Memoir: Away From Home

I would never run away from home. Not voluntarily. You probably won’t understand this thinking if you don’t have a love of the Black Hills. As a poet and as a human, the Hills are my magic and my life. They are timeless, unwavering, comforting, a channel to the sacred.

Now that that’s out of the way, I can properly explain my first experience away from home. It was in the spring of 2004. Even writing that year makes me realize how much younger and naïve toward the world I was. But, journeys like these can fill you and make you grow. Or, they can break you and make you grow back in other ways. This was a little of both. I had been accepted to Pepperdine University. Since I was currently at a local university, this forced me to choose between a new path at an exclusive college, and my home, family, and someone who was very special to me. Fortunately, my head was still filled with dreams of screenwriting and directing, my family encouraged me, and the girl never returned my feelings.

Thus, like many people who migrate to Southern California, I had a sob story and a dream to fuel my journey. To mangle a quote from Saul Bellow’s Seize the Day, “Everything that’s not properly nailed down slid toward Los Angeles.” So, like my ancestors, traversing the plains to settle the Badlands, I accepted and went to Malibu. I quickly grew to hate L.A. with every fiber of my being.

But at the same time, I grew to love Malibu. I could see the Santa Monica Pier from my room. I practiced as part of the fencing team in a rotunda that is, like most of the campus, right next to PCH (Pacific Coast Highway) and the ocean. I became friends with a band that, one day, will be very, very famous (Manixview). I hung out and browsed shops that, when walking through them, I realized had been movie sets at one point (I still belong to the Blockbuster that Arnold Schwarzenegger visits in Last Action Hero). One of my friends was on Saved by the Bell: The New Class (am I even allowed to brag about that one? Just kidding; he was awesome). I roomed with two great guys who I’m still friends with. One’s a film and television producer who’s developing his own show, which the Travel Channel was buying, last I heard. The other is a self-made millionaire investor and real estate agent. We used to drink at Moonshadows, the bar Mel Gibson left before he got arrested (we never made that mistake... drinking and driving OR being racist). And our other roommate, who I’ve since lost touch with, was a great friend as well. We used to catch movies at Universal City. This was before we chose to eat at a burger chain that we, soon after entering, learned it was some kind of gang hideout (that’s another example of why I came back).

Long story short: I had some contacts for my writing, and a paid offer on the table to work as photo editor for The Graphic (Pepperdine’s newspaper). Why did I come back? I don’t really know… not completely. Most likely, it was the fake, oppressive Los Angeles air that surrounds everything one does when he/she lives in there. This also accurately describes the physical air; not just the way people act. There were also some family issues that prompted me to live closer to home.

So, now I’m in Vermillion during the school year. Do I miss Malibu? Who wouldn’t miss Malibu? Maybe I’ll buy a timeshare there someday. I do have some good news, though. The hobnobbing skills and movie jargon I picked up during my time in SoCal has paid off- I’m the executive producer of an independent film here in Vermillion. No, it probably won’t debut at Cannes, but whatever path it is that drug me through Malibu and back again, I’m glad to be on.

Adrian C. Louis Presentation response

There are several reasons why I chose Adrian C. Louis’ Vortex of Indian Fevers for my presentation. His poetry is a timeless representation of the modern Lakota. He has a heartfelt view of the natural world, as well as the human condition. In addition, he is well-traveled and educated, and he exploits the synthesis of his background with startling results.

Although I cannot claim the Lakota lineage, my best friend since high school is Lakota. I grew up spending as much time at his house as I did with any other family. I also grew up with the rodeo crowd from the Rapid City area. Thus, my background takes me out of the typical ‘observer’ area usually filled by the white American. (By the way, I think at least every South Dakotan, and ideally every American, should be required to read Vine Deloria, Jr.’s Custer Died for Your Sins and John G. Neihardt’s Black Elk Speaks. Both speak volumes about Native culture, and are from authentic, non-researcher standpoints).

Louis’ visions are poignant, candid, saddening, and often humorous. I usually look for a well-rounded author when I choose to read something on my own time, and I was not in any regard disappointed by Vortex. Much of the poetry I write is ‘prophetic’, drawing on visions and dreams I’ve had since childhood. It was not until later, when my family moved to South Dakota, and I began to absorb some authentic Lakota culture, that I was able to comprehend them. Even though I am (to the best of my knowledge) a full Irish-German, Louis’ writing speaks directly to me, comforts me, and confirms much of what I have believed since childhood. The only subject matter I cannot relate directly to is reservation life, but Louis presents it in such an honest, first-hand way, that any outsider will likely regard his message with the solemnity it deserves.

Louis’ work is a modern epic of a shattered people trying desperately, despite the ‘help’ of the government and popular culture, to reassemble and preserve what was taken. His story is one of pain and acceptance, of pleasure and dreams. He is a visionary and a storyteller. He is wakan: a holy man. He is the last channel of the Beats. Adrian C. Louis’ Vortex of Indian Fevers is one of the true American classics. And the call he gives is not particular to race: bliya hici ayo (make yourself resilient).

Memoir: Melodious Memory (the alliteration was too great to pass up... sorry)

The Memory of Music



Is there a piece of music that reminds you of a particular time and place in your life?

I can think of a song tied to a memory right away. The song?

"Let's Dance," by Chris Rea.

Some might think me sappy or philistine to pick a little-known eighties rock song. Or now you think of me that way because you know it's an eighties rock song. Trust me, I could've easily picked "So What," by Miles Davis. I'll get to you in a minute.

The song fills me with a sense of comfort, joy, and love. This is for two reasons. (Believe it or not, I usually don't wax this Reader's Digest when I write a memoir. That tells you how good Chris Rea is. The man literally exudes thick, lively, sensual coolness out of his guitar and his voice.)

The reasons, or more aptly, incidents occurred roughly 15 years apart. When I was younger, we lived in Seattle, home of Bill Nye the Science Guy, The Space Needle, rain, The Mariners, The Pacific Science Center, coffee, and rain. By younger, I mean my sister and I were driven everywhere by our mother. This lead to many great bonding experiences as we took trips to museums and parks, as well as daily school rides accompanied by tapes of Chris Rea, one of my mom's favorite artists. (the media the music was recorded on should tell you how long ago this was).

In fact, now that I think about it, Seattle was a great place to grow up. Why the hell did we move?

Oh, now I remember.

Grunge.

Thanks, Eddie Vedder. Pearl Jam may be my favorite band of all time, but you guys also made us move to Minnesota. By the way, I still haven't bought your latest album. I heard it's great, though.

Anyway, one poignant memory I have, in particular, is listening to the song "Let's Dance" while riding in the car through the Seattle area in the late eighties. I think it struck me because it was my first real introduction to what a carefully crafted rock song sounded like, recognizable even to my young ears.

Every few years, the memory would surface, as I had none of the original music to listen to: the rain streaming, or the clouds gathering in the mossy districts of the Northwest, riding to school or a museum or park, hearing the crunch and flow of Chris' Fender swirl in the air.

As time passed, I forgot the name of the artist (sorry, Mr. Rea), but I never forgot the name of the song. With the advent of iTunes, I had an opportunity to indulge my 15-year conundrum, but one search for "Let's Dance" gave me more hits than Naomi Campbell. If I were hired as her new assistant. I'm going to be honest: that joke pretty much tripped and fell on its face. Also, needless to say, I had better things to do than wade through a thousand songs with the same title. Seriously... does someone write songs about subjects other than dancing? Can you send me their CD? I think I'd have to hear it to believe it.

Here's where the second incident comes into play. We take a yearly vacation to Snug Harbor, in the Ft. Meyers Beach, Florida area. It's easy to associate this laid-back, palm populated, perfectly peopled Gulf area with Chris Rea's style of music. At least, for me. The day after my arrival, on our most recent trip, I noticed a new CD in the rental car: "The Best of Chris Rea." The next few minutes transpired as such:

Mom: puts CD in player

Me: This is good stuff.

Mom: Yeah, it is.

a few songs pass

Me: OH MY GOD! That's that song! The song! That one song! The "Let's Dance Song!" That one we listened to when we lived in Seattle!

Mom: Yeah... yeah. You remember that?

Me: Yyyeah... of course. When did you get this?

Mom: Yesterday.

Me: Wow.

So, I ended up reuniting with a long-lost childhood friend. He wasn't rich; he didn't have a pool, or money to lend me without interest. It was something better: the magic of a song and an artist I had discovered 15 years earlier. I ended up adding ten of his songs to my iPod when I returned home. And I have to be honest; this has restored my faith in mankind a little. Just a little. Good music'll do that to you. Chris Rea's music remains fresh and vital even today.

When all's said and done, we did end up settling in the Black Hills of South Dakota, though, so I really can't blame Mr. Vedder at all. I love it here. Maybe I'll go buy that new Pearl Jam album tomorrow.

Oh, and another Chris Rea album.

(Addendum: to gain a fuller appreciation for the fine body of work performed by Chris Rea, listen to the songs "The Road to Hell, pt. 1 and 2", "Stainsby Girls", "Looking for the Summer", "I Can Hear Your Heart Beat", "On the Beach", "Julia", and, of course, "Let's Dance".)

Response to "No Room in the Booth"

I am going to be less formal with this piece, as it struck a particularly out-of-tune chord with me.

From Kathleen Osip's "No Room in the Booth: An Appreciation of Confessional Poetry":

"It is important that the formal rigor of the confessional poets take its rightful place beside their absorbing narratives because they sometimes seem to have opened the floodgates of self-indulgence in American poetry. They may be seen as using the pram containing the infant Contemporary American Poetry down the slippery slope leading to what Harold Bloom scornfully calls the School of Resentment, whose denizens elevate a content of victimization and social protest above a poetics of the sublime that will move and enlighten and individual reader."

I could not agree more, and to be honest I was literally overwhelmed with gratitude at having the privilege to read these wise words. The floodgates have yet to be closed, but rather they are being dismantled, the waters fed, by none other than my own generation. If the post-Confessionals laid the groundwork for this self-indulgent attitude towards the natural art, then my generation has certainly secured rights to the rest of the territory. I would even go so far as to say they have zoned the area residentially, and are in Phase Three of its development.

More from Osip:

"In circles that assume (emphasis added) a love of and knowledge of and respect for the art of poetry, the adjective 'confessional' is quite likely to be an automatic pejorative; shorthand for poems written out of self-pity with little or no concern for language, form, or aesthetic felicity."

Let us therefore make a careful distinction: the original Confessionals did something unprecedented. They synthesized the cult of personality with the original American poetic styles, and did so at the most opportune time.

It is up to the later generations to either venerate or tear down this ideal.

Discussion of My Confessional Poem

In "The Wyrding Way," I have tried to present an imitation of Sylvia Plath's contemplative, sometimes mystic, style. In poems such as "The Disquieting Muses," "The Colossus," and "The Moon and the Yew Tree," Plath channels startling wisdom, using mythology and mysticism.

Yet she does not warp these into the abstract, as so many do. She brings them into concreteness with her own imagery and interpretation. She cannot accept loss in her life, and this theme runs true through much of her work. Her grief at such events as the loss of her father manifests itself as anger, which she then channels into her creative element. T.S. Eliot would have been a fast admirer.

Throughout her work, Plath channels this elemental, almost primeval knowledge of ancient thought that resides in the collective unconscious. And she could never, it seems, make up her mind what to do with this knowledge.

For instance, her likening of the tree in "The Moon and the Yew Tree" to a gothic structure is accurate. To the Druids, the yew symbolized the life/death cycle, as well as immortality. After the Romans gained control of Britain, and thus after Christianity had rooted in the Isles, gothic structures (particularly the arch) were some of the few reminders of the lost Druidic religions that thrived prior to mainland influence.

For her part, she does not, at least outright, make the next connection to the holy symbol of the tree. The themes of death and hopeful resurrection are present, but she never draws any direct, specific line to the ancient traditions. Plath was a lightning rod for the dark and slumbering unconscious of man, trapped in modern commercial life. She claims, in her writing, that she stopped believing in “magic” at age nine. Thus, her conscious was in conflict with her unconscious.

In this and other poems, I have tried to channel more aptly this unconscious drive within humanity to explain things as miracles, to seek the divine (or to question it), to wonder at the power of nature and the resiliency and creativity of evolution. I have also endeavored to follow, at times, a closer interpretation and imitation of the Confessional poets, in that I try to not only expose my subconscious, but exploit it.

The free verse poem is often set against themes or modes of darkness and disorder, in order to complement the intentionally skewed rhythm. The roots of this fact stretch back many years, but the use of surprise as a tool of poetic communication seems directly connected to the idea of Confessionalism. I have tried to utilize this in my emulation.

This immediate disarming of the conscious is a crucial component of my work, one that is inherent to Confessionalism, and Plath in particular. It is a state that is vital to the understanding of the inner workings of the mind, and one that must be slipped into, in order to attempt to grasp the construct and the outcome of a Confessional poem.

Confessional Poem

The Wyrding Way

Near the dead of the lake,

in the night of the woods,

the witching hour becomes thick and heavy,

where the divine will not pass.

The ones who Borrow are hiding in the trees,

in the minds of the forest,

in the cracks of the earth,

in the deep mire of the evening.

Here the moon comforts the sun,

who whimpers in frustration where he cannot reach-

a tangle-copse of raven burdens.

The town turns out quilts

of every glorious color and heavenly design,

and I am a stiff black thread for the silver needle-

threaded perfectly, and useless for sewing.

She knows when the Witching will happen,

but in her prison I cannot reach her,

and the light of my power is stopped in a dam.

Strike for her and I am struck dead.

Under the oak,

Under the holly,

Under the yew,

They gather.

The argent circle hung from my neck

is a signet of sacred light to stay the snake,

and a sigil to draw the venom.

Bones of a horse jaw I clasp, ward of the evil eye.

Holy Mary, Mother of God,

Pray for a sinner, now and at the hour of my death.

When they dropped the ashes of my ancestors,

I remember a spirit rising from the shards,

wailing and chained to the ground under the half moon.

My opponent raises an effigy of straw.

It will raise a horror of bones from my still warm body,

and I will become a golem for the rest of my days.

The inkwell is broken, shattering black over the parchment.

I was held by the heart when baptized in the water of Styx.