Sometimes I thought I could live there forever...

I have my "go to" musicians for specific times or moods. NIN or Beethoven for when I am writing proposal responses - wide swing in tastes there but I find that either works wonders for my creative writing skills. Ludovico Einaudi is reserved for when I need to relax and escape. I've been enjoying his album In a Time Lapse recently. If you have never listened to his compositions before, you are in for a special treat if you pick up this or any other pieces from his catalogue.  Here he is talking about his work.

Here is the official video for Walk, off of the same album. Enjoy.

...and I'm never going back again

"For all the anarchy of the place, it was sometimes easy to miss the changes. A new checkpoint went up on Sadoon Street, Al-Qaeda crept into Adamiyah: those were easy. The deeper changes were more difficult to spot: the shifts in the culture, the turnings inside people's brains. The confusion lay in the violence. After witnessing a car bomb, or wading through a bloody emergency room, I sometimes forgot that violence in Iraq had a shape; that it had a direction, that the violence had a purpose. So much violence and so many purposes, all of them competing and crashing into one another, reshaping the country in their own distinctive ways. In the madness, it was sometimes hard to see." - Dexter Filkins, The Forever War

"What's the angle of deviation at 500 meters that gives you 2 inches to the right?...You don't even want to think about that." - Sebastian Junger, War

I've been meaning to share this recommendation for the past month and find myself with some idle time on my hands as we enter another week of the government shutdown which allows me to catch up. In addition, I was inspired to share this book because of a related recommendation from a dinner guest at our house last night (more on that in a moment).

The Forever War is written by Dexter Filkins, the prizewinning NYT correspondent who witnessed the rise of the Taliban in the 90s, experienced ground zero immediately following 9/11 and was embedded with armed forces in Afghanistan and Iraq. Following the two novels I have read this year about the impacts of the conflict(s) in the Middle East on soldiers, families and locals, Filken's dispatches from the front lines hit home with honest to God true stories of events that in all other circumstances beyond war, you would have a hard time believing.

This book invoked a series of emotions in me ranging from awe at people's courage in times of conflict, frustration with the blinders we see through that influence these global conflicts, to sorrow and horror at some of the visceral scenes that you experience through the author's eyes. It is intense and in my mind, a must read for anyone who wants to try to understand the complexity of the front line in the Middle East.

On to dinner: We had a few friends over last night and one of them recommended a podcast I had never heard of called The Moth. Per their website, The Moth...

"...is dedicated to the art and craft of storytelling. It is a celebration of both the raconteur, who breathes fire into true tales of ordinary life, and the storytelling novice, who has lived through something extraordinary and yearns to share it. At the center of each performance is, of course, the story..."

Specifically, he recommended one podcast from Sebastian Junger, an American journalist who worked on assignment in Afghanistan and co-directed the documentary film Restrepo (2010 Grand Jury Prize winner at the Sundance Film Festival; nominated for an Academy Award). It's a short yet powerful story told by Sebastian and if you have 10 minutes to spare, it will make a difference in your day and echo for quite some after. It is called War and you can listen to it by clicking here.

The preview for Restrepo is below.

The Gods of Gotham by Lindsay Faye

I can never quite fathom what she wanted of me. Not even in the dream. Only what she turned me into. - Timothy Wilde in The Gods of Gotham.

Historical fiction is one of my favorite genres. The Gods of Gotham is set in the middle of the nineteenth century and explores New York City at an inflection point in its history. In 1800, NYC clocked in at about 60,000 residents. By 1850, that number had reached half a million. Lindsay Faye's characters are set in the middle of this city bursting at its seams, struggling to cope with the influx of Irish immigrants arriving as a result of the disastrous potato famine hitting Ireland. Protestant vs. Catholic. Nativists vs. immigrants. The political machine of Tammany hall. The formation of the NYPD. This is the true setting for a mystery with a bartender turned "copper star," sparring with a brutal killer at its center. If you enjoy period pieces, this is one to throw on your to-do list.

So life take all your terror

"And I recall when I thought I had a plan 

The sun and moon and stars seemed to slip right through my hands 

But remember that failure is part of being alive 

I guess I let it take away my pride 

One too many times." 

- John Moreland, God's Medicine

I'm not quite sure how to introduce this music. But I do know he is coming to Lafayette, LA on November 3rd and I know I will be there. Here is one of many songs that pretty much made me stop what I was doing tonight, read lyrics, and watch him sing this song at least three times.

I’ve been living with a curse
Combing through the pages of my youth
There’s a million soggy miles
Soaking through the soles of my shoes
And I’ve been staying up all night
I don’t give a damn to sleep anymore
My eyelids are heavy
But my dreams don’t sing like before
And I apologize a thousand times for holding up the show
I always had the words, but they don’t quite know where to go
You said give me one good reason, now give me 20 more
Don’t give yourself away to settle someone else’s score
I got the guiltiest conscience
Listening for a savior on a Saturday night
I got my ear to the ground
You got Easter Sunday in your eyes
And I apologize if I seem a little overwhelmed
I’m thirsty, but the holy keep on pissing in my well
I had a purpose and a song that was true
But I ain’t ever had a lick of sense when it comes to you
So try to be patient, try to understand
I’m a child, trying to do the work of a man
My pockets are empty, I don’t own a thing
But I’d take a diamond from the sky and put it in your ring

And as a bonus, here is a song called God's Medicine. Really excited to see John swing through Lafayette. The quote at the top of this post is from the tune below.

I got a plan

Ok. Trying something new with the Monthly Mix. Underneath the track listing you will find an embedded playlist from YouTube to hear the entire mix...kind of. The mix has mostly studio versions but YouTube provides a chance to grab some live performances of the same songs, so where available, and where the sound quality was good, I took that route. There was only one song that I couldn't find an acceptable cut of so track 19 won't be found below. Enjoy.

(...or go to YouTube and watch the full playlist here if something with this experiment goes wrong.)

1. Get Me Golden    Ξ  Terraplane Sun

2. I Want You Back  Ξ  Lake Street Dive

3. Sunshine  Ξ  Court Yard Hounds

4. Live Oak  Ξ  Jason Isbell

5. Silver and Gold  Ξ  Trampled By Turtles

6. Highwayman  Ξ  The White Buffalo

7. Sinners  Ξ  The Rouge

8. She's Gone  Ξ  The Morrison Brothers Band

9. Dig Down Deep  Ξ  Vandaveer

10. Love Will Be Enough  Ξ  Seabird

11. Ya Never Know  Ξ  Terraplane Sun

12. Further On  Ξ  Bronze Radio Return

13. Love Like This  Ξ  Kodaline

14. Operated  Ξ  Rogue Wave

15. What It Is  Ξ  Kodaline

16. Grow  Ξ  Wake Owl

17. I Don't Want to Know  Ξ  The Swell Season

18. Rivers  Ξ  Bipolar Sunshine

19. Bastards of the Highway  Ξ  John Moreland & The Black Gold Band

20. I Need My Girl  Ξ  The National

21. Memories & Dust  Ξ  Josh Pyke

22. Des Fois (Sometimes)  Ξ  The Revelers  

The Old Buck is Turning 80

About 130 years ago, James Louis LaBar Sr. was born and started off a chain of events that would lead me to the side of a pond yesterday in East Texas, listening to a pretty blonde woman in an aqua colored sun dress explain to me how a nest of water moccasins had made a home next to their house which led to a weekend chore of "sitting up on this hill and popping them with my 17." Shelby is my cousin, who I am meeting for the first time. She grew up on 40 acres of God's country with grass that crunches under your feet on a ranch built by her father Bruce off the sale of timber. 

It's times like these when you wonder where North Branch, NJ went but these thoughts are quickly overtaken by the discovery of a Tarzan lunch box rusted over, keeping a set of bull horns company in Bruce's shed out back where fish and deer are cleaned and old bottles of Wild Turkey are used to collect some sort of miscellaneous liquid that could either be moonshine or grease. 

My Aunt Jeanette passed away in July, Uncle Gary back in 2009. Their family home in Natchitoches, TX, our shelter from multiple storms not only provided us a safe haven but also provided an immediate stage for stories from my family's past. With this as a home base this past summer, we've seen the family grave of James Sr. as well as the old family house where my father grew up that is now a Vietnam War memorial and a monument for the work done by Lufkin locals to recover pieces of the space shuttle Columbia that scattered itself throughout town. We've found the abandoned drive-thru movie theater that my Uncle Gary used to manage and jokingly dreamed about re-opening its doors to the public to launch a new adventure.

Grave site of James Louis LaBar, Sr in Lufkin, TX

Me and Aunt Judy on the old LaBar family lot in Lufkin.

Natchitoches is where we first met Buddy Williams, a cousin of mine who turned 80 yesterday. A side of the family that I have never known and still cannot quite follow through the web of a rather confusing family tree that has roots in East Texas, winds its way up to Canada and spreads west to California. It's here that I meet Buddy's son Scott, who has traced our family back to 1654 when Abraham De LaBarre, a Royal Guard of the King of France disobeyed an order to save the King's daughter and gave rise to the family name. It is Scott who introduces me to "one of the last real cowboys," who in between large quantities of chew, accent and stories about the tires on his truck declares that all the new ones are really just "hats."

Williams Ranch in East Texas

It's not often you get to eat fried catfish and hush-puppies with a side of your family that you did not really know existed, celebrate the 80th birthday of a cousin you are meeting for the second time, meet a friend of his who worked in the Lufkin paper mill for your grandfather Jimmy, possibly side by side with your own dad, or even chat about popping water snakes with a pretty cousin of yours all in a single day. Happy Birthday Buddy!

Me, Carlee and our cousin Buddy Williams

Mandolin Orange

Discovered this band this weekend courtesy of Hear Ya and am pretty sure that not only is it excellent, it makes me want to use the adjective "pure." Great for some lazy weekend reading out on the back porch here in Lafayette.

Train Song:

Runnin' Red