I Am A Stick

Description

When I was a kid I became enamored of Edward FitzGerald's translation of The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. I committed bits of it to memory (long since forgotten) in the hope that I could use it to make people think I was not so dumb as I looked. You would not believe how hard it is for a fourteen-year-old kid to find an opportunity to quote Omar Khayyam. I suppose it's just as well that I never got my chance to play the smarty pants, because I'd probably have been laughed out of school.

There's a section of it called The Book of Pots that I thought was the most wonderful and profoundest thing ever. Basically the idea was that people are just like those clay pots. So in homage to Mr Khayyam, on this the occasion of Tin Angel's release of my new album I Am a Stick, and in the hope that these songs find many a safe and spacious home in clear minds and kindly hearts, I've written a little poem.

I offer this
The best I've got
All of us
Are like a pot
Some are nice
And some are not
All of us
Are very very very very very
Temporary
And thus
Easily discouraged
Don't get so discouraged
Tell all your friends
Don't get so discouraged

Releasing a record is what it must be like to send your children to school for the first time. You hope people will be nice to them. It's so easy to be misunderstood. I used to think that a willingness to be misunderstood was a sign of Godliness; now I think it's just another sign of stupidity.

There's a song on here, eight years in the making, about a kid named Kent Lang, who at the age of six was the most degraded human being I have ever known. When Kent walked down the street he'd piss on every tree like a dog and say "Fuck you!" to everybody he met. He managed to get expelled from kindergarten within fifteen minutes of his arrival. And when the school burned down some months later I always thought he might have had something to do with it. But apart from being dirty and obscene and having a look in his eye that would make Charlie Manson squirm he wasn't all that bad. As far as I know he never hurt anybody. He just horrified them.

I worry a little bit about a song like "Whose Rough Hands?" What if my little anthem for the mean and stupid became just that? What if seriously fucked-up people took it as encouragement? Many years ago I worked for an outfit called The Kamikaze Freak Show. We did a show in some smallish city in Holland, and the audience absolutely adored us and they had the time of their lives. When it was over we went out into the crowd to unwind and have a few drinks and found out, to our horror, that every single person there was a neo-Nazi skinhead. I thought they were just a bunch of nice punked-out gay guys who enjoyed watching the dwarf lift weights with his dick. It's so easy to get a thing wrong.

Plenty of nails to go around
Bend 'em over, boys, and pound 'em down.
Got no hammer? A brick 'll do.
Got no brick? Use a stick.
Any old shoe will do the trick.

So I've dedicated that song to Kent, who, like myself and like us all, was a work of many hands. And I thank Colin Stetson for unleashing the very large beast of his talent on it.

Now, stupid me! True to my roundabout ways I have put the Omega before the Alpha. But hey, smarter people than me have let the last be first. And, in all honesty, Alphas have always been strangers to me. And certainly — they can take care of themselves, right?

But if there were an Alpha to the Omega of "Whose Rough Hands?" which would it be?

Happy sticks are wonderful, but, like those nice guys we're always hearing about, they never come in first, and a Sky of Loving Arms makes happy sticks of us all. The Alphas of this world never ride buses — not even bendy ones — and when they make the circus catch it doesn't slip through their fingers — not even in their dreams. Devoid of homicidal inclinations, they all get to Tokyo without even having to leave their snowy homes and never ever ever do they make themselves ridiculous by whistling, or melancholic by playing hymns on a piano.

I've been up a lot of trees and down a few rivers. I've unearthed the beginnings and burnt the ends off of several dozen songs. But it was only recently that I found a truly wonderful road. It's only a few steps from the house I live in, and I call it the Road of Eyes That See. There's our little Alphalpha! The best of the best.

But I've nothing to say about a song like that. Nice, gracious, well-adjusted songs need no explanations, no excuses, no apologies, no disclaimers. And this one is a real sweetie, not even a little bit contemptuous or condescending towards her brothers and sisters. Perfectly content in scruffy company, she is a child of joy.

There is a road that we can walk
Where sunlit winds teach trees to talk
In tongues of love, to talk in tongues of love.
And on that road of eyes that see
I am heart-set to be
A child of joy, to be a child of joy.
A child of joy, A child of joy,
I am determined to remain a child of joy.

And as for Kent Lang and his makers, those mean and stupid carpenters — with such a sister as sweet Alphalpha waiting for them, their future lives are bound to get a little bit better or at least a little less worse.

This album features the best of bands: Alex Neilson, who, like no other, makes sticks happy; Joe Carvell, the good ground without whom our sky would surely fall; our wonderful new friend Victor Herrero, el mas grande de todos los romanticos; and Jordan Hunt, our stringy godling.

Description

When I was a kid I became enamored of Edward FitzGerald's translation of The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. I committed bits of it to memory (long since forgotten) in the hope that I could use it to make people think I was not so dumb as I looked. You would not believe how hard it is for a fourteen-year-old kid to find an opportunity to quote Omar Khayyam. I suppose it's just as well that I never got my chance to play the smarty pants, because I'd probably have been laughed out of school.

There's a section of it called The Book of Pots that I thought was the most wonderful and profoundest thing ever. Basically the idea was that people are just like those clay pots. So in homage to Mr Khayyam, on this the occasion of Tin Angel's release of my new album I Am a Stick, and in the hope that these songs find many a safe and spacious home in clear minds and kindly hearts, I've written a little poem.

I offer this
The best I've got
All of us
Are like a pot
Some are nice
And some are not
All of us
Are very very very very very
Temporary
And thus
Easily discouraged
Don't get so discouraged
Tell all your friends
Don't get so discouraged

Releasing a record is what it must be like to send your children to school for the first time. You hope people will be nice to them. It's so easy to be misunderstood. I used to think that a willingness to be misunderstood was a sign of Godliness; now I think it's just another sign of stupidity.

There's a song on here, eight years in the making, about a kid named Kent Lang, who at the age of six was the most degraded human being I have ever known. When Kent walked down the street he'd piss on every tree like a dog and say "Fuck you!" to everybody he met. He managed to get expelled from kindergarten within fifteen minutes of his arrival. And when the school burned down some months later I always thought he might have had something to do with it. But apart from being dirty and obscene and having a look in his eye that would make Charlie Manson squirm he wasn't all that bad. As far as I know he never hurt anybody. He just horrified them.

I worry a little bit about a song like "Whose Rough Hands?" What if my little anthem for the mean and stupid became just that? What if seriously fucked-up people took it as encouragement? Many years ago I worked for an outfit called The Kamikaze Freak Show. We did a show in some smallish city in Holland, and the audience absolutely adored us and they had the time of their lives. When it was over we went out into the crowd to unwind and have a few drinks and found out, to our horror, that every single person there was a neo-Nazi skinhead. I thought they were just a bunch of nice punked-out gay guys who enjoyed watching the dwarf lift weights with his dick. It's so easy to get a thing wrong.

Plenty of nails to go around
Bend 'em over, boys, and pound 'em down.
Got no hammer? A brick 'll do.
Got no brick? Use a stick.
Any old shoe will do the trick.

So I've dedicated that song to Kent, who, like myself and like us all, was a work of many hands. And I thank Colin Stetson for unleashing the very large beast of his talent on it.

Now, stupid me! True to my roundabout ways I have put the Omega before the Alpha. But hey, smarter people than me have let the last be first. And, in all honesty, Alphas have always been strangers to me. And certainly — they can take care of themselves, right?

But if there were an Alpha to the Omega of "Whose Rough Hands?" which would it be?

Happy sticks are wonderful, but, like those nice guys we're always hearing about, they never come in first, and a Sky of Loving Arms makes happy sticks of us all. The Alphas of this world never ride buses — not even bendy ones — and when they make the circus catch it doesn't slip through their fingers — not even in their dreams. Devoid of homicidal inclinations, they all get to Tokyo without even having to leave their snowy homes and never ever ever do they make themselves ridiculous by whistling, or melancholic by playing hymns on a piano.

I've been up a lot of trees and down a few rivers. I've unearthed the beginnings and burnt the ends off of several dozen songs. But it was only recently that I found a truly wonderful road. It's only a few steps from the house I live in, and I call it the Road of Eyes That See. There's our little Alphalpha! The best of the best.

But I've nothing to say about a song like that. Nice, gracious, well-adjusted songs need no explanations, no excuses, no apologies, no disclaimers. And this one is a real sweetie, not even a little bit contemptuous or condescending towards her brothers and sisters. Perfectly content in scruffy company, she is a child of joy.

There is a road that we can walk
Where sunlit winds teach trees to talk
In tongues of love, to talk in tongues of love.
And on that road of eyes that see
I am heart-set to be
A child of joy, to be a child of joy.
A child of joy, A child of joy,
I am determined to remain a child of joy.

And as for Kent Lang and his makers, those mean and stupid carpenters — with such a sister as sweet Alphalpha waiting for them, their future lives are bound to get a little bit better or at least a little less worse.

This album features the best of bands: Alex Neilson, who, like no other, makes sticks happy; Joe Carvell, the good ground without whom our sky would surely fall; our wonderful new friend Victor Herrero, el mas grande de todos los romanticos; and Jordan Hunt, our stringy godling.