There are many a ‘year end’ lists pouring in. This isn’t one of those. But it is adjacent. If there is one song I have suckled off of, fed from and sought both refuge and respite in — it’s Bill Callahan’s Say Valley Maker under his old moniker (smog). I’ve probably listened to it at least once a day since June.
Frankly, I don’t know where or how to start when writing this. I really, really admire Bill Callahan’s talents. Through them, I love the world more. When everything seems too fluid, so fuzzy, overly aggressive and as if it were a poorly written spy novel you read after it’s been discarded on a waiting room bench...Bill gives me something solid. He gives me something concrete. Honest. Understandable, but not easy. His music won’t automatically give you answers, but it will make your questions seem less ridiculous
In a eulogy (elegy, perhaps?) for Gil Scott-Heron, the writer Steve Almond suggested that one of the reasons Gil and those like him are so powerful is because artists project the voice we wish we could summon in ourselves. Their power lies not in that they feel what we feel, but that they say what we cannot bring ourselves to. It’s worth noting that Gil Scott-Heron covered Bill Callahan. Word for word. The song I’m New Here. Which was also the title Gil gave to the final album he made before he passed. That’s one hell of a thing.
But I understand why. Bill’s voice, his constellation of words, his thoughtful meandering, his lollying guitar...when they come together it’s as if they’ve mulled all of life over and sifted out the unnecessary bits. Leaving us with a distilled version of emotions that lack their original bitterness.
In 2020, Say Valley Maker acted as my proxy for both reason and human touch. I can’t recall how or why I was so drawn to it, but I awoke the day after the first protests for George Floyd’s murder and I thought of Bill. I came to this song. This Song. A song so simple and lilting, you might forget its’s playing. Bill’s voice as soothing as a friend’s in the distance as they approach your door.
Say Valley Maker is told from the perspective of a dead body floating in a roaring river. It is a tale told from helplessness — of being wholly subjected to the power of your surroundings. And, as a dead body, no one has any interest in saving you. In fact, you can’t be saved. So here you are, unsavable and unable to fight.
With the grace of a corpse in a riptide
I let go
Those are the first lines. Giving up. Relinquishing with a backhanded mention of grace as if it were voluntary. This Callahan corpse will be battered against this riverbed but it is pretending, with all its dead might, that it is participating in this activity. Gracefully. As if it were not insane for an already dead thing to be aware of its very imminent death.
If you’re reading, please listen to the song before continuing, the lyrics are in the description. I’ll wait here.
Essentially, the wild water takes the Callahan corpse through a deep valley it never would have seen if it were living. The journey gives the corpse a nuanced perspective that morphs into a renewed sense of agency and a realization that love requires sacrifice, but is also best paired with understanding, leeway and room for error.
The fact that Callahan’s corpse makes this realization in the middle of its journey — still at the will of the water, careening towards an unknown end, unable to make any sort of move or change for who knows how long — is the part that punches me in the gut. Squarely. Just to the left of my navel. Despite learning its lesson, the Callahan corpse has to weather more abuse and uncertainty in order to display its newfound agency. It’s not the learning that was hard, it’s the waiting. Say Valley Maker is a song that says: this will end. It will hurt. You will be buried. But, no matter how it ends, you will resurrect. Because you have learned.
If I had to condense the whole song (forgive me, Bill), it would be:
With the grace of a corpse, I let go.
Bend.
Take me.
Bury me.
I never really realized
Death is what it meant to make it.
Because there is no love on the hacked away plateau, in the unerring
So
Bury me
I’m gonna phoenix.
Why was I seeking Bill Callahan the morning after the world erupted around me? I don’t know. Maybe because this song is the most beautiful and abstract pep talk I’ve ever received. It’s a gentle rub on my cheek when I’m sad about something that’s not my fault. It’s a way of saying “you’ll understand when you’re older” or “this could all be for the best” without undermining my current pain.
It is particularly striking to listen to this song in the context of being a human during a pandemic. It’s even more arresting to listen to this song in the context of being an American in a volatile political year that affects much of the globe during a global pandemic. It is another thing entirely to listen to this song as a Black American in a time of polarizing racial upheaval and demonstrations erupting around the world to endorse or condemn your existence during a raging global pandemic. Our collective corpses being battered in a riptide that seems to only be gaining magnitude. We are prey to the whims of so many forces, and we pretend to be graceful in the churning water. And yet, somehow, to have deep within our bodies the knowledge that this will eventually end and — no matter how it ends — we will rise.
This post in no way does Bill’s artistry justice. I am in no way satisfied with what I’ve written here. I’m tipsy and alone and about to ring in a new year that seems already doomed to be a helpless corpse of its own. But it is what I can do to help amplify the projection I wish I could summon. The true grace his music emanates. The sacrifice with understanding — the action and patience — that is necessary to be a considerate human.
If for some reason Bill is reading this, I’d like to thank you for making the whole ordeal of life a little less lonely, a little more forgiving.