The Curious Things about Cormac McCarthy
Cormac says in one of his songs that he's too crazy for the street and too normal for the farm, and that he can only rest in the asylum of her arms. So one might suspect that not much has changed in the more than 25 years since we first met that winter night in a rowdy New Hampshire bar. It was back when my dear Maggie first became sick. My daughter, Margaret, and her future exhusband invited us up to ski country, which was nice, but odd, given that neither of us skied. The weekly poker game and a general intolerance for the confessional nature of conversation prevalent during that strange time, convinced me that I should head home early. Given the desire for a beer that was inexplicably not available in our "chalet," I decided to check out the local culture on my way back.
I stepped in the door of a place called the Bristol Tap, just in time to witness the owner slam his baseball bat down on the bar and tell his clientel that they could shut their damn mouths or get the hell out, because he wanted to hear the singer. To which one of the more oblivious to baseball bat, self assured, bearded fellahs, in a hunting cap hollered back that he at least would be happy to oblige if Cormac would do a Hank Williams tune like he had been politely requesting all night, to a round of hooting and applause. So I swung my cornet case up in the air and told Cormac that if he knew "Still in Love with You" I would be happy to join him. Cormac was initially weiry, and asked me if that cornet case contained a tommy-gun. I told him no, but that my father won it in a poker game from a Chicago bootlegger, and whether that was close enough, to which he responded close enough for Bristol, New Hampshire.
So I backed him up on a couple of tunes to our mutual pleasure. I knew we were fellow travelers when he headed out to his car and brought in a clarinet, and after a 16 bar warm up headed into a tune about a river round the bend that he sang to my accompaniment. This bar and Cormac were the closest thing to the old days before the war, down in New York with the Mezz, Condon, and Muggsey I had known in quite a while.
That's how I met Cormac, and seeing him a few weeks back at the reading in Portsmouth by Ann Joslin Williams, of her wonderful story "A Woman in the Woods," he told me he had put out a new bunch of songs, so I had my grandson order it, because I only do the typing here. It is my grandson, the programmer, that actually makes everything on this pathetic contraption work, mostly anyway.
So I listen and wish I could still play along. And I get to thinking about Cormac's curious things. How they all reside in the middle. Somewhere between the right and wrong. And how if you want to see him at your back door, you have to leave your portch light on. And I think about what my father used to say about the unique, how it is never the main affair, but only resides at the edges, for when it becomes the main affair it always ends up just blending into the background. And that's the thing about Cormac's songs. What is special shines out like a diamond because he doesn't slap you both sides of the head about it.
Cormac hasn't so much changed as matured. Back in those Bristol Tap days he could display enough piss and vindgar to out last the bull shit and leave you thinking you consumed a good wine; now its a fine wine that comes not from leaning on talent, but experience. He now knows that most challenges are not the January blizzard but the May spring snow that comes in big flakes and is soon gone. He says that it would take forever to understand everything you know, but not to finally get the joke; You see Cormac doesn't just get it, he knows how to deliver it. I wish my Margaret would just look around and finally get the joke. I admire the prize fighter in her that can take the punch and not know enough to just stay down to survive another day. I sit across from her at the kitchen table and see in her eyes what she just is not ready to admit to herself. Some years ago Cormac played Al's Place, what in Al senior's day was the tavern. He looked tired and beaten, and I wondered if he was going to make it to the other side. Whether he would come to terms with what he now says are the only two things a boy needs: what you find in an empty church and down in a fishing hole. The next time I met Cormac, with his wonderful woman Sammy, was at Annie's reading. The instant I saw him I thought the answer to my question was yes. When I heard his music about curious things, I was certain of it.
So whether it comes to putting a buck in the hat as being the best you can do, or figuring out how to make an otherwise ordinary morning turn into a great big day, Cormac has figured a few things out, and as you get lolled off to the places your immagination takes you listening to his fine baritone voice you may find he has helped you to do the same.
So go see him if you are lucky enough to have your town on his itinerary, and whether that be the case or not, check this site out, listen to the tunes, and pick up Curious Things. Cormac will thank you, I will thank you, and you will thank yourself:
http://cdbaby.com/cd/cormacmccarthy
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