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SPRING FORWARD, FALL BACK
by Mike DeCapiteGreg,
The walls of my room were closing in, so I went outside and sat at the bus stop.
Immediately I felt better. I don’t want to get on the bus, I just want watch the buses go by.
You ever heard Annie Lennox singing that Marley song "Waiting In Vain"? I keep listening to it over and over. It reminds me of one of those late afternoons in Brooklyn, the trees and buildings against the white sky, and maybe it'll rain.But probably not.
I don’t wanna, I don’t wanna, I don’t wanna, I don’t wanna, I don’t wanna wait in vain...
One of the winos was asleep in a wheelchair in front of the laundromat. The bus came, and left in a roaring rise-and-settle of small brown leaves.
Where am I? The song puts me in your kitchen. But now that I think of it, the view is out your front window. So I’m sitting in your kitchen, but the view is from your front window. And then I remember you’re not even living in that place anymore. And meanwhile I’m here in San Francisco. You know what I mean? One of those late afternoons in Brooklyn. Every season has them. Sort of a default afternoon. Everything is still, it feels like nothing will ever change again. The treetops, the railroad buildings, the few colors of the world ground with black, against the sky, which is darkly white. A time of day very much itself, and echoing another place. A cool day in the tropics. There’s an acoustic guitar picking out notes above the wash of the surf, the horns come in like wind in the trees. For a moment, time overlaps itself. You feel your history, or the history of a relationship. The tops of the buildings across the street, and the top of a tree a few streets over, vivid and dark. The sky is darkly white. Maybe it’ll rain. A “pregnant pause” in which—for a moment—you see another person’s position and totality as well as your own from this cubist perspective. And how she’s alone and you’re alone. And you feel so much love. I don’t wanna, I don’t wanna, I don’t wanna, I don’t wanna, I don’t wanna wait in vain... A moment of reckoning. Which will pass.
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Did you get those Television re-releases that came out a year ago? There's a song called "Adventure", never before released, which takes a turn and ends with this coda of a kind of hardwon surrender to simple musical satisfaction, kind of like The Faces...
I played it this morning before leaving for work. I mention this song because I've heard no one else mention it. Maybe everyone else knew it already. It really sticks out because it’s unlike anything else they recorded. First it reminds you that they arrived in the context of ‘70s radio rock, bands like Thin Lizzy and Blue Oyster Cult, and its similarities to that music remind you that they were unique and short-lived, and then that "Ooh La La" coda, with the piano and guitar—heard in retrospect on the album that was to be their last real shot—that's the part that gets me... “ADVENTURE!” It's like the band broke free, against all odds, from the rigors of Verlaine's musical vision, and found two minutes of fleeting joy—for once they’re just playing—running for the pure pleasure of it—elegiac fleeting joy...like a doomed rabbit running...it veers out of sight...and then it comes back!...still running!...mid-air!...there's still hope!...and then you realize you're just watching a movie...it's a foregone conclusion. And then you remember that moments do live forever.