The bus back to Nashville. Sounds of screaming. A roaring two-stroke engine. The passenger in front of us is playing The Texas Chainsaw Massacre on his laptop.
W. yearns for his study, he says. He yearns for his bookshelves. He yearns for the tranquillity of his mornings, when he leaves a sleeping Sal in bed so he can do a few hours of work before breakfast.
There was no need to come to America, he says. He’s learned nothing here. His thought hasn’t advanced. How about my thought?: has that advanced? He thought I looked quite reflective by the Mississippi. Quite meditative. It must have been the flowing water. Rivers calm even the most frantic apes, he’s heard that, W. says.
He turns through my notebook. – ‘Ah! Drawings! Who’s that supposed to be?’ Huckleberry Finn, I tell him. There’s the raft. – ‘And what’s that?’ It’s Moby Dick, I tell him. And that’s the Pequod. W. admires my classics of American literature series.
And what is this? A poem? Preppies, it's called.
Tall/ sand in the hair/ white teeth/ pullovers/ deck shoes/ white shirts and blouses / yachts with white sails/ fuckers'
Very perceptive, says W. Here’s another. Cabin Boy, it’s called.
Upstairs, on deck/ The preppies are dancing/ with their caps worn backwards. /I am the cabin boy/ scrubbing their things./ I am angry
He like that, W. says. It’s very terse.
And what are these? More poems?’, W. says, turning my notebook upside down and squinting. Lyrics, I tell him. They’re lyrics from Jandek.
Ah, Jandek, W. say. Wasn’t Jandek was supposed to be my great discovery, rivalling W.’s discovery of Béla Tarr? He has to admit, there is something to Jandek, W. says. It’s the quality of his despair. The wailing. Jandek understands the apocalypse, W. says. Jandek knows that the End Times are upon us.
The Humility of Pain. That’s what he calls a song title, W. says. The Blues Turned Black. And he’s been releasing records for twenty-nine years, giving no interviews, remaining wholly mysterious? It’s admirable, W. says. I should learn from it.
Hasn’t W. suggested that I write a book on Jandek, on the religious aspects of the music of Jandek? You should always write on what you love, W. says. On what you love, and don’t understand, W. says.
(from Dogma)
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