Full album title: Vaxis Act III: The Father of Make Believe, full episode title, "The Dogs Bark While I breathlessly walk in unseasonably warm weather despite it being early march while listening to Coheed & Cambria’s Vaxis Act III: The Father of Make Believe

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Panda Bear’s newest album Sinister Grift is finally here and Ben & I wanted to let you know what we thought of each track. Sorry about the audio, hands-free voice note recording makes up for safety what it lacks in quality. We’ve been waiting five years for this one and couldn’t wait a second longer to dig in!

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MEG WHITE IS A BETTER DRUMMER THAN I AM A POET

This is an issue of record, meaning it is recorded

on record as sounding the thumping heartbeat

of an entire arena and or stadium. Can you imagine

if every person in the world understood every step

you ever took onto a bass drum? into a room? onto

a stage? C’mon people, Meg syncopated Jack White

tied down those long stringed guitar solos, those long

barbaric yawps. It is recorded on six records (seven,

if you count it live) and Meg always counts it live. All

eyes on her, behind a drumkit veil. Meg White is a better

drummer than I am a poet because there is no record

of me. I am not accruing dust in Spoonful Records in

Columbus, Ohio. At most, it is documented that I rent

an apartment, that I cosigned with my fiancé whom I can

no longer listen to entire White Stripes discographies while

traveling to because I have the luxury of simply rolling over.

This is as refreshing as a peppermint and I am here to report

to you, open mic crowd possibly more interested in that coffee

and or beer you ordered quite a while ago, that life is delightfully

sweet, simple, the way Jack talks about his ex-wife’s drumming.

Note(s): this poem is (as of now) unpublished, Rachel is no longer my fiancé (now happily married), and our home is now in Central Ohio, not an apartment in Southfield, Michigan, some twenty minutes (or so) from where Jack & Meg white first started playing music together.

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Assembling the stroller while listening to The White Stripes’

Get Behind Me Satan – an album that came out when I was a baby,

barely walking, brushing sweaty hair from my anxious forehead

now – marred with lines of worry and furrowed, glistening still

underneath a hat with an old logo for a new university, “this is it,”

I say to the dog, maybe my wife in the other room, the glass

of bourbon shimmering in rhythm with the spinning fan, the record

spinning thirty-three and one third rotations. It rolls like a wheel,

I think, affixing four of them into the base of the bassinet praying

the “satisfying click” these frustrating instructions promise me

will keep my son secure while we are outside. My god, out

side is everything. I can paint and plumb and dust and wet-Swiffer

your room, little man, but I can do none of those things out there.

“Get behind me, Satan,” I might yell at some demon lurking

behind a shrub in the cul-de-sac you’ll inherit when you’re finally

born. “Get behind me, Dad,” you might murmur in the songs

you sing in coos and cries, while I push the two of us circling

the sun until something new, thrilling, really music to your ears

becomes old to you, building something of your own like I am now.

Originally published in Barstow & Grand, issue six, Fall 2022.

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On February 2, 2011, The White Stripes announced their retirement from making and performing live music. This news came to me while being on a flight from Columbus to Washington D.C., which is to say, this news came to me in the form of a dozen text messages with links to unsophisticated mobile news sites broadcasting the news far and wide.

When my feet left the ground on that frigid morning, The White Stripes were a going concern. When that Embraer touched down besides the Potomac and taxied up to the gilded walls of Regan International Airport, The White Stripes were no more.

I’ve come to hate flying. I have a primal fear of airplanes, of being in the air, of being at airports, of thinking about travel by aluminum jet. And yet. I would quite like to be on that flight again. Listen to “Fell in Love With a Girl” and dream of seeing Jack and Meg play it together. Unburden Icky Thump of its status as ‘the last album.’ Free myself from the earthly sorrow of something I love but can’t quite have and soar among clouds and guitar riffs in heaven.

Join me this month as I celebrate The White Stripes by re-listening to their studio albums, live records, b-sides, rarities, and Third Man Vault releases. It is a journey I have been on many times, but as is often the case when February 2nd rolls around each year, it is a journey I feel compelled to start over. Come along for the ride (decidedly on the ground, two feet, four wheels, whatever your flavor).

In their announcement, The White Stripes had this to say:

The White Stripes do not belong to Jack and Meg anymore. The White Stripes belong to you now and you can do with it whatever you want. The beauty of art and music is that it can last forever if people want it to. Thank you for sharing this experience. Your involvement will never be lost on us and we are truly grateful.”

The beauty of art and music is that it can last forever if people want it to. 14 years later, The White Stripes continue, because we want it to.

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The Soapbox Podcast debut includes a new(ish) poem called "Birthday Party Poetry Lessons"

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