Well, I said we should be ready to change our minds. I said anyone who could see how wrong we’ve been should be convinced of that.

Turns out I was wrong. Well, I suppose we don’t get to know, but I’m saying I was wrong. I’ve come up with something I like better. Even if it’s rather strange.

I’m talking about my interpretation of Josh Ritter’s song Monster Ballads off the album The Animal Years. It’s been a revelatory week around here, all put in motion by one insightful reader. All put in motion by one little four-letter word.

To recap where we are:

I wrote a post called “Complicated unities” about the cryptic and beloved song Monster Ballads in early October. I’m not going to link to it here because you shouldn’t read it if you haven’t already. Not yet, anyway.

A week ago ritterwriter stopped by and left a comment—it’s up—in which she politely took issue with some of my points. When I read her thoughts I knew she was on a very good track. As I pondered it I suddenly saw a new meaning for the fateful word around which much of my former analysis had turned . . .

And that correction of course set off another extraordinary journey. From the Mississippi River and the mining camps of the Nevada Territory in one century . . . to a sweaty wayside dance hall in Ireland in the next . . . to a wandering, worried, wondering soul hurtling down a ribboned desert highway in the one after that. Do you have the strength? I barely did. But here we go.

[<< REWIND.] Track 3. Play.

First verse.

Radio waves are coming miles and miles
Bringing only empty boats
Whatever feeling they had when they sailed
Somehow slipped out between the notes

A ghostly, mysterious, foreboding image. Empty boats summoned by radio waves, drifting aimlessly, robbed of feeling, purpose, passion. It slipped out between the . . . notes? They can’t be only boats. I don’t think anything is one thing only is this song, let’s be clear. Let’s see, there’s radio . . . and notes. Music.

Next is the chorus, which we’ll get to:

Out on the desert now and feeling lost
The bonnet wears a wire albatross
Monster ballads and the stations of the cross
Sighing just a little bit, Sighing just a little bit

. . . But first we need the second verse and some history for some important clues.

Second verse.

And I was thinking ’bout what Katy done
Thinking ’bout what Katy did
The fairest daughter of the Pharaoh’s son
Dressed in gold ‘neath pyramids

.
Steamboats

In 1858, as the Civil War loomed, the man who would later be widely recognized as America’s greatest writer was at work learning every bend of the Mississippi River. Samuel Clemens (who became Mark Twain), twenty-two years old, was nearing completion of his steamboat pilot apprenticeship and eagerly awaiting the day he could collect the licensed pilot’s handsome salary of $250 a month. He’d always known the river: he’d passed his boyhood in the port city of Hannibal, Missouri, where every boy’s most fervent and enduring wish was to be a steamboatman, and each day was brought to life and then left for dead with the arrival and departure of the daily packet from St. Louis. Piloting a riverboat was a dream come true.

August of 1858 also marked an historic event: the very first transatlantic telegram was sent via under-the-sea cable from Queen Victoria to President Buchanan. Twain, ever enthused by new technology, later recalled, “[a] wave of jubilation and astonishment . . . swept the planet.” (MTE, 10) Passengers would have had lots of company if they wanted to discuss the exciting news: the heavily freighted steamboats navigated a crowded river. They were enjoying the final of their glory days.

The outbreak of the Civil War ended Twain’s pilot career, but it was the greatest source of nostalgia throughout his extraordinary life. In his middle and old age he longed for the river, saying if given the chance to live his life over he’d never leave it. In letters he reminisced about the hot rolls served at supper, the fragrant coffee coming through the pilot house door on a steward’s tray, the red-faced, sweating, swearing first mate and the tumbling deck hands, the bells that clanged through one’s slumber.

With the invention of wireless telegraphy, or radio, at the end of the nineteenth century, boats gained a way to communicate with each other and those on shore. But once radio operators had begun traveling on ships—in the early 1900s—the Mississippi was a far different place than it was when Samuel Clemens was a cub pilot. Boats had vanished from the levees, once-bustling passenger decks were empty. Twain himself accepted this mournful truth back in 1882, when he famously returned to research his book Life on the Mississippi. He wrote

Half a dozen sound-asleep steamboats where I used to see a solid mile of wide-awake ones! This was melancholy, this was woful. The absence of the pervading and jocund steamboatman from the billiard room was explained. He was absent because he is no more. His occupation is gone . . . Here was desolation, indeed. (LM, 172)

What was to blame?

As Twain writes [emphasis mine]:

The towboat and the railroad had done their work, and done it well and completely. The mighty bridge, stretching along over our heads, had done its share in the slaughter and spoliation. . . .

. . . Mississippi steamboating was born about 1812; at the end of thirty years, it had grown to mighty proportions; and in less than thirty more, it was dead! A strangely short life for so majestic a creature. (LM, 173)

One particular railroad began a historic service to open up the remote Indian Territory to and through Texas when the Missouri-Kansas-Texas Railroad, known as the MKT, or Katy, was christened in 1870. Railroad fever was everywhere—there was a race on to offer transcontinental service, and the evolving feasibility of western migration fired imaginations. In 1873 the Katy acquired the Hannibal & Central Missouri Railroad, which had been leased previously by another company that serviced the track from Hannibal through Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio. Katy supervised the traffic on these tracks until 1897.

The fairest daughter of the Pharaoh’s son
Dressed in gold ‘neath pyramids

Egypt. A descendant of . . . Moses? Well, Katy did set off into the unknown, lending a hand in leading a young America into what it considered (albeit unfairly) a promised land of sorts.

And she went east out of Hannibal too, leading her passengers through a sluicing sea . . .
.

.
The bridge in the foreground is the Mark Twain Memorial Bridge, built over the Mississippi in 2000. The harbinger of slaughter and spoliation behind it—half a mile away—is the Wabash Bridge, built for the railroad in Twain’s hometown of Hannibal, Missouri, in 1871.

And pyramids . . . indeed.

Showbands
(Bear with me here.)

In the 1950s, one hundred years after the majestic steamboats ruled the Mississippi, the stage was being set for a musical phenomenon to sweep the dance halls and ballrooms of Ireland. It’d be an act never replicated in any other country, likely helped along by the media vacuum that existed on the island. It’d be how future stars like Van Morrison and Rory Gallagher would get their start. They’d have names like The Clipper Carlton and The Royal. They were showbands, formed through the combined influences of 1) big bands and orchestras, which were more prevalent in urban areas and performers of popular hits of the day and 2) céilí (pronounced “kay-lee”) bands, which performed native Celtic music.

Their venues were often simple barn-like structures on the outskirts of town, destinations often reached by carpool or bicycle. The Catholic Church’s strong hold over social customs propelled the dance halls and ballrooms to a crucial status in town and village life; they were the most popular place for people to meet. Men stood on one side, women on the other, waiting for an invitation to dance. In his 1972 short story The Ballroom of Romance, William Trevor writes this about a night at the fictitious eponymous hall:

Dust and cigarette smoke formed a haze beneath the crystal bowl, feet thudded, girls shrieked and laughed, some of them dancing together for want of a male partner. The music was loud, the musicians had taken off their jackets. Vigorously they played a number of tunes from State Fair and then, more romantically, ‘Just One of Those Things.’

The showband era is a cherished and nostalgic one for many, but one wouldn’t want to suggest raising a glass to the showbands if she were to bump into, say, Bono in the pub. The rock music documentary Out of Ireland (distributed as From a Whisper to a Scream in the UK) disposes of the showbands in a handful of minutes after the opening credits, but not before a series of rockers and other industry luminaries try to do outdo one another with their insults.

Bono says this

Showband music was just—It was the enemy.

Criticism stems from the bands’ lack of creativity and innovation, for in their prime the showbands mostly covered popular hits of the day—often American ones. Irish musician and activist Bob Geldorf charges the showbands merely with arresting any and all progress in Irish music during their reign, praising his countrymen for the gymnastics required to overcome the disaster:

Socially the showbands were important. Musically, and every other which way, they were a death, which is why contemporary Irish music took so long to develop. And it came out of the Irish tradition, vaulting over the years of desert—the desert years of the showbands. It vaulted over because it’s a strong, true music.

So, the showbands were “an appalling travesty,” Geldorf concludes. (Did he just say desert?) And just to drive home a delicate point—

The showbands were CRAP!

They were at their height in the early-to-mid ’60s, just as Ireland began opening up to the rest of the world. The RTÉ One television station was founded. The Beatles arrived and the music industry took a jolt. People began to buy records. In 1962, The Royal recorded the very first showband single, a cover of an American bluegrass standard penned in the same year. Tom Dunphy sang the vocals.

Know what it was?

Come Down the Mountain Katy Daly
.

[photos credit: www.irish-showbands.com]

The record sleeve above doesn’t mention The Royal Showband, but you’ll find it on this page dedicated to that band on the enthusiastic and rather fabulous irish-showbands website. I know the spelling is Katie, but you’ll see that Katy was the original spelling, and that’s how it’s listed on the showbands website.

And I was thinking ’bout what Katy done
Thinking ’bout what Katy did
The fairest daughter of the Pharaoh’s son
Dressed in gold ‘neath pyramids

See this discussion for the lyrics (and information about the spellings and origin) of Katy Daly. The words do conjure an image of Moses (ie daughter of the Pharaoh’s son). Come down the mountain, a “judge” sentencing her. Next time you’re in Belfast, you could have a drink here.

I know this whole line of investigation may sound mad but at its heart is this: while we follow Mark Twain in his journey in Monster Ballads, I think we follow someone in this century too. While the train Katy was responsible for weakening Twain’s beloved steamboats, and is therefore a touch point for nostalgia and loss and longing, I wonder if Katy the record may be a symbol for something about the showband era that may have a relevance today.

So what could Katy the record have done? Could she have kicked the showbands off the circuit, like the trains did the steamboats on the river? To be honest I don’t know anything about that particular recording by The Royal Showband. But the advent of records and radio and television in Ireland did not help the showbands thrive:

From the mid-1960s exposure [in Ireland] increased, especially in urban centres, to newer forms of rock and pop music, performed by original artists. This was due to access to British television and radio stations, pirate radio, and new record shops catering to these tastes. Young people increasingly saw showbands as old-fashioned and rustic.

Maybe Katy, as symbol for copycat music, held up the condemning mirror that would end the drought of originality in Irish music. And as Bob Geldorf explains, Irish rock music would heed the call, finding its voice despite the showbands. In a moment I’ll talk more about the notion of voice in this song.

But before we go on I think it’s only fair to add that the film Out of Ireland has wonderful footage of showband performances that captures packed ballrooms of smiling, jostling, shoulder-to-shoulder patrons, ready to dance. Quite simply, it seems showbands knew how to perform, how to entertain. How to provide an opportunity to escape, and connect. Everyone can at least agree they had a significant social influence. Mentions of showbands are often accompanied by just how many people they touched: the huge and regular audiences, the explosion of constantly-touring bands. Their hallmark was passion, perhaps their major contribution to history rebelling against the more dignified disposition of the big bands. I wasn’t there, I’m no music history expert, but from what I’ve seen and read, it all seems quite—honest.

And it all reminds me—the passion and joy and professionalism and suits and squeaky-clean smiles—(just a little) of some wonderful concerts I’ve seen by a singer-songwriter (or rocker, or front man, or whatever he’s going by) that I rather like.

So there’s a little part of me that doesn’t want this (albeit precarious) connection to the showbands to be entirely critical. I wonder about the parallel of then and now with regard to isolation, the need to connect with one another, and the change brought about by the media. In the next section I’ll explain my thoughts on commentary about the digital age in this song. I love that the showbands put on such a grand, interactive show, and going to see them was, for a certain time in a certain place, woven into the fabric of everyday life. I wish I could go just once, whatever Bono says. Actually I wish we all went more often, like they did back then.

And as long as we’re in Ireland and talking about radio and performance, I’ve got one more thought on the identity of Katy. You know her, that girl famously declared the Northern Lights. She was a big hit in Ireland, as far as I understand, on the radio and everything. She’s a showstopper if you go see Josh Ritter live. I don’t know much about his early career, but it seems like the song Kathleen has done some very good things.

Whatever or whoever she is, Katy’s dressed in gold ‘neath pyramids. Note the showband record sleeve above is gold.

And would you humor me all the way here:

.

.
That’s the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, located in Cleveland, Ohio. They’ve got an exhibit called The Roots of Rock that has a section called Country/Folk/Bluegrass. They’ve also got an exhibit called Hang on Sloopy: The Music of Ohio. Remember Katy Daly is an American bluegrass standard, and know the man who wrote it, Paul “Moon” Mullins, was recently honored for his long-standing radio career in Ohio.

I suspect they’ve got lots of records there—gold, platinum, the lot.

And pyramids.

Chorus & bridge.

Out on the desert now and feeling lost
The bonnet wears a wire albatross
Monster ballads and the stations of the cross
Sighing just a little bit, Sighing just a little bit

Ones and zeros bleeding mesa noise
And when you’re empty there’s so much space for them
You turn it off but then a still small voice
Comes in blazing from some vast horizon

I am still inclined to find a meaning for Sam Clemens here. He ended up out on the desert after he left the Mississippi River in 1861. He traveled west in a Concord stagecoach (in which the bonnet wore a wire albatross?) with his incredibly straight-laced brother, Orion, who had employment in the Nevada Territory. Sam didn’t have employment, and he didn’t want it. But he was by no means free of ambition, or pressure:

But of two things [Clemens] was certain. One: he had no intention of following one of the usual professions, such as law. . . . Two: he was not going home until he was rich, even if that took more than three months. Fortunes were to be made. He wanted one. And the eyes of the homefolk were on him. He would not return without the wealth that would prove him estimable in their eyes. (SMK, 93-4)

Silver had been discovered in nearby Virginia City in 1859, and an excited and optimistic Clemens flew headlong into the mining business, investing the modest capital he had and traveling long distances between mining towns:

[For the first three months of 1862] his mind was almost entirely on ledges, ledges in Humbolt, Virginia City, and Aurora: how many feet could be bought at what price with what promise of return. (SMK, 95)

Ones, zeros, dollar signs flooding his thoughts from the mountains, the mesas, the desert. He didn’t strike silver or gold. Instead he got homesick, exhausted, frustrated, blistered and broke. And feeling lost, presumably. While mining he’d somehow found time to write and send in two letters using the curious pen name “Josh” (yep) to a local newspaper, and he finally gave up and in and reported—dusty and disheveled—to the Virginia City Territorial Enterprise in September 1862. Staff writer. Though the banality of daily local news left him uninspired, nineteenth century journalism allowed for the blurring of fiction and non-fiction, seriousness and satire.

Clemens seized that opportunity, and into the lines of the goings-on in a rather wild frontier town, a voice—small, for now—began to settle into a register. In February 1863 he woke up after a late-night party and signed his first article Mark Twain. That year he poked fun at himself (though he had certainly not sworn off investing or hoping for return) by announcing to his increasingly amused readers that he’d founded the “Unreliable, Auriferous, Argentiferous, Metaliferous Mining Company.” (L1, 252)

But he was not free from hardship: it followed him to San Francisco, where he was fired from a journalism job and spent some months “dead broke,” clinging to one desperate dime to avoid destitution. He later spoke vaguely of a suicide attempt. When his buddy Steve Gillis got into a barroom fight, Twain posted $500 bail. The police soon came for Gills, and both men fled town. They ended up in a rustic bachelor-pad cabin in the middle of the Sierra foothills where “hygiene and cuisine were minimal.” (SMK, 129). The men lazily panned for gold by day. Twain did too, but he was no longer convinced of or obsessed with his ability to strike it rich.

Instead he began keeping a regular journal that bore the unmistakable markings of the writer’s notebook. The biographer Fred Kaplan says this happened on Jackass Hill:

For the first time . . . Twain’s observations were tempered by and mediated through a literary self-consciousness, a sense of self that he had not had before. (SMK, 128)

Twain first heard and sketched a very important story for his career in that cabin. My favorite image is that of him laughing to himself as he wrote by firelight—quiet and calm and free of the urge to join the others outside digging for gold—a funny story about a jumping frog that would introduce a border ruffian to readers on the East Coast. Despite what happened to Michael Lewis, someday I’d like to visit Mark Twain on Jackass Hill.

But back to the twenty-first century.

Out on the desert now and feeling lost
The bonnet wears a wire albatross
Monster ballads and the stations of the cross
Sighing just a little bit, Sighing just a little bit

Ones and zeros bleeding mesa noise
And when you’re empty there’s so much space for them
You turn it off but then a still small voice
Comes in blazing from some vast horizon

Someone is lost, sighing, empty—echoing the empty boats in the first verse. Turn off the noise and in blazes a still small voice.

Bonnet, if you take the UK meaning—automobile hood—places one in the car. Perhaps the wire albatross—which can be defined as something burdensome— related to the radio. My last interpretation of Monster ballads and the stations of the cross relied heavily on a biblical meaning; lately it feels a little like a red herring. Perhaps it’s all he can find on the radio of his car—there are organ pieces called Stations of the Cross. (In September I’m afraid I even bought this CD. Perhaps I’ll do a giveaway.) Ballad is a loaded word in the history of music and radio. I like the idea of stations of the cross referring to the notion that station is a word meaningful for both radio and train.

And I do hear a meaning for Twain: his days out west were wild (monster ballads), his courtship of a devout heiress (and future wife) marked by fervent spiritual awakening (stations of the cross). He’d be lost and found all over that map in his life.

Mesa is where I think I went slightly wrong last time. I read it as being the manufacturer of guitar amps of the same name. I know, it doesn’t sound likely, but I read that mysterious refrain Monster ballads and the stations of the cross as being two extremes, as an either-or choice. The mesa noise paired with the Monster ballads songs—it seemed acceptable to link hard rock with noise—and the still small voice with stations of the cross.

But then, as I’ve said, a clever reader left a comment saying this

In the context of 1 Kings 19:11-12, I picture computers and televisions and cellphones and all other digital noise (ones and zeros) as the great, flashy, sometimes destructive forces that seem so important (the wind, the earthquake, the fire), and the ringing silence when all that is shut out as the still small voice, the truly essential and beautiful element of faith, music, life.

And suddenly I saw this

00000000000000000000000111111111111111110000000000000000000000000 00000000000000000000000111111111111111110000000000000000000000000 00000000000000000000011111111111111111111100000000000000000000000 00000000000000000001111111111111111111111111000000000000000000000 00000000000000000111111111111111111111111111110000000000000000000 00000000000000011111111111111111111111111111111100000000000000000 00000000000001111111111111111111111111111111111111000000000000000 00000000000111111111111111111111111111111111111111110000000000000 00000000011111111111111111111111111111111111111111111100000000000 00000001111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111000000000 00000111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111110000000

And I thought, Huh. A mesa. And then I thought . . . Duh.

Given this piece I’m going to go with mesa noise referring to the radio, and by extension, music. Here’s a simple explanation of how digital radio works. And, while God is indeed (and often) somewhere, I’m going to favor the still small voice as referring first to that of the creative spirit of the conflicted or searching or embattled—show me one who isn’t—artist.

So.

So.

That’s my best guess at what it all means, but of course that still leaves what it all means.

Today, for me, in light of the above . . . I think the words and images and dual narratives go to the heart of the artistic journey: to the sacrifices, the challenges, the doubt, the resilience required (and the magic that can happen) when the river gets pulled out from underneath you, or it feels like nobody’s noticing. It’s likely this song turns a critical eye on the music that’s getting played on the radio. Those empty boats in the first verse could be songs.

The refrain of being out on the desert now and feeling lost makes me think of this quote in which Josh Ritter talks about the selection of the album name The Animal Years:

I was thinking back on the period of my life leading up to this record and my experience up to that point was, you get up, you start to play music and you tour. It’s such a strange life style. In a lot of ways I felt like I became this thing, half-man, half-animal, out in the middle of the country, playing. It was so bizarre. Everyone else is living their lives and doing things that are a bit more normal. Man, after a year and a half on the road, 16 months of touring for Hello Starling, I became the proto-hunter-gatherer, going out wherever and doing stuff and trying to find a way to make sense in a human way. But, really, in the end, you’re just trying to get food in your mouth. I think back on that time and feel definitely, those were my animal years.

And here’s what he had to say when he stopped off at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame while on tour for his newest album in October 2007:

The real rock halls of fame are the venues that hundreds of bands pass through each year. These places, from community halls to old vaudeville theaters to tetanus traps in big and small towns across the world are where the real histories are made. These are the places where the house sound guy is cranky, the bartenders come in early and manage to work through hundreds of soundchecks, where guest lists and attendance numbers are haggled over, where posters are hung and taken down and hung again and where people – strangers – come and hang out with each other to listen to music played in the moment by other people. I think these kinds of halls are great enough.

from Nebraska Rock and Roll by Josh Ritter (posted 10/17/2007)
[Check out the picture he posted from the museum.]

I hear a shadow of these sentiments in Monster Ballads. I think about those Irish showbands and the joy of live music and the irony of isolation in this new digital age.

Lastly, for me, this song is certainly about the triumph and perseverance of passion. For that we need the last verse.

Third verse.

And I was thinking ’bout my river days
Thinking ’bout me and Jim
Passing Cairo on a getaway
With every steamboat like a hymn

I forgot to tell you one thing about the steamboats and the showbands, something about that organ we hear in verse 1 and 2 of Monster Ballads. Some steamboats (often called, er, showboats) had a calliope, or steam organ, with which to entertain passengers. You can hear a calliope here. And the showbands, they replaced the pianos reminiscent of the big bands with . . . an organ.

The stripped-down instrumentation of this quiet and exceptionally beautiful last verse gives us pause. We lean in and listen. It is poignant that there is no organ; I think that’s a clue. I wonder about a subtle connection to this song, released in 1963 by The Kingston Trio.

And as for Huck Finn, the narrator of this final verse . . . or is he? Could it be Twain himself? Do you know what Mark Twain did when he got back from that historic and revelatory reunion with his beloved Mississippi? From looking in vain for the steamboats crammed like sardines at the wharf, from saying this about his old friends:

[I can] call their names & see their faces, now: but two decades have done their work upon them, & half are dead, the rest scattered, & the boat’s bones rotting five fathoms deep in Madrid’s Bend. (SMK, 382)

Well, upon Twain’s return home he slogged through the grueling composition of Life on the Mississippi. He hated writing it. After he finished he turned to a manuscript he’d begun all the way back in 1876. And suddenly he was granted a “literary cakewalk,” flying high through the ecstatic completion of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. (SMK, 393)

He successfully—brilliantly—enlivened the river of his boyhood, no matter what had happened to it since. His work—his voice—enabled him to get back and share what he loved so well.

I think that’s one way of trading this

Sighing just a little bit

for this

Smiling just a little bit

As for Huck Finn—just for one last leap—here he is talking about me and Jim:

It’s lovely to live on a raft. We had the sky, up there, all speckled with stars, and we used to lay on our backs and look up at them, and discuss about whether they was made, or only just happened—Jim he allowed they was made, but I allowed they happened; I judged it would have took too long to make so many. Jim said the moon could a laid them; well, that looked kind of reasonable, so I didn’t say nothing against it, because I’ve seen a frog lay most as many, so of course it could be done. We used to watch the stars that fell, too, and see them stream down. Jim allowed they’d got spoiled and was hove out of the nest. (AHF, 179)

Just the other day I remembered a similar partnership:

Me and Jiggs staring at the ceiling the stars above the radar range

A railroad and a record, steamboats and showbands, Cairo and the county line. Katy, Twain, Huck, and Jim. Kathleen, Jiggs, and Josh. Maybe some Irish music history. As my sister says, That’s all I got. I leave it up to you.

But back to Twain’s deserted river one last time:

[I]f Twain hoped to hear his name sung on the river, he was disappointed. [He wrote,] “They do not call in the singing tone at the heaving of the lead as they used to, nor do they sing when leaving port.” (SMK, 386)

This fall Josh Ritter took his show and his extraordinary band on the road. Monster Ballads got slightly rearranged, but it still did every bit what I like to think Josh wrote it to.

We came in off our deserts—streamed in from our tiny cities made of ashes—and took out our ear buds and powered down our phones and held high our cameras and chose for one night a different noise in the theatres and clubs and halls and rooms. A cultural center, a playhouse, a ballroom, showbox, academy, and cafe. From cradle to empire.

Josh thanked us repeatedly for coming, of course.

And we did for him what they didn’t for Twain. We sang our hearts out.

.

.

. .
.

[Postscript]

One does not leap to these sorts of wild conclusions overnight.

If you’re dubious about Twain connections in the album The Animal Years, you may find my post Girl meets Mark Twain interesting.

To see what I had to say after I braved the 400+ pages of Twain’s Mississippi River fantasia . . . and missed (so close!) these Monster Ballads connections altogether, see Reading the Mississippi. There’s a Dr. Seuss mash-up!

Last June I got nostalgic thinking about the final verse of Monster Ballads while I was moving across town—that’s River days.

And to see my previous post on Monster Ballads, which I’m going to leave up, see Complicated unities. It tracks a telling journey and unwittingly illustrates some of the magic of the song.

 

[Edit: 11 December 2007. Since I wrote the below I’ve . . . tweaked my interpretation of Josh Ritter’s song Monster Ballads. You may want to read Desert radio: Monster Ballads revisited first.]

Favorite is a fickle word, but with regard to the songs I know, it flirts shamelessly with Josh Ritter’s Monster Ballads. Months and months ago I went through a troubled time when the world and God and my own heart seemed to be asking too much of me. After some time submerged in grief I began to write, and if music came to the rescue—and it did—Monster Ballads was the rope.

I didn’t know how or what or why, but I kept writing, and when it got hard and I was feeling lost I often listened to The Animal Years, and then returned to and replayed Track 3. Over and over. I didn’t know what the lyrics meant; I didn’t know what I meant to find in my words, but I found I could write them listening to that song. And it took a long time, but things got better.

I once described Monster Ballads as a beautiful ivory canvas proffering a brush. It’s true: it’s confusing. It’s mysterious. But it’s vivid, and so powerful that you don’t need to understand the words. It’s probably too cryptic to fully understand the words. I think the point may very well be that we cannot understand the words.

But it inspires me, and I was curious, so I went on a journey and came home and got out some paint.

Along the way I saw this—

Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot.

“Notice” on page 1 of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain

—and my resolution wavered for a moment. But then I thought, Oh no, Mr. Twain, you would have never heeded such a warning if it got in your way. Of all the things you’ve taught me, that’s my favorite.

And anyway, I think that while the point may be that we can never fully understand the words . . . actually . . . let’s just go already. Track 3. Play.

.

---

---

.
.
Push ‘Play’ and hear a faint, mysterious, electric sound growl and take a swipe at a strong and steady organ . . . that fades and then swells in an unmistakably holy vibrato to put the smooth wood of the pew under your fingers, the stained-glass bejeweled sunshine in your eyes, the dust and stifled coughs in the air, the arms outstretched and slowly descending with the choir, the robe climbing the stairs to the pulpit . . . but enter the single-minded drum and at once see a sanctuary splintered in your mind’s eye, the pieces falling away and the Mississippi River of the mid-nineteenth century—the steamboat’s heyday—rising up to take its place.

In the soothing and steady bass line find the wheel in your hand as you stand high up in the silent pilot house, the river’s most famous and prodigal son returned with watchful eye to see how she has fared. Rise and join the 4am watch so as to catch the singular Mississippi summer sunrise and find it as splendid in 1882 as your memory of your happiest days just over twenty years ago:

First, there is the eloquence of silence; for a deep hush broods everywhere. Next, there is the haunting sense of loneliness, isolation, remoteness from the worry and bustle of the world. The dawn creeps in steathily; the solid walls of black forest soften to gray, and vast stretches of the river open up and reveal themselves; the water is glass-smooth, gives off spectral little wreaths of white mist, there is not the faintest breath of wind, nor stir of leaf; the tranquility is profound and infinitely satisfying. Then a bird pipes up, another follows, and soon the pipings develop into a jubilant riot of music. You see none of the birds; you simply move through an atmosphere of song which seems to sing itself. When the light has become a little stronger, you have one of the fairest and softest pictures imaginable. You have the intense green of the massed and crowded foliage near by; you see it paling shade by shade in front of you; upon the next projecting cape, a mile off or more, the tint has lightened to the tender young green of spring; the cape beyond that one has almost lost color, and the furthest one, miles away under the horizon, sleeps upon the water a mere dim vapor, and hardly separable from the sky above it and about it. And all this stretch of river is a mirror, and you have the shadowy reflections of the leafage and the curving shores and the receding capes pictured in it. Well, that is all beautiful; soft and rich and beautiful; and when the sun gets well up, and distributes a pink flush here and a powder of gold yonder and a purple haze where it will yield the best effect, you grant that you have seen something that is worth remembering. (LM, 228-29)

Squint into the “blank, watery solitude” knowing you are unlikely to come across another vessel, and remark on the impressive, depressing solitude of the “stupendous flood,” yearning for the days when you trained as a cub pilot and the steamboats were crammed like sardines at the wharf. (LM, 198) Remember back even farther to your hometown of Hannibal, Missouri—river town—where every single boy’s most fervent and enduring wish was to be a steamboatman, and each day was brought to life and then left for dead with the arrival and departure of the daily packet from St. Louis.

Look in vain for the wood-yards that used to dominate the shores. Go back in time courtesy of three bright notes, the gentlest of bass drums, and remember the hot rolls served at supper, the fragrant coffee coming through the pilot house door on a steward’s tray, the red-faced, sweating, swearing mate and the tumbling deck hands, the bells that clanged through one’s slumber.

Find yourself in New Orleans, customary departure time—between four and five o’clock—gearing up for a long upstream voyage, the smell of burning rosin and pitch pine, and a cloud of coal-black smoke hanging over the boat and inching toward the city:

Two or three miles of mates were commanding and swearing with more than usual emphasis; countless processions of freight barrels and boxes were spinning athwart the levee and flying aboard the stage-planks; belated passengers were dodging and skipping among these frantic things, hoping to reach the forecastle companion way alive, but having their doubts about it; women with reticules and bandboxes were trying to keep up with husbands freighted with carpet-sacks and crying babies, and making a failure of it by losing their heads in the whirl and roar and general distraction; drays and baggage-vans were clattering hither and thither in a wild hurry, every now and then getting blocked and jammed together, and then during ten seconds one could not see them for the profanity . . . The ‘last bells’ would begin to clang . . . with the cry, ‘All dat ain’t goin’, please to git asho’!” . . . People came swarming ashore, overturning excited stragglers that were trying to swarm aboard. One more moment later a long array of stage-planks was being hauled in, each with its customary latest passenger clinging to the end of it with teeth, nails, and everything else, and the customary latest procrastinator making a wild spring shoreward over his head. (LM, 138)

Or trade the rising sun for shooting stars and, under the cover of darkness, shove out to the middle, giving yourself up to the current as you float through the night on a rough-hewn raft. The organ’s tremolo the ripples rolling fast and close—and then nothing— off the plonk of a river stone’s return to its bed. Legs dangle in the water, two thin trails of pipe smoke drift behind.

Listen and look while on a journey whose purpose—freedom—has slipped away and is now shrouded with uncertainty. En route to nowhere, begin to make a most unlikely friend, and slip past the sleepy eyes of the leadsmen aboard a giant steamboat as its wheels churn resolutely against the current:

Sometimes we’d have that whole river to ourselves for the longest time. Yonder was the banks and the islands, across the water; and maybe a spark—which was a candle in a cabin window—and sometimes on the water you could see a spark or two—on a raft or a scow, you know; and maybe you could hear a fiddle or a song coming over from one of them crafts. It’s lovely to live on a raft. We had the sky, up there, all speckled with stars, and we used to lay on our backs and look up at them, and discuss about whether they was made, or only just happened—Jim he allowed they was made, but I allowed they happened; I judged it would have took too long to make so many. Jim said the moon could a laid them; well, that looked kind of reasonable, so I didn’t say nothing against it, because I’ve seen a frog lay most as many, so of course it could be done. We used to watch the stars that fell, too, and see them stream down. Jim allowed they’d got spoiled and was hove out of the nest.

Once or twice of a night we would see a steamboat slipping along in the dark, and now and then she would belch a whole world of sparks up out of her chimbleys, and they would rain down in the river and look awful pretty; then she would turn a corner and her lights would wink out and her pow-wow shut off and leave the river still again . . . (AHF, 179)

Or push ‘Play’ and be entirely clear of the Mississippi, rocking gently west on the adventure put in motion by the Civil War enveloping the river and your reluctance to take sides. In the first beats of the drum feel the wheels of your Concord coach—a “cradle on wheels,” you call it—grip the gravel and begin to turn. In the singsong guitar see the horses’ heads nod up and down with the rhythm of exertion. Remember the envy with which you regarded your brother’s status as traveler just before he invited you along:

Pretty soon he would be hundreds and hundreds of miles away on the great plains and deserts, and among the mountains of the Far West, and would see buffaloes and Indians, and prairie-dogs, and antelopes, and have all kinds of adventures, and maybe get hanged or scalped, and have ever such a fine time, and write home and tell us all about it, and be a hero. And he would see the gold-mines and the silver mines, and maybe go about of an afternoon when his work was done, and pick up two or three pailfuls of shining slugs and nuggets of gold and silver on the hillside. (RI, 1-2)

But stop short of the romance that pervades your ghostly river, for it was something else that happened out on that desert, and not a moment too soon.

. . . Lastly, push ‘Play’ and see an endless highway framed by the windshield of a car, the journey’s purpose and promise growing fainter as the odometer spins, the wordless questions posed by eyes drifting over the desert and up the sky. The turning and turning of the radio dial, thumb tapping the steering wheel. Stop in a foreign town, the gentle bump of two railroad tracks beneath the wheels . . .
.

---

---

.
.
First & second verse.

In the summer of his twenty-third year, Samuel Clemens was nearing completion of his steamboat pilot apprenticeship on the Mississippi River. He’d always known the river: he’d passed his boyhood in the port city of Hannibal, Missouri. But though the relationship while training to be a pilot would grow a bit stormy, he loved the Mississippi, loved it and longed for it his whole life. His beloved younger brother had died in the horrible, dramatic explosion of the Pennsylvania near Memphis in June, but I find it intriguing that I can’t unearth any evidence that Clemens ever blamed the boats or the river or considered leaving them because of the tragic association. Instead he blamed himself—relentlessly—for myriad reasons, perhaps chief of which was that he thought his good-natured kid brother by far a worthier soul.

August 1858 marked an historic event: the very first transatlantic telegram was sent via under-the-sea cable from Queen Victoria to President Buchanan. She cabled, “OMG, Jimmy boy!!! I am totally putting this on my blog.” Just kidding—she said Congratulations. (And isn’t it amazing to think . . .) Twain, ever enthused by new technology, later recalled, “[a] wave of jubilation and astonishment . . . swept the planet.” (MTE, 10) Passengers would have had lots of company if they wanted to discuss the exciting news: the heavily freighted steamboats navigated a crowded river. They were enjoying the final of their glory days.

With the invention of wireless telegraphy, or radio, at the end of the nineteenth century, boats gained a way to communicate with each other and those on shore. But once radio operators had begun traveling on ships—in the early 1900s—the Mississippi was a far different place than it was when Samuel Clemens was a cub. Boats had vanished from the levees, once-bustling passenger decks were empty. Of the vision confronting him when he returned in 1882 to gather material for Life on the Mississippi, he wrote

Half a dozen sound-asleep steamboats where I used to see a solid mile of wide-awake ones! This was melancholy, this was woful. The absence of the pervading and jocund steamboatman from the billiard room was explained. He was absent because he is no more. His occupation is gone . . . Here was desolation, indeed. (LM, 172)

What was to blame?

As Twain writes:

The towboat and the railroad had done their work, and done it well and completely. The mighty bridge, stretching along over our heads, had done its share in the slaughter and spoliation. . . .

. . . Mississippi steamboating was born about 1812; at the end of thirty years, it had grown to mighty proportions; and in less than thirty more, it was dead! A strangely short life for so majestic a creature. (LM, 173)

One particular railroad began a historic service to open up the remote Indian Territory to and through Texas when the Missouri-Kansas-Texas Railroad, known as the MKT, or Katy, was christened in 1870. (It had been founded five years earlier under a different name.) Railroad fever was everywhere—there was a race on to offer transcontinental service, and the evolving feasibility of western migration fired imaginations. In 1873 the Katy acquired the Hannibal & Central Missouri Railroad, which had been leased previously by another company that serviced the track from Hannibal through Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio. Katy supervised the traffic on these tracks until 1897.

I wonder if it’s a riddle that describes both Katy (fairest daughter of the Pharaoh’s son) and Moses (fairest daughter of the Pharaoh’s son). Katy, descendant of Moses? Well, there’s this: the father of Hannibal, Missouri is Moses Bates. He founded the town in 1819.

But the much more famous Moses, the one who feels more comfortable in that Egyptian imagery . . . Well, Katy did set off into the unknown, lending a hand in leading a young America into what it considered (albeit unfairly) a promised land of sorts.

But Katy went east out of Hannibal too, leading her passengers—yes—through a sluicing sea.

The bridge in the foreground is the Mark Twain Memorial Bridge, built over the Mississippi in 2000. The harbinger of slaughter and spoliation behind it—half a mile away—is the Wabash Bridge, built for the railroad in Hannibal, Missouri, in 1871. And pyramids . . . indeed. .

.

---

---

.
.
Chorus & bridge.

Clemens ended up out on the desert after he left the Mississippi River in 1861. He traveled west with his incredibly straight-laced brother, Orion, who had employment in the Nevada Territory. Sam didn’t have employment, and he didn’t want it. But he was by no means free of ambition, or pressure:

But of two things [Clemens] was certain. One: he had no intention of following one of the usual professions, such as law. . . . Two: he was not going home until he was rich, even if that took more than three months. Fortunes were to be made. He wanted one. And the eyes of the homefolk were on him. He would not return without the wealth that would prove him estimable in their eyes. (SMK, 93-4)

Silver had been discovered in nearby Virginia City in 1859, and an excited and optimistic Clemens flew headlong into the mining business, investing the modest capital he had and traveling long distances between mining towns:

[For the first three months of 1862] his mind was almost entirely on ledges, ledges in Humbolt, Virginia City, and Aurora: how many feet could be bought at what price with what promise of return. (SMK, 95)

Ones, zeros, dollar signs flooding his thoughts from the mountains, the mesas, the desert. He didn’t strike silver or gold. Instead he got homesick, exhausted, frustrated, blistered and broke. He’d sent in some writing using the pen name “Josh” to a local newspaper, and he finally gave up and in and reported—dusty and disheveled—to the Virginia City Territorial Enterprise in September 1862. Staff writer. Though the banality of daily local news left him uninspired, nineteenth century journalism allowed for the blurring of fiction and non-fiction, seriousness and satire.

Clemens seized that opportunity, and into the lines of the goings-on in a rather wild frontier town, a voice—small, for now—began to settle into a register. And in February 1863 he woke up after a late-night party and signed his first article Mark Twain. That year he poked fun at himself (though he had certainly not sworn off investing or hoping for return) by announcing to his increasingly amused readers that he’d founded the “Unreliable, Auriferous, Argentiferous, Metaliferous Mining Company.” (L1, 252)

Mark Twain is not the only person in these lines; he may not even be the primary one, may be just a shadow, or a diversion; he may be a figment of my imagination. The wire albatross (a covered wagon? a stagecoach?) . . . monster ballads . . . stations of the cross. There’s another speaker, of course, one listening and looking, one lost out on the desert and sighing, one on a journey whose feeling is flagging.

Maybe he’s listening to some hard rock songs, heavy on the grieving guitar, maybe some other stuff, maybe this. Maybe that’s the only stuff he can find on the radio of his car.

Somwhere there’s a Bible.

And emptiness—silence?—to fill.

He offers two things that stake out impressive extremes on the spectrum of human experience: the loud, self-important, worldly and dissolute bad ass rock stars, and the humble, solemn, sad story of divine suffering and death that prompts the culmination of the Christian faith.

Sighing indeed.

Well . . . I purchased a single of Skid Row’s I Remember You in seventh grade, and I locked myself in my room and turned the volume up until my ears rang and my boom box shook and my heart beat as though pounded by an insane drummer and three minutes in that electric guitar lost its shit, and I thought I might rock myself to death before my mother’s approaching footsteps could reach my door—and wouldn’t they be sorry then— and she could yell, “What in the world?!?!? Turn it DOWN!”

I remember the uncomfortable look in her eyes as she glimpsed the music videos we were watching: the long-haired heads banging and the feet stomping up and down the stage, the features contorted and wincing as though the guitar strings stung their fingers. The wanton demolition of perfectly good instruments. The camera panning to a girl in the tenth row, completely overcome, blue eye makeup translucent with tears—her eyes wide and blank with anxious yearning.

No, the adults in my adolescent world didn’t like the rockers, and there’s no need to talk about the church. It and the world told us we’d have to choose, and that’s what I was thinking of when I read this in Kaplan’s fine biography of Mark Twain (emphasis mine):

Roles were important to Twain, who played many, both within himself and in public, including the Hartford baron and the Boston literary celebrity. When it came to business, he was a New York entrepreneur and investment financier; in domestic life, a devoted husband and father. In another mood, he was a restless adventurer pining for Hawaiian simplicity and bachelor life in a boardinghouse. In accent, he was still Missourian. In social and cultural values he belonged to the northeastern elite; in intellect, he was independent, satirical, and skeptical, particularly in regard to Christianity and what he considered inherited prejudices and stupidities. Using his own logical razor, he delighted in dissecting irrationalities. His own he had tolerance for, increasingly convinced that life combines contradictions into complicated unities, sometimes unstable but mostly cohesive amalgams that provide the reality of self and society. (SMK, 388-89)

For Mark Twain’s life had barely gotten going when, having already lived in a number of cities and had a brief spell as a Confederate soldier and mastered the Mississippi River and scoured Nevada dirt and rock for silver, he came in off the desert to be a writer. He was only twenty-six years old, only up to page 120 of a 650-page biography.

Despite his modest roots and raucous time in Virginia City and skepticism of the Christian faith he would court and marry a devout East Coast heiress. (And then she would mellow out.)

He would live to see and be a great many—and contradictory—and some not-so-great—things, and he would claim them all:

In a speech to the New England Society of Philadelphia in 1881 [Twain] presented himself as the American amalgam: ‘I am a border ruffian from the state of Missouri. I am a Connecticut Yankee by adoption. I have the morals of Missouri and the culture of Connecticut, and that’s the combination that makes the perfect man. . . . The first slave brought into New England out of Africa by your progenitors was an ancestor of mine—for I am of a mixed breed, an infinitely shaded and exquisite mongrel.’ Like himself, America was a mongrel singularity that could reach an even higher level of exquisiteness if it would understand and accept that many bloods and cultures flowed through its veins. (SMK, 389 & SP, 163-64)

So what do we do with Monster ballads and the stations of the cross?

I trekked through the stations verses of the Bible thinking about those old songs. I sorta knew it was wrong, but I had to smile as I thought of that patented rocker passion versus The Passion, as my eyes drifted over the names Stryker, Queensryche, Slaughter on my CD . . . and then Golgotha, Barrabas, The Sanhedrin in the Bible. Fourteen tracks, fourteen stations. That lead singer of Skid Row looks strikingly . . . something . . . around one minute and twenty-two seconds into the music video, and when I glimpsed that awe-struck girl with the makeup in another one, yeah, I smiled and thought Mary. At church on Sunday I watched the candles morph into the flames of a rolling sea of cigarette lighters.

.

---

---

.
.
Third verse.

At the very end of his story Huck Finn tells us he’s “got to light out for the Territory ahead of the rest” so as to avoid getting collared and sent home with Aunt Sally and all her rules. (AFH, 433)

I wonder where we find him, how we find him, when he appears and reflects on his river days, telling us how he’s been thinking and thinking, about his old friend and their lawless adventure, about the boats and their hymns? The mesa chords and the high, soft, far-off piano melody are silenced now. The organ is gone too, but these quiet lines and bars are holiest to me—as simple and beautiful and true as the heart of Huck’s boyhood tale. For when Jim is betrayed after their long journey and sold back into slavery for “forty dirty dollars,” Huck despairs over what to do: honor a conscience that has been ingrained by the law and the church and society by returning Jim to his rightful owner, or honor a heart’s desire—with nothing to recommend it beyond the tug of his memories of a journey and a friend—to help him get free. (AFH, 314)

His conscience grinding, Huck reproaches himself for the part he’s played in Jim’s escape, working himself into a fright over the apparent divine retribution in Jim’s capture. So he resolves to pray and be a better person—immediately—but on his knees he finds he can’t say a word:

I knowed very well why [the prayer] wouldn’t come. It was because my heart warn’t right; it was because I warn’t square; it was because I was playing double. I was letting on to give up sin, but away inside of me I was holding on to the biggest one of all. . . . You can’t pray a lie—I found that out.

So I was full of trouble, full as I could be, and didn’t know what to do. (AHF, 316)

Write a letter to Miss Watson, he decides. Tell her Jim’s whereabouts so she can come and reclaim him as her slave. See if you can pray then. So he writes the letter, and feels redeemed momentarily, and then like his older self and his creator in the earlier verse he thinks, and thinks and thinks—could he feel the eyes of a nation waiting, waiting?—could he hear me listening, listening?—remembering Jim’s kindness and care . . . sighing just a little bit . . . “[N]on serviam . . . . the embodiment of [Twain’s] own commitment to think for himself, to make up his own mind about what was true. . . . Although he might defer to authority if expedient . . . . when it came to what went on in his own mind, [Twain] had begun to recognize no master but himself” . . . sighing just a little bit . . . “. . . out in the middle of the country, playing . . .” . . . sighing just a little bit . . . song as profound and beautiful and true . . . as the notion of the story’s most lost boy ultimately refusing the world’s fallacy in its opposition of two things, inadvertently calling the bluff when it said Make your choice. (SMK, 76) Big enough to recalibrate conscience to the desires of a supposedly wicked heart. Brave enough to search and listen and think and think, and to sacrifice his salvation for the resulting conviction.

Whether or not he lived to realize his vindication, a boy who unwittingly found a fault line: the right in the wrong . . . the church in the mud . . . God in the sin:

I took [the letter] up, and held it in my hand. I was a trembling, because I’d got to decide, forever, betwixt two things, and I knowed it. I studied a minute, sort of holding my breath, and then says to myself:

“All right, then, I’ll go to hell”—and tore it up. (AHF, 314)

He didn’t, of course. Go to hell, I mean. I mean, it was a rocky start—there’s still controversy. But they made him a hero—some say our greatest novel. He’s not in the fire; he’s on the shelves of every bookstore in the country.

And I don’t know about you, but I’m holding out hope for these guys:

---

---

.
.
Smiling just a little bit.

Things change. The world may want black and white, but life is necessarily confusing, broad, strange. The thing about the monster ballads era is that it was so—scandalous at the time, so over-the-top, so threatening, but now . . . it’s not. (You might say it looks a little silly, but be careful. A little surfing will demonstrate that those fans are still around, and they still believe. And I confess: that guitar still gets me.) Popular music didn’t give up on scandalous, though—it just moved on. Upon investigation the lyrics to those monster ballads are quite benign and quite human. Love wasn’t intimidated by those tough rockers; she left them as broken as the rest of us, and asking the age-old questions.

And society didn’t give up on slavery; it just found new ways to disguise the chains. One way to combat that is to get comfortable with confusion and difference and paradox in ourselves, in our society, in our relationships with one another. For the hardest men’s hearts can still bleed, and perhaps you have known or hope to someday know a still small voice to blaze. Perhaps not. But I believe that whatever we each ultimately choose to believe, we have to keep listening and paying attention to and caring about and claiming it all, or we’ll miss something. Like Kaplan’s higher level of exquisiteness.

And we have to be ready to change our minds. Anyone who can see how wrong we’ve been should be convinced of that.

Don’t push! I’m climbing down from the pulpit now.

Smiling just a little bit is my favorite line of Monster Ballads. For me, it’s the small rewards for keeping at a trying journey—the sharing of a wry joke with the universe in the midst of pain, the fleeting rush of euphoria when struggle dissipates and you’re seized with the confidence and conviction to keep going. The stirring sense of freedom one feels as the quest for absolute certainty is laid aside, and one finds she can hold two seemingly opposite things, or possibilities, even, in one head, or heart, or life. It could be the precious moments—for me, nanoseconds—when we sit back and look around and survey the mess and accept that this is it. The end is journey.

Or perhaps sometimes it’s the only recourse left when you feel you’ve been stretched too far—the fixing of narrowed eyes that peer over the desert with the faintest grin. Screw you, world. I’m not giving up. It’s the moment you know the world took notice.

Smiling just a little bit is Mark Twain, a couple tough years after Nevada, hiding out from the San Francisco police with a handful of friends in a rustic bachelor-pad cabin in the middle of nowhere, laughing to himself as he wrote by firelight—quiet and calm and free of the urge to join the others outside digging for silver—a funny story about a jumping frog that would introduce a border ruffian to readers on the East Coast. Later he’d be accepted into the literary elite. Did you know Twain published, amongst lots of other stuff, the beginning passages of Life on the Mississippi in The Atlantic? I like to think it would have made him smile to think of us looking for him on Jackass Hill.

It’s Josh Ritter . . . well, I like to think he smiled when he got this call.

And it’s a girl in a cafe with a familiar nod for the waitress and a blinking cursor for her mangled heart, dusting off an old dream.

The song’s called Monster Ballads, but that beautiful high far-off piano gets the last word. You can decide what that means, if anything. In fact, of course you know, you can decide what it all means. Certainly don’t take my word for it. I’m only really sure of one thing.

We should listen.