As I made my way on foot up Eighth Avenue toward my meeting with Laurie, I found myself wading upstream through ten blocks of marching protestors chanting “I can’t breathe! I can’t breathe!” (Garner’s final words as he was dropped to the sidewalk by police) and “Hands up! Don’t shoot!” (in reference to the Michael Brown case). It was an intense reminder of how incredibly racist certain aspects of our society can still be, particularly in the relations between some black civilians and white police, particularly concerning these two cases, in which all apparent evidence, of which there was no shortage, pointed to malfeasance. Yet both cases were dismissed without further investigation.
Laurie’s phrase “meeting on top of the Time Warner building” had conjured images of sheltering from the wind in the lee of large air-conditioning units, trying to light our cheroots with our last remaining wooden matches. Fortunately, the rendezvous she had in mind was of a considerably more indoor nature, in the swell lobby bar of the Mandarin Oriental hotel, located on the thirty-fifth floor of the Time Warner building. The windows of the room look out across Columbus Circle to Central Park, delivering one of the finest views of Olmsted’s (and Vaux’s!) masterwork for the price of a cocktail and a couple of sliders. (Note to the management: The sliders used to include three small burgers with varied cheeses and sauce, but they are now only two in number, with standard toppings on both. Please return to the original, vastly superior preparation.)
We got a sweet table right by the windows and ordered: bourbon and grilled cheese for her, sliders and Lagavulin for me. Moving through the topics of Bob Dylan, Wendell Berry, and boatbuilding, and Laurie’s rendering of a relevant joke—“Why is there no woman on the dollar bill? ‘Cause it’d only be worth seventy-seven cents’”—we finally came upon the quarry of my seeking: Laurie’s ideas.
I think parents should buy their kids a house. They should go to college later—I think right now, they spend all their time, the first ten years of their lives working up to knowing what they want to do, so they can get a job, so they can get a house. Give ’em a house . . . it’s pretty arbitrary to go to college . . . to do what?
We agreed that in most American neighborhoods, you could get your kids a fine house for the price of one year of college at a high-end school, or four years at most state colleges. In a very Wendell Berry turn of conversation, we discussed the prudence of one getting one’s feet underneath one before committing to the debt that comes with a college degree that often ends up useless.
The talk turned to the protest down on the streets of Manhattan, and Laurie said, “I’m glad people are realizing—I don’t want to say something mean here, but the police are really brutal. They’re really entitled, you know?” I agree with her. The thing that frustrates me is the inaction, the seeming helplessness of the people. Two clear cases, representing a great many more similar episodes of injustice, have outraged the public and caught the nation’s attention for a lingering moment. Both cases have been stridently protested but then summarily dismissed. The white guys are apparently not going down without a fight.
This talk provoked more treasure to spill forth from the fecund imagination sitting across from me. She described an acquaintance of hers who is suffering terribly from post-traumatic stress disorder and is unable to reenter society because of his affliction.
So this is my campaign. What I want to propose is a sort of reverse boot camp. So [the army] believes in indoctrination to kill. Then they should believe in indoctrination not to kill people. When you join the army, boot camp’s at least two months, [because] a lot of people really can’t just pick up a gun. So the idea is, on the other end is two months, they’re still paid, they’re still in the army, they’re still employed by the US government, and in this boot camp they teach us how to drop the gun. Drop the gun. Drop the gun and try and pull back into wherever they were coming from.
My admiration continued to swell. Laurie Anderson has attributes that are reminiscent of other characters exalted in these pages; for example, she always seems to be thinking about how to train her particular weapons of empathy upon some sort of need she perceives in the humanity around her. Part of her technique seems to come from a fascination with the myths that each culture creates to explain the unexplainable parts of the world around us.
Laurie made a very compelling case for religion in general, versus science, pointing out that science redefines its “absolute truth” every six months. She said, “Think of science like Aristotle or somebody. Let’s make something really perfect. Let’s conceive the universe as thirty-five spheres. Then everything has to happen perfectly, but then Kepler said, ‘Guess what? They’re not spheres; they’re ellipses!’ And people said, ‘That’s not as perfect as spheres!’” Her point being that humanity scientifically craves perfection, but the natural world of course is imperfect; it is not symmetrical. Therefore, the elasticity or ambiguity of myth can more comfortably encompass all our fears and questions. Again, finding comfort is not knowing.
Furthermore, many of my heroes generally eschew the modern fashions of social media and overconsumption of technology-based entertainment; whether it’s in the woodshop or writing by the light of day, they lean toward “unplugged.” Laurie gets her kicks in the opposite direction—she has been a self-proclaimed “gear geek” for decades. She is responsible for musical innovations like the tape-bow violin, the talking stick, and her special voice filter for the “voice of authority” (Fenway Bergamot), which she refers to as “audio drag.” She now carries an iPad that she uses to record music, using a plethora of apps to achieve her various effects. She said, “Yeah, it’s more than a studio. Just every instrument ever made, every filter ever made, every groove ever made . . . I love new stuff.”
In the middle of our palaver, Laurie stopped short, distracted by something over my shoulder.
“What do you think of that?” she asked.
I looked back at a large, confusing painting on the wall overlooking the bar area.
“It’s either really good or really bad,” she continued. “It might be a combination.”
I pitched in. “My gut reaction is: abhorrent, but then I . . . yeah, I’m gonna stick with abhorrent.”
She said, “But it really bothers me. It’s not a tasteful painting, but—”
I said, “No, but it caught your attention.”
She went on. “You could say that about it. It did, and it really bothers me.”
There was a similarly styled second painting across the room that we had to get up and scrutinize. In the baffling details I pointed out the New York Stock Exchange, a picture of a squirrel, and the name Pocahontas. Laurie grew suspiciously silent, but I am not saying that she is not a Freemason.
Our conversation ended up on the topic of love. We did not discuss Laurie’s relationship with Lou Reed across the last twenty years of his life. We did discuss my wife, Megan, and the fact that she and Laurie had both performed in the excellent performance space thirty floors directly beneath us, known as the Allen Room. I described Megan’s show to Laurie, which included a duet with the late, beyond great Elaine Stritch, as well as other dark, funny, and eclectic song choices.
Laurie said, “I love dark. That’s beautiful. And she sang there.”
I said, “She did. I’m a big fan. I got real lucky in my marriage.”
She said, “Yeah. Being in love is the whole point. It’s the whole point.”
A sprite to the end, Laurie left an indelible impression upon me in the manner by which she gravitates toward lightness and humor, fueled all the while by the noblest of emotions. Witnessing her acuity and commitment to whimsy firsthand, in addition to my previously cultivated devotion to her cleverly orchestrated glamours, I realized as we said good night that I would be enlarged by the compassionate effects of her gifts for the rest of my days. I was as crazy about her witchcraft then, on top of a building, as I had been twenty-five years ago in the mid
dle of a cornfield.
20
WILLIE NELSON
America, to me, is freedom.
—WILLIE NELSON
If you have not caught up on the quality television program Parks and Recreation, I will simply reiterate that I portrayed a devilishly handsome (according to my mom), gruff libertarian named Ron Swanson—a man with little use for modern fashion or popular culture. That is, popular culture beyond the novels of Patrick O’Brian, The Bridge on the River Kwai, and the records of one Willie Nelson. The sum total of musical selections we ever heard Ron enjoy, in fact, was comprised of Willie’s songs “Buddy” and “Hello Walls.” I mention this now, in this context, because the character of Ron had a (hopefully) enjoyable, curmudgeonly demeanor, founded in an obdurate, John Wayne–esque simplicity when it came to his stance on most issues, particularly those issues concerning this great country that we call America.
That a singular American man such as Ron Swanson would choose the music of Willie Nelson serves as a splendidly accurate introduction to not only my vision of the ideal country we live in, but what’s more, the nation that America could one day become. He has been a musical and political maverick for decades, one who has often been revealed as quite human, a fact that he openly displays in his lyrics.
Born in 1933, Willie grew up playing music (and football, baseball, and basketball, natch) in the small town of Abbott, Texas, about a half hour north of Waco. His first professional gig earned him eight dollars playing rhythm guitar in a local polka band, and he was hooked.
“That first night I made money making music, I knew that I had succeeded.”
Despite his wealth of talent for songwriting and performing, Willie spent years jumping around the western United States, working at a vast variety of odd jobs, with a focus on radio DJ gigs—a position that allowed him to record his songs on the radio stations’ equipment. He sold songs here and there, primarily in the flavor of the west Texas country genre in which he had made his beginnings, until he finally made the move to Nashville in 1960.
Despite the successes of “Hello Walls,” recorded by Faron Young, and Patsy Cline’s famous cover of his song “Crazy,” Willie had a hard time finding his niche in the conservative setting of Nashville country music. He had contracts with Liberty Records, Monument, and then RCA across the later sixties, with middling success. His songs would make the charts but never top them, which meant his songwriting royalties would about break even with the cost of tours and living. During this time, however, he began to develop confidence in his own unique sound, along with the likes of pals Waylon Jennings and Kris Kristofferson. Their less-polished, more honest and stripped-down style came to be known as “outlaw” country.
In December of 1970, his house in Ridgetop, Tennessee, outside of Nashville, mysteriously burned to the ground. Willie took this as a sign from the gods to leave the conventional business of Nashville music and head back to the state of his youth.
Austin, Texas, one of the most charismatic American cities—state capital and also “weirdness central”—is where Willie took up residence in 1972. Over the forty-plus years since, he has established himself there as something more than a mayor or royalty. He has become Austin’s wizard. I am perhaps in danger of overtaxing the use of “Gandalf” as a high compliment, but I cannot bear to refer to the warlock Willie as Dumbledore, Oz, or Thoros. He demands something more classic.
Willie Nelson is the Merlin of Austin. Yea, and of America, to boot.
By the way, I am sorry to report that I was not able to meet Willie for an interview. Oh, I’m not sorry for you, reader. I mean my sorrow in a purely selfish way—as I should be able to render a serviceable, if not enjoyable chapter from my research and clear ability to opine, for better or worse. But, selfishly, the crybaby in me rears his head back in a tearful squall when I lament that I have not yet shaken Mr. Nelson’s hand. I’d settle for clasping either one of his astonishingly nimble dinner plates, those ennobled workhorses with which he manipulates the fretboard and strings of “Trigger,” his eldritch, scarred, and seemingly immortal Martin guitar, to disseminate his delectable mix of jazz and country styles, hitting perhaps eleven other genres in between them.
In 1974, Willie was the star of the pilot episode of Austin City Limits, the now-venerated PBS show that initially highlighted the music of Texas but has come to represent the finest of contemporary performers across genre lines. Notably stripped down in its production, the “unplugged” quality of the program’s presentations often delivers performances that are considered definitive—one of the reasons that the show is the only television program to date to have been awarded the National Medal of Arts. Considering all this, they could not have found a more perfect point man than Willie Nelson.
Once he made the move to Austin, Willie was able to get his feet under himself artistically, a strengthening that saw the advent of his signature style, which we’ve come to know and love and upon which we depend when we’re in need of any emotion from melancholy to mirth. His third record of this renaissance, Red Headed Stranger, is my favorite of all his albums. It’s got everything: horses, murder, Bonaparte, a piano, a preacher, and “Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain,” which provided Willie Nelson the singer with his first number one hit.
That was followed soon after by my next two favorites, The Sound in Your Mind (1976) and Stardust (1978), and the new independent feeling and flavor of these records would serve to fuel Willie’s prolific output, which has included to date more than one hundred records. If you throw in compilations, collaborations, and film soundtracks, that number tops three hundred. It’s worth noting that Willie was past forty years old before he saw the kind of success with which we have come to identify him. He’d been selling songs as a writer for fifteen or twenty years, but once he broke free of the constraints he felt in Nashville, his talent and creativity took him to a whole new level, a fact that reminds me of this, one of my favorite Willie quotes: “The early bird gets the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese.”
By the early seventies, Willie was into his third of four marriages, and he has fathered seven children to date, but considering his apparent joie de vivre, I wouldn’t cut off his tab just yet. The roller coaster–like undulations in his life’s path have undoubtedly played a salient role in Willie’s seeming ability to perpetually represent the average American. Even now that he has been a colossal success and icon for decades, the various platforms and causes for which he advocates allow America’s working class to feel that he remains representative of their best interests, quite simply because he does.
The bearded and braided man who said, “If you’re not crazy, there’s something wrong with you,” certainly inspires confidence in me. He’s another person I think we’d elect to office in a heartbeat, if he was ever convinced to run, although I’m afraid he’d have to be awfully high to entertain such a conversation. Rocky Mountain high. On weed.
With his social activism alone, he’s accomplished more for the good of our citizenry than most politicians will in their lifetimes, the difference being that we pay the politicians. He’s been a very vocal advocate for the adoption of horses, supporting the Animal Welfare Institute (AWI) with a letter campaign urging the public to contact their representatives in Congress about the AHSPA, or American Horse Slaughter Prevention Act, a proposed piece of legislation of which I had not heard, for a seriously macabre situation occurring under the table.
Apparently, a great many horses are being slaughtered (one every five minutes, according to the AWI) by nefarious overseas interests, for human consumption. For obvious reasons, this information is being kept under wraps, but until Congress passes a ban on this practice, horses will continue to be shipped to Mexico to meet the same grisly end. Given his alignment with Habitat for Horses, and the many horses he has personally adopted to his ranch in Texas, this cause is a no-brainer for Willie the cowboy.
There has been a good deal
of discussion in this book about the ways in which our society is voraciously consuming the dwindling natural resources on our planet, but there are few examples given as to tangible solutions to which we may offer our support. Willie has actually funded two plants, in Oregon and Texas, that produce biodiesel fuel. Made from mostly soybean oil, this biodiesel can be burned in conventional diesel engines without the engines needing any alterations. Finding an alternative to the monstrous amount of petroleum products and coal that we burn every day will be one of the most important forward steps we can take in conserving our planet for future generations. I personally have no bright ideas for how to do this, as I am a jackass, and so I am extremely grateful to Willie and other forward thinkers like him for stepping up to the plate on all our behalf and taking a swing at it.
Another amazing movement in which Willie has played a leading role is the establishment of Farm Aid in 1985—the annual one-day music festival that raises money and awareness for the plight of the small American farmer. He was joined in this effort by Neil Young and John Mellencamp, as well as a killer lineup of guest artists every year (including Jeff Tweedy and Wilco), and the organization has raised millions of dollars in aid for failing farms, but more important, they have made Congress sit up and take notice of the financial dilemma in which these families find themselves when trying to compete with the corporate giants in “agribusiness.”
Gumption: America's Gutsiest Troublemakers Page 28