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Rating: "America, why are your libraries full of tears?" OR Dialogues of a Confused Mind in Search of Healing
"Ok, I would like to write a review"
"Great, but what do you want to review?"
"Well, there’s this song by The Brian Jonestown Massacre called "Reign On" and I listened to it the other day and I felt my body vibrating and my heart starting to cry, and it got inside me and doesn’t want to leave"
"Alright, since no one has reviewed "Bringin It All Back Home - Again" (the EP that contains the track) yet, go ahead"
"No, you don’t understand, the point is that I’m only interested in that track, which doesn’t really fit with the rest of the album, and then tonight I was sad and didn’t know what to do and couldn’t leave the house because of this damn illness, so I picked up a book by Thomas Wolfe - "You Can’t Go Home Again" - that I bought some time ago for 2 euros at a stall, in the original language, I don’t even know how it ended up there - oh! wonders of life - I had started it but then got discouraged and temporarily set it aside even though I was incredibly impressed by the way it’s written and I can’t understand how this guy has been almost completely forgotten!"
"So you want to review the book? I’m not understanding anything anymore!"
"Wait! Basically, I’m lying on the bed and feeling really blue, and I decide to start from the end of the book, so I read the entire final chapter "A Wind Is Rising, And The River Flows" and as I read it, I hear Miranda Lee Richards' voice singing
"The rose it’s self don’t cut
only its raging thorns
did you forget were you bleeding
petals of red
so fly high tell me
what does blue feel like
are stars really suns
won’t you come answer
through my candle light"
And then I thought it’s really curious, that BJM makes an album that drips America from every song, where they talk about bringing it all back home, mention Dylan, and cover Charles Manson ("Arkansas Revisited") and here I am with the only song in my mind that has little to do with America, which almost seems like it came from a Lisa Germano album, and meanwhile, I’m reading Thomas Wolfe reflecting on post-1929 America and Germany on the brink of World War II, and all his dreams as a man and artist and what he learned and his worries for the future and the choice to continue the struggle even though in the end nothing changes and he finally tells me that
"You can’t go back home to your family, back home to your childhood, back home to romantic love, back home to a young man’s dream of glory and of fame, back home to exile, to escape to Europe and some foreign land, back home to lyricism, to singing just for singing’s sake, back home to aestheticism, to one’s youthful idea of "the artist" and the all-sufficiency of "art" and "beauty" and "love" [...] away from all the strife and conflict of the world, back home to the father you have lost and have been looking for, back home to someone who can help you, save you, ease the burden for you, back home to the old forms and systems of things which once seemed everlasting but which are changing all the time - back home to the escapes of Time and Memory."
(Thomas Wolfe, You Can’t Go Home Again", Signet Book, 1966)
And I see this great picture of America, in perpetual motion, where Wolfe wanders with his papers under his arm - like Thoreau and Whitman before him, and like Kerouac after him - and he lets himself be intoxicated by the landscape and shares whisky with the hobos and somewhere Miranda sings "Save your angels some pain...oh Goodbye baby"
"But you can’t do this! It turns into a schizophrenic mess, where you want to talk about an album and a book and end up not reviewing either one properly!"
"Maybe you’re right, better to let it go, after all "8 ½" must have taught me something."
"Exactly. Maybe next time will be the right one..."
Tracklist and Lyrics
01 Mansion in the Sky (02:19)
could you forget the awful things i've done?
could you forget the awful things i've done?
well i'm sure i will become your favorite son.
if you forgive the awful things i've done.
sweet Jesus could you take this pain away?
sweet Jesus could you drag this shame away?
if the devil offers know that i will say.
"sweet jesus blood it washed my sins away."
so open up your big house in the sky
yes, open up your big house in the sky.
but don't ask me what i've done cause i will lie.
just open up your big house in the sky,
open up your mansion in the sky.
05 Ballad of Jim Jones (02:14)
I walked from New York and back from L.A.
I lived on a mountain and once by the bay
I bought an apartment and slept in the hay
but there's no place that's softer than (your arms)
living today is just getting so bad
there's a look on your face
and it says"you've been had!"
you can take all my money
but don't make me mad
cause there's nobody meaner than (me)
I prayed to Buddha, to Allah, and Jim.
I turned to Jesus and stayed there with him
I fell in deep but I learned how to swim
now there's no one who's cleaner than me or than him
08 Arkansas Revisited (13:24)
I'm going back to Arkansas
I gotta kill my ma and pa
I'm gonna kill ma and dad,
because they made my life so sad
I run so fast, all night and day
they haunt my soul in evil ways
I don't care what the law might do
I hope your folks are good to you
I stole my neighbor's pick-up truck,
and took his daughter for good luck
I spent all my doe on a gun
liquored up to have some fun
I drink all night, and i feel real fine,
as I'm roaring past that old state line
Driving up all night and day,
just to show him on his way
(Here it comes)
I'm bailing down the streets of town
I'd love to burn the fucker down
Down the road, along the way,
I drove right past my brother, hey
I'm running up the lawn each night,
and they can't see me, there's no light
Kick down the door, then I say
'brace yourself for judgement day'
Going back to Arkansas
Burying my ma and pa
and then I'm going far away,
but where I'm going, I won't say,
cause I don't know, just where I'll run
I guess I follow the yellow sun,
or maybe north of Mexico
for I ain't saying where I'll go
I had to kill my mom and dad,
because they beat me up real bad
my daddy beat me everyday,
and what I'd done, he wouldn't say
A lether strap across my back
and punched my eyes all blue and black
So, I killed my ma and pa
I killed them both in Arkansas
made the papers so damn mad
cause I killed my ma and dad
and now I'm running night and day
where I'm going, I won't say
just me and the girl and the stolen truck
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