To the person who thought it was an ode to Kerouac, it's really more of an ode to Kerouac's Big Sur compatriot, Henry Miller. Miller published a book of essays in 1965 called "Stand Still Like the Hummingbird" which more or less outlined his viewpoints on life. There is an essay entitled "My Life As An Echo" where Miller tries to write about himself and ends up digressing. In a review of an Ionesco play Miller employs a stream-of-consciousness imagist rant in which he writes "Remember? Remember to remember!"
Tweedy's protagonist is a Milleresque one. In "Learning How To Die", Greg Kot tells us that for a period of time, Tweedy dipped into Miller's pseudonovel, "Tropic of Cancer," as if it were a bible. He apparently went though Miller's library, as the "deepest chrome canyons of the loudest Manhattans" line reflects Miller's attitude toward urban areas like New York in his road journal, "The Air-Conditioned Nightmare" - a dead miasma of ticker tape, emotionlessness, and poverty. The love interest seems to have been fabricated by Tweedy to give some more emotional depth to the song, but the underlying idea is based upon the experiences and writing one of Tweedy's favorite scribes. He subtly references Miller's philosophies a couple more times on AGIB - especially in "Hell Is Chrome" and "Theologians."
I find it pretty neat that Tweedy foreshadows this sort of songwriting on "Poor Places" -
"There's bourbon on the breath of the singer you love so much
"He takes all his words from the books that you don't read anyway."
Music is a beautiful opiate, if you don't take it too seriously.
Henry Miller
Music is a beautiful opiate, if you don't take it too seriously.
Henry Miller
The worst sin that can be committed against the artist is to take him at his word, to see in his work a fulfillment instead of an horizon.
Henry Miller
The worst sin that can be committed against the artist is to take him at his word, to see in his work a fulfillment instead of an horizon.
Henry Miller
To the person who thought it was an ode to Kerouac, it's really more of an ode to Kerouac's Big Sur compatriot, Henry Miller. Miller published a book of essays in 1965 called "Stand Still Like the Hummingbird" which more or less outlined his viewpoints on life. There is an essay entitled "My Life As An Echo" where Miller tries to write about himself and ends up digressing. In a review of an Ionesco play Miller employs a stream-of-consciousness imagist rant in which he writes "Remember? Remember to remember!"
Tweedy's protagonist is a Milleresque one. In "Learning How To Die", Greg Kot tells us that for a period of time, Tweedy dipped into Miller's pseudonovel, "Tropic of Cancer," as if it were a bible. He apparently went though Miller's library, as the "deepest chrome canyons of the loudest Manhattans" line reflects Miller's attitude toward urban areas like New York in his road journal, "The Air-Conditioned Nightmare" - a dead miasma of ticker tape, emotionlessness, and poverty. The love interest seems to have been fabricated by Tweedy to give some more emotional depth to the song, but the underlying idea is based upon the experiences and writing one of Tweedy's favorite scribes. He subtly references Miller's philosophies a couple more times on AGIB - especially in "Hell Is Chrome" and "Theologians."
I find it pretty neat that Tweedy foreshadows this sort of songwriting on "Poor Places" -
"There's bourbon on the breath of the singer you love so much "He takes all his words from the books that you don't read anyway."
Music is a beautiful opiate, if you don't take it too seriously. Henry Miller
Music is a beautiful opiate, if you don't take it too seriously. Henry Miller
The worst sin that can be committed against the artist is to take him at his word, to see in his work a fulfillment instead of an horizon. Henry Miller
The worst sin that can be committed against the artist is to take him at his word, to see in his work a fulfillment instead of an horizon. Henry Miller