Monday Morning Glory

(Flag Ceremony - '98 (watercolor, colored pencil)

The American Revolution and the founding of America have always held a place in my imagination. As a concept, it's undeniably attractive. As a citizen, it's often frustrating knowing that we have yet to live up to the ideals set forth in that time. I briefly mention this frustration in Pure Sunshine as the main character passes by Independence Hall. But a lot of poets have expressed their feelings about the American experiment over the two hundred plus years of the empire in great detail. Two have always stood out for me, expressing the spirit for better and worse.

I hear America singing, the varied carols I hear...

-Walt Whitman [1860]

Under the bluffs of Oroville, blue cloud September skies, entering U.S. border, red red apples bend their tree boughs propt with sticks.

- Allen Ginsberg from The Fall of America [1965]

Written almost exactly 100 years apart, I think these two poems combined capture the way I've always felt about America. Whitman's poem captures the sense of hope and possibility for what America can be. Ginsberg's poems bring out the harsh reality of a dream corrupted and controlled and the heartbreak of those of us who still believe in possibility.

For the last several years, I've been collecting scraps and bits of verse or ideas, sticking them in a folder marked America (Again). One of these days, I plan on writing my own epic poem about this strange land. Until then, I will share one scrap, written possibly two years ago with the title Independent Nation scribbled atop with a drawing of a boy saluting nothing in particular:

Dead leaves are my citizens.

Dandelions that I let breed

are as well.

My piece of the mountain bought and paid for,

I even own the clouds when they pass overhead,

And all the way down to the road

that runs alongside.

I am its little lord

and I do my best to govern without any laws.

The woodchuck, the woodpecker, the hungry rabbits, bees and birds,

They're all here.

They all seem to notice.

The deer leave halo footprints to let me know.

When I stand still and face the wind crawling quickly from the west,

It almost feels like I understand,

for a brief moment,

what 'America' was supposed to have meant.

-brian james 2008

Monday Morning Glory

When I was in my late teens and early twenties, trying to discover who I was as a writer, most of my texts were riddles of surreal images and stream of consciousness semi-poetics. They were untamed. Though at times, I wrote passages that I thought were exceptional, I struggled with honing in the lyrical content within a context. In 1998 Neutral Milk Hotel released one my ten favorite albums of all time, In the Aeroplane over the Sea. This is one of those works of art that both inspires me, yet haunts me with its genius. However, there is one verse on it that really helped me focus in on the creative dilemma I described above.

The only girl I've ever loved
Was born with roses in her eyes
But then they buried her alive
One evening, 1945
With just her sister at her side
And only weeks before the guns
All came and rained on everyone
Now she's a little boy in Spain
Playing pianos filled with flames

-from the song Holland, 1945

There's an undeniable beauty to the words that on the surface seem to make no sense, especially the "now she's a little boy in Spain", but that is what so attracted me to the lines in the first place. I think it was about the second or third listen when I realized this verse was talking about Anne Frank (one of my earliest literary influences). Like any great piece of poetry, the puzzle takes time to unravel, but once it does, once it's clear in your mind, the imagery and meaning of these lines is overwhelming. They stop me every time I hear them.

Through these lines, I learned that stringing together odd and beautiful images only reached their full potential when they were used for a deeper meaning that was beyond the showing off of creative language. It took me a long time to learn how to use this knowledge, but I think it's fair to say that now my books are filled with examples of what I learned thanks to two influential figures in my literary life, Jeff Mangum and Anne Frank.

Monday Morning Glory

This week, I want to share a line that has been stuck with me for fourteen years. For over a year, The Verve's Northern Soul album felt like the soundtrack to my life. The words and music completely captured the way I felt, living in a small apartment on St. Mark's Place in New York City, my body filled with substances and my mind filled with make-believe. There are many, many lines in that album that I could pick out, but there is one in particular that my mind always returns to. It comes from the song "Life's An Ocean" and it goes like this:

-Imagine the future, woke up with a scream

I was buying some feelings from a vending machine-

Richard Ashcroft

What a horrifying, yet believable image even in the mid '90s. It is even more believable today in a world where so many emotions are controlled by prescription. In a more metaphorical sense, we can download applications designed for momentary enjoyment and our serotonin levels are constantly jumping with each new posted comment or text that comes into our world. We are sort of living that future now and forever marching forward.

As with the previous two lines, this one was integral to the development of one of the main characters in my new novel. He views the world through the same lens as one who might write that line. Another bit of trivia, the lines that follow these in the song make up the quote in the beginning of my novel Perfect World.

-There's something inside of me

Crying out for something else

And if someone hears this scream

Put it in a letter to me-

Richard Ashcroft

As I said, this album played a huge part in my life in the years where I was really finding out who I was artistically. If you don't own it, I highly recommend you do. It is still one of ten favorite albums of all time.

Monday Morning Glory

To continue my series of revealing amazing lines or phrases that for one reason or other haunt me, this week I've chosen what might be the most interesting sentence ever written. I'm incredibly jealous of this sentence. From the first time I read it in spring of '97, I've been kind of obsessed with its author.

"In Watermelon Sugar the deeds were done and done again as my life is done in watermelon sugar."

— Richard Brautigan (In Watermelon Sugar)

Not only is this line a perfect bit of surrealism that captures the kind of imaginative childhood imagery that has always fascinated me, but it also an amazing little piece of writing with a cadence and rhythm that is so striking. The rhythm of words is such a huge part of my writing style. I'm forever reading and re-reading sentences and playing with them until they not only say what I want but also sound write. Brautigan's sentence is one of those measuring sticks for me. It says something interesting, in an interesting way, and sounds beautiful as it says it.

This also happens to be the opening line from the book, In Watermelon Sugar. Now, that's an opening. This book was very much on my mind in the earliest stages of working on the novel I've recently finished. There's a dream quality to the book that is handled so beautifully and delicately that I admire. I didn't go back to look at the book, because I never like to be influenced by, but rather inspired by. Instead, I just dwelt on the impressions I had from reading it so long ago. Those impressions became the inspiration for some of the elements in my book.

Opening lines aren't really my thing. I mean, I appreciate them and spend a lot of time on my own, but I'm not obsessive about them either as some readers tend to be. But since I happened to chose one today, I thought I'd share another.

"A screaming comes across the sky."
— Thomas Pynchon (Gravity's Rainbow)

Arguably the finest opening line ever, this one also inspired part in my new novel. When I read this book two years back, I spent many hours thinking about this line. I still do. It certainly inspired a key element in my story. I could never get the image of my head...neither can my character.

Monday Morning Glory

There are certain lines or phrases or bits of writing that are just simply perfect. I'm not necessarily talking about quotes. Quotes have to be complete thoughts to be relevant. I'm referring more to pure poetic expression where the combination of words adds up as tightly and beautifully as a complicated math equation. These are phrases that stick in my mind for days at a time, year after year, as I contemplate their completeness. From now on, I plan to set Monday mornings aside to share some of these lines.

The inaugural entry comes from the second verse of Leonard Cohen's song "Bird on a Wire":

Like a baby, stillborn

Like a beast with his horn,

I have torn everyone who reached out for me.

The first time I head this song was during my first semester at NYU while chain smoking in a girl named Kate's bedroom as we drank bottomless mugs of coffee and tried to conjugate german verbs. Upon hearing these lines, the young poet in me was blown away. I had never heard of Leonard Cohen before that moment, but soon would go on to read his poetry, buy his albums, and encounter Beautiful Losers, one of the best novels ever written.

I was listening to Joe Cocker's version of "Bird on a Wire" this past Saturday and was reminded again of how perfect those lines are. Two completely different images of a stillborn baby and horned animal come together to encompass the full range of both physical and emotional pain. The use of the word "torn" is brilliant in bringing the imagery together. This could very well be my favorite stanza written in the English language.