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Post by bigdoors on Mar 4, 2017 15:50:23 GMT -5
Created an account just to post here - this is not only amazing as a Hold Steady fan, but I honestly think is the most interesting piece of writing I've read in a long time. You could have just dropped the story from post one, but following along your thought process was honestly amazing. I'm so grateful for having stumbled upon this. There are a few things I disagree with (or at least upon my initial listening thought meant something else and I'm loathe to have that change), and I'll hopefully bring them up later. Regardless, this is an amazing thread.
All the best to Still Alive Carl, hoping everything is going well with him
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Post by muzzleofbees on Mar 5, 2017 15:10:24 GMT -5
I've written it several times before, but I just have to back up the last two guys posting here. This thread sort of changed my life - at least for a couple of months last winter/spring. I read every post numerous times, and the story was constantly in the back of my head while I was walking the streets of Oslo on parental leave. It was amazing as a Hold Steady fan. But as bigdoors points out, it was something more than that. It was just a crazy interesting text/analysis/journey, regardless of my love for Hold Steady.
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Post by muzzleofbees on Mar 30, 2017 6:47:23 GMT -5
I wanted to put this in the thread about Craig's new album, but it fits better here.
With a song called Ninety Bucks, it's hard not to check out if it has any connection to 40 Bucks. I'm not nearly as deep into the single lyrics from each song as skepticalfirst is, but these lines ring a bell.
I’m sick of all this wilderness The businessmen on business trips The distance goes beyond the rate and time
But school don’t start until early Fall I went ahead and made a call Sometimes I can push ahead Some nights the wheels just spin
(...)
The medication sometimes works The drinking probably doesn’t help The shepherd should still love the lambs he’s lost
(...)
The lamb can wander from the flock In shopping malls and parking lots Sometimes the shepherd brings him back Some nights the wheels just spin
I don't know about you guys, but I recognize motifs from a lot of places here. The THS ones are probably most obvious (sheperd, lambs, wander away from the flock and find yourself in a shopping mall and the recurring 'spin' thing), but there's also a possible reference to Secret Santa Cruz by Lifter Puller here. All those things about the school who starts in fall, and how medication sometimes work and the drinking doesn't help, is also present here. Oh yeah, and 'cash is king':
cash advances and jenny's back on campus i can't believe that it's september said jenny what's the story, all the chicks in her sorority asked her how she spent the summer said i interned at some law firm, i got a little sunburned i saw some raver kid get murdered i met a guy, and this guy i met he got me high and the drum and bass sounds a lot like rollin' thunder and the blue looks beautiful as it tops off the torch you don't have to go inside to buy, you can buy it off the porch
twenty-seven lovers in the back half of the summer i know you think that's way too many but the x makes me feel sexy and the sex makes me feel empty the alcohol destroys me
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Post by thrasher9294 on Mar 30, 2017 10:56:56 GMT -5
Great work, man! possible reference to Secret Santa Cruz by Lifter Puller here Very likely! Along with these recent live reunions, I've noticed that in almost every interview regarding this new album, Craig or the interviewer brings them up at some point. Asking how things have changed, how LP compares to his current work. Hell, they're referenced in the very first line of that Quietus interview posted here earlier: thequietus.com/articles/21983-craig-finn-interviewI think it's likely that his storytelling and specifically how it's changed as he's gotten older has really been on his mind lately. I'm glad to see them still be "around"—I still can't believe the reissue was 7 fucking years ago, and that was the last time they got any real recognition.
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Post by jerseyshoresoul on May 3, 2017 8:39:46 GMT -5
I found this thread today and registered for the sole purpose of telling you, skepticatfirst, that this is f*cking awesome and thank you so much.
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Post by muzzleofbees on May 8, 2017 14:38:47 GMT -5
There's plenty of good stuff in Jester & June who is - more than anything in the previous solo stuff from Craig - obviously connected to the Hold Steady universe. Here, we get both Gideon and a reference to those kids at the car wash in Oaks:
We used to have our own tune We used to sing it in church And then it got worse
We put too much faith Gave too much cash To that one creepy kid at the car wash He said he could make a few calls But I don't think he made any calls
Well we probably should have tried the guy with the Dracula cape Because other than the cape he was cool He had that wild kind of sadness Like he was something important I wonder if he even remembers They used to call us Junebug and Jester They used to call us Jester and June
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Post by muzzleofbees on Oct 6, 2017 13:33:57 GMT -5
Just as a service to people entering this thread for the first time: Here are a summary of the timeline (just copy and paste from the brilliant work of Skepticalfirst). This is the short (but still quite long) version. But I highly recommend taking your time to read the entire thread. It's worth it.
---
PREHISTORY
Sep 1970 - Sep 1971
Mary, Charlemagne, Gideon and the Narrator are born.* (see notes on timeline below)
July 1977
Holly is born.* (see notes on timeline below)
Jun 1981 - Jun 1982
Jesse is born.* (see notes on timeline below)
ACT I - High School (1980 dates)
Before summer 1988
Mary gets screwed up by religion, screwed by soccer players [SN, ASD].
Summer 1988
Mary got high for the first time at the camps down by the banks of the river [SN], had her first vision of Charlemagne-Christ (being crucified) and fell in love [R&T, HM]. Stigmata appear on her hands.
The Narrator sees a Youth of Today show at 7th Street Entry Sunday Night Dance Party. He gets almost killed by skins in the pit [PJ, BBreathing]. He also meets Gideon* [CSTLN].
The Narrator, looking to buy, gets knocked off his bicycle down by Selby and Griggs, and gets 10 bucks & his tennis shoes stolen [YGD].
The Narrator, looking to buy (invited by Gideon [ASD]?), goes to a party at the Party Pit, and meets Mary, who's there with the townies [PP, ASD].
Jesse takes up smoking [BCig].
Spring 1989
The Narrator and Mary go to prom together; they have a massive night, but the presence of Charlemagne in vision interferes, sending them off on separate trips [MN, OWL, YGD, PP].
Summer 1989
Gideon, a townie but not a Skin yet, moves in to pick up Mary, and introduces her to speed shooting [ASD].
The Narrator goes to a Shelter show at 7th Street Entry Sunday Night Dance Party. He gets a Hare Krishna pamphlet and an mystic message of non-violence from lead singer Ray Cappo [BBreathing].
Fall 1989
The Narrator goes away to school in Boston [PP].
Mary stuck around the Twin Cities for school, staying where the townies are [PP]; she lives with other girls & gets good grades, but continues to frequent Gideon and the Party Pit in secret [OftC].
ACT II - 1990 dates; Nicollet & 66th
Spring 1993
The Narrator graduates and returns to the Twin Cities to start a band [PP].
Fall 1993
Holly, 16 years old and with a developing love of getting high, skips CCD to go look for something for a party, and meets Charlemagne, 22, dealing on the corner [CiS]. Charlemagne takes her under his wing and insists that they flee the mean streets of Lynn together. Holly mentions that she has a nice cousin from a good family who just graduated college in Minneapolis [Swish, BBlues, MINTS, CiS, SN, OftC, analogy to SM, etc.]. She also said, always remember never to trust me; there's gonna come a time when I'm gonna have to go with whoever's gonna get me the highest [HH]. (See notes on timeline below.)
The "first night" party takes place in an Uptown bar. Mary and Gideon are there [Swish]. The Narrator's band is playing; he sees Mary for the first time since high school [BBlues]. Holly, just arrived from Lynn with Charlemagne in tow, enters and is greeted with a kiss by cousin Mary, whose stigmata have begun bleeding at the sight of her Christ in the flesh [Swish, BBlues]. At some point Mary tells Charlemagne that she has to talk to him, but then doesn't say anything [MINTS]. At the end of the party, Mary proposes that the five of them get a house together; the Narrator has to choose whether to get back into Mary's life and lose, or to run, but in the end decides to go with them [BBlues].
The five kids move into a house at Nicollet & 66th [HH, C&N]; Gideon lives in the loft, the other four on the ground floor [SN]. Mary calls the boys the Holy Trinity of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost [A&H].
Summer 1994
Holly's first summer in Minneapolis (the "blockbuster" summer). She and Charlemagne spend the summer in the theaters; she turns 17 in late July, he's 23, their relationship is chaste [Swish]. They're supported by Mary ("moving pictures"), who, as Charlemagne will later learn, can use her visions of the future to make easy money at the racetrack/OTB [CA, Weekenders].
Fall 1994
After September [Swish], Charlemagne, dreaming of the big time, makes contact with the meth cooker Skins and sets up as a dealer.
Holly's drug use becomes more serious, moving steadily along the spectrum from enthralled toward enslaved [CiS, implicit from later developments in Swish, C&N, CatCT, etc.].
Spring 1995
Charlemagne hasn't been dealing long before he fucks up, and, with the cops at the door, has to put the drugs down the drain. He's left owing the Skins $7K [YGD].
Charlemagne turns to Holly (who for her part wants the flow of drugs to continue [BBlues]) to bail him out; she begins turning tricks [YGD, BBlues, Swish].
Summer 1995
Holly's second summer in Minneapolis (the "cocksucking" summer). Charlemagne takes her earnings and pays her back in drugs, but is increasingly unreliable about his half of the bargain [Swish, C&N, MINTS, MM]. In the meantime she's blowing gangsters in the declining City Center, and gets herpes [Swish, PJ].
In late July, Holly turns 18. She gets a call inviting her to come out to California to be in films, and goes [C&N, MINTS]. She leaves Charlemagne with 50 bucks, a business that is now plainly failing, and a debt to the Skins that still has to be repaid [MINTS, OwtB].
With Holly gone, they're now four in the house at Nicollet & 66th [HH].
Winter 1995
Holly spends the winter in California making porn [C&N, MINTS, CiS].
The Skins cut off supplies and send over some guys with a message for Charlemagne about the debt [OwtB]. Charlemagne pulls street corner scams [FN], trying to dig out of the hole he's in, but doesn't make headway.
Spring 1996
Holly comes back to Minneapolis, to a house in the same neighborhood [MINTS] with an old landlady [CatCT], and goes back to turning tricks [C&N].
Summer 1996
In a short space of time [CSunrise, OwtB] in or around July, a series of things happen.
Mary comes home after a night of drugs and sex to a confrontation with the Narrator about what she's doing [CSunrise]. Both he and she have become increasingly drug-addicted over time [SM, CSunrise]. She predicts the metal bar beatdown at their next party [CSunrise, Weekenders].
Charlemagne's increasingly dire financial straits result in the phone getting disconnected [OwtB].
The Narrator, Charlemagne, Gideon and Mary go down to the metal bar in St. Paul; the phone's a problem, and Charlemagne wants to make an impression on the Skins [OwtB, SPayne, etc.]. The kids get a dose of meth [SPayne, SM], Charlemagne gets almost killed [SPayne, KP, SG, etc.], the Narrator is beaten [SPayne, BBlues], Gideon gets jumped in to the gang [YGD, SPayne, SN], and Mary launches into a raunchy new arc of meth abuse, stigmatic bleeding, and Skin-fucking [SPayne, OftC, Ambassador, 212M].
The Narrator gets Charlemagne to the hospital [implicit in SPayne, SN, RH, etc.] and calls Holly, who comes to the ER to see him [SN]. Charlemagne reproaches her for not having been by his side when it happened [BBreathing]. Gideon shows up, newly jumped in; Holly sees his new status, and resolves to make him share his new supply of drugs with her [SN].
In late July, Holly turns 19 and throws a party [MM, HF, SN, Weekenders]. Mary shows up with a plan to get Holly out of the way: she's going to pair off Holly's need for drugs with Gideon's need for sex [SN, CiS, Weekenders, etc.], and so kill two birds with one stone. Charlemagne, sitting in the corner with a milkcrate on his head, sees what's going down, and predicts that Holly's going to die [HF]. Mary stops to ask him how he likes the big time now [HF]. Her plan succeeds; Holly blows Gideon, tries meth for the first time, and the two of them leave together [MM, MoC].
Summer 1996
Still 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 1997
Holly 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 1997
Sometime 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."
NTERVAL (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].
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].
Fall-Winter 2003/04
Commiserating with each other in their rivalry over Charlemagne, Mary and Jesse develop a kind of hostile friendship ("sick together" [212M], "friend" [YLHF]).
Mary confronts Charlemagne about getting with Jesse; he denies it, recriminating with her instead [YLHF].
Jesse takes advantage of a show played by a favorite band to let Charlemagne see that she's doing drugs with the music boys again, but wakes up alone and sadder than before [40B].
Jesse and Charlemagne meet to listen to records in her room again [WCGT]; she was all cheerful innocence when they did this back in the summer [HH], but now that "pure and simple love" doesn't sound so simple to her any more. For his part he sees that it's heaven; still he can't let go of his thing with Mary.
Spring 2004
Charlemagne is still stuck on Mary, and a year and a half or so after the events of Chips Ahoy! is still trying to figure out if she feels anything ("Diane Lane kept me sane through the spring" [ABlues]).
Jesse's angry now, but neither she nor Charlemagne can quit the situation [BCig]; she threatens to leave for New York without him [Magazines], but won't actually go. It's clear to him that she's going to go back to the boys in the harbor bars for real this coming summer [HJ].
Last summer, Charlemagne and Jesse used to be able to go to parties and pretend that they'd never met [Smidge]. Now they're a known item, and boys are dissing him on her message machine [Magazines]. (It won't be long before she gets a visit from the Skins, when they're looking for him [CF].)
Jesse begins to get involved with Charlemagne's dealing in the restaurant ("She's got a bandolero belt filled with Kamikaze shooters / She touches every table in a total eclipse" [Smidge], "She's the pistol at the party" [BCig]). Again, he sees that things are taking a bad turn; something's got to give.
Mary, deeply unhappy with the situation with Charlemagne, has a vision of him speaking to her after the crucifixion which she's foreseen; in the vision, he needs her and thanks her for saving his life, but he also calls her "Sapphire" [YS]. Whether it's because these visions of him are actual episodes of long-range precognition, or because they lead her to get "confused about the truth" [SN], the name "Sapphire" foreshadows the fact that she won't be simply "Mary" in that future.
Mary and Jesse drag the Narrator and Charlemagne out to a party; when they get there, Mary wants to head straight for the room in the back where the heavy drugs are, and she and the Narrator end up having a fight about it [MPADJs, RP]. Unlike in past fights [HM, CSunrise], this time he says something that she hears and remembers --- namely, that by passively getting high and watching her visions ("records and tapes" [R&T]), she's living the life of a DJ; but it's her life, and she needs to take the risk of making her own music. It's a conversation that plants a seed for later, when she finally decides what to do about the impending crucifixion [R&T].
May 5, 2004
Gideon is taken to the hospital (probably Methodist) by some unspecified "they" and forced to detox [HSL, RH]; he finally comes back to himself for the first time since being jumped in at the metal bar, almost eight years prior.
End Spring 2004
Standing by the window of her room in the Ambassador in the still hours of the morning, Mary finally decides that she has to take the situation into her own hands [R&T]. The "records and tapes" framing makes it sound as if her decision is connected to the Narrator's plea in MPADJs, but whether that's true or not, she resolves to try to save Charlemagne by deliberately staging the crucifixion scene from her vision ("right song at the right time"), even if doing so means her own death ("Self Destruction" [RH]).
The next day, Mary calls up Charlemagne and asks to meet him back Uptown [ABlues]. Wanting to let him feel the power of what she sees, she takes him to a Pentecostal "dirty storefront church" [YLHF] and, while the congregation rolls on the floor in holy frenzy, tells him for the first time about the crucifixion, and her vision of him as Christ [ABlues]. From her comments at the end of the song, and the events that follow in RH, it's implied that she tells him of her plan to save him as well. This seems to take place on a Sunday (church scene), not that we're likely to be able to pinpoint which one.
Summer 2004 - Gideon's apartment
Mary, desperate about the coming crucifixion [R&T] and deeply jealous of Jesse [ABlues], drops a dime on Charlemagne to both the cops and the Skins ("someone must have said something" [RH]). Both come looking for him, forcing him to run.
Mary gives Charlemagne a ride to Gideon's apartment on Columbus [OftC]. He tells Gideon what Mary has told him, and asks for his help [RH].
Mary returns to the Ambassador (implicit from the Narrator's account in The Ambassador, as well as from the combination of CF and ABlues; see notes on timeline below).
Gideon talks with Charlemagne about leaving the Twin Cities ("tried to duck out" [RH]), but he can't/won't abandon Jesse to the harbor bars ("cause the kids at the shows / they'll have kids of their own" [SPositive]; implicit also in the SBS allusion "stuck / like a sneaker in the Mississippi mud" [RH]).
Gideon comes up with the idea of using the Pepper's Ghost trick to fake Charlemagne's death [BBreathing, Ambassador].
On Wednesday night (the first during his two-week stay there; see notes below), Charlemagne goes out looking for Mary; he checks the Uptown church where they met a few days earlier [ABlues]; later Jesse sees him driving around down in St. Paul, in a car (Mary's) which she knows has a gun in the glovebox ("Walter" [CF]; see notes below).
The Narrator joins Charlemagne and Gideon at the apartment on Columbus. He tells Charlemagne where Mary is, and proposes taking war to the Skins with an violent assault on the Ambassador [Ambassador, see also HSL]. Gideon reveals that he has a non-violent solution in mind, and convinces them to follow his lead instead [Ambassador, BBreathing, CSTLN, CatCT, HSL].
Gideon films Charlemagne, camouflaged like a townie in sweatpants [ABlues, SS] and dancing, for the Pepper's Ghost sequence in the crucifixion [SS]. The sequence ends with Charlemagne saying "I still love you Judas" [BCrosses], then kneeling [ABlues] with his arms out like Christ [SS].
Gideon shaves both Charlemagne's head and his own [RH, SS, HSL], so that they look alike, and Charlemagne disguises himself as Gideon.
The cops show up at the door of Gideon's apartment, but don't find Charlemagne; they think he went out the window in the back [CF].
On another night, the Skins come by the restaurant and ask Jesse where Charlemagne is [CF].
The next day, the cops stop by while Jesse is opening up the restaurant, and tell her about Charlemagne's disappearance [CF]. She wants to get together with him, to get their stories straight, but that's not going to happen --- from a distance, Charlemagne thinks, "Angel, i didn't say goodbye but i'm already gone" [Smidge] --- and her threat to leave will come true [CF]. Like her, though, he fervently hopes she's all right [Smidge].
The friends spend their days and nights working on the projector [Ambassador] and a ladder for the water tower in the Party Pit [CSummer].
Mary joins them (implicit from BCamp, etc.). Charlemagne takes her to the "doctors" to get her stigmata stitched up [RH], which will help her pass herself off as Holly without getting caught (see notes below). She disguises herself as Holly, among other things by wearing a cross necklace [BCamp].
Charlemagne and Holly, with the Narrator in tow, meet in the theater to prepare for joining the Skins: getting in character, reviewing the Skins' way of doing things, practicing their slang [BCamp]. He also coaches her for the eventual investigation which they expect to follow, after they pull off the staged murder: "If they ask about Charlemagne / Be polite, and say something vague" etc. [KParties].
Summer 2004 - Saddle Shop
On Friday evening, fifteen days before the crucifixion (see notes on timeline): Charlemagne, disguised as Gideon, and Mary, disguised as Holly, "rejoin" the Skins after a supposed interval of seven years, bringing with them the Narrator, disguised as the "new kid" [BCrosses]. Their plan is to wait [Smidge] until the Skins go down to the Party Pit again, so that they can go along and stage the crucifixion; in the meantime it's a terrifying, but effective, place for Charlemagne to hide from the Skins [AHfA].
When they meet with the Skins, they try to arrange to stay in Mary's room at the Ambassador [SS], but end up sleeping at the saddle shop near Lyndale and Lake instead [SS, GoaH].
The real Gideon joins them at the Saddle Shop, in order to be on hand when everyone heads downtown. He and doppelgaenger Charlemagne avoid detection by sleeping in shifts; this leads to the impression that Gideon is "always awake" [R&T, see also Knuckles, MPADJs, TL].
Avoiding detection is a full-time job. Even with the stitches [SS], Mary's hands are a constant threat to give them away; both the Narrator ("keep your bandages clean" [SS], "tell her we need sterile gauze" [AHfA]) and Charlemagne ("bleaching out the bloodstains" [GLS]) have to keep after the bandages. Charlemagne and Mary (sleeping together as Gideon and Holly; the Narrator is sleeping on the couch [AHfA]) sleep on navy sheets [NS] to avoid visible stains; Mary's strict no-touching rule is in effect, leading to a galactic case of blue balls ("everybody's coming onto navy sheets" [NS]).
Life with the Skins proves to be an insane roller-coaster of drugs and trafficking and street fights; by the time the fifteen days are up, the Narrator is a wreck, "throwing up" from the drugs and "almost [dead]" from the violence [AHfA, SS]. Like in RP, Mary loses patience with the Narrator's complaining about getting the life he's chosen ("Now Holly won't say hi to me" [AHfA]).
As was the case back in the summer of 1996 [BBreathing, SPayne], the Skins come out of these fights the worse for wear [LA; probably HH also].
After a particularly bad street defeat, Shepard shows up [LA, SS] and leads the whole gang downtown on the crosstown Lake street bus to the Party Pit. Charlemagne, Mary, and the Narrator ride along on the bus [LA]; the real Gideon drives down ahead of them in Mary's car, and is seen (dressed like Charlemagne in the film) by the Narrator in the parking lot above the Pit [SS].
Summer 2004 - Saturday night, crucifixion
Things kick off early when they get down to the Party Pit [LA]. As usual, there's drugs and the sound of music coming down from the Ambassador above [OftC]; in fact, Charlemagne and the others are counting on the effect of the drugs and alcohol to dull the Skins' critical faculties, and so to help sell their performance ("pass out," "blackout" [OftC], "blacked out" [SS]). There's dancing [SS, HSL, arguably SiM].
The party continues until darkess falls. From on top of the water tower, Gideon turns on the projector. Charlemagne's Ghost appears at the fenced edge of the clearing [HM, SPayne], eerily lit [BBreathing], dancing [SS].
Mary, still disguised as Holly, walks up to Charlemagne's Ghost at the fence. He stops.
The Narrator-as-new-kid runs up and begs, "Don't do it!" [BCrosses]
She leans into the fence and kisses Charlemagne's Ghost [SPayne, BCrosses]. In the silence, the clicking and hissing of the projector can be heard [SBS, FN; by comparison, Citrus].
Charlemagne's Ghost says, "I still love you, Judas" [BCrosses].
The real Charlemagne, disguised as Gideon, runs at the Ghost with his knife drawn. The Ghost drops to his knees, arms out like Christ [SS].
The Narrator is all wrapped up in the show when he hears Mary (disguised as Holly) say, "I love you too" [HaRRF].
Charlemagne-as-Gideon slashes at Charlemagne's Ghost, releasing a hidden bladder of blood from his jacket sleeve as he drives the knife home ("She saw him gushing blood right before he got cut" [BCrosses]; "except for that blood on his jacket" [OftC]).
From above comes Gideon's voice: "Hey hey, Providence: you gotta fall in love with whoever you can!" [SK]
The projector runs out of film, bathing the actors below in bright light [HSL, SS].
Charlemagne-as-Gideon, the Narrator-as-the-new-kid, and the rest of the Skins fall backward in terror [R&T, ABlues, metaphor of the Apostle Paul in CSTLN].
Mary (still disguised as Holly) remains standing, her stitched and bandaged hands pointing up to the light, bleeding [BCrosses, AE, SS].
On this night, Gideon, the magician, performs several related tricks: the special-effects projection of Charlemagne's Ghost is one, and the publication of the urban-myth gospel of Charlemagne is another (see Craig's comments about urban myth and magic, and Spectres' opening "projectionists and publicists" --- "spectres" being ghosts). Now he performs a third, the trick of Gideon's Conversion: he switches his body for Charlemagne's [HSL, CSTLN, KP], so that Charlemagne, standing in the bright light of the projector, really finds his soul in Gideon's body, and Gideon, on top of the water tower, is really in Charlemagne's body.
Holly, gone for seven years since her death at Gideon's hands during her baptism, comes to in Mary's body [SN, CC, HaRRF, CSTLN]. This may be another of Gideon's magic tricks, or it may just be that Mary is "confused about the truth" [SN]; uncertainty about this point will persist until the very end of the story [Weekenders, etc.]. The implication is that Mary, 33 years old [SN], bleeding from holes in her hands under the light of the projector cross [BCrosses, AE], dies for Charlemagne's sins [A&H, ABlues].
Gideon, in Charlemagne's body, stabs himself and falls from the top of the water tower to the ground, dead. Only Holly sees him fall; he leaves the knife behind him. (See "Falling on the floor just like Saul on his sword" [R&T], "he burned a hole in me eventually" [A&H], "we thought John Berryman could fly / but he didn't so he died" [SBS], "she cried, and she told us about Jesus" [FN], "when one townie falls in the forest, does anyone notice?" [OftC], "they can't find the weapon" [OftC], and "drop dead Fred" [Knuckles].) He too, having "climbed up on that cross" [A&H], and having taken his own life with "the sword in his side" [BCrosses, see A&H], dies for Charlemagne's sins; without a body, the rumor of his death would never have been believed ("she said words alone never could save us" [FN], "words won't save your life" [SBS], etc.).
Summer 2004 - Saturday night, car ride
The Narrator (disguised as the new kid), Holly ("come to" in Mary's body), and Charlemagne (now in Gideon's body) flee the scene of the crucifixion for the parking lot. Holly jumps into the driver's seat of Mary's car ("she stole it fast" [MoC]), while the Narrator and Charlemagne pile in from the sides [BCrosses]; they drive out into Lowertown [MoC] and from there onto the parkways [foreseen in OftC].
Holly's initial pleasure at finding herself resurrected ("climbed the cross and found she liked the view") quickly gives way to an urgent question: where's Gideon ("an old connection") to take up their old trade of sex ("wrapped her mouth around" and "real soft girl") for some meth ("what would you prescribe") [CC]?
Holly disposes of the crucifix [MoC] to open the way for Gideon, her "vampire" supplier.
Then the clusterfuck: Holly sees Gideon in the car with her, just as Charlemagne sees Mary, who he's been waiting years to get with. They come together with "legs wide open" [NS] from her part and "sure do kiss" [SK] from his --- only to discover, each of them, that the other is somebody else: Mary's body is inhabited by Holly's soul, and Gideon's body is inhabited by Charlemagne's soul. (The fact that there's a separate body and soul for each gives us the "boys and girls" theme, plural; she is "seeing double" [CatCT], "kicking it with chemists" [SK]; he's "kicking it with cousins" [HSL], and so on.)
Charlemagne is horrified to discover that Holly suddenly wants him ("funny bit of chemistry / how a cool car makes a guy seem that much cooler" [MoC]), but that it's pure pavlovian drug-seeking on her part ("I've had kisses that make Judas seem sincere" [Citrus]).
Holly is horrified to discover that she has no leverage over Charlemagne to get what she wants ("you know they're already taken" [FN]), that in fact he's going to deliberately withhold speed from her until she comes down ("friends from going through the program with me" [CatCT], "diamonds in the drain" [A&H], "speed shooters coming down and driving around" [CiS], and his later attempt to take it back "we'll hook it all up / there's fields of speed ..." [DLME], etc.).
Charlemagne's discovery that it's Holly he's with turns into a real search for Mary ("trying for a vision quest / we opened up three buttons" [MoC], "looking around for something that just died" [MoC], "deacon's hopeful eulogy" [MoC]); among other intoxicants that aren't speed, he gives her Feminax [MoC] and apparently peyote ("buttons" [MoC], "serotonin" [A&H]), but the main thing he gives her is wine ("Sonoma" [MoC], "drunk" [SBS], "bottles" [SK], "drinking" [HSL], "drink some more" [PP], "alcohol" [A&H], "wine" [R&T]), because --- ironically --- wine is what Mary always drinks/drank [MM, YGD, MN, LID, SPotC, Spinners, R&T] in anticipation of this moment as the "Wedding at Cana" between Mary Magdalene and Jesus [R&T].
Holly, realizing that the Gideon in front of her is really Charlemagne, realizes too that the boy who died falling from the water tower cross was Gideon, and tells the others so ("she cried and she told us about Jesus" [FN], "same kooks can't fly" [SK], see later "one townie falls" [OftC]).
Seizing the wheel again in a despairing detox spiral, Holly takes them on an insane ride ("a few hours circling the city" [MoC], "wrong way down 169" [HH], "trying to hook up with an entrance/exit ramp" [CiS]) that ends at the HarMar mall in suburban St. Paul [CSTLN liner notes, PP], one of the malls where Gideon sold meth once upon a time [SN]; "running out on residue" [CC], she crashes the car into the entrance of the mall ("crashing through the vestibule" [CC], "crashed into the Easter mass / with her hair done up in broken glass" [HaRRF], "made a scene by the revolving door" [PP], etc.).
Summer 2004 - Sunday after crash
Holly (in Mary's body, which in turn is still disguised as "Holly" for the benefit of the Skins) stumbles out of the wrecked car and into the mall ("walking through the crystal court" [PP], "found me in a florist" [SK]). She has shattered glass in her hair and broken heels [HaRRF]; she gets blood on the stereo [BBlues] and on the sidewalk ("Sunday morning, sidewalks splattered" [NS]). But the fact that she doesn't get taken to the hospital immediately shows that she's not injured; the blood is from her stigmata. When the cops arrive, they find her in a florist [SK].
The Narrator gets out of the car and follows her into the mall ("saw her walking through the crystal court" [PP]), then gets arrested with her (shown by the fact that they are taken to the station for questioning together).
Charlemagne also leaves the car, but rather than following the others, flees the scene. (The others learn of his departure when they hear from the cops that the car was found empty: "I guess we met a couple bona fide angels" [NS] announcing that Jesus has left the tomb [John 20:12].) While fleeing, he is stopped by the cops ("I got stopped by the cops and they found it in my socks" [YLHF]); having found the drugs hidden in his socks [YLHF, CiS], they pick him up and bring him into the station also.
At the police station, Holly-in-Mary and the Narrator are sequestered, that is, placed in separate rooms, for questioning [SiM, CSTLN]. The cops are tired from parading "every townie in town through the station" [OftC] since the "murder" last night, and wired from the cigarettes [CSTLN] and coffee [SK]. They ask the Narrator what kind of car she drove ("a new Mustang" [SiM]); this may have been the tipoff that Charlemagne had left the car by the time the cops arrived [NS].
Despite being separated, the Narrator and Mary (still present somewhere deep inside her body) make a "connection" [AE] that lets them get through the "sessions" [AE] without slipping up; they are cleared for release.
They are booked, and mug shots ("a couple photographs" [CatCT]) are taken. This might have happened at the time they were brought in, before the interrogations; but it seems that Holly-in-Mary crosses paths with Charlemagne-in-Gideon during the booking ("it was those two same kooks from that one stupid photo shoot" [SK]), which would suggest that it happens after they learn that he wasn't in the car when the cops arrived [NS]. It may also be that she identifies him ("it was those two same kooks") at this time; he's brought into the station on the simple grounds of having been holding something in his socks, but by the end of the session, they've identified him as Gideon, and have charged him with murder.
At any rate, Charlemagne-in-Gideon is also questioned [HSL] and attempts to bluff his way through the interrogation ("this is the end of the session" [HSL]); but, "bleeding from the holes in his story" [HM], he ends up being arraigned for murder, and is held pending trial. This happens before Holly-in-Mary and the Narrator leave the station, since Holly (as his former associate) is subpoenaed to appear to testify at the trial [SiM].
Holly-in-Mary and the Narrator "walk on back" [HaRRF] from suburban St. Paul down Larpenteur to Hennepin and over the Grain Belt bridge, where Holly sees "bright new Minneapolis" [PP] for the first time since 1997. The Narrator seizes the moment for one last attempt to get through to Mary, and kisses her [PP]; but from the response he gets ("don't turn me on again" [HaRRF], "I think that all those things I did / were just momentum from the Party Pit" [PP]), he can't tell if he's being put off by Holly or Mary ("And I'm pretty sure we kissed" [PP]), and he gives up.
Finally, maybe with a stop by their place on Hennepin along the way, the Narrator gets her to Methodist Hospital [AE, FN]; they check in together, but (after maxing out his medicine) only he checks out; she stays in to get cleaned up [AE].
Summer 2004 - Trial
The trial of "Gideon" (actually Charlemagne, in Gideon's body) for the murder of Charlemagne begins.
Trial day 1 - testimony of "Holly"
Our first view of the trial comes while Holly (in Mary's body, but still disguised outwardly as Holly in order to answer her subpoena [SiM]) is on the witness stand. The prosecutor asks her about her travels with Gideon [DLME], while Charlemagne silently prays to her not to say something that will convict him ("don't let me blow up" [DLME]). Finally the prosecutor asks what happened to Charlemagne, and to his relief she gives a noncommittal answer [DLME], just as he'd asked Mary to do some weeks before [KP].
On the way out of the courthouse, Holly (with the Narrator, who is no longer disguised as the new kid, in tow) is confronted by Jesse, who's trying to find out what happened to Charlemagne [212M]. Holly "[doesn't] say a thing ... just [wipes] at her nose and she [winks]" [212M], deliberately avoiding speaking, and continues on her way [212M]. The Narrator stays after to apologize for her behavior, and to explain to Jesse who she is [HaRRF]. He uses Holly as an object lesson to drive home Charlemagne's warning about the St. Paul hoodrat life [compare HaRRF liner notes with CSongs]. When Jesse mentions that Holly looks like Mary, he tells her she's crazy [SPayne]. This is the last we ever see of the outward appearance of Holly.
Trial day 2 - testimony of "Mary"
In the interval between the first and second day of the trial, Holly (in Mary's body) does away with the Holly disguise and, looking like Mary again, contacts Mary's family. Returning to court with the protection of Mary's father's lawyers [OftC], dressed "immaculately" in Keds and a turtleneck sweater to cover her neck tat [OftC, HM, by implication in YLHF], she "takes the stand and she swears she was with him" [OftC]. With that, Charlemagne is acquitted.
Outside the courtroom, as before, she meets Jesse, who (thinking she's Mary) asks her what happened to Charlemagne, if "Gideon" didn't kill him [212M]. Under the implied influence of Mary, still present deep inside her own body, which is after all Mary's ("one drop of blood" [OftC]), Holly replies, jealous and misleading, that she believes Charlemagne is really dead [212M]. She tells Jesse to go to New York, and to leave a message for her there when she and "Gideon" will supposedly be coming through town [212M].
Outside the courthouse, Holly smokes and thinks bitterly of the real Gideon, falling dead from the water tower, unnoticed and hardly mourned [OftC].
Later
Still in Minneapolis, Holly (always in Mary's body, with Mary's voice) receives a phone call from Jesse [212M]; she advises Jesse to get back out there, to go drink and fall in love [212M, Spinners].
Summer-Fall 2004
Jesse, following the advice she got from "Mary" (really Holly in Mary's body [212M]) moves, finally, to New York City (see notes).
Fall-Winter 2004
Holly (in Mary's body) begins to experience precognitive visions of things right before they happen, and also nighttime visions of Charlemagne as Christ [BCrosses].
Christmas 2004
Holly, in Mary's body, goes home to Mary's house (her own aunt and uncle's house [BBlues, MINTS, HSL]) for Christmas; she seemed distant and different [OftC].
Winter 2004/05 - Spring 2005
Holly, wearing a crucifix again, is sleeping in a storage space by the airport, and no longer talks about anything except her visions [TOT].
Spring - Summer 2005
Holly sells her crucifix and moves into a house on the south side with "new friends" from the drug-dealing gang world [LID].
The Narrator moves out to New York City [CSTLN]. With his (new) band, he begins to spread the gospel of Charlemagne, as it was brought to him by Gideon [CSTLN].
Summer-Fall 2006
Two years after leaving the Twin Cities for NYC, Jesse still can't settle into a new relationship; she's still feeling "phantom pains" for Charlemagne, and fear of the boys in the bars who she thinks murdered him (Skins = the other "spinners").
2006?
Holly (in Mary's body), still talking only about her visions, calls up Charlemagne (in Gideon's body) and asks him to come see her; despite his doubt whether the crucifixion was ever necessary in the first place, and despite having a pretty good idea where it's going to lead ("In the end I bet no one learns a lesson"), he agrees [Weekenders].
Christmas, 200X
The Narrator returns to the Twin Cities after some years, bringing a new girlfriend home for Christmas, and has an encounter with Shepard and the Skins [IHTWTDFY].
Years later
A girl named Sarah leaves the Narrator (if indeed it is the Narrator) after a long relationship [Oaks].
Jesse's still in NYC, much older, still alone, and still hung up on Charlemagne [JaJ].
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Post by jerryfromraleigh on Oct 31, 2017 13:17:08 GMT -5
Hey Andrew.
My prayers for your friend Carl first and foremost.
You've done some very incredible stuff here and I think your brain capacity is unbelievable HAHA. Just so much stuff. I think what you have put together is just fascinating. I had to read everything and I had a few notes, though I feel you might be too far down some paths it could be hard to turn back.
There's lots of stuff you pieced together which is brilliant, and some stuff which may have been forced. It's important to consider "voice" when analyzing any art. There's going to be situations and times where words, terms, sayings and even story concepts are repeated and shouldn't necessarily be linked together, they could just be the limit of the artist's vocabulary.
Some of the things you talk about are taken way too literally and some things are taken way too abstractly and it feels like a lot of times you do so to meet the narrative you initially put together. Early on you wondered if it was better or worse that there was so much stuff to reference, and the answer is both. The less you have to work with the more you can create your own narrative; and the more you have helps you get closer to the artists' intentions; but if he doesn't have a clear narrative, it might be a losing battle.
I have to stress again, what you did is truly incredible and very creative, but it's more your construction of a story than Craig's, or your interpretation of his work rather than a patchwork of his work. Anytime you move one art form to another, there's going large amount of subjectivity and interpretation. In that way, you're never wrong as long as you don't break your own rules, but Craig (having presented the idea that each song is told from a different person's perspective and has inherited biases, mis-rememberings, exaggerations and complete omissions) has created a story-telling world where the rules can constantly be broken without breaking them. Somewhat brilliant, making what you did, never wrong.
The only thing I would strongly ask you reconsider is the entire aspect of the crucifixion and Mary's "visions". I don't think her "seeing seven seconds into the future" is literal. If anything, it's a comment of her education and anxiety. Seeing visions could be a gut feeling or her own educated guesses (rooted in a good upbringing with better schools.) It just seems very out of place that one character has supernatural powers.
The crucifixion scene, is so loose that again, seems very out of place for everything else you built up. It almost feels like you were rushing through it and forcing a lot of things in there. The simpler explanation is probably the best. Again, nothing you did was wrong and I greatly appreciate you sharing everything you did, this is just my insight and I would just ask you may think about it and come at it in a different way and it might make more sense.
Love that you were able to pick up on some of the connections to novels by SE Hinton. She's a fantastic writer, you mentioned Rumble Fish and The Outsiders, if you have a chance definitely read "That was then, this is now" you might see some familiar characters from the for mentioned novels. Her latter work wasn't as strong but her perspective into male bravado really helps men get in touch with their feminine side.
Anyway, like I said, this is brilliant stuff, tons of great work. Thank you so much for sharing.
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Post by muzzleofbees on Nov 4, 2017 3:14:55 GMT -5
The only thing I would strongly ask you reconsider is the entire aspect of the crucifixion and Mary's "visions". I don't think her "seeing seven seconds into the future" is literal. If anything, it's a comment of her education and anxiety. Seeing visions could be a gut feeling or her own educated guesses (rooted in a good upbringing with better schools.) It just seems very out of place that one character has supernatural powers. The crucifixion scene, is so loose that again, seems very out of place for everything else you built up. It almost feels like you were rushing through it and forcing a lot of things in there. The simpler explanation is probably the best. Again, nothing you did was wrong and I greatly appreciate you sharing everything you did, this is just my insight and I would just ask you may think about it and come at it in a different way and it might make more sense. Andrew is more than able to answer your points himself, but I just wanted to comment on this. For all that's vague and unclear in the narrative, the visions and the crucifixion seems to me the two things with least doubt about being a part of the story. Both elements are so widely mentioned, elaborated and referenced that it hardly can be a coincidence. All those parts about a defined females "dreams" and "visions", the whole Chips Ahoy! thing, even with a an explicit sequel in The Weekenders. And for all the disagreements on how much we can read into this stuff on the boards, the existence of a "precog girl" seems to be widely agreed upon. I can't see how a supernatural element is out of place either. Why should it be? If we look at this universe as a story, a narrative, what restrictions prohibit one of the characters form having these powers? Also, I would find it weirder if the numerous mentions of "visions" were nothing but intuition or gut feeling. For the crucifixion thing, I agree that the full detailed sequence of events might be a bit hard to buy 100%. But the main narrative seems pretty plausible. And there can be no doubt that some sort of crucifixion (probably not literal, but you know) is central to the narrative. All those mentions on Separation Sunday, and even more detailed and focused stuff on Stay Positive. One of there characters obviously goes through something alligned with a crucifixion. I don't find that hard to believe at all. But again, that's just my reading of it. I went into this thread with a pretty skeptic attitude, but I find it hard to arrest Andrew on anything. Of course, people are allowed to disagree. But I would like to invite anyone objecting to this to come up with a more coherent and plausible "analysis".
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Post by jerryfromraleigh on Nov 6, 2017 23:27:28 GMT -5
I'm not starting an argument, I'm just trying to help analyze and again, I think Andrew has done an incredible job. But it simply is unusual for a story to have a character with unchecked abilities. For every element of significance there's has to be a deterrent otherwise in context of the world that's created there's an imbalance, and you create a "God". A God can't be a protagonist (because there's no possibility to be defeated) and they can't be an antagonist (because there's no hope of being defeated.) If Andrew and you are correct in your interpretation, then I wouldn't want to read the story because the whole time I'd be wondering why Mary/Precog/Sapphire didn't prevent all the bad things that happen to her or the people she cares about (it's a huge plot-hole.) I believe pretty strongly, given that so much of what I'm hearing in Craig's stories are rooted very firmly in reality, it would make more sense that "see seconds into the future" is more a description of intelligence than anything else.
As far as the crucifixion, I'm not suggesting it didn't happen, I just don't think it's as elaborate a scheme as Andrew described. (I can't stress enough how great a job he did with this, I really do appreciate it) but again, in the world that Craig's created, it seems a little out of place to be this complex. (And we have to remember, a very significant amount is reliant on speculation of connections and references that aren't explicit in the music. So one wrong interpretation throws a wrench in the whole thing.) A simpler explanation would likely make more sense, and truthfully, I don't think Craig wants people to know exactly what he's talking about, it could be he wants listeners to attribute their own message, it could be to keep people like us guessing and listening to everything he does, or it could be he never flushed it out himself. I don't believe Craig has a Rosetta Stone that he's written and referencing for everything he does, it could be ever evolving depending on how he wants to write a new song.
All that said, and taking in Lifter Puller and his solo career, Craig has pretty much made his own 23 enigma for his fans. It's great, most artists can make a song that a listener can identify with, Craig's made a career you can go John Nash on. I think it's all fun to take it in how you please and discuss it with others.
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nelg
Clever Kid
Posts: 108
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Post by nelg on Nov 28, 2017 4:45:31 GMT -5
I haven't visited the scene in several years. I was lerking today after the news of a the surprise 2-song pre-Christmas release to see if there was any buzz about a potential new album or 7 inch release. I clicked on this thread and have spent the last few hours reading. Just incredible. Brilliant work Skepticalfirst.
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Post by skepticatfirst on Nov 29, 2017 23:17:32 GMT -5
Hey all, it's been a while.
There were several times over the last year that I almost logged back in here, only to keep finding that it's hard to do; this place is wrapped up in my mind with some pretty intense experiences, and as things with Still Alive Carl continue to get worse I have a hard time facing the music, so to speak. But a few weeks ago Muzzle tracked my sorry ass down and pointed out, rightly, that I don't really have an excuse not to make it to Brooklyn for the Massive Nights. So I'm heading down tomorrow for Night 2.
I've still been listening to the Hold Steady all this time, and in so doing have picked up a few things that I missed earlier. The most interesting one is probably the discovery of the metal bar --- it turns out that, like the Party Pit, it's a real place. When I get back from New York I'll log in and write it all up.
In the meantime, Brooklyn, for my first THS show. Still Alive Carl is still alive, in very bad shape now, but he hasn't given up, which means that I have no fucking business giving up either. Looking forward tomorrow to a positive thing.
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Here goes
Nov 30, 2017 2:19:06 GMT -5
via mobile
Post by spencerm on Nov 30, 2017 2:19:06 GMT -5
So glad to hear you'll be at the show. If you want a warm welcome, I'll be up near the front.
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Post by skepticatfirst on Dec 24, 2017 21:06:09 GMT -5
All right. I'd hoped to get back to this sooner, but my life has been nuts since the Brooklyn shows (which, for all kinds of reasons, were an amazing experience) and I haven't had a chance. Things have slowed down for Christmas now, though, so once again, here goes. I figured I'd start by talking about the metal bar. One of the toughest things about working through the THS lyrics has been the difficulty of separating literal description from metaphor. On the one hand you've got metaphors ("Denver," "Easter") masquerading as realities, on the other you've got literal statements of fact that sound, and are meant to sound, like ordinary figures of speech ("we make our own movies," "we departed from our bodies"). This isn't surprising in and of itself; Craig's love for ambiguities and double meanings is abundantly in evidence, and his talent for bringing them off is world-class. But what *have* surprised me over and over are *particular* things that turn out to be metaphorical or literal when I've spent a really long time seeing them the other way around. The image of the metal bar I'd formed in my mind was mostly informed by the song The Ambassador, with details from Sketchy Metal, Sweet Payne, and a few other songs thrown in. Prominent details in this image were: - it was a physical building, with a back entrance [Ambassador] - it had halls (suggesting two floors?) [Ambassador] - there was a bed in it [Ambassador, SPayne] - it had a basement [SPayne] - it had a vestibule [RH] - it had reinforced doorways with the light shining through around them [SM] - it had what must have been an upstairs, where the bedroom was(?), since it had a curtained window giving a view of St. Paul [R&T] - the bar was plywood painted black [GoaH, THH] - there were skull mugs up on the shelves [GoaH] The location was (and this much was right, confirmed by "bars on the bluffs" in The Most Important Thing) somewhere on Payne Avenue along the edge of the Party Pit. So even though The Ambassador calls it "a stretch to call a club," that's pretty much what I had envisioned: a club-like gang headquarters with boarded-up windows like a strip joint, probably the building with its own parking lot just above the abandoned Hamm's brewery and the Party Pit. I never really worked out the obvious conflict between "light shined through behind the reinforced doorways" [SM] --- which suggest that the building was otherwise dark --- and the idea of an upper story window with a curtain [R&T]. But then I didn't even know that the "Ambassador" was an RFK reference until hitchhiker pointed it out, so in general the picture was pretty hazy. Turns out a few of these things were subtly off, plus I'd missed a few other things that seemed like throwaway metaphors but, again, were literal clues to the real identity of the building. I started rethinking this because of the line in The Most Important Thing: She blows blasts of static into music from the big pink Back when TMIT was released, I had looked at the updated Earl show poster image on my phone, and I read "#65 THE DRIFTERS ... The Most Important Thing." Digging around The Drifters' catalog didn't suggest any compelling reference, so I didn't know what to do with that. It wasn't until a few weeks later that I looked at the poster again on a normal-sized screen, and it turns out it's THE GRIFTERS, not THE DRIFTERS. "She Blows Blasts of Static" is the second track on The Grifters' second album One Sock Missing ( link). (In one of the Positive Jams podcasts Craig did --- I think the one with Dave Gardner? --- he talks about the Grifters being a favorite band, and about Milkcrate Mosh in particular being a Grifters-like song, which is a pretty urgent recommendation of their music.) So, together with Music From Big Pink ( link), this line forms a double reference to The Grifters and The Band (in the proud tradition of Neal Schon/Nina Simone, Meat Loaf/Billy Joel, Krokus/The Locust, etc.). That accounts for the words; but what these particular musical references actually meant, how they related to the rest of the story (Craig doesn't throw things in at random), was a question I didn't have the answer to. But in thinking more about what I proposed earlier (that "static" had to refer to the clicks and hisses, stuck-between-radio-stations, of the crucifixion-night kiss down in the Party Pit), I was pretty sure this was on the right track. It wasn't hard to link "she blows" to Mary, either. And then, with "music from the big pink," things started to get interesting. I had already speculated that the "music from the big pink" was the music coming from the metal bar on the night of the crucifixion (see what I wrote way back in the thread about "windows wide open to let the hard rock in" [OftC]). So if this line describes the scene in the Party Pit, at the time of the crucifixion, and the music from "the big pink" is the music from the metal bar, then "the big pink" must be the metal bar itself. Which leaves only the question, what's "the big pink" here? The original Big Pink was the big pink house where The Band (and Dylan) recorded a bunch of music, including the eponymous album. Here's a pic: If you're standing in the Party Pit (Swede Hollow), there's only one building that can possibly be described as Big Pink: And there it is: the metal bar is the abandoned Hamm's Brewery itself. Once that clicked, it opened the floodgates to a whole load of confirming information; but I'm going to need to get to that tomorrow, there's Christmas Eve stuff going on and I have to stop here. I started writing this whole thing out two years ago because of Still Alive Carl, with the idea that faithfully sticking to my end of the deal might make a difference. And I have in fact held up my end; but as his situation has descended, brutally slowly, into pain and other physical consequences that I can't not see, I find myself falling over pretty badly on the faith aspect of the deal. It was always hard to ask for prayers, and that's much harder now that the end seems inevitable. At the "so much joy" part of the Saturday Brooklyn show, Craig surprised me by saying "this is really hard to say, so maybe we can do it together"; I don't know what that rite means to him, but what he said at that moment seemed like a reminder to me that I have to do the same thing and, hard or not, keep asking. So if anyone out there has a spare thought or a prayer for Still Alive Carl, my heartfelt thanks to you, and Merry Christmas too. More tomorrow.
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Post by skepticatfirst on Dec 25, 2017 17:59:13 GMT -5
Back when it was active, Hamm's Brewery had its own bar, called the "Rathskeller in the Sky"; after the brewery closed in the 1990's, the abandoned buildings, including the bar, became the scene of nighttime parties/adventures for local kids. If I'd been paying closer attention, I would have caught a longstanding piece of evidence to this effect in the original "Hold Steady in the Twin Cities" map ( link); there, in a note on the Sweet Payne line ...the East Side is where we met with those guys that said they'd get us high, but that changed. it says: The note doesn't mention the bar, but it appears to have been written by a local with firsthand knowledge. Both linked sets of photos have lots of relevant evidence for THS purposes. Late photos (early 2000's) made by the Action Squad urban explorer team include a number of shots of the Rathskeller: You can see the "plywood painted black" [GoaH, THH] behind the shelves of the bar. Then, there's a fantastic promotional film of the brewery (from the late 60's or early 70's, starring Nick Nolte of "North Dallas Forty" no less!) with contemporary scenes from the bar on youtube: The video makes clear that this is a beer-only bar; maybe not strictly "a 3.2 bar" [Ambassador] by alcohol percentage, but a very limited bar in any case. (There's another, less literal sense of "3.2 bar" which simply underscores that the metal bar wasn't really about alcohol; when Mary "hit the open bar and got [herself] all turned on" [212M], it was the "strong stuff" that sent her sailing off with cherubim [SPayne]. But Craig is capable of leaning on both implications of the term.) Crucially, at 0:29, you can see the "mugs up on the shelves" [GoaH] that used to decorate the bar. This, to me, is one of the convincing bits of proof that we've found the right place; the image is such a strange one, that *any* bar meeting that description is unlikely to be a coincidental find. The actual line from GoaH is "skull mugs up on the shelves"; I'm happy to interpret "skull" mugs as being either a reference to the ghosts of the mugs that used to be there, or else a nod to the "rock and roll club/ painted just like hell"; either way works for me. The "painted just like hell" bit could refer specifically to the "plywood painted black," or to the garish graffiti all over the interior of the brewery; there are some great photos of the latter accessible via the Flickr link above, including the following: Open Door Policy by Tim, on Flickr Another clinching piece of evidence is the Narrator's comment in Barely Breathing: Told it like it wasn't really much of a big thing To be out on the tiles and barely breathing, we were barely breathing Way back, I wrote the following about these lines: but it turns out that I was too quick to turn "tiles" into "pavement"; the double entendre is once again a literal one, referring to the tiles with which the floors of the brewery are lined. From the Action Squad gallery, several photos showing the ubiquitous tiles, with a couple of shots of the "halls [that] smelled like burning hair" [Ambassador] for good measure: You can see the tiles in new condition in the video, too, at 4:27 and 8:15. There's a lot more but that's a good start, time to get back to festivities here. More tomorrow, and in the meantime still thinking of Still Alive Carl, and grateful for all the help I can get. Merry Christmas.
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Post by skepticatfirst on Dec 26, 2017 21:58:40 GMT -5
The name "Rathskeller in the Sky" plays into this, too. "Rathskeller" is the German word for a bar located in the basement of a town hall; it literally means "council/councillor's cellar." The Hamm's company played off this tradition, building a bar in the style of a Rathskeller, but locating it on the roof of stockhouse #4, high up above not only the rest of the brewery, but all of St. Paul. So on the one hand, we have the literal origin of "down in the basement" [SPayne]; the "basement" is the (Raths-) "keller," and the rest of the violent-basement-shows rock-and-roll-club theme is built on top of that. On the other hand, we have the source of the view of St. Paul described in Records and Tapes: She appeared as a wraith in the drapes Still life with cigarettes, morbid mistakes Trying to suppress a small case of the shakes Some nights St. Paul seems so holy Here's an aerial view of the brewery from the 1960's --- with the water tower prominent in the foreground --- which shows stockhouse #4 (compare the Action Squad maps here and here) with the blue, L-shaped Rathskeller spread across its roof in the background: This 1971 advertisement for the Rathskeller provides good evidence of the view, with a dramatic rendering of one of its picture windows and the caption "Enjoy the 15 mile view of the Twin Cities": Other details of the advertisement are worth noting, too: - You can see the casks along the wall; it's a genuine "taproom" [SM]. - At the left, you can again see the "mugs up on the shelves" [GoaH]. - The address is given: 720 Payne Avenue, Saint Paul. Minn., 55165. The Rathskeller is a real live Payne Avenue establishment [SPayne], and the approach from the Party Pit is accurately described as "around the back" [Ambassador]. Just to situate the relationship visually, another Action Squad shot which shows the Rathskeller (the blue rooftop building) as seen from a vantage point on Payne Avenue itself: Now that we know what it is, there's no longer a contradiction between the account of the metal bar as a "dark" place, with "light [shining] through behind the reinforced doorways," and as a building with an open window and a view over the city. Here's a modern shot of nearly the same view (shifted slightly to the south), taken from the roof of the present-day Flat Earth Brewery, which occupies the big former Hamm's building ENE of the water tower: STP by relux., on Flickr That photo can only be taken from the Flat Earth Brewery building today, because stockhouse #4 no longer exists. A blog documenting its 2011 demolition can be found here (link www.slugsite.com/archives/1471), with an accompanying photo: The demolition ends up being important to a post-THS element of Craig's work. I've read the lyrics of Jester and June, from We All Want the Same Things; there are a pile of Hold Steady echoes in that song which deserve a closer look, but the one that sticks out in this connection is in the last verse: The clubs have all changed The buildings fell away I find it difficult, given the strong verbal echo and the notable resemblance of the J&J characters to the THS characters, not to read this as a reference to the Rathskeller and stockhouse #4. These same places that were fundamental to Mary and crew were important to Jester and June as well; but now they're demolished and gone. There are other revealing descriptions of the brewery out there, written by those who've been inside it. This Substreet article ( link) calls it a "citadel"; I'm still inclined to identify the "citadel" of MoC with the water tower specifically, rather than the brewery in general, but it's an interesting comparison. And this Star Tribune article ( link) both mentions that the "bluffs" [TMIT] were integral to brewing, since lagering caves could be dug out of them, and describes the interior of the brewery as being like a "bunker" [IHTWHDFY]. Action Squad photos of the caves bring the bunker effect home, for example: A final note re: "blood on the bed"; this detail, repeated in both Sweet Payne and The Ambassador, was one of the strongest anchors of the image I'd had of the metal bar as an actual club, a lived-in building; but now it's pretty clear that "bed" is a euphemism for a dirty mattress of the kind that you might see dragged in to furnish any abandoned building. Evidence that this is the case is spread out across a few songs. Starting out from Sketchy Metal, which clearly refers to the beating of Charlemagne in the metal bar: It was dark along the edges of the city But the light shined through behind the reinforced doorways They're tipping over in the taprooms They're shooting through the ceiling and they're bleeding on the floor The incident is again alluded to via blood on the floor in Positive Jam, this time with floor="carpets": And the '70s got heavy, we woke up on bloody carpets The bloody carpet and bed aspects of the metal bar episode are reunited in On With The Business: Blood on the carpet. Mud on the mattress. And that brings us back around to Spectres. There's a line in that song which was already plainly a description of Mary's inevitable end; but knowing that there's a specific mattress being referred to, that she died like she lived clinging to that experience, makes it a sharper thing to hear: Found dead on dirty mattresses, bleeding through the bandages So going back to the original list of details, we get: - it was a physical building, with a back entrance --- check - it had halls (suggesting multiple floors) --- check (I should have noted the Action Squad's description "The Stockhouse was nothing but 9 floors of a single hallway with hatches lining each side"; their tour of the building is written up here) - there was a bed in it --- dirty mattress rather than a bed, but check - it had a basement --- a pun rather than a literal basement, but check - it had a vestibule --- not a literal description after all. we discussed this after muzzle brought up the "lobby" in Newmyer's Roof: the vestibule/portal/entrance etc. looks increasingly like a standalone figure of "the place where drugs are dealt and bad things open up," rather than a literal location. - it had reinforced doorways with the light shining through around them --- check - it had what must have been an upstairs, since it had a curtained window giving a view of St. Paul --- check - the bar was plywood painted black --- check - there were skull mugs up on the shelves --- apart from having to make allowances for the skulls, check and along the way we picked up pretty solid referents for - big pink - 3.2 bar - tiles - painted just like hell - taproom - bunker - the clubs changed/buildings fell away and got on the same page with the testimony of the authors of the original "Hold Steady in the Twin Cities" map about shit that actually went down on the East Side back in the day. I'm pretty satisfied with all that. And that wraps it up for the metal bar. Most of the other stuff I've picked up since I last left off posting is small by comparison, either dealing with minor points or else less conclusive, but there's at least a few days' worth of material in it. Hope this continues to be satisfying reading for the folks who are into it. Thanks for sticking with it, and for remembering Still Alive Carl.
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Post by muzzleofbees on Dec 27, 2017 15:26:36 GMT -5
Great to see new posts in this thread! And this is satisfying, alright. I don't have much to add, but it was an amazing read. It seems pretty solid that Hamm's is The Metal Bar. And while you didn't make a point of it, all of this further supports that the Party Pit is where it is, and that that water tower is pretty central in this entire thing. I haven't really doubted it earlier, but it's still worth noting.
Another thing I really like: The thing about the metaphors being hard, but things who looks like a metaphor but actually is meant to be read literal is even harder.
When talking about vestibule/entrance/lobby being a place where drugs are being dealt, a Lifter Puller line strikes my mind:
Cash advances and Jenny's back on campus I can't believe that it's September Jenny, what's the story? All the chicks in her sorority Asked her how she spent the summer Said "I interned at some law firm" Said i got a little sunburned I saw some raver kid get murdered And i met this guy, and this guy i met he got me high And the drum and bass sounds a lot like rollin' thunder The blue looks beautiful toppin' off the torch You don't have to go inside to buy, you can buy it off the porch
It doesn't really change anything, but it's a pretty explicit way of underlining that those places outside, or serving as a link between the outside and the inside, is a drug dealing zone to Craig.
And talking about other Craig lyrics, I was pretty close to make a post about Jester & June myself couple of weeks ago. I listened to it five or six times in a row on the plane back from the Brooklyn Shows, and while I've mentioned it here earlier, and always felt it's the solo lyrics who connects the most to the THS stuff, it seemed even more connected this time around. Reading through the lyrics now, it seems like a feast of references to Hold Steady material. I haven't found anything remotely as dense in the Lifter Puller catalog, but cross checking stuff there could be just as rewarding. Just the snipped I posted above, you get (vague) similarities between Jane/June/Jenny, "too much fun in eight straight summers" vs the tale of a particular crazy summer, the (re)told stories about what happens out on the west coast, the early fascination for drugs, who eventually turns bad (lovely/druggy/ugly/bloody, enslaved/enthralled, lots of other stuff). It's nothing solid or specific, and it could just be variations over familiar themes, but some of these lines seems to be more than that. At least - as you said somewhere up in the thread - examples of Craig playing with a more developed motif.
Anyway: This is top stuff. Can't wait to see where you take us next.
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Post by skepticatfirst on Dec 28, 2017 0:09:54 GMT -5
Thanks man! I really appreciate the feedback, and that goes for the other folks who posted here since last year too.
What the hell, let's talk about a couple of things from Jester and June, like you I want to get on and take a closer look at that.
The J&J story is a familiar one. Jester and June are looking back ("Do you even remember?") on a kind of magic time when they were younger ("we used to have our own church") before the druggy stuff stopped being fun and went bad ("then it got worse"). These are all well-known themes from the THS canon, from Oaks to Cheyenne Sunrise to Entitlement Crew, but it's the specifics that are gripping.
To start, it seems to me that the Jester and June story mirrors the Narrator and Mary story pretty closely, and that's it's told from the point of view of Jester in the same way that a lot of the Narrator and Mary story is told from the point of view of the Narrator:
- there's "Hail Mary" right at the beginning. - he regards his relationship with her as the foundation of a kind of church, like the Narrator's private connection with Mary and the congregation of lambs in the "Unified Scene" [AE, SPayne, MN] - he's the one dealing with the dealers (this just underscores the point-of-view character being boyfriend Jester, not June) - she's gone off (do you even remember?) to some place more or less unreachable [TOT, AE, LID, maybe EC too]
Then we get to some good stuff. Remembering getting ripped off by the kid from the car wash (speaking of Oaks), Jester says:
Well we probably should have tried the guy with the Dracula cape Because other than the cape he was cool He had that wild kind of sadness Like he knew something important I wonder if he even remembers They used to call us Junebug and Jester They used to call us Jester and June
So, assuming you accept my old conclusions about the kid with the cape etc., I think it's pretty clear that this sounds like a description of Gideon:
- he has a cape: both a Dracula thing (the drug dealers, fanged creatures with their needles and pins, teeth dreams) [BCamp etc.] and a messed-up magician thing [SN, R&T] - he's kind of a dork (Porky Pig, Freddy Knuckles, etc.) but kind of mystical --- other than the cape he was cool [HM, Ambassador, etc.] - he had a "wild" kind of sadness: the wild eyes, psycho eyes [HSL, Swish] - he knew something important: compare "He knows just a little bit about so many things / Knows too much about certain things" [TMIT]
That's a really solid block of references.
So, *if* these images are connected, what can we infer from that?
1) For example, reading J&J in the light of what we know about Gideon, is "I wonder if he even remembers" loaded with extra mourning for the fact that Gideon's dead, that his body now has somebody else's soul inside (this is clearly happening after the story as such is basically over)?
2) Going the other way around to try to draw inferences from J&J about the THS universe: why the emphasis on what Gideon knows? What is the important (most important?) thing that he knows?
3) Then, the big one: if the Jester and Gideon are two different people, and Jester and June are two different people, who is the "jester" of Milkcrate Mosh?
The gin was just like Gideon. The kings were just like Solomon. The bashes were like Babylon. The jester kept on jacking off. Nervous cough, nervous cough, nervous cough and now we're off. Went down on the Denver slums and she woke up in the Rocky Mountain dawn. Felt all freed up from the fears that you can never put your finger on. Finger on finger on finger on and now we're gone.
This MM jester problem is a real nut. To recap the scene:
Gideon, having become a gangster and lost his mind, is fired up on speed and looking for sex, making him ready to go when Mary brings him Holly (younger, hotter, and already turning tricks to get access to the hard stuff he's now dealing) on a plate. That's three counts on which Gideon might have been argued to be the jester: "jester" could fit "bad guys acting crazy"; "jacking off" could fit his drug-fueled state of arousal; and "jacking" contains "Jack," a nickname for Gideon in e.g. "Panama Jack" [HM] and "Ginger and Jack" [Swish].
Mary on the other hand is already well into the getting high and blowing townies phase of her decline at this point, so maybe "jacking off" is what she's doing, either to Gideon or to other Skins at the party. The "nervous cough" in the next line is also clearly Mary, but whether there's a segue there or not is a reasonable question, given the standalone quality of the first three lines. On top of everything else, Milkcrate Mosh is told from Mary's perspective.
So who's the jester, if it's not Gideon and not Mary? Is there really a connection here that points to the Narrator, and if so what's he doing in MM?
I don't have good answers for those questions now, so I'll just leave them out there pending further discussion.
One more thing to add is that A Slight Discomfort, which describes Gideon getting Mary high for the first time down in the Party Pit, fades out to the sound of junebugs in the summer night.
That's it for tonight. Thank you for any thoughts or prayers for Still Alive Carl you can muster. More on these and other topics tomorrow.
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Post by skepticatfirst on Dec 28, 2017 23:24:57 GMT -5
There's another bit in Jester and June that seems to relate to a part of the THS canon I've always wondered about. Describing those happier early days, Jester says:
We were laughing making jokes Laughing making jokes Smiling in the smoke
That's the essence of what a jester does: making jokes to make you laugh. The fact that it comes in for emphatic mention here seems to mean that it's something fundamental to their relationship, too: Jester made jokes, June laughed.
There are a number of places in the THS canon that talk about jokes and laughing in a way that suggests cluelessness about coming consequences, but I was never able to relate them to any particular thing in the story. This might be the answer to that --- that is, jokes/laughing might just be meant as a characteristic of early happiness in a particular kind of relationship, one that's destined for darker things.
The primary THS bits I'm thinking of are:
Thinking things are funny when they really ain't that funny [HM]
Your laugh leaves laugh lines, your love leaves bright bruises [GLS]
And most of the jokes just kinda hung around and died [TL]
These songs are all from the Narrator's perspective, and all of these lines could be argued to be his reminiscence about early times with Mary. Untangling characters in GLS is hard but "your love leaves bright bruises" really sounds like Mary (her ecstasies lead to bleeding lead to "the circles have sucked in her eyes ... the sutures and bruises are none of my business" [LID]). More on the HM one at the end here.
There are a couple of other lines on a similar, if not the same, theme. Whether he's an alter ego for Jester or not, the Narrator made jokes for Jesse:
Jesus rolled his eyes when his dad made Jesus jokes [SM]
The other music boys made jokes too, which Jesse took in slowly, naively:
All the boys knew it was a joke about Jamaica [JaJ]
Then there's one that's almost exactly the opposite of these --- about laughing *off* innocence, rather than laughing *in* it; from a line that wasn't used in the final lyrics of Crucifixion Cruise, about Holly laughing when she finds herself resurrected in Mary's body:
laughing off the (immaculate conception) [CC liner notes, in place of "dreaming about an old connection"]
It seems that Craig didn't use this line because he couldn't get it to fit (too many syllables and no way to shorten "immaculate conception," the doctrine that the Virgin Mary was born free from original sin), but he did try to make it work. Anyway, maybe this isn't exactly about Holly's readiness to throw away innocence (the fact that she wants speed now and wants to fuck Gideon to get it); maybe it's about an awareness, now that she's taken over Mary's body, that Mary's apparent innocence wasn't particularly innocent after all (she deliberately set Holly on the path that got her killed, just to get her out of the way). Hard to say, but it's an interesting one.
Coming back to the HM lines for a minute, the whole passage consists of the following lines:
In the park drinking Dark Bacardi Thinking things are funny when they really ain't that funny The kids on the corner they keep getting stung The color of our teeth matches the color of our tongues
In the Back Bay fens getting gentle Up against the fence with some guy who looks like Mickey Mantle Dirty minds keep coming thru the mud The color of their eyes matches the color of our blood
Understanding "thinking things are funny when they really ain't that funny" as a particular marker of an *early* time in the Narrator-Mary relationship is clarifying: it brings these lines into focus as a typical Finn symmetry (like "I remember the metal bar / I remember the reservoir," or "it was a blockbuster summer / it was a cocksucking summer") between how things started out in the first verse, and how they ended up in the second.
In the first verse, they're still a couple of kids in the park (compare "I remember we used to play in this park" [EC]), the park in question being the Party Pit ("I met her at the Party Pit" [PP]). They're mostly just drinking at this point and laughing at kiddie shit like the fact that the rum turns their tongues and teeth dark. But the situation isn't funny: they're in a sinister place surrounded by scary fucking people, heading toward a fate foreshadowed by the vampire fangs of the Bacardi bat and the sting that keeps catching the kids on the corner.
In the second verse, we scroll forward to the crucifixion, where everything catches up to them (I covered this before in detail, but in short "getting gentle"=fake stabbing "like Mickey Mantle"=the newly crew-cut Charlemagne, up against the fence around the water tower). And now the matching colors really aren't funny: it's the red eyes of the vampire Skins on the one hand, and the former kids' own blood on the other.
There's one more thing in Jester and June that really intrigues me, namely the bits at the beginning about "Hail Caesar" and the "catacombs." I know Caesar shows up as a dealer in another CF song, but I've left the albums with the liner lyrics at work, so maybe I'll come back to that one later.
Thanks for reading along this far. I have to keep asking: if you've got a minute for Still Alive Carl, a good wish or a prayer, thanks, he needs it.
More tomorrow.
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Post by skepticatfirst on Dec 29, 2017 23:17:39 GMT -5
The BAGIA re-release had some really interesting variant lyrics that are worth mentioning.
I've mentioned before that it was on reading somuchjoy's discovery of the 1976 Hurricane Holly --- which to my mind couldn't possibly be a coincidence --- that I first believed there was a carefully-planned story in these songs. But I missed the threads of the storm metaphor itself, which were pretty subtle until fleshed out by the new lyrics.
Hurricane J is about Charlemagne's growing worry that Jesse is going to go down the same road as Holly: she's going to hit the "harbor bars" (of which we now have a clearer picture, in the Rathskeller) this summer; the "boys ... at the harbor" (the Skins) are going to put her back on the "harder" stuff; and she's going to die like Holly did.
There hasn't been a Hurricane Jesse yet; but Charlemagne's sure that it's coming.
So the "storm" is a specific metaphor, not just of an unsaintly chaotic life, but of a loss of control to hard drug addiction. Craig takes this metaphor in two directions: there's the "summer" Caribbean hurricane version, and the "winter" version with "ice" (in the sense of crystal meth).
Besides the Hurricane J references, we get the following ---
Examples of Charlemagne thinking of Holly:
Last winter there was weather, and his eyes they iced right over [CiS]
He loved the Golden Gophers but he hated all the drawn-out winters [SBS]
In Stay Positive, the Narrator remembers Holly going off with Gideon (remember also the horseman "famine" metaphor applied to this same scene in CatCT), and again compares it to weather turning bad:
There's gonna come a time when the scene'll seem less sunny It'll probably get druggy and the kids'll seem too skinny There's gonna come a time when she's gonna have to go With whoever's gonna get her the highest
In the demo version of Teenage Liberation, the Narrator describes Holly attaching herself to Gideon (also called "the kid from your crew" in R&T, etc., but here it's a nautical metaphor):
She clung to his crew like a raft in a storm It was a warm wet heavy situation
And in the demo version of Girls Like Status, the Narrator says (remember again that the "cruise" metaphor is specifically applied to Holly trying to hook up with Gideon in exchange for drugs in both CC and the studio version of GLS):
We were dying on Carribean cruises [demo GLS]
The demo Teenage Liberation lines add a new twist to "warm wet heavy situation" as a hurricane image. I should add that those two lines are preceded by another new line with a familiar image from Stuck Between Stations, not that I know what to do with it now any more than I did earlier. The end of the song now runs:
Sucking off their demonstrations She clung to his crew like a raft in a storm It was a warm wet heavy situation And we're still losing lives to the teenage liberation
Still no clue what the "demonstrations" refer to.
And I guess I should also add, while on the subject of the demo GLS version, that it contains the line:
He was dusted in the dark, he was pinned down in penetration park [demo GLS]
which with the addition "he was pinned (down ...)" is another nice bit of confirmation that Penetration Park is the Party Pit. Nothing to do with the storm stuff but I should mention it while in the neighborhood.
I still love hearing how Craig makes these metaphors interact and build on each other: storm+ice, storm+cruise, storm+crew, etc.
Probably a few more things tomorrow. Thanks for reading along, and for remembering Still Alive Carl.
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Post by skepticatfirst on Dec 31, 2017 0:26:09 GMT -5
I finally sat down last night to read through the Lifter Puller catalog (which I didn't know except for the bits I'd already gotten from muzzle here). First, holy shit. Second, the LP story looks at least as hard to piece together as the THS story, which means I might take a shot at it sometime, it just isn't going to be for a while. But third, there's a lot of stuff in there that seems like it has immediate application to THS interpretation.
1) To start with an example that relates to what I just left off discussing: in Secret Santa Cruz, a young girl (Jenny) talks about how this guy got her high and compares it to a storm:
And I met this guy, and this guy I met he got me high And the drum and bass sounds a lot like rollin' thunder
which obviously is consistent with the THS storm metaphor I just wrote about, and the particular context of Gideon getting Holly high.
2) There's a lot of stuff about pouring drinks on the floor for dead friends (for some meaning of dead). This made me realize for the first time that
We poured it on the floor, and made love to the interstates [PJ]
and
Like a hawk out on the highways, we were looking around for something that just died [MoC]
are both specifically about the fact that someone's just died, as well as about the highways. (This is in the car after they've fled the scene of the crucifixion; Charlemagne is looking for Mary and Holly is looking for Gideon, both of whom have just died.)
3) I'm a bar guy, not a club guy, so all the stuff about clubs was eye-opening. There are lots of descriptions of the physical atmosphere inside the clubs; from Candy's Room:
You'll be covered up with powdered drugs by the end of the night If you're still at the Nice Nice and Bloomington:
Don't it all feel like one big game With the lights and the dust and the security?
and Sherman City:
Now we live in domes And her dome's the dome that always snows Down on me
This description of dust=snow=powdered drugs floating through the air explain, finally, what is meant by "confetti" in
You're up to your neck in the sweat and wet confetti [MPADJs]
and
There were wheelchairs, guns, and ticker tape [PJ] Covered up in ticker tape [SitS --- even "covered up" is the same expression as in Candy's Room]
and lend a more sinister focus to THS lines like
We're tiny white specks in a bright blue planet [MPADJs] Ashes to ashes and dust in the spotlight [TOT] We're dust in the spotlights, we're just kind of floating [SA]
4) Speaking of the Sherman City line describing clubs as domes and talking about Rome: I was blown away by all the Roman Empire vs the Christians shit in there. I'm not going to go back and find all these things, since I'm just tossing this out there and anyone who knows Lifter Puller will know the lines anyway, but there was:
the Pantheon (the dome in Rome) the Coliseum, complete with explicit reference to martyrs lions, tigers and bears tearing into the characters of the story Emperor clubs, one named Rome, one that gets burned down by a powerful rich guy (suggesting Nero and the burning of Rome) and I forget what else. All of which adds some pretty intricate background to the "church," "catacombs" and "Hail Caesar" of Jester and June.
5) Solid Gold Sole mentions "Wounded Knee," site of the Sioux Wars massacre, which further firms up the reading of "White Swan" [SN] as the Crow traitor ("faithless in fringes and feathers" [SShoes]) of the Battle of Little Big Horn (see "arrow through his hat" [LA] and all the rest of it, discussed earlier in the thread).
6) The final "those guys got me wired" from Star Wars Hips clearly means "wearing a wire," which in turn suggests that the line "Chicago seemed wired last night" [CSTLN], referring to the cops' attempt to get the sequestered Narrator and Mary to betray each other, has something to do with an audio wire too. Maybe it's just the Narrator saying that he knows what the stakes are (see the foreshadowing in "Turning over and turning other kids in" [HM]); it doesn't seem like they ever got his cooperation to the point of suggesting he wear a wire. But this definitely deserves a closer look.
7) Rental draws a great parallel between the car, which is a rental, and the speaker, who himself is just a "rental" for a chick who's already got a boyfriend. That background lends some tight irony to the Narrator's "I guess it might be a rental" in Sequestered in Memphis; he knows he's just a fill-in, that Charlemagne is still Mary's main man even though he's the one who stuck with her after Charlemagne ran away. (The Narrator believes that she's still alive in there somewhere; it was the fact that they "made a connection" [AE] that got them through the interrogation.)
8) Nassau Coliseum has these five lines in succession, all with strong echoes of Mary:
It's guarded by cameras, studied by doctors (compare "The doctors said that it was all in his head/Then they discovered the blood" [RH]) Wrapped up in plastic, sleeps at the airport (compare "She's sleeping at a storage space by the airport" [TOT]) Skips all its classes, skips like a record (compare "Thought she was a dancer but her steps they made the records skip" [BBlues]) Used to be better, do you remember? (compare "Remember when we thought this was better" [SitS, not that I've argued that this is Mary, yet] Used to have visions, used to believe 'em
... and that last line is golden, with links all over the place. The fantastic part is "used to believe 'em": not until the end of the THS story, when the death-of-Charlemagne visions are seen to resume even after the crucifixion is over, does it become clear that Mary's repeatedly proven power to see a few seconds into the future on the one hand, and her visions on the other, might actually be separate and unrelated things.
That's a random collection of notes, but it's what jumped out at me the first time through.
I made dinner for Still Alive Carl tonight, something really easy to digest, but he can't eat. It's a setback which is probably temporary, it's just that the setbacks keep getting worse. On the other hand he still sounds like himself, and he's still talking about what to try next. So I have to keep thinking about what's next too. If you've got a spare thought or prayer for the guy, thank you. Tomorrow I'll get back to more of the new THS lyrics from the last year, maybe some other things as well.
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Post by skepticatfirst on Jan 1, 2018 0:26:46 GMT -5
Real quick one for New Year's Eve. I was never a big fan of Chillout Tent, but I thought the BAGIA reissue of the early demo version, the proto-Chillout-Tent or whatever, was fantastic; the stormy sound gave it a totally different quality from the final version, and getting to hear Craig go full-on speaking in tongues was totally worth the price of admission. It begins like this: He was bundled up in bindles, he was needles and pins He was a once and future member of the Cityscape Skins He said, I miss those Pacific pines, but I guess I taste em in my gin She was pinned and way too skinny, she was visibly changed She was dancing in the light, she was weaving sound and sounding strange [spectacularly unintelligible] ... I don't think there's anything new here, but what there is is both cool and useful elsewhere. The first three lines, as the reference to "gin" in the third line makes plain (compare Milkcrate Mosh), are about Gideon: He was bundled up in bindles, he was needles and pins He was a once and future member of the Cityscape Skins Gideon was a dealer (first line) and a gang member (second line). Besides standing for "skinheads against racial prejudice," "sharps" is also a medical term for hypodermic needles; the fact that it's used in Entitlement Crew to refer to gang members is consistent with the regular image of dealer gang members as fanged creatures (vampires/spiders etc.), which is itself a metaphor for needles; but it's nice to have a totally unnuanced "he was needles and pins" to make the significance explicit. The bit about "he was a once and future member of the Cityscape Skins" refers to Gideon having dropped out of the Skins to go work in the tire shop after murdering Holly in the summer of 1997, before rejoining them two weeks ahead of Charlemagne's crucifixion in the summer of 2004 (see the timeline). The expression "needles and pins" is Cockney rhyming slang for "twins" (see for example here and here). This looks to me like a reference to Charlemagne disguised as Gideon together with Gideon himself in the period leading up to the crucifixion; see the timeline and the thread above for details. He said, I miss those Pacific pines, but I guess I taste em in my gin This seems to be Gideon talking about Holly after he's killed her (this is after he's left the Skins the first time, which was at the time of the murder). "Pacific pines" is a nod to Holly's California stint in porn. "Gin" confirms that "He" is Gideon ("the gin was just like Gideon" [MM]). She was pinned and way too skinny, she was visibly changed She was dancing in the light, she was weaving sound and sounding strange These lines are about Mary; being pinned, dancing, and steady decline are all characteristic of her (all treated in detail in the thread above). "Dancing in the light" must refer to the crucifixion scene in the Party Pit, which starts with dancing [HSL, SShoes, SiM] and ends up with the light of Gideon's projector shining over the scene. "Weaving sound" I don't know about: the only thing we know she says there is "I love you too" [HaRRF]; as an unexpected response to the filmed image of Charlemagne, it's certainly not a stretch to believe that it sounded strange. Wish I could understand the rest of it, but I'll take what I can get. I like the way the song just runs out, anyway, with the keyboards kind of promising rain around the edges of the rolling bassline. Best wishes to all for 2018, and for Still Alive Carl to make it through this year, too.
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Post by skepticatfirst on Jan 2, 2018 0:19:51 GMT -5
A couple of notes about complex metaphors in the THS universe.
My main purpose going into this project was just to tease out the story, which doesn't require doing anything more with the metaphors than being able to identify them, and getting a solid sense of what they refer to.
But the more I spend time with the music, the more I notice fine touches or patterns that seem to be worth calling out in their own right. Sometimes they're a way of testing whether the narrative interpretation is solid; sometimes they're just really impressive.
One of the things I like very much in Craig's writing are the metaphors that work in a system of oppositions. An example is the world built around Uptown as Heaven and Lowertown as Hell, with Lake Street as the Jacob's Ladder going up and down between them. That one still blows my mind.
Another that occurred to me recently is a similar axis running between New York and Los Angeles, with the Twin Cities in the middle. All the characters are situated in the Twin Cities, but Charlemagne and Holly want to go to LA, while The Narrator, Gideon, and Jesse want to go to NYC. Only Mary wants to stay in the Twin Cities. That seems to be more than just a detail of the plot; it's a part of what makes her the moral center of the story.
A third and really surprising one is a silver versus gold metaphor, where gold metals seem to be a symbol of the upside to getting high and silver ones a symbol of the more threatening side. I might be seeing things here, but check this out:
He loved the Golden Gophers but he hated all the drawn-out winters [SBS] She was golden with bar light and beer [FN] All the little phillies at the Yukon club / Are gunning for the goldrush [SPayne]
That last one might be a menacing thing rather than a favorable one, but compare the silver metals:
I've been trying to get people to call me Freddie Mercury [Knuckles] They did "Wade Into The Water" into "One Tin Soldier" [MoC] I could see the silver splinter in your eyes / Losing ground in a landslide [R&T] Silver metal flake up on Lyndale and Lake [R&T]
I got to this last point through thinking about Freddie Mercury. All the other Freddies of Knuckles had some obvious meaning:
"Freddy Knuckles" : the tough guy Gideon's trying to appear to be "Right Said Fred" : the righteous guy he really is "Drop Dead Fred" : the one who fell dead from the water tower ("one townie falls" [OftC] etc.) "Freddy Fresh" : Fresh as opposed to Rotten --- the one who's really a good guy, not a bad guy (or maybe who's really alive, not dead? "didn't really die") "Freddie Mercury" : ?
which left "Freddie Mercury" needing an explanation. So what's mercury? Well, it's a liquid metal, quicksilver ... and then I thought about "metal" as in "metal bar" and "silver metal" as in "silver metal flake," and the fact that "Freddie Mercury" and "Freddy Knuckles" seem to be on the side of the bad image Gideon's trying to project, and that seemed a hard interpretation to reject. And once "silver" and "mercury" were admitted to be part of the same image, it made a lot of sense to look at "tin" the same way too, since "One Tin Soldier" seems, like "Wade Into The Water" (compare BCamp) to have to do with Gideon; but there ought to be a concrete reason for that, or a stronger one than we've got so far, at any rate.
The rest of it about "golden" versus "silver" might be overreach, but maybe not. Another thing that might be overdoing it is to note that the name "Fred" means "peace," in contrast with the "wars going down in the Middle West" in the same song, and in keeping with Gideon being the one to propose a non-violent solution to their problem with the Skins (see the timeline, and Ambassador, BBreathing, CSTLN, CatCT, HSL). On the one hand it seems impossible that all of these names and meanings could have been found just lying around and ready to be fit together. But Craig has paid crazy close attention to the meanings and associations of the other names he uses, so maybe there's something going on with this one as well.
Holidays are over and I might have a hard time keeping this up starting tomorrow. Obviously I'm down to little stuff that doesn't have much effect on understanding the story, and I don't have much left of that, even, but I'd like to keep it up until I've really run out. Hopefully these more marginal notes aren't boring anyone who's still along for the ride. Please remember Still Alive Carl if you've come this far, and as always thanks for reading.
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Post by skepticatfirst on Jan 2, 2018 22:08:37 GMT -5
A list of minor things that I figured out late or never mentioned before: 1) The following lines, from the Narrator's point of view, in Hostile, Mass., Seeing lousy movies but only for the A/C Skimpy little outfits and bad guys acting crazy That's how I know when you're lying It looks just like overacting appear to refer to the situation at the beginning of Banging Camp: the Narrator has accompanied Mary (disguised as Holly) and Charlemagne (disguised as Gideon) to the theater, where they're rehearsing their parts ahead of (supposedly) rejoining the Skins. Compare "Seeing lousy movies" to "Listen to the back of the theater" [BC]; "only for the A/C" because it's summer 2004 (see timeline); compare "Skimpy little outfits" to "fringes and feathers" [SShoes]; "bad guys acting crazy" because Charlemagne is acting the part of crazy-bad-guy-Gideon; "overacting" because Mary too is acting the part of Holly (and badly, in the estimation of the Narrator). We know that the Narrator argues with Mary regularly ("I didn't come here for fighting" [CSunrise], "some weird-talking chick who just can't understand" [MPADJs], "Now Holly [Mary in disguise] won't say hi to me" [AHfA], etc.); but if "that's how I know when you're lying" refers to a specific incident, I don't know what it is. On the other hand, knowing that this specifically refers to his judgment of Mary's ability to act the part of Holly convincingly, it may set up the moment on the Grain Belt Bridge when he realizes, crushingly, that he can't tell the difference between Mary and Holly after all: "And I'm pretty sure we kissed" [PP]. See the timeline, and the upthread discussion generally, for more detailed context. 2) It's funny, but I didn't realize until late that the line about "kicking it again" in Sweet Payne --- Strong stuff and she had more than enough And she was slumping over smiling and sailing off with cherubim The cityscape skins are kinda kicking it again doesn't just refer to the Skins picking themselves up after being "down on their luck and still high from a street fight" [BBreathing] --- it refers, literally, to the fact that they're fucking (gangbanging) Mary, who's sailed off into sexual ecstasy under the effects of the strong stuff and the sight of the scourging of Charlemagne, her Christ. (As described in detail in the thread above; but I guess none of this will make any sense without that background.) Compare the sense of "kicking it" here with the sense in "kicking it with cousins" [HSL], "kicking it with chemists" [SK]. 3) Can't remember if I put all of these together, but I don't think so ... the following all refer to the episode in the car, when Charlemagne (in Gideon's body) refuses to hook Holly (in Mary's body) up with the sweet stuff he's got stuffed into his socks [CiS], trying instead to force her through withdrawal: detox [HM] coming down [CiS] ("Speed shooters driving 'round and coming down") the program [CatCT] get clean [SK] ("washing machine" is Charlemagne; she's literally "bumping up against" him to coax the stuff from him, while he's trying to get her to come down) 4) In the thread above, I really fumbled my way through Moving pictures got us through to September [Swish] but with the help of discussion here we got to the right answer --- namely that Mary, with her unlimited funds ("don't have to work/ She knows which horse is going to finish in first" [CA]), supported Charlemagne and Holly through their first summer in the Twin Cities; in other words, she kept them supplied with drugs (she's called "moving pictures" for the same reason she's called "St. Theresa," because of the visions). Confirmation of this reading, which I missed for a long time, is found in The Swish, when Mary welcomes them to the city by saying I got some hazardous chemicals So drive around to the window 5) Another point about that verse in Swish which came in for a lot of discussion was the Rick Danko allusion in She said my name's Rick Danko, baby Spencer suggested that Danko was a metaphor for Mary's gradual decline into drug addiction and ill health; I thought that that seemed a little generic, but an indication that this was the right reading is found an interview with Craig in GQ from January 26, 2012 ( link) in which he summarizes Danko's life after the Band: Good enough for tonight. Thanks for reading along, and if you have an extra moment to think of Still Alive Carl, thank you for that too.
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Post by skepticatfirst on Jan 3, 2018 23:59:43 GMT -5
[extended quotes below ...] Hey Jerry, Thanks for your posts above! I meant to get to them earlier, but keeping up a daily schedule always takes more time than I think it will. I actually agree with a lot of what you say in your critique --- in the end, there's just a few key points of perspective on which I differ. Maybe by answering some of the particulars it will help close the gap, or at least clarify how I look at this. Let me start with one essential point you make: Apart from "too" and "initially" (which are admittedly an important difference) I agree that that's what I am doing. I myself mentioned a few posts back how hard it is to sort out the metaphorical from the literal in Craig's writing, and just as you say, I've changed my mind often about whether something is to be taken metaphorically or literally based on whether or not it fits the rest of the narrative. The only thing is, I think the standard for "meeting the narrative" is a good deal higher than you're giving credit for. If you start out by saying that *every* bit of lyric provided has to fit the narrative, and that you aren't allowed to ignore *any* of it, that's quite a high standard right out of the gate. And even with all the ambiguities in the text, the truth is that it's very far from being open to any interpretation; we have a ton of detailed information about the characters and their stories, each piece of which adds to the limits on your degrees of freedom. If you actually sit down to try to put it all together, you'll see for yourself just how constraining the net result is. (You've obviously got some literary chops, maybe you want to take a shot at the Lifter Puller story? which looks like a fresh opportunity to do the same thing :-) To come at it from another angle, we have a lot of external evidence that Craig is heavily invested in puns and close reading. If the tight constraints force us into a solution that can credibly be looked at as a well-turned double meaning, I don't see why that should be a problem. Finally, about "initially" --- I don't know to what degree it emerges from the way I wrote this up, but I definitely didn't start anywhere near where I finished. I'd been wrestling with the plot for months already before the Party Pit history led me to realize that Mary had more than a cameo role in the story, for example; before that I assumed it was all about Holly. I've had to backtrack over really major chunks of interpretation maybe as many as a hundred times to arrive at what I've described above (some of the late backtracking appears in the thread itself). In short there have been plenty of times when no amount of interpretive latitude could save the narrative, and I've just had to toss it out and start fresh. Even now I expect there are things that will prove to need correction (like the corrective discovery that the metal bar is the Rathskeller, for example; though admittedly that's not a structural plot point). That's just how these things go. You do your best, try to be your own worst critic, and improve when you can. So having said all of the above, yes, I have to agree with you that some stuff may have been forced. All I can do, though, is look at those things one at a time, concretely, and try to find a better solution for each problem point, including walking it back to take a new path if necessary. It always comes down to specific details. Absolutely, but it's also true that the earlier parts of those paths only got laid down and survived as long as they did because they stood up to the challenge of the concrete details (as far as I could see, anyway; that doesn't mean that I didn't make mistakes, or that there isn't room for improvement). This is really well said, and right I think in several respects. At the same time, you reveal a difference in starting point which may be more significant than all the rest put together: do we go into this believing that Craig has a clear narrative, or not? Even if I discount all the external stuff he's said about having a diagram of events with arrows etc. taped up on his wall, I've seen enough early signs (starting with Hurricane Holly in October 1976) and other signs along the way to make me believe that Craig does have a consistent, detailed story behind the songs, and that he's got an incredibly fine-grained control of its presentation. Still, I recognize that this might as well be an article of faith: the only way you're going to pay enough attention to sort it out is if you believe there's order there in the first place, and by the same token if you believe it's unlikely that there's an order there, you're going to be skeptical of the interpretation required to try to prove the existence of one. I get that people have different barometers on this score and I'm totally cool with that. This is the only thing you've said that I disagree with kind of strongly, although again I realize that it depends on the difference in starting point. To me, the idea that Craig has a limited vocabulary can be dismissed just on the face of it. I kind of bristled at that NPR interview where Craig admitted to double-checking the meaning of "subpoenaed in Texas, sequestered in Memphis" with a lawyer, and the author of the article goes on tolerantly to explain "of course, it means X" (as if Craig were a fledgling out of the nest, and not a Doberman of fucking language. And the author got it wrong, too). The degree to which words, sayings, particular episodes are like toys in Craig's hands, objects to just be batted around at will, is incredible. I have to go back to dead people to find comparisons, and there's not so awfully many of those, either. But look, I do get your reluctance. As long as you understand that I don't agree with the theoretical objection you're raising because I think I have detailed evidence to the contrary, I'm totally cool with your not liking my handling of the evidence because it strains the limits of a reasonable approach to art in general. We can co-exist and I'll happily take your input on questions of detail regardless. On that note, you bring up two points, the crucifixion and the visions. I'll start by saying that I did a messy job of handling both of these topics, since I was figuring out a lot of the story along the way, and our final view of both aspects is dependent on things that I didn't realize until nearly the end. So I hope I haven't made them look less coherent than they are just through my own fumbling. First, the visions: To deal with the technical stuff first: There are multiple explicit descriptions of the precog girl making guaranteed money betting on horses; these are emphasized, I think, precisely so that we understand why everyone believes her when she talks about her other visions, i.e. the ones about Charlemagne. The idea that going to school helped her formulate a system for the ponies that can't lose is kind of a stretch. (I don't think this is your main objection, but I did want to answer it.) Also, being able to see a few seconds into the future *only*, and not further, and only when she "does" it deliberately [CA], is, crucially, a pretty checked ability. I don't see this as your main sticking point either, but at any rate it's not like she's omniscient or something, not even close. As for your theoretical objections, which are more essential: First, I think talking about protagonists and antagonists in this context misses the mark a little bit. If we were talking about a believable science fiction or adventure plot or something, I would agree with you 100%. Old Superman comics or whatever, where you say "why didn't the Flash use power X to do Y," or badly formulated time travel stories, have this problem. Craig's not writing that kind of story. Among other things, there are no antagonists in his universe: everybody is very explicitly her or his own worst enemy. With regard to Mary in particular, from the time she first appears in the story [OWL] she's "spooky," already "going off," and even talking audibly about things that aren't there (which the Narrator rationalizes as "talking about that boy back home"). She already has the nickname "St. Theresa," which is strong evidence for something pretty far from a rational, focused engagement with optimal outcomes on her part. Plus most of her efforts are focused on getting high / fucking / watching her visions of Charlemagne. So I don't see any practical problem with her not focusing on using her powers, such as they are, to save her friends from the bad guys, when after all she already thinks she knows what's going to happen. (I'll add too that it's only Charlemagne she really cares about; she's basically the one who gets Holly killed for being in the way, for example, and the others don't seem to be a whole lot more than a means to an end for her.) Second, I think your definition of a dramatic "God" and "a story you wouldn't want to read" are probably a little too narrow. People have been reading the New Testament for thousands of years, or hell Prometheus Bound for 500 years longer than that, both stories about gods who know the future but end up going through really bad shit anyway --- to the extent that both are challenged on this very same point within the actual story: people keep telling Prometheus "Obviously your ability to see the future is crap if you let yourself get into this mess," and Jesus, "If you're really God you wouldn't/shouldn't be in this situation"; but the point is that things are more complicated than that. I'd argue that Craig's writing a story that has a lot more in common with the New Testament than with protagonist-antagonist contests; on those terms I don't find that it strains dramatic believability. I totally agree with you, it's just that I only ended up where I did on this because of my inability, in the face of the facts we have, to come up with a simpler explanation. (And the repeated emphasis on Gideon's status as a magician who performed some trick, on his apparent power to conduct Mass, the hints about "some people who switched places before" [HH], etc. seems to point to that being an allowable solution.) Seriously, if you have any particular ideas for a simpler explanation, I'm all ears. I'm really not arguing against you in all this, just stating for the record that I still want to hold my ground. I do get where you're coming from, and I have to say that for you to have these doubts and still patiently read through the whole thing, and then to respond at length, is pretty fucking impressive! Not everybody would, or even could, do it. Hope you've enjoyed it in any case ...!
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