Caveh Zahedi
"Final Words Can Be So Hard to Devise"
2020. Remembering David Berman
“I remember the first guy who played me a Silver Jews song. He was a graduate student who had invited me to speak at California College for the Arts. He was giving me a ride in his car and he played a Silver Jews song on his CD player. He also had some Will Oldham CDs on the floor. I liked the Silver Jews right away. And I couldn’t help but make a lifelong metonymic connection between the Silver Jews and Will Oldham.
I had recently made a film in which I tripped with Will Oldham. It was the pilot for a would-be series called Tripping with Caveh. While tripping, Will had talked about Berman (they were friends) but I hadn’t heard his music yet. A friend suggested I trip with Berman next and I considered it but I still didn't know his work well enough to be motivated enough to actually reach out to him. In any case, every
television station turned down the would-be series so the question became moot.
As I listened to his music over the years, my esteem for Berman grew. He was obviously a real poet (his lyrics are unparalleled) and there was something about the simultaneous joy and sadness in the music that I couldn’t help but be moved by. I especially loved Slow Education, Random Rules, Smith and Jones Forever, Suffering Jukebox, Dallas, and The Wild Kindness.
But then I watched the Silver Jews documentary and I hated it. It’s the only film about a band I’ve ever seen that made me like the band less after I saw it than before. The film’s mediocre aesthetics infected the viewer’s perception of Berman and his bandmates. I had an especially strong aversion to the scene of Berman’s breakdown at the Wailing Wall, which struck me as forced and contrived. It seemed he wanted to break down because that’s what you do at the Wailing Wall. I couldn’t help seeing it as a kind of conformity whereas everything else I had ever seen him do felt like the exact opposite.
After that, I avoided the Silver Jews for a while. But whenever one of their songs would come on, I couldn’t help but be seduced back into the genius of those lyrics, the anguish in his voice, and the sheer majesty of the music.
I was sad when I heard that the Silver Jews had broken up and that Berman was going to devote himself exclusively to writing. It seemed like a bad idea. And then 10 years went by.
When I heard that David Berman had killed himself, and that he had done it in Park Slope (which is in walking distance from where I live), I was shaken. He was a great artist. The real deal. And to think he died apparently lonely and miserable a few blocks from where I live. There but for the grace of God go I. The scene of the breakdown at the Wailing Wall no longer seemed like conformity. It seemed like a call for help. But instead of being touched, I had written him off.
Like everyone else, I started listening to him again, but with an awareness of his death, which inflected how I now interpreted the lyrics. I discovered the new album (which I hadn’t known about) and became obsessed with it, along with everyone else. It upset me that people, including me, were listening deeply to his music only now that he was dead.”