Thunder Pie Q & A (Vol 2)

Hello. As promised, here is the second half of the Thunder Pie Q & A!!! Thanks again to everyone who wrote me with so many thoughtfully crafted questions or kind words of support. If I didn’t get to your question, I’ll save it for next time.

Enjoy.

*****

Hi Serge. I know this has been asked before - have you ever considered reading and recording some of your pieces?

Marko

That has come up from time to time and I get why. More and more people on the go/ commuting/ etc/ means more time for EarBuds than dedicated reading time. Nothing wrong with that either. I’m the same way. I devour way more podcasts at work than I do books at home these days. It’s the nature of the beast, I’d say.

So the short answer is yes. I have most def considered doing this in some capacity. But I’m not sure how I would have the time. Recording a usable version of a mistake-free edited reading actually takes longer than I wish it did. Especially if you make a lot of hiccups like I know I do. If I can get up to 250- 275 paid subscribers, I think I could take a bit more time from my other jobs each week to put more time into this idea and others like it. It’s something to shoot for and I’m really glad at least a few others are thinking about recordings of my writing too.

*****

If you could do anything all day without having to worry about earning a living, what would your days look like? 

Meghan

Oh hell yes. Now we’re talking. And this is easy for me because, just like everyone else, I have given this a LOT of thought. I’d want to create. Make art. Writing one day, working with wood old boxes the next. Maybe one thing in the morning and one in the afternoon. I’d also have a lot of time for hitting thrift stores and flea markets so I could accumulate more junk that Arle and my kids will hate me for when I die.

I would hike a lot. I would grab Arle and tell her we are going bluelining (finding little blue streams on topo maps) and we’d hike back miles into the forests to see if there’s any little native brook trout there. I’d sit and watch nature more. Just out in the yard or in any old woodlot anywhere by the side of the road. You don’t have to be in the wilderness. I’d want to get to know some local squirrels and groundhogs a lot better/ watch them on summer mornings and autumn afternoons/ see if I could tell them apart and when I can, I’d imagine them as understanding me/ wanting to be my friend.

I know that sounds like I smoke a lot of weed but I don’t at all, I swear. It’s just that I wish I could spend my days being creative and looking at wild things. And having afternoon delights with my lady. And going to the ATM and not having my heart climb up in my throat every time because I’m afraid there’s nothing in there and I’m over-drafted and FTW.

I love this question. But now I’m sad it isn’t true.

*****

I'm just happy in you're in the world at the same time as me, bud.

Kurt

Thank you, man. That’s a kind thing to say to someone and I appreciate that.

*****

What was the greatest gig Marah ever played? You guys were certainly on fire in Chicago one night. Abby Pub I think. You guys were way late because your brother had gotten arrested in Indianapolis earlier that morning (or something).

Tom

The greatest Marah gig ever? Jesus. I don’t know. It’s subjective, of course. I forget way more than I recall, which is natural, I think. And my bias are different than yours and the next person’s, but still: I like the question even if I reserve the right to change my answer ten minutes from now, okay?! But I’d have to say that playing the Khyber in Philly for a few nights straight back in the day was something very meaningful to me. That was our home turf and our proving grounds and it honestly felt as if we were headlining a sold-out Veteran’s Stadium for a week. There was so much excitement inside of me then. I was effervescent, lit up from my insides by the fire of rock/roll and the idea that we had done something I once only ever dreamed of. You know, no matter what we accomplished in music, there was always more to grab for, always someone else who had done better and someone else still who was doing better right then. Early on in the life of the band, I believe I began to dissociate from a lot of the world around me precisely because of that. It felt as if the music business was designed to always keep you feeling unfulfilled/ like you weren’t enough. People you absolutely adored and who loved you so much were always saying things like: “You guys should be so much bigger!” And they meant well, but it hurt a lot too. And so I began to understand, exponentially over time and through experience: that there was never ever ever going to be another weekend in my lifetime that was as lovely and raw and sublime as the one where we played for a small hot crowd of people who really understood and cared and wanted in on being a part of whatever it was we were dealing in.

Sorry. Got carried away. Short Answer: Khyber Pass 3 night stand.

*****

What a fun idea! Here goes: Where do you see yourself as a writer in five years? What are your hopes as a writer? 

Taryn

Thanks, Taryn. That’s a good one. As a writer, I just want to be able to keep writing for a living (more and more hopefully). And in true Serge Style I am embarking on that journey here as most of humanity winds down with the whole reading thing and turns to Tik Tok tidbits insetad! So I guess I’m fucked, huh?

Whatever. I still want to keep writing and maybe pick up new subscribers here and there by word of mouth. What else is there? I don’t know. I don’t want anything else. I want to be totally DIY and that’s that.

Mostly though, I want to get better and better, More subs would mean more time that I could focus on writing. But I also know that this is a hard world and i have had such a wonderful existence with bands and music and writing that I can’t complain at all. If I an just keep up exactly what I have now, I’m a happy man, I swear.

In 5 years I’d like to still be doing what I’m doing with writing right now.

We’ll see, I guess.

*****

What drew you to move to small town Pennsylvania?

Miriam

I began coming to central Pennsylvania (which is largely rural or small town) when I was 16. My mom met a fella who was a part of a hunting camp up here and he invited us along. Now he’s my stepdad. He and my mom moved here when his job disappeared in SE Pennsylvania. Years later my brother moved here and then eventually I followed suit. It was a grand experiment, I suppose, in hauling your whole adult family to a new location far from where you were all from. And it failed in some ways, but not in others.

I love it here so much. I love the land and the sky and I love the feeling of being part trout and part whitetail deer because…guess what?….that’s what I think I am! Just by osmosis I am more alive here/ more removed from more static/ and better in executing my never-ending attempts at a better version of myself because I am surrounded by crows and wild turkey and horse shit and the Appalachian mountains worn down by time and wind and snow.

If I could live anywhere in the world, I’d pick here. Maybe a few miles as the eagle flies in one direction or the other, but it would be here. I found my place. Blow my ashes into a muddy deer track and keep on going/ never worry about me.

*****

What have you learned in your marriages/fatherhood that has helped you build a successful blended family.? I was in one and I was from one… and I feel like I did a pretty good job as a Dad/Stepdad, but not so great as a Son… which taught me a lot.Just wondered what your perspective looks like. Thanks, I’ll hang up and listen on the radio.

Brooks

This one is a real galaxy crosser of a question, isn’t it. I mean: it is vast and forever undefined by the property lines of our own feeble definition. I think I should write about this more in a larger piece just focusing on the heart of the matter how I see it, but let me riff on it just a bit here since you asked.

I think the parenting thing is more important than the kid thing. And by that, I mean I personally believe that you push the world more in the right direction when you find your groove as an honorable loving true parent or step-parent than you ever could as a son or daughter or kid or a stepson or stepdaughter or stepkid. Even later on when you are an adult step-kid, there are limits to how you can interweave your feelings with reality if things are damaged or hurting you. The obligations are questionable for either side (parent or “kid'“), I think, because who the hell is the person in this world who has the right to tell anyone what they should feel or how they should act, you know? Especially if things went wrong somewhere along the line. Which is often the case.

For me, the older person (the parent or step-parent) is the sky and the kid is just a bird flying around up there. If the sky folds up with a devastating storm or conjures up a wind that never lets up, then the bird will fuck off and find some other sky to be in. But the bird can’t change the sky because the sky is bigger and wiser and so much more expansive and it is never the bird’s job to have to take care of the sky, like it or not. It is the sky’s job to take care of the bird. I really believe that in my heart. And it has helped me so much in finding a way forward with the real love for all of my kids. I don’t really think of them biologically much anymore. Science schmience. Fuck that noise. I am a man and I am finding my way so I can have them know that I will always be there for them even when I don’t quite understand things.

Many parents cannot do that and so they don’t. They are lost in their inability to process reality outside of their own paradigm and so they believe that the world of their kids (or stepkids) ought to fall into cadence with their own personal wants and desires.

And that is such tragic bullshit. But so it goes.

Be the best. Fail. Be the best again. Fail. Be the best some more, never giving up on love even if it means you have to give up on it completely. In the end, if you keep it up, you will die either trying to be the best or you’ll die failing between bouts of being the best. Both are noble as fuck.

*****

Great idea btw. Favorite venues: to go see a band play and to have played in yourself?

Neil

Fav venue to see other bands would probably be some podunk bar with a stage on the floor and a crowd of drunk friendlies and it’s Friday night. And I’m 25 again. Where is that club? I think it might be in Birmingham, Alabama? Or somewhere in Mississippi? Damn. I used to know it.

The coolest venue I think we ever played in was this tiny bar in Denver where we only played once. It was so small and it was crowded and nuts. I walked on the bar with my guitar. There were homeless people dancing out in the street. Thats when you realize you are playing in the best venue you’ll ever play in. Then the next day it’s over and it’s gone forever. I fucking love that. The sweet ephemeral everything lives and dies upon such hills.

*****

Hi Serge. congrats on three years of Thunder Pie! here’s to thirty more. So many thoughts on questions but here’s (one) to chew on. If Bruce called you up and commissioned you to take one of his lyrics as starting point for a short story, which would you choose? Can’t wait to read this Friday’s ThunderPie!

sincerely,

M

Well, let’s see. I think I’d go with Land of Hope and Dreams because I’d want to be able to move in and out of a lot of people and possibilities in my story. And that song has both. Plus it’s Arle’s favorite and so that makes it very important and I like to have a lot on the line when I’m doing a paid favor for my boy, Bruce!

*****

Serge. I am an English northerner. I love ale and pubs and the joy of a pint on Friday. Where/ what do you drink and where?

Marc

Hot damn. I love an English pub and I am missing that maybe more than most anything else I miss from the band days. I sure did drink in some fine ones. You sure do have a lot of magic pubs over there, Marc.

As for me: I mostly drink red wine from Spain known as Rioja. It’s one you’ve heard of, I’m sure. Nothing fancy, just right down the middle the best fucking wine ever made in the world/ bar none. I might be bias towards that because I also don’t have a big budget for drinking, man. But I learned to love Rioja when I was over there in Spain and it stuck with me. Most of them taste like the windy dust on Don Quixote’s chapped lips. I guess that’s a flavor I dig?

I like to drink at home, especially out around our fire pit. It’s a place to end the day. It’s our place to sigh and smile and watch the bats come out above us.

*****

What song are you most proud of lyrically that you wrote?

John

Maybe ‘My Heart is the Bums of the Street’. I set out to write a Smokey Robinson song and I ended up with something close enough for me. It pulls no fancy punches but it’s honest and true and it all came alive before me as I wrote it.

*****

I will leave the deep questions to deeper thinkers. Favorite fishing fly? Why?

This is a great project mate.

Mark

Finally a fishing question! Thank you, my friend. I needed the digression. My favorite fly is probably the WD-40 nymph. I don’t have any explanation for it, but I have caught way more trout on that little thing (usually size 16 or 18, usually natural grays and browns) than any other fly. Mostly I think it had a lot to do with the fact that the WD-40 just felt fishy to me. Like whenever i looked at it next to almost any other flies in my box, it simply seemed to show itself as a real bug in my eyes as opposed to an imposter like all the others. And confidence, as you know, is everything on the water, right? If you feel like you are using a sure thing…you will probably be using a sure thing. It’s weird!

Anyways, great question. I need to get out on a trout stream soon. Hope you can too, Mark.

*****

Serge, Congrats on 3^rd anniversary of TPie. Knowing you love jazz my question is jazz related.Keep in mind, I believe I know the answer to this question….

Is jazz good music for romance and or sex? I look forward to your answer…

Matt

Jazz music is good for romance AND sex. And cooking. And contemplation. Jazz music is a key to a portal that is located just beneath your feet and right above your head. If you listen to jazz and you are uncertain how to feel: that is a very very good start. That is jazz trying you on just like you are trying it on. You need to stay with it.

Kiss your person with jazz music on. Be a comet. Be timeless. Listen to the music tell you how to be the night.

*****

Do you feel like it's possible to be a rock n roller and also a good Dad and good partner? Or is the lifestyle just destined to be a lonely and selfish endeavor?

Meghan

My stars, you people have some electrifying questions. Thank you for that.

In my humble opinion, I think it is possible to be a good rock-n-roller and also a good dad/ partner. BUT. (There had to be a but, right?) BUT, I believe that you have to make heavy heavy choices along the way that will always favor the seemingly small world that you have with the people you love versus the seemingly vast world that you have given yourself over to in so many ways with rock-n-roll.

And that is just the first step. You know why? Because the more you wrestle with family vs rock-n-roll the more confused you become with the wrestling in and of itself. Rock-n-Roll is a wonderful thing. It is a medium that allows for fantastical expression splattered all over a canvas made out of stone cold reality. And as such, the very thing that makes it potentially magic (it’s power to lift and transport) is also the very thing that makes it potentially tragic (it’s penchant for promising you things it can never ever deliver on).

Some of the greatest rock/rollers of all time were hideous people. They were shitty parents and terrible spouses and partners. They wrapped themselves in so many layers of the music and the life that when it came time to shedding some of those skins in order to be naked/vulnerable/in touch with their loved ones they simply don’t know how to do it. I’m not even sure it’s a choice at that point. Too far gone is too far gone. Believing that you are married to the music is the Devil in your ear. Who benefits from that? People buying your records, I guess. People in the crowd.

But at what price to your people at home?

And at what price to yourself?

I don’t think I have any idea what the right answer is here. I just know what I’ve seen and experienced. Some people believe that music is more important than everything else. I think the world is lucky to have those people. But you might want to avoid them at all costs too. Especially when kids are involved. Because kids today don’t even give a fuck about that old ass music. They just want you to love them right.

*****

Congrats on your 3 year Anniversary TP! And Arle! Great team! 3 years of thought provoking heartfelt shoot from the hip lengthy reads. I usually use a phone for this so it’s a challenge in micro reading winding glasses. Anyway, how long does it take you to generally write these posts?

Gina

Thanks a lot, Gina. That’s so nice of you to say about us. Most weeks, writing these pieces takes me about 2 or 3 days total.

*****

who was your favorite philly local band growing up? :)

Gerry

Easy. Napalm Sunday. From the moment I first heard them when I was still in high school (Jesus…was I??) they blew my mind. People call them power pop and college rock and I don’t know what the fuck else, but I never cared about that. Me and my brother recognized them instantly as a very real very incredible Philly rock/roll band. They sounded like seagulls attacking a Phillies fan eating a hoagie on the beach at Sea Isle City in July. A legendary band in my life.

*****

What are your top five Bruce songs(at the moment)?

M.

1. Loose Ends/ If I Should Fall Behind (Live 99/2000 versions)/ Prove It All Night (Live ‘78 with long two-guitar intro)/ Mansion on the Hill/ Hitch Hikin’.

*****

What is the meaning behind the title of the song Formula, Cola, Dollar Draft- one of my fave Marah tunes. Me and my brother have kicked around theories (RC Cola?) but perhaps you can enlighten us- even though sometimes an air of mystery is the best!   

Julian

My brother wrote that song when he was 19 years old. They just don’t make 19 year olds like that anymore, do they? The title was my idea when we needed one. It came to me because the song had a lot of our family history in it and I remember thinking how so many people that had come before us had lived their lives and gone and now here we were and what does that mean. And so this kind of chronological order made sense to me: childhood/ young adulthood/ adulthood. It was all I’d known up to then. But it made more sense in a title when I took those eras and applied a drink to each of them…like, a drink that you would drink during that stage of your life. Formula when you’re a baby/ Cola as a kid and a young adult/ Dollar Draft from adulthood on.

*****

If you could do a rewrite of your life, would you, or would you keep it all just as is? 

Meghan

I don’t think I would change a thing. I’m happiest NOW. And I figure this now depends on that then unfolding just the way it did, you know?

*****

Would you consider your past workings with Steve Earle an overall positive experience? Feel free to elaborate as much as you'd like...or not.

Alec S.

Steve Earle is a hero of mine. I owe that dude some of the best opportunities and times of my life. He believed in our band and gave us chances that I will never ever be able to pay him back for. Steve’s deepest most sincere parts are hidden away a lot of the time but I think he is one of the sweetest souls underneath it all.

That said, he is also a motherfucker a lot of the time. Haha. Which was perfect for us because I saw a lot of us in him and I suspect maybe he did too. You have to understand something. I became a really massive Steve Earle fan when Guitar Town dropped. I was 16, in high school. It changed everything for me. I loved Springsteen and Hank Williams and Mellencamp and Hank Williams Jr and Muddy Waters and the Stones and suddenly here came this living breathing walking talking cool as fuck synthesis of all of those guys. I was enamored with his music. I watched hours of CMTV just to catch a glimpse of the video for Someday, or even better yet, this extended interview they kept running with him.

Me and my brother saw him live at the Valley Forge Music Fair opening for Waylon. I loved Waylon but he wasn’t shit compared to Steve Earle. In all honesty: he still ain’t. To meet Earle later, to have him come to watch us play and to ask us to sign to his label and to sit on our manager’s back deck in South Philly and bullshit with Steve and have him laughing and telling stories and giving us ideas and asking us to open for him on tours that would take us across the land and over to Europe for the first time…fuck. I still can’t believe it happened.

We played stickball with Steve on Bancroft Street outside Frank’s Auto the same day that he recorded the basic tracks to ‘Transcendental Blues’ with Ronnie and Danny from our band on our shitty gear. And then he used that stuff on the album.

Steve would cut you off just to tell you another story about how him and Emmy Lou Harris went mountain climbing in Peru or whatever the fuck. He would take your dirty crappy acoustic guitar and play something magnificent and gorgeous on it and then hand it back to you and giggle and you knew that your guitar knew that you sucked compared to him. Steve once yelled at my brother on the phone because he was watching the Yankees game and my bro kept calling him about some dumbass liner notes bullshit. I could go on and on. He is the real deal and he gave us so much just because he felt like it.

I love that guy with all of my heart forever.

*****

I am a US History teacher in Valley Stream, Long Island and also a big Civil War fan as I know that you are. Do you have a favorite lesser-known figure/battle/book from the War? (By the way I plan on reading this summer, - based upon your recommendation, Robert E. Lee and Me by Ty Seidule)

Julian

Right on. History teacher for high schoolers is a noble position. I do wonder how much history you’re even allowed to teach anymore though. Everything is changing, huh? I’d be interested in hearing more from you about that someday.

As for me: the Battle of Shepherdstown is my absolute Civil War jam. It’s not nearly as well known as Antietam which happened just three days before it, and that makes sense. Antietam was an epically mad and bloody day. But my GGG Grandfather was with the 118th Pennsylvania Volunteers at Shepherdstown. It’s where they saw their first action. They’d been in the army barely a month at that point. And on a warm September day they found themselves far from their native Philadelphia, on some very high bluffs above the Potomac River, the rear guard of Robert E. Lee’s slowly retreating Army of Northern Virginia spinning around to throat punch the Yanks in a way that my ancestor surely never forgot for the rest of his days.

I won’t say more. Hopefully if you’re curious and aren’t familiar with that fight, you’ll look into it a bit. I can recommend books and stuff if you want.

Have a great rest of the school year, Teach.

*****

Who wrote the lyrics to My Heart is the Bums on the Street?

Brian

That was me. :)

*****

This is the question I ask everyone I meet. What’s the one book that has had the greatest impact on you? How? Why?

Ed

This is almost impossible for me to answer. But here’s a book I am reading right now that I keep connecting with in deep unexpected ways. That hasn’t happened for me too often, not quite like this. I mentioned it briefly a few weeks ago, but the book is by a writer named Reg Darling and it’s called Hartwell Road. Without giving too much away, it’s a memoir that may have some fiction hanging around, according to the prologue. This fact doesn’t bother me in the least because I honestly think that memory is kinda unintentional bullshit half the time anyways.

Darling tells his story using short vignettes to take you with him, starting back with the days of him wandering the Pennsylvania forests of his youth. Along the way he discovers pain, love, sex, drugs, and perhaps most importantly: art as the epicenter of his being alive. Creativity is breath for the writer and when it wanes or is put on the back burner, he suffers and loses himself. The bonds Darling writes about having lived through, bonds with seemingly common people whose intersecting lives made his better, as well as his bonds with nature/ they collide to make perfect cosmic sense by his telling.

I don’t know. Certain books simply bash into us from the very moment we put our hands on them. I did not expect that from this book…or any book these days for that matter. But that’s what happened. I feel deeply and wildly invested in a guy’s life who I have never met nor heard of before.

That is a sign of some good fucking writing if you ask me.

*****

I know you love trout fishing. As an angler I would love to hear more about your days on the bank or something fishing related?

Marc

Marc, I need to write more about that part of me, huh? I agree with you. Fishing has been such a vital part of my life. Have you read ‘Three Rainbows on a Stringer’ yet? I’m pretty proud of that one. But look for more about trout fishing from me before long. Thanks for the prompt.

*****

Hey Serge Hope you’re well? My question is, what advice would you give to a 50+ man who is fed up of feeling bored and old? (Not asking for a friend)

Cheers

Paul

Paul. I guess I would say that time is running out. Old and bored today will be shut-in and hobbled tomorrow, you know? Don’t be afraid to be depressed as fuck a lot of the time. I am but I still manage to at least do a few things that make me happy. Eat foods you like. Exposure to nature is key. When I go outside, I feel alive. It doesn’t have to be a goddamn hike or a kayaking trip or whatever; stand in your local park and talk to a squirrel. Love a select few humans and let the rest go to hell in a hand basket. Being older doesn’t obligate you to having to have a hundred different friends and relationships. Too much of anything will kill you. Except sex. For god’s sake, man, have as much sex as you can possibly convince someone else to have with you.

I wish you many beautiful years ahead, bud.

*****

I've always thought this was a great medium for you and has helped a lot of us get to know you better through your sometimes brutally honest writing. It helps me sometime with my own unknowing self. Thanks for that. Other times ,I reflect on my younger self and relive some of those summertime garden hose backyard moments through your observations of the kids.....thanks for everything! Keep it up Serge! I'll bet you could sell a bound volume of selected short stories/essays.....jus sayin.

Jay

Thanks Jay! Thanks for being here since the beginning. It means so much to me.

*****

You could bring anybody back to life for pizza, beers, and one on one conversation
Who you got?

Tom F.

I like this question and I have a lot of different answers. This time I’m going to have to say my GGG Grandfather, Charles Frederick Marker. He is someone I cannot ever stop thinking about. He’s from where I’m from/ Philly area. And he served for most of the Civil War alongside his brother. That’s enough for me. That’s enough for me to want to speak to him/ see what he looks like/ ply hm with beers (‘You ever had an IPA, Pop?!’) and listen to him tell me his tale of being at Antietam, at Shepherdstown, at Gettsyburg, at Cold Harbor and Fredricksburg and the Wilderness and Chancellorsville. He was there are at Appomattox n that final day. And he marched in the Grand Review in Washington DC after Lincoln was killed.

Then he went home and lived a life that remains mostly a mystery to me. I just would give anything to know more.

*****

Howdy Serge! I hope you’re having a great week. I do indeed have a question for you! I remember in an interview way back you mentioned you put post-it notes in the kitchen(?) when you are working on songs, with the song titles/ideas on the notes. I’m curious if you could go a bit more in depth on how that process helps your writing? Do you still use that tool today with your essays, or was that mostly a songwriting thing?

Love the art you make, in whichever form you choose. Thank you again my friend. 

Tony 

What’s up, Tony. Thanks for the nice words! Holy shit, that was a while ago, huh? I can barely remember doing that with the Post Its, but you have brought it back from the dead and I thank you. Initially, I was setting those notes up to try and remind myself to think about the songs at uncommon moments. In my mind: the way I saw it: if I was making a sandwich or getting some coffee to take with me in the car and I ran into a hot pink note with some in-progress song lyrics or ideas scribbled down on it: I would suddenly be thrust into a very golden opportunity to maybe have a flash of brilliance at a time when I was intending to do something else….all because I would be thinking about the song in a rush of flowing time when I hadn’t intended to be thinking about the song at all.

*****

Who was your favorite or most impactful teacher (if any)in high school?

Larry

His name was Ed Krakowski. Mr Krakowski. My 7th grade science teacher. He was years from retirement, still a fairly youngish guy when I had him. Instantly we bonded over a love of the outdoors. He was a fly fisherman and a hunter and his room was all animal skulls and things in jars and nature posters. I never felt so excited or inspired or at home in a classroom. And to make matters better: he was a really cool human. He had a taxidermy club. I mounted a 12-inch stocked brown trout I caught in the Wissahickon Creek one day after school! (Jesus…where is that fish? I really want it back). He had a fly tying club. He had a contagious love of wild things and the forests and the streams and for a suburban kid with no dad and a desire to do things on the outdoors I just had no way of doing, he represented- to me- the first glimpse of what a real man could be. He was kind and calm and he took no bullshit but was never a yeller or anything like that.

*****

Do you have a larger set of books on one topic than the Battle of Gettysburg?

Bill

Bill, you know what? I do not. Ha. I mean, overall I have a larger collection of the Civil War if you include all of my Gettysburg books in that. But between me and you: I don’t do that. My Gettysburg collection stands alone by my bedside, tall and proud.

And it looks down on me in the night and says:

This fool will never stop buying more Gettysburg books, will he?

Oh wait, no. That’s actually Arle saying that.

*****

I might be too late, but…what is the meaning of Life???

Thomas

Thomas, my friend. ‘Tis never too late to ask the question of all questions. And it is never a surety that any one answer will shed even the tiniest speck of illuminating light upon any of us, let alone the most recent questioner, himself. However, in the spirit of the show going on, I will endeavor to risk all I have on allowing myself to humbly take a stab at putting this one to rest for you.

Life was meaningless, but it meant so much. Then it ended and did the two of us, each of us trying to claw our way back through the casket wall in that closing sequence. But the lid slammed shut and the darkness was solid, velvety. Space poured into our face then and with it came a look back at the leaf on the stream and the cardinal in the pine tree. Every child grew up right before our eyes in an instant and without ever having wondered about it before: we were allowed to watch, in our fading moments, all of the people being born and living and dying at once.

Life was meaningless because it meant so much. The ties we had got washed away in the flow of a tide we could never come close to fathoming. The dream was but an instant and we were even less. Each of us raised up in the flash of a particle of something less than an instant. You and your story in the reflection of a headlight on the kitchen wall. Me and my story in the butter knife glare a driver saw from the street.

Powered by what we thought were ancient movements and desires, we never came with a country mile of anything truly old. Or of anything truly new for that matter.

It was all right now.

And then it was not.

*****

---

---

---

---

I appreciate you being here and reading Thunder Pie. It’s almost three years since I published my first piece on Substack. I’m quite proud of that. I’m very grateful too. If you enjoy my writing but haven’t signed on as a paid subscriber, would you consider doing so? It means a hell of a lot to me to be paid for my art. :)

Anyways, I hope we get to spend many more years together.

Thanks so much.

Serge

---

---

ATTENTION!!!

Want to buy me a glass of Rioja or a pizza or something? I leave this here for you!! Thanks!

---

---

Things I Liked This Week.

• I really think this cover of Tears for Fears ‘Everybody Wants to Rule the World’ by Ted Leo & the Pharmacists is exciting and badass.

• I found this article’s headline to be irresistible. ‘Paul Giamatti Says Cher Keeps Calling Him, And He Has ‘No F**king Idea’ Why.’ You’re damn right I’ll be reading that. And it was as good as I’d hoped it would be. Giamatie makes me smile.

• Check out my wife’s mad photography skills on her Visual Diary 2 . It’s part of her ‘Letter to You’ Substack.

• This hour and a half interview with country legend, Marty Stuart, on the Broken Record podcast was absolutely stellar. Stuart is one hell of a singer, songwriter, and instrumentalist, but he’s also a freaking incredible storyteller! Best podcast of my week, hands down.

• That podcast led me to check out Marty Stuart’s 2019 album, The Pilgrim. It didn’t disappoint at all either. Johnny Cash, George Jones, Emmy Lou, all have roles in this sprawling country theater masterpiece. But it’s Stuart himself who shines the most. On Spotify there’s a Deluxe Extended version of the record that has a ton of outtakes and they’re all really good too! I’m gonna give MS some of my money and buy this sucker on vinyl. He earned it.

• I watched Donnie Darko with Arle this week. Been a long time since I saw it. What a superb film.

---

---

Thunder Pie is edited every single week by Arle Bielanko.

Photos: SB

Email: sergebielanko@gmail.com

Subscribe to Letter to You by Arle.

And please check out her gnarleART for mega handmade treasures.

---

---

goodbye.