02 January 2010

Slow Walking Daddy

Although I've lived permanently in California since Orwellian 1984, I've been bi-coastal since the Summer of Love, dividing my time between Cali & Pennsylvania, where I grew up & graduated high school...northwestern Pennsylvania to be more exact, not far from the Ohio & New York state lines. Now, when I was coming of age, New York had 18 drinking age & Ohio had legal fireworks of the unsafe & insane variety. These facts precipitated many a back-roads adventure throughout the beautiful desolation of rural Amerika. Once musick became the driving force in my life, many Ohio sojourns revolved around live shows in Cleveland, the nearest metropolis to this country hick's native soil. Rocket From The Tombs & Pere Ubu were essential fodder for my twisted cerebrum.

The last time I was back in that neck of the woods was when my mother was dying. She had a failing heart & late stage dementia. I went back to be with her at the end. It was a trying experience to say the least. I had stayed with my father when he was dying from liver cancer. It was a dignified & spiritual time. The time of my mother's dying was anything but...there were times when I was a complete stranger to her. I don't really do funerals & would much rather endure the final days & hours of a person's life than the phony emotions of funerary folly. When my mother would be sleeping or otherwise occupied, I would drive through the countryside to clear my head...smoke some righteous bud & crank up the Father Ubu.

Pere Ubu - "Slow Walking Daddy" from St. Arkansas
Here are some pictures that I took that go with this song...

"I wear a suit
& honey, I wear a tie...yeah-yeah-yeah.
I'm gonna look good
each & every day I say goodbye."

"I love that highway, US 322...yeah-yeah-yeah,
yeah... yeah..."

"Six miles south of Meadville,"

"all bare cinder-blocks,
sitting there is Moose Lodge 2505.
& outside there's a sign that says,"

" 'Good Cod Dinner, Fridays, $5.95'
'Good Steak-eye Dinner, Saturdays, $5.95'
& it says, 'Welcome'."

"You are welcome..."


"...to the crazy green
of the midsummer nowhere...yeah-yeah-yeah.
Mr In-Between is showing up fair,
four-square."

"I love that highway, US 322...yeah-yeah-yeah,
yeah... yeah..."

"& I saw stars in strange constellations,
trapped inside the blackness of never-ending night,
seen thru the pearly luminescence of shatterproof glass,
framed by the wrong side of green velour
& maybe it felt like home.
Maybe for just a little while."


"I love that road,
I love the way it yields to me.
It sorta breathes & whispers out my name...
...that's how it feels.
I love that highway, US 322...yeah-yeah-yeah,
yeah."

Writers: Herman - Mehlman - Temple - Thomas - Wheeler.
from St. Arkansas

Enjoy,
NØ
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5 comments:

  2. Great piece. And beautiful photographs too.

    A curious thing, vaguely.

    'The Deer Hunter' was on the box the other night. I have watched it too often, and I can't abide the "God Bless America" finale - a bit too much like "Auld Lang Syne" on Hogmany here - but I fell into watching it yet again.

    For some reason, and this is quite shameful, it had never registered on me that that even the Clairton steel foundry was set in Pennsylvania; let alone that some of these scenes were shot in Cleveland.

    As to the deer hunting scenes...

    In my distant fashion, I always regard Pennsylvania as being thoroughly urbanized. It never dawned on me that that there are mountains and rural wilderness; much like a lot of the scenery to be stumbled upon just outwith Glasgow.

    Of course, Scotland is a tiny place.

    Egg on my face. So.

    I don't really enjoy the theatre of funerals either. Or the way more people seem drawn to the stilted social element of it. And the coffin as some kind of prop.

    That is a kyloe there. A Highland cow ?

    Those photographs resemble parts of Scotland so closely it is almost jarring. Highland and Lowland.

    Thanks for "Slow Walking Daddy". A bonus. David Thomas's vocal is stark and suitably keening. I have not heard "St. Arkansas".

    One more shameful admission.

    Meadville. Honey wine.

    Happy New Year again, brother NØ.

    ReplyDelete

  4. Great pictures... ib sent me.

    ReplyDelete

  5. Great reading, Nathan. I hear there's a new Ubu album a'coming round the mountain!

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