she must be tired of something…

It’s in Counting Crows’ mythology now: their first-ever appearance on Saturday Night Live, with the producers pressuring them to play “Mr. Jones” during their first segment on the show. Vocalist Adam Duritz held firm, though, and the band opened with the first track of August and Everything After, “Round Here.” Duritz was adamant that “Round Here” better represented what the band was all about, no matter what the NBC execs said, and he ended up getting his way.

Step out the front door like a ghost into the fog
where no one notices the contrast of white on white
and in between the moon and you
the angels get a better view
of the crumbling difference between wrong and right

Duritz has said repeatedly that “Mr. Jones” is a song about his dreams, while “Round Here” is nearly perfect in its depiction of longing and loneliness. I’ve always believed he was right in insisting that the band play the latter song first; it also set an unshakeable example that the band would do things its own way, even at the risk of the lust for stardom that fills every second of “Mr. Jones.” They might not have won many friends among the SNL crew that night in 1993, but they took charge of their career in a way that few bands ever do…and they never looked back. “This is our life,” Duritz reportedly said that night, and while he might have been mocked at the time for his seriousness, his will and his instincts would not be denied. And so America met one of its truly great bands through a poetic, meandering song about characters lost in this maze we call life, characters who might seem dead inside but reveal through the very force of their longing and loneliness that they may be damaged but remain very much alive. “We all want something beautiful,” Duritz sang in “Mr. Jones.” “Man I wish I was beautiful.”

but the girl in the car in the parking lot
says “Man you should try to take a shot
Can’t you see my walls are crumbling?”
then she looks up at the building
says she’s thinking of jumping
she says she’s tired of life
she must be tired of something

It didn’t hurt matters, of course, that August and Everything After was a truly perfect debut album, pitch perfect in every way. Produced by T-Bone Burnett and featuring backing vocals by Maria McKee of the band Lone Justice (who had a hit in the eighties with the Tom Petty song “Ways to be Wicked”), the band recorded the album in a house in the Hollywood Hills. The idea of such a collective had been explored before, of course, most notably by the Band, who recorded the classic Songs From Big Pink in a similar home studio. Still, it’s hard to say if anyone has ever done it better. The band lived and worked together for months, and ended up creating the perfect album for lonely people everywhere. And since we’re all lonely at one time or another, that means everyone, right?

There’s an ache that permeates August and Everything After, sometimes dull, sometimes sharp, always present. It’s an album that you might cry to if you’re so inclined, but it’s also a celebration of life in all its triumphs and shortcomings. Written and recorded with great care and love, it has become timeless in the twenty years or so since its release. It’s been a difficult debut to live up to, but the journey which followed has been well worth the twists, turns, missteps, and occasional spot-on beauty. No band could ever recreate an album such as August; Counting Crows haven’t even tried. It’s better that way, of course: the only way to retain any sort of viable and meaningful career is through constant experimentation and reinvention. That Counting Crows have succeeded so well is a credit to their collective genius; here’s hoping that Adam Duritz never forgets how it felt when he sang, “We’re gonna be big stars…”

“the last thing that you said as you were leaving…”

The morning I left Pennsylvania, I drove south without looking back. There was no final, bittersweet, last visit to the pub. There was no final walk through the town. There was no final look at the Penn State campus, with people just beginning to realize their dreams. There were no goodbyes; there was no one to say goodbye to. I left the same way I arrived: with a car full of books and clothes, and a mind full of hopes, ideas, ambitions, and dreams. I left with little; I left with the things I came with. I left with the things which can never be taken away.

So now I’m going back again
I got to get to her somehow
All the people we used to know
they’re an illusion to me now
some are mathematicians
some are carpenters wive’s
don’t know how it all got started
I don’t know what they’re doing with their lives
but me I’m still on the road
heading for another joint
we always did feel the same
we just saw it from a different point of view
tangled up in blue*

If you’re busy enough and manage to distract yourself enough, you can convince yourself that you’re not homesick and that you don’t miss the people that you love. At least, not that badly. There’s always a holiday coming up, some time off from work, a long weekend to look forward to. There’s always something to hold onto. But someday, no matter how strong you are, those dates on the calendar are no longer enough. You need to see them more often: the people that you love. And when it comes to children, you cannot help but wonder: do they still love you? I thought about that as I was leaving…and I realized that I just didn’t know.

I can’t remember the last thing you said as you were leaving
and the days go by so fast**

Through Maryland and West Virginia I wondered. As I finally entered Kentucky, I still wondered. I didn’t know if my sons would welcome me back to Lexington, or if they would view my return as another retreat and failure. But this time, I had a story to tell and a book to write, and it wasn’t going to be written in Pennsylvania. I was coming home with a purpose, and that, I hoped, they would understand. If I was to become the writer I always wanted to be, first I had to come home.

Hemingway, in A Moveable Feast, wrote that distance is essential in writing of closely held emotions and experiences: “…in one place you could write about it better than in another. That was called transplanting yourself…and it could be as necessary with people as with other sorts of growing things.”

Substitute emotional distance for geographic distance, though, and you essentially accomplish the same thing. The key for any writer is maturity, perspective, and command of your material. That I have. So it really doesn’t matter if I write in Pennsylvania, Kentucky, or Katmandu. I remember the old question: who, after all, is a writer? One who writes…of course. We make this alchemy seem too complicated sometimes, I think. Words turn into pages turn into chapters into books. It’s not that difficult, is it?

No. It’s really not. And it’s much easier when you can simply drive across town and spend time with the people that you love.

*Bob Dylan, “Tangled Up in Blue” (from the album Blood On The Tracks)

**Counting Crows, “A Long December” (from the album Recovering the Satellites)

“I don’t go out much these days…”

There are still times when I am perfectly content to stay inside all day, ensconced in an enforced solitude that is as much withdrawn as it is literary. I’m sure it’s very difficult for most “normal” people to understand, but there are days when the mere act of venturing into the world is more than a little…frightening. I know at these times that I’m becoming withdrawn; I know it and yet there are times when I can do very little about it.

Don’t wake me, cause I was dreamin’
And I might just stay inside
I don’t go out much these days
Sometimes I stay inside all day*

The odd fact is that I can be incredibly productive on such days; office work seems to take very little time at all, and my literary work sometimes assumes a new music and poetry. Somehow it seems easier to concentrate, to focus, to think, to write, to create, to produce. Which doesn’t mean that I don’t become…lonely…on such days. I do, sometimes very much. Sometimes I reach out to someone, usually with only mixed success. But there are days, though (still), when all I want to do is sleep. There are still days when all I want to be is dead to the world.

You wouldn’t think it would require such great effort to accomplish one of the simplest things in life, that of venturing out into the world. But sometimes it does, and all I can do is force myself to keep going. I don’t always succeed, but I do try. And yet there are still times when I must say: “I don’t go out much these days…”

*Counting Crows, “Miller’s Angels” (from the album Recovering the Satellites, 1996)

“just yesterday she was here…”

Everyone disappears. Everyone runs. Nothing lasts forever. Sometimes things end before they’ve even begun. And only the few, the very, very few, even bother to say goodbye.

I understand that everyone goes disappearing,
into the greatest grey
that covers over everyday,
and hovers in the distance and the distance and the distance…*

Maybe goodbye is the cruelest word of all. I’m not sure; I just know that there have been many times when I needed to hear it. Without a goodbye you can remain for years–even decades–in the moment of parting, the hurt so fresh it feels that it will never go away.

Sometimes I go out for an errand and forget my phone, and foolishly think I’ll have missed a call by the time I get home. So I pick it up from the table or kitchen counter, power it on, and stare a second in disappointment at the blank screen. It’s funny, I think. Maybe if I stare at it long enough a call will suddenly materialize; maybe the phone will even ring while I hold it in my hand. But it never does. Of course, it never does.

You would think I would go slightly…daft…after a while. Start talking to myself or something. But no: I read, write, listen to music, play guitar, and when I have the nerve and feel like it, even go to the pub. But I’m not going to the pub much these days…

Who knows? Perhaps tomorrow will be different somehow. Perhaps I’ll feel better; I might even feel like going to the pub. But I’ll carry with me memories of all the disappeared. They’re not here, of course, but they’ve never really gone away.

*Counting Crows, “Up All Night” (from the album Hard Candy, 2003)