Bon Iver & Florence and The Machine

Last night I could hear Bon Iver and then Florence and The Machine from my house.

Were I in Reno I would have shot myself in Reno just to watch myself die.

But I wasn't in Reno, I was at home in San Francisco.

My wife, reading while laying on the couch, complained about the music coming from Golden Gate Park, two blocks away. She found it tiresome and asked if I still had my Bose 'noise cancelling' headphones, the headphones I'd bought when we lived in the duplex in The Presidio and had the noisy, pestilent German neighbors. I knew the noise cancellers were somewhere in the house: Bose Headphones are not something you just throw away or take to Goodwill.

I was sitting in my favorite chair, opposite her in the living room, reading too when she asked.

Hmm, I thought, I wonder where those headphones are? I knew I'd kept them when he moved from The Presidio to our home in The Richmond. I presumed they were upstairs, but I didn't want to go upstairs.

Loving her I got up from my chair and walked upstairs, not finding the Bose headphones in the first place I looked but finding them in the second, hiding on a bookshelf behind closed doors.

I'd been reading a biography of the poet James Wright when my wife asked for the headphones. I hadn't realized how hard Wright worked on his poems, or that he actually believed in The Muse. The concept of The Muse seems archaic these days, but why should it? I once believed in The Muse whole-heartedly, and was happier when I did.

After going upstairs for my wife I came downstairs and handed the Bose headphones to her. She smiled at me. She was reading a new book by a famous author about the benefits of micro-dosing LSD. Earlier she'd gone to the public library on 37th Ave to borrow the book, but the librarian said there were over 300 'holds' on it already. So we drove to Green Apple on Clement and she bought the thing and I bought the Wright bio.

Returning to my chair and my book I thought, of all the poets in 20th c America James Wright is the only one who was picked out to be a poet. This goes hand-in-hand with my theory--unique to me--that a century can really only tolerate one poet per continent, and that James Wright is that American poet for the 20th century*

When I said things like this my oldest son would call me "a barroom philosopher." When he called me a barroom philosopher it hadn't sounded too good to me. I hadn't asked him what he meant, not really wanting to know, and besides he said it years ago and probably has forgotten he said it. But that I still remember what he said means it still has some meaning for me. 

After I resumed reading about James Wright, I took a break. Florence and The Machine were both wailing and droning in the near distance, somewhere in GG Park. As I listened I wrote in my notebook, The truth is mean-spirited, and bad music sounds worse when it's far away.

*In assigning Wright's lofty poetic status I exempt WC Williams, Wallace Stevens, Robinson Jeffers, and Robert Frost from consideration, assigning all of them to previous centuries of poetic time.

 New Yorker cartoon, July 30, 2015.