listening notebook: a cartography of attention
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THE HOTEL CARDBOARD (PHOTO BY PAUL C. TUMEY)
Van Morrison
Common One Album
WHEN HEART IS OPEN - WHEN THE NEW MUSIC IS A PERFECT FIT IN THE MOMENT
© 2026 Paul C. Tumey
08-10-2026
Common One by Van Morrison has been a part of my music life for over 40 years. As always, I understand if it's not your thing -- and that's FINE -- just sharing. I put it on today to calm my crazy mood swings blowing across the surface of my lake -- to find that deeper, calmer place.
I first heard it in the spring of 1981. I was 20, attending Florida State University. I lived in a studio apartment -- my first home independent of my parents -- at a run-down cheapo two-story cinderblock apartment complex with the ridiculously grand name of "The Jefferson Arms." Motel-style, it had turquoise-blue balconies in front of the doors that looked down on a rarely cleaned swimming pool, usually littered with green Heineken bottles and cigarettes.
Lots of interesting folks lived there.
Emlio - a brilliant, dark-skinned, black-haired guy in his 30s studying economics at uni. We had some great intellectual discussions. He was gay (discreet -- you had to be in that place at that time) and one night, drunk, he confessed to being in love with me and begged me to come back to Puerto Rico with him and be his chauffeur. Apparently, his family was wealthy. I didn't have the heart to tell him I didn't drive. He apologized profusely the next day while nursing what looked like a pretty rough hangover. I took his pass as a compliment. Maybe I need to go buy a chauffer’s hat.
Aaron - a fellow student constantly on the make. I once saw him pick up a pretty woman who walked by the tennis court he was playing at. Smooth operator. Hair was always meticulously combed. He played Molly Hatchet's "Flirtin' With Disaster" at full volume a LOT.
Kevin - another older guy. Skinny, unhealthy-looking white man with a scraggly beard. Former radio announcer. He could drop his vocal register by an octave and spit out syllables like an auctioneer in a straw hat at a fire sale.
Mike - fellow student. Big strong man. Black. Me, him, and his gorgeous and brilliant girl - Carla - used to go fishing at Apalachicola.
Albert - in his 80s. Living there cause it was cheap. Old Jewish man. Funny as shit and lively as fuck. Seen all over town with an ancient umbrella, always closed and used as a walking stick. Albert told me how to quickly get rid of evangelizers — tell them, “I’m a Jew — go away!” It works! He had me over for dinner one time. His walls were covered with taped-on art prints of great paintings interspersed with explicit photos torn from porn mags. He remembered reading Happy Hooligan. Found dead in his place one day.
Young women lived at the Jefferson Arms, too — but I don’t have any specific memories of them. I was a shy geek, tongue-tied and knees knocking in front of a woman in a swimsuit. Not much has changed, come to think of it.
I first heard Common One on a gloriously beautiful day -- perfect for this record that celebrates the spirituality of nature with long 15-minute cuts. It put me in a special place that I hadn't reached before -- an exalted state of consciousness in which sunshine felt like love.
I had another connection to the album. Morrison mentions T.S. Elliot, Coleridge, Blake, etc. and I was studying them in my Lit classes. How cool that a rock star was singing about T.S. Elliot and William Blake! Elliott’s Prufrock measures his life out in coffee spoons—with me, it’s Van Morrison albums.
That spring day, after playing Common One over and over, I needed to get out. I walked across the street to a park. A few men and women were gathering folks for a pickup softball game. I joined them -- very unusual for me. I knew how to play baseball from playground games when I was growing up in Louisiana. Often, I was the pitcher, for some reason. Once I hit a ball so perfectly, it landed on the roof of the school and might still be there to this day. And everyone saw me as a crooked and tape-repaired glasses geek.
I'm not a sports guy but I have an athletic body, rarely developed. God knows why, but I played basketball for one year in 8th grade. I couldn't understand a fucking thing about the game and was incredibly nervous. I never made a point. But I stole the ball a lot. The coach seemed to always be chewing me out and I never could understand what how I screwed up; I slipped over into shock a lot, which explains why I can hardly remember the games.
I remember reading the Rolling Stone review of Common One. It convinced me to go out to the local record shop and buy it, consigning myself to ramen dinners for a week to have the dough. The writer loved the moment in “When Heart is Open” when Van is vocalizing with a harmonica and making these primal, animalistic howls and grunts — funny in one way, and transporting in another —depending on one’s mood.
Years later, I attended a reading at Elliott Bay books in Seattle by music writer Greil Marcus (Mystery Train) for his new book on Van Morrison, When That Rough God Goes Riding. It’s a strange little book — almost as odd as Van the Man. Marcus dismisses Morrison’s records of the 1980s and 90s. During the obligatory Q&A after the reading, I mentioned the Rolling Stone review of Common One and said, “maybe you wrote it.” He shook his head vigorously, as if I had suggested he had farted in church. I asked him if he was also writing that record off and he was adamantly agin’ it. I was baffled. His book, Mystery Train, taught me how to listen to records like Common One. I must have missed something, somewhere. That intersection of life and music, of soundwaves and sensuality, of the sacred and profane, seems to me what rock and roll is all about. But maybe I’m flirtin’ with disaster, here…
That fresh spring day in Tallahassee was so much fun to be celebrating the gorgeously sunny, not-too-hot-and-humid weather with fellow humans who were also digging it. Moving our bodies around, being at ease -- just having fun. The air felt soooo good on my skin and breathing it in and out. Running, breathing hard, laughing, rolling in the grass, sweating. I remember lots of funny goofing.
Surrender. Peace. Satisfied. Sun. Poetry. Spirits. Haunts. Ancient. You. When heart is open.
Everyone was in a great mood, laughing, playing, happy ... satisfied. In that little span of time on that tiny part of the planet a group of people -- most of us strangers to each other -- played in sweetness. I wish it could be like that all the time.
- Paul C. Tumey
"Nature has her proper interest; and he will know what it is, who believes and feels, that every thing has a life of its own, and that we are all one life."
- Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Jakob Dylan
Nothin But the Whole Wide World
[Chorus 1]
Nothing but the whole wide world to gain
Nothing, nothing
Got nothing but the whole wide world to gain
Nothing, nothing
Got nothing but the whole wide, whole wide world to gain
[Verse 1]
I'm here on the blacktop, the sun in my eyes
Women and country on my mind
Bolting me out over the borderline
Now there's no more love lost and no more shame
No more digging holes or graves
Nothing to lose but rivets and chains
Got nothing but the whole wide world to gain
[Chorus 1]
Nothing but the whole wide world to gain
Nothing, nothing
Got nothing but the whole wide world to gain
Nothing, nothing
Got nothing but the whole wide, whole wide world to gain
[Verse 2]
Was born in a stable and built like an ox
Down in the pastures I learned how to walk
Mama, she raised me to sing and just let 'em talk
Said no rich man's worth his weight in dust
Bury him down same as they'll do to us
God wants us busy, never giving up
He wants nothing but the whole wide world for us
[Chorus 2]
Nothing but the whole wide world for us
Nothing, nothing
Well there's nothing but the whole wide world for us
Nothing, nothing
Well there's nothing but the whole wide, whole wide world for us
[Verse 3]
I ain't got no money, can't get no love
Never was too good at either of 'em
I'm here for adventure whichever way it comes
But what good is an angel that won't catch up
Free falling now and I'm ready enough
I give my tears and I give my blood
I give nothing but the whole wide world for one
[Chorus 3]
Nothing but the whole wide world for one
Nothing, nothing
Give nothing but the whole wide world for one
Nothing, nothing
Give nothing but the whole wide, whole wide world for one
NOTES OF NOTABLE NOTHINGNESS
Notes on Jakob Dylan’s song, “Nothin But the Whole Wide World”
© 2026 Paul C. Tumey
07-23-2026
There is something about this one. I’ve been listenin to it since the year it came out on the Women and Country album (2010), exquisitely produced by T-Bone Burnett, who played bass for Jakob’s dad in the 1970s Rolling Thunder Revue (anybody got a copy of Sam Shepard’s Rolling Thunder Logbook, original PB issue, you’d trade or sell to me?)
This is one of those compositions that cleverly takes a trite saying and turns it on its head, flips it down on the bed, and then makes tender love to it. “Whole wide world,” resonates with the sort of teaching one might give a child, to inspire them with wonder: “You’ve got the whole wide world out there, Dorothy - so get the fuck outta Kansas!”
In this phrase, there’s a play with nonduality, as I realized when I recently shared this song and discussed it with a friend, who pointed out that nothin’ contrasts with everything (the whole wide world).
Dylan lays it out across three verses that represent not just a physical journey, but also a life journey and a spiritual path.
In the first verse, the singer is finally free — no more love lost, no more shame — nothing to lose but the rivets and chains that have held him down, if he has the courage to walk the blacktop road he is now on, sun in his eyes.
(An aside here about the aesthetics of the lyrics. “Blacktop sun in my eyes” not only economically conjures a scene, it has a marvelous syllabic rhythm. I also note the word “rivets.” We hear “chains” a lot in songs, but rarely are rivets paired with them. Good writing is specific writing, and that detail has delicious specificity.)
In verse two, I smiled when I read “Mama, she raised me to sing and just let ‘em talk.” That works on multiple levels, as encouragement to move toward self-actualization in the face of disparagement. Knowing Jakob’s father, one realizes how difficult it must have been to also grow as a songwriter and performer in the shadow of his world-famous father. But, here he is, in the song, doin’ it — and it’s GOOD. With this lyric, the song itself becomes a symbol for standing on your own ground, no matter what others may have to say. That’s a way to gain the world.
Additional lines deal with refuting wealth and power. These things are not the world, in the mind of the singer. He wants to make it clear this is not the world he’s talking about gaining.
The third verse is about what the world really is that one might wish to gain. “What good is an angel that won’t catch up?” Personally, I hear the ache of trying to keep pace with someone whose life was moving to a different rhythm. I am also “free falling” and ready enough in 2026… having left a marriage, career, and life and starting over. Could Dylan possibly be talking about the aftermath of divorce here (resonating with his father’s astounding songs about divorcing his mother, mostly collected on the album, Blood On The Tracks)? Note the next line “I give my blood.” Ultimately, it’s about being finally ready, willing, and able (to rock and roll all night long - no wait, sorry, different song).
But this verse works for more than finding the right partner at the right time. It’s also about a life that works. An inner resolution of duality. Notice how the chorus has changed, from gaining … to giving… to include, repeat, and end the song on one word: one.
It’s sort of like, where are you comin’ from, man? You know? If you believe, say, the blacktop to heaven is giving to the poor and that’s why you do it… then, that ain’t it. But yeah Tumey, what about this “one” business? Well, to me, “one” kinda means when I can tune my life in alignment with my inner signal — which seems to come from somewhere outside my individual consciousness. But - hey. You do you. I just encourage you give this earworm a few thoughtful listens — after all, you’ve got nothin but the whole wide world to gain.
Moselle
Scar Tissue
Scar Tissue numbing up my hands
I can make myself believe that nobody understands
That I've
Got issues fucking up my plans
Hide myself between the lines
Such a delicate dance
I keep on hoping that I'll grow out of it
Then i remember I'm done developing
Don't mind the tears that have swelled in my eyes
If you ask me right now I'd still say i was fine
Bite my tongue
Till I'm tasting blood
It's not fun It's just a system
Knuckles crack
And i fake a laugh
For that fickle love's attention
Ring the bell and i jump back in
I'll see i through to my very end
Ice bath ready when i leave the ring
Nice and steady in the cold i sink
Why is it easy to be so deceiving
Can they tell I'm misleading
The ways they perceive me
Deliberate attempts
To make a little more sense
Of what it was that i meant
Interpreted as defense
Hit hard and ask about the bruise
Looks so out of place on a pretty girl like you
Low bar but really what's the use
Collect the reddest flags
To tie into a noose
Say that i'm out
And then pull me back in
Scar Tissue numbing up my hands
I can make myself believe that nobody understands
That I've
Got issues fucking up my plans
Hide myself between the lines
Such a delicate dance
I keep on hoping that I'll grow out of it
Then i remember I'm done developing
Don't mind the tears that have swelled in my eyes
If you asked me right now
I would say i was fine
Rainy days in your t-shirt
Coffee after noon
Spent so long beneath the dirt
Now we get to bloom
Hazards through the windows
Symbolize the futile plan
Sometimes i don't feel real
But then you take my hand
Half naked in your yard
Cursing our aversive stars
Say they made us what we are
Blame can't be passed that far
It's like I'm running
After something
But it doesn't beat my pace
I don't think that it's a race
I think I'm in it for the Chase
I wanna be known and loved
Don't wanna be seen or touched
Do you think I'm not enough?
Or have I become too much?
Pound puppy picking at your food
Speak up they call it attitude
Impress and it makes em' act a fool
Praise the ways that you're breaking all their rules
Fog so think that i can't think
Say I've got deficiencies
So i take what they give me
Like it might just tame the beast
Scar tissue numbing up my hands
Make believe that nobody understands
I've got issues fucking up my plans
Hide behind such a delicate dance
I might be losing it
Healthier to admit
Sometimes I see myself
I think she's someone else
ICE BATH READY WHEN I LEAVE THE RING
Lasting a few rounds with Moselle’s song, “Scar Tissue”
© 2026 Paul C. Tumey
7-24-2026
This one is brand new new to me. Two days old in my consciousness. Passed on to me from a friend. I will refrain from sharing my thoughts on what resonates for them and chart my own hot takes. Note: I’ll be hiding myself between the lines - although not so much in a delicate dance as a sweaty slugfest, because I’ll be fighting for the song’s meaning.
I’ve always loved scars. Not much of an appreciator of ink, but man - show me a scar and I will feel closer to you.
Ice on bruised knuckles. That’s a scene in some old boxing movie I saw, DiNiro in Raging Bull, Willis in Pulp Fiction, doesn’t matter. It’s a cliche. The boxer’s fight is symbolic of facing challenges in life and how much the bouts cost us — looks, teeth, busted up body, fuckd up head. Paul Simon wrote a song about it: “The Boxer.” My favorite version of this story is Garland Jeffreys “Matador.” So yeah — I’m thinking — this 2024 song is a new version, well done, of that idea… but wait…
“Why is it so easy to be so deceiving/Can they tell I’m misleading” This is different. I can relate to that — it’s how I feel in front of others. It’s how I feel in this moment, writing this essay. I want to be myself but I flinch, parry, body block, hold my gloves up, dance around the ring — anything to avoid that right hook. I might look like I know what I’m doing, but that is a case of, as the aforementioned friend and I discussed, “fake it till you make it.”
Moselle and her co-writer Matt Hip get us back to the boxing metaphor not with getting back on the defense, as I described above but, “Deliberate attempts/To make a little more sense/Of what it was that I meant/Interpreted as defense.” These four lines almost knock me out. The singer wants to connect, to stay open but sincere attempts (and I love the close rhymes in this stanza) seem to make it worse. Oh man, can I relate to that!
I’ve read the song relates to drug addiction, tying into the singer’s own life. Hunh. Ooookay. Then how come I can relate to these lines so much? I’m not a drug addict (unless you count caffeine and probably weed). Is there a parallel between mental health and addiction, he asked, eyes wide and blinking. (Disclosure: I’m AuDHD, CPTSD and yeah, whatever - shrug)
“Scar Tissue” goes way past one level. It has a lot to offer under the surface, getting down to why. This is not about the awful shit that happens to someone struggling with addiction- it’s about why addiction happened, the emotional terrain in which addiction happens — shame, masking, self-alienation, emotional dysregulation, lonesomeness, fragile identity. “Collect the reddest flags (emotional traumas)/to tie into a noose (yeah, we know what THAT means)/Say that I’m out (of pain). Whew.
The song is not just ABOUT inner pain so terrible it becomes existential, it makes the listener FEEL it. Which is what a good song and a great performance (which this is) can do. The emotional range in Moselle’s voice here is astonishing. You get the song without needing to know a single word of what it says. But then you’d miss so many things you might need to hear said:
“It’s like I’m running/After something/But it doesn’t beat my pace/I don’t think it’s a race” That, my friends, is a spiritual journey. Waking up to the illusion life is a race. Recovery to living.
“I think I’m in it for the Chase” - back to a cliche that is turned slantways. No idea why Chase is capitalized - might be an error. But, I can relate. I’m a hunter. I love, love, love the chase. But here, I think the song is suggesting something more - the chase being the singer not pursuer, but seeker and the next line is bare naked:
“I wanna be known and loved”
The singer expresses how much her lover grounds her. I worry about her. What happens if there's no one to take her hand when she doesn't feel real? What happens to her then?
The lines about not enough and too much really resonate with the comments I’ve received on my relationship customer satisfaction surveys… so yeah, I will want to know if you’re okay with me and that I’m not too much or not enough.
Too needy.
You ever have someone say that about you?
Fuuuuuck.
The singer mercilessly reveals herself, layer by layer. False bravado that people fall for. Being praised for breaking the rules — like she is a master when she can barely function with so much scar tissue. As a teen and throughout my twenties, I unfortunately had the tendency to release unbearable emotional pain by hitting walls — brick walls felt really satisfying. In those years, I also lost the feeling and function of four toes directly due to my parents' alcoholism and have a nice scar for it.
Maybe that's why scars have never bothered me. They've always made me curious. They don't make someone less beautiful to me. If anything, they make me want to know their story.
So where does this song leave us? Make believe that nobody understands — ah, peeling back those ego layers. I've got issues fucking up my plans — okay, the singer is still in the ring. The question is, is she losing herself or finding herself? I think both. Once the wounds heal and scar tissue comes, you're different. You don't go back.
I think I sense some acceptance, here. Hard-fought self-acceptance. When you look in the mirror, as I do these days, and think that's someone else … I gotta go get a bowl of ice, soak these hands.
