David Berman: (A personal remembrance)

I believe the stars are the headlights of angels
Driving from heaven to save us
To save us
Look in the sky
They're driving from heaven into our eyes
And though final words are so hard to devise
I promise that I'll always remember your pretty eyes
Your pretty eyes

"Pretty Eyes", The Natural Bridge, Silver Jews, David Berman 

David Berman changed my life. I loved him.

I know David Berman changed lots of people’s lives with his poems, songs, drawings and sideways, but rigorous way of looking at the world. His turns of phrase stuck with you. He wrote perfect choruses. 

I can’t say that I knew him well because I wasn’t a friend. I was just a fan who also happens to be a writer, and because of that I was able to be in conversation with him (a highlight of my life).

In 1997, when I was 19, I wanted to meet David Berman so I wrote to him care of Mr. Gate Pratt, using an address included in the liner notes for the first full-length Silver Jews record, Starlite Walker. I lied and said I had a zine and wanted to interview him. He sent me a postcard and said yes. I spent a day with him. Since I had lied I didn’t have an outlet for the interview and I didn’t self publish it until 2005. I know. Here is the interview, Don't Fall for the Traps of the Man Who Was Never Born.  

front of postcard from David Berman in 1997

Back of 1997 postcard from David Berman (I don't live there anymore.)

He was funny. When we went to the Strand the store still asked customers to check their bags and David asked the attendant what the strangest item he’d ever had to check: a roast chicken. I believe David picked up Don DeLillo’s Underworld, among other books. 

But! Something he said to me while we walked from the meatpacking district over to the Strand changed my life. I’m paraphrasing because I didn’t use my tape recorder until we got to the hotel room he was sharing with some Drag City people. I mentioned that I wanted to write but I didn’t know if I could. David said that you have to allow yourself to be bad before you can get good. I took that to heart and it changed my life. Letting go of self-consciousness just a bit helped me write my way through badness toward something I could be proud of. 

Berman had visited his friend Steve Keene and Keene had given him a couple paintings. One of them contained the words “Going into Dark Hallway”, which is from one of David’s poem, the other one is a long rectangular double depiction of the Williamsburg Bridge. David didn’t want to bring them on the plane to Austin (where he lived at the time) so he gave them to me. I still have them.

Polaroid print of Steve Keene painting from Berman "Going into Dark Hallway"

In 1999 Open City published Actual Air and I saw David read at KGB Bar. I recorded the reading and a very glamorous woman wearing stacked wedge studded heels sat next to me. It was Cassie (Berman). At one point my tape recorder got knocked over and she turned it right side up for me. I saw Berman introduce her to friends of his and I could see the love between them and his adoration. (Spare a thought for Cassie Berman. According to Berman, they collaborated on the video for "Darkness and Cold".)

After that interview I was in intermittent touch with David, like a lot of people must have been over the years. Post-college I worked at then-Holtzbrinck and I’d ask him if he wanted any books and I’d have them sent to him from the company warehouse. 

When I visited Nashville in 2002 I asked David for recommendations. I didn’t want to impose on him, so I didn’t suggest meeting up. My dad was on that trip and knew I had a tenuous correspondence with David, and as we listened to the Silver Jews while driving around Nashville he suggested going over and saying hi. I was still young enough to be embarrassed by the idea of my dad meeting one of my heroes, so I said absolutely not. I wish I’d been less self-conscious. 

I got fired from a different publishing job in 2003 and while unemployed I taught myself Silver Jews songs on guitar. I still like to play “Inside the Golden Days of Missing You”, “Pretty Eyes”, and “the Wild Kindness” and whichever other ones I can bash out. 

I was in a band for a long time (I played drums) and I sent David some possible band names and asked him to illustrate them. He did. 

potential band name illustrated by David Berman

potential band name illustrated by David Berman

potential band name illustrated by David Berman

potential band name illustrated by David Berman

I started teaching English in fall 2003 and maybe the next year or the year after I taught a class that was full of students with undiagnosed learning disabilities. I taught a short poetry unit and showed the students Berman’s poem, “Snow”. One student wrote an homage of sorts and I sent it to David. He seemed to like it. 

Then…Silver Jews toured and I finally got to see them live. I got older; life began to blur. David Berman quit music. 

David Berman and Silver Jews at Webster Hall, 2006

I saw him give a talk at CUNY in 2013. It was long, rambling and sublime. I just listened to the intro snippet and I heard him say, “Is that you, Gate?” 

Fast forward to Memorial Day weekend 2018. I meet someone and it turns out to be Gate Pratt. We talked about how he acted as courier for that letter that set up my interview with David way back in 1997. Small world. Gate told me a rumor that David was working on a record. I, and the one friend I mentioned it to, were cautiously optimistic. 

Then I ran into an editor after a Malkmus and the Jicks show who knew I had been in touch with Berman back in the day. He asked me if I knew what Berman was up to. I decided to take it all as fate and asked Gate to put me back in touch with Berman and from there I set up an interview and found an outlet for the interview. 

I first got in touch with David last August. I believe he was in NYC doing something with the record that would become Purple Mountains. He begged off on meeting just then, said he was in “a sorry state” and went back to Chicago. 

We did eventually connect through e-mail and corresponded from fall 2018 until late June 2019. Our correspondence was full of links, requests that I read certain books, jokes, shit talking, talk about his upcoming record, fears, his separation from his wife, his astrological chart, his Meyers Briggs letters. It unfolded over a long time and his mood was up and down. At points he seemed optimistic about the record. He said he was looking forward to meeting fans. (I do hope you have a chance to read this interview one day. I think it gives you a long-term window into his mind, as prickly and expansive as it was. But I don't know exactly when it will publish.) 

He sent me a digital copy of the record, Purple Mountains, and I started waking up with those dark dark dark choruses in my head. It’s a beautiful record but it’s not easy. 

I asked in several different ways to meet him in person and he put me off. I asked to speak to him on the phone and he agreed, but then he said he dropped his phone down a sinkhole. When he got a new phone he agreed to talk, but then he begged off, saying journalists think they’ll get better material off the cuff but he didn’t believe that to be true. I didn’t push him because we had already been corresponding for 9-10 months by then. I didn’t have a gotcha journalist’s agenda even though we both understood the interview was for publication, and I asked some tough questions. I decided to ask the hard questions at the end. The other day I told my dad I didn’t ask him to re-hash drug stories because all rock musician’s drug stories are the same. I did ask about mental health and the way forward. I wish I could say that our last messages weren’t fraught, but they were. I was afraid he was annoyed at me because he didn't exactly enjoy being interviewed (but he answered all my questions--he just sometimes gave me guff for them, as was his right). I was waiting for the tour to begin to write him another note of encouragement. I shouldn’t have waited. Always tell people that you love them. Always. 

When I saw the news I shouted “No”! I cried. But I wasn’t surprised. I wish I could say I was surprised, but over the course of all those months I got a glimpse of the turmoil he was in and had been in for so long. I won’t presume to understand why, or speak knowledgeably about how he felt, but the pain was evident in his words.

He talked about not feeling like he had fans. I told him several different ways that he did. I wish he believed it. I told him how a man saw my Silver Jews pin when I was at my librarian conference at Shea stadium and the man was excited to meet another fan. I told him about the other guy who gave me an ice cream sample and after seeing my Silver Jews pin, asked if I knew of a Silver Jews community he could join. So many people got in touch with me yesterday because they knew how much he meant to me. They were also fans. David, people loved you.

I hope with all my heart that David Berman is in peace now. 

David Berman changed my life and I loved him.