{"id":71,"date":"2005-11-25T22:52:00","date_gmt":"2005-11-25T22:52:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ayearofsongs.org\/blg\/?p=71"},"modified":"2015-11-01T17:14:56","modified_gmt":"2015-11-02T01:14:56","slug":"dimmer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ayearofsongs.org\/blg\/2005\/11\/25\/dimmer\/","title":{"rendered":"Dimmer"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Dimmer\"<\/p>\n

T<\/span>his gruel is about as thin as it gets.<\/p>\n

Inspired, for a moment, by the superfluity of meaningful lyrics to a good blues song, I threw these sketchy lines across some appropriately minor blues changes and, for a while, it made its way into my live sets on an at least occasional basis.<\/p>\n

Sharp-eyed fans of 60’s lit may notice a few references to poet-novelist-folkie Richard Fari\u00f1a’s nearly forgotten novel, Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me<\/span>, which attained near scriptural significance for me as a young man.<\/p>\n

Perhaps because it was very much a young man’s book, perhaps it was because Fari\u00f1a had died, still a young man himself, only a year or two before I discovered him… at any rate, I read and reread it and then went on to read his pal Thomas Pynchon’s V <\/span>and Crying of Lot 49<\/span>, looking for some sort of clue about where to go from there. (If you’ve read V<\/span>, you probably know how scary that notion is… And, no, <\/span>it wasn’t the source book for the 70s sci-fi TV show.)<\/p>\n\n

Dimmer<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Wake up baby, turn your <\/span>
\ndimmer lights down low<\/span>
\nWhen it gets yellow like this it hurts my
\neyes — but it eases my soul<\/p>\n

Come here baby pay those <\/span>
\nmonkeys in the shadows no mind<\/span>
\nThose monkeys are my demons — they been
\nwaitin’ for me such a long time<\/p>\n

I been down — but it
\nnever looked like up to me <\/span>
\nI been down but I guess
\ndown isn’t what it used to be<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This gruel is about as thin as it gets. Inspired, for a moment, by the superfluity of meaningful lyrics to a good blues song, I threw these sketchy lines across some appropriately minor blues changes and, for a while, it made its way into my live sets on an at least occasional basis. Sharp-eyed fans […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pgc_meta":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[6,340],"tags":[877,482,484,483],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ayearofsongs.org\/blg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ayearofsongs.org\/blg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ayearofsongs.org\/blg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ayearofsongs.org\/blg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ayearofsongs.org\/blg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=71"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/ayearofsongs.org\/blg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2071,"href":"https:\/\/ayearofsongs.org\/blg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71\/revisions\/2071"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ayearofsongs.org\/blg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=71"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ayearofsongs.org\/blg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=71"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ayearofsongs.org\/blg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=71"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}