"Real In"

On A Charlie Brown Christmas, The Vince Guaraldi Trio, and the promises of fearsome angels.

Good morning! Given the crummy state the social media platforms I’ve relied on too heavily for the last decade and my increasing feeling of antipathy regarding “logging in,” I’ve come around on the idea of this blog as a viable place to not only share things I create with Aquarium Drunkard, WASTOIDS, and my various musical projects, but also to offer more personal reflections. To that end, I’m setting an intention to be more active here. Welcome to the relaunched JPW Blog, let’s get started with some Seasonal Content™.

Are you having a cool Yule? I’ve been dealing with a case of holiday blues personally, following what I can only categorize as a deeply anxious year. I know I’m far from alone. Consequently, my annual viewing of 1965’s A Charlie Brown Christmas hit especially hard when I settled into watch it last weekend. Despite the fact that Coca Cola paid for and commissioned it, the animated special stands as one of pop culture’s most honest accountings of the disillusioning way “holiday spirit” so often manifests as blatant consumerism and the forlorn sensation that arises from feeling like you’re participating in the season “incorrectly.”

Watching A Charlie Brown Christmas never fails to move me and inspire feelings of hope and peace, in no small part because of the low-key West Coast jazz score by the Vince Guaraldi Trio. I’ve been heavy into Vince’s non-Christmas and non-Peanuts work as of late, but no one captures the gentle tension of melancholy and sweetness like Vince does. Writing about the music featured on the soundtrack, critic Ralph J. Gleason noted that Vince, a “flip and funny, salty and serious, and sometimes stubborn” guy, was perfect for the job of empathetically resonating with the cartoon images of the film: “All the characters in Peanuts are artists confronted with the illogical, blind and mechanistic world. It was natural that Vince Guaraldi’s music should fit so well.”

I interviewed the late drummer Jerry Granelli in 2018 about his work on the soundtrack. Jerry had been a practicing Buddhist for nearly 50 years when we spoke. I wondered how his practice informed his read on the spiritual aspects of the film, and his response has stuck with me in the years since:

“The whole thing is about a basic goodness. The world is screwed up…But there is still human wisdom. There still is human dignity. Buddhism is based on the idea that all humans are basically awake. You have everything you need to live this life and help other people.”

My favorite thing about A Charlie Brown Christmas echoes Jerry’s instance: beneath the chintz and false cheer, there is something deeper happening at Christmastime. Even your “own dog gone commercial” can’t snuff out the hint of that deeper, dignified spiritual core.

I was recently rapping with my dear friend Ken Layne of Desert Oracle on the phone, and he mentioned how, despite its normie conventions, Christmas is a deeply gothy holiday. Wintertime necessitates an acknowledgment of death as the air gets cold, the ground grows hard, and the nights stretching out longer and longer. Traditionally, it’s a time for ghost stories, when spirits from the past appear to hector us into doing the right thing toward our fellow humans.

There are no ghosts in A Charlie Brown Christmas, but there are angels. And even in this cute little film, they inspire great fear. Bizarre and baffling “Biblically accurate angels” have made a big splash online this year, memetic signifiers of the terror that accompanies the divine. Despite the apprehensions from corporate sponsors about its inherent religiosity, Peanuts creator Charles Schulz insisted Linus’ reading from Luke chapter two, which documents the appearance of awe-inspiring celestial messengers to shepherds watching their flock, be included in the special.

Thankfully, Schulz got his way. In the comments of the YouTube video of the scene I embedded above, the commenter “A.T.” notes a moving detail I’d never noticed before: just as Linus quotes the fearsome angels command to the shepherds—“Fear not!”—he releases his security blanket. I don’t think one need to practice any particular faith to appreciate the message of A Charlie Brown Christmas, but I think it encourages having a little faith nonetheless, remaining open to the notion that our fears—even Charlie Brown’s pantophobia, the fear of everything—may be transformed into wonder if we open our hearts to it.

The spirit of new possibility follows the winter’s longest night. The holiday, with all its frustrations and dissatisfactions, is still a chance to go “real in” regarding our experiences with the world and each other. It’s a time to celebrate the unlikely and absurdly meaningful: a holy being found in the lowliest of settings, strange stars guiding us in the skies, Vince Guaraldi’s fingers on the keys, Fred Marshall on the bass, Jerry Granelli’s expressive brushes skittering across the snare.

Recommended listening: While we’re on the topic, it’s a good week for “angel-centric” podcast conversations. I recommend the season closer of Conner Habib’s great Against Everyone podcast, a conversation about anxiety, gratitude, and the unknown with meditation teacher and author Michael Lipson (who reflects on Luke chapter two). And of course you need to spin Strange Familiars’ annual Advent check-in with Irish monk Brother Richard, who shares an exhaustive but charming account of the many orders of angelic hosts—“Seraphim, Cherubim, Thrones, Archangels, Guardian Angels, and much more.”

A plug: You won’t get it in time for Christmas if you order today, but: the yellow vinyl edition of my debut solo album Something Happening/Always Happening is available now from the fine folks at Fort Lowell Records. Any of its songs count as Christmas songs if you listen this time of year, right?