I’ve
attended the Kansas City Hispanic Chamber of Commerce’s annual gala a handful
of times across the last seven years, and on one particular occasion, the
then-president of my employer’s local facility took my (babysitter-related)
exit to make one of his own. Although my short-lived presence at the function
had an aura of gratitude about it, I couldn’t help but feel weird leaving,
having interacted with a number of folks I know well, but with whom I had never
done business. Investing two decades in an industry to then transition to work
for an entity that services that very industry served as a beacon of
false hope in that said transition had come with a murky sense of confidence
that bordered on arrogance.
In the
one-story elevator ride, I expressed this sentiment to the then president, who
said, “Let’s schedule a day together to go after some of those white whales.”
Months later, when we made that happen, we visited outside of an establishment
prior to entering and he informed me of his awareness that my documentation
practices did not match protocol, that their completion should be happening in
an individual, time-relevant fashion as opposed to tackling them in bulk. My
surprise probably sounded like a flustered excuse machine, to which he
responded, “Good habits never form until you start them.”
That phrase
-- rooted in benevolence, I believe -- zapped me in the moment and became
something I carry with me today. To be clear, I haven’t actually changed
anything about myself; it was just like an, Oh, yeah…good lookin’ out.
And that’s a tough spot, maybe one of our biggest challenges as human beings:
to adjust, to change, to absorb something about the world and fold it in to
your own existence.
Developing
new bad habits, though? Or recognizing the continuation of old ones and
doing nothing about them? Or worse: a marriage of the two? Seems like we’re
pretty good at those. Or at least I am. And my latest doozy is one of
those that jars the noggin with beaming clarity like the clock tower did to Doc
Brown: YouTube reaction videos. Or as my internal mutterings call the concept:
watching people watch shit you’ve already seen.
It’s.
Bananas.
Like a
Costa Rican grove.
It’s every
bit of a, What…am I doing…with my life? It’s a time-suck and a barrel
full of bad decisions in terms of consequences, which I imagine most time-sucks
to be, but it’s crazy: the providers find their content monetized and the
viewers experience…well, joy, if you’re doing it right, I guess. I dunno.
I’ve seen
all the top bits of my three favorite comics more times than I’ll ever admit
and the Tube is -- as we know -- the rabbityest of holes; the hours I’ve
murdered watching tons of other stuff are incalculable.
Like music
videos.
We’re
talking dozens of songs I’ve listened to many times over the years. And now I’m
watching total strangers watch the music-video version of those songs for --
often -- the first time. And all of this is going down in the most crucial
portion of the 24-hour cycle: when I should be resting. It’s crazy-making to
ponder all of the shuteye I’ve sacrificed to watch this stuff.
I won’t say
that I’ve spent a ton of time in any particular lane, but I do have my go-to
channels and songs, and sometimes there’s crossover underneath those two
umbrellas; sometimes you just go where the hole leads you. So, I haven’t spent
a lot of time watching grunge-music reaction videos, and I haven’t necessarily
watched a lot of content that was spawned from MTV Unplugged, but there
are particular videos from that show that seem like lots of reaction folks
react to, and the Alice in Chains performance gets a fat dose of run in this
community. I have found myself mentally embedded in “Nutshell” from that
evening for a good bit now. And it never gets old. Ever. It is motherfucking
gospel at this point.
I don’t
want to review the performance, per se, but it borders on breathtaking. All
four minutes, six seconds of it. It is crisp. It is beautiful. It is hollowing.
I’d love to
spend a few lines talking about how grounded and amazing Jerry Cantrell is in
it, but I won’t. And I’d love to talk about Layne Staley, but I don’t think --
at this very moment -- that I can.
Alice in
Chains, specifically, was pretty huge, but I never memorized their discography.
I mean, Singles soundtrack? Sure. Facelift? Of course. Dirt?
You know it. After that, I checked out, though. Not on purpose. It just sorta
happened that way. Then came Jar of Flies and Sap. Or rather,
those two E.P.s landed in my lap a little later, I think. Anyway, by the time I
got to know those two records, I’d all but decided they’d been written and
produced for me.
It was as
if they’d said, Oh, we’re a little too heavy for you at times? How ‘bout
this shit then…
Such great
records. Staples, even. For every collection.
That Unplugged
performance, though…
Like, who
was going to top Neil Young and Bob Dylan and Nirvana and Stone Temple Pilots?
Alice in
Chains. That’s who.
So,
“Nutshell.” And more specifically, the Unplugged “Nutshell.”
It’s the
show opener and the stage-taking fashion is just bonkers.
Cantrell,
of course, is already out there…the anchor…
The bassist
joins him and brings this crisp, velvety, alien-acoustic tone on a gorgeous
instrument with a burnt, hand-written message on it. Two more members join then
Staley takes the stage and just walks right in to the song’s first lyric. In a
world of tarnished and rote language, it is sincerely epic. The whole thing. A
genuine masterpiece.
“We…chase misprinted lies,”
Pretty tough to open a track in a more
intense fashion than they already did musically in this performance, but what
an introductory line. Whew. I don’t even know where to start with those four
words as a unit. If you split them down the middle and start with the first half,
the subject and verb need no explanation. It’s that second half, though:
misprinted lies. I can’t decide if it’s as basic as it was maybe meant to seem
or if there’s a double-negative involved. I mean, basic would mean like, the
newspapers, right? That the vein of conspiracy circulated enough to be relevant
even as far back as 1993? Or was the vehicle meant to include magazines, too?
Possibly even books? That all the written word we consume is bullshit?
One notch deeper and you wonder if
the content producers -- the authors -- are giving truths to the printers and
the printers are misrepresenting the writers. Even one click further than that,
though, is that the artists produce fake shit. Lies. And then those lies get misprinted?
So by the time it reaches the consumer they’re already two wrinkles of deception
in? Never imagined a pair of words could present such confusion. If you’re dumb
like me though, and keeping shit dumbed down makes the sea more navigable, then
we’re all just a pack of dumb Americans. Right? I mean, here we are, chasing
misprinted lies, i.e. that good ol’ American dream.
I can’t really envision a scenario
in which you enter a story and find the subject so royally fucked that soon
outta the gate. I mean, this song is basically a 14-line poem, and one line in
we’re maybe being shown that we’re living in some version of The Matrix.
Pretty tough to recover from that and with the mood set visually and sonically
the way they are in this performance, things look and feel pretty bleak. And
super, super sad if you have any back-story inkling.
My daughter climbed in to bed with
me the other morning and -- as has been the case for weeks now -- this song was
already in my head. She said something that had an element of emotional charge
to it and I reached for my phone. She laid there with me and watched, not uttering
a word until Staley wailed the all-vocal refrain a second time.
“Dad,” she said.
“Yeah, honey?”
“We…face the path of time.”
Fuck, man. Just…fuck. So goddamned
heavy. So goddamned poignant. So goddamned direct. And wild. And unfortunate.
It’s really difficult to think
about Layne Staley and not think about Chris Cornell, whose also-tragic ending brought the heavy, and it’s really wild to think that -- even with money and
fame -- these guys struggled (and perished) before the Internet changed the
freaking world. I don’t know if the way that the Internet changed the world has
made things harder or weirder or if it just feels that way now in Pandemicland,
but there are obviously folks who have flourished in both eras while
maintaining decent-or-better mental health. It’s just…man.
“And yet I fight,
And yet I fight,
This battle all alone,”
Watching these “Nutshell” Unplugged
reaction videos offers some mysterious kind of numbing in knowing that almost
every single content producer relates -- in some fashion or other -- to that
three-line run. The battle can, of course, take many shapes; it can present itself,
once, often, or repeatedly. It can be synonymous with life. Like Louis C.K.
says in his bit about kids eating French fries and asking, “Why?”: “’Cause fuck
it, man! We’re alone in the world! Nobody gives a shit!”
And in that battle line, I imagine
double-entendre. Yes, the literal interpretation jumps, but it doesn’t only
jump; it also barks and bites. There’s also the broader perspective, though,
that the song’s title is addressing human existence, how individual it is, how cold
and how lonely.
“No one to cry to,
No place to call home.”
I don’t know if that’s nihilism or
what one might call it. Desolate, I guess. And probably accurate for a good lot
of people. I imagine that sadness -- being one of the most intense feelings --
often gets addressed with self-soothing and self-soothing alone, and that the
frequency with which one might feel left out or without a special, specific,
carved-out place for them in the world could lend to a feeling of figurative homelessness.
And when the canvas of the world is often painted with the imagery of
community, it just might feel impossible to imagine being a part of a community
when self-soothing in the cold, dark world remains your only accessible remedy.
“My…gift of self is raped,”
It’s tough to think of a better
example than the word rape when pondering the way an actual word makes you feel
when you see it written or hear it spoken. This one’s possibly an anomaly.
Hearing that word is icky and chilling; seeing it written might wield an even
greater power. It’s tough to consider the word and its meaning and not think of
only violation on a human-to-human level, but -- unfortunately -- its got
greater reach than even that, and I think that collectively the message is that
a person, place, or thing -- having experienced that -- is forever changed. The
fields, your body, or even…your gift of self.
I mean, what. The. Fuck. That’s
crazy.
Your gift of self? Wow.
Imagine living most of your life
never even acknowledging that you in your uniqueness and existence are a gift,
that you -- by virtue of existence -- have value. Your self. Not your
personality or your talents or your love. The part of you that -- as dictionary.com
puts it under the philosophy subheading of the word’s definition -- “knows,
remembers, desires, suffers, etc….the uniting principle, as a soul, underlying
all subjective experience.” Now imagine having had awareness of your you and
its value, and a person or a thing altered your you and your value, leaving you
alone to rebuild yourself, re-appraise yourself, and view the world anew as the
modified you.
The implication is that life, of
course, is a gift, and that as part of life, there’s a sense of self inside everyone
and we’re all moving about on this planet attempting to attach meaning to our
own person and all of the other things in the world, and in doing so seeking
connections between the two entities. Your gift of self, though, wound up
violated and forever changed. Your whole became fragmented, and only at times
feels sealable or that the seal in place will hold.
“My…privacy is raked.”
I suspect it to be common knowledge
that us ordinary folks will never understand the concept of privacy on a level
similar to those with fame. It’s just not feasible. We do, however, have a
rudimentary understanding of what private means, or at least what we think it’s
supposed to mean, especially now, in the age of Health Insurance Portability
& Accountability Act (Note: I can’t believe that’s what the acronym stands
for. Why have I assumed all along that the ‘P’ was for privacy?).
Safe, secure, and private, though.
That’s what companies and entities are supposed to be diligent at and
responsible for, right? And let’s not skip over our rights as citizens, either.
We’re supposed to be allowed the freedom of privacy in our lives while
following some semblance of public responsibility, I think. And if that freedom
is jostled or exposed or collected from it really limits our ability to assign
that meaning and make those connections, does it not? Pardon the rhetorical
shit in here. It’s just quite the picture. I’ve been wanting to write about
this song for days and days but the song itself keeps getting in the way. Beyond
capitalism and citizenship, though, is -- I think -- the natural, organic
notion of the want and wish for varying levels of privacy that cognition has
encouraged us to expect and to cherish.
“And yet I find,
And yet I find,
Repeating in my head,
If I can’t be my own,
I’d feel better dead.”
Jesus, man. And that vocal refrain again,
delivered -- just like the first time -- with seemingly no effort, next to no
mouth movement. It’s all -- the whole thing -- the most frightful combination
of comforting and haunting I think I’ve ever experienced.
And nothing about this whole
endeavor could bring it home in any other fashion than Cantrell taking back the
reins and delivering the briefest, most-perfect of gorgeous solos just before
closing the chapter.
Truly phenomenal musicianship all
the way around.
The reaction videos -- be they
comedy or music or my 47th go with “Nutshell” -- are nothing but a double-edged
sword in the lonely battle, though. The producers seldom meet my ridiculously
placed expectation in terms of the whole thing cutting deep, but I think I hold
out for the hope that they will. And I burrow further and further looking to
have that thing met and yet I find that in doing so I get further away from
doing what’s right and good for me: recharging for a better tomorrow.
I hope it’s a phase. I think it’s a
phase. May be a little seasonal affect with a touch of holiday/winter blues. I
dunno. It’s a wild world out there, though, and until I can shake it, this
thing keeps repeating in my head.
Hopefully these words will help put it to bed.
