spinofflive
David Berman (Silver Jews) passed away on August 7, 2019.
David Berman (Silver Jews) passed away on August 7, 2019.

Pop CultureAugust 9, 2019

An answerphone message for David Berman

David Berman (Silver Jews) passed away on August 7, 2019.
David Berman (Silver Jews) passed away on August 7, 2019.

Jonny Potts leaves a message for one of the musicians that mattered to him most: David Berman of the Silver Jews, who died this week.

Hi David.

I know that’s a bit familiar. Sorry, I guess.

So, I’d just got out from seeing the shrink when I checked my phone and saw the Pitchfork tweet. The words didn’t fit together, they were sort of floating around each other: ‘52’, ‘Dead’, ‘Berman’, ‘Has Died’… I stared at the ‘Silver Jews’ and ‘Purple Mountains’ words to try to make sense of it. By ‘make sense’ I mean something quite literal.

I was in the food court I used to go to over a decade ago now to listen to Tanglewood Numbers at lunch. The food court is the same as it was, but like everything else that’s still here ten years later, it’s different too. In fact I was just talking with the shrink about that Mark Fisher book you linked to a couple of weeks back, Ghosts of my Life. Shrink had never heard of ‘hauntology’. I used the not entirely accurate but convenient definition that it’s a type of nostalgia for a future you felt you were gonna get that never came to pass. I’ve found it in everything recently. Maybe I’ve even been deliberately looking for it in empty, smashed-up Wellington. I’ve been leaning in to the eerie and the disappointing, the way you did – shit, past tense! Gonna have to get used to that. Especially now, when you’ve been so present again.

I heard the interview you did with Vish Khanna. I couldn’t believe what he said about that backing vocal in ‘Darkness and Cold’: that it sounds like a “cowboy on the range”? No, Vish! You said “I don’t know what it is” which was very diplomatic.

But I know that sound: not really a flinch, not quite a wail. It’s a slowed down, melancholy reading of that involuntary hiccup thing people do when they know everything is lost. That’s how I could tell it wasn’t you singing it. Heartbreak was something you used to stand apart from. You felt it, but it flowed through you or swept over you. It’s that line from ‘Trains Across the Sea’: “In 27 years I’ve drunk 50,000 beers / And they just wash against me like the sea into a pier”.

And now I’m doing it – I’m doing that thing: quoting the memorable lines. Everyone’s doing it. I wonder if I set up one Google alert for “David Berman” and another for “In 1984 I was hospitalized for approaching perfection”, they’d get the same amount of results? You’re in good company though: you’re rubbing shoulders with Toni Morrison! Ha.

You know the one song I will generally do if there’s wine and a guitar around? ‘Sleeping is the Only Love’. Piss easy chords. And I know it better than maybe any of your other songs cos my first iPod had one music video on it and it was that one. The one with the eyes and the bike. I still watch it on my phone sometimes when I go to bed drunk. I was surprised to read that you were learning it again ahead of going out on the road. How could you forget a song even I know how to play? You said you’d just made new discoveries about the lyrics of that song.

You’re right, though. Those words can surprise you.

I wonder if anyone has ever had ‘Tennessee’ as the first dance at their wedding? Stranger things have happened. I’m 100% sure I’ve never heard your stuff at a wedding. But man I wanted to hear some Silver Jews when we were driving up to my dad’s funeral.

There were three of us crammed into the cab of a Hi-Lux and we were taking turns picking full albums to play. Paul put on Me First and the Gimme Gimmes and Nick chose Bowie’s Black Star. Both are weird as hell to hear in Horowhenua on the way to your father’s funeral. Drag City hadn’t put your stuff on Spotify yet, so I couldn’t play The Natural Bridge. (A couple of years later it showed up there so I got a six pack and tweeted about it.)

I know you never got to make peace with your dad. But from what you’ve said, you wouldn’t have wanted it. From what I can tell, he’s an evil motherfucker who can rot in hell.

You resonate most, in my experience, with people devoted to opening something up in themselves. The three people I know who would have been most affected by your (stupid, inevitable) death have all had books published. Go figure. In fact, you read one of those books. I know this because you took the time to write to the author, and the author told me. And that’s as close as we ever got.

You got on Twitter recently, but I never thought of saying anything to you. You let your listeners in so much, it wasn’t necessary. But thinking about it now, the way you were talking near the end, it sounded so lonely. Your mother’s death. A decade reading books. Separation from the woman who remained your only family. Holing up in your label’s headquarters with the boss checking up on you. The tour they’d planned for you looming like a wolf.

I never saw you perform. Few did. That’s a future that was taken from us. And now, man, Purple Mountains – such a clear and deliberate break from Silver Jews, a statement that there were Things To Come. And now those have been taken from us too.

And when the dying’s finally done and the suffering subsides, all the suffering gets done by the ones we leave behind. You wrote that. You only just wrote that.

You know how that song begins “I heard they were taming the shrew”? Well one time I started singing it in front of some theatre girls and they just booed the song down right away – which sucked cos they were so close to hearing, “You might as well say ‘Fuck me’ cos I’m gonna keep on, keep on lovin’ you”.

Maybe I don’t understand women, but I can’t imagine anyone turning you down after hearing a line like that. But no, that’s not why I ever did it. I did it once on a deck at a party and this girl asked me if I wrote it and I suppose one specific part of me wanted to say yes but come on there’s no way I can back that up.

What am I going to say? “Oh yeah and here’s another one I wrote” and go into fucking ‘Rockin’ in the Free World’ or some shit? Ha. I don’t have plausible competency. I always make sure it gets back to you.

And thank you. Thank you for getting round to getting back to us.

Keep going!
Screen Shot 2019-08-09 at 6.55.00 AM

Pop CultureAugust 9, 2019

The Handmaid’s Tale recap: How to get away with murder

Screen Shot 2019-08-09 at 6.55.00 AM

Tensions continue to rise in Gilead, but June’s plan to start the revolution is coming together perfectly. Is this too good to be true? Tara Ward recaps this week’s episode of The Handmaid’s Tale.

It’s the pentultimate episode of season three, and life is positively jaunty in Gilead. The Waterfords are in the Canadian slammer, Winslow’s still dead, and June’s dream to steal a bajillion children and fly them to freedom is about to come true. There’s also plenty of carrots and potatoes at the supermarket, and I feel a hearty casserole coming on. I bet Fred Waterford loves a good stew, as much as he loves a delicious dystopia. Sucker! No stew for you, prison boy.

That prison lighting is BRUTAL.

“I can’t stop imagining them in orange jumpsuits,” June says when she hears about the Waterfords, but she’d be sadly disappointed. Fred and Serena are being held in a detention centre that doubles as a sleek 4 star hotel, with crisp white sheets and comfy armchairs and a pleasant garden view. Mr Treason and Coconuts even gives Serena Joy free pizza and newspapers, which I certainly didn’t get that time I was upgraded to a double bunk with ensuite at the YHA.

Despite all the home comforts, Fred’s in a right state when he discovers his beloved wife set him up. “I want to be with my daughter,” Serena tells him, and if Fred had his Scrabble board in prison, he would spell out FUMING for a Triple Word Score of 36 points. “I pity the child that has you as its mother,” he replies, his sweaty hands around Serena’s neck. Ugh. Check the prison mini-bar, that guy needs to be invoiced $36 for a tiny block of chocolate, ASAP.

“That was MY sandwich in the office fridge.”

While those two argue about who should burn in hell first, luck continues to swing June’s way. She sits in her room, gun pointed, expecting to be killed once Winslow’s body is found. She waits for the knock at the door, the footsteps, the voices, but nothing happens. After the Waterfords’ arrest, everyone in Gilead assumes Winslow was also captured. Holy loaves and fishes, did June just catch a break?

“Fred and Serena are toast, and you got away with murder,” Lawrence tells June. “All in all, not a bad morning.” Mmm, toast.

With the airlift confirmed for one week’s time, word of June’s plan spreads among the Handmaids and Marthas. Even Rita cracks a smile when she spies June in the supermarket. “You’re such a boss now,” she tells June, as they hold hands across a tub of potatoes. “I’m proud of you.” It made my heart soar, mostly because I love potatoes, but also because I love all the joyful moments that we’ve had lately. I haven’t smiled as much since Aunt Lydia hooned past on her mobility scooter.

Meanwhile, the revolution lighting is golden.

But let’s not get ahead of ourselves, because political tensions are escalating and Lawrence has to play both sides. The only way he’ll avoid Waterford’s fate is if he becomes a hero who gets 52 kids across the border, and that won’t happen if Gilead panics and starts World War Three. June’s nervous, Lawrence is stressed, and an increasingly erratic Eleanor nearly spills the beans about the escape to Mrs Winslow. That plane can’t come soon enough, for all our sakes.

Back in Canada, the Waterfords are greeted by a local welcoming committee. Moira brings Nichole in for a supervised visit with Serena, while Luke pops by for a chinwag with Waterford. Moira unleashes a barrage of home truths, reminding Serena that Nichole is June’s daughter, not hers. “Just because you got some new clothes, doesn’t make you any different,” Moira says, before calling Serena a true gender traitor. That toast just got burned again, FYI.

That baby is going to need, conservatively, ENDLESS amounts of therapy.

A round of applause for Moira, and one for Luke, who punches Waterford straight in the piehole after Waterford tells him June’s not the woman he once knew. That’s KAPOW, 14 points to Luke in the Scrabble game of life. “I’m not done!” Luke yells as he’s dragged from the room, but Waterford’s got at least two faces, Luke can come back any time.

Waterford’s right, though. June’s not the woman she once was. The old June would never let Eleanor die, but new June won’t let anything stop her from getting those kids out of Gilead. So when June finds Eleanor unconscious, a bottle of pills lying next to her, she does nothing. She kisses Eleanor on the forehead, closes the door, and pretends she never entered the bedroom. June waits. She waits for the footsteps, the voices, the cries. Mrs Lawrence dies, and June did nothing to stop it.

June and Lawrence stand together at Eleanor’s grave, silently contemplating their next move. Does Lawrence know the truth about his wife’s death? How will June get 52 children across the border? Will they build a bridge out of all those stale muffins? Under his eye, see you for next week’s season finale.

But wait there's more!