Cabrales

We find our protagonist again

Faux Brothers & Sisters,

I agonized a bit over which song to add to the album this week.¹

I added the above gif of bald me and Lord Heinrich von Schindler pulling faces because I thought, perhaps like me, you could use a chuckle.²

We took these selfies in December of 2015.³

What is time?

This newsletter might be renamed “The Crappy Dad Gazette” by year’s end.⁴

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Cabrales is a type of blue cheese made in Spain. It is wrapped in grape leaves, which makes it unique. Sometimes you’ll take a bite of this cheese and it might taste like you took a small shot of Ammonia.

I shit you not.

And I love it.

Sometimes it’s a very thin line separating what is gnar and what is fine.

Cabrales served as a gateway food for me, in that I was able to overcome my fear of eating beets when I was encouraged to eat them with Cabrales cheese.⁵

Suddenly, in 2002, I loved beets.

I was forced to reflect upon a misspent youth writhing in disgust every time a beet was proffered.⁶

We keep changing.

We’re not set in stone.

Sometimes we’re very connected and dialed in.

Sometimes we need to dissociate.

This week’s song, “Cabrales,” is about that tendency to dissociate.

(You can listen to it here, as well:)

The final version of this song wound up being called “Unintouch” and appeared on the 2003 Faux Jean release, “Dead Lover.”

This version here wound up being named after a cheese because I called out to my girlfriend at the time "what that great cheese was" as I began recording, and she answered “Cabrales,” which wound up at the beginning of the first instrumental demo for this one.⁷

But the concept of “Unintouch” came from a friend who worked in Uptown and who sometimes struggled with her employers.

I’d pop by the shop she worked every couple days, just to see what was up.

One day, she was so fed up with them and blurted out: “They’re just so damned . . . Unintouch!!”⁸

I’d not heard that word before, to my knowledge.

I began writing the lyrics as I walked home down Lake Street.

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I sometimes feel like a maker of fine, stinky, bleu cheese when I release these lo-fi demos.

Like, the kids just don’t understand.

Kinda like I didn’t understand that beets, while they do taste like dirt, really taste like the good dirt.

Let us drink to the good dirt, I remain your humble servant,

OX&C,

Faux Jean

1. This is me being vulnerable. Thankfully, I did not beat myself up about it.

2. My car was stolen a month ago and, while I accept it and understand I just gotta move on, it’s kind of bringing me down.

3. I had shaved my head out of sympathy to my wife who was doing chemotherapy at the time, recovering from surgery. She made it through, thankfully.

4. Second week of fall break with the kids at home during the day got me feeling nutty.

5. So if you hate beets, but want to learn to love them, try Cabrales. (This message brought to you by the Spanish cheese council.)

6. And I assure you, the beets were proffered.

7. I know, that’s a horrible sentence.

8. Thankfully for her, she is self-employed now, and I encourage you to check out her business, Vuefinder, if you need new glasses and you are in Minneapolis.