jawn one.
Not long ago, I posted something on my Facebook page saying that I was planning to write some more stuff about Marah, my old band, in the near future. I mentioned that my format would be my ‘Jawn’ method’, a method — if you’re not familiar — which allows me a sort of liberated chance to write shorter, often unrelated, vignettes that ostensibly add up to a single threaded comprehensive ‘episode’ of Jawns. Confused yet? Haha/ hope not.
Beyond that, I stated that I was hoping to do some of this in a sort of oral history style. This meant that I would be asking fans to contribute by answering specific questions I post regarding their experiences and memories and feelings about Marah. My intent was, and still is, to incorporate their words into my own in an effort to create a loosely quilted narrative that might help tell the story of a relatively unknown American rock ’n’ roll band in a way that hasn’t necessarily been done before. Although, I have to admit, at this point in time… what the hell was I thinking? What I’m hoping to do here isn’t all that varied from what lots of other musicians or writers have done before me. Use the fans as a powerful voice in the telling of the tale, and you add intricate layering and promising depth. No rocket science required. What I didn’t see coming, however, was the straight up emotional rollercoaster I’ve been riding on since people began to actually respond to my initial ask. I guess maybe I should have understood that by scratching the surface of an experience that was so monumental in my life, I’d be soliciting visits from all kinds of emotional ups and downs and in-betweens. But between you and me: I just didn’t. Until now.
jawn two.
Is it possible to never quite understand what the hell happened? In life, or maybe even in death, do you think there is a likelihood that many of us, if not most of us, are never quite able to add up all the days with all the nights and end up somewhere down the long dusty road with an equation that rings true somehow? It’s almost like, how much of what you have lived through/ or how much of what I have/ has even been important? Or necessary? Or recollected correctly? Do you see what I’m getting at here? The life we have known, as alternately sweet or as dog shit as it likely was at different times… wouldn’t it be fair to say that- more often than not- it was really just maddeningly difficult? And by difficult I don’t necessarily mean: A paper plate of Dickensian-style short ribs ripped fresh from your own personal cage and served up with a slathering side of tin cup blind beggar blues. Although that qualifies, no doubt. What I’m getting at is more complex. The way I see it, even if a person like you or me has led a fairly average life, an existence with joy and sorrow more or less evened out across the decades they have known, isn’t it still quite difficult to truly fathom what the fuck even happened? Has our grandest hurdle in this world been tryin to figure out what to do? Or has the real challenge always lurked in the trying to figure out why we did it? Did my world actually unfold the way I think it did? And if it did, well then why? Or how? What dangling strings came together over time to stitch this tapestry I have now/ this thing that feels like home/ this wild, worn-out and musty collection of knots and loops that I call my body… and my mind… and my memories?
jawn three.
You want to hear what the first question I posed to people was? I’ll tell you. It was this. Why was Marah important to you? Look at it. Short and sweet, right? Read it a couple more times in a row now. Anything a little off about it to you? I’m guessing if you do have something in mind that theres a very good chance you landed on the same thing that I now land on when I look at it. I used the word was instead of is. Why WAS the band important to you? Not why IS it still important to you? You see what I’m saying? Now, I know, I know, that might be of tiny importance to almost anyone who isn’t me in this particular case, but since I’m writing this thing I’m going to hang out here with it a while. If I’m being honest, you see, prior to posting the original thing on Facebook, I do in fact remember vividly trying to tweak the construction of that single simple question. I fiddled with it with literary aspirations, in hopes that the question itself might reveal as much as possible about the nature of the person asking it (me!) without throwing down heavy influence on the way it might be answered (you!). I can’t help but wonder now though if my phrasing here that I did end up using is possibly a case of me bullshitting myself in order to bullshit you? You see what I’m getting at here? Do you see how goddamn tricky it is to be the writer that you yourself can trust and believe, let alone the one that others can? While trying diligently to not implement even the slightest bit of damage to my street cred or my perceived image as a man who writes openly about real things, was I in fact attempting to sway the reader (and the potential responder) into a state of looking at Marah purely in terms of the past? Was I trying to influence folks into considering their responses through a very specific filter system that disallowed them to mention the band Marah in the here and now? Look, I know for a fact that I considered the past tense as well as the present one when I was hemming and hawing about how to write it down. What I cannot tell you now though is why exactly I used the one instead of the other. Hell, I could have even used both without any trouble at all, huh? I could have written: Why is/ was Marah important to you? and not a damn thing would have been excluded. The past, the present, even the future could have easily been imagined in this version of my question in question. But still, I settled on what I settled on. I indicated that this band I was asking about existed solely in the past. Before now, I was saying, there was then. Stand back there when you write me a reply. It seems to be where I am with all this now, huh?
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Serge Bielanko lives in small-town Pennsylvania with an amazing wife who’s out of his league and a passel of exceptional kids who still love him even when he’s a lot. Every week, he shares his thoughts on life, relationships, parenting, baseball, music, mental health, the Civil War and whatever else is rattling around his noggin.
