new year

being stuck, what is the internet, and a silver jews cover

For months I’ve been stuck, turning over the same few thoughts over and over, trying to figure out how to break out of a huge fog of heartbreak. This week it feels like something is shifting, like there is movement, space for some joy to come in through the cracks. Emotions don’t move in linear patterns, and it’s easy to expect them to, to be surprised when you are overcome by a powerful hit of despair in the middle of lunch, but in the same way that grief can come seemingly out of nowhere, so can joyfulness.

I’m a big believer in pushing through, but sometimes it feels like you just keep pushing and pushing and you get through and you find yourself in the same place you started. When I’m depressed I try to think of life as a game, like a create your own adventure, and months can pass and the level keeps restarting and I can only keep trying and getting nowhere. But if it’s a game at least I can create the world I exist in, at least every step I take is full of the potential of whatever I want it to be and at least there is some control left for me in that. The idea again is that emptiness is full of possibility, and sometimes, out of nothing, something new can come. So even in the pit of despair you can laugh at a joke and find a little pocket of joy because who am I to feel so down, who am I to take myself so seriously? I am lucky and life is fun.

I didn’t know what to write this week because I haven’t been feeling consistent, so I recorded a cover of Smith & Jones Forever by Silver Jews. I love this song, and I only came by it when a few years ago, after David Berman died, I was asked by someone to draw an illustration of him to go alongside an essay they’d written about him. I would link to it here, but it looks like the website no longer exists. Isn’t that weird - how websites can stop existing and suddenly there’s no record anymore in the world of something that seemed physically real and would age infinitely. I used to find the internet very confusing because I didn’t know where it was. I spent a long time fruitlessly trying to figure out what it actually is (without asking) - because it exists everywhere and also nowhere and I can’t touch it but it’s inside my computer. It turns out it does exist somewhere - on a server. And I guess that’s why a website can disappear, because it’s just some information stored somewhere. Something can only disappear if it exists somewhere first. If something is just an idea, like I used to think the internet was (an idea inside my computer), then it could never disappear. I’m not sure why I thought that applied to the internet. It’s definitely stupid. Isn’t that strange, to think of the internet as something that doesn’t exist anywhere, like an intangible idea, like something that was found and not created. Maybe it felt like that to me because it exists in one location (inside my computer) but also everywhere else at the same time, and I never knew life without it. What a strange invention. What a weird world we live in.

David Berman illustration from aforementioned article

So someone asked me to draw an illustration for their essay about David Berman, and I didn’t know anything about him and had never heard his music. I’d only heard that he was an indie musician who had recently taken his own life. I knew some of my friends were big fans, but I didn’t know anything. So out of respect I looked him up, first I read the essay I was illustrating (now in the ether somewhere) which discussed his life and his death and his music and his poetry, and pointed me in the direction of the 2007 documentary Silver Jew about their first ever tour. Then I watched the documentary. The documentary led me to his songs, and the songs led me to the albums Lookout Mountain, Lookout Sea and American Water - I’m not sure why only those two, and then of course to the final album Berman made, Purple Mountains.

There’s a line in the song We Are Real where Berman sings the line ‘all my favourite singers couldn’t sing’. That drew me into his world. All my favourite singers couldn’t sing either, and they’re the reason I thought I could sing the songs I was writing to people even though I didn’t think I was the kind of person who could do that. I couldn’t sing. The same train of thought is what also allowed me to play guitar on stage when I didn’t know how to tune one and felt like I was too old to be embarrassing myself in public (20). That feeling of being there for the song itself and the person pouring their heart into it, and not their technical skill or knowledge about performance made me feel like I was allowed to do it too, and I liked the way Berman was acknowledging it.

Everything I write lately seems to come back to that idea. You can just do anything, go into any room and pretend that you know exactly what you’re doing there and that everybody has been expecting you and sing your stupid song because who cares and why not. You’re allowed. The riot grrrl movement and the DIY scene are also about that idea, and I’m so glad they existed to show me a way to do the things I wanted to do. Often the idea that ‘all my favourite singers couldn’t sing’ is reserved for men. Artists I obsessed over from my teenage years like Leonard Cohen or Stephen Malkmus or Lou Reed or Jeff Mangum or Isaac Brock, but where are the people who aren’t men who can’t sing supposed to fit in the indie canon? I know they exist now, but I couldn’t see them when I was younger and obsessed with all those bands (and I’m not going to offend people by accident by listing the singers I love who can’t sing because they might think that they can and that’s ok and I’m sorry, but know that I love you and I’m grateful you’re doing what you do). Luckily I never realised I wasn’t one of them, but it still took me a long time to realise there was a space for me in the room. The point is you don’t need to know how to make art to make art, because meaning exists where you make it.

I love David Berman’s voice too, and the way that he sang and also couldn’t sing. There is something so beautiful and so graceful in the awkwardness of his delivery and the fluency and grace of his poetry. I wish he was still alive to see all the joy and comfort that he has brought to people.

That’s how I learned about Silver Jews and David Berman. And why this cover now?Recently someone sent a message to the band asking us to do a Silver Jews cover, and I liked the idea and learnt this song. It’s full of delight. We didn’t get round to playing it as a band, busy doing other stuff. This feels nice though.

Video below for my special subscribers :) hmu with cover requests