David Berman One Year Later

 It's been one year since David Berman left us. I wasn't going to write anything, but today I made a linocut print of American Water, just listening to Silver Jews albums and the Purple Mountains record. 

 American Water linocut print

American Water linocut prints

American Water linocut

While I created these I thought about the word, wish. It occurred to me that this is the perfect scenario for a wish. To bring back someone who is gone. Not money, not anything you could ostensibly gain through your own cunning, but something that requires magic. So, that's what I wish, that David Cloud Berman was still here. I know it's terrible now, but it's terrible without him, and if he was here it would be just a tiny bit less terrible.

Last year, the song I kept returning to the most (besides all of them) was "Suffering Jukebox" from the last Silver Jews record, Lookout Mountain, Lookout Sea. The reasons were lyrical. They seemed to speak a truth about DCB I needed in order to understand why he left us (whether this is true or not). But in the spring, instagram user @secretknowledgeofbackroads posted a video of the original version of "Open Field" from the same record. I hadn't realized it was a cover. Something about the song clicked with me. Maybe it's the implied openness of the lyrics, which references an "open field", and right now an open field sounds like an alright place to be. And this reminded me of the lightness DCB had in addition to the darkness. The original is by Maher Shalal Hash Baz and here's a peel session version. The other thing I did today was learn how to play the song on guitar. So simple, repetitive, like the mantras I'm used to hearing when my mother makes offerings to Buddha. It's what I need now. 

This is what I wrote last year. It includes some cool drawings DCB did for me. Take a look!

In Feburary I published my long interview with DCB in Believer Magazine. Please read it. I believe it's the last published interview with DCB.

What else can I say? I wish David Berman was here. 

Adalena