Archives for 2014

Of Scotland, and Towers of Strength

September 17, 2014 by John 1 Comment

As you likely know, whether you’re in the United Kingdom or not, tomorrow Scottish voters will determine their independence from the rest of the UK. I have no personal stake in the outcome, other than having a Facebook friend who’s been very active in the “Independence YES” movement.

But I do have a philosophical/political stake in it.

As an American lefty of long standing, I’m accustomed to what might be termed Political Bipolar Disorder (PBD). Horror (at the enthusiastic handiwork of those on the right) alternates with disillusion (when my political heroes, inevitably, turn out rather wobbly-kneed once they actually get into office). Elections — even midterm ones, even primaries — can be exhausting affairs.

But what seems to be happening in Scotland — oh my. Which is to say, Go, YES!

On September 7, New York Times columnist (and Nobel Prize-winning economist) Paul Krugman contributed his own view on the debate. (With a title like “Scots, What the Heck?” it was bound to trigger inflamed opinion on both sides.) His central point: a YES vote makes no sense on economic grounds. (Scotland may or may not end up with a national currency called “the pound,” or possibly “the Euro,” and whatever it’s called, it may have little or nothing to do with any other such currency of the same name.)

Krugman is right, or at least not flat-out wrong, about one thing: the Scots need to be clear-eyed about the election, no matter the outcome. If (as seems about to happen) YES succeeds, disentangling themselves from a “partner” of centuries’ standing will likely bring many, many pains.

I sincerely hope the American experience will not be any guide. If it is, Alex Salmond — who heads the Scottish National Party, or SNP, and would likely become an independent Scotland’s first leader — may turn out to be something quite other than what he has seemed all along.

But the normally perceptive Krugman strikes me as wrong, wrong, wrong on the overall case for or against independence. So wrong, in fact, that his column (on which comments were closed by the time I read it) induced me to write a letter to the editor.

The Times‘s policy is to notify you if your letter will be printed, and they claim a seven-day response time. Given then that I have not heard from them, I think it’s safe to share my letter with you:

Re: Paul Krugman’s “Scots, What the Heck?” (2014-09-07)… I don’t live in Scotland, or anywhere in the UK, but I’ve been following the news about the upcoming independence vote. And I believe Krugman’s got it wrong, for one of those very rare occasions.

He writes eloquently and persuasively of the economic risks for an independent Scotland. But the Yes movement seems not to be about the economy (although they do talk of economic issues, wisely or not). It reminds me instead of the old Gene McDaniel song, “Tower of Strength,” which begins: “If I were a tower of strength, I’d walk away / I’d look in your eyes and here’s what I’d say / ‘I don’t want you, I don’t need you / I don’t love you any more’ / And I’d walk out that door.”

Scolding Scottish Yes supporters for not using their heads in this vote — especially over the economics — strikes me as rather like scolding a woman in an abusive relationship with her otherwise “respectable” husband: at some point, you’ve just gotta walk out that door.

For at least thirty years, official Britain has seemed (from a distance) determined to ape the worst practices and policies of its American counterparts. Yes, yes, the country still does what it needs to stay “quaint,” “historic,” “charming,” and so on. It’s getting harder and harder to believe that’s more than a two-dimensional façade, though. Driving on the left, half-timbered houses, and royal ritual just don’t carry the same weight as they used to for me. You can’t revere Margaret Thatcher, place a surveillance camera every fifty or hundred yards along every street, snuggle up to the American right, and somehow still convince me that you — no, really! no kidding! — remain, y’know, jolly old England.

On the other hand, Scotland’s got a history of leaning left. It’s just been held relatively powerless by the UK political system and constitutional constraints. Specifically, in the case of this vote, the YES party seeks to dispense with British nukes and British control over North Sea oil, overturn British immigration policies, shore up social resources like education and the National Health Service… It’s like a laundry list of things that American lefties wish would happen on this side of the pond.

So maybe it’s projection — maybe even nothing more than projection — but I really, really hope that Scots go the tower-of-strength route tomorrow.

The Trap of What Never (Might Have) Happened

September 12, 2014 by John 1 Comment

[Image: “10th July 2008 – The Dream Diary,” by user practicalowl on Flickr.com. (Right-click and view in a new window/tab for a much larger version.)) Used under a Creative Commons license.]

From whiskey river:

Song for the Deer and Myself to Return On

This morning when I looked out the roof window
before dawn and a few stars were still caught
in the fragile weft of ebony night
I was overwhelmed. I sang the song Louis taught me:
a song to call the deer in Creek, when hunting,
and I am certainly hunting something as magic as deer
in this city far from the hammock of my mother’s belly.
It works, of course, and deer came into this room
and wondered at finding themselves
in a house near downtown Denver.
Now the deer and I are trying to figure out a song
to get them back, to get all of us back,
because if it works I’m going with them.
And it’s too early to call Louis
and nearly too late to go home.

for Louis Oliver

(Joy Harjo [source])

…and:

Some religions call life a dream, or a dreaming, but what if it is a memory? What if this new world isn’t new at all but a memory of a new world?

What if we really do keep making the same mistakes again and again, never remembering the lessons to learn but never forgetting either that it had been different, that there was a pristine place?

Perhaps the universe is a memory of our mistakes.

(Jeanette Winterson [source])

…and:

Birthday
(excerpt)

I know this world is far from perfect.
I am not the type to mistake a streetlight for the moon.
I know our wounds are deep as the Atlantic.
But every ocean has a shoreline
and every shoreline has a tide
that is constantly returning
to wake the songbirds in our hands,
to wake the music in our bones,
to place one fearless kiss
on the mouth of that new born river
that has to run through the center of our hearts
to find its way home.

(Andrea Gibson [source])

…and:

Shuttered Windows

To speak of the smell and feel
of books, the erotics of the text,
has begun to sound perverse

One by one, the old places of worship
churches, bookstores, Nature herself
become quaint and are vacated

In their stead a gleaming, ambitious screen
part shuttered window, part distorting mirror
full of wandering, restless spirits

Like so many ghosts in limbo —
free of the tyranny of bodies,
yet aching for their phantom limbs.

(Yahia Lababidi [source])

[Read more…]

Weekend Music Break: Mozart’s “Divertimento No. 11 for Oboe, Two Horns & Strings in D Major / K.251”

September 7, 2014 by John Leave a Comment

Something called a divertimento certainly sounds like something I’d want to listen to on (say) an idle Sunday afternoon.

And yet, yet… featuring oboes? Aren’t they kind of, well, somber?

Not in Mozart’s hands, evidently. Wikipedia says this work “was written in July 1776 in Salzburg, possibly for the name day of Mozart’s sister, Nannerl on July 26th or her birthday on July 30th”… which would certainly explain the light feel of this piece.

I can’t pretend to know the significance of the musical terminology for the six movements, but here are their names (and lengths) per the recording I have.

Molto Allegro (4:43)
Menuetto & Trio (3:39)
Andantino (3:58)
Menuetto (4:10)
Rondeau, Allegro assai (5:05)
Marcia alla francese (2:18)

(This is the 1990 LaserLight recording, which doesn’t identify performers for specific pieces. As you can see from the image above, though, the album cover attributes the album as a whole to these performers: Franz Lizst Chamber Orchestra; Berlin Chamber Orchestra; and the Budapest Wind Ensemble.)

[Below, click Play button to begin Mozart: Divertimento No. 11 for Oboes, Horns, and Strings in D Major. While audio is playing, volume control appears at left — a row of little vertical bars. This clip as a whole is about 23 minutes long.]

[audio:divertimento11_mozart_1_moltoallegro.mp3, divertimento11_mozart_2_menuettotrio.mp3, divertimento11_mozart_3_andantino.mp3, divertimento11_mozart_4_menuetto.mp3, divertimento11_mozart_5_rondeauallegroassai.mp3, divertimento11_mozart_6_marciaallafrancese.mp3|titles=1-Molto Allegro, 2-Menuetto & Trio, 3-Andantino, 4-Menuetto, 5-Rondeau, Allegro assai, 6-Marcia alla francese|artists=Various Artists]

Small Things Big, Big Things Small

September 5, 2014 by John Leave a Comment

[Image: illustration from Mountains and Molehills; or, Recollections of a Burnt Journal (1855), by one Frank Marryat. (Click image to enlarge.) For the complete book in various formats, see the Internet Archive. For more information about this image in particular, see the note at the foot of this post.]

From whiskey river (italicized portion):

The Swan

Across the wide waters
something comes
floating—a slim
and delicate

ship, filled
with white flowers—
and it moves
on its miraculous muscles

as though time didn’t exist,
as though bringing such gifts
to the dry shore
was a happiness

almost beyond bearing.
And now it turns its dark eyes,
it rearranges
the clouds of its wings,

it trails
an elaborate webbed foot,
the color of charcoal.
Soon it will be here.

Oh, what shall I do
when that poppy-colored beak
rests in my hand?
Said Mrs. Blake of the poet:

I miss my husband’s company—
he is so often
in paradise.
Of course! the path to heaven

doesn’t lie down in flat miles.
It’s in the imagination
with which you perceive
this world,

and the gestures
with which you honor it.
Oh, what will I do, what will I say, when those white wings
touch the shore?

(Mary Oliver [source])

…and:

Time has no meaning, space and place have no meaning, on this journey. All times can be inhabited, all places visited. In a single day the mind can make a millpond of the oceans. Some people who have never crossed the land they were born on have traveled all over the world. The journey is not linear, it is always back and forth, denying the calendar, the wrinkles and lines of the body. The self is not contained in any moment or any place, but it is only in the intersection of moment and place that the self might, for a moment, be seen vanishing through a door, which disappears at once.

(Jeanette Winterson [source])

…and:

Living

The fire in leaf and grass
so green it seems
each summer the last summer.

The wind blowing, the leaves
shivering in the sun,
each day the last day.

A red salamander
so cold and so
easy to catch, dreamily

moves his delicate feet
and long tail. I hold
my hand open for him to go.

Each minute the last minute.

(Denise Levertov [source])

[Read more…]

It Seems So Reasonable, and So Crazy

August 29, 2014 by John Leave a Comment

[Image: panel excerpted from “Slobbering Like Pavlov’s Dog: A Neurocomic,” by Matteo Farinella
and Hana Ros. To see the three-panel portion of the comic of which this is a part, click on the image.
For the whole thing, head on over to The Nib.]

From whiskey river:

A whole lot of us go through life assuming that we are basically right, basically all the time, about basically everything: about our political and intellectual convictions, our religious and moral beliefs, our assessment of other people, our memories, our grasp of facts. As absurd as it sounds when we stop to think about it, our steady state seems to be one of unconsciously assuming that we are very close to omniscient.

(Kathryn Schulz [source])

…and (italicized lines):

Miracle Fair

Commonplace miracle:
that so many commonplace miracles happen.

An ordinary miracle:
in the dead of night
the barking of invisible dogs.

One miracle out of many:
a small, airy cloud
yet it can block a large and heavy moon.

Several miracles in one:
an alder tree reflected in the water,
and that it’s backwards left to right
and that it grows there, crown down
and never reaches the bottom,
even though the water is shallow.

An everyday miracle:
winds weak to moderate
turning gusty in storms.

First among equal miracles:
cows are cows.

Second to none:
just this orchard
from just that seed.

A miracle without a cape and top hat:
scattering white doves.

A miracle, for what else could you call it:
today the sun rose at three-fourteen
and will set at eight-o-one.

A miracle, less surprising than it should be:
even though the hand has fewer than six fingers,
it still has more than four.

A miracle, just take a look around:
the world is everywhere.

An additional miracle, as everything is additional:
the unthinkable
is thinkable.

(Wislawa Szymborska [source; I have used this one before, although not on a Friday])

..and:

The range of the human mind, the scale and depth of the metaphors the mind is capable of manufacturing as it grapples with the universe, stand in stunning contrast to the belief that there is only one reality, which is man’s, or worse, that only one culture among the many on earth possesses the truth.

To allow mystery, which is to say to yourself, “There could be more, there could be things we don’t understand,” is not to damn knowledge. It is to take a wider view. It is to permit yourself an extraordinary freedom: someone else does not have to be wrong in order that you may be right.

(Barry López [source])

[Read more…]

Midweek Music Break: Tony Bennett, “The Way You Look Tonight”

August 27, 2014 by John 3 Comments

Tony Bennett with Elvis Costello

[Photo: Tony Bennett with Elvis Costello. Don’t worry, today’s song is a solo.]

Tony Bennett was 82 years old when he appeared, in 2008, on Elvis Costello’s talk-and-music program, Spectacle. His performance of this old standard, at close to the beginning of the episode, greatly moved me.

I’ve had a Frank Sinatra cover for years. But his version “swings,” flirting (I guess) with the object of the song’s affection. Here, Bennett takes his time with it, even free-form vocalizing softly — and a very little — down towards the end.

In this recording of the performance, you’ll hear two distinct bursts of applause at the beginning. The first occurs when Bennett agreed to Costello’s request to sing something by Jerome Kern. Bennett didn’t announce which Kern he’d choose, though, just began singing — the second round of applause greets the specific selection. At the piano is Bill Charlap, whom Bennett had introduced as “the finest jazz pianist today,” but I’d never heard of him before. Charlap certainly did nothing during this performance (including a sweet and tender solo of his own) to make me question Bennett’s wisdom.

About the song: Kern composed the music, but the lyrics were by Dorothy Field. It was introduced in Fred Astaire’s Swing Time of 1936, where Astaire croons it to Ginger Rogers. Wikipedia quotes Field: “The first time Jerry played that melody for me I went out and started to cry. The release absolutely killed me. I couldn’t stop, it was so beautiful.”

[Below, click Play button to begin The Way You Look Tonight. While audio is playing, volume control appears at left — a row of little vertical bars. This clip is 5:00 long.]

[audio:thewayyoulooktonight_tonybennett.mp3|titles=’The Way You Look Tonight’|artists=Tony Bennett]

[Lyrics]

Putting Aside the Enchanter’s Wand

August 22, 2014 by John Leave a Comment

[Video: “Somebody That I Used to Know,” performed by Walk Off the Earth. Lyrics here. See the note about the video at the bottom of this post, too.]

From whiskey river (italicized portion):

What Narrative Is For

How fine the mind that can calculate
change and recognize destiny,

as if luck had something to do
with knowing, as if the lease

signed with the eyes closed
meant happiness, or even time

that’s bearable, slow breaths exchanging
the currency that wanting spends,

and how fine that sedatives
and jewels exist, those slanted elegies.

So there are errands and hours
when you hear your own breath—

or feel my breath coming from within you—
and register the haunt of cicadas

summering under the porch. So there is time
spooking off into the wings.

These are going to be big surgeries, bloody
gauzes of conditions, when loss

must be measured, and then
there are the outcomes, the calls

that must be made. Wouldn’t we all like to avoid
being the reason for anguish, to understand

why it’s so easy to cut ourselves
on our own edges? Silent,

the responders. They might
have the answers, but they’re not

telling, even when the vise grips
go for the nails. All that’s left is to know

we will suffer through almost anything—
make sure to remember it well.

(Margot Schilpp [source])

…and:

Art gives us the knowledge that many have gone before, and had the same strange feelings and the same unanswerable questions, and that we are not alone in the art-endeavor, let alone life. It gives us the knowledge that people have always been stupid and violent and cruel, and compassionate and confused and curious and wondrous and astonished and tired. What it does not give us is answers. It gives us instead a picture. It does not ask that we analyze the picture, but that we stand before it and look, in the hope that looking might turn into gazing. For gazing will hold our attention for a very long time.

(Mary Ruefle [source])

…and:

The world is an illusion, but it is an illusion which we must take seriously, because it is real as far as it goes, and in those aspects of the reality which we are capable of apprehending. Our business is to wake up. We have to find ways in which to detect the whole of reality in the illusory parts which our self-centered consciousness permits us to see. We must not live thoughtlessly, taking our illusion for the complete reality, but at the same time we must not live too thoughtfully in the sense of trying to escape from the dream state. We must continually be on the watch for ways in which we may enlarge our consciousness, we must not attempt to live outside the world, which is given us, but we must somehow learn how to transform it and transfigure it. Too much “wisdom” is as bad as too little wisdom, and there must be no magic tricks. We must learn to come to reality without the enchanter’s wand and his book of the words. One must find a way of being in this world while not being of it. A way of living in time without being completely swallowed up in time.

(Aldous Huxley [source])

[Read more…]

Real-Life Dialogue: The Inscrutable Double-X Chromosome Edition

August 19, 2014 by John 2 Comments

Real-Life Dialogue [The setting: a comfortable suburban home in North Florida, USA, on an August weekend in 2014. She is sitting in the living room, her laptop computer open; He is walking through the living room on some mission or another, in one direction or another.]

She: Oh, these people.

He: Hmm? What people?

[He stops to look over Her shoulder. On-screen is a publicity still from a current television mini-series, based on a hugely popular novel of romance and time travel. The photo depicts an early moment in the romantic relationship between a twentieth-century English woman, Claire, and an eighteenth-century Scotsman named Jamie. Claire is tending Jamie’s battle wounds. Jamie is sitting quietly, looking at Claire, and of course wearing a kilt.]

He: Nice picture of them.

She: Yes. I’m just saying, you should read some of the comments on it.

He: Such as?

She: Like this one. [She points.] “Those knees. *SWOON*” [She laughs.]

He: Er, uh… Wait. Women swoon over men’s knees? They even notice them?

She: You’d be surprised what women notice.

Writing in the Night Sky

August 15, 2014 by John Leave a Comment

[Image: “Storyteller,” by user fobach (Pieterjan Hanselaer) on Flickr. (Used under a Creative Commons license; click to enlarge.) The Dutch text says (per the English translation) “I followed the trail of my uncles. From the forest, at the edge of the Makokibatan Lake, the morning sounds arose.” No other information seems to be available for this mysterious image. For what it’s worth, though, you can find a lake by that name in Ontario, Canada.]

From whiskey river:

Food, fire, walks, dreams, cold, sleep, love, slowness, time, quiet, books, seasons — all these things, which are not really things, but moments of life — take on a different quality at night-time, where the moon reflects the light of the sun, and we have time to reflect what life is to us, knowing that it passes, and that every bit of it, in its change and its difference, is the here and now of what we have.

Life is too short to be all daylight. Night is not less; it’s more.

(Jeanette Winterson [source])

…and:

Rereading Frost

Sometimes I think all the best poems
have been written already,
and no one has time to read them,
so why try to write more?

At other times though,
I remember how one flower
in a meadow already full of flowers
somehow adds to the general fireworks effect

as you get to the top of a hill
in Colorado, say, in high summer
and just look down at all that brimming color.
I also try to convince myself

that the smallest note of the smallest
instrument in the band,
the triangle for instance,
is important to the conductor

who stands there, pointing his finger
in the direction of the percussions,
demanding that one silvery ping.
And I decide not to stop trying,

at least not for a while, though in truth
I’d rather just sit here reading
how someone else has been acquainted
with the night already, and perfectly.

(Linda Pastan [source])

…and:

Stars were the first text, the first instance of gabbiness; connecting the stars, making a pattern out of them, was the first story, sacred to storytellers. But the moon was the first poem, in the lyric sense, an entity complete in itself, recognizable at a glance, one that played upon the emotions so strongly that the context of time and place hardly seemed to matter.

(Mary Ruefle [source])

…and:

(from) Body and Soul
(for Coleman Hawkins)

I used to think the power of words was inexhaustible,
That how we said the world
was how it was, and how it would be.
I used to imagine that word-sway and word-thunder
Would silence the Silence and all that,
That worlds were the Word,
That language could lead us inexplicably to grace,
As though it were geographical.
I used to think these things when I was young.
I still do.

(Charles Wright [source (the whole poem)*])

[Read more…]

Midweek Music Break: Sinéad O’Connor, “Take Me to Church”

August 13, 2014 by John 2 Comments

[Image: promotional photo for Sinéad O’Connor’s 2014 album,
I’m Not Bossy, I’m the Boss. Click to enlarge.]

You’ve gotta hand it to Sinéad O’Connor: she will not be categorized.

Much of her identity — which seems to be the same identity privately and publicly — centers around gender. She takes her womanness about as seriously as it’s possible to take such a thing. But it’s a seriousness on her terms: yes, she likes sex; no, she does not like to be thought of as (un)sexy; she doesn’t play head games which might confirm your expectations; she likes playing with those expectations; she counts on your understanding; she resists being understood…

All of this is laid out in her new album (just a day old!), I’m Not Bossy, I’m the Boss. As numerous reviews have pointed out, right up front she challenges you: the album cover shows her in a skintight black-latex outfit, standing hipshot with an electric guitar in her arms, and her mouth drooping open, well, provocatively.

None of that is what really grabs attention, though — it all “means” something in the context of the songs. No, what really grabs attention is the wig: a sleek, black shingle-bob hairstyle (à la Louise Brooks) at that. She looks, as many guys would say (as I myself am about to say) smokin’.

It grabs attention because O’Connor never appears in public (well, as far as anyone knows) other than with her shaved head. It’s identified her as much as her gender has.

Here’s how a recent interview with NPR went, in part:

Linda Wertheimer: Tell me about the cover of the new album. I wondered why you chose to wear a long black wig and a tight latex dress, because you’ve always made a point about the sexualization of the music industry.

Sinéad O’Connor: Well, I don’t necessarily think that donning some hair and wearing a dress equates to being sexual. I think the fact that I have never looked particularly like a female — I’ve always dressed very male — is what I really had in mind. It wasn’t supposed to be the album cover; it was supposed to be a couple of publicity shots, which I wanted to do because I knew that it would draw attention. People would run the shots and go, “Oh my God, look at the sight of her with hair,” and they’d have to mention the album. Then the record company asked could they use it for the album cover, but originally it wasn’t meant to be.

I thought maybe it was a shout out to Cher.

No, it was really just a publicity stunt, if I’m 100 percent honest. I know what you’re saying, but at the end of the day, I’m clothed from neck to knee. It was more based on, “Guess what Sinéad O’Connor looks like when she makes an effort?”

The album cover photo doesn’t look feature a “long black wig,” if you ask me. However, the cover of the single — which seems to have been taken at about the same time as the black-and-white photo atop this post — does feature her in a long red wig.

Anyway, did you get that? She didn’t dress that way for the album cover because “that way” is sexual. She didn’t dress that way to make guys’ pulses race, or women’s for that matter. She dressed that way, at bottom, because she didn’t — doesn’t — want people to have any expectations satisfied except, maybe, their expectations of her music.

Well, whatever. It is great music — and the only Sinéad O’Connor album I’ve bought since the very first, back in the ’90s.

Despite what you may think from the title, the song featured below has little (nothing?) to do with her “complicated” past with Roman Catholicism… and everything to do with the evolution of the song’s protagonist (who may or may not be O’Connor herself). Expectations, right?

[Lyrics]