Jim Carroll at Tin Angel
Philadelphia, PA, July 1995
Review by J. Gilday
The only time I saw Jim perform, it was five years ago and exact details are indistinct–the pieces read, lines that hit home, etc.–but the IMPACT I remember always, something significant, like the day a parent dies.
Or using a more positive comparison, discovering Albert Pinkham Ryder’s paintings, or the photos of Walker Evans. Deep boogaloo, chill bumps. Attention and senses suddenly on “full alert.” Questions and thoughts way beyond “entertainment” or “art” or “shock of recognition.”
Shaman shit i guess.
Two friends and I went to the Tin Angel in Philadelphia in July (i think) of 95 to see Jim read. I was familiar with his books and recordings; they were not. they went because I assured them he was something special.
Heidi, Judy and I were eating downstairs when Jim walked in. I had told them he was very “odd-looking,” in an indefinable manner, but Ii don’t think my remark registered until that moment. They both got quiet, looked my way, and felt compelled to whisper something like “jeez Jane, he is really….well he looks kind of boy but girl, very unearthly in some weird way.” Something like that.
I have to put some things in context here: I am transgendered, born male but never felt comfortable in any human sense as boy, and since 1991 have been “shifting” via the hormone therapy people like me use. This aint confessional, it’s relevant. I had been introduced to Jim in 1980 or 81 after I performed at cbgb, but was so foggy and introverted at the time, I probably didnt do more than handshake and mumble. But the introduction, from Jane friedman, stuck in my head and about 8 years later I found a giorno 33 rpm LP anthology with Jim on it, doing (i think) “A Peculiar Looking Girl.” I didnt place him at first on the cover, thinking the photo was of a female.
Here is where my “personal agenda” kicked in. I wondered if perhaps he was another who had experienced discomfort with given gender, so that led me to finally paying close attention to his work–especially the writing. His band work has never hit me as deep as the written and spoken words do. I quickly became a big fan of his prose and poetry, and the “gender” agenda was more or less forgotten, a floating questionmark not important or intrinsic to my appreciation. But that was what got me looking closer.
The Tin Angel people had impishly booked him with a poet named Patricia Smith-a black woman. She was good, but the crowd had come for Carroll. Probably more than a few had come expecting Patti Smith. In retrospect this booking seems a teenage joke on both poets, as their approaches and respective”ways” with the word were not that compatible. It seemed she was exploited for the accident of name, and the shock of the unexpected reality. He was exploited for the myths of friendship. The club got a sold-out house, and the premise seemed smirky. Wet t-shirt night on Parnassus.
He began as expected. Some humor, very Noo Yawk, very knowing, very quick and familiar. Updowntown Rimbaud, Diary of Pan Frank, the knowing wink of getting away with it.
Dangerous fun. Hip but not cruel. Jaded still green.
I noticed his reading glasses, the shake in the voice, the Colorado Rockies softball cap, the battered and spilling-at-the-seams composition books he was reading from. The cigarette package poking out of a pocket, the softback wrinkled and nearly empty that yields smokes with creases and wrinkles, that seem to burn faster and taste shittier than the ruler-straight ones from a fresh or hardbox.
The words were going by fast, but not rushed. Definite tides and cadences. I realize now I had no expectations at all that night. I had never been to a slam, and had never seen a poet “speak”, outside of some “beat” documentary footage-maybe.
The words slowed a bit. An introduction almost missed–something like “I got a letter (or phone call or email) from __________ who’s over in __________ so i’m gonna say something back to them.”
Something like that. Vague and only remembered because of what occurred next.
Jim began to speak about war. About atrocities. About rape and blood lust and murder and deep real fucking evil. To the beat and march of brute ancient cold vampire stuff.
Plenty of Hollywood films and tv do too. We are modern. We understand. We know. We know shit.
Some circuit turned on. I had felt the same circuit turn on only precisely once before, about 7 months before, and the two were somehow linked, unexpected, and undeniably similar. And felt like colliding head-on with something big. Leaving the scene of the accident was not an option.
I began to shake. deep down shake. I began to weep, then just flat-out cry. Heidi grabbed my hand and held me up. I was falling off my stool. I felt very stupid, very naked, like probably everyone was staring at me. Like an idiot. Ii heard every word, even with this instant nervous breakdown in public progress.
Every damned luminous word hit like a hammer bom bommm
I felt bad to be human because humans did what Jim talked about. I felt slimy and evil and dirty. Ashamed. Like you’re “supposed” to feel via “wrong” sex or drugs or crime or general mayhem, but don’t really. I felt stupid and dirty and small for never really considering the realities of such events as war until then…that exact moment. Prior it was just “news” I had only felt so deeply about my son until then. My abilities with words fail at trying to spell out the interlocked, braided, multi-dimensionality of what was happening in my head/on the stage at the poet focus…
I could use the word epiphany but that seems pompous and vain, but that’s the kind of word that suggests the impact. Not satori or “flash” or “dug it” or “grokked it.”
Fuck those words. This was spiritual. Down home gut bucket bare boned gospel hoodoo.
Others must have moved the same way. At the end of the piece, there was total, dead, not-a-sound or throat-clearing silence.
A second or three….and this shakiness voice says:
“Ti tti…ink I’d …..I’d bettaa find somethin fffuuunnnyyy ta rrreeead.”
The contrast in that fast/slow transition was not show biz. It was instead a performer as mystified by the shit….as the rest of us…. and as friendly and understanding in the implications as a family member saying “it’s all right, I know, I know, hey… let’s watch tv!” after a bad news phone call from a relative.
I dont know how to qualify or quantify what Jim Carroll does or is. That’s why Ii said shaman shit previous. But I think it was the best whatever-it-is I have ever witnessed. Iit felt like drugs, or like what drugs are supposed to feel like but usually don’t after very long. But the residue was not sickness or shakes or anything bad.
And all I can compare it to happened 6 or 7 months before… listening to the old Carter family song “Hello Stranger” alone and a blizzard outside. In the very rural, forested and quiet place I live. Somehow this song grabbed me… I could not stand up and was laughing and crying at the same time for hours, being flooded with the same type of troublesome waters Jim’s words rode in on.
I have looked for the Tin Angel war words in print or cd since then but have not found them. He must write a lot. It cant all get printed. Or maybe some words are only for speaking live. Not ink or disc.
On the catholicboy site or perhaps in an interview Jim said something like:
“it was during a reading at the ____________ and the holy ghost came down and took over.’ “
This is not a precise quote, but it stuck in my head, because, even though it seems embarrassing and pompous and uncool (whatever that is) and millions of other inexact anti-definitions, that is what it felt like when Jim Carroll poet talked about the war in dracula land. Like something dead serious said “listen up and listen good.”