The Quiet Before the Storm

All the greatest things in life come down to deadlines. If its worth doing, worth pursuing, then it will probably have a somewhat firm deadline attached to it.

The end of term flew in and out, without too many passengers say stranded at JFK.

Most of the week was standardized tests, and the pressure these students face is unimaginable. I suppose standardized tests have been high-stakes for awhile now, but then what? Once they pass the WASL in tenth grade, where do we go from here?

The answer is, quite resoundly, we don't care. It's a benchmark system. Trying to teach students to express themselves clearly is difficult in a world of standardized tests.

A new term came into town, savvy and sophisticated, if early journals are any indication.

Next week is more standardized testing, but today is a regular day. The in between days are the most important. We're in between areas, gasping for breath.

All this while trying to write, I must be mad. I've been reading Death of a Salesman again, research for my book, wherein the protagonist plays the part of Willy Loman in a High School play.

Each night I work on this I have vivid dreams, where areas and people are blended, like the United States in a grafted cross-stitch. My wife just finished her work sample, and is one step closer to being a licensed teacher. I remember the time.

Work doesn't want to acknowledge the fact I have a Video Department. Now I know how the Quebecois feel.

Its SxSw in Austin right now, thousands of bands and discovery. Youth, a concept I know well, but am distanced from. Too tall to ride that ride.

The new Wilco record, Sky Blue Sky, seems to anticipate the Summer. Languid, hot and free. The new patio, writing, reading paperback books until my hands sweat. Battling the Sleestacks in the backyard.

Rode the bicycle the other day. There's something magical about being on a bike path and having a river on your left and an airplane landing on the right. My Dad got his pilot's license. Perhaps someday, I'll bike to the airport to meet him there.

Creative time, ha. Yeah, how does he do it? Squandered time everyday. Working on a novel is continuous, always trying out new ways of doing something.

All for now,

Kronski

School Prayer and the Mountain Goats

Things happen to us, and because of the amount of space between the two of them, Tom Spanbauer would call it propinquity, we can't help
but meld them together.

What does School Prayer have to do withthe Mountain Goats? How can the concept of School Prayer and all of the free speech issues it brings up be linked up, connected, referred to indirectly in the same
sentence as John Darnielle ofthe Mountain Goats? Just what is the
connection exactly?

We can start with the most logical choice first. John Darnielle is a huge Death Metal Fan, on his blog Last Plane to Jakarta, John wrote thirty poems about Death Metal. So we can take that as an anathema to Christianity. The people punished for a morning group prayer meeting at the High School I teach were Christians, and this happened to coincide with the weekend that I got to see John Darnielle's band the Mountain Goats play live at the Doug Fir Lounge here in Portland, thereby making me groggy on the morning that students were at it again, attempting a morning prayer meeting, after their story was plastered all over the local news.

One of the greatest thrills of being a music fan, nay being a human
being is discovering worlds within worlds. Webs of connotation and
expression that live underneath concepts that exist despite one's lack
of knowledge of these said webs.

Since I first heard their named mentioned in music circles, the
Mountain Goats have intrigued me on namesake alone. It took me some
time to discover their albums released on their 4AD label, and when I
did I was richly rewarded.

Call it a slow conversion process. I acquired 'We Shall All Be Healed'
and read many interviews in which the word 'narrative' was applied
liberally to the man. The lyrics were unintelligible to me, but the
music was infectious.

It took the 2005 release of 'Sunset Tree' to make me wake up and hear
the stories he described. I was a tad disappointed in last year's 'Get
Lonely' record, but the 'Sunset Tree' never really left my mind.

It wasn't until last night that I became a converted Mountain Goats
Fan. In the weeks leading up to the show, I pulled out their records,
I listened with a firmer ear, I digested stories with shadowy
overtones. I read his reactions to Jazz records, downloaded Bill
Evans's 'Moonbeams' on his recommendation.

And then last night. The stories, the songs, the way in which he
played, with absolute radiant joy. His whole face lit up, his stories
were weired, semi-personal and semi-fictitious.

One of the songs, they played it towards the end of their set, I was
the only one who didn't know every word, who didn't sing every word out
loud and clear, much to John's insistence.

And now Monday I come back to work and its school prayer and controversy, and even though I side with the Administration on this
one, I still can't help but think about free speech, and what I
spectacle they made of it.

I am a convert to the mythically dark world of John Darnielle and the
Mountain Goats, and I found it without having it waved in front of me,
And while I may have risked feeling groggy the next day, It did not direct me to the path the prayer group took. My visit to musical nirvana was purely based on a love of music and maybe the telling of a good story.

All this time John and his band have played Portland time and time
again since I moved here, each time with different stories, to different crowd shout
outs. And now that I can see his full catalog in perspective, and I
can see how much the man has written, and how increasingly
sophisticated that writing has become. I can now marvel at the way it sat
in the back of my brain, never unraveled or opened, in the corner the
surface barely scratched.

And that praying, and the gaudiness of it, the free speech issue that
isn't there. I see it all in a new light, through the eyes of a Death
Metal fan.

Thank you John, thank you so much.


Mountain Goats - Woke Up New