Weird Deer

Over the course of 2003 and 2004, David Berman, author of Actual Air and the creative force behind the band Silver Jews, corresponded with Travis Nichols through email about poetry, songwriting, and the charm of 5:30.

TN:
 The other day I was thinking about the line “Everything in this room right now is a part of me . . .” humming it and whatnot and for maybe the first time I realized what a profound thought that is, how it’s a kind of spiritual orientation summed up in one line of a song. And you do that all the time, laying out personal beliefs and private thoughts in a way that never feels confessional or earnestly manipulative, two of the pitfalls that keep people away from trying that sort of thing.

And I wondered if, in contrast to someone who is more into showmanship, your poems and lyrics need to be right to you, to say something you need to hear, before you let them out into the world? 

Maybe that doesn’t make sense. Let me know if I need to try again. 



DCB: In answer to your second question I’d say I won’t let it out into the world unless it’s clearly not wrong. Not everything I write strikes me as of high value, but nothing is subtractive i.e. a waste of mine or somebody else’s reservoirs of time. 

It’s hard to get that sweet spot when you speak in generalizations like I often do. Not being confessional or manipulative. Sometimes I worry its a skill that may deteriorate in me.

Nice day in middle Tennessee

One number I’ve been working on for a new Joos album is an incredibly late answer to the old “just say no” campaign. It’s called 
”Just Take One” or “Just Take Some” (which do you think is better?). A song about moderation. 



TN: “Just Take One.” Definitely.

Is saying “You know what I’m talking about” manipulative? 


DCB. The English have their manipulative thing, “is it?” as in “The curry’s not very good- is it?” and the French have “no” then they speak English. “You like the cheese, no?”

TN: I was thinking of when you say it in “The Charm of 5:30.” 


DCB: I guess I regarded that character as the type of clubby, over-enthusiastic guy who would utter such a thing.

TN: How much of your characters are you in different moods? Moods is a bad word, but what I got right now. Pieces of your personality. 


DCB: Good point, if a question can be a point, and I know it can. I don’t know how much to attribute to myself. I’m not sure how much of the monologues originate in my own heart.

TN:

I just got back from a huge reading at MIT with 50 poets reading over two days. It was a total ghetto. The only way to get people to come to a poetry reading is to let them read too. How do we reclaim poetry from the nerds?


DCB: That my friend is the question. We used to call a group of bad bands in NY “the scene that celebrates itself.” It’s how nerd poetry propagates itself. A man and a woman cannot create life by taking turns giving each other oral sex, and these sorts of logrolling communities cannot create lasting work.

TN: Big question: If a truly great book of poems came out right now, how would we know?

I just spent the weekend at the James Merrill house in Connecticut screening submissions for a book prize, both of which got me thinking. Who decided James Merrill was so good? Given a cold reading without his historical baggage would anyone be able to really enjoy it?

Maybe.

Or did I read a few great manuscripts but have no idea because somehow I’m in the absurd position of judging the quality of someone’s work? Of course maybe the audience doesn’t matter anyway and it’s the act of writing itself that is important. In that case the only thing that would matter about a truly great book is that it was written in the first place and the writing of it ups our collective spiritual quota. How did you know when you read a good book that it was good?

DCB: The act of writing alone is overrated. Without the charge and challenge of a reader….. It matters.

They use to call the Clash and X “music that matters” when I was a teenager. Journey and Supertramp and their irrelevant ilk ruled the world at the time but more time has leveled them and vindicated their financial inferiors. I think to be good it has to give pleasure. And it has to ask.

TN: I’m teaching your book to my undergrad creative writing class. They all hate poetry because it should either rhyme or re-enforce their wobbly ideas of themselves. So they’re a bit thrown off by your moves. But they like it. Some even love it. They say they feel like they could have written some things (Self Portrait) but also somehow never could. I’ve gotten some thank yous. Now they’re supposed to write their first poems. No rhyme. Any suggestions for them?

DCB: Tell the ones who didn’t like the poetry that I’m coming up there to kick their asses and that you accidentally told me their names and addresses.


TN: On Monday, two friends of mine came into the class I’m teaching and one of the students asked when these two supposed living examples of poets realized they were in fact poets. Paul, the first friend/poet, paused for a second and then said he hasn’t realized it–that he is a poet when he is writing a poem, but he wakes up he doesn’t only have “poet activities” on his mental agenda in the same way when he starts a poem he doesn’t have any idea where he wants it to go, just lets it go.

Monica, the second poet/friend, said it’s a realization she has every day–or, rather a decision she makes every day. Some days she’d rather be a kick boxer or mom and finds she is actually a poet, and other days she’d like to be more of a poet but is somebody waiting in line to get her drivers license.

The whole idea seemed a little strange to me, but having heard it, it was kind of refreshing and relaxing–like I don’t HAVE to be stuck in my small idea of what a poet is (tortured, obsessive scribbler/pretentious, squishy headed flake/natural). It got me thinking too, since it seems like you can switch it on and off like Paul and Monica can, that I’d like to ask: Are you a poet today? 



DCB: Dear Human Person, 

If I’m sending you this email it’s for one or more of these reasons: 

1. I’m apologizing to you for not responding to one of your letters. I’ve been away 
from the computer for a month and haven’t been able. 
2. I’m telling you ahead of time, because you might write me in the weeks to come, 
that I won’t be able to get to a computer after this afternoon for another month more. 
3. I’m apologizing for not being able to respond to your request for _____. 
You can re-ask me after January 4th.. 
4. I am trapped in a chimerical gangland and I miss you. 

DCB

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