Wild Sage

I don’t ever recall experiencing musical love at first hearing as passionate as this. Not since I discovered Donovan a year ago, anyway. But John Darnielle’s Mountain Goats are much better than Donovan’s hippy-trippy flower power. Well, loves always get better, don’t they?

Luckily, musical infatuation is not quite that exclusive, and “Rain has showered far her drip/ Splash and trickle running”, the line which got me into Donovan in the first place, still runs and trickles down my spine and showers me with amazement. But there is a sense in which The Mountain Goats seem more authentic than Donovan. It’s the same Rembrandt versus Rubens antimony I’ve explored in “Triptych” – The Mountain Goats are raw emotions, while Donovan tries to impress with his raindrop-clear voice. Of course, I don’t really believe Rembrandt is necessarily better than Rubens – my own blog, with its flowery metaphors and “how amazing seemed the sky!” is usually more on the Rubens side, and it bloody sure is authentic. And, I’ve said it before, I’m all for the sublime and for baroque/prog rock showoffishness. The fact remains, though, that at the moment there’s something special for me about the Mountain Goats.

As an aside, the issue of authenticity in music is a delicate one – I suppose what’s authentic for me is just what I can more or less relate to and understand. Thus while I find Simon & Garfunkel’s harmonies sublime, Art Garfunkel’s solo work (with perhaps the exception of “Bright Eyes”) strikes me as unnaturally sugary-sweet. I’m inclined to argue that there’s a significant difference between the two, and songs which say “So I’ll continue to continue to pretend my life will never end, and flowers never bend with the rainfall” will be authentic no matter how polished the vocal harmonies (in fact, for me they're more authentic because of the polished vocal harmonies); but others will draw the line in different places, and I suppose I can understand them if they say the lyrics I’ve just quoted are pretentiously philosophical and overintellectualized.

Returning to The Mountain Goats, there’s a few songs I’ve been listening to over and over again these last couple of days. One of them is “Wild Sage”, and one line in it – “wild sage growing in the weeds” – resonates with me so strongly I decided to base a text around it. So, finally abandoning overintellectualized, baroque, and unauthentic ramblings about imagined aesthetic distinctions, let’s get on to the real thing.

My first scout trip. Chest full of excited breaths, head full of dizzying happiness, I’m on top of the world and I know it. We went to a bar to eat some pierogies before the train back home – when I come back to the waiting room, I remember I have shortbread cookies to share with everyone. “Can I have one?” a stranger asks me. A homeless man, with a broken arm, looks like an alcoholic. “Sure,” I say and smile, his eyes a hungry dog’s. There’s a second man next to him, more wolf-like.

The canines don’t listen to us when we ask them to stop smoking. Still, one of us takes out a guitar, and we all take to singing. The wolf-like man sniggers, interrupts, protests. The hungry one says “Ssh, I wanna listen”, but this sounds like the last faint sparks of independence of mind. My eyes dart to his broken arm and I feel an unfounded dislike towards his “friend”.

“Crowds dragging through streets, vodka drunk in parks, and sunsets will deceive, but remember: nothing ever really happens and nothing ever will – ‘til the very end”. I hear a sob next to me. Vodka and sunsets and nothing!... Liquid humanity in the dog’s eyes – surely there’s something somewhere.

“Let’s go, leave these f-ing kids,” the wolf growls. (“Parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme (Generals order their soldiers to kill)”). “Oh, shut up!” – the dog’s answer is surprisingly assertive.

Sensitivity grows in odd places. Wisdom, untamed and unpredictable, grows in weeds, and weeds can be flowers too.

“The Water of Life does not exist, but you should always search for it, you should always search for it...” the same message of meaningless meaning, of nothing being something or something being nothing. “What an idiot must’ve written that!” the dog barks fiercely and unexpectedly... Wild weeds growing in the sage. Sun rays drowning in the vodka. There goes my belief in humanity.

Of course, the image John Darnielle’s song really conjures up in my mind is that of a bearded hermit of inexplicably increasing height, philosophy twinkling in his eyes, running around like mad in fields of cannabis.

PS Sorry about the awful translations of the Polish songs...