Joy Division: Unknown Pleasures

I bought this album in 10th grade, 1986. It was an import, so it came in a thick clear poly sleeve rather than the typical crinkly shrink-wrap. The sleeve had one perforated edge, allowing you to remove the record while preserving the protective layer. It was, I think, the first imported album I owned, and the slightly elevated edge of the slipcover made it stand out in the growing stack of records leaning against my crappy turntable/receiver/tape deck combo cube. I could easily find it in the dark. And fittingly enough, the music is particularly well suited for darkness, both literal and figurative.  

The album got heavy play throughout my sophomore and junior years, and became a point of connection with several significant people in my life, both in high school and beyond. Most importantly, it provided an inroad to myself at a formative time–and in many ways still does. Even after two decades of transformation, the view from that inroad remains essentially the same. It’s captured in the album’s opening line and groove notation (the “secret” message scratched into the blank vinyl rimming the album label):  I’ve been waiting for a guide to come and take me by the hand.

And now, five bites:

1. She’s Lost Control. Perhaps the best-known track on the album, and one of the weightiest for me personally. It opened side 2, which wasn’t actually called side 2–instead of being given numbers or letters the sides of this album were labeled as “Outside” and “Inside.” (Sadly, the significance of sidedness, like the thrill of groove notations, is lost on CDs and iTunes.) In 1986 the depression I’d carried through childhood was surfacing  into recognition, and from my first listen, this track’s hypnotic bass line and unearthly vocals combined to trace melancholy’s dark and shifting perimeter in my mind.

Confusion in her eyes that says it all
She’s lost control
And she’s clinging to the nearest passerby
She’s lost control
And she gave away the secrets of her past
And said I’ve lost control again
And of a voice that told her when and where to act
She said I’ve lost control again

It felt so familiar at age fifteen, the guitar chords straining against the weight of relentless rhythm. It still does.

2. Shadowplay, the next track, trades restraint for slowly building urgency. First verse:

To the centre of the city where all roads meet, waiting for you
To the depths of the ocean where all hopes sank, searching for you
I was moving through the silence without motion, waiting for you
In a room with a window in the corner, I found truth

Every listen, then and now, transports me to a dark stretch of unknown city, where I stand in the rain and wind, scanning faces, awaiting destiny with palpable anticipation and, at the very end, near-violent frustration.

(The video for the Killers’ version, which I just happened across on YouTube, features truly awesome footage and a truly horrid cover. Seriously–its awfulness rivals this, and that’s saying something.)

3. Interzone — the album’s brief manic peak. Vocals in unsettled layers, simultaneously pushing forward and pulling back. First verse:

I walked through the city limits
(Someone talked me in to do it)
Attracted by some force within it
(Had to close my eyes to get close to it)
Around a corner where a prophet lay,
(Saw the place where she’d a room to stay)
A wire fence where the children played
(Saw the bed where the body lay)
And I was looking for a friend of mine.
(And I had no time to waste)
Yeah, looking for some friends of mine

The first time Reed and I listened to this song together we sang along, voices drowned by stereo volume, and as its climax neared (trying to find a way to GET OUT) I wondered  if frenzy would break through his usual reserve. To my delight, it did.

4. Day of the Lords. The album’s first track (Disorder) is a relatively lively and ordered and hopeful song, yet ends in fragmentation and chaos; this track, which follows, is a full bottoming out. Last verse:

This is the room, the start of it all
Through childhood, through youth, I remember it all
I’ve seen the nights filled with bloodsport and pain
And the bodies obtained, the bodies obtained, the bodies obtained

Some might call such stark despair self-indulgent or maudlin, but it couldn’t be more authentic for an unlucky some. Just months after Joy Division released this album in the USA, the band’s vocalist, Ian Curtis, took his own life. Two weeks ago I received word that an old friend of mine did the same. Mike, a highly intelligent, gentle-hearted, and frequently hilarious guy who suffered from crippling depression. A Joy Division fan. He had a creepy/funny experience with this song one random night on a dead-end road in the Maryland woods (yes, the Blair Witch woods, although that came much later), and ever since he told me about it, this song has brought him to mind. These days, even more so.

Which brings me to the last bite:

5. New Dawn Fades. Mike’s memorial service was held on Saturday. Unable to attend, I listened to Unknown Pleasures on my ipod while I ran errands, thinking of him and his wife and their baby son. I was sad but okay until this came on, my favorite song on the album, and one of my all-time favorites, now more than ever. Last verse:

We’ll share a drink and step outside,
An angry voice and one who cried,
‘We’ll give you everything and more,
The strain’s too much, can’t take much more.’
I’ve walked on water, run through fire,
Can’t seem to feel it anymore.
It was me, waiting for me,
Hoping for something more
Me, seeing me this time,
Hoping for something else.

Mike was waiting for a guide who never came. I’m still waiting, myself. And just beginning to understand what I’m waiting for.

There are six of them, all adults now, several with children of their own. They clog the street with their SUVs and economy cars, and no doubt clog their mother’s kitchen with welcome laughter and unwelcome fingers picking at the platters of food still under construction. I imagine the scene, and I smile. If I’m lucky, it will be my future.

Our nearest family members live 800 miles away. In some of the years past, my husband’s parents have made the drive from Portland to share the holiday with us; a few times we’ve driven to them. But this year, like last, we’re home for Thanksgiving–the nine of us cozying up on a drizzly day with the smell of roasting turkey driving us mad. The air is rich with content. I am grateful, more than those eight letters can really signify, for the family within these walls. But then I think about my brother, and I am sad.

The call from Church headquarters came a month or so ago. “We have the records of (name),” the quavery-voiced woman said. I could picture her, white-haired and wrinkled, sitting in front of a computer monitor with my brother’s information glowing onscreen. “We would like to send them to his current ward. Do you have a street address or phone number for his place of residence?”

My mouth ran dry. “No,” I said. “I don’t.”

“Is there someone we can contact who might have that information?”

“Not that I know of.” I swallowed hard. “None of us has heard from him for almost two years.”

She paused. “I’m sorry to hear that.”

Yes. I was sorry, too, to hear the words spoken aloud. It had been months since I’d had cause to speak of my brother, and my sense of loss amplified anew. After I hung up the phone, I wept and wept.

My brother, my only blood sibling, two-and-a-half years older than I. Throughout our childhood he was my mind-twin, or perhaps, more accurately, my heart-twin, understanding things nobody else understood. He alone could comprehend the unfillable void in my chest that had yawned wide ever since our parents’ divorce. He alone shared my particular parcel of pain in the troubled blended family created by our mother’s remarriage. We didn’t speak our understanding aloud very often. We didn’t need to.

But while my life took an upswing after leaving home, his continued along the slow downward spiral we’d both been following throughout adolescence. His drug use became drug addiction. He was homeless for years, sleeping on friends’ couches and enjoying, at least some of the time, the freedom of uprootedness. He visited me once, ten years ago, when I had three small children in a tiny house. He and his friend, the delightfully odd bearded man named Jelly, arrived in a battered VW van (natch) and stayed for the afternoon, eating grilled cheese sandwiches and filling our washing machine drain with dirt from their incredibly filthy clothing. That was the last time I saw him.

Then came the car accident. Two people died; a strict new DUI law held him accountable. He received two prison sentences, each two to twenty years. After serving his minimum four years, he was released on a writ of habeus corpus due to controversies surrounding the new law and his attorney, who was disbarred soon after his trial. But after eighteen months, the state’s appeal was granted, and he was summoned back to prison to finish his 36 remaining years. Instead of complying, he ran.

I heard the news two Decembers ago. The children and I were decorating gingerbread men for Christmas when my mother called to tell me my brother had disappeared. I stood in the middle of my kitchen, hands dry and itchy with flour, apron smeared with butter, and felt utter rage. How could he do this? I thought. How could he do this to our mother? How could he do this to me? It was a betrayal of everything he’d been given over the course of his thirty-seven years–love, nurturing, compassion, forgiveness, encouragement. It was a betrayal of Home.

My rage is gone now, for the most part. It still flares now and again when I see and hear the effects of his choice on my mother, who grieves a certain yet ambiguous loss. “He could be dead,” she says. “And whenever he does die, I might not ever know.” But I believe that no matter how thickly brewed the pain can taste for all of us who love my brother, his is greater still. Even as my mother and I spoke that December evening, with my children chattering in the background and gobs of frosting hardening on the countertops, I was standing in the midst of everything warm and good, and he was moving farther and farther away from the chance of ever regaining it.

I don’t think of my brother often. I’ve had to close the door on his memory in order to minimize the impact of his choice on myself and my family. But on days like today, the door swings open. I remember holidays past, when he and I would be shuffled from one family gathering to another, trying to bridge the gap of a severed marriage. I remember our psychic closeness, which I’ve never experienced with any other person, not even my closest girlfriends, not even my husband. I wonder where he is right now, and who he’s with, and what he’s doing. And as I look around at my children, praying that one day they will eagerly return, like the Bishop’s children, to the heart of their upbringing, I pray that my brother can still hold and touch and feel a small piece of his own.

At one point she flipped the disc over and showed me a tiny button lodged deep into the plastic casing–the kind you’d need a very thin screwdriver to push. “If my pet dies, we can push this reset button,” she explained.

Reset??

I was about to launch into a tirade about how we’ve been ruined as a society if we think that life, even digital life, can be revived so easily. (Thank you, Tom and Jerry. And Roadrunner. And… oh, never mind, the list is too long.) What about responsibility? And accountability? And grief?

But then a tear-stained Elizabeth approached me. She had just discovered her hamster, Rocket, curled into a cold, furry ball in the corner of his cage. I went downstairs to see the evidence. Oh dear.
“Why did he have to die on Christmas?” she sobbed. I hugged her and murmered sympathetic words for a while. Then my wise-counselor streak took over.

“You know, in a way it was good timing,” I said.

She asked why.

“Because today we’re celebrating the birth of Jesus. And that reminds us that Rocket is still alive–his spirit is scampering around somewhere up there. And his little furry body will come alive again, someday.”

She sniffed and nodded, and sniffed some more. I thought for a while about Christ’s power to throw tragedy into reverse. Errors, sins, even death. All we harm, all that harms us, all that perishes in any of a hundred different ways, will be repaired and revived through love.

Thank God the universe has a reset button.

On Thursday he got a call from his lawyer telling him that his appeal was denied, so he has to serve his full prison sentence (40 years, of which he’s served four) starting now. On Friday he ran.
How long has it been–seven years, maybe? Eight? A while back, he was in a car accident. Two people–an older married couple–died. My brother, a chronic drug user, was convicted under a brand-new Nevada law that carried mandatory jail time for DUI. A lot of it. And it wasn’t necessary to prove that he was under the influence at the time of the accident–certain blood chemistry levels were all that was needed for the conviction. (He tested positive for marijuana use.)

People have asked me how I feel about strict DUI laws. Yes, I’m all for them, in theory. If my parents had been killed in that car accident, I’d be livid if the other driver, a proven drug user, was let off with a slap on the wrist. But I don’t like the way this particular law was designed. And no, I’m not happy about what happened to my brother. I don’t think he deserves to be in jail for the rest of his life. I don’t think it’s clear that his drug use caused the deaths. And as he has pointed out repeatedly, convicted rapists got out of jail after serving far less time. I think rotting in jail for 4 or 5 years, and being denied the opportunity to ever drive a car again, is enough. I don’t think society is better off with him locked away.

This whole incident is part of a long and convoluted history that I won’t detail here. The bottom line is that my brother was finally beginning to improve himself and his life. He’s been clean and sober (according to the random tests he’s been required to take) and working hard these last eighteen months. I don’t see what good will come of locking him up again. He’s 37 now; if he started serving his remaining time right away, he’d be 73 at the end.

He’s made many stupid choices in the past, and I don’t want to excuse him from reasonable consequences. But it pains me to know how desperate he must feel right now. It makes me feel sick. I feel especially ill on my mother’s behalf. She doesn’t know when or if she’ll ever hear from him again. I’m furious, of course, that my brother is putting her through this. Not to mention the fact that as soon as a warrant is issued for his arrest (which may be as soon as tomorrow), my mother loses the 20K she posted for bail.

But I’m worried that if his escape plan (which he’s surely been concocting over time) doesn’t pan out, he might take his own life.

Mein bruder.

Back in our dorm days she was the object of much attention, from both males and females, but she never paid much notice to her popularity. Beautiful, cheerful, unpretentious. Infectious smile. She was kind to everyone. And we all predicted that loveliness would be hers in all aspects of her life, forever.

It was halfway through our sophomore year when she hit the first pothole. We were roommates again, this time in a six-woman apartment. I was in our little, steamy bathroom getting ready for church when she called to me through the closed door. I opened it to her trembling face. “My mom found a lump in her leg.” She could barely get the words out. Her mother was a breast cancer survivor and seemed to be doing well, until that day–and she was never truly well again.

My friend left for a Mormon mission to Uruguay, but returned home a few months later severly ill with parasites. It was so strange to consider. A golden glow had always seemed to surround her; now she was mired down in a most unpleasant state, bloated and weak. She was out of commission for months. The very order of the universe seemed to be reversed.

Next came an ill-fated temple marriage to Joe Nice Guy, a returned missionary. Turns out that being faithful to his wife wasn’t on his Franklin Planner list. A few months after the divorce, my friend lived with me for a while. Outwardly she was her usual upbeat self–almost. Her cheer wasn’t as bright around the edges. She told me that she cried every day, overcome by betrayal and loss.

She moved back to her hometown and I didn’t hear from her until I got a wedding invitation in the mail. She was marrying her high school boyfriend. I couldn’t attend the ceremony. I hoped that she was finally finding happiness.

A few years later she contacted me after reading my Christmas letter, which shared the news of our sixth child’s neonatal crisis. “When I saw ‘NICU’ in your letter, I knew I could talk to you,” she wrote in an email. The story of her life since the wedding followed in a few paragraphs, punctuated by grief. A miscarriage. A daughter with Downs Syndrome, stillborn at seven months gestation. A beautiful son, Charlie, who stopped gaining weight at two months and died at eight months, a victim of liver disease.
Her father, a former leader in the local church, was gone; he had abandoned his wife and family some time before. Her mother succumbed to cancer three months after Charlie died.

I could barely imagine it. How could she have lived it?

A year later, I held my breath during the final weeks of her fourth pregnancy, barely daring to hope for happy news. But it came: Louisa, a gorgeous daughter, who soon developed a grin that would charm your socks off.

Louisa died just a few weeks ago. She was seven months old.

No parents left, no children left.

The day after the funeral, my friend and her husband left for a respite in another state. “I’m scared to go home,” she wrote in the email I just got. “What now?”

What, indeed? Even though I come up with words in response, they’re just a thin veneer, a coating for the silence.