Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas, everyone. This is about the time of year a lot of people listen to and/or post links to "Fairytale of New York".

Of course, it means a little more this year with the recent passing of Shane MacGowan. I decided to honour him I'd drink like him. With perhaps a touch more moderation.

I googled interviews and articles and found out his favourite whiskey was Tullamore Dew. So that's what I've been drinking. It's pretty good, a little more complex than Jameson, which is the Irish whiskey I usually drink.

There is an official Pogues whiskey, named for MacGowan's band, and it happens to be available at the mall right here in Kashihara, Japan, where I'd be surprised if two people have heard of the Pogues or Shane MacGowan. I guess I didn't buy it because I suspect MacGowan probably just signed a license agreement, took a check, then went off and bought bottles of Tullamore Dew. But who knows, maybe he actually went and scouted distillery locations and took discriminating sips from ladles before giving an okay symbol to his handpicked staff. I'm sure I'll try the whiskey at some point.

I also read an interview in which he said, when writing "Fairytale of New York", he ate peanuts and drank sherry to pretend it was Christmas. So I've been eating peanuts and drinking sherry. I love sherry but, as with all wines, it gives me some of the worst hangovers, I've basically felt like I was transmitting my life from another planet for three days. That's with just two glasses of sherry a night (three last night). I never realised how well sherry paired with peanuts, though.

Anyway, Merry Christmas, everyone.

X Sonnet #1801

"But that's the tree," she said, recalling late.
Another sign the crooked road returned.
She paused and checked her book; another date.
"It's wrong," she said, "as prying eyes'll learn."
A stolen car commenced the extra slice.
A touch of blue could chill a drowsy room.
"We need some tools," said she, "and something nice.
"A string of lights could sew a gangster's doom."
Divesting her of tinsel traps, she starts.
A dozen twink'ling eyes beheld her path.
"You see the plan," she traced her scribbled charts.
"We wake with love then sleep with spirit wrath."
Her bank was built of metal orbs and canes.
"The blizzard comes," she says, "and evening wanes."

Shane MacGowan

Shane MacGowan died on Thursday. I'd been feeling grim for several days and it kind of seemed like everyone was. MacGowan's death sort of blends in with it, which yet makes it stand out more. Everyone has kind of expected MacGowan to die any day for the past forty years. The hard drinking singer who never seemed to care much whether he lived or died had all the marks of it in his manner and infamously bad teeth.

Just last year, an interview at The Guardian with MacGowan began, "MacGowan has not talked to a British newspaper for 10 years and there is so much to ask him, not least how he is still alive." And now he's not and it's not such a mystery. Why does that make it hurt more? When he lived, it was an interesting rebuke to all apparent evidence. Now he's dead, it's just ugly grey, dull normalcy. It's the inexorably fulfilled prophecy in his lyrics about being beaten, starved, and abused.

I often find myself whistling "Dirty Old Town" in recent years, a song I first heard in a rendition by The Pogues, MacGowan's band. The town I live in, Kashihara, seems to suit the song with its factories, canals, battered old buildings, and, despite the famous Japanese obsession with cleanliness, plenty of dirt, with many buildings bearing streaks of black mould and rust.

I suppose it's fitting that MacGowan died at the start of a Christmas season since his most famous song, ironically, is a Christmas song. Just last year the song, "Fairytale of New York", was featured on no less mainstream a platform as The Guardians of the Galaxy Christmas Special.

It's kind of fucked up there's a Michael Buble ad at the end of that video right now, especially since it's the uncensored version of the song.

Shane MacGowan was 65 when he died. He collaborated with many other great musicians in his time. He performed as part of Nick Cave's ensemble arrangement of Bob Dylan's "Death is Not the End", which seems as appropriate a note to end on as any: