Feargal Sharkey is 55 today. We're driving to Ohio today to abandon our daughter at college Thursday morning. I'm driving a rental while Planet drives her car, she tells me she drives as fast as me, I'm glad Earthgirl will be in her car for that reason, glad too because I've music - listen to this blog's last week of songs, yo - I can listen to on the way out but won't play on the way back: the world is large, and Earthgirl loves Pere Ubu and lots of stuff I love for the seven hours back. Expect lots of Lampchop here the next few days: they are always part of this trip's soundtrack, here's your aargh, for instance. But, on abandoning my daughter: though it hurts to drive away, it's hyperbole to call it abandonment. Obligatory sentence: when Planet is my age it will be 2047. I'm told movies with top box-office stars are in movie theaters even as I type this that are conditioning her for that world. Anyway, what to say, and over and over? That takes care of angry links and their metaphors and overtones, nothing but songs, poems, photos, perhaps some non-angry links, travelogs until at least Friday, I can hope if not promise. The above song always reminds me of this Delays song:
[HE LIVED - CHILDHOOD SUMMERS]
Lorine Niedecker
He lived—childhood summers
thru bare feet
then years of money’s lack
and heat
beside the river—out of flood
came his wood, dog,
woman, lost her, daughter—
prologue
to planting trees. He buried carp
beneath the rose
where grass-still
the marsh rail goes.
To bankers on high land
he opened his wine tank.
He wished his only daughter
to work in the bank
but he’d given her a source
to sustain her—
a weedy speech,
a marshy retainer.
