Here is the track list for Show Me a Loser + I’m On Your Side: 26 Absolutions, Vol. 6, completed by Jay Thompson in the latter stages of 2019 I believe:
Side A:
Tiger Trap, Puzzle Pieces
Velocity Girl, My Forgotten Favorite
Amy O, Spacey Feeling
Helium, Silver Angel
Maximum Joy, In the Air (12” Mix)
Sleater-Kinney, Get Up
The Aislers Set, Catherine Sayers
The Blossoms, That’s When the Tears Start
The Shangri-Las, I Can Never Go Home Anymore
Yo La Tengo, Avalon or Someone Very Similar
The Spinanes, Manos
Wimps, Old Guy
Team Dresch, She’s Amazing
Side B:
Mary Lou Lord, The Bridge
Mountain Man, Moon
Big Thief, UFOF
Big Star, Nighttime
Mission of Burma, Einstein’s Dad
PJ Harvey, Rub ‘til It Bleeds
Lois, Strumpet
The Mekons, I Am Crazy
Liz Phair, Fuck and Run
Frankie Cosmos, Jesse
The Softies, Hello Rain
The Raincoats, Love a Loser
Fiona Apple, Hot Knife
This mix concludes the “Absolutions” portion of this series of mixes — at least, for now. I’m not yet sure what Jay will title his next line of entries in the series. Their creation and distribution lasted for twelve years of my life. Incidentally, those twelve years were the exact gap between when Esme, my oldest child, was born and the moment when I decided to catch up on music between when Esme was born and the present, in late 2019 — and catching up on that music is what led me to write this newsletter. I suppose none of that is likely a coincidence. Here’s a collage of thirteen paragraphs I wrote to Jay across those dozen years in which most things in life changed almost all the way for me and also for Jay— fitting my voice around his, which is absent in the collage but present in these past six mixtapes. Not the room you made the mixtape in but the room I heard that mixtape in.
*
Some cockroaches have taught us that our house has a lot of little holes in it. This is valuable information, and we're watching them closely, when we're not busy swatting them with shoes, to learn some of the secrets we might miss without them. I suppose the next thing we'll do is make some sort of informed purchase: a caulking gun? some caulk? We shall see. I've done some of the easy things, such as leaving the drain plugs in when the drains aren't in use. I don't feel as grossed out by cockroaches as I once did, and their presence in this city isn't the harbinger of poor house hygiene that it might be elsewhere, but if I had my druthers, I'd have less cockroaches around than more.
*
The best part of my day was going for a swim with the kids. Really, isn't that true of any day when you go swimming with kids? The last swim I took before this one was 9 days ago at my cabin, and while it wasn't with the kids, it was memorable. There's a place we call the big rock where we go to the river to take the sun and let the kids wade in shallow water. If you walk ruggedly over some rocks and through some cold water for about 5 minutes, you're still in sight of the big rock, but you're near a turn in the river (the Cle Elum River), where there are some bluffs/cliffs and a deep swimming hole. The water is frigid, but it's so clean and good that I almost don't feel it anymore (by contrast with the Gulf, where I swam today, which is so gross feeling that sometimes I almost don't want to go). Anyway, once you get there, there are several jumping-off places, and we always jump in 5 or 6 times while we're at the cabin. The last time I went, I went by myself, around 6 pm, while there was still lots of light, but shadows had taken over the area of the jump/swimming hole. I went in, swam around the corner to peek at the falls, swam back to grab my glasses, and then paddled across 2/3 of the river and pulled myself up on a group of rocks there. I sat there for 10 minutes or so, watching things, looking around, feeling the air and the water. It felt marvelous. Then I got back in the water and drifted down to the big rock.
*
The bush/tree in the corner of our yard near the play structure is a pomegranate! I had nearly cut it down shortly after we moved in, as it seemed a useless invasive thing at best. Just before we left for Seattle, I thought I noticed some fruit-like objects emerging from some of the branches, but I dismissed them as likely just being the sort of elaborate flower buds that plants down here will sometimes produce. I figured we'd have some blooms late in the summer, but wasn't even hoping for anything fragrant. When we got back, the fruits looked distinctly more like pomegranates than buds, so we looked it up, and sure enough, they're pomegranates. I had always thought they were a northern and late-autumn fruit, but it turns out they're a sub-tropical and late summer fruit. They thrive in places just like this, and ours is indeed thriving, with at least 13 pomegranates on their way to ripeness. Given the difficulty of making a pomegranate useful, and the length of time that they remain in good condition after picking, you may be able to eat or drink from one of them if you are able to come down in early November. Wouldn't that be something?
*
I'm mostly with you, that I'd like to sit and talk and watch the baby, listening to music and writing poems from time to time.
- We will walk past beautiful houses, and through a beautiful park
- We will visit Cafe Du Monde and Central Grocery
- We will possibly also walk around the beautiful French Quarter and visit good bookstores
- We will visit at least several coffee shops, one in the Marigny that is down the block from a place we will likely find masks in
- We will watch a movie, maybe
- We will each write a chapbook
- We will embark upon a music listening project that we likely won't see through to its conclusion
- We will make Zach and Meg another mix like the wonderful "Take Me Home or Take Me Anywhere," this time on my computer
Etc. Etc.
*
Today was a significant day in an insignificant way. It was the first day in my life when I seriously (though briefly) entertained the notion that maybe I should go to law school. I say first, but I don't mean there will be a second. First because I had never before even briefly imagined that it could be anything other than self-serving (if one went to make money) or wasteful (given that I am committed to poetry), in spite of the fact that I know there are many lawyers who do excellent and important work. Today I imagined that it could be a way for someone, someone like me, to make a positive impact in the world. And I'd never imagined that before.
*
I won a small victory. Years ago, in 2006, Melissa and I came to New Orleans for the summer between our two years of grad school. I worked as a dishwasher out at the TImberlane Country Club, where Melissa's dad had been President. It was right after the hurricane, and the libraries were in terrible shape, but I got a card and checked out some books -- one of them by Stendhal, The Red and the Black. I never read the book, and I returned all the books one day, choosing to run them inside (it was about to rain) instead of leaving them in the dropbox, even though the library was about to close. I remember it very clearly because it was one of those big New Orleans cloudbanks and I hadn't seen many of them yet. That branch closed for repairs a few months later, but not before they reported my book missing. I disputed it immediately, but had no book to show them (obviously, as I'd returned it, and since the branch I'd returned it to was closed). Now, I'm not a man who minds paying a library fine if that fine is just. I pay them regularly because, no matter how much I try not to, I always manage to lose a book from time to time. But not this time -- I didn't lose that book, I had a clear memory of returning it. So the years passed. Every couple years, I'd go into the library, explain what had happened and when, and let them know that I was interested in checking out books, but that I wasn't going to pay the fine. They always referred me to the central library people, and they never did anything about it because I had no proof. Finally, today, I decided to hell with it, I'll pay the fine. So I went to the bank, got out my money, and headed over to pay $28 that I didn't deserve to pay. I walked up to the woman and told her I wanted to pay a fine. She looked me up and came up with nothing. They'd canceled my account for inactivity when they put in a new catalog system in June. She issued me a new card, and I was obligated to pay no fine.
*
We're about to go to the Dining Hall for the second time. Here at the end of summer, they're only open for an hour each day, for lunch -- but once school is in session, we'll eat there three times a day. It's a kitchen like you'd see at a camp, attached to it is a huge, lovely formal dining room, wooden with nice tables and chairs, each table seating about 10 people. In the kitchen they have several options at each meal, including, always, vegetarian and gluten-free. Always fruit, always drinks, so on. There is a salad bar with both make-your-own and prepared salads, always there if you don't like what they're serving, or want a salad. It's such a strange but amazing thing, and I really look forward to it seeming normal….Right before kid bedtime today, we hiked up to what is known here are "the rock" -- a little rock overlook of the valley, up on Pocumtuck Ridge. We decided suddenly to go, not knowing just how steep the walk would be. It was steep! But the kids didn't even complain, to our amazement. We've been telling them how there used to be dinosaurs in this valley, lots of them, since at that time Deerfield lay below the equator and was tropical -- that this was a dinosaur valley. And they are excited by that, and interested in the history and geology of the place. Anyway, they hiked up all the way to the top of the ridge, and we looked out at a beautiful end-of-day. Esme had also roller-bladed for the first time earlier in the afternoon. They fell asleep wonderfully, before I could finish my songs for the night.
*
I'm back online, back on a regimen of lists and schedules, back to the exhilarating and consuming daily rhythm of school life for this year. All these things had to happen, though I enjoyed my time away from them over the nine weeks of our trip. I do love the place we return to, and am beginning to feel real affection for some of the people who inhabit the place with me. Every day, my focus is on getting ducks in a row. My ethos this year is to press on ahead through the feelings of wanting to stop, to put aside the work until next hour, next day. As my truly honorable colleague Mark Scandling pointed out to me once, the stack of papers takes the same amount of time to address ten minutes after it's handed in as it does to address three weeks after it's handed in. I'm a conscientious sort in that regard to begin with, but after the wonder of presence that this summer was for me, I'm eager to be deft and speedy with my work when it arrives, in order to be more full (as full as possible) of presence when I can be and need to be. I purchased (by thrift store) an entirely new and rather stylish (given the medium) wardrobe upon returning to New England. My classes are new and old by turns. My cross country team is looking like a real force this year, a really serious step forward from the two years prior. I know things may not be as strident and eager where you are, caring for and bidding a long farewell to your father.
*
This morning, early, still dark out but sitting in my kitchen doing various teaching tasks while the rest of the family continued to sleep, I read through a small stack of handwritten reflections from my senior poetry class. I had asked them, as we wrapped up the poetry class, to write about where they were at with contemporary poetry. They're all, having studied it, interested by it of course -- but what was interesting to me was how they almost to a person pointed out how they had not so long ago been uninterested in it, unaware of it, hostile towards it, and that they had had to work through difficulties with almost everything that we read during the year. It made me think how weird it is to sort of blithely sit down there at the table again and again with these odd artifacts, these books, that are almost always exceptionally good and interesting, but which are entirely outside the experience of the people I'm handing them to with as little trace of judgement or sway as I can offer, akin to my walking in and handing them a tray full of rare insects or something like that and asking them to hold a conversation. Which they do. But it's strange, really –
*
My grandfather died this week, so I'll be flying out to Seattle tomorrow (Friday) and leaving again on Sunday. Pretty much my whole weekend will go, of course, to family things. However, I hate to miss a possible chance to see you briefly at some point, so am casting about in my mind for ways that might work. A tedious possibility: would you have any interest in driving me from the airport to Edmonds? Lots of other people could come pick me up, so would only be worth doing as a manner of spending an hour talking or whatever. Do you even have a car? I don't know...just a thought. I get in at 8:55 p.m.
*
The greatest gift you could ever have given me was this wealth of mixes that you've given me over the last thirteen years. I know I've told you this before, but honestly, I could tell you once a month and it wouldn't be enough. I feel I need to renew my commitment to sending mixes in your direction -- I have one finished, even, and just need to burn it to cd. But once a month might be necessary. Tonight, driving my kids back from Boston, I listened to "Living Proof" and "Hold Your Head Out" and was in a kind of dusky driving heaven.
*
On Friday night, Esme came downstairs about fifteen minutes after I'd finished singing songs to her. In recent months, that's been Curran's role -- if he doesn't fall asleep before I leave the room, we can almost count on him appearing down in the living room just as or just after we settle into discussion or reading or work or relaxation, sometimes more than once. But having learned that if I stay a few minutes longer in their bedroom he'll fall asleep, I've done so whenever possible; and Esme, who never falls asleep while I'm singing, also never comes downstairs after I've left the room, but falls asleep. Friday afternoon and evening had been a trial, so much so that I'd driven to the convenience store upon concluding singing, to buy Melissa a beer and myself some ice cream. So when I got back home, and Esme came rushing into the kitchen saying she felt sick, I braced myself for the worst. But it turned out she was hungry instead of sick, so that was easy. And since I had been about to go lie down on the couch, turn off the lights, and listen to Kill For Love by Chromatics, turned up loud, to wind down from the week and the day, to pass the time, and to press some solace forward into the day of travel and protest I knew would come Saturday, I invited Esme to join me. She was very surprised by the invitation -- I guess she had expected to be sent packing back to bed -- so much so that she said okay and then went upstairs. I had to call her back down and explain that I meant she could come and listen with me. And then she was happy, and we got some blankets, and she snuggled up with me and we turned the music on and it was wonderful. Melissa came in after awhile and made a fire. I got to explain what Laser Floyd was, and that I'd used to go to that on Friday nights when I was a teenager. All of the songs are pretty, she said near the end of the album. It was the kind of moment you hope to have with your child as they start to get old enough to know that it's special to do something like that, and know that they might remember it. I hope that such evenings become routine enough that she won't remember it specifically -- but who knows, it may never happen again.
*
The postcard that you sent from Greece arrived to our house today. Melissa and I each read it, in turn, and were happy to think about Greece, that bygone place and time that we grew in together and which I know that I still think of often, one of the very few places that draw my attention away from the present. I hope that you and your family have had / are having a similarly memorable time there this time. I'm feeling a suddenly-blinding pace of change in my feelings, here, without going so far away as Greece to feel them, wish I was a better friend for instance, to everyone I know. Was thinking about Mount Bonnell the other day as well, describing it to a friend who is going to Austin. Hi to your loves --
Sunday Mixtape #9