Hello, friends.
Bruce Springsteen’s “Radio Nowhere” was a single on his 2007 album Magic. The album, as a while, was a response to life in George W. Bush’s Post-9/11 America. I find a lot of the album relevant now. The same happened between 2016-2020, too. This weekend, though, a line from “Radio Nowhere” keeps running through my head: “Crushin’ the last lone American night.”
That’s what it feels like to me. This is the United States’s last weekend. Whatever happens Monday and beyond (Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, how fucked up?) will be different. If you’re reading this and think I’m overreacting, I hope to hell that you’re right. But if I’m not…well, who knows?
Thanks for joining me today. Let’s get into things.
Welcome to the 105th installment of Gauthic Times, the newsletter about my writing, my life, and aging parents.
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Project: Amusement Park his page 503 this week. This page starts a new chapter. This past week was spent in a prison in few different POVs as a riot was about to begin, then begin, and then hours after the riot. Some grim stuff that does a lot without being a main part of the book. This next chapter brings us to better POVs but we’re now 179 pages from the end of the book so things are going to get more and more intense.
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This past week has been crazy. My father wanted to go to the hospital because he hadn’t been feeling well. He already had a doctor’s appointment schedule for Wednesday that I took a day for. On Tuesday night, I called to confirm what time I needed to pick him up, when he told me, “I have a plan.”
Whenever Dad says, “I have a plan,” it means he’s made up his mind and no amount of arguing, questions, or logic will make him change it. His “plan” was to call the ambulance to take him to the hospital in the morning. Why not just go today? Because he wanted to go tomorrow. Why not go now? Because he’s feeling all right now. Then why go to the hospital at all? Because he really hasn’t been feeling well, he’d been dizzy and stuff. Now, I already knew this and had asked him days before if he needed to go to the hospital. He’d said no. Then he said he still wanted me to go over Wednesday. Not to take him, but just to be there.
Well, he went. He told me he passed out in the morning beforehand. At the hospital, he was dehydrated. A few days later, he sounds better. But he doesn’t want to go home.
There’s a lot more I could say and write about but I’ve already probably said too much. There are several things going on here and they make me feel horrible. It’s tough seeing him like this. It’s tough because it’s someone you love who took care of you. It’s tough because I’m not in a position to help as much as I’d like, mentally, physically, or financially. It’s tough because he doesn’t want help but needs help but will only take help on his terms.
How do I handle this? I’m trying to figure it out. My sister lives in Florida and she’s really the one better equipped to be a caregiver. She has a huge heart. I’m much too selfish. It pains and embarrasses me to say it but it’s true. Pamela has been coming up with ideas to help, which is great because she, too, is a caregiver type. She can’t help her mother, who lives two hours away, much so I think she wouldn’t mind helping my father.
When my mother died in 2019, I promised that I’d take care of my father. I feel like I’ve failed. I know I haven’t but that doesn’t negate the feeling.
So this has been a big focus of this week. Not a ton of writing stuff, though I did work on editing Project: Amusement Park a bit, which was a way to escape for a bit, the same with drawing the comic book and such.
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While I mentioned the Bruce Springsteen song “Radio Nowhere” at the start of the update, I want to look at a different song of his.
“Rainmaker” was on Springsteen’s 2020 album Letter To You. Many of the songs on the album had to do with death, remembering, and the passage of time. There is very little of a political nature on the album, sparing one or two lines here or there. However, “Rainmaker” sticks out to me as a good metaphor for some of the trying times we’re in.
Parched crops dying ’neath a dead sun
We’ve been praying but no good comes
The dog’s howling, home’s stripped bare
We’ve been worried but now were scared
The scene is set. Bad times have come. Really bad.
People come for comfort or just to come
Taste the dark sticky potion or hear the drums
Hands raised to Yahweh to bring the rain down
He comes crawlin’ ’cross the dry fields like a dark shroud
A revival of sorts. A place that people can escape that fear. A place where they feel welcome and use their faith or anything else that can get them through. Of course, someone is coming, and Springsteen’s choice of words is ominous. This person is “crawlin’” through those fields like a “dark shroud.”
Rainmaker a little faith for hire
Rainmaker the house is on fire
Rainmaker take everything you have
Sometimes folks need to believe in something so bad, so bad, so bad
They’ll hire a rainmaker
Like the fabled snake oil salesman, the Rainmaker is someone who’ll come and promise you something, take everything from you, and people will gladly follow him because he’ll tell them what they want to hear and give them a reason a fear and way to have hope in something that seems tangible.
Rainmaker says white’s black and black’s white
Says night’s day and day’s night
Says close your eyes and go to sleep now
I’m in a burnin’ field unloadin’ buckshot into low clouds
Here, the Rainmaker will say anything and it doesn’t matter if you can see it’s incorrect. Don’t worry about anything, I’ll take care of it. And it looks like he is to them as he does something that is completely unhelpful to them. But it’s something they can see.
Slow moving wagon drawing through a dry town
Painted rainbow, crescent moon and dark clouds
Brother patriot come forth and lay it down
Your blood brother for king and crown
For your rainmaker
It’s a show for the rubes who will give him everything. He appeals to their sense of patriotism but cares not of it himself.
They come for the smile, the firm handshake
They come for the raw chance of a fair shake
Some come to make damn sure, my friend
This mean season’s got nothin’ to do with them
They come ’cause they can’t stand the pain
Of another long hot day of no rain
’Cause they don’t care or understand
What it really takes for the sky to open up the land
Some just want the camaraderie and the feeling of belonging. They hope nothing bad will happen to them because of their faith in the Rainmaker. “They don’t care or understand” is the key line here because they’re unwilling to learn or think for themselves. They want the Rainmaker to do the work of making things better even though the dry, parched land is nothing he can handle. It’s beyond anyone.
The first time I heard the song it made me think of all the people I’ve known in both 2016 and nor in 2024 who wondered, “How could anyone vote for him?!” It’s there in the song, as far as I can tell. He’s the Rainmaker who promises things that cannot be done. They are following someone who appeals to their basest interests and beliefs and makes their thinking feel normal, natural. He had promised to fix things easily in a time when nothing is easy.
And crawlin’ in like a dark shroud, this week, the Rainmaker will be setting up his tent. The house is on fire, indeed.
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