Loudon Wainwright III: Surviving Twin

Hey!!

Hey!

Welcome to Surviving Twin.

That was the title track.

It's a posthumous collaboration, in which I'm gonna combine and connect

some of my songs with the writing of my late father,

the esteemed Life magazine columnist Loudon Wainwright Junior.

He wrote under the byline of Loudon Wainwright,

and his column, "The View From Here," appeared in Life magazine

throughout the 1960s and '70s and '80s

when Life was ubiquitous on every coffee table in America,

way back when there were coffee tables.

My dad wrote about the big stories of his day,

the Vietnam War, the Project Mercury astronauts,

he interviewed Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy

and Marilyn Monroe and...

the Maharishi.

But he also wrote about his personal life,

including his feelings about his own father,

and they were complicated feelings.

My dad's father died when my dad was just 17.

So my dad never got to say, "Fuck you, Dad!"

It's so important, kids.

So his father was a ghost figure for him

and that's reflected a little bit in this first piece I'm going to do

that my dad wrote, for you.

Let's have the card.

So when you see that card--

Not that particular... you know, when a card comes up,

when a card comes up, that's my father talking to you.

Okay, and now the card's up.

This is my father talking to you about his father.

If I remain still

if I am alone and silent long enough to hear the sound of my own blood

or breathing or digestion above the rustling of leaves

and the whir of the refrigerator...

my father is likely to turn up.

He just arrives,

unbidden in the long-running film of my thoughts

like Hitchcock in his pictures.

And he looks for all these 40-plus years of disembodiment,

much like himself, big and sandy-haired with freckles on the backs of his hands,

perhaps a bit more diffident in the way he holds himself than I remember.

Doesn't stay long.

As far as I can tell, his visits have no message.

Yet even though years of therapy have led me to make the dark whistling claim

that he's finally dead and gone...

my father...

who died when I was 17...

continues to be

my principal ghost...

a lifelong éminence grise.

And only my own end...

will finish it.

At last I am properly dressed.

Well, that is on some occasions.

I'll be properly dressed because any fool knows

a man can't wear his new English suit every day.

But on the good days when the suit has been well brushed

and its fibers adequately rested after a decent period in the closet,

I will wear it with pride in the confidence that I fit all over.

Ah, of course, all this has probably happened too late.

A man should really have his first London tailored suit in his speedy years,

sometime in his early James Bond period.

He should certainly have more than one.

Still, if a single Savile Row suit does not make a new man,

it has at least made this one feel splendidly redecorated.

A miracle of weskit and good gray worsted.

When I choose it

over the less distinguished American models on my rack,

I can be sure that its $170 elegance

covers up a substantial secret.

Much of my feeling about the suit

undoubtedly comes from the experience of buying it.

It was the most lingering pleasurable purchase I have ever made.

I will remember it long after the trousers are out at the knees.

During the five meetings I had with my tailor over a period of two months,

the conversation was delightfully single-purposed.

We talked about my requirements,

my measurements,

my appearance.

We seemed always to be progressing toward a triumph

that would be totally mine.

I selected my tailor because he was nice about a button.

With a friend, I'd been looking at suit materials in several London shops,

and we finally wound up in a small establishment

where the friend had bought a suit earlier.

He introduced me to the tailor,

a short gentleman named Mr. Perry

who was dressed in a double breasted black weskit and striped trousers.

A tape measure was draped around his neck.

Mr. Perry was entirely courteous,

but as he showed us bolts of cloth...

he kept glancing in the direction...

of my middle.

At first, I thought he might be registering

some sort of understated astonishment at the cut of my American ready-made suit,

and then I thought he might be wondering about the problem...

of dealing with my shape.

I was beginning to not like Mr. Perry...

when he spoke.

"I think you have a bit of a problem there, sir," Mr. Perry began.

"That is if you don't mind my saying so, sir."

He approached and delicately touched the center button on my coat.

"The button, sir.

I doubt if it will last out the day.

We'll have it tied down properly for you in a moment."

Ah. I felt relieved, ridiculously grateful,

and decided that a man so discerning about buttons

would have to be marvelous about suits.

We selected the material rather quickly

when I kept returning to a swatch of light colored tweed, said I liked it.