Full of Life - Sun Kil Moon

July 6, 2020

I just finished John Fante’s 1933 Was A Bad Year.

Reading it made me realize I

can’t write.

Not with emotional impact like that anyhow.

That book has it all.

At 17, Dominic Molise tries to fuck his best friend’s sister, he steals tools

from his dad, and believes he’ll be a rich southpaw pitcher within six months

Caroline and I are just back from Martinez.

I went into the Amtrak station

there and asked the lady how far east it went

She said «Chicago.»

I said «How long does it take, two and a half days?»

She said «That's right, two and a half days.»

«Does this train go as far south as L.A.?»

«Yes»

«How long does it take?»

«6 hours or 12 hours, depending.»

«Depending on what?»

«If you want to take a bus from Bakersfield it’s six hours.»

«How far north does it go?»

«Seattle»

She watched me pacin' around.

I finally said

«Yeah, I’m thinkin' about just getting on a train and taking off.»

She said «Yeah, well, there are a lot of people doing that right now»

I was just checking it out.

Thinking out loud.

She didn’t seem to mind

Caroline and I were the only people in there besides a kid sitting on the floor

looking at his iPhone

He looked like he hadn’t washed his hair or cut it in a year

I don’t know what to read now

I’m going to open Henry Miller’s Moloch, see how it makes me feel

But nothing makes me laugh like John Fante

I don’t have any of his other books here with me right now

I just watched a little news.

There were fires today.

One in Gilroy.

One in Fairfield.

And one right under the George Miller bridge at 2 pm

It looks like things are heating up over a confederate monument in Downtown

Shreveport

Came home from six days of bein' away

Checked on the dove who’s been outside my bedroom window

Protectin' her eggs

The last time I peeked she was gone

And there were her two little fuzzy ones

This past month the dove’s nest comforted me

Like a guardian angel the mother dove protected me

Have been so down this year, out of work, no work in sight

And now it’s July and for some reason I just came home feeling

Full of life

So full of life I picked up John Fante’s Full of Life

At City Lights on Columbus

Ah they might have to change the name of the street

Because as of late Christopher Columbus is gettin' a lotta heat

I gotta ask you

People burnin' down statues

Yeah I gotta ask you

Did you knock down that statue

Just after cashin' the check

The Donald Trump wrote you

I don’t get you

You go knockin' down statues

Well maybe I’d join you

But I got somethin' better to do

For in this song I might just take the opportunity to knock down you

And if I may, whoever this song is speakin' to

May I suggest that your great great great great grandaddy

Probably ain’t no better than that man who got the plaque or the statue

Like I said, I came home walked in the door, full of life

So full of life, full of optimism, knowin' everythings' gonna be alright

Like I said, I came home walked in the door, full of life

So full of life, full of optimism, knowin' everything' gonna be alright

But I slept alone last night and I missed you

I read Henry Miller’s Moloch, or This Gentile World

Readin' about his days as a young boss in the telegraph world

All about the racial tension in The Bowery, New York 1920s

For laughs I read Fante, for confidence I read Nietzsche

For the truth I read Henry

I closed the book missin' my mom and dad and my sister and her girls

Feeling disconnected and adrift in this 2020 world

I watched Walk Hard The Dewey Cox Story from beginning to end

I rewound the part where Dewey’s' brother was halved

When Dewey with his machete cuts his brother in half

Yeah I laughed and laughed

I rewound it so many times for laughs

I love when the doctor says to his parents

«This is the worst case I ever seen of a kid gettin' cut in half'

(Speak English doc we ain’t scientists)

While we were gone, I walked in circles and circles through the graveyard

In a state of cogitation

There are usually two deer in there, a male and a female

But the last time I walked through there

I saw two people fornicating

Yeah fuckin' in the graveyard

Hey I don’t blame 'em

Looks like fun, fuckin' in the graveyard

Bein' young

I don’t blame 'em, looks like fun

Fuckin' in the graveyard

Bein' young

Yeah where they gonna fuck with everybody stuck in the same home

And an above ground pool and a flamingo in the yard

With a garden full of watermelon, squash and chard

They take their fuckin' to the graveyard

You ain’t gonna stop nature, no you can’t

You can file complaints, vent your hates

Let the blood boil in your veins

You ain’t never gonna fully stop human nature

If someone wants his fentanyl fix he will find it

If somebody wants to fuck behind a gravestone

They will do it

And of all things god damn those people were fuckin' behind two tombstones

Husband and wife

Each stone engraved with a pentagram

There hasn’t been a lot happenin' this year I guess

If I’m singing about kids fuckin' in graveyards

But I have you and your love, the two deer and now I have these three doves

But I turn on the TV and all I see are the cases of obliquity

If I spend too much time sittin' around sedentary

I get panicky and take a few globules of melatonin to make me sleepy

I hate the news, it gets me down

I’m so crazy, Fox makes me laugh, CNN makes me frown

Everybody’s talkin' «Black Lives Matter»

And now they’re sayin' «Don't forget to include brown»

How come when I was in New Orleans all those many years

Black on black murders

I told my white friends and they’d say 'and?'

I told my white friends 'Hey.

blacks killing blacks in New Orleans is outta

hand'

And they’d say 'and?'

And they’d say 'and?'

And they’d say 'and?'

And they’d say 'and?'

And I said, hey, are you sayin' it doesn’t matter

Because there were drug dealin', gang bangin' or chasin' somebody' else’s tang

They said well all that stuff you just mentioned above is felonious

I said, no, you are erroneous

I always knew intuitively that black lives mattered

Some kids are brought up in situations where all they know is what they see

And I can see in your eyes that a kid who got shot by kid in a New Orleans'

shoot out

Is less important than you and me

'Cause when I used to tell you about black on black crime in New Orleans you

would yawn

And now you’re tellin' me that Black Lives Matter on the phone keepin' me up

until dawn

As it never dawned on me

As if this whole time I’ve been sitting around unobservant

Not noticin' white-owned restaurants and hotels with black servers

It’s not a trend I follow or information I’ve just come to gather

Don’t need to see it stenciled on a sidewalk

Don’t need to be reminded by Don Lemon’s smirky talk

Don’t need to be taught by teacher’s chalk

And hey if Black Lives Matter, why do you live in an all-white neighborhood in

Portland Oregon?

Of course your protests are peaceful

Because in Oregon there are no Black People

And why am I even listenin' to you

Tell me about race when my girlfriend is Vietnamese

That’s right, when I kiss her skin

It tastes sweeter than a light girl’s skin

Can I say that?

Is that alright?

If a woman can say she prefers a man to be of a certain height

Or that a man with an accent is her type

Can I say that a darker skin woman turns me on more than light?

And maybe as I’m white I ain’t supposed to speak on this

Well, anyone who tells me that eats fish 'n' chips

Maybe 'cause I’m white they want me to sound like 'Dear Prudence'

Or John Fogerty, or Ted Nugent, or REM who met as college students

Or that just me singing about the subject is impudent

I’m just trying to say I always knew that Black Lives Mattered

I’m glad that in 2020

So many of you have come to gather and acknowledge that Black Lives Matter

And to me it should be Blacks Lives Matters A Lot!

'Cause where would Jim Carrey be if was not for Keenan Ivory Wayans?

You see what I’m sayin'?

Where would boxin' be without Jack Johnson, Joe Louis and Sugar Ray Robinson?

And where music be if it weren’t for Robert Johnson, Louis Armstrong,

James Brown, Isaac Hayes

Marvin Gaye, Michael J, NWA, HR from The Bad Brains, Fats Domino, Chuck Berry

Sammy Davis and Miles Davis?

Where would art be without Bill Trailor and Basquiat?

And where would writing be without James Baldwin, Mia Angelo

And the autobiographies of Mike Tyson?

And where would comedy be without Richard Pryor and Red Foxx and Garret Morris

Eddie Murphy, Arsenio Hall and Martin Lawrence?

And who would have guessed that the highest paid comedian

In all the world’s history was Kevin Hart?

So as the sun’s comin' up I look next to the window at the nest

At the mother dove and her young

Feelin' their comfort

Feelin' their detachment from this world situation

Feelin' their love will continue on no matter what

The political situation on the ground

They are three doves and all they know is love and protection

I feel their appreciation for the nook I’ve given them

I feel their affection

I open Henry Miller’s book Moloch

One-minute Pregosi is ebullient

The next minute he is crestfallen

Isn’t that the way it is with all of us?

Homicide victims in New Orleans, recent trends.

From the American Journal of

Epidemiology, volume 128, issue 5. Data are presented on 694 criminal homicide

victims killed in the city of New Orleans during four years;

1979, 1982, 1985,

and 1986. The homicide rate for black males was 6.5 times higher than that for

white males for the years studied.

Over 70% of victims were killed by handguns.

When victims were assigned to one of five socioeconomic strata,

homicide rates for blacks exceeded those for whites by a factor of at least 2.

5 times for each socioeconomic stratum.

White victims were more likely than

were black victims to be legally intoxicated at the time of death,

but black victims were nearly four times more likely to have illicit drugs

other than alcohol detected.

During the time period investigated,

there was a marked decrease in the number of victims with pentazocine and

tripelennamine («Ts and blues») detected and an abrupt increase in the number

of victims with detectable phencyclidine and cocaine levels.

Further studies

are needed to investigate risk factors for homicide victimization so that

effective intervention strategies can be employed.