The National Transportation Safety Board wants to ban the use of all electronic devices while driving—even hands-free devices.

You had a good run, GPS. Looks like we’re back to holding up a giant map in front of the windshield while steering with our knees.

A word of wisdom from Don Draper.

A word of wisdom from Don Draper.

Take the next seven minutes to listen to this. Download it here for free: http://noisetrade.com/davidstory.

Take the next seven minutes to listen to this. Download it here for free: http://noisetrade.com/davidstory.

The storm hits the moment I slouch onto my mattress and keeps me up until four o’clock in the morning. For days I have agonized, chanted, sang the same eight words over and over—sometimes at the top of my lungs (in the shower), sometimes under my breath (in public)—“I’m a child of the Second Great War. I’m a child of the Second Great War.”

Who is a child of the Second Great War? Am I? I was born in 1985. It’s not me. So then it’s a metaphor, about…what? “Carry me on through the river; carry me over the valley floor.” These two lines, and the anthemic declaration of WWII’s child, are all that I have before me—four simple lines with a chasm between. What bridges the gap between being carried through a river and declaring one’s self a child of the Second Great War?

After hours spent poring over a single line, I walk away wiping the soot off my forehead and rubbing the smoke from my eyes. I have been in the forging fires and can feel its effects. Those brave enough to create know of the forging fires. There are profoundly physical effects that come with creating something utterly intangible. But it is worth its toll.

Content with what I know to be a beautiful, ache-inducing refrain, I prepare to end my day. But as I climb into bed, the sky lets go the words that begin to fall onto my pillow like intrepid raindrops that find their way through an open window. “Take a last look around, shake the dust of this town…hedgerows and wires…foxhole fires.” The story begins telling itself; I am merely listening, taking dictation from some ghost of the war.

After the flood and fury pass I pause to inhale the scent of the still-wet ink. I reread the newborn words and exhale with humble pride. Prideful humility? Perhaps. But my pride is gated, inasmuch as I do not found but find the songs I sing. And on some stormy nights they find me.

(“Second Great War”—listen)

A war-tattered town in the European Theater—perhaps Belgium or France (he cannot remember)—a soldier makes his way westward, wearied and in retreat. His brother, two years older but a twin in rank, carries him from the battle, back through a town which he had taken from the Nazis just two weeks earlier.

Their long, seemingly endless journey to the boat takes them through the rutted routes of what has already become historic, hallowed ground. The history of this place as it exists in their memories is anything but sacred. The wounded sees only the starkest contrast between these cold wastelands and the warm enclosures of the Tennessee foothills in which he spent the first eighteen years of his life.

How many years have past since he last saw those giant American Chestnuts? How many years since his feet last felt the cool stream? Since his face last felt the tree-muffled wind slither through the narrow valley? How many years?

Six months.

He has lived a lifetime within them. He is at the same time a grunt and a vet; at once a child and an old man.

It is here that our soldier, numbed by the three bullets his body absorbed less than twenty-four hours ago, becomes acutely aware of the nature of his retreat. If he is to go home, he must be carried home a helpless baby birthed through the canal of cataclysm, born of the battlefield, no longer a child of Tennessee but of the Second Great War.

As the paralysis slowly fades, he cries out for the hollows and the hills he once knew; for the Appalachian river that heretofore had been his only known world. He will pass through the river once again, but only once, and be laid down at the edge of the cemetery grounds where he and his brother would spend endless summer nights watching the full moon move across the sky until the swallows and the songbirds coaxed the dawning.

No other place is worthy to be his body’s last bed. Here the air will be as quiet and unchanged for eternity to come as it has been for eternity past.

(“Second Great War”—the song that inspired the story.)

Songwriters read this and let not your songwriting hearts be troubled.

I start with the knowledge that everything I write will turn and laugh at me. Still, you never get used to mocking laughter. I am forever withdrawn and shuffling before my own words. I do have some feeble phrases that I put forward to excuse myself: “But that’s the way I felt at the time.” But I can barely hear them for the ringing of laughter in my ears. You see, I know that in one year’s time (did I say a year?) I’ll reread these scribbled notes and “Oh no, did I write this junk?” 

(Scene: A small room. One bed, unmade. The chairs and tables are papered with fluorescent sheets upon which are printed many art anti-beliefs (now out of date) and several abortive attempts at short stories. From a gramophone near the wall the muted sounds of laughter can be heard.) 

PAUL: (Reading notes of L.P.) Who wrote this junk?

PAUL: You know very well who did.

PAUL: (In mock astonishment) Don’t tell me it was you.

PAUL: Once again your sardonic and piercing shafts of wit have touched me to the quick. I bare my neck to the sword. 

PAUL: How many times have I told you never to write anything down? 

PAUL: Oh god, not this again. 

PAUL: Yes, I’m sorry, but you know the rules. Put on the L.P.

(Derisive laughter for twenty minutes.)

PAUL: Oh no, I can’t.

PAUL: Here, just let me set the needle for you… 

(Scene fades as the laughter is amplified to migraine intensity. Paul crouches in corner with hands over his ears.)

Me, I’m a phony. I guess I’ve been a phony all my life. When I say phony, I don’t mean it in the sense that to think that I’m something I’m not. Not at all. The fact is that I don’t care that much what you think. Oh, I care, but not that much. What I mean is, I think that I’m something I am not. In fact, I just want me to think that I’m something. 

On the rare occasions that I have glanced at my reflection I have repeatedly, and quite deliberately, turned my back on the reality of the picture and wandered off, warm and sleepy, into a valley of illusion. 

(Scene: A golden Walt Disney poppy speckled field, inhabited by cartoon field mice (didn’t I see you in ‘Bambi’) and the little old wine maker who tends the poppies. A friendly dirt roads skips over the horizon where an enormous egg cream rises majestically through the pink puffy clouds.) 

THE MAN WHO TENDS THE POPPIES: Hello there! And where are you bound for lad? Is it to London where the streets are paved with gold?

PAUL: (To himself) This guy thinks I’m Freddy Bartholomew. (Out loud to the POPPY TENDER) Will you come off the David Copperfield bit, I’m on my way to the Magic City, there to become a poet. Can you show me the way? 

POPPY TENDER: I’d be glad to. There have been so many like you of late all going to the Magic City to become poets. Let’s see now (He places his finger alongside of his red button nose in a pose of contemplation… or maybe he places his finger in his red nose in contemplation. It depends who’s directing)… Go down the happy road three peach trees and one apple orchard and turn left at the great big picture of Dylan Thomas… It’s only a short way (but very far). 

PAUL: (To himself) I wonder what significance should be attached to that remark. Could he be deep? (Out loud to the POPPY TENDER) Thank you sir, I’m much obliged. 

POPPY TENDER: Here, take these poppies with you in your basket (what basket?) for it’s a long way (but very near) to the Magic City and you will be hungry. 

PAUL: (Already staring up the road) No thanks. I haven’t the time to stop now. I want to get to Magic City before the night falls. (He walks a few paces then pauses)… Well, maybe I’ll just take a few poppies… 

The POPPY TENDER laughs and his eyes twinkle and Paul realizes that the POPPY TENDER is none other than Bert Lahr and that Paul himself really is Freddy Bartholomew.

This LP contains twelve of the songs that I have written over the past two years. There are some here that I would not write today. I don’t believe in them as I once did. I have included them because they played an important role in transition. It is discomforting, almost painful, to look back over something someone else created and realize that someone else was you. I’m not ashamed of where I’ve been and what I’ve thought. It’s just not me anymore. It is perfectly clear to me that the songs I write today will not be mine tomorrow. I don’t regret the loss. 

I am finishing these notes. They have prodded and driven me where I didn’t want to go and reflected what I didn’t want to see. One thing I know: I won’t reread them.