Valerie Dryden, a photography student at the Corcoran College of Art in Washington, has been photographing our family for the past several months. Taking thousands of photos, actually, as part of her senior thesis. That thesis is now finished, and last night was the opening of an exhibition of her photos at the Corcoran. Tina has more photos up on her blog if you want to see them.

I have to say, it was a bit odd to see myself and our family up on the walls of the gallery. Stranger still to see people recognizing us from the photos. The public nature of our participation in the project began to sink in for me — that we really had opened up our lives for people to examine in a way that we have not in our various blogs, podcasts, etc. In all our projects, we control the message — but here, the camera controls the message. It’s objective, and with thousands of photos taken, any effort to try to control how we’re presented is more or less lost. What remains is the real thing, unfiltered, unmanaged. Granted, the photo selection was managed by Valerie and her professors — and the selection has its own thesis, tells its own story — but it was weird to realize that we had opened our lives up to this. And in many ways, it is a more honest depiction of who we are than anything else we’ve done or participated in.

There was one photo in particular — where Tina and I were kissing each other goodbye — that showed us in a way that we rarely reveal to our friends and family, much less the world at large. My friend Jake pointed out to me that he had never seen us kiss before — therefore, the photo was his favorite, because it showed a side of us we never reveal even to the people we’re close to. And I have to admit, I was surprised to see the photo on display, maybe even a little embarrassed. We actively suppress intimate moments in our relationship — we keep them private, just between us. We’ve made a lot of our lives public, from the original Restaurant Fuel ‘zine, through our blogs and now through our three podcasts. So it was a shock to see us up there on the wall, gigantic, kissing. Our true inner lives on display.

And that I suppose is just why Valerie’s project was a success. Because even with subjects who are actively aware of how they’re perceived and are accustomed to managing and compartmentalizing their public persona, the truth came out. And it’s truth — whether objective or subjective — that makes the best art.

photo credit: soggydan

Well, it appears that John McCain — famously self-righteous about his high moral standards, honor and honesty — may have had an affair with a lobbyist in 1999, just prior to his first bid for the Republican nomination.  Daily Kos has a run-down on the scandal here.

Now I must confess, I do like John McCain.  He’s the only Republican for whom I would possibly vote, and the damage to his reputation from this is incalculable, as is the damage to his campaign for the Presidency.   In comparison to Barack Obama and his long marriage and young family, the divorced and unfaithful McCain loses the moral high ground in its entirity.  Against Hillary, I think it definitely destroys any advantages he had over her.

But you have to wonder why the hell these people do stuff like this.  If normal people can’t keep their own infidelities secret, then why do politicians assume they can do it?  Particularly with so many people — not just the press, but staff, opponents, opponents’ staff, the public, etc. — watching them all the time.  It was inevitable that something like this would come out eventually.

It’s my belief — call it Jeff’s Axiom — that there are no such things as secrets.  Once someone else knows a bit of forbidden information, it passes from person to person like a virus until it’s revealed to the world at large.   The fact that John McCain could keep this under wraps for 9 years is surprising, but what’s not surprising is that the moment he locked up the nomination it came out.  McCain and his staff should have known and predicted this would happen.  The fact that they didn’t shows that they’re really not going to be up to the task of campaigning against Barack Obama (or possibly Hillary Clinton), with an energized Democratic movement behind him (or her).

photo credit: numlok™ 

Doesn’t it seem strange that with 10 straight losses, Hillary Clinton still clings to the desparate notion that she can win this thing? Any other candidate, including Obama, would be under intense pressure to bow out of the raise if suffering from similar losses. It’s always the next state where she’ll turn things around — we heard it this week with polls showing her ahead, and pundits expecting a Hillary resurrection. And then Obama beats her by 15 points.

Look, I’m not going to say that she can’t do it, but after a week of negative campaigning — with some pretty tough lines of attack at that — she still wasn’t able to close the gap in Wisconsin. In fact, if you were to compare the actual results to the polls, the gap actually widened.

The only thing staying in the race serves is to 1) give weight to the conspiracy theorists who believe that she’s going to steal the nomination, and 2) keep our party from having a candidate who can engage John McCain over the summer. If this things drags on until the convention in August, there’s nothing stopping McCain from campaigning against Obama on one flank, while he’s still engaged with Hillary on the other.

If Hillary had any honor or decency, she would concede if she lost Texas and Ohio, but we know now that she has none. The sad fact that we’re all waking up to now is that the “smears” and “slanders” the Republicans launched against the Clintons were 100% true. We were just unwilling to believe it until we saw her use the same sleazy tactics on another Democrat. She’ll fight this all the way to the convention, and continue to use strongarm tactics on delegates to try to subvert the will of the voters. The party is now splitting into two factions, and if something isn’t done to reconcile the two soon, the ultimate winner of the nominations risks losing half the party due to the Obama-Clinton rift.

If Hillary continues her losing streak, I hope her advisors, friends and colleagues in the party will have the good sense to pressure her to get out of the race. If she wins, fair enough. But if she loses, she needs to wake up to reality and concede.

I picked up Heretic Pride, the new LP from the Mountain Goats today.  Emusic, usually my stalwart resource for new music, doesn’t have it, yet.  I ended up picking it up from iTunes.

I have been a fan of the Mountain Goats and John Darnielle since about 1996 or so.  There’s not a lot of bands or artists I listened to back then that I still listen to now.  In recent years, he’s worked on a trilogy of “memoirs” — albums that deal directly with his past.  I love two of the three records — The Sunset Tree, which chronicles his childhood with an absuive stepfather and We Shall All Be Healed, about his time with a group of friends in Portland addicted to crystal meth (or so I’ve read — I’m sorry if this is an inaccurate description).  Both records are beautiful and honest and contain many of his best songs.  Get Lonely, the third in the triology, was a great accomplishment, but wasn’t a very pleasant record to listen to — the loss and sadness of that record made it somewhat inaccessible to me.

It’s hard to remember now back when his records were like collections of short stories — glimpes of characters in the throes of life.  But that approach returns on Heretic Pride, and it is a welcome return.  Although the Mountain Goats continue on a a trajectory away from John’s lo-fi roots, the themes of the record and the stories here are familiar to anyone who has stuck with him over the years.  There’s even appearances from old friends who contributed to the Mountain Goats in the early days, most notably 1990’s lo-fi king Franklin Bruno and The Bright Mountain Choir, whose back up vocals have been sorely missed from many years of Mountain Goats records.

It’s hard to describe the rush of emotion I get when I listen to this record, particularly to “San Bernardino,” a song that tells the tale of a young couple who take to the highway and ultimately give birth to their son in a motel bathtub.  Despite what one might expect from the subject matter, it is infused with a tremendous sense of love and hope — it’s as beautiful and moving as anything he’s ever written.  Perhaps it’s the greatest example of John as an artist, it may very well be my favorite Mountain Goats song.  When he sings “It was hard/but you were brave/you are splendid/ And we will never be alone in this world/whatever they say/we will be okay,” any parent knows exactly what he means.  If anything, the song documents the transformation of two individuals into a family, and it does so with such empathy and love that it’s hard to believe that John hasn’t been there himself.

Other standouts to me include “Sax Rohmer, Pt. 1,” the eponymous “Heretic Pride,” “Autoclave,” and especially “Lovecraft in Brooklyn,” which finds the Mountain Goats venturing into true rock music for the first time.

Here’s the new video for “Sax Rohmer, Pt. 1:”

The girls are now in the other room with their mother, who is trying to get them to fall asleep. Every few moments, Rachel stirs from near slumber and shrieks, “I can’t sleep! I want to play!” It is a harsh sound, filled with anger and pain, like a knife blade jabbed in your back. Meanwhile, her sister babbles happily, not at all close to falling asleep.

No, I really am not going to get any rest tonight.

It happens like this often. We go to bed about midnight, and one or both of the girls wakes up shortly thereafter, screaming bloody murder. The only thing that calms them down is coming into the living room and turning on the television. After that, they’re wide awake, and won’t be asleep again until 4:30 - 5:00 am. But the crying stops, which does our neighbors a serious favor, even if it ensures that we’ll never sleep.

So I’m looking at maybe not quite two hours of sleep tonight. I don’t know how I’m going to function at work tomorrow. I don’t know when I’m going to sleep again.

A long time ago, I held onto the fragile belief that this gets easier over time, but it doesn’t. It gets harder. And harder and harder.

It’s times like these, when I wonder what it must be like to be in normal family, with kids who sleep the night.  Do such families exist?   You have to wonder.

Here’s why: