The newly released album by Advance Base, the nom de plume of Owen Ashworth (who was formerly known as Casiotone for the Painfully Alone), is a tremendous thing of beauty called Animal Companionship (Orindal Records), all songs about pets, or songs that feature pets, in a field of inquiry otherwise concerned with the devastation of the human animals. Where Ashworth’s earlier albums really leaned into the consumer electronics, lots of Animal Companionship is mostly about electric piano. You can almost hear fingers striking the keys now and then. This approach to arranging puts the minimalism back in minimalism, an approach to music almost completely unexplored these days.
The desolation of the human animals here is as complete as on other albums by Owen Ashworth, but lo and behold the companionship of the non-human animals somehow effects a tiny ladling in of hope that has perhaps been less frequently present on earlier recordings, and which results both in a greater poignancy, and some giddy joy, perhaps an erroneous joy, given the circumstances of these narratives, but one that is totally welcome nonetheless.
I have written in this space about Owen Ashworth before, and so in a state of delight about the songs I tried to conceive of a new way to talk about Ashworth’s new emotional palette on Animal Companionship, and I thought it might be fun to get him to write some haikus about the pets in his own life. (Ashworth’s songs are very often written for characters, not from his own life, and so these haikus do not, in fact, duplicate much material on the recording.)
Ashworth’s haikus are below, followed by an equal number of haikus by me, about the pets in my life, and, finally, one by my daughter, about the first pet she lost. If you like Owen’s haikus, and even if you don’t, you’ll really love his album. It might even cause you to think anew about the animals in your life.
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By Owen Ashworth
LUCY
Lucy was my dog
A big golden retriever
A real hell raiser
FISHES
There were more fishes
Than I can remember now
Black betas mostly
PENNY
First of many cats
Penny was a calico
I dream about her
RAMSEY
We had a manx cat
After Penny disappeared
This one stuck around
CHIP
Chip was my brother’s
A yellow rat in a cage
Who peed everywhere
SOPHIE
My folks got Sophie
After I left for college
She liked my dad most
MEOW
My housemate Michael
Adopted his ex’s cat
When she moved away
STRAY
For a few fall months
We fed tuna to a stray
But then he was gone
THREE CATS
An old girlfriend’s cats
Mostly hid under the couch
After I moved in
RUFUS
We thought we’d lost her
In the fire but she came back
Smelling like cocoa
POPPY
We came home to find
A kitten on the back porch
So we let her in
By Rick Moody
TROUBLE
Trouble, a black lab;
Was never any trouble.
Mostly, she just slept.
FLATTOP
Dick Tracy was the
Origin of my turtle’s
name. You could do worse.
GUINEA
My mother ended
Up doing all the feeding
of the guinea pig.
COON
The coon cat fell ill
Not long after we got her.
Cancer, and so fast.
GYPSY
Our next cat became
Pregnant three times in one year.
The kittens were cute.
CHOLMONDELEY
An English setter
Who was struck by a taxi
And never improved.
MAC AND DAPHNE
…were the parakeets
Who learned to imitate my
Grad school typewriter.
MAO
The ashes of one
Gray cat remain uninterred
In a friend’s attic.
CLEMENT
Clement Moody of
Exeter, NH, shared a
Name with my dad’s dog.
MOO
You’re a nearby ghost,
You’re a specter underfoot,
You’re lost and not found.
MINNOW
A cat who is a
Fish who is a figment of
A former ocean.
By Hazel Jane Moody
RADISH
Radish is my cat.
He loves me very much.
I miss him a lot.
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Featured image of Owen Ashworth © Jeff Marini.
