For serious

Whether or not I've met you, whether or not you knew Jon very well or not at all, I say this: Lend me your addresses! I've finished this collection of music that addresses What's Happened in ways I, for one, have found helpful. And no joke: I'd like to share this collection of songs, selected in Jon's memory, with everyone possible. Who knows if the music's good enough to trump our deep-rooted musical preferences and ideologies; although I hope it is, I can't make calls like that. What I can do is send you a copy. You know what to do: email me.

*

Here's another appetizer. I'm really trying to drum up interest here, I know. So here's the song, its liner note, and its lyrics:

*

Track 7: The White Stripes, “I’m Lonely (But I Ain’t That Lonely Yet)” (from Get
Behind Me Satan)

Here’s another song I see as a ventriloquist’s dummy animated by Jon’s voice and heart. I can easily see Jon as the “I” in this song. In fact, it might be the best realization of Jon’s frame of mind so far, of all of these songs. I should amend that to say that it realizes Jon’s frame of mind in the days or months (or God, maybe even years) prior to the step he finally took that Saturday morning. I should also call your attention to the lyrics about the singer’s sister, and allude to the deep friendship Jon had / has with Melissa. (Some critics have made reference to some incestual aspect to the singer's reminiscences, but I find such suggestions to be groundless and bunk.) I should do the same with the lyric about the singer missing his mother. Jon didn’t say things like “I miss you, ______,” but you knew he did. I should also mention in passing that the verse in which the volume drops and the singer’s voice grows intimate is a particular eerie, ultimately helpful lyric to hear; frightening in its relevance, it reminds me of Jeff Buckley’s photo in the liner notes to Grace in which Jeff seems to be flying down the stairs thanks to the up-tilted perspective of the photographer, a shot that’s made eerier when you know that Jeff Buckley drowned—accidentally—in the Mississippi.


"I'm Lonely (But I Ain't That Lonely Yet)"
The White Stripes

Well I miss my mother
And I miss being her son
As crazy as I was I
Guess I wasn't much of one
Sometimes I miss her so much,
I want to hop on the next jet
And I get lonely, but I ain't that lonely yet

And I love my sister
Lord knows how I've missed her
She loves me
And she knows I won't forget
And sometimes I get jealous
Of all her little pets
And I get lonely, but I ain't that lonely yet

I roll over in bed
Looking for someone to touch
There's a girl that I know of
But don't ask for much
She's homely, and she's cranky
And her hair's in a net
And I'm lonely, but I ain't that lonely yet

Are you my friend when I need one
I need someone to be one
I take anybody I can get
And sometimes I wanna call you
And I feel like a pet
And I'm lonely, but I ain't that lonely yet

I go down to the river
Filled with regret
I go down and I wonder
If there was any reason left
I left just before my lungs could get wet
I'm lonely, but I ain't that lonely yet

And I love my sister
Lord knows how I've missed her
She loves me
And she knows I won't forget
And sometimes I get jealous
Of all her little pets
And I get lonely, but I ain't that lonely yet
Yeah I get lonely, but I ain't that lonely yet

The Sun -

Another Great CD Reorganization happened last night. There's about a foot of dining room table that's occupied not by CDs but by various correspondence materials, but the rest is all music. I keep all of the records in 6 black cases of 72 and 4 black cases of 96. Jacket sleeves get slotted in behind the CD; experience has shown that this process does not unduly injure the disc. The organization process is strictly alphabet; the alphabet is law. I realize that were it not for this system - say, if I organized by genre or by artist - that I wouldn't need to remove every CD every time it came time to update.

Take note that I don't do this whole process every time I pick up a new CD. Hopefully it's clear enough that I'm not that preoccupied with music to realize all of my anal-retentive urges. Which are legion. No no: only when I've accumulated a good number of CDs does it become time to do a Great Reorganization. Typically this good number is around 30, but last night it was over a hundred easy. Insert Visa / Mastercard joke here. Ahem!

So what happens is that

1) The new CDs are separated and stacked by alphabet.

2) All of the CDs come out of their cases. In the picture, the Zs are in the upper right and head back down through the alphabet as you approach the camera and scan down from right to left. Like an Egyptian Torah, you might say.

3) As you go through the process of, say, removing the Ss from their slots and laying them on the table, you insert your new Sufjan Stevens and your new Stars and your new Sigur Ros in the appropriate spot.

4) By the time everything's been laid on the table, it should be fully alphabetized. Now put everything away!

It takes hours, and is thankless. Once in college however I did this project with the caveat that I couldn't replace a CD until I had listened to it. CDs all over the floor, bookshelves, dresser, windowsills. Still it was a worthy project, as I rediscovered the likes of the Replacements and certain less famous Pink Floyd cuts. If I did that now, and figuring a conservative 40 minute running time per CD, I would have to listen to music 24 hours a day for over 22 days.

*

Looking at these CDs, I think of a friend of mine, David Eldridge, to whom I owe a great deal of credit for teaching me what's what about quality rock, roll, and Sam Cooke. Not to open a very large, mythological, mist-filled screechy box or anything, but I was in college somewhat intimidated by how much David knew about music - not to mention psychology, contemporary American fiction, Spanish, and Bridge. This intimidation was to the detriment of our friendship, as I allowed myself to get worked up to the point where I had to distance myself from him at times. Considering that we lived together, this was difficult and often awkward to do.

The upshot of all this is that I wonder to what degree, if any, Jon felt towards me the way I felt towards David. I was never angry with David for knowing all of the fascinating stuff he knew, and neither do I think Jon was angry with me for knowing the (unfascinating, if humble W could chip in for a moment) stuff I knew. But often I felt inadequate to David should anyone think to hold us and our accomplishments up side-by-side. It took me years to get over this scenario of envy and self-incrimination, although I can say happily that I have. As to Jon, this scenario ran deeper and longer in every way, because for God's sake we were brothers. I was the academic, the good kid, the one who spent his free time inventing new starfighters for Star Wars space simulators that hadn't been designed yet. Complete with specifications such as armament and shield rating. Jon, on the other hand, was the more recalcitrant student, the more touch-and-go, let's-try-this-and-ditch-it-if-it's-lame sort of kid, the boy outside practicing throwing well-balanced knives at tree stumps. I'm unsure to what degree his development took shape in opposition to my own. Just tonight I spoke with a friend about the possibility that one's political leanings might tend to lean away from those of one's parents; in this case that might apply to the difference between Jon and I. I'm not blaming myself, or Jon, for reacting to each other in the ways that we did; how else could we act except for how we acted, and reacted? Rather, I am perhaps beginning to understand how Jon could have felt about me, or how he felt about himself in relation to me, his big brother. If I could talk to him now, I would want him to grasp the fact that I don't have it as together as he maybe thinks I do. (Granted, he's largely the cause of that, but why should I rub that in.) I wonder if what would make any difference to him.

The other day in the basement I found a Mead composition journal - you know, with the marble black and white design - which had in the NAME and SUBJECT spaces on the front the name "Jonathan Lobko" and the subject "Planetary Study." This caught my interest, because Jon never studied astronomy or anything like it as far as I knew, and plus I had always been the amateur astronomer in the family. I opened it, and its spine cracked with the sound of old glue giving way for the first or second time. The journal was pristine, and all of its pages were blank except for the very first one. In pencil, Jon had written as a heading "Our Solar System", and on the first line the entry "The Sun -". That's all. Broke my goddamn heart.

It occurs to me that I will keep this journal for the rest of my life.

Appetite whetter, perhaps

I imagine what comes below the asterisk below to be the start of a set of thorough liner notes for the CD for Jon I finished sequencing today. Whatta sentence that was. Anyway. I like the idea of writing a set of liner notes to accompany the songs. Not so much to explain or defend the selections or the sequencing, but rather to provide some Jon-related context for the songs and the sequence. After all, I think you'd not find Jon listening to the kind of songs on this album. Vice versa me and his music - although in the name of research I'll have to dive into "Sehnsucht" sometime soon. In the meantime, here's Track 1 of the CD and its accompanying liner note. If you would like a copy of the CD, or a copy of the complete liner notes, or both, email the Disruptive Juxtapositioner.

*

Track 1: The Zombies, The Way I Feel Inside

Most people familiar with this song are so familiar because they saw it prominently featured during The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou. What happened was that Ned (Kingsley) Zissou (aka Owen Wilson) crashes in the ocean with Steve Zissou (Bill Murray), and ends up dying. This Zombies track is what plays during the seaside funeral, with Cate Blanchett and Bill Murray and the other bereaved making no recorded sounds on the soundtrack; all you can hear during this scene is this song. It’s haunting. What I recall also about the scene is that during the helicopter crash into the ocean, there’s complete silence; onscreen, you get a great many black screens, with in addition to those a few hazy, rapid-fire remembrances of Ned from earlier in the movie. Even more haunting is the occasional screen of complete, uniform red, an effect which accurately conveys the sense that this is a serious crash and there is blood in the water. I imagine that this flash of red—no more than 16 or so frames (film runs at 32 frames per second, normally)—might have been similar to what Jon saw in his last second or half-second of life. Jon might mock the spare, even sappy tone with which this song proceeds, and kicks off this double album. Especially with the vague organ tones in the background. But as so much of Jon’s life was a kind of struggle to articulate himself. Never one to discuss the peaks and valleys of his emotional EEG, Jon’s tight-lippedness goes hand-in-hand with the struggles of the singer here to articulate himself and his deep hope that the addressee of the song cares for him. Despite his inability to share the titular way he feels, the singer can’t help but dream that the failure of communication won’t obstruct the love he knows exists between himself and the song’s other characters. Which is not a dream, but rather the way things are.


“The Way I Feel Inside”

The Zombies

Should I try to hide
The way I feel inside
My heart for you?
Would you say that you
Would try to love me too?
In your mind could you ever be
Really close to me?
I can tell the way you smile
If I feel that I could be certain then
I would say the things
I want to say tonight

But till I can see
That you'd really care for me
I will dream that someday you'll be
Really close to me
I can tell the way you smile
If I feel that I could be certain then
I would say the things
I want to say tonight

But till I can see
That you'd really care for me
I'll keep trying to hide
The way I feel inside