I made mom drive us to Wal-mart. I made her. It was Saturday morning and Jarod rode his bike from his house down the street to eat breakfast with us. We were in the kitchen when he opened the door. “Hey Jarod,” Jack said, as we both looked at him simultaneously. “Don’t call me Jarod,” he said. “Call me Mike.” He was wearing pajamas, but not any pajamas—Michael Jordan pajamas. We flew off our seats to touch the fabric—a soft, supple, cheap polyester. It was an exact replica of the Bull’s 1992 away jerseys. We had watched every game. We knew how many points Jordan had averaged; how many rebounds Horace Grant had, how many assists Scottie Pippen had. We had to have the pajamas and mom knew that we would never shut up until we had them. Had it been anything else, we could have been talked down.
That night we watched Michael and the rest of the Bulls in the playoffs. They won. Mom made us popcorn with parmesan cheese and black pepper sprinkled on it while Dad rolled his own cigarettes in the alcove next to the television before sitting on the couch to watch with us. We sat on the floor, as close to the television as we could get before dad made us scoot back. Our jaws hung loose and limp as we watched Mike glide to the rim for another dunk.
The next morning we woke up early. We pulled the little trampoline to the back yard and set it down just in front of the basketball hoop. We took turns running towards the hoop, jumping and bouncing off the trampoline, skyward to the hoop, practicing our “Air Jordan” technique—legs scissored, left hand slightly extended behind us, right hand palming the miniature ball, arm fully extended. We slammed the balls with all the force in our tiny bodies.
We wore the pajamas everyday. Teachers complained to our parents about our state of dress. But when we wore them, we were Mike. He was us.
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
Monday, April 13, 2009
Ashton Goggans
RFW: Writing About The Popular Arts
9 April 2009
I wanted to write about something that I don't like liking. Here you go.
Half A Person
I have never known how to talk with people about Morrissey. And you’d be surprised how often he comes up in conversation. Actually, maybe you wouldn’t. The conversations usually go one of two ways: the person hates Morrissey, calls the fan an idiot or something slightly more derogatory, and the conversation ends at that. Or the person loves Morrissey, is thrilled to share the fondness with someone new—they share stories (when they first heard the Smiths, if they had seen Morrissey perform, or how badly they wish they’d seen the Smiths). These conversations are largely fruitless; no new insight is shared; we learn nothing substantial. But Morrissey is a very unique specimen in popular music and most certainly a jumping off point for many larger issues of contemporary culture. He poses questions that few listeners presumably consider. What do we consider masculine today? What is a performer’s image’s relation to his art? How does Morrissey transcend class, national, age, and political boundaries? Is he a modern figure? Post-Modern? Why him?
Let me preface that when I refer to Morrissey’s music I am referring to him as both the singer of the Smiths and as solo artist. Distinctions are to be made, certainly, but for this examination will not be. By all intensive purposes, Morrissey is the same person he was twenty-five years ago—a little fatter, a little grey around the ears, but still the same. I will also disregard his politics, both American and English, and his extreme veganism. (He won’t play shows where meat is served backstage. His tour help is required to eat entirely vegetarian, usually vegan, to the extent that all flights are booked for employees and vegetarian meals specified for their in-flight meal.)
He presents himself as the shell of, what in a different time would have been, a virile, beast of a man. He is striking: hair swooped back and over, broad, full shoulders and the strong, distinguished chin. Despite his best efforts, he is not fragile looking. He is not the creation of record company marketing; he is his own product, one more literary than rock and roll.
In this way he is transparent. This transparency does not turn people off. Rather it allows them to embrace him as their own. Everyone gets sad, and Morrissey is the sad people’s man.
Morrissey is a conscious amalgam of popular myth and archetype. He is the product of all modernity: Ernest Hemingway’s Nick Adams and Jake Barnes, the doomed youth of the contemporary Byronic Hero—Elvis, Buddy Holly, James Dean, John Lennon, and John F. Kennedy—, and the ironic wit and flamboyance of Oscar Wilde. He knows from the books he has read what a broken man should be like, a man who carries the weight of modernity on his shoulders, a man without faith.
The autobiography in his lyrics is Kafka-esque; he is the hunger artist, a man so beautiful and perfect that there must be something bigger keeping him from finding the love he needs, the love he has always wanted but never found, the sustenance he burns for. In a world of sexual deviance as masculine exhibition and female exhibition as orthodox gentility, Morrissey’s asexuality leaves him stranded, an island in a sea of nothingness. He is an echo: I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each./I do not think that they will sing to me.
Or maybe he is just that narcissistic.
Whatever it is, fans devour this persona. During live performances Morrissey is known to dispose of several sweat-soaked shirts, to tear them from his body and fling them to the fawning crowd. Both men and women clamor over each other, ripping the garments to shreds. They bring flowers for their beloved Adonis. It is now customary for attendees to rush the stage, dodge security, and embrace their sad, mournful icon. He sings:
Sing me to sleep
I don’t want to wake up
On my own anymore…
I really want to go
There is another world
There is a better world
Well, there must be.
Don’t be sad, they plead. We love you. It is a spectacle; a crowd of adoring fans begging their idol to cheer up, to please know he is beautiful and loveable. It’s sad, really. Viewing the scene played out, one is left unsure of who is being ironic, who really believes the words their crooner delivers, and who just came to enjoy some music.
His music is not nearly as unique as his persona and it is important to mention. Robert Smith of the Cure, Ian Curtis of Joy Division, even Bono of U2 are somehow representative of their respective bands. They fit. But in all reality Morrissey sings like a lounge singer--a soulful, deep croon— but that of a lounge singer nonetheless. Now that I think of it, he kind of looks like one, too.
Despite the transparency and overt irony, Morrissey’s popularity increases proportionately to literacy. Bookish men adore him; they see themselves in him, hoping to be embraced for their impotence as he is. Yet largely they are not. It is no accident that indie-rock darlings have embraced him as pater familias. Morrissey is part of a broader shift in masculinity, a willing undermining of the role of men in society. It can be seen in the characters played by John Cusack and Zach Braff, in romantic comedies where mix-tapes make everything ok, where novelty songs are shared like Shakespeare’s Sonnets or Keats’ “Ode to Melancholy” was in generations past.
For modern men it is not the love of a female that we desire, but their recognition of our sensitivity, of the deep pool of feelings just below the surface. Yet is not sadness that men immerse themselves in, not sorrow they breathe deeply, but irony—corrosive, pointless irony. They aren’t feeling or saying anything. I get the feeling that neither is Morrissey.
RFW: Writing About The Popular Arts
9 April 2009
I wanted to write about something that I don't like liking. Here you go.
Half A Person
I have never known how to talk with people about Morrissey. And you’d be surprised how often he comes up in conversation. Actually, maybe you wouldn’t. The conversations usually go one of two ways: the person hates Morrissey, calls the fan an idiot or something slightly more derogatory, and the conversation ends at that. Or the person loves Morrissey, is thrilled to share the fondness with someone new—they share stories (when they first heard the Smiths, if they had seen Morrissey perform, or how badly they wish they’d seen the Smiths). These conversations are largely fruitless; no new insight is shared; we learn nothing substantial. But Morrissey is a very unique specimen in popular music and most certainly a jumping off point for many larger issues of contemporary culture. He poses questions that few listeners presumably consider. What do we consider masculine today? What is a performer’s image’s relation to his art? How does Morrissey transcend class, national, age, and political boundaries? Is he a modern figure? Post-Modern? Why him?
Let me preface that when I refer to Morrissey’s music I am referring to him as both the singer of the Smiths and as solo artist. Distinctions are to be made, certainly, but for this examination will not be. By all intensive purposes, Morrissey is the same person he was twenty-five years ago—a little fatter, a little grey around the ears, but still the same. I will also disregard his politics, both American and English, and his extreme veganism. (He won’t play shows where meat is served backstage. His tour help is required to eat entirely vegetarian, usually vegan, to the extent that all flights are booked for employees and vegetarian meals specified for their in-flight meal.)
He presents himself as the shell of, what in a different time would have been, a virile, beast of a man. He is striking: hair swooped back and over, broad, full shoulders and the strong, distinguished chin. Despite his best efforts, he is not fragile looking. He is not the creation of record company marketing; he is his own product, one more literary than rock and roll.
In this way he is transparent. This transparency does not turn people off. Rather it allows them to embrace him as their own. Everyone gets sad, and Morrissey is the sad people’s man.
Morrissey is a conscious amalgam of popular myth and archetype. He is the product of all modernity: Ernest Hemingway’s Nick Adams and Jake Barnes, the doomed youth of the contemporary Byronic Hero—Elvis, Buddy Holly, James Dean, John Lennon, and John F. Kennedy—, and the ironic wit and flamboyance of Oscar Wilde. He knows from the books he has read what a broken man should be like, a man who carries the weight of modernity on his shoulders, a man without faith.
The autobiography in his lyrics is Kafka-esque; he is the hunger artist, a man so beautiful and perfect that there must be something bigger keeping him from finding the love he needs, the love he has always wanted but never found, the sustenance he burns for. In a world of sexual deviance as masculine exhibition and female exhibition as orthodox gentility, Morrissey’s asexuality leaves him stranded, an island in a sea of nothingness. He is an echo: I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each./I do not think that they will sing to me.
Or maybe he is just that narcissistic.
Whatever it is, fans devour this persona. During live performances Morrissey is known to dispose of several sweat-soaked shirts, to tear them from his body and fling them to the fawning crowd. Both men and women clamor over each other, ripping the garments to shreds. They bring flowers for their beloved Adonis. It is now customary for attendees to rush the stage, dodge security, and embrace their sad, mournful icon. He sings:
Sing me to sleep
I don’t want to wake up
On my own anymore…
I really want to go
There is another world
There is a better world
Well, there must be.
Don’t be sad, they plead. We love you. It is a spectacle; a crowd of adoring fans begging their idol to cheer up, to please know he is beautiful and loveable. It’s sad, really. Viewing the scene played out, one is left unsure of who is being ironic, who really believes the words their crooner delivers, and who just came to enjoy some music.
His music is not nearly as unique as his persona and it is important to mention. Robert Smith of the Cure, Ian Curtis of Joy Division, even Bono of U2 are somehow representative of their respective bands. They fit. But in all reality Morrissey sings like a lounge singer--a soulful, deep croon— but that of a lounge singer nonetheless. Now that I think of it, he kind of looks like one, too.
Despite the transparency and overt irony, Morrissey’s popularity increases proportionately to literacy. Bookish men adore him; they see themselves in him, hoping to be embraced for their impotence as he is. Yet largely they are not. It is no accident that indie-rock darlings have embraced him as pater familias. Morrissey is part of a broader shift in masculinity, a willing undermining of the role of men in society. It can be seen in the characters played by John Cusack and Zach Braff, in romantic comedies where mix-tapes make everything ok, where novelty songs are shared like Shakespeare’s Sonnets or Keats’ “Ode to Melancholy” was in generations past.
For modern men it is not the love of a female that we desire, but their recognition of our sensitivity, of the deep pool of feelings just below the surface. Yet is not sadness that men immerse themselves in, not sorrow they breathe deeply, but irony—corrosive, pointless irony. They aren’t feeling or saying anything. I get the feeling that neither is Morrissey.
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