Shuffle Synchronicities: Volume 1 - #362

Guest Post by Matt Chambless + “Sippin” by Icewear Vezzo, Babyface Ray - 01/22/22

Thank you again to one of my favorite music writers and a guest poster on the Shuffle and a bipolar compatriot and an amazing TikToker and just a wonderful person overall in this lovely world of ours, Kiana Fitzgerald, for her shout out of the Shuffle as one of the things making her happy on NPR’ Pop Culture Happy Hour!!

Which was later adapted into this article on NPR.com, which I’ve excerpted below:

So I say, WELCOME, to the even more readers who have been Subscribing!!!

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Today we have a very special guest post from musician, music producer, photographer, executive creative director, and writer Matt Chambless!

Matt and I met via Instagram when I noticed that a friend’s girlfriend posted about a piece he wrote for Bright Wall/Dark Room, which was later picked up by RogerEbert.com, which you can read here.

I’m going to further describe the impact of that piece and incorporate the synchronicity of finding it into my half of the collaboration. But suffice to say I was so taken with it, that I immediately reached out to Matt to congratulate him, speak via phone, and invite him to guest post on the Shuffle.

Here today is the fruits of our connection ;)

First a more formal bio!

Matt Chambless is a writer, musician, and executive creative director living in Los Angeles.  After studying Jazz Performance at the University of Memphis, he toured the globe as a Hollywood Records recording artist, and now leads a creative team whose work has been profiled in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Rolling Stone, and more.

Okay, take it away, Matt!

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I Get Along Without You Very Well (Except Sometimes)

by Matt Chambless

Summer afternoons in the American South are a docile time.  No yards are being cut; no outdoor projects completed.  No one moves.  It’s much too hot for all that.  And yet this past August, as I walked from my car to the rear entrance of St. Francis Hospital, it wasn’t the heat I feared, but the cold.  Nothing will twist a man into a frenzy faster than the full-throated gonzo attack of an air-conditioned Southern interior during the height of Summer. 

My mom and I had developed a little routine: drive to the hospital; walk inside; sit with dad.  During these visits he mostly slept while the two of us watched television.  Every so often, however, he’d wake and join in the conversation.  

“In the office at home, on the floor next to the TV, you’ll see a box with all the knives in it.”  My dad was telling us where to find his collection of pocket knives.  He wanted me to have them.  He was a collector, though not of any renown.  He belonged more to the curatorial school of if it’s found its way into the house then the polite thing to do would be to refer to it from this point forward as a collection.  Old bills, magazines, bottle caps, construction cones, jackets he’d found, records, anything he could grab, barter for, order on Amazon, or accept in the mail without request he collected.  Pocket knives were one such genre.  

Later that evening I went home and found the box right where he said it would be.  Written on the outside: Pocket Knives for Matthew.  I have no idea when he put it there.  

Several days later my dad passed away.  After the funeral I drove from Memphis back to Los Angeles.  On the seat next to me, the Pocket Knives for Matthew.  

I, too, like pocket knives.  I have a small collection I’ve gathered over the years.  And not just knives, but pens, notebooks, tiny flashlights, and so on.  There’s an entire cottage industry built around this particular genre of goods: Everyday Carry.  The useful things we equip ourselves with each day.  Wallets, watches, knives, pens, flashlights.  I like all of these things, especially pens.  I like the act of writing things down, of taking notes with pen and paper instead of my phone.  Taking pleasure in documenting the things I want to remember: a stray thought; a list of records I want to buy.  

So I find it interesting that I approach playlists the same way.  For me they’re not mixes; they’re not vibes, either.  They’re notepads.  A collection of songs I want to remember, notes that I can refer back to when needed.  They have funny names like Soundhound (named for the app I use to recognize and collect songs when I’m on the go) and References.  That is, all except for one.  The last playlist I made.  The one that still sits atop all the others.  Body and Soul.  A mix of my dad’s favorite songs to be played at his funeral.  I’m not ready to revisit that one yet.  So I go to the next one.  Liked Songs.

It’s a January morning in Los Angeles and I’m in my office.  In front of me is my computer.  I set the playlist to shuffle and then… I hit play—

Chet Baker. “I Get Along Without You Very Well.”  Pacific Jazz Records, 1954.

“Put on a sad song,” N— said to me.  We were driving along the spine between West Hollywood and Beverly Hills on our way to her house.  With a mile to go she pulled the car over and asked me to call an Uber.  This, the corner of Doheny and Olympic, was as close as I was allowed to get.  Any closer and this ride would have to mean something, and she didn’t want this to mean anything.  A few weeks earlier N— had put an end to our relationship—I had served my purpose.  I was the shiny object meant to get the other guy’s attention.  I guess I succeeded.

Another time—also while driving—she told me that earlier in the day she had been listening to Amy Winehouse to “feel sad.”  I initially thought this was about me.  I found out later it was about the other guy.  At least I think it was later.  It’s been years now since our relationship, and what memories I have left appear out of order.  I don’t remember which car ride was first.  I don’t remember a lot of things.

For instance, I don’t remember where I first heard “I Get Along Without You Very Well.”  My father—a hobbyist piano player—hosted a radio show at the local jazz station every Friday night when I was in high school.  And though I also went on to study jazz in college, I don’t remember ever hearing that song in our house, and I don’t recall ever performing it in school.  Its origins in my life are unclear.  It’s as if it’s always been a part of me—preloaded on some internal hard drive at birth—and therefore reminding me of home.

Nor do I remember why I chose to play it that night when N— asked.  I don’t think there’s any question that it certainly qualifies as a sad song.  The vocal delivery has a kind of late night whiskey lament to it, and the song’s melody—borrowed, in part, by songwriter Hoagy Carmichael from Chopin’s “Fantasie Impromptu”—hangs mournfully in the air like mist.

Yet, I would never place it atop any definitive ranking of the world’s saddest songs.  It’s much too smart for that.  By which I mean the obviousness of its sadness is more intellectual than emotional.  That’s not to say that sad songs can’t be smart.  It’s just that the ones that are capable of making us feel “the most sad” do just that—they make us feel.  They announce themselves through the senses not unlike the first whiff of chlorine before seeing the pool.  They don’t enter through the mind.  

As a part of the jazz idiom, “I Get Along Without You Very Well” intrinsically affords itself a kind of sultry posture—it’s to be expected.  So as a result, it becomes incumbent on the lyrics to tell you how to feel.  You have to be an active participant in order to follow the narrator’s proclamation for the aptitude to which he “gets along very well” without his lost love, just so long as absolutely nothing reminds him of her.  And of course everything does.  By contrast, songs like “Jude” by Dan Mangan & Jesse Zubot

Or “Dogwood Blossom” by Fionn Regan

Lay a heavy smack of sadness on you right from the start just by the way they feel.  Their lyrics are almost irrelevant.  The songs just sound sad.  They’re much more passive in that way.  Being active is a happy man’s game.  True sadness is passivity.  

N— didn’t want to be active in that moment.  “Play something else, something more modern,” she said.  I didn’t understand her then; what she wanted, why she didn’t want me.  I think I do now.  

These last two years have been unspeakably difficult.  At the beginning of the pandemic I went through another breakup—a relationship that I’m still, in many ways, getting over.  Then my mother got sick.  Then my dad died.  And I went through all of that, in large part, sitting alone in my apartment—my family 1800 miles away—as the rest of the world did the same.  Together we all lost a sense of routine, of self, and of normalcy.  We lost what it was to be us—the us we thought we were before the world shut down.  That’s a tremendous amount of loss to endure.  

Lately I’ve found a satisfying comfort in nostalgia.  TV shows from my youth, music and movies that remind me of childhood.  This isn’t uncommon.  Dr. Kirby Farrell writes in Psychology Today that as our anxieties grow, we devise shelters in culture, home, and the past.  And as we lose parts of ourselves—childhood, parents, relationships—we mourn them through the creation of symbolic iconography.  After the death of my father I started rewatching the 80s sitcom, “Night Court,” a show that routinely played in our house when I was growing up.  I did this without thinking—my consciousness just needed a safe place to go.  

I don’t get along well in the wake of loss.  I think the point of the song is neither does anyone else.  Sitting in N—’s car all those years ago, waiting for my Uber, I was in mourning.  Mourning the loss of who I might’ve become had we stayed together; the loss of who I was all the years before her spent alone; and genuinely frightened about the uncertainty of the future.  We were divergent, she and I.  She wanted something sad to feed her grief and I needed safety to ease mine.  And I found it in a piece of nostalgia borne away in me with origins unknown.  I found it in the comfort of my youth, of my mom and dad, the street we lived on, Halloweens and soccer games and trips to McDonald’s together.  I found it in Chet Baker crooning “except perhaps in Spring, but I should never think of Spring,” and anything else I could muster up to stave off the eventuality of things like one day having to make playlists called Body and Soul.  I did all of this in an instant without thought, and then I played “I Get Along Without You Very Well” as we sat on the side of the road.  Somewhere along the way that song had become another one of those useful things I had equipped myself with each day—my everyday carry.  Reminding me that as long as I have it, that one day, hopefully, I’ll get along pretty well too.  Of course, I will.  So long as I never think of Spring, as that would surely break my heart in two.  

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Aw, Matt, that was beautiful, thank you!

I can’t stop thinking about this part:

“Lately I’ve found a satisfying comfort in nostalgia.  TV shows from my youth, music and movies that remind me of childhood.  This isn’t uncommon.  Kirby Farrell writes in Psychology Today that as our anxieties grow, we devise shelters in culture, home, and the past.  And as we lose parts of ourselves—childhood, parents, relationships—we mourn them through the creation of symbolic iconography.”

and this:

“I found it in the comfort of my youth, of my mom and dad, the street we lived on, Halloweens and soccer games and trips to McDonald’s together.”

And of the synchronicity that Benny Goodman’s “Body and Soul” is also mentioned in my long sentence book about my dad and me and is on that book’s playlist.

And of the synchronicity that Nina Simone’s cover of that Chet Baker song came up on the Shuffle in this post about my now-ex-wife telling me she’s seriously dating someone new.

And how sad that was for me, and I’ll say now, that I’d ‘argue’ that Nina turns Chet’s intellectually sad song into a feltly sad one.

I, too, have been finding lots of comforts from the past.

Initially, there was our connection over the movie The Royal Tenenbaums from now over 20 years ago.

You wrote in your previous piece:

“in this moment, when the way forward seems so daunting and unknowable it can only be approached by metaphor, and the path of extrication from this forest of grief has not yet made itself visible—except perhaps to the keen eyes of certain mystics and select Upper West side analysts—I turn to the only scripture I know, the only way I can think to wrap my head and my heart around what has happened. Naturally, I’m referring to Wes Anderson’s third feature film, 2001’s The Royal Tenenbaums.”

And about a particular line in it:

“And this brings about the last door through which Royal must walk to complete his redemptive arc: his reconciliation with Chas. It just so happens that Chas needs this, too, even more so than Royal. And so there the two of them are, standing face to face, Royal apologizing for not being there for Chas, and for the family, and earnestly trying to make up for it. They crouch down together, Chas gives Sparkplug a little pet on the head, and then it happens: Chas takes a breath, drops his armor, and says the most vulnerable and beautiful line of the film, “I’ve had a rough year, dad.”

Very inchoately and unconsciously, I’ve been drawn to this film since I first saw it in my late teenage years.

Not really aware that my dad and I had issues to resolve.

Like all parents and children do.

Until it was too late.

And I found myself finally addressing them first still unconsciously then more consciously by writing the long sentence book.

When I moved into my own apartment after the breakup of my marriage sparked by that metanoia from writing the book about my grief about my dad that same year.

I had no art.

Because I gave her all ours.

So I bought some pieces from Etsy.

Including one with exactly that line:

So when I saw Matt’s piece and read that he also loved Wes Anderson and Richard Rohr and described so eloquently why this line was so important not just to me, but to him, and perhaps to anyone who has ever watched it, I felt like a kindred spirit.

And I urge you to read the full piece linked here.

And am inserting a twist on the ‘the feminine urge’ meme to further inspire you to ;)

I horny femboy God urge you…

Anyway, in other ways, like everyone, we also had different experiences of comfort in our youth returning in adulthood it seems.

I read Matt’s guest post after playing tennis.

I’ve played 6 days in a row.

And I’ve been playing nearly that much since March of 2021.

I LOVE it.

The fellowship with the people you play with.

The flow state of the state of play you’re in itself.

And, yes, the physical fitness, I’ve lost 25 pounds since this started.

As I was talking to the person I was playing today, someone I had never played with before, about our experiences with the sport, I was re-realizing that it was a comfort from childhood.

Our family of four used to play doubles together all the time.

Not just in our town.

But also on memorable family vacations near the ocean in Delaware.

Ha, not exactly that.

But for a Western NY lake kid, the Atlantic Ocean trips were memorable.

And part of the reason I live near the Pacific Ocean now.

But also I was remembering that during that childhood I often spoiled that comfort.

That I was often a brat who said I didn’t want to play.

Or threw my racquet in anger.

Or got into competitive disagreements with my mom during them.

And that even though I played 1st doubles on the varsity tennis team, I was sometimes embarrassed that I couldn’t play with my other friends on their seemingly cooler sports teams like baseball or lacrosse.

Basically, how even though I played tennis throughout my life, I never really always enjoyed it.

Just like I sometimes never really always enjoyed my life.

And how the week before my dad died, one of the last things we did together as a family was play tennis.

At first, he could barely get the ball back over the net.

But then he started to really get it back.

And we were laughing.

And we had a nice rally the four of us.

But, to be honest, I had some anger then, even still.

I was angry that he had ‘let’ his body degrade so much that he couldn’t play tennis anymore with his friends or family.

Which in part led to more depression.

And perhaps more suicide attempts.

Because we stopped relatively shortly after he hit a few good shots.

He was tired out.

Because he needed a kidney transplant.

And how (mostly unconsciously) I was angry at him because I believed he had caused the kidney problems due to his suicide attempt in my youth with pills and worsened them with these more recent attempts.

And I was (perhaps more consciously) angry (but still relatively unconsciously) angry that I believed I had to potentially give him a kidney but didn’t want to and that even though he didn’t want one of mine I was the one consigning him to dialysis machines.

And so I was also (mostly unconsciously) angry with myself.

That anger though.

It subsided after writing the experimental therapeutic stream of consciousness long sentence book about him and having the manic episodes and spiritual awakenings that went with that.

It makes me think of a book I discussed with a friend last night after we played tennis, Crime and Punishment.

How when the main character finally comes clean for his crimes, his conscience is clear, and he’s content even though his freedom (and life) is basically over.

How now I feel happy despite losing so much.

Like my now-ex-wife as a result of the grief/book/manic episode/awakening.

That this daily practice of writing whatever the shuffle seems to be revealing keeps the conscience clean, the shadow lightened, and the contentment quite present.

That friend mentioned last night how Zen I am in comparison with someone else we play with.

And it’s humble-braggingly mostly quite true.

When I’ve played tennis with my mom now, she’s been struck by how we don’t ever argue while playing like we used to.

Part of our healing after my sister’s wedding this summer was to play three times in five days, some of the best times we’ve ever shared together.

This ties into the song I shuffled to today:

“Sippin” by Icewear Vezzo, Babyface Ray

Which is a rap song, that for all of its party energy and irreverent wordplay, is, to be honest, quite an angry vibe.

I don't fuck with rappers, I’ll crash out, take his shit, these n—s straight bitches, yeah (He pussy)

It made me think it was a memoiristic synchronicity about how I used to be a tennis player who didn’t want to ‘fuck with other’ tennis players.

How you gang, you ain't ride with me? (How?)

It made me think it was a memoiristic synchronicity about how that as a family member I sometimes spoiled our comforts in my youth.

But the song’s visceral anger and negativity also sort of sickened me.

Fuckin' these hoes, soon as I get to that age, we fuckin' your daughter, n— (N—) Fuck these n—s

I let the shuffle go to a second song and it was:

“Wonderwall” by Oasis

Which was more immeditaly pleasing.

But also I soon realized that it too was a memoiristic synchronicity.

Because my memory of this song is also related to my dad.

And me spoiling another moment of comfort together in my youth, LOL.

I was playing him this song for the first time enthusiastically when it came out in 1995 when I guess I was 11 or 12?

And he remarked that it reminded him of The Beatles.

And for some reason, I don’t know why, but I guess then and definitely for many years after I had a weird relationship to superiority and taste and knowledge, and I wanted to pretend I knew everything about music and books and film and culture, when really I knew very little.

So I said…

And, yes, this is embarrassing, but I said something, like…

“Actually, Oasis came before The Beatles.”

My dad, I could tell, even though he didn’t know tons about music like Matt’s dad it seems, he definitely knew that wasn’t true.

And he might have said so.

But, if he did, I definitely double-downed on my weird lie/assertion.

And, if that all happened, he definitely demurred from there.

And, so, I listen to the lyrics now, and I’ll be honest, I started to cry, and again now in the edit, because the chorus, it goes:

I said maybe (I said maybe)
You're gonna be the one that saves me
And after all
You're my wonderwall

I said maybe (I said maybe)
You're gonna be the one that saves me (saves me)
You're gonna be the one that saves me (saves me)
You're gonna be the one that saves me (saves me)

Because as I’ve said before, in a way, my dad’s suicide, it saved my life.

Like in the book about him and me:

Joyce says in Ulysses that “I read a theological interpretation,” about Hamlet and his father’s ghost, “The Father and the Son idea, The Son striving to be atoned with the Father,” and so maybe I need to atone with you for something,

And how it wasn’t his fault or mine that we couldn’t repair things until he was gone.

Or as Oasis sings:

There are many things that I would like to say to you, but I don't know how

Because now my inner voice isn’t relentlessly critical of me, it’s almost 100% positive, my conscience is now a comfort, a Comforter like The Holy Spirit is sometimes called, and who I think of as my dad, or the Father, or I guess you could call whatever it is…

my Wonderwall

Which is defined by its songwriter Noel Gallagher as:

"An imaginary friend who's gonna come and save you from yourself".

And I imagine now, that I speak for Matt and my dad and his dad, when I say:

You have the power to be your own comforter.

Okay, that’s the three hundred and sixty-second Shuffle Synchronicities.