Cascadia Calling, 2025.10.20
"you don't like sunny days, I'll make it rain"
I write this having just watched the Mariners fall apart in ALCS game 6. The same Eugenio Suárez who delivered us to victory in game 5 with a clutch grand slam had three errors in an unremarkable 6-2 loss. Tomorrow night’s game is the knife’s edge on which rests my requirement to eat crow over shit-talking I previously did in this space.
(Ed. Note: The Mariners blew it, but the author has, for the most part, forgiven them.)
“…I too
have known trickery, sunk
in the warm salt bath of a lie,
the desire for vengeance
a pillar of fire swording
the brown land of my chest. Prince,
I commiserate and curse
how if time is an arrow, it strikes
us in the back. …” - Stephanie Yue Duhem, “Esau”
This past week I’ve been slowly digesting Stephanie Yue Duhem’s collection Cataclysm Moves Me I Regret to Say. I found it uneven, but brilliant. There’s a strange anxiety shot through much of it that I found both resonant and hard to sit with. Perhaps it’s because I have my own anxious streak, but it felt so keen as to be uncomfortable at times.
The collection does a strange dance, between the overly modern and familiar (“Dental Work”, “Lilacs”) and the eternal (the above-quoted “Esau” which will stay with me as among my favorite contemporary poems). I was also struck by the diversity of form in the collections. There are several pieces with fairly staid structure and rhythm (“Afterfight”), others that leverage classical forms (“The Possible Daughter”, “Arachne in Haiku”), and some that feel almost unhinged in their post-modern discarding of form (“Outsideness”).
One poem that I passed over at first, but has since stuck with me is “Dental Work”, which evokes the anxious, post-anesthesia energy of finishing a medical appointment. Its nervous, stream-of-consciousness structure suits the nervous patter of the piece. It’s in works like this that Duhem is at her most authentic. No one else could bring out quite the same fluttery, bitter energy. There’s a signature in the anxiety that is uniquely her own.
I finally got around to listening to All In, a “rarities collection” of Justin Townes Earle songs. Really, it’s mostly demo versions of songs that appeared on his studio albums The Saint of Lost Causes and Kids in the Street, plus a few covers and other ephemera. If you’re not already a massive Justin Townes Earle fan, it’s probably a skip. For those of us who are already JTE obsessives like myself, it’s essential listening. For one thing, it demonstrates just how much variety Earle got from his own music. No demo on the record has quite the same emotional or musical valence as the album version.
It’s a testament to his skill as a songwriter and musician that his demo version of “If I Was the Devil” feels like a rediscovered, 80-year-old field recording of the folk song that the album version was a modern re-interpretation of. These kinds of collections also give the true fan a chance to dig into the writing process of the artist. Lyrically, this version is clearly a sketch of the sexier, more sinister song that it would become on the album, but all of the core images are there to serve as tentpoles to the tune.
This version is more mournful and yearning than the album version. The album version of “If I Was the Devil” takes much of its power from its cool self-assuredness. This version seems desirous of power and a chance to prove itself. (“I just need you to need me, just need you to need me.“) The fact that it matured into the wickedly calm album version feels almost self-actualized. As if the song itself demanded whatever bargain turned it into the final product.
For comparison, here’s how the tune finally ended up on the album.