A Dylan-esque Sunday

a late one for all you folks!

I was going to take a break from the newsletter this week. It was a busy couple of days - returning home from the conference (and some beautiful time with my New York girls), catching up on work and home stuff, and spending time in the park today to connect my bare feet with the dirt once again.

But as I’m unwinding and getting ready for the week ahead, I realized I wanted to share two staples of the weekend. I’ve been listening to two songs exclusively on repeat - Remember the Mountain Bed by Wilco and Billy Bragg and the new National song, Tropic Morning News (which will be referenced as RTMB and TMN from hereon out).

I was playing RTMB for Matt while we were cooking dinner last night and he said, “this sounds like Bob Dylan.” It’s folky, a little rambling - I think Jeff Tweedy has a little bit of Dylan twang to him. I only learned after some research that RTMB is actually an unrecorded Woody Guthrie song (see Dylan’s greatest idol). Here I am just assuming it’s another song that speaks to my soul (or as my mom says, certain songs just pull on your heartstrings). I listened to Dylan growing up extensively, even seeing him live in 2006, and wrote many a creative nonfiction piece on his songs like Idiot Wind.

But back to Wilco and Bragg. RTMB lyrics are haunting - I highly suggest a deep read if you’re a lyric freak like me:

There in the shade and hid from the sun, we freed our minds and learned
Our greatest reason for being here, our bodies moved and burned
There on our mountain bed of leaves, we learned life’s reason why
People laugh and love and dream, they fight, they hate to die

So while I’m crooning between RTMB and naturally, teeing up the The National’s Tropic Morning News as my #1 played song of 2023, I’m here thinking a lot about songs about love and the mundane parts of life and soaking rice before we have some with dinner. Might as well get the sadness train going at full speed before we see The National at the Greek over Memorial Day, where we saw them back in 2019 and the first time I’ll be seeing them again since pre-pandemic. I’m yearning for their new album back together, First Two Pages of Frankenstein, since Matt Berninger’s solo career. I have absolutely no comment on T. Swift joining for a song but I have to trust their process and the magic of the Dessners. But then I read an interview with Aaron Dessner about TMN - he said Matt came out of a deep depression with these “Dylan-esque lyrics.” He co-wrote TMN with Carin Besser, his wife (a very common collaborator) and something tells me this album will be more akin to Sleep Well Beast (2007) than I Am Easy To Find (2019) in terms of noise and energy and social commentary on a desolate future but trying to find some beauty in it anyway.

Got up to seize the day
With my head in my hands feeling strange
When all my thinking got mangled
And I caught myself talking myself off the ceiling
I was suffering more than I let on
The tropic morning news was on
There's nothing stopping me now
From saying all the painful parts out loud

But what does it mean that both songs are Dylan-esque - it’s that they are at opposite sides but still so attached within the connected spectrum of love and maneuvering it with so many outside factors. RTMB illuminates the subtle beauties of a love life in nature - dreamlike and escapist, early love, creating a life together. TMN acknowledges the reality of never escaping the weight of literally reading the news, connecting with your lifelong love, and longing, deeply, to return to the mountain bed.

I crossed many states just to stand here now, my face all hot with tears
I crossed city and valley, desert and stream, to bring my body here
My history and future blaze bright in me and all my joy and pain
Go through my head on our mountain bed where I smell your hair again

/

I'll be over here lying near the ocean
Making ocean sounds
Let me know if you can come over
And work the controls for a while

Love,
Lily