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raven_cromwellI've told the story of my intersection with Allison Moorer elsewhere It may seem odd, and even unproductive, to be as enamored with a memoir about grief as I patently am with Blood; lord knows I've gotten some skeptical side-eye from folks and mutters about poking bruises and making them worse.
But one of the things Blood talks about and grapples with is the idea of healing as accepted functional haunting; how to carry your ghosts without being overpowered; what memories are of value, and to what do you cling out of obligation? Stepdad grieves differently than I do; I think of it as triggered grief, brought about by specific memories etc. etc. But I'm always aware of the "hole in the world" as one of Moorer's chapter titles puts it, and so much of the last year has been the learning of how to contain the abyss while also containing y'know...all the profoundly glorious, joyous shit that makes life worth living.
It feels profoundly validating to see a reasonably functional adult--with many of the markers of career success etc. etc.--stand up and say: yeah, I, too, am deeply fucked up by grief. Even if that grief is a different shape than yours.
The piece is also a meditation on legacy: the way that we, often robbed of the ability to know family with the nuanced eyes of our adulthood, know shadows; how much of our lives is spent attempting to reconcile the pictures we have with those of others; the jagged edges where all the pictures don't fit, and coming to terms with our own lack of clarity. It's also a piece about trauma and alcoholism and other profoundly complicated, raw shit, and there aren't really words to do it justice.
Fortunately, there is the album Blood, ostensibly penned as a memoir companion, but more a contained project in its own right. It feels as experimental and unique as a Mitchell album: a kind of opera done in country, folk, and jazz.
My choice of opera is very deliberate; just as the language barrier often excludes us from the nuances of Italian opera, there is a curtain across Blood. Moorer has pain-stakingly told the story in the memoir. This is all the poetry of the memoir, paired down and sharpened not into stories but word-pictures. Snapshots that take you through an entire journey. From a woman struggling in a relationship to two children clutching hands in the dark as human monstrosity surrounds them. From a woman bitterly exhausted of "pushing this rock up a hill" to the raw admission that all that was ever wanted was someone's love. Capped off by an exquisite ballad in which all the roiled-up feelings are slipped back into the mental box they appeared from to make room for a little piece.
It's an absolute rollercoaster in ten songs--forty minutes, tops. The poetry still has me quoting phrases over and over--to which I won't subject y'all, because they lose their power out of context. And the ambiguity fascinates me. We will never know, and are never meant to, if the woman struggling with the breakup is Allison herself, or Allison's mother, just before her death. We will never know if this story is told chronologically from Mrs. Moorer's leaving to Allison's healing, or in flashback after the breakup brings all the memories roiling forth.
We simply live in ambiguity, as adrift as grief so often makes us, until we're brought to catharsis. I can't rec either the book or the album enough, but especially the album if you need something beautiful that won't entirely gut you.
But one of the things Blood talks about and grapples with is the idea of healing as accepted functional haunting; how to carry your ghosts without being overpowered; what memories are of value, and to what do you cling out of obligation? Stepdad grieves differently than I do; I think of it as triggered grief, brought about by specific memories etc. etc. But I'm always aware of the "hole in the world" as one of Moorer's chapter titles puts it, and so much of the last year has been the learning of how to contain the abyss while also containing y'know...all the profoundly glorious, joyous shit that makes life worth living.
It feels profoundly validating to see a reasonably functional adult--with many of the markers of career success etc. etc.--stand up and say: yeah, I, too, am deeply fucked up by grief. Even if that grief is a different shape than yours.
The piece is also a meditation on legacy: the way that we, often robbed of the ability to know family with the nuanced eyes of our adulthood, know shadows; how much of our lives is spent attempting to reconcile the pictures we have with those of others; the jagged edges where all the pictures don't fit, and coming to terms with our own lack of clarity. It's also a piece about trauma and alcoholism and other profoundly complicated, raw shit, and there aren't really words to do it justice.
Fortunately, there is the album Blood, ostensibly penned as a memoir companion, but more a contained project in its own right. It feels as experimental and unique as a Mitchell album: a kind of opera done in country, folk, and jazz.
My choice of opera is very deliberate; just as the language barrier often excludes us from the nuances of Italian opera, there is a curtain across Blood. Moorer has pain-stakingly told the story in the memoir. This is all the poetry of the memoir, paired down and sharpened not into stories but word-pictures. Snapshots that take you through an entire journey. From a woman struggling in a relationship to two children clutching hands in the dark as human monstrosity surrounds them. From a woman bitterly exhausted of "pushing this rock up a hill" to the raw admission that all that was ever wanted was someone's love. Capped off by an exquisite ballad in which all the roiled-up feelings are slipped back into the mental box they appeared from to make room for a little piece.
It's an absolute rollercoaster in ten songs--forty minutes, tops. The poetry still has me quoting phrases over and over--to which I won't subject y'all, because they lose their power out of context. And the ambiguity fascinates me. We will never know, and are never meant to, if the woman struggling with the breakup is Allison herself, or Allison's mother, just before her death. We will never know if this story is told chronologically from Mrs. Moorer's leaving to Allison's healing, or in flashback after the breakup brings all the memories roiling forth.
We simply live in ambiguity, as adrift as grief so often makes us, until we're brought to catharsis. I can't rec either the book or the album enough, but especially the album if you need something beautiful that won't entirely gut you.
no subject
Date: 2021-12-18 10:29 pm (UTC)