Airmail, page 4
Not that I would have actually written new music for you to be sung to, national anthem. I would have taken a song that already existed and put new lyrics to it, as did your so-called composer, Francis Scott Key, back in 1812. In music this is known as a ‘contrafactum’, or, since 1922, as ‘plagiarism’. The song Key used for his template, ‘To Anacreon in Heaven’, is as pompous and meandering as a politician’s stump speech. Whereas ‘The Marseillaise’. . . Now there’s an anthem, and even I can hit every one of those four or five notes. I listen to ‘The Marseillaise’ and I want to march; I think of revolution; I think of opposing fascism in its many guises. When I hear you, national anthem, I think of how many innings I’ll wait to buy a hot dog. Your original tune was an obscure eighteenth-century private-club drinking song – I suppose we should be grateful that ‘In Heaven There Is No Beer’ had not yet been written. So I wish I had written you, national anthem, to the tune of a respectable but much more rhythmic, more singable composition, like ‘I’ve Been Working on the Railroad’ or Roy Orbison’s ‘Running Scared’ or anything by Bob Marley.
And then there’s your lyrics, national anthem. There are a lot of good songs, songs I like, where the whole thing is posed in a question: ‘Will the Circle Be Unbroken?’ ‘Who Wrote the Book of Love?’ ‘What’s It All About, Alfie?’ ‘Does Your Chewing Gum Lose Its Flavour on the Bedpost Overnight?’ But for an anthem? Come on. How lame is it to throw down these rhetorical questions – Oh say can you . . .? Oh say does that . . .? Which could be answered with a simple no – no, actually, I can’t see a thing: there’s too much smoke from the bombs bursting in the air.
Now I’ll grant you that your lyrics are an improvement on the original club song, where every one of the 187 verses ends with ‘entwine the myrtle of Venus with Bacchus’ wine.’ And if you know the story of how Key conceived the new lyrics, it makes a nice visual: dawn breaks and the tattered flag is still waving over the besieged American fort. ‘Star-spangled’ is good writing – alliterative, descriptive – and I will certainly give you ‘land of the brave’. Not everybody, not all the time, but plenty of brave people under that flag since it was first raised. It’s the ‘land of the free’ part where we run off the tracks. Certainly, Francis Scott Key had a very different idea of freedom from mine when he wrote the lyrics, and when he became attorney-general of the United States he actively prosecuted anybody caught disseminating anti-slavery literature. I know you’re supposed to brag a little in an anthem, but ‘land of the free’ wasn’t even true on paper till after the Civil War, and literally true? For too many citizens we haven’t gotten there yet.
So if I had written you, national anthem, I might even have kept the question mark in the lyrics, but why not go all the way with it? Instead of a simple rhetorical question, why not put it in the subjunctive tense (which luckily is easier in English than in any other language I’ve ever tried to learn). The subjunctive is used to express various states of unreality such as wish, emotion, possibility, opinion, necessity or action that has not yet occurred. What if, national anthem, you had the confidence, the cojones, to admit that our country, like democracy itself, is a work in progress, a goal we reach for – sometimes nearer, sometimes further from our grasp? If I had written you, national anthem, you would express the dream of America, not crow about a status we haven’t yet earned.
Oh when will that star-spangled banner e’er wave
O’er a land of the free and the home of the brave?
Sincerely,
John Sayles
Dear Nevermind,
When we first met, I was thirteen years old and your dad had just died. You probably wouldn’t remember me – I had braces, a middle part, I wore a lot of wildlife t-shirts, and before you came into my life I listened mostly to Oldies 99.9 and contemporary Christian pop music.
Looking back now it seems impossible that I could have failed to notice you before then . . . I mean, I’d heard your name around school, but our paths had never crossed due to a variety of factors beyond my control. I grew up so deep in the woods that cable, and MTV along with it, was a simple impossibility. Where radio was concerned, the choices available were the aforementioned Oldies station, classic rock or nothing at all. My family’s church discouraged teenagers from indulging in secular music. And the internet we all rely on now for discovering new music was just a tadpole back then – developing, but still a whisper of what it would become in a few years’ time.
Yes, the odds were stacked against our finding one another, but then two things changed. The first was that I entered the terrifying halls of junior high school. My class size increased 400 per cent, giving me the opportunity to befriend exciting new weirdoes with cool record collections, devil-may-care attitudes and serious crushes on your dad. The second was that we moved out of the woods and into a neighbourhood where people could have cable, and I could finally watch Music TeleVision.
It began, as I’m sure so many of your relationships did, with ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’. I can remember exactly where I was when I first heard the opening chords and that kick-snare entrance promising to annihilate everything in its path. I thought, What is this? It was like nothing I had ever heard before and – I don’t think I’m overstating things here – that was the moment when everything in my life began to shift.
I wasn’t old enough to understand why I felt so powerless, or why this music affected me in the way that it did, but I was old enough to sense, at least on a subconscious level, that things seemed, in a word, fucked . . . And listening to The Cranberries, while satisfying in many ways, wasn’t giving me the screaming catharsis that my young brain and soul called out for.
There’s something that I wasn’t aware of then but that I believe now to be true. I listened to you and felt that raw rage, which led me to think about the ‘cool kids’ and the things they might have done to make me feel small . . . But I’m guessing that those very kids, who I now realise had their own problems (especially the mean ones), were in all likelihood sitting in their houses across town listening to the same record and feelings all kinds of crazy feelings too. You didn’t speak only to the people who felt like freaks – or maybe it’s that you found a way to access the ‘freak’ part of everyone, and spoke directly to that.
After I came to know you, I even started to look different. My jeans got baggier. I traded up from wildlife t-shirts to rock band t-shirts (the iconic Sliver shirt was among the first of them). I gave myself an under-shave haircut. I’m not saying they were all great decisions, but the point is you helped me realise that I could make my own choices, and that belly shirts didn’t have to be a part of those choices. And one of the most important parts of the youthful process of exploring free will is learning from your mistakes . . . like an under-shave.
You introduced me to the magic of power chords hammered out on a borrowed guitar, travelling from my fingers along wires and out through my parents’ stereo speakers. You shaped the way I think about lyrics and led me to write from a more immediate, more honest perspective. I’m writing you this letter because you are something I would love to have created, but you are also the first thing that made me realise I was capable of creating something myself – so it could be said that, in a way, it was you who wrote me . . . at the very least, the rough draft of my first act.
This letter to you has ended up mostly being about me, and that feels a little self-absorbed, but before you write me off, consider how many lives you have touched, how many paths you have permanently altered, how many people you have inspired. I’d bet that all of them have a story like mine, a love story that stays with them, a love story that changed them all. The thing is, you did what you do to so many of us: grabbed us by the hand and the brain and the throat and the heart, and guided us over the threshold from the world before you to the endless possibilities of a world with you in it.
Thank you for changing me.
Love,
Jenny
Dear love,
You are the word. The word that matters most. And the one most devoid of meaning. You are the word that my Swedish friend said she has used only one time, because in Sweden, to say the word to someone once in a lifetime is more than enough for many lifetimes. But you are also the word that advertisers in America use to sell hotdogs and shoes. In our age of hyperbole you are used so often that to hear your name sometimes makes me cringe.
And yet, you are one of the words that I use the most, that occupies my mind and heart. And the only damn thing worth living for.
But if I had written you, love, I would have split you, like an atom, revealing your power. Fracturing you so you spread across the universe in all your glorious colours.
Love, if I had written you, you would have so many siblings. A word for the feeling that a mother’s smile evokes, and one for the feeling that accompanies the afternoon sun, hot on your cheek, as you kiss your lover in the park.
I would have sliced you like a master sushi chef slices the fish, finely and expertly, across the grain to release the flavour. Because how can I use one word to explain how I feel about two different people? Each love is its own animal: one has horns, one has scales, one can’t even walk, the other can fly.
There would be a special word for the dark, dangerous love, the insatiable and voracious burning for the lover who does not treat you well. And there would be a word for when that love shatters. When it becomes instantly clear that you cannot feel what you have been feeling for someone who would hurt you so willingly.
And for Jason, who put a bullet in his brain a year ago, there would be a word for the love that I have wrapped up specially for him and sent back in time so that he could breathe it in with his last breath. So that he could know that even in that darkest time he was loved, and not alone. Because I believe love is a time machine and can cut across the grain of time to find the ones who need it most. Even if it changes nothing. It changes everything.
Where is the word for the love that strikes so suddenly, with excruciating brilliance, lasting only a split second but leaving ripples and sparks that bounce around the edges of your vision and make everything glow?
I need a word for the love love, The One, the one that is the one after the last the one. Because when you love like I do you know there’s bound to be a few. But they cannot be numbered sequentially. Each must be the one. Not the two.
If I had written you, love, and all your compatriots, I would have been sure to include a word for the feeling of being without someone whose presence makes you possible. The person whose love has stripped you of all the other versions of you and left you naked and gleaming and new. There must be a word for that gaping lack, when the words ‘I miss you’ fall so short of the need for expression that they lose meaning. But twined with that missing, that ache of the phantom limb, or phantom heart, is the deep calm, gratitude and happiness of just knowing that that person exists on the other side of the world. And you will see them again. Where is the word for that?
And what of the love for friends, old and new, the friend you only know for a weekend, whose presence in your life leaves an indelible mark?
And the love for your hero? The author or musician with whom you once shook hands? Where is the word for the feeling that springs up in the space between your palms as you touch, a divine creativity that spreads through you and flows out and follows you home and inspires you to write your own words or melodies?
Most of all I want a word for that feeling that happens when you are alone, completely alone, and just totally at peace. Feeling everything at once, and nothing in particular. Fleeting moments in a whirlwind life.
But I also want a word for how I feel about food. How it makes me dance and sing. A word for the soaring satisfaction of getting what you want and loving it so deeply and viscerally, because you are eating it and it is now inside you.
Love, were you my creation, I would have written words for the feelings about books, and art, and knowledge. Because those feelings are all love, but each is unique and sublime and cannot be compared to the others.
And what about the words of love for cats, and squirrels, and platypuses, and spiders, and snakes? And the night sky, and trees, and rust? And the abiding love for humanity when it is at its best, in its search for knowledge, in caring for others, or exploring the cosmos?
‘What do you love more?’ they ask. I do not love things all the same. But it’s not a question of more or less; it’s a question of texture, or flavour, or light.
Love, you are all of these things. And more. And more. And yet, love, you have been stripped of meaning by being used, overused, abused, tweeted, linked, liked and clicked on.
So how is it that I can say ‘love’ after all the hundreds, thousands of times I have said it, tweeted it, linked it, liked it? How can I say it and have it still feel true?
Each time renewed.
Love, if I had written you, and all your siblings, all the words we would need to know to express ourselves, our language would be stuffed to bursting with a specialised vocabulary. And maybe we would understand love better, but maybe we would be splitting ourselves. Compromising the structural integrity of a concept too important to be divided.
Love, what if I was wrong?
If I had written you, I would not split you. I would not slice you up. You are the gorgeous fractal that has guided my life. A million billion meanings, more than all the stars. Love, you are already split and fractured with every utterance of your name, and yet whole, just as you are.
Love,
Kim
Dear ‘Fuck off ya punks’ written in correction fluid on the wall outside the Green Bean Café in Halifax, Nova Scotia, for a week in the mid ’90s,
You don’t know me. My name is Rich. I used to live in the building across the street. You probably thought that building was abandoned, but it wasn’t. There were a half-dozen of us living there. The place was a wreck and was probably killing us, but it was a roof overhead and it was free. I was up on the top floor. There was no bathroom and the ceiling leaked badly, but my room had a nice view of the harbour.
Anyway, I used to be a regular customer at the Green Bean. They say it had the best coffee in town, and the sandwiches were amazing. And, man-o-man, remember the girl that used to work there? I think her name was Bronwen. Was she not the most beautiful human being in the world? Gosh. Not only was she unreasonably pretty, but she was also the sweetest, kindest and coolest girl in the city. How was that even possible?
My guess is that you remember as well as I do, based on the anger you lived to express when the riffraff took over the place. What a drag, right? They just ruined it! They were there morning, noon and night, stinking up the place with their obnoxious behaviour and rude remarks and shitty looks. Punks . . . Why the hell weren’t they in school? And where’d they get the money for coffee and snacks? Probably their parents. After terrorising our neighbourhood all day, they probably went home to their soft bedrooms to watch cartoons and eat cookies and get tucked in by Mom and Dad. Not that they spent much money, mind you! Sometimes they’d order a brownie between five or six of them and just poke at it all day . . . Arseholes. Always putting their feet up on the tables and chairs and leaning on the counter and cracking their dumb jokes and laughing at everyone who came in. Even if you could tolerate them, they never left anywhere to sit down. They just turned the place into some kind of teenage-delinquent refugee camp! I had to start walking halfway across town for a decent and reasonably priced lunch.
Well, I just wanted to say that your message really resonated with me. ‘Fuck off ya punks’. Thanks for sticking it to them like that. You took the words right out of my mouth. And I want you to know that I’ve thought about you a lot. I bet you never imagined someone would remember you all these years later. Especially since you disappeared after a few hard rainstorms. You only stuck around for a week. I wish you could have stayed longer, because I’ll tell you something: those punk-arse kids sure as hell stuck around. I hate to break it to you, but they killed the place. It ended up going downhill pretty fast. Less than a year after you faded away, the place closed down. Surprise, surprise. The place has been boarded up ever since, just like most of the rest of downtown Halifax’s depressing arse.
So, like I said, I’ve thought about you a lot and I have so many questions. First of all, who’s your daddy? Or mommy? Who’s the hero that brought your message to the wall? I have great admiration for this tortured artist. And why do you suppose correction fluid was their chosen medium? Though your dimensions were quite tiny, it must have taken a considerable amount of time to bring your plea to completion – especially since you were written on brick. I’m guessing the job must have taken a good fifteen minutes, at least. That brush is so small. The brick is so porous! So abrasive! I wish I had the patience to create something that requires such painstaking effort. And the opening of that bottle is so small, as well. I haven’t used correction fluid in a while, but I remember that when I did, I was always missing the hole or jabbing the rim, which would mess up the brush’s bristles. You were clearly the work of a very sure hand. And a courageous heart, as well! After all, you were an act of vandalism. Your disgruntled, coffee-deprived author must have had to look over their shoulder for 5-0 every few seconds for the risk of arrest and the incompletion of their masterpiece. I don’t have the guts. I wish I did. You were born perfect and of fury and haste. And risk! Few artistic works evoke such a thrill – knowing your creator put it all on the line. And make no mistake: you were a work of art. You were just as much painting as you were a written declaration. ‘Fuck off ya punks’! I also admire the egolessness demonstrated in creating such a labour-intensive work that was destined to survive only a few days. Oh, the tragic fragility of it all!
