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