The Waterboys, "This Is The Sea." This was the last song I heard on my headphones last night, before I dozed off on the porch with my book on the floor. I got in a car accident Thursday afternoon -- rear-ended on 94 in the rain -- and my wife gave me a muscle relaxant, which did me in. The last thing I remember is the utter transformative powers of this song, which I've written about before, but which last night took on a power bordering on the mystical.

Now I'm sitting here wondering for the first time if songs sometimes act as premonitions, or precursors to real thought and actions. For the past couple days I'd been thinking about how little philosophical effect the crash had on me. I had no ephiphany that made me want to cherish life more fully, and chalked up the non-reaction to being older and harder to impress, epiphany-wise.

Then I heard this song, which I've heard a hundred times, easily. It always gets me; I wish I'd heard it when I was 14. "That was a river," sings Mike Scott, about the past; "this is the sea," he sings, about the present and future -- yours, mine, ours -- and in its waves of awe it is sheerly and simultaneously hopeful, bouyant, and terrifying.

Then last night, as the devil-fiddle was fading out along with my consciousness, I heard Scott sing a line I'd never heard before:

"Behold the sea."

Behold the sea! It took my breath away; did I hear him right? He wasn't just celebrating the sea, he was insisting that I behold it. It unlocked something in me. It had always been a great live-in-the-moment power-of-now message, and a reminder of why I've always been drawn to water -- the infinity of the lakes, the creek, the ocean, the Mississippi River (water from which makes up 83 percent of all Twin Citians) -- but now it was a demand, coming from a wiseman, that hit me with as much force as a 55-mph car.

It also took me back to On A Clear Day, a beautiful British film about a middle-aged guy who drags his buddies along with him on his dream. He swims the English Channel, and the methodical approach he takes to his training will be recognizable to all Zen-types in the Twin Cities Marathon, whom I am with in envious spirit today.

Student: "I've achieved enlightenment, master. Now what?"
Master: "Chop wood and carry water."

Today I chopped wood and carried water. I dug weeds, cut the lawn, tore down the tire swing, cleaned the basement, picked up my daughter's friend (whose 12-person family lives in a house the size of an antfarm and are very likely not wrestling with questions of existentialism), went to the book and record store, and to the hardware store with my neighbor Pete, whom I recently met and started talking to about seeking, big questions, mysticism, history, and the freedom that comes with not having answers to anything.

All the while, I had KFAI-FM's Good and Country on the radio. It's the best thing about Saturday afternoons -- tooling around listening to all these obscure decades-old songs about love, death, murder, drinking, cheating, heartache, beauty, lust, good, evil, heaven, hell, gambling, friendship, lost love, found love, and everything else they haven't named yet, and realizing yet again how universal the human condition is.

And at the moment, I'm wondering if any of these unconnected dots would have been connected in my head had I not gotten whiplash, or heard Scott's order for me to "behold" the beauty of the world, or found this prayer waiting for me over the e-transom as I sat down to write tonight:

Pray for Peace
by Ellen Bass

Pray to whomever you kneel down to:
Jesus nailed to his wooden or plastic cross,
his suffering face bent to kiss you,
Buddha still under the Bo tree in scorching heat,
Adonai, Allah.
Raise your arms to Mary
that she may lay her palm on our brows,
to Shekhina, Queen of Heaven and Earth,
to Inanna in her stripped descent.

Then pray to the bus driver who takes you to work.
On the bus, pray for everyone riding that bus,
for everyone riding buses all over the world.
Drop some silver and pray.

Waiting in line for the movies, for the ATM,
for your latte and croissant, offer your plea.
Make your eating and drinking a supplication.
Make your slicing of carrots a holy act,
each translucent layer of the onion, a deeper prayer.

To Hawk or Wolf, or the Great Whale, pray.
Bow down to terriers and shepherds and siamese cats.
Fields of artichokes and elegant strawberries.

Make the brushing of your hair
a prayer, every strand its own voice,
singing in the choir on your head.
As you wash your face, the water slipping
through your fingers, a prayer: Water,
softest thing on earth, gentleness
that wears away rock.

Making love, of course, is already prayer.
Skin, and open mouths worshipping that skin,
the fragile cases we are poured into.

If you're hungry, pray. If you're tired.
Pray to Gandhi and Dorothy Day.
Shakespeare. Sappho. Sojourner Truth.

When you walk to your car, to the mailbox,
to the video store, let each step
be a prayer that we all keep our legs,
that we do not blow off anyone else's legs.
Or crush their skulls.
And if you are riding on a bicycle
or a skateboard, in a wheel chair, each revolution
of the wheels a prayer as the earth revolves:
less harm, less harm, less harm.

And as you work, typing with a new manicure,
a tiny palm tree painted on one pearlescent nail
or delivering soda or drawing good blood
into rubber-capped vials, writing on a blackboard
with yellow chalk, twirling pizzas--

With each breath in, take in the faith of those
who have believed when belief seemed foolish,
who persevered. With each breath out, cherish.

Pull weeds for peace, turn over in your sleep for peace,
feed the birds, each shiny seed
that spills onto the earth, another second of peace.
Wash your dishes, call your mother, drink wine.

Shovel leaves or snow or trash from your sidewalk.
Make a path. Fold a photo of a dead child
around your VISA card. Scoop your holy water
from the gutter. Gnaw your crust.
Mumble along like a crazy person, stumbling
your prayer through the streets.

The Gun Club, "Sex Beat" and "She's Like Heroin To Me."
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You are just a click away from something which will eliminate your most distressing trouble. Several inches in a couple of months, this is not fantasy, this is reality!

Ladies will fight over the chance to get into your bed! You should be ready to witness females go wild because of you. The change that will happen will be obvious! You won't increase your most important muscle in gyms - so this is what you have to try!

See our offer:

Count Basie and Oscar Peterson with Joe Mauer, "Homerun."

Marlin Levinson/Star Tribune

The Replacements, "Cool Water." I always thought Chris Mars wrote this ditty while haunted by the Hamm's jingle ("from the land of sky blue cool waters"), and I can't read anything having to do with Hamm's -- such as today's cool cool Don Boxmeyer piece -- and not hear this celebration of simple pleasure, or have it take me back to my first beer (a Hamm's), with my boy Rick Schreiber, sitting on the banks of the Minnehaha Creek after baseball practice.

The Concretes, "On The Radio." God and creepy culture vultures forgive me, but this is gonna be sentimental. It's my little girl's eighth birthday, and some guys never get to see their little girl's eighth birthday, or third or 28th or 50th, because they go to war with themselves or the world, and don't make it home.

So I'm feeling lucky to be alive. Partially because I moved a friend today. It was the classic Minneapolis move: 25th & Dupont to 25th & Blaisdell. No biggie. We listened to The Current the whole time, the five of us, and talked about the songs and, on a ridiculously beautiful afternoon in the kill-the-Republicans-with-kindness-in-2008 Twin Cities, heard this says-it-all tune in the middle of a perfect-day-for-a-move-and-hookie set:

4:12 Charlatans UK - Glory Glory
4:09 Tom Waits - Filipino Box Spring Hog
4:05 The Long Winters - Sky is Open
4:01 Ane Brun - To Let Myself Go

3 - 4 PM
3:57 Mason Jennings - Be Here Now
3:51 Ray LaMontagne - Be Here Now
3:46 Grand National - Drink To Moving On
3:41 Apollo Nove - War
3:36 Alexi Murdoch - Dream About Flying
3:31 Ben Harper - Better Way
3:27 The Alarmists - Some Things Never Stop
3:21 De La Soul - Me, Myself And I
3:16 The Lashes - Daddy's Little Girl
3:13 Mission of Burma - Spider's Web
3:10 The Wedding Present - I'm From Further North Than You (Acoustic Version)
3:07 Amy Millan - All The Miles
3:02 Ugly Duckling - Slow The Flow

2 - 3 PM
2:58 Spank Rock - Rick Rubin
2:54 Drive-By Truckers - Feb14
2:50 Chris Koza - View From a Pier
2:44 Built to Spill - The Wait
2:42 Teenage Fanclub - What You Do to Me
2:39 The Rosebuds - Back to Boston
2:35 Nickel Creek - Why Should the Fire Die?
2:32 Weezer - My Name is Jonas
2:28 Paul Westerberg - Meet Me In The Meadow
2:23 Sonya Kitchell - Can't Get You Out Of My Mind
2:16 GST - Money
2:12 Lilys - With Candy
2:10 Mike Doughty - Rising Sign
2:07 M. Ward - Right in the Head
2:03 The Concretes - On The Radio
2:01 Super Furry Animals - God! Show Me Magic

1 - 2 PM
1:55 Michael Franti And Spearhead - Everybody Ona Move
1:51 Calexico - Yours and Mine
1:46 Bruce Springsteen - Froggy Went A Courtin'

The whole day made me fall in love again with this city and its music, and it reminded me yet again that I've met most of my favorite people through music. All of whom have a common survivor mentality, which they get from hearing others make art out of pain and joy, and music helps them find different ways to love and take care of each other, etc.

The non-musichead-in-my-head sometimes says, "Where will you be when the music stops?" Meaning, "When America's Armageddon comes, you're going to be so fucked up on the unreality of music you won't be able to deal." Fleeting, that. Obviously. The music addicts I know come from all walks of life, and they're strong and weak. The main thing they share is guts, and incredible inner lives that will serve them well in the face of election season and beyond.

That's why I'm more interested in "Where will we all be when the music starts?" You know, when Dan Wilson uncorks "You and Me Against History," and Ike Reilly lets fly "It's Hard To Love An American." Coming soon to a change-agent-on-the-radio near you.

Beight, "It's Coming Down" (unreleased). This was the winner at last night's Rift 36-hour Songwriting Contest at the Bryant-Lake Bowl, in which 13 songwriters had 36 hours to write a song about the same topic: snow. Brad Senne (a.k.a. Beight)'s tune was a whimsical flurry of doomsday-worthy metaphors, including the importance of staying back 500 feet from the big yellow trucks, and a chorus that made the first snowfall of the year feel like ashes from Pompeii.

Other highlights:

Dana Thompson's murder ballad, which sounded not unlike Iris DeMent doing a Handsome Family song, what with her pushing her ex off a cliff just to watch him fall slow... y'know, like the... snow. It brought nervous titters from audience and singer alike, who simultaneously seemed to realize that hell hath no fury like a Minnesota woman scorned.

Terry Eason's sweet ode to his "snowgirl," whom he met at a rock show during a Minnesota winter.

Dan Israel's weary winter tale, Desdamona and Carnage's riff on the power of polar icecap-melting powers of self-reliance, Ben Glaros confessing and concluding that "I don't need this fucking snow" to bring him down, and Jenny Dalton's weird piano-pushed tale of her brother, trapped in a Norwegian snowstorm without a compass, but who ends up "surfing in San Diego."

All in all, this is one of my favorite local things going. It introduces you to new music (I'm listening to Beight's dark and sweet new CD at the moment); it's fun to hear what folks come up with, and it's inspiring to see how artists react to the idea of creativity-on-the-spot (I speak from experience; I was one of the songwriter/guinea pigs last night). Next installment is November 4. See ya there.

Your Loving Tiger, "Pick Up" (from the new CD What Gives). Ye olde scenario of the dumped waiting for a morsel via Ma Bell has been traversed by songsmiths from Blondie ("Hanging On The Telephone") to Sugar Ray, Ernest Tubb, The Drifters ("Pick Up The Phone"), Prince ("How Come U Don't Call Me Anymore?"), and the Replacements ("Answering Machine"). This one, by local honky freaks Your Loving Tiger (no Earlimart/Sparklehorse/Grandaddy fan should be without YLT's "The Long Arm Of The Lamb"), sounds like it was recorded under a post-Katrina porch.

In the Ninth Ward.

With a banjo.

On a cellie.

Played back on a Victrola.

Sung by a washed-up body on the shore who shore enough sounds like he's been through a shitstorm, but still wants to hear his shitstorm girl's voice.

Drive-By Truckers, "Goddamn Lonely Love" (from The Deep South) and Suzy Bogguss, "Drive South" (from Greatest Hits)

Wild Geese
by Mary Oliver

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting--
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

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This Train Won't Slow Down, "Mess Of Love" (unreleased). Think Polyphonic Spree busking with The Mamas and the Papas on an indelible hook/sentiment ("We are fools for making a mess of love") in four-part harmony. Viva the late-night joys of trolling Myspace.