Memoirous

Memories have been stirred by the song Carissa by Sun Kil Moon or Mark Kozelek . Mention the state Ohio and today one might be greeted by several responses. Rust-belt. Went for Trump big time. Ground zero for pill mills. Overdose country. Craigslist serial killers. (That last one is not made up.) It has become a place of desperation, where residents felt left behind, misunderstood. Also the pill mills. They were rip[e and ready to be taken advantage of by shyster doctors and lawyers, using them for SSI money. Many have been left behind by an economy not built on manufacturing or mining. The population of the small towns has been decimated—the overdoeses don’t help. But that isn’t the Ohio I remember. Because many of my memories are colored by bike riding ( see even back then I rode way too many miles. Often too far to get home. More than once I had to call my dad from a pay phone to come get me because I was too tired or it was too dark for me to get home.) I remember...

Carissa Autobiographical songs, Ohio Sun Kil Moon or Mark Kozelek Left Ohio. Carissa was his second cousin, killed in a freak accident. Burned to death. Just like their grandfather. What are the chances? he asks in this highly autobiographical song full of melancholy and wondering, loss and unending questions. The landscape of rust-belt Ohio, devastated by prescription drugs, black-tar heroin, unemployment when the manufacturing jobs left, when the mines closed. I might have been drawn to this song because it deals with memoir, or because of the Ohio connection (I hail from there) or because of the voice. Nothing spectacular, the whole song is somewhat flat and not exactly full of emotion, but it evokes. It tells a story that demands our attention, because we all know someone like Carissa, someone deserving of a little poetry in their life, who vanish way too suddenly from this earth. He also brings us back to family, all those needling connections that we sometimes ...