ON BEARDS
In Seattle

I’ve liked Iron and Wine ever since my friend Danielle and her husband Devin introduced it (along with many other things) to me a few years ago after an evening of stories of Tibetan adventures and Japanese pancakes of potato, onion and cabbage covered with wasabi mayonnaise (I think). Devin mentioned that he liked the sensibility of singers who play their own instruments and do their own harmonies. Individualists, I think now, who treated their vocation like Kierkegaard (one true thing) and wrote like Nietzsche, thinking all the time that existentialism and extreme facial hair was cool. Sam Beam said as much last night about his songs of graffiti on the gates of heaven and sour milk flowing into the mouths of rivers and a general manifesto calling on unity for the “beards of the world.”

Now we live in Seattle and I still like Sam Beam’s Iron and Wine, his singular poetry and voice. He is a cheerful man with a wedding ring, hair split down the middle. A short man with smiling eyes and a small mouth which tilts back for the high notes. His songs and guitar are quiet and dense with precise images and thunked arpeggios. He rings around his words and weaves them, worming into your brain like a true thing you didn’t know. He is an original man.

So now we live in Seattle next to a vegan clothing store, we own a GPS, and bake our own marinated tofu. It’s a good and simple life and we work our endless days into texts, spoken and caligraphied, and housebound invalids who are still valid. We live from farmer’s market to farmer’s market, polish our debts like shackles and chains, and enjoy our occasional creeks and cradles. Once in a while we see a man or woman king, a maker, who makes out new ways of being strong and active and cheerful. It's cherry season, what else can we want?

Here are some music videos said to make tears.

Photos by Oslo in the Summertime and KM Photography