New Note: It’s been a while since I last posted this piece, and I’m glad to bring it back here as a republication. “Hamilton I” remains one of my favorite entries on the Kyoto Kibbitzer—an early chapter built around friendship, music, and the strange, formative textures of freshman year, especially the central presence of my good friends Ian and Jake, who shaped so much of that time. It’s also one of the more widely read pieces on the site, which I appreciate. Re-reading it now, I’m struck by how much of what came later was already there in embryo: the scenes, the sounds, the late nights, and the people who mattered. As always, thanks for reading.
And I recall the moment More distant than it seems When five green queens On a black bin bag Meant all the world to me
The Pogues
I attended Hamilton College, and managed to graduate–possibly in linen. At Hamilton I was an English major, and intended to be from when I enrolled. This was a decent choice; however both Hamilton and English were kind of my father’s choices. I also managed to cobble together an Asian Studies minor through the good auspices of my advisor who checked out my credits and told me I could put that together. This was a good call on his part, and even though I kind of stumbled into it, The Asian Studies minor was my choice.
I was pretty unprepared for college. Before going I was asked to fill out a kind of questionnaire to help the college place me with roommates. One of the questions was, are you clean, messy, or in the middle. I chose in the middle, which was sort of a mistake because it turns out men are pigs, and I was cleaner than most. At the same time though it wasn’t a mistake because if I had selected clean I may not have met Ian and Jake. Jake was my roommate, and we lived in a quad. The other two roommates were Brian and Geoff, and although I had a relationship of a sort with both of them freshman year, we were not really on the same page. Jake and I were. Ian was our next door neighbor, and he roomed with Marc Campbell, and two other people. Ian, Jake, and Marc are still in my life.
My parents came with me to upstate New York, and before I moved into the dorm we stayed for a few days in a hotel near campus. I was kind of apprehensive, and spent the days listening to The Pogues and quietly stressing. But when I moved into the quad things were fine. This was mostly because of Jake.
Jake was a bit of a wild character. He was from either New York or Connecticut as I recall, and I think he came from decent money. When I visited his house later that year it was very patrician, for lack of a better word. His father seemed like a super old-school WASP patriarch, and his mother didn’t work I don’t believe. His younger brother held right-wing political views at the time, while Jake was a lefty. This was a point of serious disagreement between the brothers, but other than that the family seemed pretty solid. I believe that his brother has since switched his political views.
I didn’t meet Jake’s family until Thanksgiving however, and got to know him first in the context of the quad. We lived in a dorm called North, on the first floor right by the door. (My buddy John Innes, who joined me at Hamilton from our high school lived in the neighboring dorm Kirkland, and next to that was South.) The door to North would be locked at night, and other dorm folks would regularly misplace their key and crawl through our always open window. Jake and I rarely slept, and I got in the habit of staying up until about five AM. After that I would get a little sleep before first period English class. Then I would attend Geology class, which satisfied some kind of Science graduation credit. For English class I was alert and on top of it, although I was still hand-writing my papers, which changed once I got in the habit of using the computers in the library. English class was small, maybe 12-15 people, whereas Geology was huge and held in a lecture hall. I would go lay down in the back in the aisle and try and sleep. I ended up getting As in almost all my English classes, and a C- in Geology, which was deserved to an extent because of the sleeping. However, the main question on the final was brutal and pretty unfair, which was to draw a seismograph. Literally, draw one, which we had never studied and I did cram for the final. Brutal action. Somehow I still made the honor roll that year, and every year, because of my performance in the humanities.
Jake was an English major as well as far as I recall, I kind of forget, but he knew a lot of the teachers I knew. In any case, we did not bond primarily in the classroom, but in the dorm and then at “Sig,” the frat he was associated with and later pledged. Sig was the alternative frat. I hung out there a bit, but when pledge season started they kind of cracked down on non-pledges attending parties. For Halloween, Jake snuck me in early, and although that night I got a few looks I was good with Jake’s blessing. That night I wore all black with a turtleneck and a paper sign on my back saying “No future for you.” As in the Sex Pistols. I was talking with an older guy, an alum (there were always some alums that hung at the frat parties at Sig) at the party and he said something to the effect of “I like you, but I don’t like your shirt.” OK dude.
That was the same night I believe that inspired the following little ditty I later shared with Jake:
I pissed in the toilet
He pissed in the sink
He said I haven’t got a god above
I haven’t got a drink
Jake later took umbrage with the lines, not the sink part, which was and remains credible, but the god part. I think he is, or was, a believer. In any case, he’s my friend and won’t sue.
I appreciated Jake showing me the ropes at Sig and elsewhere. In the dorm we would play his music–he was into the classics, Beatles and Stones, Kinks, Bowie. We would sing “The Ballad of John and Yoko,” and “Come Together,” mostly the former over and over, no doubt to the annoyance of our roommates. Jake also liked The Pogues, and this made me think even more highly of him.
Jake smoked, Marlboro Reds, and I soon started smoking too, the same brand. This was not out of a desire to be a smoker, but rather as a way to keep my hands occupied and look busy at parties, where I had some difficulty mixing. I picked up, or invented, a little trick where I would fold up the flaps of a cigarette pack so they looked like a paper airplane, and then lob the cigs around the room, usually to any girl that wanted one. This got me some attention and some affection, and I kind of became known for the move. It didn’t get me laid, but at least it was something. Jake and I were fast friends, and hung out a lot in the early part of the year, before he began to branch out. Once he started pledging Sig though I saw less of him, naturally enough I guess.
By the time Jake started pledging, and even before, I was spending more time with Ian. Ian was from Boston and his father was a medical doctor. He lived in a nice house in the suburbs–both Jake and Ian had quite a bit more money than I, a common feature at Hamilton where pretty much everyone had money expect me. I was on a pretty decent scholarship, despite my not so impressive high school record, and could not have afforded the school without the scholarship. I visited Ian once or twice I believe in college, and then stayed with his family for a few months in the fall after college, but that’s a story for a future post.
Ian had a massive record collection in his quad, next door to mine as I have said. I liked Jake’s music, especially “Rebel Rebel,” “Come Dancing,” and The Stones, however his selection was somewhat limited. Ian’s was capacious. He was into bands like The Stone Roses, The Charlatans, Ride, and a bunch of other British bands I didn’t know at the time. But he was really into everything. I spent hours in Ian’s room soaking up his music, and my association with him kind of took over where Dyche Alsaker’s left off. I think it was Ian who also introduced me to Luna, who was coming up at the time and is still one of my favorite bands to this day. Later, in senior year I think, Ian and I had a radio show together and one night we got to play records all night long when a few other people canceled suddenly. I would play The Replacements and the Pogues, and Ian would play his music, but I was also getting deep into the 4AD label and bands like Big Star,This Mortal Coil, and a little known band called The Binsey Poplars (who I’m not sure were even on 4AD), named after a Hopkins poem. But my favorite around that time was Nick Drake, who was on Rykodisc.
Drake is now pretty well known, mostly on the back of his song “Pink Moon,” which was featured on a Volkswagen commercial, but back then he was not well known outside serious music circles. I loved his song “Rider on the Wheel,” and was an evangelist for him, telling all and sundry to listen. Most people didn’t, of course, but the whole move was just odd enough to get a little attention, which I was definitely seeking. (Another friend from that time John mentioned to me a few years ago that I would sit on the front steps of his frat in my trench coat and read a book. I don’t really remember this, but if it’s true it was for sure for attention.) I remember one evening Ian had a kind of band that was playing and I “opened” for them. My act was simply talking about Nick Drake, painting him as a forgotten genius, which he was, and pleading with the crowd to listen. It went over pretty well, like I said probably just because it was different.
Later on, mostly the next year I think, Ian and I went to a few shows in Boston, including The Red House Painters, The Fall, and Love Spit Love. Ian would drive, and blast The Pogues with the window down to stay awake on the way home. Before one of these shows we managed to source a little green, which was enjoyable. We would park, illegally, in some lot Ian knew. In the lot, there were rats.
Jake and I were sort of on the same level–both semi-degenerate English majors–but Ian I looked up to. He was definitely the leader in the friendship, although he must have seen something in me because we hung out a fair bit. Ian was also friends with Marc, but he was perhaps closer to another group of guys who lived in two adjacent quads on the third floor. This included John and a guy called Will. I would go up there too, and Will would ask “what Dead do you want to listen to?” I always went with Reckoning because I liked the country-folk sound and the song “It Must Have Been the Roses.” I liked the third floor guys too, especially John.
Next door to Jake and my quad was Adam and Basmo. Adam and Basmo (a nickname) were seniors who for some reason decided to stay in what was basically a freshman dorm. Adam was cool, but pretty grown up. Basmo was still a kid, and loved to get high. Loved to get high. Early on in the year he would come over and ask “anyone want to get stoned and session?” A session, it turned out, was you would smoke, put on The Beatles, and watch Bugs Bunny or something with the sound down. The idea was the music would synch up with the cartoon and it would be hysterical. It totally worked, although I just liked to listen to music and bullshit rather than session. Real heads will remember the session. (Jake told me that sadly Basmo later took his own life as a result of the worsening effects of ef. That was really too bad because Basmo was just a pure open-hearted soul.) So basically we would get stoned when we could, smoke Reds, and stay up all night and listen to music, which was a pretty decent life all in all. Jake and Ian took me in, and made the first part of freshman year so much better in all ways than it would have been if I hadn’t known them.
Dedication: For Ian and Jake, for seeing something in me, and helping make me a little somebody.
New Note: It has been a little while since I last posted this piece, and I’m glad to bring it back into view. It remains my very favorite essay on the Kyoto Kibbitzer, and has continued to circulate far beyond what I ever expected, with many hundreds of reads over time. In an entirely unscientific but pleasingly persistent corner of the internet, it still seems to rank #2 in search results for the term “Katie Park Bad Moves,” just behind Wikipedia, which is pretty cool. I have no idea what to make of that, but I’m not complaining.
The piece itself—on Craig Finn’s “It’s Never Been a Fair Fight”—has always felt to me like one of the most complete things I’ve written about music, scenes, and subcultures, and I’m grateful for the continued readership and responses it has received. Reposting here in full for anyone who missed it the first time around, or wants to revisit it.
Original Note: This piece is about an absolutely amazing song by Craig Finn called “It’s Never Been a Fair Fight” released in 2020 on All These Perfect Crosses from Partisan Records. We will also expand on the song’s theme, which is how subcultures (and “scenes”) operate. Finn is, in my opinion, the greatest lyricist working today (not the greatest living lyricist, that’s still Dylan). I’ve written about about Finn before here, and here.
Craig Finn himself has commented on this song and says that “It’s Never Been A Fair Fight”:
“Is about the extreme difficulty of staying true to the rigid rules of a subculture as you get older. The character in the song revisits an old peer and finds struggle and disappointment in the place he left behind.”
In this case, the narrator had been part of the punk/hardcore scene in the 1980’s and 1990’s, has left the scene, and reflects on his time there and what it meant as he meets his old friend—and we suppose former lover—Vanessa. I’m not sure I understand the entire chronology of the song, as it engages in some apparent time jumps that can be a little hard to follow. Overall however, it is pretty clear what the song is about.
The opening verse sees the narrator (let’s call him C., because while we will grant Finn the understanding as an artist that his characters are characters, in this case the song feels pretty autobiographical) checking in with Vanessa. The song opens in the present day.
Finn has C. meet her “right in front of her building,” Vanessa “vague in taste and drowning,” telling him she’s “got a new man…in a new band,” and “they’ve got a new sound.”
We get the impression that C. has been out of the scene for a while, while Vanessa is very much still in it: new man, new band, new sound, same old place. Vanessa’s man, we assume, is in a hardcore band, and I believe it is the case that Finn came up through the hardcore scene before forming his first band Lifter Puller. Lifter Puller is not a hardcore band, and I don’t know if Finn was actually in a hardcore band or just in the scene.
Then comes one of Finn’s perfect little deadpan truths. C. shrugs that “hardcore’s in the eye of the beholder,” a funny line for a number of reasons (it also reminds me of the classic David Berman line: “punk rock died when the first kid said / punk’s not dead.”) The humor hits because it’s both self-aware and scene-aware.
After C. recalls his “broken heart from 1989,” Finn pivots the timeline. The song shifts back—back to when C. was attending hardcore shows, hot and sweaty, elbows in his eyes. The chronology bends, but the emotional logic stays firm.
Vanessa says there are “threads that connect us,” and “flags and wars we should never accept.” Angelo’s off seeing “snakes in the smoke” from someone’s cigarette. And Ivan? He isn’t concerned at all — for him it’s mostly just about “what you wear to the show.” C. admits he “heard a song…on the radio” that he liked, which we can assume violates at least one of Vanessa’s unwritten rules.
Finn is an absolute master of sketching characters in just a line or two. Here, he uses a sort of pointillistic approach to introduce us to two additional members of the scene, Angelo and Ivan. With just a few short verses we already understand a great deal about “the scene.” Here is what we can deduce:
i) All four members of the scene have very differently valenced loyalties. Put another way, they want different things from it. Vanessa is a purist; for her being part of the scene is like being part of an tribe, an army, and we take her to be a fierce protector of the in-group/ out-group aspects that tend to arise in subcultures. Angelo, it seems, is a little out there; he’s seeing snakes in the cigarette smoke and probably not all that interested in the ultimate nature or meaning of the scene. Ivan likes the t-shirts and jeans, likes the look. He’s not a purist either. And C., well he likes a little pop music, an inclination we assume is strictly verboten for folks like Vanessa.
ii) Probably because of the differences in ideas and ideologies between the scene members, C. sees things coming to an end, both with the scene and between he and Vanessa. Here we are reminded of the difficulty of keeping any kind of group together, whether a scene, a band, or just a group of friends. Everyone knows the feeling of having a group of friends who tell each other they will be tight forever, however life doesn’t usually work that way. The best film about this dynamic is Whit Stillman’s Metropolitan, which depicts a young group of friends in Manhattan who come together and then slowly, but inevitably, come apart over the course of a winter. There is a great moment in Metropolitan where the main character, Tom, looks around and realizes the scene is dead. Where did it go? It was here one day, gone the next. Scenes are like that, and this is what Finn is writing about.
iii) The inherent differences between people which make keeping the scene together are also something that Finn celebrates to a certain extent I think. One of the most salient features of Finn’s writing is his compassion. Finn has compassion for Angelo and his snakes, Ivan and his jeans, and for Vanessa, in all of her rigidity. As of the time of the song we know for sure that Vanessa is still in the scene and C. is not. I guess that neither Angelo nor Ivan is still around, however if only one of them is my money’s on Angelo, if he’s still alive.
Through the course of my own life, I have been involved, for a shorter or longer time, with a variety of subcultures. One category of subculture that I have frequented is what we could broadly call “new age.” My explorations of this category have been reasonably extensive. Back in my early 20s, I was involved for about 4–5 months with a Tibetan Buddhist group back in Washington State. I would get up at 4 AM, drive an hour across town to a beautiful old house on the hill, and meditate with the folks there. This group also organized some outings, such as mountain hiking.
I enjoyed the group and the meditation. The group leader, a slightly older woman who was lovely, asked me to pay like 6 dollars for a little book with chants in it, which I did. There was a total cross-section of people in the group of different ages and backgrounds, and all in all I liked it there. However, I peeled off from the group after a time for reasons very similar to those discussed by Finn. There were two specific things that led to me leaving. The second I’ll discuss a little later. The first was one day I was chatting with one of the members on the street outside after meditation. He was telling me how his daughter used to play chess, however he would no longer allow her to do so because it was interfering with her studies of Tibetan Buddhism. “There’s just not enough time,” he told me.
I had talked with this guy before and he was a perfectly nice guy, but I didn’t agree with his approach. I felt, in fact, that it was bad action. Now, I understood that people joined the group for different reasons and had different levels of investment. I was not looking to become a Tibetan Buddhist or anything—I was just “checking it out.” To circle back to Finn, the valence gap between this fellow’s take on the subculture and my own was vast, and his entire approach turned me off. This was the first step in my deciding to leave.
The next three verses of “It’s Never Been a Fair Fight” see C. trying to keep the door open to Vanessa even as he edges out of the scene. He wants to meet her and if she agrees he will know that she like him feels that “punk is not a fair fight.” Finn doesn’t say, but I’m guessing Vanessa doesn’t show.
If things change quickly/ just remember I still love you/ and I’ll circle ’round the block tonight/ between 9 and 10 o’clock tonight
If you’re still standing here, I’ll take that as a sign/ that you agree it was a sucker punch/ punk is not a fair fight/ it’s never been a fair fight
We said there weren’t any rules/ but there were so many goddamn rules/ we said that they’d be cool/ but then there were so many goddamn rules
Verse VII is the hinge-point of the song and basically its thesis. Finn’s point is straightforward: the appeal of the scene is the potential for freedom, exploration, rebellion, however once inside the subculture C. finds himself increasingly hemmed in by the strictures of that culture and the requirements necessary to remain within it. The very thing that drew C. to the subculture (flight from an over-determined social reality) is that thing that ultimately drives him away. “It’s Never Been a Fair Fight,” appears in two versions on All These Perfect Crosses; the main version is horn driven and upbeat, and there is also an acoustic version. On the main version, Finn, realizing perhaps that the repeated line is a bit poetically unorthodox, spits out a laugh on the “then” in “but then there were so many goddamn rules,” and in the process underlines the centrality of the sentiment to the song as a whole. It’s a great verse, and one which tells us something fundamental about C.’s nature: he likes the action, and as such needs to be free to pursue it wherever it may be. Action is not limited to the Minneapolis hardcore scene, after all.
“I listened to the radio / I waited all night long…” — Radio Radio, Elvis Costello
Note: This piece reflects my personal memories of listening to Larry King’s overnight radio show in the late 1980s and early 1990s, along with later impressions from television appearances, interviews, and conversations with people who knew him. It is written in the spirit of appreciation and nostalgia rather than media criticism, and emphasizes the uniquely loose, humane, and unpredictable quality of King’s radio work, which for me remains the defining core of his legacy.
I grew up listening to Larry King’s overnight radio show between roughly 1988 and 1992, and in my opinion — which happens to be correct — the radio show was much better than the television version that later made him famous. The TV show was good, even great at times, but radio was longer, looser, freer, and far more unpredictable. It had weird guests, weirder callers, and the feeling that anything might happen at two in the morning. That’s where Larry really lived.
I would listen in my bedroom at my parents’ house in Spokane, Washington, the volume turned low, the house quiet, insomnia hovering. The Spokane AM station — KGA 1510 — carried the show from around 9 PM Pacific time, and then, wonderfully, they would run it again. So I’d listen from nine to midnight, fade, wake at two or three, and hear the same segment again in a half-dream. The effect was surreal. Didn’t I just hear that caller? Didn’t Larry just say that? It created a strange loop of late-night déjà vu that only made the whole thing more atmospheric. The show felt less like programming and more like a continuous nocturnal conversation.
My friend Kelly Rudd loved Larry too. When we were in high school we were both big fans of the radio show, and we talked about it constantly. There were a couple of things that we especially liked. The first was that Larry famously did no preparation. He knew a huge amount about the world, of course, but he didn’t read guests’ books ahead of time. He wanted to come in cold. If his guest was a firefighter, he’d ask, “So what’s it like to be a firefighter?” It sounds lazy, but it was brilliant. By staying open and getting out of the way, he let the conversation go anywhere. This way the show became eventful.
Another thing we loved was what happened after the guest left. Larry would open the lines and take questions about absolutely anything. Most of the time he was generous and patient, but when callers went off the rails he had a signature phrase. He’d cut them off gently: “Cold compress, ma’am,” or “Cold compress, sir.” Basically: lie down, ice your head, regroup. It was hysterical, especially because he used it sparingly. When “cold compress” dropped, you knew things had gotten weird.
Anyway, Kelly and I loved Larry so much that when the station suddenly dropped the show, Kelly proposed we drive to the radio station and protest. So we skipped school, drove across town, and rang the intercom demanding to speak to someone about the cancellation. The station manager eventually came down and heard us out. We knew we weren’t changing anything, but it felt right to try. Larry never came back to Spokane radio, and the show faded not long after, but the whole episode captured what the show meant to us. It wasn’t just background noise. It felt alive.
Larry’s on-air style was the key. He was unbelievably relaxed. By the late ’80s you could tell he had done thousands of hours. Nothing fazed him. Weird guests, drunk callers, eccentrics — all the same to Larry. He absorbed everything. He had pet phrases — “cold compress” chief among them — and he deployed them like a veteran reliever, only when needed. He famously did no prep, and he leaned into naïve questions. He’d ask something simple and let the guest do the work. The effect was disarming. People opened up. He also had real humanity. He listened. He didn’t mock callers. He didn’t rush them. There was compassion there, and I think that’s what I loved most.
And the show could get wonderfully out of control. In one story Larry told from his old Miami days, an adult actress he was interviewing suggested they just have sex during the commercial break. Larry, amused, asked the producers to clear out — but there wasn’t enough time. That kind of anecdote captures the looseness of late-night radio. It wasn’t polished. It was alive.
Larry left the overnight Mutual Radio show in 1994 to focus on television. By then I had already drifted away, but I still caught Larry King Live on CNN over the years. I remember watching during the O. J. Simpson trial while at Otago University in New Zealand, when the show became part of the nightly noise. Later there were the Vladimir Putin interviews — classic Larry, conversational and oddly disarming. And of course there were the great comic moments, like the interview with Jerry Seinfeld where Larry suggested the show had been canceled and Seinfeld snapped back in disbelief, and the Norm Macdonald appearance where Norm kept repeating, “I’m a deeply closeted homosexual,” and Larry tried earnestly to parse it. “So that means you’re gay?” “No, Larry,” Norm replied, “it means I’m deeply closeted.” Pure Larry: sincere confusion meeting absurdist comedy.
Larry’s personal life was famously complicated. He married eight times, had several children — including sons Chance and Cannon later in life — and lived in a kind of perpetual romantic improvisation. The marriages came and went. The last ended painfully and publicly. He once joked he’d never leave his wife unless Angie Dickinson came along — and when she did, he married her. That was Larry: impulsive, affectionate, slightly chaotic. Despite decades of success, he didn’t leave the kind of massive fortune people assumed. The money came and went, as did the marriages. It was a life lived in motion.
My friend Sergio Mandiola actually knew Larry in his later years in Los Angeles. Sergio was running an independent studies program at Beverly Hills High School, and Larry’s sons Cannon and Chance, and he taught his sons for three years. Larry would come by for open nights or just to chat.
Sergio Mandiola: “Larry would come in from time to time and we would talk. He was lovely and open. He talked about his family and his career. One time he told me, ‘Sergio, you should totally have a radio show!’ I was flattered. One thing about Larry is his politics were more to the left than he let on on air. He had strong views and wasn’t afraid to share them in person. Larry was a true mensch and I’m glad I got to spend time with him. I miss him.”
In the end, I’ll say it plainly: for me, Larry King is the radio GOAT. There was no one like him, and there probably never will be. It wasn’t just longevity. It was the curiosity, the looseness, the humanity, the love of people, politics, baseball, and life. He trusted the conversation. He let the night unfold.
And then there was that absurd, wonderful USA Today column, which read like a diary gone completely outta control. Mets lose 6–4…Rain in Baltimore…Clinton flies to Ireland…You’d read it and think, Larry, baby, WTF is this? And also, Mr. USA Today, WTAF are you doing paying for this? But somehow it worked. It was pure Larry — fragmentary, observational, intimate.
And that’s how I remember him most clearly: late nights in high school, the radio turned low, insomnia hanging in the room, Spokane quiet outside.. Sometimes I’d listen from nine to midnight, fade, then wake again to the rerun, half-dreaming, half-aware, caught in that strange déjà vu — didn’t I just hear this? — while Larry kept talking, calm as ever, taking calls from truckers and insomniacs and eccentrics. My listening years were brief, but they stuck. And when I think of Larry now, that’s where I go back to: the low hum of AM radio, the half-fade, and the sweet sounds of his voice in my ear.
Dedication:
For the one and only GOAT, Larry Motherfucking King. RIP baby.
Note: This essay is written in the spirit of amused inquiry rather than firm conclusion. Human history is filled with reports of strange visions, unexplained lights, divine visitations, and unidentified aerial phenomena. The interpretation of such experiences has tended to shift with the cultural vocabulary of the time. Medieval Europeans often described encounters with saints or angels. In the twentieth century the language of extraterrestrials became available.
The psychologist Carl Jung famously suggested that UFO sightings may function partly as modern mythologies—symbolic attempts by societies to understand mysterious experiences in technological terms. Jung also observed, with characteristic dry humor, that UFOs often appear to be “somehow not photogenic.”
The present investigation was prompted by my brother Mike, who recently asserted via text message that extraterrestrials are currently residing in Earth’s oceans. His wife Coleen agreed. “They are everywhere,” she said. While this claim remains unverified, the oceans themselves are vast, poorly explored, and capable of sustaining a wide range of speculative hypotheses.
The purpose of the essay is therefore not to prove or disprove the existence of extraterrestrial life in the ocean. Rather, it is to examine why such ideas persist, how they resemble earlier historical visions—from medieval religious phenomena to modern UFO culture—and why the possibility continues to feel strangely plausible to otherwise reasonable adults.
Epigraph
There are aliens in our midst.
Wussy
The Jung Problem
At this point in the investigation one is reminded of a dry observation by the Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung.
Jung noted that UFOs possess a curious property: they are “somehow not photogenic.” Sightings multiply, witnesses speak with conviction, yet the documentation remains just slightly blurry.
Jung’s larger argument was that such phenomena often behave like modern myths. They appear at moments when societies are under stress, technological change is accelerating, and people are searching for new symbolic explanations of the world.
In other words, the sky fills with things.
Medieval Precedents
This pattern is not entirely new.
During certain periods of medieval Europe, particularly when grain supplies were contaminated by the fungus ergot, communities reported vivid religious visions: glowing figures in the sky, saints appearing in fields, the Virgin Mary materializing in unexpected places.
Ergot poisoning, now understood scientifically, can produce powerful hallucinations. But to the people experiencing them the visions were not chemical side effects. They were divine manifestations.
Entire crowds could witness miraculous shapes in the heavens or detect holy images in the crust of bread. A modern observer might diagnose environmental intoxication or collective suggestion. The participants experienced revelation.
The important point is that the content of the vision reflected the cultural vocabulary available at the time.
Medieval Europe saw saints. Modern America sees aliens.
One can see this dynamic clearly in the case of Joan of Arc. Joan reported hearing voices and receiving instructions from heavenly figures whom she identified as saints.
Historians generally accept that Joan sincerely believed these visions were divine communications.
But it is difficult not to notice that saints were the most advanced category of non-human intelligence available in fifteenth-century France. The conceptual vocabulary for extraterrestrials would not be invented for several hundred years.
Had Joan lived in the late twentieth century, it is at least possible that the same experience might have been interpreted somewhat differently.
She might have reported a craft.
The Cold War Sky
By the late 1940s the heavens had acquired a new cast of characters.
The famous incident near Roswell occurred in 1947, just as the Cold War was beginning to reorganize the world’s imagination. Reports of flying saucers multiplied. The mysterious visitors were described with increasing consistency: small grey beings with large heads and enormous eyes.
The explanation most often offered by the authorities was considerably less glamorous.
Weather balloons.
Strange objects falling from the sky during the early Cold War often turned out to be classified surveillance equipment. Unfortunately, the phrase “weather balloon” never fully satisfied the public imagination.
Aliens, after all, are much more interesting than meteorology.
The Mulder Doctrine
By the 1990s the entire mythology had been carefully systematized by American television.
The X-Files:
In the series, FBI agent Fox Mulder dedicates his career to investigating extraterrestrial activity after his sister Samantha is abducted from their home during childhood.
The abduction occurs at night. A strange light fills the room. The sister disappears.
Mulder spends the rest of his life attempting to prove that what he witnessed was real.
His partner, Dana Scully, is assigned to bring scientific skepticism to the enterprise. Their relationship gradually becomes one of the most beloved partnerships in television history, built on the productive tension between belief and doubt.
Entire generations of viewers absorbed the idea that somewhere in the sky—or possibly beneath the ocean—extraterrestrial activity might be quietly unfolding.
A Modern Lens
Seen from a slightly greater distance, the pattern begins to look familiar.
Medieval villagers saw saints because saints were the explanatory language available to them. Cold War Americans saw aliens because aliens had become the new vocabulary of the unknown.
Both phenomena may reflect the same basic human impulse: when confronted with mysterious experiences, we populate the heavens with the most compelling figures our culture provides.
Which brings us back to Mike.
So Are There Aliens In Our Oceans?
It must be admitted that if an advanced civilization from another planet wished to observe humanity without attracting attention, the deep ocean would offer several practical advantages. The environment is dark, difficult to access, and rarely visited by surface-dwelling primates equipped with submarines that can only remain operational for limited periods of time.
From a strategic standpoint, it would be an excellent hiding place.
This possibility has occurred to more than one observer, including my friend Mason, who recently suggested that a technologically sophisticated off-world civilization might simply have decided that the bottom of the ocean was the most convenient place to avoid the rest of us.
Provisional Conclusions
My brother Mike believes there are aliens in the ocean.
Carl Jung might have suggested that mysterious phenomena often adopt the symbolic clothing of their era. The Middle Ages had saints. The twentieth century produced extraterrestrials.
Mike has simply moved the story offshore.
The oceans remain vast and poorly explored. The woods remain dark and occasionally unsettling at night. Both environments have the correct atmospheric conditions for unexpected encounters.
If extraterrestrials are present, they may well prefer the sea.
But it would be a mistake to rule out the woods.
In either case, it seems wise to remain polite.
Footnote: The Ocean Logic
It must be admitted that if extraterrestrials wished to establish a long-term observational presence on Earth, the ocean would offer several advantages. Humans rarely visit the deep sea, and when we do we tend to leave fairly quickly due to crushing pressure, darkness, and the general inconvenience of breathing water.
From the perspective of an advanced extraterrestrial civilization attempting to avoid unnecessary interaction with our species, the ocean may therefore represent the single most sensible real estate on the planet.
Mike may, in other words, be thinking strategically.
POSTSCRIPT: Supplemental Testimony
Shortly after the investigation began, the primary witness—my brother Mike—provided additional clarification regarding his position.
According to Mike, extraterrestrial life has not only visited Earth’s oceans but has been present there for a considerable period of time. The aliens, he explained, appear to prefer the environment and have constructed bases beneath the sea.
When asked for supporting evidence, Mike cited the well-known Navy pilot videos showing unidentified aerial objects performing unusual maneuvers.
These videos—often referred to as the “Tic Tac” incidents—have circulated widely in recent years and are frequently interpreted as evidence of advanced technology of unknown origin.
Mike considers them decisive.
A second observer, his wife Colleen, agreed with this general assessment while expanding the hypothesis somewhat.
In her view, extraterrestrials may not be confined to the ocean at all. Rather, they may be present around us at all times.
According to Colleen, it is entirely possible that aliens walk among us.
At this stage of the investigation, these claims remain under review.
Dedication: For my brother Mike. I love you bro, but I still thinks them shits are in the woods.
Note: If you liked this piece, you may also like the pieces below, which also discuss the famous psychologist Carl Jung.
Note: This essay is not an attempt to defend Ryan Adams the person. It’s an attempt to defend the continued seriousness of the music. The distinction matters, even if our cultural conversations sometimes pretend it doesn’t. Also, I fucking love Ryan Adams. He is the motherfucking man.
Epigraph:
“When the stars go blue.” — Ryan Adams
For several years now it has been socially safer to treat Ryan Adams as a closed case: talented songwriter, personal flaws, cultural exile. The outline is familiar enough that most people no longer bother to revisit the work itself. But the strange thing about Adams is that the songs refuse to cooperate with the narrative. They remain stubbornly alive — hundreds of them scattered across albums, demos, and late-night recordings — carrying the same bruised intelligence that first made people pay attention twenty-five years ago. At some point the question stops being whether Ryan Adams is an admirable person. The real question becomes harder and less comfortable: what do we do with an artist whose flaws are obvious but whose music continues to tell the truth in ways very few writers can manage?
Part of the problem is that Ryan Adams belongs to an older model of songwriting — the kind where the emotional life of the artist is inseparable from the work. The songs are confessional without being literal, personal without being autobiographical in any simple way. From Heartbreaker on to today, Adams has always written like someone sitting in the wreckage of his own choices and trying to understand what just happened. That voice — raw, impulsive, often heartbroken, sometimes self-pitying, often painfully perceptive — was never tidy. It wasn’t supposed to be. The appeal of Adams at his best has always been that the songs arrive before the moral cleanup crew.
When the accusations against him surfaced in 2019, the cultural machinery moved quickly. Adams’s shows were cancelled for a while, he was dropped from projects, and reclassified overnight as an artist whose work had become morally contaminated. Some listeners stopped immediately. Others quietly kept listening but stopped talking about it in public. The silence that followed was oddly complete. In a culture that usually thrives on argument, the Ryan Adams conversation simply evaporated.
That disappearance is revealing. It suggests that many people were less interested in wrestling with the complexity of the situation than in resolving it as quickly as possible. Once the story had a clear villain, the cultural instinct was to move on.
But the songs remain.
Listen again to Come Pick Me Up, and you hear a man cataloguing his own emotional incompetence with surgical clarity. Oh My Sweet Carolina still carries that strange mixture of homesickness and resignation that only a handful of songwriters ever capture. Later work — Ashes & Fire, Prisoner, Chris, the better moments of the sprawling archive that followed — continues the same project: the slow documentation of a person trying, often unsuccessfully, to live with himself.
None of this absolves Adams of anything. It doesn’t erase the accounts of people who describe him as manipulative, volatile, or worse. If anything, the songs themselves suggest that those accounts are not entirely surprising. Adams has been writing about his own volatility for decades. The records are full of it — jealousy, insecurity, emotional chaos, the constant sense of someone struggling to regulate the intensity of his own personality.
What the songs also reveal, though, is a rare level of self-awareness about his own condition. Adams’ best work doesn’t present him as a romantic hero. It presents him as part of the problem.
And that distinction matters.
One of the stranger habits of contemporary cultural criticism is the belief that the value of a work of art should track the moral cleanliness of the person who made it. This is a comforting idea, but it collapses under the slightest historical pressure. Much of the art people still revere emerged from personalities that were messy, selfish, unstable, or worse. Songwriters, perhaps more than most artists, tend to write directly from the fault lines of their own lives.
If we demanded perfect character from every songwriter whose music we admire, the history of popular music would shrink dramatically.
The more interesting question is not whether Ryan Adams deserves redemption. That is not something critics or listeners are qualified to grant. The question is whether the songs themselves still carry meaning once the mythology surrounding the artist has been stripped away.
In Adams’ case, the answer seems to be yes.
The songs are still precise. The emotional details still land. Lines that once felt like romantic exaggeration now sound more like documentation — the sound of a man who understands, perhaps too late, the patterns that keep repeating in his life.
There is something oddly honest about that.
The best Ryan Adams songs have always sounded like dispatches from someone who knows he is partly responsible for the wreckage he is describing. They are not pleas for sympathy so much as attempts at recognition — moments where the singer steps outside himself long enough to see the pattern clearly.
That is why the music persists even when the cultural narrative surrounding it has hardened.
The songs were never about innocence. They were about self-knowledge.
And self-knowledge, even when it comes from flawed people, is still one of the things art is uniquely good at revealing.
Dedication
For Ryan, one of the five greatest songwriters ever and the motherfucking man. I love you baby.
Note: If you like this essay, you may like these others in the same “In Defense Of” series.
So I called you a cab and they called you a hearse, and I knew what they were talking about. — The Mendoza Line, “It’s a Long Line (But It Moves Quickly)”
Note: This piece pairs naturally with my recent essay On the Safe Space (aka Corner Girl). Both pieces are about the small moments that hold us together when we are breaking apart. You can read that piece here.
By 2012 I finally understood what I had been circling back in 2008 without fully naming: the business hotel wasn’t just a neutral space — it was a controlled dissociation chamber. A place where my mind could flatten without collapsing. A room where the world muted itself into CNN-colored soft focus, where time thinned out, where nothing asked anything of me. I didn’t know it then, but all those mid-range rooms — the bland art, the sealed windows, the gentle hum of an air conditioner tuned to the exact frequency of psychic anesthesia — were teaching me a skill I would need later: how to disappear just long enough to come back intact.
So when the pressure finally broke, when I had been working thirty straight thirteen-hour days and felt myself sliding toward the edge of something unnamed, I took the Shinkansen to Tokyo, checked into a business hotel, turned my phone off, and told the world — or most of it — to fuck off for thirty-six hours. And the shocking thing wasn’t that it worked. The shocking thing was realizing I had been preparing for it years earlier, in those identical rooms where the towels were always clean, the windows always closed, and 9-ball was always on.
So I ducked into the nearest konbini and bought a latte from the machine — the one small ritual that still made sense. The warm cup in my hand steadied me just enough to get through the turnstiles. Kyoto Station felt too bright, too full of intersecting lives and needs, the air full of other people’s urgency. I didn’t have the bandwidth to absorb anyone else’s story; I barely had enough for my own. All I knew was that the next Shinkansen to Tokyo was leaving in eleven minutes, and if I didn’t get on it, something in me would snap in a way I wouldn’t be able to walk back. The latte was cooling fast, my hands were shaking, and every part of my body was saying the same thing: Go. Now. Before you say yes to one more thing you don’t have the energy to carry.
Once the room was arranged — bag on the stand, shoes lined up by the door, Pocari Sweat sweating slightly on the desk next to the bottle of red — my whole system downshifted into something like relief. Not joy. Not peace. Just the quiet recognition that, for the next thirty-six hours, my time belonged to me and no one else. I didn’t have to speak. I didn’t have to answer. I didn’t have to hold anything together. All I needed to do was sit on the bed, take a long drink of Pocari, a short drink of wine, and let my body loosen by degrees. It wasn’t dramatic. It wasn’t cinematic. It was just freedom in the smallest, most essential sense: I get to be here, in this room, alone, and the world can wait.
After the first wave of relief, the question always arrived: Do I go out?
Tokyo was right there.
Akasaka-Mitsuke humming five floors beneath me, restaurants lit up like little stages, the crossing full of men in suits walking fast enough to convince you they knew exactly where they were going. I never did. So I’d sit on the bed and pull up the map — not to plan, but to orient. Izakaya here, ramen there, a bar tucked down some side street with red lanterns and a name I couldn’t pronounce. Nothing fancy. Nothing difficult. Just food, warmth, and maybe one drink that wasn’t red wine from a convenience store. I wasn’t looking for a night out. I was looking for simple movement, the kind that doesn’t require performance or decision-making. A walk, a meal, a seat at a counter. A single beer poured by someone who didn’t know my name and didn’t need to. That was the whole question every time: stay in the bubble, or slip into the Tokyo night just long enough to remember I was a person.
Stepping out into Akasaka-Mitsuke wasn’t lonely — it was liberating. The air felt different the second the sliding doors breathed me out into the crosswalk light. I wasn’t hiding from anyone. I wasn’t avoiding anything. I was simply off the clock in a way that almost never happened in my real life. No one knew where I was, and for the first time in weeks, that fact didn’t carry a threat or a stain of guilt. It felt clean. It felt earned. I wasn’t missing; I was saving my own damn life by giving it a night without responsibility. The freedom wasn’t dramatic. It was simply this: I could walk in any direction, and every direction was allowed.
Out in the Akasaka night, I felt like the version of myself that gets buried under work and obligation — the real me, the one who just wants to wander and see who’s out, what’s open, what energy the city is holding. I wasn’t searching for anything dramatic. I wasn’t looking for revelation or escape. I was just checking things out — the izakaya with the red lantern, the alley with the quiet bar, the group of people laughing too loud on the corner. Dabbling. Moving lightly. Letting Tokyo show me whatever it wanted to show, without needing to make a night out of it. It was the simplest, purest freedom: explore until something feels right, and stop when it doesn’t.
I walked the Akasaka backstreets the way I always do when I’m in this mode — cutting down alleys, taking long cuts and shortcuts that don’t make geographic sense but feel right in my body. Tokyo is a city you navigate by instinct, not logic. You follow energy. You drift. You take the turn that looks interesting, then the one that feels safe, then the one that’s pulsing with life. Sometimes I’d follow the Google map to the place I thought I wanted to eat, only to walk past it and keep going. Other times I’d catch a glimpse of something through a noren curtain — warm light, the sound of laughter, a chef moving with the right kind of ease — and that would be the signal. It was never about the spot itself. It was about finding the right spot, the one that matched the night’s frequency. And over the course of the evening, I usually did both: follow the algorithm, then abandon it; trust the map, then trust myself.
Eventually I found the place — an oyster bar tucked behind one of those half-lit alleys where Akasaka feels a little European and a little dreamlike. Warm light, wood counter, the soft clatter of shells, and a chef who moved with the kind of quiet competence that settles you the moment you sit down. This was exactly my jam: an oyster platter arranged like a small geography, cold and briny and perfect, a bowl of clam chowder steaming in front of me, and a carafe of white wine that I poured slowly, deliberately, one glass at a time. Spendy, sure — but in this mode spendy isn’t excess. Spendy is permission. Spendy is dignity. Spendy is saying to yourself: I get to take my time with this. I get to have a meal that cares for me back. And in that moment, slurping an oyster with the city humming outside, I could feel the night open around me in the cleanest way.
The white wine hit me in that way good pairings do — not as a buzz, but as a reminder of how people take care of themselves when they’re not drowning. White wine and oysters belong together; everyone knows that, and sitting there I felt myself re-enter that understanding. The pairing wasn’t fancy. It was human. It was the kind of small, civilized pleasure most people allow themselves without thinking, and I’d been so buried under work and obligation that I’d forgotten what that felt like. The red I’d had earlier had already warmed me, softened the hard edges, and now the white layered over it, sharpening the night just enough to make everything shimmer. I was slightly buzzed and buzzing — not out of control, not hiding, just finally aligned with myself again.
I left the oyster bar with that warm, gentle buzz humming through me — the kind that makes Tokyo feel lit from within — and walked until I found the sort of place I always look for on these nights. A spendy cocktail bar: dim lights, bottles arranged like small works of art, a bartender in a crisp vest moving with that Japanese mix of precision and grace that makes you feel taken care of without being noticed. I took a high seat at the counter and ordered something I never drink in real life — a proper cocktail, layered, balanced, spendy. Spendy was the point. Spendy meant: I am worth slowing down for. Spendy meant: no one is waiting, no one is watching, no one needs anything from me. I sipped slowly, letting the night stretch out in front of me like a long exhale, feeling myself settle into the version of me that only Tokyo brings out — curious, quiet, open, free.
The bar I ended up in wasn’t some sleek Tokyo cocktail temple — it was better. Two bartenders from Nepal were working the counter, the kind of guys who’ve lived ten different lives before landing in Japan, commuting in from way out because Akasaka rent is a joke. We talked the way travelers talk when no one is trying to impress anyone — about where they were from, how far they lived, what Kathmandu feels like in winter. I wasn’t performing, just listening, rapping with them in that easy drift that happens when you’re slightly buzzed and buzzing in a foreign city. I ordered red wine — not more cocktails — because that was the right shape for the night, and when I finished my glass one of them poured me another, full to the brim, “for the gentleman.” It wasn’t flirtation. It wasn’t special treatment. It was the small grace of the night saying: You came to the right place. You came at the right time. And you’re not carrying anyone else’s weight right now.
When I stepped back out into the night after the second glass of wine, the whole neighborhood felt like it belonged to me. Not in a macho way, not in a performative way — just in that rare, private way where the city’s pace matches your own and you fall into step with its pulse. Akasaka was quiet but lit, humming but not crowded, and for five or six blocks I felt like I owned a slice of it. My slice. The alleys, the crosswalk glow, the last trains whispering underneath the city — all of it moved around me without touching me. I wasn’t hiding. I wasn’t disappearing. I was just walking back to my faded little hotel in a state of clean, earned sovereignty, knowing the world wasn’t tracking me for once. And for those fifteen minutes, Tokyo wasn’t a megacity. It was mine — exactly the size of the person I was in that moment.
Back in the room — my little faded Akasaka hideout five or six blocks from the bar — I didn’t overthink a thing. I drank more red wine, chased it with Pocari, stripped down to my boxers, and let my body fall exactly where it wanted to fall. There was nothing left to hold, nothing left to manage, nothing left to translate. I slept like a baby — a full, unbroken twelve hours, eleven to eleven — the kind of sleep that only arrives when you’ve been carrying too much for too long and finally set it all down in a room no one else can enter. No dreams, no interruptions, no alarms. Just the deep, uncomplicated sleep of someone who gave himself thirty-six hours of mercy and actually took them.
When I woke up around eleven, I felt clear-eyed and ready for more of exactly what the night had been—a continuation of me time. No urgency, no guilt, no one waiting on anything. Just hunger in my stomach and calm in my body. I didn’t rush. I stayed in the room for hours, drifting between the bed and the window, drinking instant coffee, sipping a little more Pocari, scrolling nothing, letting the quiet stretch. I could go out or stay in—either was fine. The whole point was that the day was mine to waste or spend however I wanted. After twelve hours of baby-level sleep, I wasn’t reborn—I was simply functional again. Hungry, steady, grounded, and free.
The next day I was set to return to Kyoto. When it’s time to go, it’s time to go — and the Thin Man cleans up quick. I showered, shaved, packed my bag with the same neat ritual I’d used the night before, and stepped back out into Akasaka like someone who had never been tired in the first place. Before heading to the station I picked up omiyage — the small gesture that makes the return feel seamless — something for the office, something for home. It wasn’t guilt; it was continuity. A way of saying: I left for a day and a half, and now I’m back in the world with all the edges smoothed. By the time I boarded the Shinkansen back to Kyoto, I was already shifting into IB mode — the coordinator, the problem-solver, the guy who keeps the whole thing moving. But now the engine was clean again. The reset had worked. Thirty-six hours alone in a faded Tokyo hotel, oysters, wine, a long sleep, a morning that belonged only to me — and suddenly I could re-enter at full tilt. Not as a martyr. Not as a runaway. Just as myself, restored enough to carry everything again.
Dedication:
For Akasaka — whoever designed that little slice of urban order also re-ordered my mind in the best possible way. Thanks there, baby.
Well it’s always been my nature/ to take chances/ my left hand drawn back/ while my left hand advances. Bob Dylan, Angelina
I’m glad I did it all then you know that I didn’t listen/ glad I went and got it all outta my system. My Morning Jacket, Outta My System
It’s never been a fair fight.
Craig Finn. It’s Never Been a Fair Fight
Note: What follows is a direct and somewhat graphic account of my experience of being badly abused as a child. The abuse happened at the hands of my aunt’s (father’s side) first husband when I was six and seven years old in the very early 1980s. As I will recount, the abuse had deep and lasting impacts on me and it took me years, decades, to process and understand what it did to me.
I make absolutely no claim to be an expert on childhood abuse or to speak to anyone else’s experience of this all too common problem. My experience is my own, and that’s all I can really speak to. In addition, although he conducted what I consider to be vicious abuse of my brother, I understand that anyone impacted by abuse may categorize events in different ways. Therefore, I will allude only glancingly to these aspects, and only through the lens of how this impacted me personally. I will, inevitably, make reference to the role of my parents and my aunt in the events, and as I mention below when I began to fully process the abuse I directed a certain degree of anger at these adults. As time has passed, however, I have come to understand that although they were not able, for whatever reason, to stop the abuse, and although it was conducted, at least in my case, in their direct view, the primary responsibility lies with the abuser himself.
In early 2024 I did seek out legal advice from a firm that specializes in childhood sexual abuse, and they gave me a professional and compassionate hearing, however in the end declined to take up my case and directed me instead to the Washington State public system. I will detail those events below. I am not currently pursuing legal avenues, and instead am hoping that by making this public I can finally fully exorcise the lasting damage that was done to me. I take full responsibility for the content of this piece.
I was born in South Bend, Indiana in June of 1974. My father was pursuing a master’s degree at the University of Notre Dame at the time, however when I was around six months old my parents moved back to Santa Clara, California, where my mother’s parents were living. My father did not finish his master’s at Notre Dame because of some issue with the faculty there, however I believe that he did later finish at Santa Cruz University in California. In an interesting side note I also pursued a master’s degree, in History at the University of Northern Arizona in the late 1990s, and did not finish because of a conflict, or disagreement, with my thesis advisor. Life has a funny way of repeating itself.
We lived in Santa Clara until I was, I believe, two years old, and then my parents moved us to Gig Harbor, Washington. My understanding is that my father wanted to move to Washington State to be closer to his sister, Nancy (Nan) Thomas. Nancy is my father’s younger sister and it was she, I believe, that introduced my father to my mother, who was Nancy’s friend when they all attended Santa Clara University.
It just so happened that Nancy was then married to a man who would become my abuser. My first memory of this guy, just some fucking guy as far as I’m concerned, is also my first real memory in life (Note: This has since been revised to happier memories when I was two in California. I will detail these at a later date). It goes like this:
When I was very small, two going on three, (I know I was three in Gig Harbor because my brother Mike was born there in June of 1977), we lived in a small house right next to the Pacific Ocean. What I recall about this time was, we had a dog. My father was working at a nearby lumberyard which I occasionally visited, and, I think, was sort of seeking what would be the next stage of his life. My parents had no money, but I didn’t understand this at the time.
My first vivid memory is of playing a game called “Shovelman” on the beach of the Pacific Ocean right by our house. I don’t remember the rules of Shovelman, but it involved a frisbee. However I do recall, with absolute precision, that one time the frisbee was thrown out into the ocean, which, in western Washington, was very cold. This guy ordered me to swim for the frisbee, and when, predictably, I struggled mightily to reach the frisbee in the freezing water and came out gasping for breath, he laughed and laughed, like a total sadist. Of course I didn’t know what a sadist was at the time, but I recognized his essential nature even then. I knew for sure at that moment that he was a bad guy. Now I don’t fully know if my father and mother liked this guy or considered him a friend. All I know is, he was around some. I later learned that my uncle Kim did not like him. Hated him in fact. Kim has had an interesting and varied life, and is my godfather. I love Kim, and salute him here for his instincts.
While my first memory is a negative one, presaging as we will see later events, I also have positive memories from this time. I recall right around this time the days after my brother was born that some of my mother’s family visited us including her mother Barbara and her youngest sister Leslie. My mother has nine siblings, all, fortunately, still alive and all wonderful people. Leslie was quite young at the time and is only a few years older than myself I believe. Anyway, I looked up to Leslie and thought she was cool, so when we all went to a restaurant I sneaked under the table and pulled on her leg, like little children do. I wanted her attention, but I’m not sure if I got it. As I mentioned above, I also recall visiting my father at the lumberyard and thinking he also was cool and had a cool job. I don’t know if he would remember that line of work the same way or not.
In any case, my family did not stay in Gig Harbor very long, and pretty soon we were back in California, this time in Palo Alto, which is a town adjacent to Santa Clara. These days, Palo Alto, Santa Clara, and the nearby San Jose are well known for being sort of the heart of Silicon Valley, but back then they were not really on the map in that way. My mother was working as a swim coach at Stanford University and my father was working at a school in town. This was a wonderful period of my life as I spent time at Stanford hanging around the pool while my mother was coaching which was a total blast. I may recount this time in more detail at a later date. Suffice it to say I was an outgoing, curious, and happy child, eager to see what the world had in store for me. As I will detail below, I believe I was at this time essentially an extravert, and the primary, from my perspective, impact of the later abuse would be to turn me into a somewhat serious introvert. Over and above all other impacts of the abuse, this is the one I resent the most. It is my belief that my natural extraversion, my interest in and ability to trust and like people, was deeply damaged by the actions of my abuser. I will never fully get over this aspect of the situation, and have had to work very, very hard to overcome what I see as a kind of inversion of my essential nature.
In the year 1980 my family moved once again, this time to Spokane, Washington. And again, this was, as I understand it, for my father to be closer to his sister who was by that time working as a young lawyer in the same city. My abuser was also, I believe, a lawyer. It is certainly true that, although younger, Nancy was on the upswing of her career much more quickly than my father. Other than that I don’t know the exact reasons for this following of his sister, however my father found a teaching job at St. George’s school in Spokane WA. I would attend St. George’s from grade 1 through 12, and have written rather extensively about my time there. Interested readers can find these pieces on this blog.
St. George’s was great, and overall, although my parents were still broke, I had a good childhood. However, there was one dark aspect, which was we would regularly visit Nancy and this guy at their home on the South Hill in Spokane. On occasion, but much less regularly, this couple would visit us at our house on the outskirts of the city. I believe that all of the incidents recounted below occurred in 1980 and 1981. I know this for a couple of reasons, first of all because the volcano Mount Saint Helens erupted in 1980 and at Nancy’s house in the backyard there was a big craggly rock which had pockets of ash residue from the eruption and this event was a big topic at the time. Secondly, I know that I was enrolled in first grade at St. George’s so I must have been six. My brother Mike then would have been three going on four. I wrote about my wonderful brother Mike before here.
The action at the Thomas household there was not all bad–there was the ash and a nearby park called Cannon Hill Park which was pretty cool. The house on the South Hill was pretty large, certainly larger than our own, and I got to know my cousins, both of whom were even younger than myself. I would say we visited dozens of times over the course of a year or two, and I remember the house and its environs well. In any case, ash and parks aside, the main event at the Thomas house turned out to be regular and vicious abuse from this guy which was conducted in full view of everyone in the living room of the house. After a little dinner or whatever, he would “tickle” myself, my brother, for extended periods of time, 20-30 minutes at a time or so or more. This “tickling” was not in any form playing; it was, instead, a totally vicious fully body attack.
It was absolutely excruciating and horrible, and he would touch every single part of my body and dig his fingers in as deep as possible and screw them around. At first I didn’t know what to make of this or what to do, but overtime I came to hate this so much that I began to fight back. My bother Mike, at three, was obviously in no position to do so, and so he, in my recollection, absolutely got the worst of this. The amazing thing, amazing to me to this day, is that the three other adults, my mother and father and this guy’s wife, would just stand there and watch. There is something deeply sad about adults that cannot, for whatever reason, stand up to a bully.
Later, much later, I would confront my mother about all this, and she has since said that her inability to intervene is one of her deepest regrets.
What I think happened was, when I began to fight back he gave up on abusing me. Also, I suspect, from my understanding of abuser psychology, that I had, essentially, “aged out” of whatever his mindframe was. My sense is that he preferred his victims to be as helpless and defenseless as possible, and I was no longer fitting the bill.
Now I should note that I don’t know what his problem was or what he thought he was getting out of this abuse. And, I don’t wish to research it really, because I would prefer to spend as little time as possible engaging with people of this sort. What I know for certain is that in the early 1980s he was a brutal man. That’s a flat fact.
I will detail what I understand to be the effects on myself and some of the later repercussions of his abuse a little later, but first of all I will recount my attempts to engage with the legal system over this issue, as well as indicate, in a compressed form, how I came to process and understand the abuse. Now I wish to tread carefully here because I do not want to get sucked into a discussion of, or really even take a position on, what is known as repressed memory. I understand that this topic is highly controversial, with strong opinions on all sides. Although I have read a lot, I am not an expert on psychology, much less a topic as fraught as this. What I will say is that I never repressed the memory of the abuse; if you had asked me at any given time in my life if I was brutally attacked by this guy, in full view of other adults, I would have said absolutely yes, that happened. However, what took time was to fully work out how deeply and negatively it impacted me, and in what ways. I think I always intuited it, however it took a some very difficult life experiences to get to the bottom of it.
The first of these was in 2010, when I was already 36 years old. It was at that time that I began spiraling into my memories and trying to uncover some kind of nugget that would unlock a range of issues that I was encountering at the time. In this year, and on a few other occasions after, I would, somewhat obsessively, go over events from my sixth and seventh year, always centering around my aunt Nancy, her house, and what I perceived to be my essential ambidexterity. More on this point later. At some point I intuited, in some way, that Nancy may have had a miscarriage before the birth of her first child. My mother, when I asked her, confirmed that this had taken place, and asked how I knew it. I didn’t, but somehow worked it out, just because I was spending so much time thinking this constellation of issues. It was also during this times that I was also trying to get to the bottom of my sexuality, my introversion, and my inability to learn to play the piano because of seriously weak left hand. I will detail these, and other aspects of the situation, later.
In any case, it was in 2022 that I fully worked out the effects that the abuse had had on me over time, and began, for the first time, to identify as a sexual abuse survivor. This was not something that I wanted to have to incorporate into my personal narrative, however it became inevitable. I looked into the law in Washington State, and as I recall, as I understood it at the time, the statute of limitations was three years which began at the moment that the victim became fully aware of their injury. From my point of view, I became fully aware of my injury in 2022, and therefore, after thinking about it, I contacted a law firm in Washington State in early 2024. This firm specialized in sexual abuse cases, however they were pretty high-powered and I got the impression from their website that they specialized in suing institution, schools, churches, and the like. On this basis I felt that it was somewhat unlikely they would take up my case–there was probably just not enough percentage in it. Nonetheless, their website indicated that they meant business, so I contacted them and a little while later had a call with an associate from the firm. He told me that all the lawyers were all in court, but gave me a full and proper hearing and said that he believed my story. He also asked me an interesting question, which was, did the abuse happen more or less than 20 times? I said my recollection was that yes, it was over 20 times, and he took a note of this. My impression was that for a case like mine, 20 times was some kind of legal threshold.
A few weeks later the associate got back to me via email. As mentioned above, he said that the firm would decline to take my case, and recommended I pursue the public legal system. He also said that he hoped that I got justice. I thanked him in response, and was not overly disappointed because it was clear that their focus was on institutions and I had done my best.
Now I should mention that before I contacted the law firm, I did Google this fucking guy to see what came up. It is true that I didn’t want to, and still don’t really want to, research this guy, however I wanted to see at a minimum what internet footprint he had. It turned out that he had a website where he described himself as some kind of elite international mediator and the site had a picture of him climbing a mountain.
So I guess he leveraged his legal background into some kind of mediation role, which is guess is all related. And I have no idea, he may have had success as a mediator. In actual fact, it is not even my intention to comment at any length on who or what he is today (I do believe he is still alive). Is it possible that he cleaned himself up in some respect? Maybe. But actually I doubt it. It is my opinion that someone as twisted as he was in his early adulthood doesn’t really get over that. I can forgive a lot of things–for example taking a life when drunk driving or something of that nature. Mistakes are made, and mistakes of that sort are basically unintentional. However, this guy, with his Shovelman action and his subsequent brutality, in my estimation, doesn’t really ever get better. Am I being unfair? Perhaps. It’s really hard to say.
In any case, although the firm turned me down, reaching out to them was one of the best decisions I have ever made. By attempting to work through the legal system I had engaged, fairly and properly, with the available channels, and I felt immeasurably better about the whole thing. I did not at that time decide to pursue the public option, because I am not located in Washington State, and I didn’t feel that taking this route any further would be feasible. Instead, I thought about using the only real platform I have, my blog, to discuss my thoughts on the matter. Aside from the legal system, this seemed to me to be the next best thing. And so here we are.
In what follows I wish to enumerate what I understand to be the long-term effects of my abuse. I will, in the interest of my own privacy and that of others, somewhat undersell these, and it is not my intention to burden the reader with my own issues over time. In addition, I would like to make clear that my encounter with the legal system as well as my somewhat long-gestating decision to go public with my story and my conversations with a few trusted friends, has ameliorated, to a significant degree, the effects of my personal abuse. In any case, here is what I feel:
From my earliest memories I wanted to play the piano. When I was in first or second grade I asked my mother to enroll me in piano lessons, and she declined, saying that she had no money. A few years later my brother Mike was allowed to take cello lessons, and he became very good very fast. I would wait in the car while my brother and my mother attended cello lessons there on the South Hill in Spokane. Naturally, I never held this against my brother, who was an awesome musician and I was proud of him, however I did resent, for a very long time, being denied the opportunity to pursue music. It is my understanding that although people can learn music at different times in life, the earlier the better. I have subsequently tried to learn the keyboard by myself, and somehow was able to play “Ocean Rain” by Echo and the Bunnymen and “Someone I Care About” by the Modern Lovers. I didn’t dominate Ocean Rain, but it was least passable. But I still can’t really read or play music. I wish, beyond almost anything, that I would have had the chance to learn music at an early age.
However, my strong feeling, underlined by years of reflection and memory spiraling, is that the abuse from this guy essentially crippled my left hand. I don’t know exactly how I know this, but I have always known it. So I probably wouldn’t have been that great at piano anyway, because the left hand is pretty important. And, the destruction of my left hand is intimately and directly connected to my crippled ambidexterity, the inversion of my extraversion, as well as my somewhat ambiguous sexuality. I will take up these issues in turn.
First, as mentioned above, there was as a result of the abuse, a long-term impact on my left hand. When I was very young, maybe four, I learned to swim in the pool at Stanford, and my strong memory is that I was developing a certain ambidexterity. Ambidexterity is related in some respects to dyslexia, which I also have a very mild case of, however it also has some salubrious aspects, for example in sports and music. I understand this intuitively and experientially, that I could have been a good piano player if I had been able to take lessons and if I had not been, essentially, crippled from the repeated abuse. Thus, the quote from Dylan at the top. It’s been forty-five years since I was first abused by this guy, and only now is my left hand, so to speak, advancing.
Second, as mentioned above, I was an extravert until I was six years old when I suddenly turned into a pretty serious introvert. Now, I absolutely don’t wish to imply at all that one orientation is better than another–both have great strengths. However, the issue here is that I was one thing, and then became another. And this corresponded to, and was directly triggered by, the abuse that I suffered. Somehow, the repeated and protracted abuse turned me inward. I no longer trusted people, essentially, and although I still liked, and still do, many people, something went off track. This is the reality.
Third, I know for an absolute fact that my sexuality was deeply damaged by this guy. I can’t speak to any other form of abuse, however my case of male on male abuse, which I experienced (and yes I absolutely categorize my experience as sexual abuse because he violated every part of my body including my genitals) led to a situation where it became for me, once I hit puberty, somewhat difficult to work out what my sexuality was and in what direction it ran. I was, without doubt, attracted to girls, however in the back of my mind there was some kind of lingering, and for me uncomfortable, ambiguity, as well as a distinct inability to approach women. Now, I fully understand that the inability to approach women is a pretty normal aspect of heterosexual teenagers, who are awkward at the best of times, but I always sort of knew that there was something else going on. And what was going on was, my genitalia was first touched, without my consent obviously, for lack of a better term, by an adult male when I was six years old. And that damaged me.
In essence, and again I know instinctively this to be the case, the abuse was so brutal and so protracted that it in essence re-wired my brain. As with repressed memory, I don’t wish to take a strong position on the issue of the left-brain and the right-brain, although I have read and deeply integrated the book The Master and His Emissary, by Iain McGilchrist, which goes into this matter in far greater detail, and with far greater insight, than I will ever achieve. What I know is the connections within my brain were compromised, indeed fractured, by the abuse. Although it took years for me to fully work this out, I have absolutely no doubt that this is the case. It was, in my belief, something about the pure digging of his fingers that did the damage. Some light tickling would not, I think, have had this effect, however the intensity and depth of his action were, I know, of a completely different level.
Basically, I have been dealing with long-term PTSD from his attacks, dealing with it for 45 years in one way or another, and 15 years more intensely. And you might say “hey there Matty baby, how do you know that your supposed ambidexterity, for example, was so compromised by this guy’s actions?” In answer to that I wish to make an analogy to the trans issue. Now I understand that the trans issue is highly political, and, I guess, pretty complex. However my basic stance is as follows: I do not believe that people who experience feelings of transsexuality or gender dysphoria, basically, are “making it up.” A few may be for various reasons, however I believe that, generally speaking, the set of feelings they experience are real, and also because I have never had them, I cannot speak to them with any authority. Such it is with sexual abuse. The feelings and understandings of sexual abuse victims are, I believe, valid and need to be understood in the context of they know best what the effects of the abuse were. While I cannot perhaps fully explain how I know what I know, I know.
I have a few final thoughts. The first is, as mentioned above and now underlined, my bother also received similar treatment from this guy. I mention this only because I have, ever since, suffered from a great degree of guilt for my inability to protect my brother at that time. Indeed, it was primarily this aspect of the situation, more so than the damage to myself alone, that caused me to direct my anger at my abuse to my mother, and by extension my father and Nancy. I still carry this guilt, and don’t suppose I will ever really get over it. Once again, there is a good deal more to the story, but that’s all I really wish to say at this point.
The second refers to what I described above as the re-wiring of my entire mind and body. Perhaps there is a more clinical term for this, and I think that psychologically alert readers will be able add understanding around this, however this is the best description I can offer. As the second quote at the top of this piece alludes to, the life we have led has been what it has been. I strongly wish I had never suffered the abuse that I did, and have had as a consequence, some of the most painful imaginable situations, however the mere fact that I cannot turn back the clock means that the life I have lived will have to stand, in all of its glory and messiness. This is true, I think, for everyone.
Finally, and I am in no way being facetious, I want to express my deep indebtedness to the great Craig Finn. Craig Finn is the lead singer and songwriter from the bands Lifter Puller and The Hold Steady, and has also had a substantial solo career. One of my very favorite songs of all time is “It’s Never Been a Fair Fight,” by Finn, which I have written about at some length here, and from which the third epigraph for this piece comes from. I am not exaggerating when I say that Finn saved my life, probably more than once, and has, over time, helped me overcome the damage done by my abuse. Thank you Mr. Finn sir. I love you.
I will choose to close this narrative here. As alluded to above, there is a lot more to the story, however in the interest of the privacy of a range of people, not the least of which myself, I will desist. What I would like to say at the end of the day is, abusing a child is never a fair fight. And so I am deploying the only real tool that I have at my disposal, my pen. Thank you for reading.
Dedication:
For all my friends and family who have taken such good care of me over the years.I wouldn’t be here without you.And for Spencer Krug, the greatest piano player I am aware of.
Note: It you enjoyed this piece, you may also enjoy the other pieces below which take up somewhat similar themes.
This is my third piece dealing with the songwriter Craig Finn. I wrote at length about his song “It’s Never Been a Fair Fight,” and a little more in my piece on Katie Park and The Bad Moves. Although my primary allegiance will always be to Dylan, if I am totally honest Finn is my favorite songwriter. Dylan is a transcendent force, world-historical, and therefore also sort of unapproachable. Finn is down-to-earth—I can imagine having a drink or three with Finn, whereas Dylan would probably have his hoodie up.
So, for the record: my favorite band is Luna, my favorite songwriter is Craig Finn, and the greatest is Dylan. My three favorite Finn songs are “It’s Never Been a Fair Fight,”“A Bathtub in the Kitchen,” and “Killer Parties.” This post takes a close look at “A Bathtub in the Kitchen,” with the aim of explicating both the song and Finn’s delivery.
II. Premise and Setup
“A Bathtub in the Kitchen” is track three on Craig Finn’s 2019 album I Need a New War, released by Partisan Records. For my money, it is not only the standout track on the record, but one of the three greatest songs of my all-time favorite songwriter. The song is ostensibly about an old friend of the narrator (I will refer to him as C.) called Francis, but it’s also about trying to make it in the big city, and about moving on from the past. Making it—or not making it—in the big city is a classic Finn theme.
III. Verse One — The Accident and the Past
The song opens with a report of an accident. The nature of the event is unspecified, but my best guess is an overdose.
The lightning clarity typical of Finn is all over these four lines. We learn that C. and Francis have a relationship shaded by deception, that they still move in overlapping circles, and that both originally came from somewhere else. The final line delivers one of those Finn-isms that cut both ways: city transplants trying to recreate a tiny town, while C. himself is still entangled in the very past he’s trying to escape.
IV. Verse Two — Money, Health, and Elegance
By the second part of the verse it seems Francis has recovered somewhat, and C. has met with him again.
Finn’s concision is astonishing. In eight lines we understand the dynamic completely: C. has money he could give, but knows it’s probably enabling; Francis is perhaps an addict, though neither man states it. We also glimpse Francis in better days—The Parkside, elegant companions, a life C. once aspired toward. And already C. is trying, gently, to pass responsibility to someone else.
This touches something universal: the friend who needs more than we can sustainably give. Or the times we’ve been that friend ourselves.
V. The Chorus — Youth, Longing, and New York
The chorus arrives, one of Finn’s most moving and beautiful. His voice rises on I was drinking, I was dancing, packed with emotion.
This is a flashback to young C. in New York—broke, naive, crashing on Francis’s couch. Finn underlines C.’s passivity three times: waiting,hoping,desperate for New York to ask me out. That phrasing is brilliant. It captures the essential vulnerability of arriving in New York with dreams, no plan, and a subway map.
The memory sends me to my own first visit to New York. Stepping out of the station at 42nd Street into the noise, I felt the shock of sensation—an energy I still feel every time I return. I’ve been to many great cities—Tokyo, London, Singapore, Amsterdam, Melbourne, Hong Kong, Kuala Lumpur—but there is nowhere like New York.
And in a city like that, it can be nearly impossible to get your footing. Everyone is already in motion. Finn evokes that perfectly.
VI. Verse Three — Present-Day Francis
Back to the present:
Francis has been in New York for twenty-three years, and C. nearly as long, since he knows the number by heart. The “bathtub in the kitchen” signals the classic New York starter apartment—a detail so iconic it becomes the song’s title. Francis still goes to the roof for better reception. Phones get disconnected. Life is fraying. C. registers all of this without overt judgment, but with distance. A sense of “there but for the grace of God go I.”
VII. Chorus Reprise — Guilt and Gratitude
The chorus returns with slight changes—“doing things I shouldn’t”—and doubled gratitude: Francis let me crash out on his couch. Repetition becomes confession.
My father read my “Fair Fight” draft and, not knowing anything about Craig Finn, immediately said he sensed a strong midwestern Catholic vibe. He was spot-on. Finn grew up Catholic in Minnesota; guilt, forgiveness, and redemption run through almost everything he writes.
There is also a phenomenal YouTube video of Finn performing this at the Murmrr Theatre, and during the post-chorus especially the performance takes on a spiritual intensity you can’t miss.
VIII. Post-Chorus — The Confession
The lines:
I can’t keep saying thank you, Francis…
These cut two ways. C. is saying:
The couch surfing was long ago, and he has done what he can.
And simultaneously: I’m not the person who can save you.
The confession is directed at Francis—but maybe just as much at himself.
IX. Verse Four — The Old Ropes and the New Distance
The final verse returns briefly to the past: Francis teaching C. how to navigate New York nightlife—befriend bartenders, tip big on the first round. These are the rules of the game. C. remembers them vividly.
Then we snap to the present: Francis’s job rumors, his terrible landlord, the $200 that will “help him breathe a bit easy.” And the repeated question: Francis, do you even have a plan? C. has given him money, but not much, and not with much faith. The trust between them has frayed into obligation.
X. Outro — The Spiritual Release
The outro repeats the confession. Again, it’s worth watching the Murmrr Theatre live version to feel how Finn leans into this. It becomes a kind of secular prayer, a release and a resignation all at once.
XI. Closing Thoughts
“A Bathtub in the Kitchen” is about youth and aging, about friendship and how it lasts and decays, about guilt and human selfishness in the face of real need. More than anything, it captures what it feels like to try to survive in New York.
I think this song, like “It’s Never Been a Fair Fight,” is more personal for Finn than some of his strictly narrative pieces. The narrator here has “made it.” Finn himself is an immigrant to New York, from Minnesota, and has sampled deeply from the nightlife he writes about. Few songwriters have chronicled nightlife with more range, consistency, or compassion.
Even if C. can’t keep saying thank you, I can. This song moves me in ways I’ve tried to describe here but still can’t fully encompass.
New Note (2025): Since this piece was first published, Japanese Breakfast the band has gotten even bigger, Michelle Zauner wrote another book, and the cultural universe has shifted enough times that some aspects of this essay may be outdated. I’ve kept the original text intact because the dream-logic and breakfast-logic still stand.
I live in Kyoto, Japan, and after many years here I’ve traveled pretty widely—especially in the greater Tokyo area. Traveling in Japan is pretty easy as long as you can manage a little spoken Japanese and read a train map. The trains are famously efficient and connect most of the country, including every major city.
I haven’t driven a car here in more than fifteen years and don’t miss it at all. Trains and taxis get the job done just fine. Overall, I love traveling in Japan and I love exploring Tokyo, a city that contains worlds within worlds. I have almost no complaints about Japanese travel.
Except for one.
It is nearly impossible to get a good breakfast—or really any breakfast—when you’re on the road.
Now, it’s not that Japanese people don’t eat breakfast. They do. The archetypal morning meal—rice, miso soup, maybe a little fish—is as recognizable in its way as the “full English” of sausages and beans. But the Japanese breakfast is overwhelmingly a home operation. Once you’re traveling, the options narrow to two—two and a half, if we’re being generous.
I. The Hotel Breakfast
Mid-price and nicer hotels usually offer a breakfast buffet with “Japanese” (rice, miso, maybe grilled fish) and “Western” (toast, jam, and some ambivalent eggs) selections. Except at the truly top-tier hotels, these buffets manage to be both overpriced and bad. A traveler is lucky to escape for ¥1,500–¥1,800 (about fifteen dollars before the yen weakened), and more commonly pays north of ¥2,000 for a pretty uninspired spread.
Budget hotels often don’t offer breakfast at all.
In my experience, Japanese hotel breakfasts are among the weakest anywhere in the world. I take this as symptomatic of a broader truth: Japanese people simply don’t care about breakfast when they’re on the road—and maybe not all that much at home either.
II. The Convenience Store (“Combini”) Breakfast
When I have raised the issue of the lack of decent breakfast in Japan, Japanese people usually point me to the convenience store. And it’s true: you can purchase food and coffee at any of the ubiquitous combinis—Family Mart, 7/11, Daily, Lawson, and the rest. They’re open 24 hours, and they stock a range of items that theoretically qualify as breakfast. Hard-boiled eggs, yogurt, rice balls, steamed buns, fried chicken, sometimes bananas, and of course hot and cold coffee.
I’ve certainly been in situations where I had no choice but to fall back on the combini for breakfast while traveling. And this is…fine, to an extent. But most combinis have nowhere to actually sit and eat, and in any case you can’t really call a combini breakfast nice.
Most Japanese folks seem to regard a combini breakfast as perfectly acceptable—desirable even. And while one can admire the low expectations, or the cultural pragmatism behind them, it’s possible to admire those qualities and still wish for more.
III. Starbucks or a Local Coffee Shop
Starbucks are fairly common in major cities and usually open at 7 a.m. (if you’re lucky) or, more commonly, 8 a.m. They should really open at 6. The food offerings are overpriced, and Starbucks has never truly figured out its food—which remains baffling. Still, one can grab a few combini items and smuggle them in, or settle for a four-dollar fragment of quiche with your Americano. I would not classify Starbucks as having breakfast, per se, but they are pleasant enough to sit in, and one can create a simulacrum of breakfast there.
Then there are the local coffee shops. These, fortunately, often open at 7 a.m. or even earlier, and serve strong coffee—often brewed by hand at the counter with a drip filter—and a breakfast that nearly always consists of a single piece of white toast and an egg. White toast, egg, and handmade coffee with old guys reading the paper around you is, I admit, at least an approximation of breakfast, and I have certainly relied on this setup while on the road.
But it’s still not quite what we are looking for if we want a hearty, balanced breakfast. There is no French toast, no fruit bowl, no omelette, and only very occasionally a strip of bacon. None of the staples one might reasonably expect from a decent, full breakfast.
And that’s more or less the list. You can also find 24-hour beef-bowl restaurants, but they are cheap as and not exactly the sort of thing you look forward to when greeting the day. Beyond that, most restaurants simply don’t open until 11:00 or 11:30 for lunch. The concept of brunch—dicey even under ideal circumstances—barely exists outside the swankiest of upmarket hotels.
It is, put bluntly, really hard to find a proper breakfast in Japan unless you make it yourself. And that fact continues to puzzle me. I understand that most people here eat rice and miso at home, or grab something at the convenience store. Fine. But metropolitan Tokyo has roughly 30 million people. None of these 30 million want a real breakfast at 7:00 or 7:30 a.m.? Not even a few hundred thousand?
It seems incomprehensible. And yet, incomprehensible or not, this is simply the reality. There is no broad Japanese market for breakfast. I mean, I’m in the market—but apparently one man does not a demographic make.
Go figure.
Now, I’ve covered the issue of Japanese breakfast—its scarcity, its odd cultural positioning—to the best of my ability. But before we move on, I want to add a few details that may seem unrelated. Let’s see if we can get them to connect.
Because the truth is, I dream about getting breakfast in Japan. And in a surprising number of these dreams, the Trumpster shows up.
More precisely: the dreams focus on the fact that the Trumpster and I share a birthday (June 14th), which makes us both late Geminis. Late Geminis, I have good reason to believe, are uniquely dangerous and slippery. But in my dreams the Trumpster isn’t dangerous at all. He shows up as basically an empty suit.
Trump/ Breakfast Dream I:
I am at a breakfast buffet in Japan. This is at a hotel that I am not staying at, and I may indeed be attempting to crash the buffet while masquerading as a hotel guest. Trump is there with an entourage, and he sees me staking out the buffet. I make a comment to him that we are both late Gemini, and he nods, curtly but with some minimal consideration. He sees me trying to steal the breakfast, does not care, and would probably provide cover if it came to that. He and I are not aligned, but nor are we enemies.
Trump/ Breakfast Dream II:
I am outside in the morning, standing on a dock or something of that nature. I am looking for breakfast, and not finding it. There is a commotion above me to the east, and I realize that Trump is being rolled out, literally on like coaster wheels, for a speech. He is on some kind of sliding seat and when this seat hits the balcony he stands up and postures about like Mussolini. I am watching and he sees me watching, but continues with his Mussolini act. I realize quickly that this is a total act and that he doesn’t even want to be there. He is not dangerous in this moment or in this speech, just faintly ridiculous. Still, no breakfast.
=====
What do Trump and breakfast have to do with one another? I’m not sure yet. But I do know that Trump, although maligned by nearly everyone I know (I know a bunch of liberals), and apart from being an egotistical, mafia-adjacent, easily flattered, shape-shifting sociopath, is also pretty funny. Before I lose half of my readership, I’ll just nod to the comedian Shane Gillis, who made this point several months after Trump left office.
Has enough time passed that we can admit Trump was funny? Can we finally admit that he was funny? (…) He was funny (…) I saw it. I’d show my friends I’d say look at that. They’d be like “what?”
“It’s funny.”
“There’s nothing funny about Donald Trump.”
I don’t know, during Hurricane Dorian he was like “maybe we should nuke it” (…) Like that was a real suggestion from the President (…) “Hey we got a big storm coming, you want me to blow it up?”
They were like “no, what the fuck are you talking about?”
“I fuck around, it’s what I do,” is a great summary of Trump’s whole approach to governing. Now, is there anything funny about his terrible immigration policies, his attempted pressure of the Georgia secretary of state to “find” 1800 votes, his total disregard of democratic norms? No, not really. But is there anything funny about his speculation that maybe a little light and a little bleach could cure COVID? Why yes, there is. Is there anything funny about his noting that Frederick Douglas is getting bigger and bigger these days? Yes indeed. Is the way he pronounces “huge” funny? It’s funny to me anyway. And in my dreams, the two above being part of a series of about four or five total Trump breakfast dreams, he always shows up as semi-defanged, basically neutered, and non-dangerous. I think this is because, as a fellow late Gemini, I kind of have Trump’s number. It takes a late Gemini to know one, and I know this guy. In fact, I see right through him, to the extent that I know he’s not even there.
One other salient piece of data, there is an indie rock band called Japanese Breakfast that is getting bigger and bigger these days (they tell me “sir, this Japanese Breakfast is getting bigger and bigger these days, and I say look at that, wow, this Japanese Breakfast is really getting huge”). I don’t know them that well, but they sound like the kind of band I would like. I do wonder though if their name is not an ironic nod to the fact that Japanese breakfast is not a thing. Is the band name self-effacing, or even self-erasing? Does Japanese Breakfast the band exist at all? Does Trump? There is a way in which the Trump presidential term has come to feel like a fever dream or collective delusion, a set of events that cannot really have occurred as we recall them. In this sense, the Trump presidency may in the future be subject to Phantom Time Hypothesis speculation. And he and his handlers have already played right into this speculation what with their first lady doubles, the totally unhinged press conferences with the ubiquitous helicopter waiting in the wings, and the classic Trumpism, “we’ll see what happens.”
Here is what I think. Japanese Breakfast as a band exists. The Trumpster exists, but his wife spent most of her time in the White House being doubled. Trump and I are dream doubles, and I have his number. Japanese people don’t care about breakfast. And I am always starving at around 9 AM when on the road in Japan. Someone should look into the matter. I hear the Trumpster is free these days, maybe he’s the guy for the job.
Note: If you enjoyed this piece, you may also like the pieces below which also deal with American politics, albeit from a slightly different angle.
This piece takes a look at Kris Kristofferson’s “To Beat the Devil.” The song appears on Kristofferson’s self-titled debut album from 1970 on Monument, which is, by any standard, an astonishingly good record. The album features “Me and Bobby McGee,” “Sunday Morning Coming Down,” and “Just the Other Side of Nowhere,” along with the ol’ Devil. That’s four absolute classics right there for ya.
Sunday Morning features an opening quatrain that most other songwriters would trade their career for:
Well I woke up Sunday morning/ with no way to hold my head that didn’t hurt/ and the beer I had for breakfast wasn’t bad/ so I had one more for dessert
(I could play this game all day—Jason Isbell’s Southeastern features another couple life-work worthy couplets:
The first two lines of “Super 8”:
Don’t wanna die in a super 8 motel/ just because somebody’s evening didn’t go so well
And from “Different Days”:
Time went by and I left and I left again/ Jesus loves a sinner but the highway loves a sin.
If I’d written lines that great I’d call it a career and sip martinis on the house for the duration.)
Sunday Morning and Bobby are probably objectively better songs than To Beat the Devil, yet what I like about this one is that Kristofferson states very clearly a kind of founding intention for his life in song and art, right out of the gate. The only parallel I can think of is Craig Finn’s The Hold Steady, whose first album Almost Killed Me kicks off with “A Positive Jam.”
(Here’s Finn telling it like it is:
I got bored when I didn’t have a band/ so I started a band/ we’re gonna start it with a positive jam/ hold steady.
Rock on Craig baby.)
Anyway, let’s get to the focus of this piece. Kristofferson opens with a spoken intro.:
A couple of years back I come across a great and wasted friend of mine in the hallway of a recording studio. And while he was reciting some poetry to me that he had written, I saw that he was about a step away from dying, and I couldn’t help but wonder why. And the lines of this song occurred to me.
Here the singer is looking up at his idol who is both “great and wasted.” I wasn’t around quite yet in 1970, yet I can easily imagine Ginsberg’s “best minds” line hanging over talented folks across a lot of zones. Klosterman wasn’t quite there either (June 5, 1972–a mid Gemini of course), but he was close, and to indulge not for the last time in a little Klostermania, the zeitgeist seemed to be making people thirsty.
The singer receives some scraps of poetry, shards of shattered inspiration, and a song “occurs” to him. He doesn’t state it directly, however we imagine the song arrives fully formed, like “Pancho and Lefty,” or “Kubla Khan.” Thus, To Beat the Devil is also both an answer and an offer of redemption to his idol, who here is John(ny) Cash.
I’m happy to say he’s no longer wasted, and he’s got him a good woman. And I’d like to dedicate this to John and June, who helped showed me how to beat the devil.
The singer takes up the mantle of the master, and in so doing opens a possibility window onto redemption for his senior. This is no exaggeration—Cash also recorded To Beat the Devil in 1970 and we are basically stipulating that Kristofferson’s genius, descended from Cash while also original to himself, helped rescue Cash from addiction and the whole deal there. We won’t be deep diving into the archive on this one—as we said we’re just keeping it local and breaking it down, so you’ll have to take my word on it or search it up your own self.
Here’s the first verse; the words speak for themselves:
It was wintertime in Nashville/ down on Music City Row/ and I was looking for a place/ and to get myself out of the cold/ to warm the frozen feeling that was eating at my soul/ keep the chilly wind off my guitar
A classic down and out in the big city piece of scene-setting. The singer is physiologically and psychologically frozen, a cold wind gusts across his art. The man needs a break.
My thirsty wanted whiskey/ my hungry needed beans/ but it had been a month of paydays/ since I’d heard that eagle scream/ so with a stomach full of empty/ and a pocket full of dreams/ I left my pride and stepped inside a bar
You might think that the operative nouns here would be “thirst” and “hunger,” but no. This is not a man with a thirst; this is a thirsty man. We also hear an echo of a now-ancient American past where a man with an empty stomach would go in search of, of all things, “beans.”
Anyway, he’s got no money, can’t really bring himself to care. So, a singer walks into a bar.
Actually I’d guess you’d call it a tavern/ cigarette smoke to the ceiling
and sawdust on the floor/ friendly shadows/ I saw that there was just one old man sitting at the bar/ and in the mirror I could see him checking me and my guitar/ and he turned and said/ come up here, boy, and show us what you are/ I said I’m dry, and he bought me a beer
The man in the mirror, the devil himself. The singer comes face to face with the man who checks him out and summons him over. Kristofferson then enters into a bargain–offers up the terms of an encounter: a beer on the old man’s tab. Score one for the thirsty man. The singer faces the old man; it’s to be a showdown. He doesn’t have much, but he’s got some “friendly shadows,” traces of an older map perhaps, an older memory.
I can’t help here but engage in a bit of presumption. When I play the song in my head, I want to hear “in the mirror I saw him casing me and my guitar,” (listen to the way he pronounces “guitar” on the track. Kristofferson was born in Brownsville, Texas in ‘36 and behind the laid back folksinger you can here some roots here baby).
If I could make one edit to the song, it would be to replace “checking me,” with “casing me.” What a great verb “to case” is.
Lexical Interlude: “To case the joint”
1. slang To observe a place in order to familiarize oneself with its workings in preparation for some criminal activity (often robbery). Judging from the security footage, those men cased the joint hours before robbing it.
2. slang By extension, to thoroughly examine a place. In this usage, no devious motive is implied. As soon as my kids walking into the hotel room, they started casing the joint, exclaiming about everything from the TV to the mini-fridge.
The seminal use of this verb phrase comes from Bill Callahan, formerly of Smog. Callahan is an odd duck—he is so artificial, so obviously self-created as an entertainer, that he has become almost post-authentic. Callahan contains multitudes.
My favorite Smog album, well in the top two, is Red Apple Falls, which features “Ex-Con,” on which Callahan sings:
Jean jacket and tie/ feel like such a lie/ when I go to your house/ I feel like I’m/ casing the joint
Devious motive implied.
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He nodded at my guitar and said/ it’s a tough life, ain’t it?/ I just looked at him/ he said “you ain’t making any money, are you?“/ I said, you been reading my mail/ he just smiled and said, let me see that guitar/ I got something you ought to hear/ and then he laid it on me
The devil has a bead on the singer, and he’s not far off. Yes he’s broke. Yes he’s down and out. Whaddaya want?
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Filmic Interlude I: The Long Goodbye
In Robert Altman The Long Goodbye, written by Leigh Brackett, the main character Philip Marlowe gets out of jail somewhere in the first act and heads to a all-purpose pit stop restaurant who’s owner apparently collects Marlowe’s mail. The dialogue is exquisite.
Marlowe: You got any messages for me?
Owner: Believe we’ve got a few over there. As a matter of fact, you’ll find my phone bill in there too.
Marlowe: I wouldn’t worry about that.
When you ain’t got nothing you got nothing to lose. Kristofferson’s got nothing to hide in his mail. Those bills go straight to the wastebasket.
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If you waste your time a talkin’ / to the people who don’t listen/ to the things that you are saying/ who do you thinks gonna hear?/ and if you should die explaining how/ the things that they complain about/ are things they could be changing/ who do you thinks gonna care?
there were other lonely singers/ in a world turned deaf and blind/ who were crucified for what they tried to show/ and their voices have been scattered by the swirling winds of time/ ‘cause the truth remains that no one wants to know
The devil’s words speak for themselves. The path of the troubadour is a dead end. The world has not ears to hear nor eyes to see. Truth tellers meet a bad end. Whiners gonna whine. It’s a strong opening bet, made, we presume, with his red right hand.
Well the old man was a stranger/ but I’d heard his song before/ back when failure had me locked out/ on the wrong side of the door/ when no one stood behind me/ but my shadow on the floor/ and lonesome was more than a state of mind
The singer is on familiar territory; he’s has been tempted by this cynical incantation, he’s not immune to tuning out his calling when out in the cold. Who is?
You see, the devil haunts a hungry man/ if you don’t want to join him/ you gotta beat him/ I ain’t saying I beat the devil/ but I drank his beer for nothing/ then I stole his song
This is the key verse in our little tale. You see, when we tango with the devil the devil usually gets to lead. That’s just the way it goes. But the thing about the devil is, his game is a bit of a bluff. A couple of low pairs, maybe. You just gotta call.
and you still can hear me singing/ to the people who don’t listen/ to the things that I am saying/ praying someone’s gonna hear/ and I guess I’ll die explaining how/ the things that they complain about/ are things they could be changing/ hoping someone’s gonna care
I was born a lonely singer/ and I’m bound to die the same/ but I’ve gotta feed the hunger in my soul/ and if I never have a nickel/ I won’t ever die ashamed/ ‘cause I don’t believe that no one wants to know
Kristoffeson flips it right around. The devil’s got a point; the singer may die dead broke, that’s fine. Songs are borne on the wind in any case. The thing is to have faith in your audience. To believe someone is out there, heart in their hands and ear to the wind. And to hold this faith as a mantra. That’ll keep ‘em guessing, cause then you’re not playing their game, you’re playing your own.
Overall, To Beat the Devil is a young man’s song. It’s got a confidence, a swagger, even a hubris. So, after drafting most of this piece I wanted to find a recent live version, see how it’s aged. I stumbled on a version from a live set with Lou Reed released in 2017. The set is part of The Bottom Line Archive, and it finds Kristofferson in a Waitsian stage of life. The voice is richer than ever, but he’s not exactly singing. Then again, that’s what they said about Dylan and it’s B.S. The voice is the voice; singing is just a category.
The set is interspersed with short interviews of the two songwriters. Here is Kristofferson’s spoken introduction that precedes To Beat the Devil. It is instructive.
Interviewer: The devil figures in some of your songs, you know there’s that silver tongued devil and he pops up from time to time. Who’s the devil? What’s the devil for you? What are your demons?
K.K.: Well, I, I’ll do that song then. Ahhh…
Interviewer: Is that a metaphor or is that something real for you?
K.K.: Well here’s a song called To Beat the Devil. Maybe it’ll explain it. I can’t.
The Kyoto Kibbitzer 