The Last Great Washington State — Damien Jurado

#365Songs: August 18th

“There are two voices in every memoir: old and young.” — Jill Ciment, Consent

I’ve been thinking a lot about time. How it passes, how it changes, how it sometimes stops. How what we see and understand changes over time. How we alter what’s true, and what’s not, as time offers new vantage points.

Jill Ciment wrote a memoir in 1996, at age 43, about her life and unorthodox marriage. Her newest memoir, just released at age 71, re-examines her own truths, what was left out or misinterpreted, revealing as much about memory and memoir as about her own life.

“The point of view in a memoir is curious. The writer must trick the reader (and herself) into believing she actually remembers how she felt decades ago.” — Jill Ciment, Consent

I once thought I was a fiction writer, and for a while I was both educated and writing quite well in the form. But it became clear that every character was a variation of myself and others in my life — a common plight for fiction writers, of course. The first time I attempted memoir writing, as an undergrad, my brilliant professor Bill Roorbach and every peer in the class called me out for fictionalizing my truth. At the time, I thought it was because I had nothing honest to say about myself. I learned later that I just hadn’t had enough time to know myself, that I wore so many masks I might as well have been just another fictional character.

“Was it the artist’s duty to rush ahead of humanity and report back from the future?” — Jill Ciment, Consent

It wasn’t until after my Mom died in 2010, when I was angry and confused, feeling betrayed by family details long withheld, that I learned the art of vulnerability, of working through my own complex and raw truths through the writing. I started the BSidesNarrative website to explore my grief, dug deep underneath my life’s darkest, dustiest, and most terrifying corners.

What’s most interesting about documenting your own life isn’t how others receive or respond to it, but rather what you learn about yourself when you revisit that work years later. What was foreshadowed, which traumas were breaking through the surface, what was being withheld or subconsciously overlooked.

That’s the beauty of Jill Ciment’s book, how much her current vantage point revealed the layers previously missing. That’s the beauty of any art, really: how it reflects back at us what we need to see.

Never be sorry for the lack of response
Your hand on my arm before we were lost
The horizon just laughed to see us fall off
Your face in a jar I constantly dropped
You have him now but I’ll have you later
The phone is a gossip
The clock is a murderer
My time is her burden
Your voice is his slumber
How long have we been here?
I can’t quite remember my name

Singer-songwriter Damien Jurado has followed me through my many phases, moods, and moves — more so than any other artist. His reflective and introspective poetry, the way he so beautifully contemplates what it means to be human, the way he writes about the many ways to forgive our own flaws and mistakes. For every pain, there’s a Damien song; for every pleasure, there’s a Damien song. Somehow, no matter how melancholic the music, no matter how painful the story he tells, there’s always a glimmer of something hopeful, a path forward.

I can’t imagine there’s a more under-appreciated artist.

I had you pegged as one who would throw me
Away from your shoreline
Into the galaxy
Where moons are a fool
Stars climb eternity
Long after voids
And handwritten destiny
Long after voices return from the telephone
Cut off from color
Leave everyone you know
They’ll let you down
I’ll let you talk into the sky
That he keeps turning off like a light

Damien’s longtime producer and closest friend, Richard Swift, passed away in 2018. A few months later, Damien released his first album on his own, The Horizon Just Laughed. The opus track, Last Great Washington State, was written prior to Richard’s death, and yet there’s ominous reflections on what that loss would feel like after he’s gone — an inevitable fate, as Richard was too deep in the process of drinking himself to the other side.

About the album and Richard’s death, Damien said in an interview with Vinyl Me Please, “That song and a lot of the album is really eerie because it’s very foretelling. Not only did he die, but I left Washington after living there for 36 years for California. Something I thought I’d never do. I didn’t know I’d do that at the time either.”

Praises fall short from the hands of the choir
Who all stand in judgement and funerals pyre
Now that you’re dead
They wait for the symphonies
Conductors retire to the bed of our sympathy
Losing our minds on yesterday’s tragedy
Are you surprised they’re singing in harmony?
Flooding the hallways
I notice the exit signs pointing the way out
I knew they were onto us along

The Last Great Washington State is a song about grief, carrying on despite the losses, saying goodbye while looking forward to whatever comes next. But it’s also about what we know before we know it, how it’s innate in us to pre-process our deepest fears, that prescient way that we tell ourselves the stories we need to hear long before we’re ready to hear them.

That’s the other thing about Damien’s songs. They feel so personal it’s often difficult to discern when he’s fictionalizing someone else’s story or sharing his own. Every song, a short memoir. Every memoir, a lesson worth revisiting time and again. And isn’t that what the best art does, the way it changes over time as we do, revealing new layers as we’re more ready to receive them?

Your suitcase fits well in the room you are living in
Quick to leave town
Is it how you imagined it?
Alone with your ghosts, and the question mark protagonist
Leaving you in deserts in search of the answers
To all of the questions that lead to more questions
Afraid to stand up or lose your salvation
Stop and rewind
They all change the station
The story hits home too close for their liking
“Stick to the script where your lovers are dying”
Bored and annoyed
“You’re not even trying to turn us on”

In my experience, every great loss requires some major life change. To settle back into what once was, even as something has gone missing, is perhaps how we fail to process what is lost. A denial, of sorts, that everything is the same minus one thing. When that one thing is everything, life just can’t go on as it once was.

Damien knew that before he knew that.

And the building was on fire
When I saw you step out
Afraid of your ghosts, and highly in doubt
When you knew along
Not even your cloud
Would ever withstand the song from your mouth
So they took all your scripts
And the rain from your eyes
They’re cashing it in for the next passing ride
To some other city you made up in your mind
They missed when you died
So they’re hitting rewind
What good is living if you can’t write your ending?
You’re always in doubt of the truths you’re defending
Seeing yourself in others’ ideas
I’ll write you from somewhere
And call you from later on
I’ll need a good time
You’ll need a daydream
Helplessly helpless
“I am alive, can you hear me?”
Sleeping in motion
I love you Washington State

It takes a certain amount of courage — or insanity — to share a life story in such a public manner. The line between self-indulgence and entertainment is a thin one, the line between a personal life lesson and broader wisdom is even thinner. I always try, at least, to ensure that whatever I share about myself has some broader relevance, or some point of view that — hopefully — leads whatever audience I have to reflect about their own life. That’s the beauty of stories: it’s often less what we learn about the characters within and more what we learn about ourselves, how we contextualize ourselves in someone else’s journey.

That’s what Damien does as well as anyone.

One day, in the distant future, I’ll come back to what I’m writing now and ask myself if I’ve done that, too.

“A story stops when the writer doesn’t know what to say next; it ends when there is nothing more to be said.” — Jill Ciment, Consent

~

Start following the #365Songs playlist today, and listen to each new song with each new article!