31 July 2009
GRATEFUL DEAD SONG OF THE WEEK: "Loser" (1972) It's not a song that inspires parties. There's an incredible rush to the adrenalin and red-lining glory of, you know, "Whole Lotta Love" and "Calling Doctor Love" and "Seven Nation Army" and "Johnny B. Goode," but life just ain't always like that. There's also this need for songs that might help slow down the slide towards wherever you don't want to go. Songs that say Ya Basta! without screaming. The delivery of the lyric "All that I'm askin for is ten gold dollars/and I could pay you back with one good hand...I've got no chance of losing this time..." catches that snapshot in time where Wile E. Coyote's rock is still balanced on a stick, but next to the canyon... But, I mean, hell, if even Richard Gere and Jodie Foster can end up in a film as demented as Somersby, there's hope for us all, ain't there? Has that back-on-my-haunches-but-I-draw-lines-too, feel to it. Come on.
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OBAMA SAVES THE ECONOMY (and now horrified rank and file Republicans are his greatest asset)
http://features.csmonitor.com/economyrebuild/2009/07/23/bulls-back-as-dow-closes-above-9000/
In September most everyone was preparing for the crash of '27 all over again. Horrified by the villains of Wall Street, President George W. Bush started pumping them cash in unpredented quantities to give them a chance to....not make good, but get back on their Guccis. I was horrified, but my long-since chosen candidate Obama and John McCain (whom I also like) both backed him up on it.
(to be fair, not all Republicans did. Newt Gringrich wrote a scathing attack that deserved more consideration than it got, kind of, and deserves more consideration here....but first let me note that it reminds me of Jack Kemp's brilliant assessment of the Rodney King riots in which he so articulately spoke in terms of hopelessness, cycles of poverty, and milieus of despair...he totally had it nailed until he concluded that "the only way to correct this is by cutting the capital gains tax." In a similar vein Newt masterminded the unnecessary and sinful corporate greed, irresponsibility and largesse that had led to the immediate concern and concluded....no, I swear, that the way to the right the thing was through "abolition of the capital gains tax" so that corporations could "earn" more.)
So President Obama inherited a situation in which his Republican predecessor had allowed the economy to go to, almost literally, hell. He inherited an approach against which I harbor a particularly dark form of ambivalence, but he's made it work. Kind of.
No one's freaking out, as much, anymore. Consumer interest isn't so limp. Wall Street's getting a hard-on for the future. One would think, as champions of "trickle down" Reaganomics from what they perceive as time immemoral, no one would be happier about this than rank and file Republicans. But they're not, and that's a good thing, as I'm about to explain after this next digression.
As long-time readers of my analyses are aware, the Bush disaster (really the Reagan/Bush/Clinton/Bush disaster) was not readily amenable to any "bottom-up" solution....January was a time for prudence rather than revolution...
And so that's what President Obama did. He worked on strengthening the existing structures of the American economy, largely reflections of the Reagan & caretakers revolution. He did so in a manner only somewhat different than Bush junior, but at least demanding corporate accountability (rather than just throwing big bags of cash to the greedy and at fault) and...low and behold in a mere six months the terrible shadow has passed! That is to say that the darkest moment has passed...
Our jobs are safer and we've been bilked again! Of course most of the alternatives offered by the Reagan/Bushes/Clinton fiaso were a great deal worse, and Congress would never have approved most of the better ones. No jobs: if the corporate elite had tucked their bags and assets and intricate knowledge of the corrupt system they rule and headed to the border we could have really been screwed. Yeah, we're lucky to get out of it this well, and the truth of that is a reflection on how bad September, and everything over the past 30 years leading to it, really was, and where it was inevitably headed.
Now the Republican rank and file, ripped off for decades by their heroes and rather unaccustomed to applauding Democrats at all, and particularly African-Americans (other than maybe Cosby and the local cornerbacks)....and generally disinclined to change their ways in any manner recognizeable to normal humans...
The Republican Faithful, the ones who got conned by Reagan and continued to be conned by both Bushes, (see the writings of the Republican economist Kevin Jarvis on the class war of the past 30 years) and basically hated Clinton even though the pursued esentially the same policies....are now rabid at Obama.
Why? This is where it gets good. This will be a pivotal moment in 21 st Century American history if the Republican masses stay their course, which history suggests that they will (few voting blocs have ever demonstrated such a lack of inclination to change direction). Not a bunch of shrinking violent wallflowers or anything....not a herd easy to divert...
They HATE the bailouts. The bailouts that were necessitated by the policies established by Reagan and continued through Bush. I'm not saying that the crisis would have occurred had Reagan been awake for seven terms (though I suspect it would have been much, much worse), I'm just saying that no one including Clinton ever tried to slow down the locomotive, whereas conceivably Reagan might have. So love him if you have to, it didn't happen on his watch.
But if Republican main street can't be conned again, before the '12 primaries, into something as obviously against their own interests as Reagan's (at least) re-election was....we're going to see Republican candidates fighting for space on a spectacularly populist, and traditionally conservative (rather than irrationally and irresponsibly promoting international corporatism), Republican platform for the first time since....Goldwater or Eisenhower. In other words they'll still be going on about school prayer and abortion, but they will have cut the crap about tax breaks and welfare for people making ten times as much as they do.
This clearly plays into Obama's hands, assuming he can best the surviving lout. It would give him the mandate that he was denied in the '08 election. The clear mandate to make things better for the most of us at the expense of the few whom have fed off us like leeches for 30 years. It would give him the opportunity to change the culture of corporate greed (by at least making them feed off of each other, instead of us), just like he promised on the campaign trail, most articulately in Wisconsin.
If Obama and the Republican candidate fight out a general election by arguing who is going to give the least of our money away to the corporations most used to getting it, there aren't going to be a lot of compelling arguments left for any lobbyist trying to dip into the public trough in order to promote Big Macs in Shanghai.
Main Street has become-very belatedly but at last-suspicious and resentful of Wall Street. Defensive against the moneychangers. People may still trust banks to hold their money, but they're not inclined to pay higher taxes in order to continue the kind of wild and self-serving speculation that we've suffered from for nearly 30 years. I would suggest opening by creating two nationalized banks in response to newfound Republican concerns over economic elitism: one to be run by the Republicans, one run by Democrats. Let's see who charges greater interest and more bullshit fees. Let's see how Bank of California fares on a real open market. Down the road, a 99% tax bracket on all individual earnings over $5 million/year.
And yeah, that includes capital gains, but maybe at only 98.5%. $5 million a year? No one's worth more than that, no matter how many other people's jobs they cut.
Let's get those ill-gotten gains back from Wall Street conmen, to the Republicans in the diners of Kansas and New Mexico and Montana and Britney Spears' hometown of Hammond, Louisiana. I swear I see some common ground: same damn common ground I've seen since '81, but it looks like the Republicans are about to claim it as their own. 'Bout damn time, brah!
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RICKEY HENDERSON was, without leaving room for any sensible debate, the greatest lead-off hitter in the history of baseball. Lead off hitters get on base to score runs. Rickey scored more runs than anyone ever did, he stole more bases, he walked more than anyone but Barry-he was on base more times than anyone but Pete Rose, Barry and Ty Cobb-and once he was there he was way more dangerous than any of them including Cobb.
But I'll always remember him best for one shining oratorical flash. I'm not saying that Rickey was necessarily also smarter than everyone else-though it's entirely possible-but he was always that street kid with an eye for the treasure falling off the fruit cart. He was, at the time-early or mid '90s-unquestionably the best player in baseball. He'd signed the highest contract the year before, but for several years. In the offseason his contract had been surpassed, by lesser talents.
He shook his head a little sideways for the interviewer, dumbfounded by the horror of what he now had to reveal, so early in spring training. "I'm just not sure how hard Rickey can play for $5 million..." it sounded like an apology.
He should forever be the baseball hero of the trade unions. And not just because he played harder than anyone anyway, no matter what he said about himself in third person.
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http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20090729/wl_mideast_afp/healthfluisraelvaccine_20090729131107
Yep, that's about the most obvious thing a government should do. Provide health care for all of its citizens. Well done, Israel.
24 July 2009
In Which I Become a Colonel in the Penguin Army
A couple five or six years ago Amelia decided she wanted to be a Brownie. Though the scouts were one of my biggest disappointments in life (on a magnitude of Jagger's debut solo album and Tony Blair) I offered no objection. She came back complaining "they made me pledge allegiance to the queen!" "Waaal," I offered, "they don't really mean it. It's more a symbolic thing, you know, like you're happy to be in England." She wasn't pleased, the queen wasn't the entirety of the problem (ain't that regularly the case): Amelia didn't like the stupid suits, she didn't like the uptight leader, she didn't like the little social cliques that seemed to be encouraged by the proceedings....
She quit, reluctantly, after two sessions. She wanted to belong to something. Someone told us about Woodcraft Folk, it's a bit more relaxed, not always terribly organised. Amelia loved it the first time out and was soon asking me questions about my views on nuclear power, and wandering around the house humming "Blowing in the Wind." These seven years on Amelia, Alexandra and Myles have all been happily involved, and me too.
http://www.tuc.org.uk/the_tuc/tuc-16170-f0.cfm?regional=8
And so I found myself at the Tolpuddle Martyrs Festival in an official capacity with Woodcraft Folk. The scene finds me seated at a table outside, good weather, the kind of event where you would expect more balloons than there actually were, a group of maybe 15 children and five adults in front of me weaving God's eyes and planning parachute games and waiting for the next singalong.
A nicer sort of, not elderly but maybe approaching 73, gentleman approached the table. "What are The Woodcraft Folk, then?" he asked. Like any meaningful question that's fairly complex, and so I started out "Waal, they're...."
"They're a bit of a Hippie Scouts, are they?" he asked, approvingly and with a twinkle in his eye.
I smiled and shrugged, that's not a bad point to start from. Of course there's more to it than that but I was saved from so much as sensing direction by a veteran leader who recited the official explanation (I haven't quite memorised it yet): We are a youth organisation dedicated to promoting personal responsibility and social change and....(it goes on like that)
The guy was impressed and I'm pretty sure he's going to help out. A lot of older folk would like to be hippie scouts. Never explained that penguin bit yet, did I....?
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The Tolpuddle martyrs are generally recognised as the beginning, or at least the beginning swelling, of the British union movement. As the British union movement has historically been at its heart a socialist movement, Tolpuddle remains at its heart a socialist event. Woodcraft Folk was also formed by socialists (with a particular admiration for Native Americans), and though there have been exchanged views throughout the years to the extent that the Folk may now most closely share the values of the Greens, there remains an essential, elemental socialist vein.
For my eyes Tolpuddle is an absolutely bizarre event. Every political organisation conceivably to the left of Labour (except for the Lib Dems, who seem to mainly recruit amongst themselves, or at least quietly and selectively) is represented, but although booths in favour of and against everything you'd expect and more...no one's talking politics. It has that British thing to it, where one generally chooses not to offend anyone else. There is no confrontation (and so no revolution). Progress happens to the extent of new connections and charging psychological batteries. Not my way, but no one was arrested. Well, maybe one guy might have been, but it was more for trying to match his behaviour to his atrocious haircut.
The centerpiece of the festival is the Sunday march. We march from the fairgrounds at the edge of (Tolpuddle!) about halfway through town, then turn around and come back again. This is particularly enjoyable as it allows you to take stock of all of the different delegations on their way back. Of course there are people standing along the parade route, but they're not 20 deep or anything. The march is primarily for the benefit of the paraders.
The Woodcraft marchers numbered about 70, maybe twelve adults. I think five guitarists, one of whom was an adult-actually she was playing something very similar to a guitar, anyway-Joan Baez school-and she could play absolutely anything if you'd give a key and hint.... So we marched on Tolpuddle in support of these guys that a few hundred years ago sparked the labour movement, singing and strutting in that Woodcraft way. The sight of so many children-aged 6 to 16 or so-singing "Joe Hill" and "Blowing in the Wind," and "Down By the Riverside" and all of those old songs of solidarity and the civil rights and equality movements, and some new ones....it was an incredibly beautiful thing.
But the thing that moved me most was the unreconstructed elderly hardcores along the way, standing to the side watching us walk by. And then joining in, tears in their eyes and as loudly as their fading vital signs would permit. "...what they forgot to kill, went on to organise, went on to organise." I'll never forget the lady singing that.
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Billy Bragg closed the festival. Not technically, it was going to go on all night again but Billy was the big musical event. I've tried to love Billy Bragg but I can't get much past kind of liking him, and admiring his determination and energy a lot. It was the end of the festival and my feet hurt and I was sick of crowds, so I hung out towards the edge, sitting at my old Woodcraft table, actually.
People came and went to a limited extent, asking if they could leave this there and I might watch it (of course). The only constant companion I had was a guy about 80, sorting through his backpacks for food and his mind for thoughts, mouth running all the time. I was pretty burned out but I knew that if I listened to this character long enough he was bound to say something brilliant, so I tried to kind of monitor the broadcast.
He rambled on about a guy he knew who had cancer and a very nice chair and liked roast beef. Might have been elected, he wasn't sure. He went on extensively about having been imprisoned for three days in 1962 for an action at Aldermaston (nukes). He still hates every cop in the damn place even if they don't still kick people whilst dragging them to their cells. He's pretty sure we should throw bricks more, he was disappointed that I'd not thrown more bricks.. He couldn't find his fish spread and wanted to make a sandwich. He finally did, "the pièce de résistance," he declared, springing a slice of days-since toasted bread out of one of the many packs. I was kind of trying to listen to Billy (so I'd like him more) and the guest artist he'd pulled from a local prison, and this guy kept going on about wardens and every kind of food and his ambivalence towards Chippendale dancers (if they make the women happy, he guessed they're alright).
Then he decided to up and go. I was kind of reluctant to let him, but no one had asked me not to and I didn't even know whom he was attached to. I guess I figured he'd probably do well enough on his own, he wasn't young, he'd no doubt done it before. I'd seen him around Woodcraft groups but it's possible he had just latched onto them, as well. "It's time to go," he said, "although I have this sinking feeling that I left long ago."
I assured him that he hadn't. He hasn't. For awhile I feared he never would.
Billy closed with an a capella rendition of "The Internationale." God Bless him, so long's Billy's willing to accept the blessing. In a way I half envied the guys who responded like it was Led Zeppelin kicking into "Whole Lotta Love."
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There's a recently traditional Woodcraft penguin song & dance game that's always struck me as more fun than most anything else, but we had this guy from way off somewhere South East...he was so damn funny, especially his portrayal of a penguin salute. Hell, let's face it-the reality is that he's also half-penguin lookin'! Add a bob and a weave here and a tux... It won't translate to words and even video might not do it justice. Anyway, we were all quacking and buns up and flapping about....fifty of us on an open space of grass, trying to express for everyone else who we are....I imagine some of 'em must have had a sense that we left long ago.
17 July 2009
Laural's dish is a not quite as full this week, as I've been preparing for and am off to the Tolpuddle Martyrs festival. Theresa mistakenly commented that I was going to “Puddleduck,” which is what camping's going to be like if it keeps raining.
Ummm, lots of Cuban food, good music and radical politics. Should be lots of fun so if you're good I may tell you about it next week. But this week was not without its own terrible revelation:
Unless you're too horrified to talk about anything else, or don't want to, or want to make that point, or…anyway, it seems that David's a better man than I because I'm gonna talk about it.
NO. It IS too stupid to talk about but so much we talk about is, so let me talk about it anyway. Lots of things are too stupid to talk about-invading Iraq jumps to mind-but it's better to talk about them than just let them roll past unchallenged, even if you can't do anything to stop them.
What the fuck is it with ageing rock stars who take time off from partying to collect socialite awards? Are their brain cells possibly that rotted? Can they have possibly become that bored ?
You can't tell me that a grown man with a functional bank account and any artistic sensibilities at all can't think of anything better to do than stand there in that. So it would be too easy to turn it into yet another brilliant and unanswerable attack on the aesthetic of capitalism (I have previously argued that capitalism is the true"classless society," as it's so absolutely bereft of class). But it's something way smaller and lamer than that.
Robert Plant may or may not have been born to accomplish great things, but whichever the case he achieved them anyway and changed the world for mainly the better in the process. This doesn't change the world, it's more like watching Alexander the Great piss in his pants at a state dinner celebrating his agility and strategic prowess.
LOUD MUSIC OF THE WEEK: “Stone Blue”- Foghat (1978). I'm not saying it's a great song, I'm not even saying that it's all that loud, I'm just saying that it's an incredible and true, and great sentiment. Mea benefacto. It's got that raunchy '70s amped blues vibe that is the music closest to my heart. “When I was stone blue...” isn't such a great lyric that you don't even care what comes next, it's just that lyric that leads into something that means so much more than any study of lyrics. As Lou Reed says, “My life was saved by rock 'n' roll.” In the spirit of the thing it becomes an almost endearing quality that this track isn't cut by Lou or some other intellect of staggering proportion, but by a mere mortal band, and one that's still on the road nearly 30 years after I saw (and thoroughly enjoyed) 'em at the Baton Rouge Centroplex with Blue Öyster Cult.
10 July 2009
CLASSICAL MUSIC OF THE WEEK : CHAMBER DOMAINE – Henryk Gorecki:: Life Journey (2009) My brother Jonathan sent me this and I've been playing it several times a day. I'm positive that I don't have the frame of reference to write anything technically interesting-ask me the difference between classical and baroque and watch me blink-but if anything I'm overqualified to explain what I think (me thinking about myself so much, you see). So anyway, my working theory is that everyone has this interior personal rhythm. A lot of them maybe, or more likely variations on a central one. But everyone has a central interior rhythm, the rhythm of their soul as manifest on this earthly plane. To quote one of Jonathan's favorite philosophers, “We are not human beings having a spiritual experience, we are spiritual beings having a human experience.” And one of the cards we're dealt (or choose ) on the way through is this personal, central rhythm. We are then attracted to music that aligns in some way with that rhythm. The closest anything comes to my own personal rhythm is probably “Stray Cat Blues,” but all kinds of stuff-Thelonious Monk and Beethoven and Peter Tosh-all reflect that rhythm in some way and to some extent. I have probably studied, inadvertently, Jonathan's musical rhythms more than anyone on the planet, through his actions and musical selections over the past 32 years. Even as we've moved around to different spots on the globe he's sent me CDs of what he's into, it's almost like a UPS tracking device except that it's musical and-if you accept the premise-spiritual. Jonathan's sent me Gorecki stuff ( sounds like a description of the cheap horror flicks that we both love ) before, I probably wouldn't have found Gorecki yet otherwise, and I almost certainly wouldn't be so attuned to what he's doing because...yep, that's right, Jonathan's trained my ear with all of the other stuff he listens to. The Gorecki vibe is deceptively simple, living on that edge like a teapot in advanced but unobserved heat distress. A couple stringed instruments not playing much at all set the atmosphere of some place stark but undemanding...then he launches the mad and crazy and disconcerting and brilliant...he does heavy throwing not heavy lifting. The Toccata for Two Pianos and Four Preludes for Piano are going on my iPod right away, but it's generally music that demands some growth and deviation from my inherent more jaunty truck-driving rhythm.
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There were three and then there will be one. Strange insights on a Trinity? Well, maybe, but what I'm really trying to address here is the more mundane (but not at all!) reality that...Amelia already having moved on to West Ex Technology College (high school in American terms), and Myles now leaving, Theresa will be the only representative of the Trapp family at the Exeter Steiner School next year.
Many will attest that a single Trapp is way more than enough-at least if it's me-and Theresa has to be applauded for her work at the school: a few years back it was a building down a frequently trashy back alley, an oasis in the midst of disinterested but intransigent indecision...today they're down a far classier alley and have a full-on campus with several buildings, a big grassy area, trees and treehouse, conference room...a lot more kids than they've ever had and that spirit that kept ‘em going in the first place.
If I had it to do all over again, and accessibility and resources-I would put every single one of my kids through Steiner education from kindergarten. It's more attentive to delivering what the kids need, when they need it. It's less one-size-fits-all. It's responsive to the child. There's a reverence for spirituality that's not didactic. It's a very gentle approach (the slogan being “Education is a journey, not a race.”), though of course the kids do whomp on each other on the playground from time to time. No one freaks out, there's a minimum of freaking out.
Of course I have no difficulty distinguishing my own beliefs from those of Rudolf Steiner, the central figure in Steiner education and Godfather of Anthroposophy (a Christianity-based belief system inspired largely by his thought). I'm positive that I would have liked Rudy and I think that, as a historical figure, he's fared fairly well. His legacy has been true to the ideal.
Of course, there's always someone bound to get it right. Whereas many if not most of the worst wars in the history of mankind have been fought in the name of the ultimate pacifist Jesus Christ, and some of the most totalitarian systems of repression founded in the name of the man whose central talent and purpose was to liberate mankind from the control of authoritarian institutions, Karl Marx:…actually Marx is kind of a good match here. Marx was a raving genius of a poet and social critic. It's impossible to read his social criticisms without getting fired up about it. The problem being when you believe that he knew everything about how to fix everything, or worse when you're a despot desperate for power and think you know everything and set him up from his grave as spokesperson.
Rudolf Steiner was also an intellectually rampaging genius. His most extended forays tended to be of a spiritual nature, but his political perceptions were incisive and insightful to the degree that Steiner schools were the second social organizations shut down by Hitler (Freemasons being the first). His observations and perceptions are nearly universally fascinating, and speculative to an exhilarating degree. Which means, I think, that you have to give him a broad margin of error, as he did himself. While championing the Anthroposophical movement in the spectacularly intellectually fertile Germanic culture of the earliest decades of the 20 th century (think Nietzsche, Hesse, Jung, Freud, Luxemburg), he often declared “I am not an Anthroposophist.” He was saying, “Get your own read on these things, I'm a generalized signpost if a particularly glorious one. Don't just sign up and think you did it. ”
But I digress...
So Myles will not be attending Exeter Steiner School next year as he's graduating, moving on to South West Steiner School, in Dartington. It's a little bit of a commute but he's into it. He had his introductory days last week, he's pretty excited about the level of interest in Star Wars Legos amongst the other students.
Theresa's best friend's daughter also attends Dartington, commuting even further. So Myles has rides up. But the schedule was such that I needed to pick him up last week.
This would mean getting off the train in Totnes. We had not been on British soil, back in July of 2001, for more than a day when a friendly self-described pensioner suggested that we might find “lots of kindred spirits” in Totnes. By this I imagine he meant it is a hippie town.
Now, my own relationship with hippiedom is shockingly ambiguous and undefined, for someone so regularly described as one. I think Bob Dylan was on point as usual when he said, “It's just people trying to quantify things they don't understand,” though his analysis may in some small part break down (or achieve a stunning new dimension!) when it turns out that it was the San Francisco hippies themselves who got everyone saying it. In any event, I have an aversion to a lot of things...a lot of things frustrate me and piss me off and I try and avoid them. Corporate attorneys and other hypocrites and doctrinaire petty-ists probably foremost, but stoned wannabe philosophers are the relevant hit. People who con others and con themselves.
Totnes suffers/enjoys a public perception of a duality that includes long hair and sandals; and also a level of flow chartdom to choke a corporate advisor, trust funds and counselours and assistants and constituents of all sorts of New Age things many if not most of which strike me as distracting and unnecessary, at best, and snake oil salesmen, at worst. The sacred and the profane: peace, love and understanding on one side-and the dark art of wasting everyone's time and taking their money on the other. I can't stand La Jolla and I've never seen a worse gallery than The La Jolla Museum of Modern Art. They threw me out for laughing. I went and sat in the car listening to a baseball game whilst my friends more slowly came to the same conclusion.
I'm not going to try and reconcile my Totnes ambivalence here: in fact, now having at least got off the train there twice (after avoiding it for eight years), my sense is that everything about it is exaggerated. But taking the train to Totnes is cool, in itself: it's a ride up the coast ( past plenty of places with the positive association of me and Theresa drank a bottle of champagne there ), it's kind of like driving down the interstate to a Grateful Dead concert. You can tell, just by looking, who's going to take the off-ramp to the stadium: those same people are going to get off the train at Totnes.
From there it's this incredible walk on the river, with all of these bamboo overhangs and cool little sculptures and very green trees, then through a giant field of stuff that kind of looks like corn to me but Myles told me what it really is (I forget, it wasn't turnips or pandas). It's about a three mile walk from the Totnes train station to the Steiner school just outside Dartington.
It's a wonderful place, it's been there for a very long time. Big Old three-storey red stone Victorian building, sprawling grounds that include playgrounds, several buildings, a greenhouse, their own little bus station (not a single graffiti on it: I have mixed feelings on that but I applaud ). It was one of those days, one of those perfect English days that W. Somerset Maugham said make up for everything else. Those days where-when you were a kid-no one cared about predicate nominatives or logarithms or the capital of Chile or anything else except for school ending.
The entire Dartington school was outside. The younger kids were involved in optional and loosely organized activities. The older ones mingled amongst themselves in those little groups, talking in the shade, laughing and sharing the afternoon.
Man! At Stuttgart American High School ( actually in Ludwigsburg-we passed the Porsche factory in Zuffenhausen on the way in every day ) in 1977 we had to call in fake bomb threats on behalf of the Baader-Meinhof gang to achieve that level of education!! ...but we did, well one guy did and the rest of us appreciated it...and it's my fondest memory of the place.
As the parents showed up to pick up their children, instead of waiting around gossiping they just found their children's class and seamlessly joined in.
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PUT THIS ON YOUR iPOD FOR LATE AT NIGHT (or at least when something's dark): "Diamonds and Rust"-Joan Baez (1975) Writers are lazy people as a general rule. Especially music reviewers, probably because there are only so many ways that you can say what you like about a song-I've written plenty of music reviews and I've always tried to stay fresh and I have definitely not always succeeded. "Haunting," this song is absolutely haunting, but so many people have been inclined to say that about damn near anything that it don't mean much…unless you really believe and understand it, which you can only do by listening. I'd heard this song a number of times and always liked it. Then I heard it on the radio a few years back, right smack in the middle of the afternoon, and I got absolutely hainted. I wasn't even in a mellow or dark mood or anything. The song just took over. Now it haunts me every time I hear it, it touches some strange place between my psyche and my spirit and my soul. It's about a great love lost or something like that, which has nothing to do with me. But it has that sensation that hits us at a certain age, that something has been lost, even if it's only (as if "only" begins to compensate or explain) our youth. We've all lost something dear by the time that I reached the age that I walked into the kitchen on this song. Joannie obviously wrote it about Dylan, I don't care what she says, and given that I suspect that none of his strongest suits are those of family man, it's about losing something that was never there. I'm with her though, losing something that was never there can be a very serious loss, if you ever saw it if only in your mind.
3 July 2009
CANINE CULINARY FLOURISH OF THE WEEK: Last Friday Alexandra finished off the best bits of a hefty beef rib and flipped the bone into Laural's dish thinking he might skim off a bit of fat. Three explosive seconds later there was no evidence that the bone or anything on it had ever existed.
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There was a week when the Beatles had like the top three albums on the album chart, and the top five singles or something. Alexandra hasn't replicated that feat, precisely, but she's come closer than anyone in this family has in a long time (my father is a member of the National Piano Guild Hall of Fame, I remember ushering a concert of a few hundred people in Monroe, Louisiana in the late '60s, not bad attendance for a classical piano recital in those parts). Three concerts with two different musical ensembles in five days, and neither one even being the Exeter Youth Orchestra, her primary outfit (catch 'em on tour in Russia next summer).
The highlight was unquestionably her partially improvised performance of Barbara Thompson's "Country Dance" with the West Exe Jazz Band. Written for violin, her wise and astute music teacher Mr Parsons (who also came up with this absolutely stunning and brilliant arrangement of "She's Not There" for at least ten saxophones) decided she could attack it on viola. And, oh my heavens, lawdy, it was just amazing.
I mean, the girl just came out smoking and never let go, I can't begin to tell you how proud I am. I couldn't express it if I was a ten million times better writer than I even am (there being a comment to be made here that I don't hold my talents in artificially low esteem).
Somewhere around the third round of soloing she decided she didn't need her shoulder rest, and cast it aside in the midst of a flurry of notes. As things went back to the band, she decided maybe she would like it after all, and reached down and picked it up and applied it under her (heavily miked) instrument. So there were a few (not more than ten) gloriously loud and exotic electronic feedback clonks in the midst of the proceedings as she got it just like she wanted it. I don't think she ever even noticed, but I looked over at her boyfriend Mason--the best of the afore mentioned sax players, seated maybe ten feet from her. He had this big ol' grin on his face, he appreciated what was a definitive Boo moment. Theresa clutching my arm, eyebrows up and giggling.
Things came back around for her to solo again and she just exploded like a firework factory in a fire festival. The student section was full of jubilant screaming, the adults were getting a great deal louder than they deemed dignified. I know that Alexandra's been practicing nearly every day for several years. I listen to her carefully. But I didn't realize that she can let loose like that , and I hadn't realized that she could improvise to any particularly interesting extent, as she doesn't bother much. Wow.
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http://ca.news.yahoo.com/s/afp/090512/health/health_us_food_medicine
How many bowls of drugs did you have for breakfast this morning, Brandene?
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A personality strength, or/and flaw, of mine is that I'm forever analyzing what I've done, and the implications and-on a good day-how it might affect anyone else
A bit of background is probably in order if I'm going to insist on [and I imagine I will, from time to time: I tend to get real passionate and say what feels important, though it's sometimes out of context even in the context I create it] writing things like last week's:
those long-faced guys in dresses who elect a pope and come out to tell us who our new lifeline to God is. An impediment, the pope is not a lifeline he's a barrier.
The first thing is, I agree with myself.
The second thing that should be understood is that I am not anti-Catholic. In fact I nearly became a Catholic in the early '80s (at LSU we had an incredible priest who looked like a Kennedy and preached nuclear disarmament from the pulpit, and a brilliant acoustic guitarist) but I didn't because-that's right-I can't get behind the concept of a pope, which I understand to be somewhat central to the denomination.
At a health check-up some years later I responded to the question of my religion with "vaguely Catholic." It was a reflex response, but upon further contemplation now running into decades, I can't come up with much better.
Someone who could, who can explain it better, my point of view, is Gandhi, who said "There will always be as many religions as there are individuals." This is anathema to at least the conservative majority of the Catholic hierarchy, obviously, one of whom famously denounced people sharing my approach as "cafeteria Catholics" who think they can pick and choose amongst dogma. Yep, that's what I think I can do. I do it, too.
But the truth is that most dogma doesn't interest me much anyway, for the most part. If a miracle didn't happen quite like it's said, that doesn't bother me because it could have happened, and that's what's important to me. All Catholics are good on miracles, I think. Einstein said that either everything's a miracle or nothing is, and I'm with Einstein and all the popes-even the awfulest ones-on this one.
The bottom line part is that I guess I consider the pope about the same as the Queen of England. When I first moved back to England I was all for the immediate abolition of the royal family and all of the absolute nonsense that it entails: can you imagine a more ridiculous feudal remnant? And they don't come cheap. Then the queen came to Exeter in an awful pastel suit and spoke in front of the Cathedral, or maybe she just stood there and waved and smiled a little bit, I don't remember. I attended with the same sense of degenerated curiosity that might guide a heavy metal guitarist to a Tom Jones concert.
And the weird thing was, it was kind of fun. All of these people just love her! Thousands and thousands, I've never seen Cathedral Green so packed. Shameless idolatry, maybe, but they were happy and well behaved. I have no idea why, it makes no sense at all to me, but it was, at least for them, a really good thing. I'd still vote to abolish the monarchy without wincing but it's not really something that I'm worried about as much anymore.
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PUT THIS ON YOUR iPOD: "Little Red Rooster"- Rolling Stones (1964) In the early, Brian Jones-driven days the Rolling Stones considered themselves such blues purists that Brian was quoted as saying "I hope they don't think we're a rock 'n' roll outfit." They were an incredible blues band, too; several of my happiest evenings at LSU were spent in Tabby's Blues Box and Heritage Hall discussing the matter with Tabby himself. Tabby loved their early blues stuff, as did Henry Gray who oftentimes sat in, though so far as I recall never danced on the tabletops as I was occasionally wont to do. Henry was whisked off by private jet to Paris to play Mick's birthday party at one point, but that was years after I'd left for California. Henry Gray is the greatest piano player I've ever been privileged to see in this life, and many but never enough times. The Stones have always been deferential to their blues heroes and contributed generously to the Blues Heaven that Chess Records has become. Mick once said, "I have no idea why anyone would want to hear me sing ' I'm a King Bee' when they can hear Slim Harpo sing it. But I'm happy to sing it if anyone wants to listen." This version of "Little Red Rooster" remains to this day the only blues recording to top the British pop charts. That's Brian Jones playin' some serious slide. It's 40 years today that Brian's gone.
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LITERARY FLOURISH OF THE WEEK:
"I don't like football. I don't like to go out and get a crack in the eye." Lewis spoke aggressively, for his mother had cononized all his timidities as common sense.
-- F. Scott Fitzgerald, Basil: The Freshest Boy
I somehow made it to the age of 46 without reading more Fitzgerald than a paragraph being quoted here or there. I knew that I'd like him, as much from the biographical material as from the quotes, and from things Theresa told me about the novels. But I'd been saving him.
What I found in some short stories-mostly (though not the one quoted) from his later Hollywood days where he was otherwise writing wilfully commercial schlock and encouraging the grim reaper through the prism of his bottle with the abandon to please a pirate and inspire a butterfly collector- wasn't what I expected.
The stories are beautiful, and shamefully elegant particularly for an American writer (how'd he do that? I want to!), but they're all…not about lost hope so much as representative of it. He has this incredible insight into how people lose their way, but his only apparent conviction is that there's no hope of finding your way back.
That's where all his talent led him, by age 32. I' think I'll put him down for awhile.
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HOLIDAY OF THE WEEK
As a dual US/UK citizen I don't have any mixed feelings on the Fourth of July, except that I'm not in the states to celebrate it.
But I remember listening to Handel's Water Music down by the old state capital in Baton Rouge, a building that Mark Twain described as "the ugliest building on the Mississippi." [actually, I think it's kind of cool looking, but wouldn't miss a chance to quote Mark Twain on Louisiana] I remember the fireworks off Madrona Point, on Orcas Island. Where you would sit there and all of the islands would, in turn, set off their fireworks. Except for Vancouver Island, obviously, which caught a bad deal and got stuck on the Canadian side of the line when they resolved the Pig War.
Never heard of the great Pig War (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pig_war)? My cousin David Richardson, who still lives on Orcas with his good wife for 60 years now or so, has written the definitive historical account, in two volumes I believe. Seems that the San Juan Islands lived in nationally ambiguous harmony -Americans and Canadians farming side by side-until the fateful day that an American shot a Canadian's pig, or was it a Canadian shot an American's pig. Anyway, the outrage polarized the community: no sooner were Americans and Canadians yelling at each other than American and Canadian fleets were descending with disproportionately violent intent. Was it the King of Prussia who stepped in to resolve the matter diplomatically? Something like that. Old white guys drawing lines on a page, again.
[yes, I do notice that the Wikipedia page doesn't exactly replicate my brief, but good heavens, man! I've had one-on-one learned discussions with the leading historian on the subject, and I often get most of the story right and I'm a roll]
But anyway, the main place I associate with the Fourth of July is Ocean Beach, California. The coolest part of San Diego.
The Fourth of July starts very early. The walkers on Dog Beach, then on south down the human dominated beach to the cliffs. People set up giant tents and kegs on prime real estate by 5 a.m. and party all day, the fireworks get shot off over the cliffs and magnificent pier ( longest in California? I don't remember: I do remember that you look north and see Mission Beach and Pacific Beach and La Jolla and lights all over the hills; you look south and you see dark and open ocean, I tended to look south ) that I lived right at the end of, as soon as it gets reasonably dark.
The population of OB swells like, I don't even know, fifty fold or something (and it's way too crowded to start with). It is the perfect little postcard hippie beach town (yes, this is where I met Theresa). The Geriatric Surfer Drill & Bugle Team, I know they march in the OB Christmas Tree Parade but I don't recall them having much of anything to do with the Fourth but they must, I guess I was always somewhere else (actually they were probably scattered amongst the circus tents and kegs with me)… I most vividly recall watching a particular series of fireworks that exploded like dreadlocks and thinking it Bob Marley in the air.
It's a magical day, and when it's over it takes the tourists hours and hours, I mean we're probably talking like six or seven, to clear our. The roads out of OB, Bacon Street just wasn't made to take that kind of traffic. No one gets much more than three feet an hour for the most part and the traffic jam becomes a party in itself. Locals watch 'em from our stoops. We yell back and forth, pro-American stuff, in a bipartisan sense for the most part. "Washington or what, brah?" "Got a beer?" "Yeeeeowwwwweeeeeeeee!!" "Who stole my fucking lighter?!"
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LOUD MUSIC OF THE WEEK: "Bad Boys Running Wild" - Scorpions (1984) I remember reading someone saying, about the Ramones, that anyone who loves rock 'n' roll for all the right reasons will love 'em. Statement applies to this as well. There are other lyrics, but the song's mainly the title being repeated and immediately followed by a killer riff. Doesn't hurt that the singer's obviously a German singing with apparent difficulty in a second language, and so it all climaxes with "you better get out of their weeeeeeeeeee…!"
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WIMBLEDON MOMENT '09: My heart warms up the second week of Wimbledon, when they bring the old guys (the heroes of my youth) out to waddle around the Senior Men's Invitational Doubles. The big star has become Mahesh Bhupathi. He was a successful doubles player in his day. But he's more a trick shot artist and natural born entertainer, and as the other guys get a lot slower and a little bit less consistent they have more and more trouble dealing with him.
This year he's playing with Henri Leconte, a brilliant French lefty whom I thought would do even more than he eventually did (finalist at Roland Garros once, peaked at #5), it being said that he enjoyed more diversity in life than the practice-automatons, several of whom unnecessarily overtook him. History will probably know him best for the fact that Princess Diana seemed to show up for his matches with undue regularity for a period of time, and things that are probably scandalous and untrue have been said in return for payment.
After the good guys won the first set, Tuesday, there was a mild flurry in the crowd and Leconte got on his knees in the middle of the court, arms outraised and bowing in that Eastern manner: Ilie Nastase was leaving. Nastase looks just like he always did, but with silver hair.
Ilie Nastase was powerful and quick to pretty much the extent that any tennis player was ever powerful or quick. He was also, I believe, smarter than everyone else. Unquestionably more creative. I don't think that anyone has since hit a shot that he neither mastered nor invented, often in mid-stroke. He was without sensible issue the greatest tennis player in the history of mankind, for a stroke or a set. After that he seemed to invariably find a problem with the proceedings, and so lost interest. Like he apparently did with the doubles match.
see what in Laural's Dish today
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