Banner Peak
1
Oh I am a lonely painter
I live in a box of paints
"A Case Of You"
I’m trying to read a new book about Joni Mitchell. Littered with interesting facts, Michelle Mercer’s "Will You Take Me As I Am" ultimately reads like a senior thesis, all analysis and no soul. And that’s the essence of Joni’s music, soul. It has a way of penetrating you, making you feel known and alive at the same time, sometimes euphoric, sometimes depressed, but totally human.
Today I heard k.d. lang’s version of "A Case Of You" on Radioio Acoustic Cafe. Penetrating, it lacked the upbeat lilt of the original. Although depressing, about a breakup, "A Case Of You" still radiates hope. That love lost is not a terminal condition, but a life-enhancing experience. You don’t jettison the past, you integrate it. We carry all our previous lovers with us. The relationships couldn’t continue, but they changed us, they made us not only deeper, but stronger.
Not knowing Ms. Lang’s take, I dialed up Rhapsody and found in excess of a dozen covers of the song. Performed by notables like Prince and unknowns, most of whom are trading on a genius’ work and adding very little. But I was impressed. Because this song which was never a Top Forty hit, an album track buried deep in side two, had such a dramatic impact.
That’s what bonds us, what these songs mean to us. We’re stunned decades later to find out that we are not alone, that across the country, across the world, are human beings just like us, with more questions than answers, who used this music to get them through.
I dialed up Joni’s homepage. Technically unauthorized, but seemingly endorsed. I saw an incredible video of her singing "Urge For Going" on a Canadian TV show long before most people had ever heard of her. This artifact from 1966 evidences the era, when TV exposure was rare, when most citizens of the United States thought going to the Great White North to avoid being drafted was resigning from humanity. But that’s just what we’ve got in this clip. In this one video is everything Michelle Mercer is missing in her book. An ingenue from the prairies who having practiced, written and perfected her act, is employing it as a ticket out of…where she came from. That was our goal in the pre-Internet era, to get away from where we grew up, where we started, to a place where we could be absent preconceptions, where we could reinvent ourselves, molding ourselves into who we wanted to be.
But now you don’t have to leave your house to make it. You can just fire up your computer, walk your fingers over your keyboard or turn on your cam and suddenly you’ve got a voice. You can reach out and touch your heroes, you’re suddenly just as powerful as they are.
The old guard resents this. That these newbies who have not paid their dues can not only get attention, but reach in and attack. That’s the scourge of the Internet era. Those who have not won the looks lottery, those without enough talent or drive to make it by the old rules are exercising their wrath. Used to be you were a lonely painter, a Gauguin who never made it, living in isolation. Today, if you’re willing to play, you’re scrutinized online. Told you suck, no matter how good you might be. Do you have the backbone, a skin thick enough to tolerate this?
Most don’t.
It’s an acquired skill.
One I’m trying to learn every day.
But every once in a while I need to remove myself from the fray and lick my wounds. Be anonymous, like so many of my attackers.
Not that I plan these sojourns, plot my absences, but a day or two goes by without writing and it’s like a weight’s been lifted from my shoulders.
2
I went running down a white sand road
I was running like a white-assed deer
Running to lose the blues
To the innocence in here
"Refuge Of The Roads"
Writing is best when fully inspired. Wait long enough and the inspiration comes. Usually in the bathroom. Standing in the shower, sitting on the pot reading the newspaper, suddenly I have a eureka! moment. I’ve got to run to my computer and channel the thoughts in my brain to the screen.
Today is not one of these days.
I had an idea on Saturday. But today it’s just not resonating.
It had to do with that one uncharacteristic song on the album, the one that sounds nothing like anything else in the collection, yet touches so many. Classic case is Green Day’s "(Good Riddance) Time Of Your Life". Not punk, not even pop-punk, it was mainstream enough to even be featured in the "Seinfeld" finale. But it was Queen’s "Crazy Little Thing Called Love" inspired me. All these years later, "Another One Bites The Dust" is the track that is remembered. But "Crazy Little Thing Called Love" came first. This rockabilly track sounded nothing like what the English band had cut before. I bought the album immediately.
I heard "Crazy Little Thing Called Love" at the Mill. The lodge adjacent to the Stump Alley Express at Mammoth Mountain. There was not a cloud in the sky, nor a bare spot on the hill, it was hard not to feel like you were in God’s Country, if you believed in God.
And the snow having turned to slush in a matter of an hour and a half, not long past noon we hung up our boards, and after showering ventured onto Highway 395, in search of experience. And shortly after turning onto the June Lake Loop I had the aha moment. Off in the distance I saw Banner Peak.
"Blue" is Joni Mitchell’s best album, but for a long time it was not my favorite. That space was reserved for "Hejira". An album that seemed to have no impact upon release that kept me alive, that gave me hope when it came out back in ’76.
The key track is "Song For Sharon".
But the song I had an urge to hear was "Refuge Of The Roads".
That’s what I experienced this weekend. The refuge of the roads.
It’s not like the old days, satellite radio accompanies you on your journey. With Verizon, there’s only one brief stretch outside of Mojave where there’s no service, in many places you’ve got 3G. But one thing that doesn’t change is the mountains.
Mt. Whitney in Lone Pine. The highest point in the continental United States, 14,505 feet tall, only 76 miles from the lowest point, Death Valley, 282 feet below sea level.
But Whitney is not staggering. It’s a series of teeth behind another peak that appears taller.
But Banner Peak had no peers. Off in the distance it appeared a Xanadu. Forbidding, with its sheer face, it was everything today’s modern culture is not. It was solid, meaningful, here forever, or at least until the next ice age.
I’d tell you I felt insignificant in its shadow, but quite the contrary. I felt fully alive, I felt at one with not only the Earth, but the universe. We’re evanescent. But while we’re here we can either seize life or let it pass us by. We can either stay in our comfort zone or test our personal limits. We can surf from site to site or ultimately journey outside our abode and go on a true adventure.
3
Sharon you’ve got a husband
And a family and a farm
I’ve got the apple of temptation
And a diamond snake around my arm
But you still have your music
And I’ve still got my eyes on the land and the sky
You sing for your friends and your family
I’ll walk green pastures by and by
"Song For Sharon"
I was married once. Didn’t want to have kids while we lived together, only got the urge after she moved out. Alas, we could never get it back together. Then the years slipped by and suddenly I was the old guy. The one without the hair who listened to the old records and wasn’t a go-getter, didn’t put ads on my site, didn’t sell out for the bucks.
I’m confused.
All the old markers are gone. What kind of crazy fucked up world do we live in where I reach the target audience better than the "New York Times". I’m still looking for recognition from the paper of record and my audience figures if anything important happens, they’ll find out about it from me.
But I don’t always know what’s going on. There’s too much information and not enough time. And whenever I wade in, I’ve got the screaming meemies asking me who the fuck I am, why I’m entitled to an opinion. They tell me to shut the fuck up and go back to the hole I crawled out of.
I used to call the worst offenders. Mostly they were looking for recognition, to be heard. That’s what we’re all looking for. But you’ve got to fight for it. And when you get some traction, the naysayers will appear, believe me.
But now there are too many people. And a certain segment of the public is mentally ill, like that guy who killed that woman at Wesleyan. Reason doesn’t come into the equation. You can’t respond to anybody, because you never know who will twist your words and threaten you and cause unforeseen headaches.
I try to explain myself.
But they don’t want explanations. They want answers. That square with the ones they’ve predetermined.
I know the power of a great record. Just like you. I want something that touches me, that makes me feel less alienated, that makes me feel I’m not alone. But people don’t want to admit their despair. Not in a nation of winners. Acknowledge your flaws and you’ll be trampled by those reaching for the gold.
But the truth is we’re all alienated, we’re all lonely, that’s the human condition. We go online to connect. That’s why I write.
But it comes at a cost.
What a conundrum, the lonely painter shows his work and find out he’s both god and a shithead.
Welcome to the modern world.
