Now You're Really Living

Do you know what it’s like to fall on the floor

Cry your guts out ‘til you got no more Hey man, now you’re really living!

For those not in the know, that's the first stanza of one of my favorite Eels songs, "Hey Man (Now You're Really Living!)" I just finished reading the autobiography of Mark Oliver Everett (aka "E" or the Eels: www.eelstheband.com), which I ordered from Amazon.co.uk because it won't be available in the US until September and I didn't want to wait that long. Now that's a true fan for you! The book is called "Things the Grandchildren Should Know," which is also the title of one of his songs, another of my favorites. OK, so I have a lot of favorites, pretty much every song on his last few albums. Not so crazy about the earlier ones, but neither is he so I don't feel like I'm letting him down as a fan. The reason I love the Eels so much is that Everett writes about what's real—what hurts, what drives you to the ground, and what gets you back up again. And he does it with humor and inventive music. Someone once commented that his songs are "all about death," but he argues, "No, they're not—they're about life!" His songs to me are the finest expression of John 1:5 I've ever encountered: "And the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it." As he writes about the time leading up to "Hey Man":

While recovering from the surgery [for a sinus cyst] after the tour, I spent the winter resting and, for once, not working on anything. I just sat around thinking a lot and passing the hours entertaining myself any way I could. Answering wrong-number phone calls for the local video store, whose number is one digit away from mine, became a time-consuming hobby. A kid asks if we have the latest action/adventure film, I put him on hold while he thinks I'm checking the shelves for it, then get back on and tell him we're out of it. Then I ask him if he's read the book. He says no and I ask him when was the last time he read any book? He says it's been a while and I tell him he should go to the library and read something. He says OK. I get a lot of these calls and impersonating a video-store clerk becomes one of my chief means of passing the hours.

It got to the point where I was getting tired of thinking so much and doing nothing but talking to kids who think I'm a video-store clerk. An idea started to form in my mind. I should try to make an album that, like the Kubrick and Bergman films that I loved, was more important to feel than to think about. ... I wanted it to be full of life and love. I wanted it to be about the idea of God, and the God that's in the details, whatever God is. I wanted it to be about the condition of living. ... Yes, I'd been through some terrible stuff. [Everett's sister, Liz, killed herself; soon after, his father died suddenly of a heart attack; and only months later his mother died of lung cancer.] But I couldn't ignore the fact that I'd been through a lot of great stuff, too, and I wanted to reflect that in my songs. ... The tougher circumstances I'd been through were now making it easier for me to truly appreciate all the great things in my life. ... I was still having occasional bouts of desperation and hopelessness but I felt stronger, like it wasn't going to overtake me. I wanted to express how grateful I was for the terrible experiences as well as the great experiences of my life. I thought about the moment when I heard that Liz had died and my legs gave out as I fell on the floor. "Do you know what it's like to fall on the floor..."

I love Mark Everett's approach to life, I love his music, and I loved this book so much that I read it really fast so I can send it to a friend for her 21st birthday, which is tomorrow so it won't get there on time but it'll be close. Happy Birthday, CB! It's been really healing for me over the past 3 years or so, since I first heard "I Like Birds" on KXCI, Tucson's independent radio station, and then "Hey Man," and went on a quest to find more Eels music, to hear someone sing about depression in a way that's true and painful yet ultimately full of joy. I do know what it's like to fall on the floor and cry my guts out 'til I've got no more. Just the other day I had a good cry in the shower after reading a beautiful, heartfelt e-mail from a beautiful friend of mine who now lives on the other side of the continent—she sent me this poem that she wrote in 1986, when she lived in a snowy land, and I asked if I could post the poem here. She agreed (thank you, Kim Elliott):

Covered in white
the city is
made new.

From my window
I can see the changing Hudson
Pewter in this winter light.
And cold, so very cold.
But I remember green
And brilliant blue
And points of light skyrocketing
into Spring.
Or the heavy slow welcome
quiet of August.

And now in his winter face
I am absorbed.
And cold, so very cold.
I wrap his secret close
And cloak my heart in grey
and wait
for Green.

Reading Kim's poem made me think of her, which made me miss her, and made me think of a poem called "Old Woman" I once wrote while living in a snowy land that I then gave to an old wise woman in Tucson, Dolores Brown, during the first year or so that we were there:

“As beautiful as time in the winter.
Time is so quiet and—
humble—yes, humble in the winter.
It passes under the gray skies
and over the gray streets while nobody notices
except to say, ‘How early it gets dark
these days!’ and
‘Where does the time go?’
Yes, winter time is a quiet time,
only noticed when it’s gone.”

We said goodbye in the kitchen
and she tucked in my scarf.
“Be beautiful,” she said.

So much to do, and it gets dark so early.

The poem made me think of Dolores, and of the last time I saw her. She was preparing to die at Tucson Medical Center Hospice. It was late summer, 2005. On our way into the building, I quickly grabbed a few leaves off a creosote bush, knowing how much Dolores loved the desert and wanting to give her another chance to smell it again. We got to her room and I became dumbstruck, unable to speak through my grief at losing her. Plus, she'd given us firm instructions NOT to cry and I knew if I opened my mouth I'd start to wail. So I handed her the creosote and watched as she crushed it between her fingers and inhaled as deeply as she could. "She always knows just what to do," she said of me. I don't think that's quite true, but I'm grateful that I knew that time anyway. Then I bent to give her a kiss and the tears came out, no matter how hard I'd tried NOT to cry. Dolores put her hand to my face and whispered, "Be beautiful. You already are." I couldn't believe that, literally on her death bed, Dolores would remember the poem I'd given her so many years before. But that was Dolores—I doubt she ever forgot anything about anyone she'd met in her life who mattered to her, and that was a lot of people. So thinking of Dolores and her death and creosote and Tucson and being beautiful… well, I cried hard in the shower for a minute or two. And I felt better. Feeling the bad stuff helped me feel the good stuff again.

And hard work always helps, too. Here are some pictures of our kitchen that I spent the past week repainting. I also made the little sun that's mounted over the sink—just a touch of wild Dianne to offset the otherwise very classically countryish kitchen.