I Was Beat With Ukuleles

this about reading Thomas Pynchon and listening to Cameron Winter

I am twenty pages into The Crying Lot of 49, my introduction into the literary world of Thomas Pynchon. Long, twisty sentences packed full of references and snide commentary on the state of the world that I don’t quite understand. Its been a long time since a book has made me feel this stupid.

I wish I were envious of someone normal, like the influencers on my Instagram feed. This is more attainable; I could buy all the products they peddle, and starve myself, get some Botox for good measure, and appear close to what I see. Instead, I am envious of Thomas Pynchon—an eighty-eight-year-old American novelist known for his complex works of post-modern fiction.

He is still alive, maybe I should leave college and go on a quest to find him, the way Bob Dylan found Woody Guthrie in the hospital. Read him my Substack essays. Oh brother.

There are two songs I listen to when I am feeling this particular feeling. Cameron Winter gets it.

Nina knows the reason, and she’s seen into the mouth
Of what it is to be a mountain
And she’s seen all the good pigeon-like people shot down
And bones be kicked to powder by the insane wild horses
Nina I’m not nothing, but when you lie on the piano
I am reminded I am stupid, and in every upstairs room
A tall and daughterless Russian is kicking robins eggs to powder
While the music breaks a window

Nina + A Field of Cops, Cameron Winter

This song is about Nina Simone, a flash-in-the-pan, once-in-a-lifetime type of influential artist. A real musician’s musician. In the song, Winter wailing over a noisy piano, laments his frustration: listening to Nina Simone and feeling stupid. An apocalyptic howling that faithfully captures how I feel after twenty pages of Pynchon.

But it is not enough for me to joyfully consume. There is a reason—a feeling I can’t quite describe. I imagine it as a purple undercurrent swirling around me. I need to excise it. Catch it in a bottle. Write it down and miss the mark.

There is Cancer of The Skull. If I were still an edgy teenager when this song came out, I would have given myself a shitty DIY tattoo of a cancerous skull on my upper thigh. I see a pirate ship stranded in the middle of the ocean, a rosary slipping through the wooden hook arm of a patch-eyed pirate, a bruise on my left cheek after being slapped silly with the heavy side of a bright pink ukulele. This is a good song.

Oh, cancer of the fingers
And the hands of a beginner
Songs are meant for bad singers
I can't reach cancer of the 80s
I was beat with ukuleles
Oh, songs are a hundred ugly babies
I can't feed

Cancer of the Skull, Cameron Winter

There are guitars and then there are ukuleles. There is Thomas Pynchon then there is me. The purple undercurrent takes on a new image. I see a horde of shriveled, tiny faces—everything I want to write but can’t. I don’t have the words to do them justice yet. I am beholden to the ability of my beginner hands, the soft, fleshy fingers that exist before callouses take form.

I should finish the book. And finish my drafts. There is no end in this pursuit, only a constant state of reformation that I will grudgingly accept. Feed the mess of ugly, shriveled up babies before they disappear

Thank you for reading! I actually did write this immediately after reading A Crying Lot, so just now my frustration is being harnessed productively!

Here is four seconds of Love Takes Miles I recorded at the Cameron Winter concert in December! The only footage I got. Thank you Cameron Winter, your music makes me sick.