For most of The Aughts I compiled my favorite songs onto CDs and gave them to a few friends as Christmas presents. My tastes skew sharply toward acoustic folk music so there’s a good chance you’ve never heard of anything that I like. A few of my people love it too, though, and they tend to be less diligent (obsessive) about finding the new stuff. That’s where I come in.

I claim no authority. These are just the songs that opened my eyes the widest from 2000-2009. Because I’d never stop if I didn’t impose some kind of limit, I have picked songs that fit on one CD (plus some honorable mentions).

If you like any of them, support the people who made them. And tell me what I missed!

Tanglewood Tree

but love is a light in the sky,
and an unspoken lie
and a half-whispered prayer

From Tanglewood Tree,
Dave Carter and Tracy Grammer
–Signature Sounds

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The Aughts are the Dave Carter years. I have written elsewhere about Dave and Tracy, and about this song in particular. Those who know me may be a little surprised to learn that it’s a love song. When I complain about sentimentality, this is what I have in mind as an alternative. Listen for the fierce truth of Dave Carter’s lyrics. Listen for Tracy Grammer’s beautiful harmonies and exultant violin. Listen for the whispered Hendrix lines at the end. Just listen; I can’t think of a better song, period.

Ironbound

Play Ironbound

I never liked me much but I tried for you
I never held my breath for anything good
so won’t you slow down.

From Time Spent Lost, Katie Sawicki

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“Ironbound” is in one respect another love song. It should be a testament to its greatness that I am willing to puncture my curmudgeonly reputation on its behalf. I love it because it acknowledges how riddled with self-doubt we can sometimes be, and how uplifting it can be to be believed in, whatever the context. Probably a happier song than “Tanglewood Tree,” but don’t get used to it.

Gentle Arms of Eden

this is my home, this is my only home
this is the only sacred ground that I have ever known

From Drum Hat Buddha, Dave Carter and Tracy Grammer
–Signature Sounds

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A creation story set to music that doesn’t require you to believe anything in particular–except that music has the power to create. In 3 minutes we go from an unpopulated universe to single-celled organisms to the industrial revolution to war. Like all of Dave Carter’s songs, it is reassuring and a little wistful.

Shirt

Play Shirt

and it’s the same old jar of car keys by the door
the same old scuffed up floor
the same old thirst for more until they put you in the dirt

From Kitchen Radio, Peter Mulvey
–Signature Sounds

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In Boston I attended a concert celebrating the 10th anniversary of the Signature Sounds record label, which is, um, well represented on this list. Peter Mulvey was one of several new discoveries that night. At one point I played “Shirt” so often that someone gave me my own corduroy shirt, which survived moving from Boston back to North Carolina but was no match for Sawyer’s teeth. The song is a cheerful account of a mid-life crisis, through which the smallest of comforts (like the familiarity of a well-worn shirt) are the only meaningful ones.

Oast Houses

Play “Oast Houses”

I could show you stuff ‘round here perchance might make you pause
I could take you walking
Show you certain things that move like wind upon the conifers
Hear the seasons whispering

From Broken Yellow, Jack Harris

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A few years ago the Dave Carter mailing list lit up with conversation about a young Welshman who was the hit of the Kerrville Folk Festival. He didn’t seem to have an album or a website though, so I promptly forgot all about him. Some time later I discovered that Jack did have a CD, and that Eric Taylor had produced it. The only way to order it was to send Jack’s mom (still in Wales) $23 by mail. “Oast Houses” is one of several songs on Broken Yellow that someone as young as Jack Harris had absolutely no business being able to write. Its language is exotic because Jack is from Wales and has a massive vocabulary. The acoustic guitar is like a slow-building thunderstorm. The lyrics are as much Annie Dillard as they are folk singer. Listen well.

Harrisburg

Some say that man is the root of all evil
Others say God’s a drunkard for pain
Me I believe that the Garden of Eden
Was burned to make way for a train

From Golden Age of Radio, Josh Ritter
–Signature Sounds

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I’d heard of Josh before I moved to his adopted home state of Massachusetts, but didn’t actually listen to him until Joan Baez covered his song “Wings” and I had to hear more. “Harrisburg” is as close as a song can get to being a train, Johnny Cash be damned. You listen to it and you think it has seeped as far into your brain as it can go, but then six months later it breaks through another barrier in your consciousness and you start walking to its beat for an entire summer.

Revelator

Queen of fakes and imitators
Time’s the revelator

From Time (The Revelator), Gillian Welch
–Acony Records

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In 2001 Gillian Welch opened an epic album called Time (The Revelator) with a song that I’ve been trying to unravel for lo these many years. It is full of history and ancient tones, and the songs are interwoven and essential to each other (and to you). “Revelator” is probably the most dense of these. I keep nibbling on it like my fourth slice of despair-flavored cheesecake.

Train Home

Now is what can be,
all the rest is wait and see,
those prophets never hear that cosmic laughter.

Train Home, Chris Smither
Hightone Records

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Chris Smither has made a career out of finding new ways to espouse his keen-eyed philosophy of having no idea what the world is really about (and being okay with that). He packs a lot of words into his songs, so you’ll probably want to read along as you listen. I moved to Boston just weeks after this CD came out and was lucky enough to attend an album release party. I might have hated living in that city but I found a lot of incredible music while I was there.

Northbound 35

It’s just flashes that we own

Little snapshots

Made from breath and from bone

And out on the darkling plain alone

They light up the sky

From Stripping Cane, Jeffrey Foucault<
–Signature Sounds

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Early in The Aughts I got an email from a guy from Paris who runs a mailing list I was on, suggesting that I go see Jeffrey Foucault since he was playing in North Carolina. He didn’t realize that the drive from Asheville to the coast would be about 7 hours. I skipped the show but ordered the CD, which was a fantastic debut. A couple years later, Jeffrey released another album, with “Northbound 35″ on it. Of all the songs on this list, this one would fare best if you had to strip away the performance and just read the text as poetry. It is line after line of insight.

Happy Endings

Play Happy Endings

Carl had a way with the cotton,
Mother had a way with words,

And I had my way with a red-haired Catholic girl
.

From Scuffletown, Eric Taylor

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Eric Taylor’s albums are as dense and rich as novels, full of broken people and compassion. This song might as well be a novel in its own right. At the very least, it’s a Raymond Carver short story with fingerpicked guitar for punctuation. I’ve been listening to “Happy Endings” since 2001 and it’s still unfolding for me.

Wisteria

Play “Wisteria”

If we turn off the radio
I’ve only to close my eyes
And the wind in the sycamores
Will carry me home

From Somewhere Near Paterson, Richard Shindell
–Signature Sounds

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“Wisteria” is a beautiful testament to the power of memory to become overwhelming. I want to curl up inside of Richard Shindell’s guitar and listen to him play this song over and over again until I die. And then I would like to buy Richard a puppy.

After All

And when I chose to live
There was no joy
It’s just a line I crossed
I wasn’t worth the pain my death would cost
So I was not lost or found

From The Green World, Dar Williams
–Razor & Tie

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There aren’t a lot of songs about a subject as taboo as the contemplation of suicide, which is a horrifying thought if music is something that helps you make sense of the world. This song is a frank argument against suicide for those who aren’t religious or who are childless. Dar Williams excels at a certain grim kind of empathy that acknowledges how truly dark and alone the world can get, but she always brings along breadcrumbs in case you want to follow her back into the light.

Mother, I Climbed

Play Mother, I Climbed

sticks and stones might break this body and words might wound my soul
and phantom visions fly me where the faithful fear to go
but when this story’s over and my sun is sinkin’ low
open up your gate, marianna

From Flower of Avalon, Tracy Grammer
–Signature Sounds

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This song is a prayer for grace. The speaker’s fruitless search for the comfort that is supposed to come once one finds something to believe is only half of this story–it is even more important that she never ceases looking for something to invest her faith in. This pilgrim, who has embraced as many kinds of religion as she knows how, and found them somehow incongruous with her spirit, is still hopeful, still open to mystery. I try to be mindful of this in my own frustrating encounters with those who claim to speak for higher powers.

Mercy of the Fallen

There’s the weak
And the strong
And the beds that have no answers
And that’s where I may rest my head tonight

From The Beauty of the Rain, Dar Williams
–Razor & Tie

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Dar Williams’ songs about humility and the importance of finding your people and keeping them in your life always seem to come just when I need a reminder. Sometimes what you need more than anything else is an honest acknowledgment that someone else has been as far down as you are, and that sometimes that’s where you need to be. I think it just makes it easier to live with confusion when you have something in your life that is up front about how the world doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. Here’s to having, and trying to be, humble friends.

Transit

The merge from the turnpike was murder, but its never a cinch

It was Friday at five, and no one was giving an inch

They squeezed and they edged and they glared

Half them clearly impaired by rage or exhaustion

The rest were just touchy as hell

From Somewhere Near Paterson, Richard Shindell
–Signature Sounds

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I will now begin to extricate myself somewhat from this sequence of sad songs (remember how happy things were when we began?). “Transit” is an odyssey by Richard Shindell at his wry and acerbic finest. Not too shabby on the guitar, either.

Long Time Gone

They sound tired but they don’t sound Haggard
They got money but they don’t have Cash
They got junior but they don’t have Hank
I think, I think, I think the rest is a long time gone

From Real Time, Tim O’Brien and Darrell Scott
–Full Light Records

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What do you sing at the top of your lungs, with the windows down in your U-Haul truck, when you are finally escaping from two long years in Boston to come home to North Carolina? This. Also? The mandolin is so good in this song that Darrell Scott sings along with it.

Wagon Wheel

Headed down south to the land of the pines
And I’m thumbin’ my way into North Caroline
Starin’ up the road
And pray to God I see headlights

From O.C.M.S., Old Crow Medicine Show
–Nettwerk Records

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“Wagon Wheel” is so self-evidently fantastic I don’t know what I might say to change your mind if you disagree. It began life as a chorus by Bob Dylan, who abandoned it. Almost 30 years later, Ketch Secor of Old Crow Medicine Show resurrected it from that inauspicious beginning. The finished song’s loose harmonies almost insist that you sing along. If you’ve ever in your life been homesick for the South, this will make you feel better. Promise.

Come Home

No matter what you bought or sold
The only thing you’ll have to hold
Is the love you’ve loved and the truth you’ve told
When you climb up on that train.

From Songs for a Hurricane, Kris Delmhorst
Signature Sounds

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I had never heard of Kris Delmhorst until the Signature Sounds 10th anniversary show, where she played two songs in pigtails and pajamas and was much in demand on other people’s sets. She has an amazing voice and an obsession with bad weather. She can make a banjo sound like wind chimes in a thunderstorm.

Honorable Mentions

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See? See what unspeakable damage the Twilight phenomenon is doing to kids (and more than a few adults, but let’s be honest: if an adult is susceptible to the kind of message embedded in Twilight, he or she is already an almost lost cause).

Emblematic of the cult surrounding Twilight, and therefore convenient target for my hate, are t-shirts that feature Edward Cullen’s enormous forehead (and, more recently, Jacob whatshisname as well). I am thankful that, since I do not frequent malls or Hot Topic, I have never encountered one of these shirts in real life.  They cross my periphery thanks to the all-seeing eye of my Google Reader feeds.

When New Moon was unleashed upon the swooning masses around Thanksgiving, a comic strip from HijiNKS Ensue turned the hysteria around and created an outlet for venting geeks. Replacing Edward Cullen with another Edward, no less worthy of idolatry in the eyes of many, was genius. Click that link and go buy your own. Team Edward James Olmos is worth every penny.

Once the notion of alternative Edwards is introduced, it’s easy to imagine an army of better Edwards, locked in a meta battle with the pale and sparkly Edward Cullens of pop culture. It’s also easy to make t-shirts. It is hard, however, to top a man who starred in both Blade Runner and Battlestar Galactica.

Evangelism is ineffective unless the audience can recognize the idols of the faith. Those who swoon over Edward Cullen are unlikely to know Edward James Olmos, but they probably know Johnny Depp, and thus Edward Scissorhands.

The internet is also full of Edward Norton photos, though unfortunately none were iconic enough for my t-shirt evangelism purposes.

I should at this point warn you of the dangers of blind web searches. I had in mind two other better Edwards, but I decided to use Google’s autocomplete search technology to discover other potential idols. Early on, I learned about the Edward Fortyhands drinking game. Disturbing, but innocuous. An indeterminate number of clicks later, however, I found the unspeakable horror that is Edward Penishands. Sometimes, the internet makes me proud.

Fans of the Edward Scissorhands aesthetic will probably appreciate the next better Edward: Edward Gorey. Gorey isn’t as widely recognized as Mr. Scissorhands, but his work is beloved by those who know it. In his self-portrait he wears a fur coat and tennis shoes.

It’s no great surprise to me that I have to explain these shirts to people. Most of the people I know have never heard of the Team Edward shirts, because they have the good sense to avoid things like that. It’s a little more disheartening, though not unexpected, that nobody recognizes Edward Gorey.

There is no excuse, however, for not knowing who Edward R. Murrow is. Even if your knowledge of World War II history is spottier than mine, even if you weren’t alive during McCarthyism, you could have watched George Clooney spoon feed you Murrow’s legacy in the film Good Night, and Good Luck. The final better Edward t-shirt is of David Strathairn, as Murrow, scowling through artfully photographed cigarette smoke. It brings to mind Murrow’s address to the Radio-Television News Directors Association:

This instrument can teach, it can illuminate; yes, and it can even inspire. But it can do so only to the extent that humans are determined to use it to those ends. Otherwise it is merely wires and lights in a box. There is a great and perhaps decisive battle to be fought against ignorance, intolerance and indifference. This weapon of television could be useful.

I’ve met precisely one person who knew who Edward R. Murrow was and was also familiar with the Twilight t-shirts. (Thanks, incidentally, for preserving my faith in humanity.) The rest of you, use the box of wires and lights to which you are attached and edify yourselves.

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When I graduated from college, I wanted to get a cat to inaugurate my grownup life. I was going to get an apartment, find a job, and have pets, like people do. My cat was going to be long-haired and gray and answer to the name Ender. Adulthood was going to be awesome. It turns out that long-haired gray cats aren’t as prevalent at the local shelter as one might think, and so I was blessed with a scrawny gray and black tabby who loved to drink more than anything in the world. In light of this habit he was named after F. Scott Fitzgerald.

I was fine with calling him Scott for the time being. The woman who ran Asheville Pet Supply called him Scotty, as have several others who’ve met him over the years. My secret hope was that he would grow into a more stately name, Mr. Fitzgerald. This optimism was misplaced.

My partner Amy found Scott in a cage with his feral mother at Asheville Pet Supply (a fantastic shop that succeeds despite having no website even though it’s 2009). She was such a wild cat that oven mitts were required to feed her or, as was unfortunately necessary, to coax her into nursing her kittens. Scott was only 6 weeks old but the kind proprietor of Asheville Pet Supply felt it would be best if he was weaned a bit prematurely. Too soon or not, Scott was sent home with Amy.

By “home” I mean to say that Scott went to live in a college dorm, where he was kept hidden from me (because he was a surprise graduation gift) and from UNCA’s resident advisors. He spent finals week passing from one dorm to another, each inhabited by students somewhat frayed by the end-of-semester slog. The long-term implications of his time under the care of college students of questionable sanity cannot be accurately gauged, but I believe this was a formative week.

It soon became apparent that Scott’s mother had, in addition to physical malice, the enmity to withhold the basic life lessons one expects a cat to learn early in life. He knew that toys with colorful feathers were for killing, but his preferred method of attack was to sit on them and smother them. This became somewhat more effective in later years, when his bulk ensured he was capable of smothering anything smaller than a toddler, but as a kitten he just looked confused, but pleased with himself, when he tried.

Scott struggled a bit in our first apartment. For an entire year, he jumped every time the central air came on. He became overfascinated with a burning candle and spent a few weeks without the whiskers on one side of his face, during which he would only walk along the walls his good whiskers could touch. At one point he disappeared for an afternoon until we heard a muffled, plaintive mrreaw? that sounded like it was coming from the dishwasher. We found him in there, stuck under the bottom rack.

Now, I’m not great with geometry, so I can’t explain how a cat whose head is smaller than the spaces between the dishwasher rack wires could get his head stuck between them. I just know it took two people to rescue one very small kitten from the bowels of a dishwasher, and the operation involved lifting both Scott and the rack out of the dishwasher, then forcing his head into a position that allowed him to slip through the gap. Scott was lucky that this particular impasse wasn’t irreversible.

Kitties are Frequently, Secretly Fond of Each Other

In our second apartment, Scott met and fell in love with two cats. First was a huge orange tomcat (Sherbet) who lived with our neighbor and could come and go as he pleased. Perhaps Scott envied Sherbet’s indoor-outdoor lifestyle, or perhaps he just found Sherbet’s mangy fur irresistible, but whatever the attraction, it was clearly unrequited. Sherbet would have nothing to do with Scott, and he eventually moved away, leaving Scott to mope on the front porch all day, staring down at Sherbet’s favorite step.

Eventually a new suitor showed up, and Scott forgot all about Sherbet. He was a flame point siamese, a stray, and for reasons I can no longer remember, his name was Blue. Scott and Blue were thick as thieves. They slept together. They groomed each other. They spent hours at a stretch just staring at each other’s impossibly long legs.

Blue was, however, a demon. He seemed to need to be an only child, despite his love for Scott. When he climbed onto the bed while I was reading, pawed at me to get my attention, then pissed in my lap while staring me down, I knew it was time for him to go. He lives on a farm somewhere in Raleigh now.

Not All Cats Are Meant to Live Outside

Scott wasn’t always hapless. There were a good few . . . weeks . . . when he could safely cavort in the little jungle behind our house, and (contrary to kitty nature), he always came running up to the sliding glass door whenever we called him. Eventually, though, it became clear that Scott’s time would be best spent inside.

The first time Mr. Scott ventured untended into the great wide world, he jumped from a moving car. I’ve forgotten why he was being transported, but I do remember the rear driver’s side window of the car had malfunctioned. The window was stuck not quite halfway down, and it had been sealed well enough, we supposed, to prevent any kitty hijinks. I wasn’t in the car at the time, but the report I got was that Scott made a break for it in the middle of a dirt road and ran into the nearby underbrush.

We’ll never know what he sought out there in the wild, or whether he found it. Ten minutes after he escaped, he scampered back to the car, soaking wet and smelling disgusting. A week later he was favoring one of his hind legs, so we took him to the vet. Evidently in that 10 minute excursion Scott had managed to find a festering swamp and get bitten by a nearby creature, and because he was Scott, the wound had abscessed.

The Big City Takes Its Toll

Scott followed me to grad school in Boston. We lived on the top floor of a brownstone not too far from the river. Scott was fond of my room, which featured a huge window where he could observe the mundane goings on below, but he especially loved my roommate’s room, because he was not allowed inside and because it had a window that opened onto the fire escape.

Scott wasn’t the most affectionate cat in the world but he did like to sleep on my bed, curled up behind my knees. I woke up one April morning and knew that he hadn’t slept there all night, the way you miss the warmth when your eyes are closed and clouds block the sun. He wasn’t in any of his usual hiding places.

At the bottom of the stairs was a sign: “Found, FAT gray cat” with a phone number. A couple in a nearby apartment was already on their way to the vet with the cat they’d found on the sidewalk the night before. He was pretty beat up, they said, and not very responsive. Since I didn’t have a vehicle in the city, they offered to swing by and pick me up. We were all relieved when I looked in their cardboard box and Scott immediately started purring.

It was easy in Boston to believe that everyone was too busy to think of other people, too focused on getting ahead to help out someone else. This couple, whose names I have forgotten, drove me to the vet with my cat, waited there with me to find out how he was doing, drove us to another vet when the first one confessed they weren’t equipped to help, and called to follow up every few days until Scott was better. And they weren’t even cat people.

Even vets evaluating trauma cannot resist making the obvious joke about how cats are supposed to land on their feet. It seemed clear from his injuries that Scott landed on his head. He could no longer see out of his right eye. His mouth wouldn’t close for a week after he fell. He got three different kinds of eye drops for a month, administered by me and a helpful roommate. He survived.

How To Tell Whether Your Already Hapless Cat Is Brain Damaged

One-eyed Scott was slower around the house, and less interested in playing with his toys, but he didn’t seem to be in any pain. His digestive system, never a marvel of efficiency, became the source of room-clearing, eye-watering visits to the litter box. And sometimes, just lying on the floor, Scott would start, as if he’d just fallen down.

His disposition became at once sweeter and more combative. He decided that he liked sitting next to people (but seldom directly on laps). He renewed an on-and-off battle with his kitty nemesis Ella. This time around, though, Scott had an unfair advantage: Ella wouldn’t fight back. Whether out of pity for the gimp or fear that Scott’s obvious ailments were contagious, Ella wouldn’t raise a paw against him.

Maybe He’s Just A Jumper

Last month, Scott decided he wasn’t going to eat anything anymore. Several trips to the vet were inconclusive, though we ruled out all the obvious stuff. Granted, he needed a diet, but it’s bad for cats to stop eating altogether, which is what he did just before Thanksgiving. His ribs and spine were much too visible beneath his flabby skin, and as the month wore on, he became weak and disoriented. He turned up his nose at every imaginable kind of food and beverage anyone could think to put in front of him.

We came home from the vet armed with a syringe and the most delicious puree of kitty food you’ve ever sniffed and gagged at the smell of, and for that Saturday morning I tried to coax him into eating something. I got more on the carpet than down his throat, but at least something was going in his belly.

It was the first sunny day in ages, so I thought we’d both like to sit out on the balcony for a while. Scott sniffed around the edges of the railing while I read a while. Then this cat, who was too weak to jump into a chair, leapt up 3 feet to the top of the railing, then down another 20 to the ground. Maybe he’d finally found something he wanted to eat. Maybe he caught wind of Blue’s scent, all the way from Raleigh. By the time I got down there, he had disappeared. I haven’t seen him since.

He was 8 and a half years old. He had the sad privilege of watching me muck my way through my entire adult life. I see him everywhere in shadows now, and I try to hope that another absurdly kind stranger has picked him up and dribbled something tasty into his confused little mouth and called him their own.

I know, in the quiet part of my brain, that I have been a good steward to such a small and bewildered creature. Still, there are days now when I think it might be better to hope that he found a warm hole to crawl down where he could go to sleep and never again wake to the starved and sightless world that was left to him in the end.

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The truth about the world, he said, is that anything is possible. Had you not seen it from birth and thereby bled it of all its strangeness it would appear to you for what it is, a hat trick in a medicine show, a fevered dream, a trance bepopulate with chimeras having neither analogue nor precedent, an itinerant carnival, a migratory tentshow whose ultimate destination after many a pitch in many a muddied field is unspeakable and calamitous beyond reckoning.

There are things against which I know I should not measure myself. I imagine McCarthy’s prose is high on that list. I haven’t thought of anything compelling to write here since I read those lines, though it may comfort you to know that I have been hacking away at a short story in the meantime. Funny how I can deem myself irrelevant in the face of words like those, but feel somehow more justified in spooling out some fiction.

Sometimes a truth stays ringing in my ears, hits my own personal resonance frequency, and I linger on it, taut and humming, until it fades. I’ll let you know when this one does.

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photo credit: Ian Hayhurst

Is the robust interior life that makes it so easy to open a book and pitch headlong into its pages also the thing that makes it hard for me to relate to the things that are going on outside my head? I may be socially functional now, but it was a slow-learned and hard-won skill. From the time I could read a narrative until pretty late in high school I had a lot of trouble giving a damn about anything that wasn’t happening in a book. I kept stacks of novels in my desk at school. I failed to notice when people spoke directly to me. When I learned to drive I had no idea how to navigate anywhere in my very small hometown because as a passenger my eyes had always been in a book rather than on the road.

There are few devout readers in my family, but they shine out in my memory. My mother, of whom I’ve written before, is an incurable sci-fi and fantasy addict. Her sister’s teenaged zeal and creativity were channeled into helping me learn to read and along the way learn to love words and the act of telling stories. Their father in a rocking chair of an evening with an inexhaustible supply of westerns. My own father reading only the newspaper, but reading it all the way through every time it came. His mother reading letters aloud to his father, who for reasons I don’t recall could not read them himself.

photo credit: natalia & gabriel

Whether for utility or leisure, each of these acts was accompanied by a hush I normally associated with church. Unlike the barely contained quiet of church (I could be a fidgety child, and wasn’t the only one), the hush of reading was a stillness, a thoughtful succumbing to the images forming in the head of the reader. Some of these were intimate moments I’d have observed in any family, but I don’t know many who had so many role models with such dedication to reading as I did.

I can’t remember anyone my own age who was enthusiastic about books. Reading is by nature a solitary act, but just as natural for me was the impulse to share what I was reading, and my excited overtures tended to fall on indifferent ears. I was a very shy child, and books were one of the few things I got excited enough about to try talking with other kids. It was easy to justify retreating back into my imagination when they failed to reciprocate. Even easier when there was mockery involved.

The reason I kept trying, though, is because I did have powerful proof that some kids were as into books as I was. When I was 6 or 7 years old, Reading Rainbow became a staple in my house. LeVar Burton became an enthusiastic tour guide through the world of books for legions of children, all of whom, like me, considered themselves part of his on-screen troupe. Even after I replaced other PBS fare with Thundercats, Tiny Toon Adventures, and Animaniacs, I’d still sneak in a bit of Reading Rainbow and revel in both the joyful explorations of wordscapes and the unabashed fun that was shown being had with books.

photo credit: nyki_m

That Reading Rainbow has recently departed the airwaves isn’t a surprise. The generations of potential benefactors raised on the show probably all found their way into low-paying careers like mine, unable to muster sustaining donations for even so potent a symbol of both literacy and, now, nostalgia. The rationale behind the lack of grant funding for the show–that it’s much more important to teach the mechanics of reading than it is to teach children to love to read–strikes me as short-sighted at best and a false dichotomy at worst.

Whatever the reasons behind Reading Rainbow’s cancellation, the result is the same: there’s a kid somewhere who loves to read so much he falls asleep still clutching his books, and now rather than learning to feel comfortable in the world as a book lover, he may instead withdraw from it further. I’ve got to find him before he’s gone. I’ve felt that loneliness and am thankful to have escaped it. Now I need to do the same for those who don’t have the “luxury” of Reading Rainbow.

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A Pair of Leaves

Like rivers flowing to the sea
To end in peaceful harmony
A pair of leaves drifted, treeless
To a quiet end of their world
But their attempted suicide
Was soon thwarted by a gusting
Well-meaning wind, who saved a life
Angry, old and withered, without
A compelling reason to live
The tree, at least, saw fit to thank
The breeze who saved a pair of leaves.

Spring

Winter succumbs to the cycle of life
Its severity replaced
By pleasantries of the eye.
Ears too rejoice, for the sounds of the
New season now fill the air,
Mingle with a scent, fresh and gently
Warm, like a kiss.
Take care, kind days, and be humbled;
Fear not, sweet surrendering
Winter, for tomorrow you too are reborn.

Why

The stars to us are just out of reach,
Yet lay unnoticed beneath immortal feet.
Why is it that for them we would fight,
While the gods ignore their heavenly light?
Why do they desire our sweet, simple life?
And why do we fill it with hatred and with strife?
We have all we need in love, a smile, a tear.
How can that compare to more wasted years?

Dancing with the Muse

When asked to write a page tonight
Those few words fill some with fright
They whine and say they have no time
But they do write, without the rhymes

And as I’m asked to sit and think
Call the muse, go out for drinks
Or dancing in the snow
As we drink and dance, I know

Do you know? I want to write
Something for special people, who might
Know what I mean, but others would be lost
And so I take chances despite the cost

I realize no one knows right now
They say I’m lost and don’t know how
To deal with someone like me
I would tell them and show them how easy

How perfectly simple to end the strife
And together understand this life
As well as can be understood
Compromise for collective good

When at last I coax the muse
Out of hiding so I might use
The powers only she can wield
And she peeks from behind my shield

She looks out into the rain
And sets about ending the pain
And confusion that everyone shares
Until one man, left standing there

Defiantly without pain, and she
Joins him, and they leave me
But I can at least know in my heart
The muse and I will never part

And so to end my tale and frame it all
To please picture-hangers great and small
With this message I depart
For those seeking something smart

I live now in padded cells
My last works were received not well
I still make a rhyme or three
But no sharp objects for me

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To the Reader:

As I begin gathering material for the first accumulated body of work that I have attempted, a thousand thoughts and questions flow through my mind. Never-ending armies of insecurities run in streams, but are dashed against an unseen wall, the certainty that I know what I am doing. Potential selections rise up to meet me from the past. Half-written stories that I never got around to finishing come back to me, asking if now is the time to complete the vision. I am compelled to bring them to life each time I write. They nag at me, gently tugging the shirt sleeve in the back of my mind. Do I include everything, since this is the first? Or do I embrace the new ideas that I have pitched around in my head but have been hesitant to start? I must consider my audience. My early writings I have buried, hidden from the rest of an unforgiving world. They are lost in the anonymity of the past, but I know where they are. I know how to find them. Do I risk bringing old ghosts back from the dead? At one point I wrote because I felt I was haunted. I wanted to slay my demons, the pen my only weapon against them. Those excerpts from my life, the beginning and learning process that my writing went through, do they remain unpolished, immature tidbits of a pretentious mind? Or should I taint them with a flair of my current mindset? They remain untouched, as they were written. There is something honest in them, something innocent, and I believed in them at the time. If that makes me unpolished or pretentious during those years of my life then so be it. I accept that as yet another difficult stage of my youth.

Now on to the greater topic at hand. Of the countless potential new compositions at my disposal, which ones do I feel compelled to compose? If I select something safe, simple, or in the same vein as some previous work, I fear I would not escape the notion that I had cheated myself and my audience. Therefore it is my hope that the few who are familiar with my writing will find something unexpected, a new style that I have not attempted before. I see this as an opportunity to experiment, not only in new realms of writing but in new thoughts as well. It is my hope that through these new writings I might discover something about myself previously hidden from my view, and I invite my audience to do the same. These are my thoughts as I begin this writing project. My work does not undergo major revision; rarely do I even read my own writings once they are finished. This keeps the idea fresh for me, for if the idea itself becomes stale, how could the execution of that idea be otherwise? Therefore the ideas and the content selected for this collection are as close to my original conception of them as possible. I submit this effort to the reader, and whether it is accepted or not I stand by it as I have all of my written work. You, the reader, will find everything you seek here, no matter how ambitious your quest.

Yours,

David E. Mahaffey

1996

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Imagine a heart. It has stopped beating and lays dormant in the chest of a dead man who lays on a table. Men and women surround the man and try to make his heart beat again. They want it to beat and they know it wants to beat again. The man is young and obviously has a full life ahead of him. “Where there’s a will, there’s a way,” the doctors all say. But the man isn’t listening. He doesn’t know if his heart should beat again.

Imagine two hearts, a tiny one beating along with a bigger, much stronger one. Imagine the security that baby heart feels, with Mother nearby. Follow the tiny heart as it grows up through the years. Soot it is strong, like the one who protects it. It no longer wants protection. When it wants to leave the sanctuary of home, the strong one doesn’t want to let it go. She doesn’t know how to let her child grow.

Imagine two hearts with the same wants and needs, the same hopes and dreams. They are drawn to each other in a way they can’t understand. What if they stay together? They could both recapture the old feeling of security. They could add to that feeling a new sensation, combining the past with the wonder and excitement they have discovered. These two have sought each other out, felt the thrill of discovery. What would that feel like? So easy to understand and virtually impossible to explain. Nobody knows how to express it.

Imagine a broken heart, abandoned by its mate and left to continue the journey of life alone. With nothing to keep it going. Living just to keep from dying. How could this heart go on, without a reason to feel, without a focus? Its wants and needs build up with no chance of release. Somewhere inside this broken heart there is a love that continues to burn. The flame flickers but never fades away, and this heart doesn’t know how to carry on.

Imagine a wounded heart, confused and unable to understand what has happened. Imagine watching helplessly as its love is torn from its side. Imagine again finding its mate, and finding there is no longer a connection between them. The time and distance between the two hearts has burned away the memory. Imagine trying to move on, and just when it begins to want to live again, it is damaged in another way.

Imagine a bleeding heart, bleeding from a bullet wound in the chest. Crimson tears flow from the pain of this wound and all of the old ones. All the healing, the will to live that was only recently regained, everything is undone.

Imagine again the heart of the dying man. Imagine his thoughts and feelings as his heart slowed its beating, giving up its grip on life and slowly slipping away. Along this journey, a heart blossoms and it wilts. The rose had just regained a whisper of a new bud when it began to die. The doctors know all hearts should beat. The man knows the voyage has been long. Will this heart beat again? Only it can know.

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Welcome to my woeful world, where misery mingles with the tears of despair in harmonious coexistence. Welcome to my own solitary niche where grief and turmoil brew around every street corner.

The sky is tinted with a strange, unreal red hue. No shadows are cast by the eerie sun; all the world seems bathed in darkness. Trees line the sidewalks, gnarled and twisted. Behind them, hidden from the public eye, rest the houses in which the unhappy inhabitants live. The houses vary only in the degree of blackness enveloping them. Each house has two bedrooms and a bath. There is no family room or den. Citizens long ago gave up socialization. In front of each desolate abode is a small yard. The grass is unkempt and dry, always brown, with the stench of death hovering above like a vulture circling its prey. Weeds cling desperately to life, climbing the walls like a sinister serpent crushing the life from its victim.

A man emerges from his home, wearing a somber mix of anxiety and grudging acceptance. His attire matches his disposition, paralleling his life of longing and hopelessness. He walks along a dusty road seldom traveled by others. This, the road not taken, is always avoided by man. One thing is certain as his silhouette fades from view: he will never again return here, where the sun never sets but has never truly risen. Welcome to my town, where angels of no mercy feed constantly on the innocent masses.

1996

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Seven years ago today a man I never met died. The sting of it lingers even now. Close members of my own family have died, and I have grieved and healed and gone on living, full of their memories, but the death of this one random person leaves me undone every time I think of it. I am beginning to suspect that I always will be.

I count the days in cups of wine and candles I have burned

Dave Carter & Tracy Grammer, 2000 Falcon Ridge Folk Festival
–photo by George Green (thanks!)

He was a songwriter named Dave Carter. I don’t expect you to understand; as it is, I feel an urge to apologize for the intensity of this loss, I resist the impulse to add “just” to that last sentence. He was “just” this songwriter, you know? It’s weird to still count the days, seven years on, even if you love music. Yet I know I am not the only one feeling a little lost this day.

He wrote what he called “postmodern mythic American” music. It’s the kind of acoustic, literate music that earns comparisons to Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen, and Townes Van Zandt. I love it for its irreverence, its compassion, and its humble, wry wonder at the world.

Many who love Dave Carter’s music speak of it in terms of having uncovered a secret treasure, all their own. His singular ability to write songs that resonate on a deeply personal level makes us a bit protective of him, makes us want to share it with the world so his memory won’t fade. It is one of the few things about which I am evangelical.

Love is a light in the sky, and an unspoken lie, and a half-whispered prayer

I first heard Dave Carter and his partner Tracy Grammer as the opening act at a Joan Baez show. When Dave started telling stories, even before they began to sing, I felt like he was sharing the truth with me, gentle and horrible and silly, undiluted. This scrawny banjo player with an afro of curls and a wistful inflection had perceived through the haze of this world at least a slant of light and seemed to want everyone else to glimpse it too. He called all of his songs “true stories,” and talking about every one of them unearthed a dozen more true stories, more characters he’d met and places he’d been.

What I remember best is “Tanglewood Tree.” Dave began with a simple observation that became a chant before turning into a sermon that turned into the song. Just when I thought it was perfect, Tracy’s violin came trilling like revelation just before the bridge.

Mother the years pass outta countin’ but no prophet comes to comfort me

We live in an absurd, joyous, sometimes frightening world, often unforgiving, and what I look to for faith are the things that give me strength or joy or peace. I believe in trees, stillness, words, and my friends. I’ve been thinking of music in that context ever since I heard Dave Carter & Tracy Grammer. It was like finding the Rosetta Stone; they made the way I thought about my life make more sense and assured me, once and for all, that everything is worth another look, and another. They let me hear what it sounds like in my head.

I don’t think it’s sadness that I feel at Dave Carter’s departure from this world. He may be a little harder to find but the things he illuminated are still shining. I am bursting with the light myself, so there is little room for grief over his absence. Maybe that’s because Dave’s not actually the source of the light. He’s the guy behind the scenes shoving things out of shadow so the rest of us can see them. The more we see, the more we’re able to see. We need not rely on him to continue seeking revelation.

I will lay my burdens in the cradle of your grace

I wish, oh I wish, Dave Carter had gone on sharing new aspects of his gift with us for years to come. His task was an unending one, so of course it feels like it was prematurely arrested, because the work of untangling the world can never be finished. The longing for new Dave Carter music and the new understanding that comes with it brings me to the brink on days like this. Then I remember: his gift is generative. Others have been stirred to share their own new visions of the world because of the words Dave Cater wrote. That tribute keeps him as present now as he ever was, and my lament only delays its further uncovering.

So I keep on looking. I remember Dave Carter, with a swelling grateful heart. Following Tracy’s lead after his death, I commit myself to sharing this music with everyone who will listen. I do my best to celebrate the union of words and melody and all the things they touch. I hope you’ll join the chorus.

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