One final selection from Ryan Adams’ Infinity Blues.

Dreams, God, Albert, and Disappointment

by Ryan Adams

Albert wakes God up (again) and God is pissed,
but then laughs
and makes tea
tea for two
and they sit by the bay window
and God speaks
and Albert, grinning, says, “hmm”
and not much else
and when he talks
it isn’t in a germanic drawl
no
they speak one language
Angelica
which sounds like a puppy barking
about nothing in particular
like an animal sigh
and
eventually
Mrs. Claus comes round too
and says, “hello, Albert,” like he was a kid
because he is just a kid
always was
always is
punk as funk
and they all listen to the story of how
and why
and Albert tries very hard
not to ask too many questions
and
eventually
goes back to the dormitory
and writes stuff down
the ink disappears
into a cloud
and I wake up
in the middle of this firing range
where the bullets
and still the curse of days
and the worry
that my heart will explode
from love
and
disappointment

Yet another selection from Ryan Adams’ Infinity Blues.

Joy

by Ryan Adams

When you say a thing that I write too much
I dream myself a thousand-plus
more books I wrote myself
and imagine them in a swinging stack
fainting
and collapsing onto you
as they crush your bones
in the name of art
in the name of american idealism
in the name of the future
because
fuck you and your sleeping wordless criticism
and
that path before me is lit with possibility
and lore
and my cup is not full because it is not a cup
it is a life
it is a heart
and me
I am trying to show you something
about yourself
not me
that a person can do anything
and
that is what hope is
so,
with all due respect,
fuck you if you dismiss this
because it is a process
and
I accept
if you discount what it has to say
but if I draw a line
and say
what have you done today
be prepared
because while you are sleeping
I am with the sunlight
and the life
and joy
joy will rise in the names

This week’s poem comes from Ryan Adams’ Infinity Blues.

Becausewhy

by Ryan Adams

because we are bored
We War
Because we are bored
We Fuck
sexy or not
and
Because we were born to fight
inside
we know
our children too, eventually will die
this is how it is
in the universe of ours
us against time
and
in this place,
show me where god stood up
and said otherwise
i say he does not speak
and may be everything
inside that thought
you are allowed
but may not keep
for the growing
of things
immeasurable
i have not seen him
while i have been alive
and regardless
heaven
that would not work
if men and women
were anything like this
someplace else
especially an elsewhere
of brights
and
if so
that is not a good place to go
i would not dine there
how could one relax
infinitely
in a place like that
so why?
becausewhy
that’s what
that’s what they say
right before
“shut up”
and i’m like
ok
no
never.
Fuck-Face.

It’s no secret that I’ve had a thing for pretty much everything Ryan Adams does for quite some time. I own a good handful of his many albums, I read his blog, followed his Twitter, watched him on Tumblr, and wherever else he chose to publish his words, videos and songs for 10 days at a time before deleting it all.

It started when a good friend introduced me to his album Love is Hell — one of the saddest and most beautiful collections of alt. country and piano ballads about heartbreak ever put to tape. It started a snowball effect that has slowed down but I doubt will ever stop until he does. (Coincidentally, he stated a while back that he’s on an indefinite hiatus from making music, so maybe that time has already come.)

So it comes as no surprise to most that I finally got around to reading Infinity Blues, his book of poems that he wrote a year or two ago.

Adams has undergone what seems to be a significant transformation in the last few years, having given up several addictions, getting married and, generally speaking, doing everything he can to shed the asshole image he had created for himself during several years of self-destructive actions on stage and off.

If nothing else, Infinity Blues is a look into the mind of Adams at the age of 33. It’s frantic, thoughtful, funny, sad and all over the map from one moment to the next. He talks candidly — and yet still with a shroud over names and events — about his broken family, lost loves, life in the city, art, faith and everything. In one poem he claims that he wrote anywhere from 3 to 17 poems a day for the book which, knowing his prolific creation schedule, isn’t too surprising.

If you like free verse poetry or watching Adams “find himself by losing himself,” Infinity Blues might be worth a read.

[I have a friend from high school who] has a 13 year old son. And his 13 year old son is a massive Minor Threat fan. In 2009! And I think that’s just incredible! The idea that music, if it’s created in a way that is honest, can still resonate. Kids can still be like, “Yeah, that means something to me.”

It’s interesting how transcendent honesty can be. How the teenybopper pop from the 70s and 80s (Leif Garrett anyone?) has almost zero relevance now while punk rock still inspires and expands, and is well on its way to powering through three generations.

What else are people doing now with music that will still resonate and inspire in 30 years? It’s certainly not “Party in the USA” or that damn Justin Bieber song. It’s what the teenagers do who aren’t listening to top 40 radio or the top-purchased pop songs on iTunes.

I don’t know what that is because I’m an old fogey already at the ripe age of 25. (Seriously, I felt like a grandpa when I saw Vampire Weekend last month.) Maybe it’s a kid writing the next Heartbreaker or some high-schooler learning how to use Ableton Live and a synthesizer, or Talbot Tagora, who are sneaking into their 20s and already touring the US as a noise rock trio (music I’m just now learning to appreciate and understand). Those damn kids and their music.

You expected to be sad in the fall. Part of you dies each year when the leaves fell from the trees and their branches were bare against the wind and the cold, wintry light. But you knew there would always be the spring, as you knew the river would flow again after it was frozen. When the cold rains kept on and killed the spring, it was as though a young person had died for no reason.

Ernest Hemingway

I don’t think I have SAD, or if I do, it’s a very mild variety. All I know is that when the fall comes around, my mind goes into overdrive, pushing me into a place where I analyze my place in the world.

Maybe it’s because school always started in the fall, or that autumn ushers away long, sunny days, but fall always brings about an analytical side of me and a sense of urgency for spring to arrive.

The combination of being in Nashville (where fall is much more obvious than here), seeing and saying goodbye to my girlfriend and brother far too quickly, a few dark nights and a few weights I carry on my shoulders, this time of year has arrived.

It feels like sitting in a dark room just after twilight; that period of time when you’re wrapped up in a book in an empty house, the sun is going down and it’s just getting to the point where you need to turn on a light or start a fire to continue reading. It’s comfortable, but slightly off-center. There’s a sense of loneliness, but while still knowing there is company a room away.

For me, fall has a soundtrack. mewithoutYou’s second and third albums, Ryan Adams’s Love is Hell, Neko Case, Joshua James. They’re all sad, full of thought and despair, looking back on better times.

I know this seems dark, but I welcome this every year. It’s a part of who I am, and it’s the one emotional season I am guaranteed to experience year by year, regardless of the circumstances.

Is there anyone else who feels the sadness of fall?

Think of 25 albums that had such a profound effect on you they changed your life or the way you looked at it. They sucked you in and took you over for days, weeks, months, years. These are the albums that you can use to identify time, places, people, emotions. These are the albums that no matter what they were thought of musically shaped your world.

I couldn’t even begin to put these in order of preference. They’ve all been number one in my heart at some point or another. So, in true Rob Gordon fashion, I put them in autobiographical order, all the way from high school up to now.

I won’t even begin to try and explain each album or even the general progression of my music habits. If you are curious, that’s kind of what comments are for.

1. Jimi Hendrix – Woodstock
2. Project 86 – Drawing Black Lines
3. Incubus – Make Yourself
4. Radiohead – OK Computer
5. Tool – Aenema
6. A Perfect Circle – Thirteenth Step
7. Sigur Rós – Ágætis byrjun
8. Extol – Undeceived
9. Sufjan Stevens – Michigan
10. The Dillinger Escape Plan – Miss Machine
11. The Mars Volta – De-loused in the Comatorium
12. Godspeed You! Black Emperor – Lift Yr Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven
13. Radiohead – Amnesiac
14. He Is Legend – I Am Hollywood
15. Killswitch Engage – The End of Heartache
16. The Dillinger Escape Plan – Irony is a Dead Scene
17. Explosions in the Sky – The Earth is Not a Cold, Dead Place
18. mewithoutYou – Catch for Us the Foxes
19. The Appleseed Cast – Low Level Owl: Volume 1
20. mewithoutYou – Brother, Sister
21. This Will Destroy You – Young Mountain
22. Neko Case – Fox Confessor Brings the Flood
23. Sigur Rós – Takk
24. Ryan Adams – Heartbreaker
25. This Will Destroy You – This Will Destroy You

This morning I watched the music video for “My Girls” and a sense of inspiration hit. All of a sudden there was an itch to be creating music. Something about the song touched the creative nerve in my brain (however dormant the action of creation may be). It reminded me of something Bob Boilen of NPR’s All Songs Considered said about a Radiohead show (that I was at!):

These guys write great songs, and sometimes you can even sing along to them, but what they do better than any band is create a sonic adventure — a soundscape which, at its best, stretches time and allows the mind to wander and rejuvenate. I think of it as resetting the synapses. Creativity breeds creativity. When the music was over, I felt unboxed and changed and pretty darn happy. Drugs are overrated; music is underrated.

Resetting the synapses. I like that. Everyone should make a list of songs (or any kind of art, for that matter) that resets their synapses, where its creativity inspires your creativity. Here are eight songs that inspire me to create:

1. Radiohead – “15 Step” (In Rainbows)
2. Black Moth Super Rainbow – “Forever Heavy” (Dandelion Gum)
3. Animal Collective – “My Girls” (Merriweather Post Pavilion)
4. Eightball – “Drama In My Life (feat. Psycho Drama)” (Lost – Chopped and Screwed)
5. Burial – “Archangel” (Untrue)
6. Radiohead – “House of Cards” (In Rainbows)
7. Ryan Adams – “The Shadowlands” (Love Is Hell)
8. M83 – “Lower Your Eyelids to Die With the Sun” (Before the Dawn Heals Us)

And an iLike playlist if you want to listen to the songs:

Yesterday, Ryan Adams announced that he was leaving The Cardinals (or, in his revised announcement a few hours later, that he was “stepping back,” whatever that means). Anyone familiar with Adams knows he is prolific; he once released three albums in a single year. Aside from his huge music catalog, he also paints and writes. I think it’s safe to say that he is in his element when he is creating. That’s why I’m not too upset about him stepping back, despite being a big fan. I know he’ll be back with something soon.

I think that instinctive attraction towards creating is what makes the greatest artists. Certainly they have to practice and build their skills, but it’s the one with that insatiable desire to create that can focus enough to get good enough. There’s something different about art created to show off skill or to earn money and fame and art created because it had to be.

In music, it’s the latter that I tend toward. Maybe from now on, when people ask me what kind of music I like, I’ll just tell them, “The kind that would have driven its creator to madness if it had not been created.”

Time for another quote!

The truly creative mind in any field is no more than this: a human creature born abnormally, inhumanly sensitive. To him, a touch is a blow, a sound is a noise, a misfortune is a tragedy, a joy is an ecstasy, a friend is a lover, a lover is a god, and failure is death. Add to this cruelly delicate organism the overpowering necessity to create, create, create – so that without the creating of music or poetry or books or buildings, or something of meaning, his very breath is cut off from him. He must create, must pour out creation. By some strange, unknown, inward urgency he is not really alive unless he is creating.

Pearl Buck

Be afraid not to try.

Thank you, Ryan Adams.