (as shown in the final verses); his presence during her questioning is what lets us know that those questions are an examination on the witness stand, and not an interrogation along the lines of what we see in HSL and SiM. The prosecutor is asking her about Gideon (supposed to be the killer) and Charlemagne (supposed to be the victim); Holly is known to have had a history with Charlemagne before leaving him for Gideon, and they're trying to put together the story. He said what about Los Angeles? She said we never really made it that far west We scored big in Denver and thought it might be best To go hang around in the upper midwest [(liner) to turn around and go back and hang around the upper midwest] The prosecutor tries to clear up where she and Gideon were for the seven years that she was "disappeared" and he was off in "Bay City." He asks about Los Angeles: she denies it (they "never really made it," that is, they never hit the metaphoric "California" big time). She says rather that they had a big score in "Denver" (which is the tipoff that the question is about her and Gideon), and that they thought it was best to hang around the "upper" Midwest. I've mentioned this before, but in the 2006 Pitchfork interview ( link) Craig has described speed as the defining problem of the Midwest (Knuckles does too, in fact). This comes up a few lines later in the "I guess there's fields of speed where there's fields of grain" line, which the liner notes have as "I hear there's fields of speed in the amber waves of grain"; "upper" Midwest here looks like a double entendre in this sense also. He said what about New Orleans? She said I don't think you understand what that means All those hangers-on, those girls lifting up their shirts when the cameras come on We were trying to stay away from those kind of scenes The prosecutor asks about New Orleans: she denies that too. "Those girls lifting up their shirts when the cameras come on" could be meant to suggest her earlier trip to California doing porn, or Mary's sexual escapades down at the Ambassador when *her own* cameras come on. I think "all those hangers-on" (Skins="bloodsuckers/parasites" [ASD]) makes the latter reading more likely; in fact, Mary's Cheyenne sunrises there, "saw the dawn through a crack in the curtain" [R&T], etc., makes "There is a house in New Orleans / They call the Rising Sun" a pretty likely anchor for "New Orleans" as a metaphor. And we didn't go to Dallas 'Cause Jackie Onassis said that it ain't safe for Catholics yet Think about what they pulled on Kennedy and then think about his security Then think about what they might try to pull on you and me She denies going to Dallas, land of the Cowboy Skins and scoreboard/stadium violence [SPayne, LA, BBreathing, DMLE, C&N], particularly the metal bar beatdown. "Jackie Onassis" appears to be Gideon as "Jack" [Swish, HM] warning that they shouldn't go there: "look at what they did to Charlemagne, and think about what they might do to you and me." "His security" is a nod to Charlemagne's status as Christ: "He shall give his angels charge concerning thee, and in their hands they shall bear thee up, lest at any time thou dash thy foot against a stone" [Matt 4:6 / Luke 4:10-11, also referenced in SBS]; and, when Peter cut off the servant's ear to defend him in the garden, "Thinkest thou that I cannot now pray to my Father, and he shall presently give me more than twelve legions of angels?" [Matt 26:53, also referenced in BCrosses, Ambassador]. Saint Barbara, I'm calling your name Don't let me blow up We'll hook it all up I guess there's fields of speed where there's fields of grain [(liner) i hear there's fields of speed in the amber waves of grain] The song cuts to Charlemagne's silent prayer to Holly (as Saint Barbara, analogous to his references to Mary as Saint Theresa [YLHF, SPotC]), begging her to have mercy on him: every question is a land mine (Saint Barbara the patron saint of those who work with land mines), and one wrong answer will finish him. "We'll hook it all up (i.e. with a new source); I guess there's fields of speed where there's fields of grain" sounds like Charlemagne's promise to Sapphire (Sapphire is Holly-in-Mary as foreseen by Mary herself; note the references to Sacramento indicating the presence of Holly) in YS: "Sapphire, if Cheyenne's too small, we'll haul it all back to St. Paul; if St. Paul don't call, we've always got Aberdeen." It's clear that Charlemagne is remembering Holly's desperate need for speed during the car ride, and his own refusal to hook her up [alluded to in SK, A&H, MoC, CatCT, NS, DLME]; now, scared, he's vowing to find her some as a reward if she only won't torpedo him from the stand. Saint Barbara, don't let me explode I can feel the whole scene Starting to corrode When we're fooling around on the frontage roads Charlemagne continues praying: he feels the "stuck between stations" threat of destruction --- her getting wet [SBS], leading to "corrosion" and "rust" --- from when they were trying and failing to get it together in the car, on the frontage roads [MoC]. He asked what happened to Charlemagne She just smiled all polite-like and said something vague She said Charlemagne got caught up in some complicated things Then she wiped at her nose and she winked The prosecutor asks the final question --- what happened to Charlemagne? --- and Holly comes through with the answer Charlemagne had coached Mary to give in the first place: "If they ask about Charlemagne / Be polite and say something vague / Like another lover lost to the restaurant raids" [KP]. This doesn't have to be evidence of Mary's presence; the Narrator was in on the plan, and was with Charlemagne and Mary when they were prepping in the theater [BCamp]; it's just as likely that he passed this coaching on to Holly before she took the stand. More on the trial tomorrow, maybe we can wrap it up in just a day at this point. Thanks for keeping Still Alive Carl in mind in the meantime.
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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.
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Post by muzzleofbees on Mar 23, 2016 1:29:10 GMT -5
I'm not sure if I understand this "Holly taking the stand as Holly"-thing. What do you mean? Does she physically appear at the stands? As far as I understand, by the time of the trial, the bodies of Charlemagne and Holly are now off - Holly being drowned back in the days, and Charlemagne apparently stabbed by the foot of the water tower. The persons physically present in the court room is Mary (with Holly's "soul") and Gideon (with Charlemagne's "soul"). So I would think the female on the stands always appear to be Mary. But maybe you mean that she gives her answers *as Holly*? Or maybe I'm just a little thick :-)
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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.
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Post by muzzleofbees on Mar 24, 2016 2:00:14 GMT -5
I get it! It's pretty intricate stuff, and I'm not 100% convinced that such a plot could be extracted from a sparse amount of lyrics. But as always, what you lay out makes sense. I'm still pretty excited everytime I see a new post in this thread.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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
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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.
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