Word to that. The tradewinds have not been as kind to this thread as they ought.
a reasonable thesis
(maybe): By the early-mid-seventies, the Big-Blue-Marble-ism of the first post-Heyerdahl/Cousteau generation and its attendant conception of open water as Liquid Mother had supplanted the you???re-in-the-Navy-now machismo of their fathers, and had done so not only in the abstract of mass consciousness, but in the marketplace as well, since the aforementioned Water Babies by this time found themselves in the captain???s seat of a more considerable portion of cultural production and cultural sway. This general shift in sensibility coincided with a kind of spiritual saturation faced by Woodstock-informed musicians: By this time, the 60s had been paying off for a minute now, and the utopian communalism in which they???d immersed themselves???community at its most literal and most extreme (all people, all one, all over, all everything, all the time)???had curdled into smug insularity and people, people, Jesus Christ, all these fucking people.
The general populace of maturing children of the blue earth took a step up out of landlocked straight society at the same time the music types in need of a less-populous frontier took a step back from their cashed and crowded garden of earthly delights, and both parties ended up in the same place: the marina. The marina and all its signifiers???natural fabrics, woven rope, palm trees, endless airbrushed horizons, watery locales far and near, underutilized buttons of the shirt, all of it???represents a very particular kind of community: tightly knit by their unanimously implied preference for the Excursion Life, but with this shared circumstance shared in light of the constant possibility that any one of them could at any time loosen a couple of knots and slip off across the blue wine, no second thought, no aloha. So you???ve got this heroic isolation, this Caspar David Friedrich-style just-me-and-the-sea/fuck-all-y???all coexisting with this wide-open Antwerp-blue liquid fraternity that???s eternally awash in Hallelujah-I???m-A-(Beach)-Bum bonhomie. However much or however little humanity you can stand, it???s there for you at the marina???dip your oars deeply and/or not at all. You???re here at the marina, and if you want to be here, then that???s great, ???cause other like-minded brothers are here, too, but if you don???t want to be here, it???s still jake, ???cause the water???s here, too, and water is everywhere, and since you???re right on it, you???re kinda everywhere, too, which means you???re not necessarily here???if you don???t want to be, I mean.
This everywhere/nowhere duality hints at the seamy side of this reversible community--the slow rot of the Excursion Life. And everything a parrothead needs to know about the Dark Marina is right there in Cat Stevens???s Foreigner: the constant proximity of water, that escape, that slipstream, erodes one???s sense of the local, of the here, and can result in utter displacement and deep, deep rootlessness; you???re a polar bear in a ceaselessly moving ice floe, you???re a rained-out resort, your corked core picked at by the future-fingers of somebody like Timbaland or somebody, and you???re crying like a church on Monday (hey, C), rudderless, just a sloop without a slip to be found anywhere in this world, skint back and watered-down (Hey, T), ringworn and waterlogged.
But though it may at its best and worst exist outside of place, not even the marina exists outside of time: The tide ebbs, the docks splinter, the record ends, and the season turns???
September???In the last days when things are getting sad for no reason???All of the hot-dog stands were boarded up with strips of golden planking, sealing in all the mustard, onion, meat odors of the long joyful summer. It was like nailing summer into a series of coffins.
???the October Country looms???
???that country where it is always turning late in the year???where noons go quickly, dusks and twilights linger, and midnights stay. That country composed in the main of cellars, sub-cellars, coal bins, closets, attics, and pantries faced away from the sun.
???and there it is:
The bouquet of summer Turns blue, and on its empty table It is stale and the water is discolored. True autumn stands in the doorway. After the hero, the familiar.
And that???s kinda where I find myself: familiar. Autumn is usually my shit. Usually I drift through summer on a life-raft, keeping the living shallow so as not to get pulled under by the venereal heat and my own mind gone jungle. Usually I spend June, July, and August notching days, listening for the hissing of ???Summer???s gone!??? and waiting for the creeping, permissive chill that will allow the life-raft to moult into the great ship that will schooner me through my season. The great ship is also a black ship, though, and I???m not sure I???m ready for it this year. I fucking hate hate hate summer???it keeps me monkey-minded in a way that leaves me exhausted--but the thought of autumn???s precise, ticking peace doesn???t entirely appeal to me right now either. I think I???m trapped in the latitudes and atitudes bewteen Meteorological Summer and Emotional Summer. Hmm.
I apologize, because all of this is going nowhere. But hey, that???s the marina for you. Step in or step off.
Yo, I heard some late-period Randall Bramblett, and it was proof positive that you can take the boy out of the marina, but you can???t take the marina out of the boy: good stuff, but it had that kind of sadness you only get when a man of the high water ends up singing about highways.
Few are carrying the marina tiki as ably as The Avalanches.
My wife???s girl Naomi didn???t have a phonograph, but used to buy Pablo Cruise records whenever she saw ???em. ???I like pictures of beaches.???
???Avenue At Middleharnis???: mast appeal, son.
Where are all my marina motherfuckers that have ever flirted with a girl wearing a lifejacket?
I punched a fish one time. I'm not proud of it, but I'm not running from it either.
Ebb and flow. Mostly flow. I agree with it all. What is is true. What isn't is true. The tide giveth and the tide taketh. Everybody push and pull. I stay eye level with the watery wave. Off balance, but secured by sea salt keeping me afloat. Obscured by sea weed. When I was young I didn't build sand castles, for I was well aware that castles made of sand fall in the sea. Eventually. I dug holes. Dug so deep I found the water. I was eye level with the watery wave. Docks are for the observers and decision makers. Ride the wave, but if you don't want to risk it, walk away son, because the weak of stomach must walk the plank. I walk with plankton.
Comments
TrainYact?From one South Coast Texas country boy to another, "let's build."
Wow, I never even knew that Guy Clark record existed,
thanks Bam.
Did you see his interviews in the Townes Van Zandt[/b] documentary
Be Here To Love Me[/b]? Funny and poignant, makes it look fun to
be drunk.
Generally though the Townes Van Zandt story is such a downer.
It will make you cry wine and shit tears.
We all need little valves like this to release the pressure between
the ears:
(maybe):
By the early-mid-seventies, the Big-Blue-Marble-ism of the first post-Heyerdahl/Cousteau generation and its attendant conception of open water as Liquid Mother had supplanted the you???re-in-the-Navy-now machismo of their fathers, and had done so not only in the abstract of mass consciousness, but in the marketplace as well, since the aforementioned Water Babies by this time found themselves in the captain???s seat of a more considerable portion of cultural production and cultural sway. This general shift in sensibility coincided with a kind of spiritual saturation faced by Woodstock-informed musicians: By this time, the 60s had been paying off for a minute now, and the utopian communalism in which they???d immersed themselves???community at its most literal and most extreme (all people, all one, all over, all everything, all the time)???had curdled into smug insularity and people, people, Jesus Christ, all these fucking people.
The general populace of maturing children of the blue earth took a step up out of landlocked straight society at the same time the music types in need of a less-populous frontier took a step back from their cashed and crowded garden of earthly delights, and both parties ended up in the same place: the marina. The marina and all its signifiers???natural fabrics, woven rope, palm trees, endless airbrushed horizons, watery locales far and near, underutilized buttons of the shirt, all of it???represents a very particular kind of community: tightly knit by their unanimously implied preference for the Excursion Life, but with this shared circumstance shared in light of the constant possibility that any one of them could at any time loosen a couple of knots and slip off across the blue wine, no second thought, no aloha. So you???ve got this heroic isolation, this Caspar David Friedrich-style just-me-and-the-sea/fuck-all-y???all coexisting with this wide-open Antwerp-blue liquid fraternity that???s eternally awash in Hallelujah-I???m-A-(Beach)-Bum bonhomie. However much or however little humanity you can stand, it???s there for you at the marina???dip your oars deeply and/or not at all. You???re here at the marina, and if you want to be here, then that???s great, ???cause other like-minded brothers are here, too, but if you don???t want to be here, it???s still jake, ???cause the water???s here, too, and water is everywhere, and since you???re right on it, you???re kinda everywhere, too, which means you???re not necessarily here???if you don???t want to be, I mean.
This everywhere/nowhere duality hints at the seamy side of this reversible community--the slow rot of the Excursion Life. And everything a parrothead needs to know about the Dark Marina is right there in Cat Stevens???s Foreigner: the constant proximity of water, that escape, that slipstream, erodes one???s sense of the local, of the here, and can result in utter displacement and deep, deep rootlessness; you???re a polar bear in a ceaselessly moving ice floe, you???re a rained-out resort, your corked core picked at by the future-fingers of somebody like Timbaland or somebody, and you???re crying like a church on Monday (hey, C), rudderless, just a sloop without a slip to be found anywhere in this world, skint back and watered-down (Hey, T), ringworn and waterlogged.
But though it may at its best and worst exist outside of place, not even the marina exists outside of time: The tide ebbs, the docks splinter, the record ends, and the season turns???
???the October Country looms???
???and there it is:
And that???s kinda where I find myself: familiar. Autumn is usually my shit. Usually I drift through summer on a life-raft, keeping the living shallow so as not to get pulled under by the venereal heat and my own mind gone jungle. Usually I spend June, July, and August notching days, listening for the hissing of ???Summer???s gone!??? and waiting for the creeping, permissive chill that will allow the life-raft to moult into the great ship that will schooner me through my season. The great ship is also a black ship, though, and I???m not sure I???m ready for it this year. I fucking hate hate hate summer???it keeps me monkey-minded in a way that leaves me exhausted--but the thought of autumn???s precise, ticking peace doesn???t entirely appeal to me right now either. I think I???m trapped in the latitudes and atitudes bewteen Meteorological Summer and Emotional Summer. Hmm.
I apologize, because all of this is going nowhere. But hey, that???s the marina for you. Step in or step off.
Yo, I heard some late-period Randall Bramblett, and it was proof positive that you can take the boy out of the marina, but you can???t take the marina out of the boy: good stuff, but it had that kind of sadness you only get when a man of the high water ends up singing about highways.
Few are carrying the marina tiki as ably as The Avalanches.
My wife???s girl Naomi didn???t have a phonograph, but used to buy Pablo Cruise records whenever she saw ???em. ???I like pictures of beaches.???
???Avenue At Middleharnis???: mast appeal, son.
Where are all my marina motherfuckers that have ever flirted with a girl wearing a lifejacket?
I punched a fish one time. I'm not proud of it, but I'm not running from it either.