Move Me

[EDIT: Carpenters video posted at the end now]

As a counselor, my theoretical orientation is Solution-focused Brief Therapy. That is, they made us pick a theory and run with it. I actually find that Narrative therapy resonates more with me (don't gasp), but I found the idea of doing it in my second language too daunting.

I like SFBT quite a bit though.

Turns out there's an even briefer approach:


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Let's zip down the rabbit hole a bit, shall we?

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The first time I heard the song "All Things Must Pass" by George Harrison was in 1996, as I was leaning over the computer, writing something (again, don't gasp).

It's a demo version, just voice and guitar, from the third volume in The Beatles Anthology. It stopped me completely, this stark voice singing, "None of life's strings can last." It was so sad, so resigned, yet so wistful, and so George. I was in tears before it was over.

Harrison recorded that version on his 26th birthday. Of course, it went on to be the title track of his acclaimed solo album.

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What art has moved you?

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Music that sent me into therapy, part 1: After the Fall by Mary Coughlan. I can do heavy. Heavy heavy heavy. Fast, slow, sludgy, hateful, screaming... I can sit through metal of the most brutal variety.

But listening to these baker's dozen chamber ballads about wrecked dreams and unraveling seams, I lost it. Coughlan is very Irish, and easily the darkest vocalist I've ever encountered. I dove head-first into the music, taking a trip to some of the most perilous emotional places I've ever visited. Okay, I had some other stuff going on, but Coughlan wasn't exactly a bright and cheery soundtrack. Boom, I hit the therapist's couch. It was 1997.

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Thing is, I got a "best of" compilation of hers quite some time ago. Toland sent it to me, I believe.

And... I can't. I can't play it. I'm scared to. Here it sits, as yet unplayed. Send me the newest CD by Cannibal Corpse and I'm cool. Mary Coughlan shakes me up too much though.

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Wolfboy is quite fond of ranking things. He wants me to rank my favorite superheroes, favorite this or that. And he will sometimes ask who my favorite band is.

It's not an easy question.

But I tell him that the musician who has brought me the most joy over the course of my whole life is almost certainly BB King. I can remember listening to him when I was 3. I don't think I'd be who I am without him.

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Books... Steinbeck. It starts with Steinbeck, period. He's the Great American Voice, the man who captured the dust bowl days, the hopelessness, the humor, the tragic character flaws, the wobble in our ellipse.

Larry Brown, however, remains the voice in my head. In my mind, this is what I wanted to accomplish in my stint as a novelist. I failed--so sue me. I aimed damn high.

He... speaks my language. Southern "grit lit," right? That's what they call it. It's smart and earthen and flawed, the product of willful talent, not some slick writing program. Art always belongs to the people, no matter how rarefied the pinnacles of achievement.

And that was Brown, period. Check out On Fire.

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I try to have taste, but it doesn't always pan out.

That is, several years ago, while leaving the Museo del Prado in Madrid, I saw a print of The Triumph of Death by Pieter Bruegel the Elder. I insisted on going back into the museum to the see original, as we'd somehow missed it.

And there it was, this dark, chaotic landscape full of skeletal death-soldiers, slaughtering the living, covering the landscape with corpses. It's primitive and fearful and akin to folk art. It was painted in 1562.

I bought two prints. One I gave to a dear, sweet coworker whose very burps make canaries chuckle. What the hell I was thinking I don't know; she looked at me like I'd lost my mind, and perhaps I had.

I framed the other print, and it sits in a closet to this day. Where exactly does one hang such a print?

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Music that sent me into therapy, part 2: "Let it Be" by the Beatles. Yep. The song. I'm sure this world is full of folks for whom this song has great emotional resonance. I'm one of them. Maybe you are too.

I remember so clearly that day in 2003. I was in downtown Dallas, maybe on a lunch break from my hellish job at BACS. It was on the radio. I knew I was taking a chance by sitting through it in a mood such as mine.

And it rattled me, just like I feared it would. I spent six months on the therapist's couch that time. BACS paid the bill, every penny.

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I could go on and on, but it's getting late. I'll wrap up, though, with a nod to Charles Bukowski. His writing's not antiquated Beat poetry. He's not a caricature, not some empty voice from inside a bottle. His writing stripped out all pretense. He cut everything to its core.

During my undergrad years at UT, I enjoyed the downtime between classes. I'd often hit the library on campus and dive into one of his books, occasionally managing to read one in its entirety before my next lecture. I'd emerge in a daze, like I'd been in some other world. And I had. It was terrific, and it taught me a lot about what good writing is. I don't know if it manifests itself in the slightest in my own words, but it became a key component of what I seek in an author.

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It's late and I'm tired, and I've probably put you to sleep by now. But if there's anything you'd like to add, any sort of art that moved you in some meaningful way, I'd love to read your input.

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Good night.

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