Death, Anonymity, Jandek, and the Pines
A few days ago I wandered in to the Pines again, making another cryptic foray into an alternate universe that exists here on Earth.
This time I brought my camera as I promised.
IT's not snowing in the Pine Barrens this Winter, but nonetheless, during my entire visit I could not rid myself of this obsessive thought, which is a Jandek album title and lyric:
"Somebody in the Snow"
"Somebody in the snow"
"Some Body in the snow"
ad infinitum.
What does it mean, Somebody in the Snow? "You're just somebody in the snow, I don't even know why I think about you..."
Well that just about sums it up, doesn't it?
The viewer is just somebody in the snow,
The author is just somebody in the snow.
Here and there.
I find those simple words to be... heartwarming? Why the hell is that...?
I picture McCabe* dying in the snow while it slowly piles up, enveloping him. I imagine Jandek visualizing that scene while that lyric pops into his head.
(*From McCabe & Mrs. Miller, another motion picture worth writing about.)
McCabe's just a guy who worked his ass off and got a small name. He's got his own little Corwood Industry going on out in the Old West Oregon and he's not really looking to make a hell of a lot out of it. Maybe he wouldn't mind that but he doesn't seem to get too wound up about it. Some folks would like to liven things up for him and take a successful enterprise and make it more successful, for themselves.
Well McCabe's just an extraordinary ordinary guy who manages to keep the wolves at bay, just long enough to end up just another somebody in the snow. Where he ends up, well no one even knows what's been happening to him in his final moments. There's no one to appreciate the last clever trick he played, well except the guy he fooled, who probably didn't have a split second to think over how well he got tricked.
But it's simultaenously a disturbing and beautiful moment , when McCabe crawls away from his decisive victory, only to die "somebody in the snow," with the forces of Nature wrapping him in a cold blanket of anonymity and meaninglessness.
His corpse is saying to us: that's all there is to victory. You die if and when God or Nature so chooses. You try to have a hand in your own destiny, you play a joke on the bears out to get you, you think you're pretty clever, and then the snow has the last word. So be like McCabe here and try to make a good joke out of it if that's what tickles you.
And so the Pine Barrens make me feel this same way, as does much of nature, and our ambivalence about nature here is of course not an idiosyncratic eccentricity. Uncontrolled nature is a threat to our life, and to our sense of identity. However, I am finding more and more that those things, life and identity, do not exist. How many people and animals have died out in the Pine Barrens, their identity, and their place and cause of death known only to God or Nature?
And what is life, and what is it to have an identity?
Can someone please explain?
No.
all right, then...
I'm just somebody in the snow,
Hallelujah.
Free to do whatever I please.
I am freed by the callousness of nature.
Looking back at Jandek's words, they at first appear to be addressed to you. But then, they seem to be about Jandek, and about how Jandek imagines us looking at him. In the end, it's just somebody looking at himself. Even if Jandek tries to imagine us looking at him, he's just imagining himself looking at himself, and finding it all pretty puzzling. So, Jandek didn't mean for there to be a mystique about him? So some of his audience might wonder why he seems to keep it going. Well, it you go back to that song it just about figures because he can't do anything but be mystified himself at the whole thing, and there's really no one to talk to much less anything to talk about. You're stuck here with your corpse in the snow, scratching your head wondering what after all was the point.
...
...
...
Driving back out of the edge of the Barrens I dared to enter, going towards Philadelphia, you come across a town called Berlin, which is even more Jandek-like than the Pine Barrens. Tiny little houses, faded by the sea. If only they were by the sea. Sad little hobbit holes. I felt such a churning, silent desperation pulsing through it. And in fact I was informed, this isn't far off. Berlin is in the shadow of more affluent Voorhees, and the people there literally live in the shadow of their neighbors, because they grow up going to the same school. They don't live in the Pine Barrens; they didn't intend to just be somebody in the snow or in the grimy liqour store. All the shades were drawn in this town. In the Netherlands it's the custom to live with your living room shades open, welcoming people and avoiding secrets. And folks over there don't live so financially far apart either. But you turn a block and you go from millionaires to folks of meager means around Berlin. So they don't invite their neighbors in as much I guess. It just didn't seem very happy and I wished I could have whispered a word to the whole town somehow.
After all, I've been inside homes in Voorhees and frankly I don't think it's anything to be jealous of. It's always nice to have money I suppose, but I can't say I've met many happy people from Voorhees either. And frankly for all the money those places are a lot uglier than the run down territories in most cases.
Photos later.
This time I brought my camera as I promised.
IT's not snowing in the Pine Barrens this Winter, but nonetheless, during my entire visit I could not rid myself of this obsessive thought, which is a Jandek album title and lyric:
"Somebody in the Snow"
"Somebody in the snow"
"Some Body in the snow"
ad infinitum.
What does it mean, Somebody in the Snow? "You're just somebody in the snow, I don't even know why I think about you..."
Well that just about sums it up, doesn't it?
The viewer is just somebody in the snow,
The author is just somebody in the snow.
Here and there.
I find those simple words to be... heartwarming? Why the hell is that...?
I picture McCabe* dying in the snow while it slowly piles up, enveloping him. I imagine Jandek visualizing that scene while that lyric pops into his head.
(*From McCabe & Mrs. Miller, another motion picture worth writing about.)
McCabe's just a guy who worked his ass off and got a small name. He's got his own little Corwood Industry going on out in the Old West Oregon and he's not really looking to make a hell of a lot out of it. Maybe he wouldn't mind that but he doesn't seem to get too wound up about it. Some folks would like to liven things up for him and take a successful enterprise and make it more successful, for themselves.
Well McCabe's just an extraordinary ordinary guy who manages to keep the wolves at bay, just long enough to end up just another somebody in the snow. Where he ends up, well no one even knows what's been happening to him in his final moments. There's no one to appreciate the last clever trick he played, well except the guy he fooled, who probably didn't have a split second to think over how well he got tricked.
But it's simultaenously a disturbing and beautiful moment , when McCabe crawls away from his decisive victory, only to die "somebody in the snow," with the forces of Nature wrapping him in a cold blanket of anonymity and meaninglessness.
His corpse is saying to us: that's all there is to victory. You die if and when God or Nature so chooses. You try to have a hand in your own destiny, you play a joke on the bears out to get you, you think you're pretty clever, and then the snow has the last word. So be like McCabe here and try to make a good joke out of it if that's what tickles you.
And so the Pine Barrens make me feel this same way, as does much of nature, and our ambivalence about nature here is of course not an idiosyncratic eccentricity. Uncontrolled nature is a threat to our life, and to our sense of identity. However, I am finding more and more that those things, life and identity, do not exist. How many people and animals have died out in the Pine Barrens, their identity, and their place and cause of death known only to God or Nature?
And what is life, and what is it to have an identity?
Can someone please explain?
No.
all right, then...
I'm just somebody in the snow,
Hallelujah.
Free to do whatever I please.
I am freed by the callousness of nature.
Looking back at Jandek's words, they at first appear to be addressed to you. But then, they seem to be about Jandek, and about how Jandek imagines us looking at him. In the end, it's just somebody looking at himself. Even if Jandek tries to imagine us looking at him, he's just imagining himself looking at himself, and finding it all pretty puzzling. So, Jandek didn't mean for there to be a mystique about him? So some of his audience might wonder why he seems to keep it going. Well, it you go back to that song it just about figures because he can't do anything but be mystified himself at the whole thing, and there's really no one to talk to much less anything to talk about. You're stuck here with your corpse in the snow, scratching your head wondering what after all was the point.
...
...
...
Driving back out of the edge of the Barrens I dared to enter, going towards Philadelphia, you come across a town called Berlin, which is even more Jandek-like than the Pine Barrens. Tiny little houses, faded by the sea. If only they were by the sea. Sad little hobbit holes. I felt such a churning, silent desperation pulsing through it. And in fact I was informed, this isn't far off. Berlin is in the shadow of more affluent Voorhees, and the people there literally live in the shadow of their neighbors, because they grow up going to the same school. They don't live in the Pine Barrens; they didn't intend to just be somebody in the snow or in the grimy liqour store. All the shades were drawn in this town. In the Netherlands it's the custom to live with your living room shades open, welcoming people and avoiding secrets. And folks over there don't live so financially far apart either. But you turn a block and you go from millionaires to folks of meager means around Berlin. So they don't invite their neighbors in as much I guess. It just didn't seem very happy and I wished I could have whispered a word to the whole town somehow.
After all, I've been inside homes in Voorhees and frankly I don't think it's anything to be jealous of. It's always nice to have money I suppose, but I can't say I've met many happy people from Voorhees either. And frankly for all the money those places are a lot uglier than the run down territories in most cases.
Photos later.
posted by A. Chankin at 12:28 PM
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