“NOT COMPLAINING, BUT…”
Have a tendency to be self-defeating
It’s getting hard to keep this heart from bleeding
The clearer my reflection, the faster it grows dim
If I turned into a lighthouse, the navelcade had better learn to swim
There’s something hypocritical about loving New York
Sweetness on the plate, poison on the fork
As one nice thing arises two better things must fall, but
It’s alright, Ma! I’m only bleeding after all
I’m not complaining…
…but
Nearly thirty days after the second tower fell
We had to walk to school surrounded by the awful smell
Nearly thirty years I’ve spent, now, trying to deny
That I was born short and I’m gonna die shy
I’m not complaining…
…but
Every issue of this publication includes an exposé on one of The Motor Tom’s songs. Sometimes the article has been or will be a simple history of how the song came to be; sometimes it has been or will be an explication of the song’s meaning. In this week’s edition, we are presenting somewhat of a supplement, a companion piece of sorts, to the song for which this publication is named. So, a healthy chunk of the material herein may bear only indirect relation to the subject, the song, but that is because the song is but a piece of a larger creative and philosophical whole.
ll eight million of us raced out of New York because the City was going to draped in poisonous gas. In the Heights my grandfather shrugged off the notion of evacuation and threw us his familiar casual smile from outside the car.
The smoke stuck around the bottom of the island for a week and the smell of burnt hair and singed concrete pervaded for a month, and for the first time in our lives we weren’t safe.
Keep you eyes down to make sure you don’t step in shit; keep your head up to make sure someone’s not about to stick in a knife in you. Look both ways before crossing the street until you’re old enough to make speeding cars stop for you. Fill up the bathtub and any bucket you have those couple of times a year when the building shuts off the water so the pipes can get cleaned. Give a quick look around as a train approaches the station to ensure some nut doesn’t shove you onto the tracks. Do all of these and keep yourself from getting addicted to heroin and you’ll have a splendid time in the worl’ds greatest city.
We never saw it coming and that’s why, some fourteen years later, the telling of the tale is accompanied by lumps in the throat. If only that sonabitches who did this hadn’t perished in the undertaking then we could put their names and faces in the papers, try them in court and fry them ourselves. Instead we had to find someone alive to blame; some living person had to pay. Brown. Arab. Over there. Check. Check and… check.
Shoot first and ask questions later, cowboy. That’s the American way and America is at war. Again. Smoke em out and watch this drive, right? The problem for folks like me, as angry a teenager as I was at the time, was that more than ever before, we didn’t feel American. Rather, whereas a New Yorker had been proud to represent all that is intrepid, all that is free, diverse and accepting about America-the-Beautiful, by September 12, 2001 we were Americans no longer.
Anger is a perfectly natural reaction to threatening phenomena. Certain reactions involving the amygdala, the adrenal medulla, norepenephrine and glucocorticoids elicit a response we define as anger. (For greater detail into this chemical process, you can reach my mother, Dr Cynthia Schupak at BigBrainGal1251@aol.com.) While this mechanism is an efficient one, it is, typically, a fleeting one. Within a second or two enough blood has entered the frontal cortex centers associated with cognitive functions such as self-control, and we enter that markedly human procedure of thinking before acting. In the instance of America’s reaction to New York being attacked, the latter operation was mostly overridden. And thus the emotional cessation, a cessation borne of equal parts resentment and estrangement, of New York City from the Union began.
“I hear a character who is telling me something. Anything that distracts me from hearing what he’s saying, is just… kind of annoying.”
-Gregory Lattimer
ast-forward to some time in the year 2014 to find The Motor Tom in a barn in upstate New York. The band members at the time, Andrew, Nick, Anthony, JJ and Alessandro, have laid down the essential musical components of the six songs they had sought to record, and even a song they had not previously considered. Andrew and Nick peruse their respective internal browser histories for musical snippets that might be worthwhile of attention when they recall something scattered and incomplete from a year earlier. Pretty much all that existed was a chord pattern and a notion of an ascending melody on the phrase “I’m not complaining.” Somewhere in the overgrowth producer Gregory Lattimer spotted something crucial so he sic’d the band on the tune.
Lattimer’s Method, which I assure you deserves capitalization, is to strip any song and its parts to its essentials. There is hardly a 5-minute span during any Lattimer-led recording session during which you won’t hear the word “dumb.” “For me, I hear a character (gesturing towards Schupak, or in an ambiguous situation, towards whoever is singing lead) who is telling me something. Anything that distracts me from hearing what he’s saying, is just… kind of annoying.” His can be an excruciating process for a musician. During a pre-production session for The Shake’s 2010 LP “The Shake Go Crazy,” the producer waited until drummer Vishal Kumar’s eyes were closed during a song, sneaked over to his kit and took away two of his cymbals. Kumar only noticed this had happened when he went to hit a crash as one section transitioned into another and was, well, rather nonplussed. The ideal guitar solo in Lattimer’s eyes is the one that doesn’t exist, but if it must then it ought to be comprised of one single note played with feeling.
Such is the foundation of all Motor Tom constructions, with “I’m Not Complaining, But…” expressing a particularly pronounced version of the Lattimer Method. Being so minimalist it seemed incongruous to employ any sort of lyrical deceit or clever-ness, so this stands as the only TMT song thus far to include purely confessional lyrics. The nucleus of the song’s lyrics is the line “I was born short and I’m gonna die shy,” a line that was ad-libbed during one of several live run-throughs during the frenetic weekend in the barn. It was the catalyst to let the lyrical content come some place deep, even if that place be quite dark. So, when thoughts and words about September 11 began to surface a marriage of tone and content occurred; and the wedding ceremony took place at the intersection of two pervasive Motor Tom subjects: New York City and the unavoidable nature of paradox.
Fast-forward just a bit more to now, as I Nick Schupak, write this article for you. It’s Monday, March 16, 2015 and I’m at work considering the effects of the September 11 attacks. Personally, nearly a decade and a half later I think the events of that day made me and a lot of my fellow New Yorkers calmer, more understanding people. Now that the fear, the confusion, the anger and disbelief have had time to be chewed, swallowed and digested, it seems that a particular characteristic has emerged in a renewed light: thoughtfulness. These are two things that no one would ascribe to your average modern American. Headline culture reins here, after all. If I can’t learn all I need to know about a topic in 140 characters or, ideally, fewer, I’m just not all that interested. For me, I’ve found that it is along this very fault line, along the fissure between those folks who read quickly and act quickly, and those folks who require more information, that the extreme partisan nature of modern America occurs.
was there the day my City was attacked and my fellow New Yorkers were killed and I watched a cowboy president shoot first and ask questions later. And I resented the shit out of him for that. Though I have my reservations about some of President Obama’s actions and policies (why weren’t you in Paris after the Hebdo attacks, dude?!), I find that the example of his composure far outweighs any specific decision, or lack there of, he might make. His Presidency shows that there are still some Americans, a lot of Americans in fact, who maintain that thoughtfulness is crucial to being modern. I am aware that I generalize in a pretty big way when I speak about me and my fellow New Yorkers, there are myriad types of New Yorker. Perhaps, in order to rap this article up, I ought to clarify what I mean by it. I mean to create a symbol: The New Yorker as the prototypical modern citizen. My New Yorker is educated not only by what he or she is taught in school but by the experience he or she gains by being around so many different-looking, different-thinking people all the time. It’s not too difficult to vilify brown folks when you hardly ever see or interact with any. It’s much more difficult to vilify brown folks when their humanity is a part of your everyday life. During the several months following the attacks of September 11, 2001 the Arab and Muslim members of New York City were vocal about their condemnation of the events and its perpetrators. That’s because they weren’t speaking as Arabs or as Muslims but because they were speaking as New Yorkers. And we listened to them, and we agreed with them, not as Westerners, not as Americans, but as fellow New Yorkers. That was a proud time in our history. Those were honest moments. In all good conscience I could not reference such poignant times in a song and allow a hint of deceit or dishonesty to exist alongside. That’s why this is the only Motor Tom song — thus far — to include zero imagination. I was born and raised in a place that cannot help but evolve, and I can only wish the same for myself.
