So this is my vain attempt at an antidote, to rip down the "walls that it can't pass through"--a wan, scratchy whisper in a windstorm about beautiful things. These are the ones that will not stand as background music, the ones that take you down the darker tunnel where all our fears lay waiting, that do not verify our comforting preconceptions but shatter them, the ones that remind us that we live within those ever-narrowing bookends, and that it hurts to be all squeezed up here between them:
I want to talk about Joe Henry. For those unfamiliar, he's a singer/songwriter who's been around a long time. He's also brilliant and in a just and verdant world would be as famous and influential as the blonde chick in the silly outfits with a bit of a voice.
With the release of his album Scar in 2001, Joe Henry began an extraordinary run. That album's opener, "Richard Pryor Addresses a Tearful Nation," blows the walls away and shamelessly looks at a life (lives) shaking uncontrollably while we look on, often at ourselves, helpless.
Sometimes I think
I almost fooled myself...
Spreading out my wings
Above us like a tree
Laughing now, out loud
Almost like I was free
A blue dirge accompanies, junkie slow, and Henry's voice exhausts with its weariness and reminiscence. Low strings moan, and then the great Ornette Coleman's plastic saxophone shows up to remind us what genius is--to dance its strange, spasmodic dance: ungainly, absurdly beautiful and unapologetically unique.
I wear the face
Of all this has cost
Everything you tried to keep away from me
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