It Went Right By You

[Image: “Lodz, PL, 1994.” A photo by Mark Pimlott from his 2008 exhibit, All Things Pass,
at Stroom Den Haag, The Hague, Netherlands (click for original)]

From whiskey river:

Wild geese fly south, creaking like anguished hinges; along the riverbank the candles of the sumacs burn dull red. It’s the first week of October. Season of woolen garments taken out of mothballs; of nocturnal mists and dew and slippery front steps, and late-blooming slugs; of snapdragons having one last fling; of those frilly ornamental pink-and-purple cabbages that never used to exist, but are all over everywhere now.

(Margaret Atwood, from The Blind Assassin [source])

…and:

Transience is the force of time that makes a ghost of every experience. There was never a dawn, regardless how beautiful or promising, that did not grow into a noontime. There was never a noon that did not fall into afternoon. There was never an afternoon that did not fade toward evening. There never was a day yet that did not get buried in the graveyard of the night.

(John O’Donohue, from Anam Cara [source])

…and:

Sleepless

Can’t get clear of this dream,
can’t get sober.

Spring breeze chilly
on the flesh: me all alone.

My orphan sail
finds the bank
where reed flowers fall.

All night
the river sounds
the rain falling:
listen.

(Yuan Mei, from I Don’t Bow to Buddhas [source])

Not from whiskey river:

We thought all the time that we were passing through time when we really weren’t, when we never have. We’ve just been moving along with time. We said, there’s another second gone, there’s another minute and another hour and another day, when, as a matter of fact the second or the minute or the hour was never gone. It was the same one all the time. It had just moved along and we had moved with it.

(Clifford D. Simak, from The City[*] [source])

…and:

Sometimes one of us stands near the sea

He remains there for a long time, staring at the blue, motionless and stiff, as if in a church, knowing nothing about what weighs upon his shoulders and holds him back, so weak, hypnotized by the sea. He remembers what may have never happened. He swims through his own life. He lightly feels its shape. He explores its distant edges. He allows the sea to unfold within him:  it grows to match his desire, becomes intoxicated on his sorrow, strikes out like a blind man’s cane, and leads him without haste where the heavens alone have the last word, where no one can say anything else, where no tuft of grass, no idea grows, where the head emits a hollow sound after spitting out its soul.

(Jean-Michel Maulpoix [source])

All through the 1980s, I thought I was doing a pretty good job (thanks to still-new MTV and, later, VH1) of keeping up with music. Then came the ’90s: I went into “I’m writing, damn it, leave me alone, world!” hibernation for years. Consequently, I missed a lot of good songs during their first go-round… among them, R.E.M.’s “Nightswimming.” (Thank the gods for Kid Brother, who worked hard to bring me up to speed long after normal humans would have given it up as a lost cause.)

It’s an odd song: musically, tonally beautiful, yet not really… uh… not really melodic in any way familiar from other songs. (Speaking for myself, I have difficulty imagining it will ever be covered much, although I know, per Wikipedia, that it has been covered some. The arrangement, and Michael Stipe’s voice, are just too much a part of it.) The lyrics don’t really scan, and rhyme — when they do — apparently only by accident. Commentators about it seem split about evenly into those who say it recounts the band’s memories of their early days, and those who say it recounts nothing in specific but merely evokes. The first few times I heard it, it went right by me. Only after a few repeated listens did it stick.

Here’s “Nightswimming’s” video (which, yes, sorta looks like it’s saying something and sorta merely evokes); lyrics below, as usual.

Lyrics:

Nightswimming
(by Bill Berry, Peter Buck, Mike Mills and Michael Stipe;
performance by R.E.M.)

Nightswimming deserves a quiet night
The photograph on the dashboard, taken years ago,
Turned around backwards so the windshield shows
Every streetlight reveals the picture in reverse
Still, it’s so much clearer
I forgot my shirt at the water’s edge
The moon is low tonight

Nightswimming deserves a quiet night
I’m not sure all these people understand
It’s not like years ago,
The fear of getting caught,
Of recklessness and water
They cannot see me naked
These things, they go away,
Replaced by everyday

Nightswimming, remembering that night
September’s coming soon
I’m pining for the moon
And what if there were two
Side by side in orbit
Around the fairest sun?
That bright, tight forever drum
Could not describe nightswimming

You, I thought I knew you
You, I cannot judge
You, I thought you knew me,
This one laughing quietly underneath my breath
Nightswimming

The photograph reflects,
Every streetlight a reminder
Nightswimming deserves a quiet night, deserves a quiet night

____________________

* Gosh, The City — I haven’t read any of that in years. From Wikipedia, introducing the plot:

The novel describes a legend consisting of eight tales the pastoral and pacifist Dogs recite as they pass down an oral legend of a creature known as Man. Each tale is preceded by doggish notes and learned discussion.

An editor’s preface notes that after each telling of the legend the pups ask many questions:

“What is Man?” they’ll ask.
Or perhaps: “What is a city?”
Or: “What is a war?”
There is no positive answer to any of these questions.

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