In the News – Page 20

Caught by Surprise

May 25, 2012 by John 4 Comments

[Image: a key (and classic) moment in Fritz Lang’s 1931 thriller, M: the murderer, played by Peter Lorre, learns he’s a (literally) marked man.]

From whiskey river:

We can never know what to want, because, living only one life, we can neither compare it with our previous lives nor perfect it in our lives to come.

(Milan Kundera [source])

…and:

When It Comes

Any time. Now. The next minute.
Years from today. You lean forward
and wait. You relax, but you don’t forget.

Someone plans an elaborate party
with a banquet, dancing, even fireworks
when feasting is over. You look at them:

All those years when you searched the world
like a ferret, these never happened — your marriage,
your family, prayers, curses. Only dreams.

A vacuum has opened everywhere. Cities,
armies, those chairs ranked in the great
hall for the audience — there isn’t anyone.

Like a shutter the sky opens and closes
and the show is over. The next act
will deny that anything ever happened.

Your hand falls open. It is empty. It never
held a knife, a flower, gold,
or love, or now. Lean closer—

Listen to me: there isn’t any hand.

(William Stafford [source])

[Read more…]

The World Was Too Much With Them All

May 17, 2012 by John 6 Comments

I just finished reading Susan Orlean‘s Rin Tin Tin: The Life and the Legend. Aside from the heart (and I mean heart) of the main story itself, after something like ten years of borderline-obsessive research Orlean managed to weave into the book dozens of little stray details about the lives and personalities of the many people whose lives drifted into and out of the great movie and TV dog‘s* orbit. Here’s one such side story.

Background: TV producer H.B. “Bert” Leonard ran into financial difficulties and ended up owing his lawyer, a man named James Tierney, a ton of cash. To partially settle the debt, he gave Tierney his shares of two TV programs whose rights Leonard had retained over the years: Naked City and Route 66. Orlean writes:

…this cinematic windfall couldn’t distract [Tierney] from his own troubles. A year earlier, in 1992, one of his clients told him he needed some cash. The client owned a number of valuable paintings, including a Monet and a Picasso, and, he explained, if the paintings disappeared, he could file a $17 million insurance claim for them. Tierney agreed to help him out. By their arrangement, Tierney broke into the client’s house and stole the paintings. Then he gave the paintings to a young lawyer in his firm for safekeeping. The young lawyer decided to stash the paintings in a warehouse in Cleveland.

Unfortunately, the young lawyer also had some problems, including a volatile ex-wife, who happened to be the first California highway patrolwoman to pose for Playboy, a jealous girlfriend, and a crack cocaine addiction. He was also, evidently, unable to keep a secret and ended up telling both his ex-wife and his girlfriend about the stolen paintings; they, in turn, both informed on him to the police, each hoping to beat the other to the $250,000 reward being offered for information on the case. When the young lawyer was arrested, he immediately pointed the police back to Tierney. Before long, Tierney ended up in prison and lost his law license, his house, and his marriage.

No word on whether either the ex-wife or the girlfriend scored the hoped-for reward. I did love this story, though.

____________________

* Technically, that should be dogs’ — plural possessive — as Rin Tin Tin was and continues to be played (in film, on TV, in hundreds of personal appearances) by a whole list of German shepherd dogs, from only one or two paternal bloodlines. The current incarnation is up to somewhere around Rin Tin Tin X or XI.

Midweek Music Break: The Band, “Rockin’ Chair”

April 25, 2012 by John 6 Comments

[The Band (circa 1969), left to right: Richard Manuel, Levon Helm, Rick Danko, Garth Hudson, Robbie Robertson]

I‘ve posted about The Band exactly once, and barely then — tacking “All La Glory” onto the end of a whiskey river Friday post in December, 2008. I’ve not been ignoring them offline; in fact, as with (to take one example from a whole ‘nother musical universe) Madeleine Peyroux, I sometimes go for weeks listening to no one else. Artists like these (whatever “like these” means!) just sort of tingle in resonant sympathy with something inside me. But personal taste isn’t always something you can expect others to share, and I try hard not to overplay them here.

The death last week of Levon Helm, The Band’s drummer and probably its signature vocalist, gave a lot of casual (and otherwise) listeners an excuse to dust off the group’s albums for a listen. And this does seem like a good occasion to mention The Band again.

Whether the work of the moment is writing, editing, Web work, or software, I’ve always found their music difficult to work to; its drive and its characteristic electrified-hillbilly sound make it push to the forefront of my conscious mind — especially in rollicking favorites like “Rag Mama Rag” and “Time to Kill.” (Helm’s voice in particular punches through, very hard not to attend to.) So when I’m working, you won’t usually find those numbers in rotation. What you’ll find instead is the quieter ballads, for which the lead singer was often Richard Manuel or Rick Danko. “All La Glory,” from that long-ago post here, was one such. Right up there with it is today’s choice, “Rockin’ Chair.”

The title apparently name-checks both a Hoagy Carmichael tune from 1929 and — more of a stretch if you ask me — the (common but unofficial) title of a 1962 blues album by Howlin’ Wolf. The Band’s song (written, like most of their music, by Robbie Robertson) is deceptively simple: an old-timer looks back, wistfully, on his life. Apparently a sailor, he drifts back and forth between being at sea and wishing he were home, and being at home and wishing he were aboard again.

But the confusion between where the narrator is and where he wants to be masks a deep subtlety — a shifting chiaroscuro of metaphor overlaid on statements of apparent fact. The old sailor (with his companion “Ragtime” Willie Boy) is gripped by confusion himself, fading in and out between past and present; he seems almost to trail off into frightened, hallucinatory dementia, as though babbling I’m dying! I’m not ready to die! I’m so ready to die! Willie! Willie!, the Flying Dutchman, Willie!…

Levon Helm didn’t sing lead on this song, simply providing harmony (with the others) for Richard Manuel’s voice at its most wistful. Even in photos in which he’s smiling (like the one on this page), Manuel seemed to me to bear a mantle of sadness on his shoulders. In the photo which tops this post, that’s him on the left — the only one not dressed in dark clothing, but that doesn’t make him “lighter”; his demeanor appears almost fearful. This is just 20-20 hindsight conjecture, though: he spent much of his offstage life plagued by depression and substance-abuse problems, especially with alcohol. (His drink of choice: Grand Marnier. Wikipedia says that he maxed out at an average of about eight bottles a day. And reportedly, when he left one residence in 1976 the people who cleaned up afterwards had two thousand empty Grand Marnier bottles to dispose of. One doubts that these were the 50-ml “minis.”) By the time The Band filmed their farewell concert for Martin Scorsese’s The Last Waltz, in 1978, Manuel could barely sustain his sweet but heartbreaking voice through more than a few songs. He committed suicide in 1986. He was then on tour with The Band, reunited (without Robertson), and had just left Levon Helm’s motel room; indeed, Helm and Danko had to lift him down from the bathtub shower rod where he’d hanged himself (I can’t even imagine the horror).

Band members and others always insisted it had to have been an accident, or maybe a bad joke gone wrong. (According to People Magazine, Helm told police, “I don’t know what got crosswise in his mind between leaving the foot of my bed and going into his own bathroom.”) But it’s hard for an outsider, at least, not to picture him asea and drifting, pushin’ age forty-three, suddenly dashed on some reef rearing up out of the fog.

Here’s “Rockin’ Chair”:

[Lyrics]

Addendum: A 1997 BBC documentary, an hour-plus in length, explored the making of The Band, the album on which “Rockin’ Chair” first appeared. The entire documentary (first released in the UK, in partnership with the VH1 music channel) was for a time available at YouTube in a single clip. Speakers included Levon Helm, John Simon (one of the album’s producers), Robbie Robertson, and Rick Danko. It’s not on YouTube anymore, alas, but here in the US — at least as of August, 2023 — you can find it on DVD, or streaming via various services (Amazon Prime, Pluto, Tubi, et.).

____________________________________

Minor gripe: the only thing marring this song, I believe, is the way it ends. Others (including many other fans) have commented that The Band’s songs often don’t conclude, so much as plain-old stop; and this is particularly egregious in “Rockin’ Chair.” Compounding the weird abruptness of the close is the mandolin (wielded by Helm, I think), which plucks out something very much like a playful Shave-and-a-haircut, two bits! rhythm completely at odds with the elegiac melody and loose, ropy lyrics which preceded it. (In the BBC/VH1 documentary I described above, Helm asks producer John Simon, How’d we come up with that Chinese ending?!? Simon replies, I don’t know. Makes at least three of us then!

Plugged Right Between the Eyes

April 10, 2012 by John 3 Comments

I’ve been following the Letters of Note blog for a good while now. The curator/editor, Shaun Usher, collects samples of real letters — often but not always from “famous” people — on matters of real import, and/or in styles worth sharing.

Today’s entry features a 1914 letter from Jack London to a young aspiring writer named Max Fedder. Fedder, apparently, had written a letter to London, a fan letter as we might call it nowadays, and enclosed a story of his own. No doubt he hoped for encouragement from his hero, if not actual praise.

From London’s first sentences, if not quite his first words, that hope must have flown out the window — or, finding it closed, crashed right into the glass and dropped senseless to the floor:

Oakland, Calif.
Oct. 26, 1914

Dear Max Fedder:

In reply to yours of recent date undated, and returning herewith your Manuscript. First of all, let me tell you that as a psychologist and as one who has been through the mill, I enjoyed your story for its psychology and point of view. Honestly and frankly, I did not enjoy it for its literary charm or value. In the first place, it has little literary value and practically no literary charm. Merely because you have got something to say that may be of interest to others does not free you from making all due effort to express that something in the best possible medium and form. Medium and form you have utterly neglected…

Ouch, ouch, ouch. Objectively regarded, it’s a terrific letter, in fact — long, articulate, utterly non-generic, and frank. (See the whole thing here.) Somehow, though, I suspect that Max Fedder didn’t draw much comfort from any of that.

I’m trying, and failing, to think of any communication I’ve ever received remotely like it, from anyone. This doesn’t reflect on — haha — the grandeur of my works; it’s because I’ve been far much too nervous to offer them up for comment, unsolicited, to anyone at all. (To say that this complicates life for someone aspiring to write for a living greatly understates the case.) London’s response is exactly the kind I’d fear most.

How ’bout you? Are you the Give it to me straight, Jack, and don’t mince words! sort? Or the Don’t hurt me, don’t hurt me! sort?

And if you were in Jack London’s shoes, can you imagine writing a response like his?

Endistanced

April 6, 2012 by John 4 Comments

[Video: zooming in from a Milky Way-wide view all the way to galactic cluster NGC 3324, dubbed the Gabriela Mistral Nebula for its resemblance to the profile of the Chilean Nobel Prize-winning poet. Music by John Dyson; original video at the European Southern Observatory (ESO) site.]

From whiskey river:

And as you sit on the hillside, or lie prone under the trees of the forest, or sprawl wet-legged on the shingly beach of a mountain stream, the great door, that does not look like a door, opens.

(Stephen Graham [source])

…and:

Coincidence and chance and unsearchable causes will now and again make clouds that are undeniable fiery dragons, and potatoes that resemble eminent statesmen exactly and minutely in every feature, and rocks that are like eagles and lions. All this is nothing; it is when you get your set of odd shapes and find that they fit into one another, and at last that they are but parts of a large design; it is then that research grows interesting and indeed amazing, it is then that one queer form confirms the other, that the whole plan displayed justifies, corroborates, explains each separate piece.

(Arthur Machen [source])

…and:

The World Loved by Moonlight

You must try,
the voice said, to become colder.
I understood at once.
It is like the bodies of gods: cast in bronze,
braced in stone. Only something heartless
could bear the full weight.
[The above poem’s] source was a sentence written by Chekhov in a letter to a young writer: “If you want to move your reader, write more coldly.” The advice is chilling, true, and rich, I think, and leads in many different directions of thought. This poem follows one of those directions: that if one were to imagine a world in which there were mythic, conscious deities, then those beings would have to be very cold, very detached, in order to bear seeing what they must see in the course of any given day. So much suffering, so much foolishness, so much anger. To be able to watch that at all — and even more, to play some active role in its continuance — would demand total heartlessness. It’s the same lack of pity that Virgil demands of Dante as they tour the regions of Hell. Pity, the ghost-guide tells the poet, is forbidden. It is true for the contemporary writer as well, and for any seeker after truth. A certain detachment is needed to look the fullness of life eye to eye; yet that very detachment is what permits the viewer to feel things fully, to know them without blinking.

(Jane Hirshfield [sources: poem and commentary])

[Read more…]

Midweek Music Break: The Animals, “The House of the Rising Sun”

March 28, 2012 by John 10 Comments

[Image: The Animals (original image doctored up by Jude Kane and found on Freakoutville Xpress). And they looked like such nice boys…]

To get it out of the way right up front: no house in New Orleans called the “Rising Sun” ever existed.* Or rather, more precisely: never definitively, and no one establishment. Furthermore, it may or may not have been a brothel, which is fitting… because to find one in the song’s house of the rising sun we have to read between the lines, nudging that meaning into place with the words draped over it. (Not that we have to nudge too hard.)

I was surprised to learn that it began life as a folk song, first recorded (as far as we know) in 1934 by a Clarence “Tom” Ashley, in a version alternatively titled “Risin’ Sun Blues.” (Wikipedia does its usual brisk, reliably good job in documenting the song’s performance history, and outlines the several theories about the real (or otherwise) house in question.) My surprise is 100% Boomer-centric: You mean history happened at some time other than my own?!? Inconceivable! But yes, Eric Burdon and the Animals were pretty far down in the chronological list of performers. Nevertheless, they did succeed in putting their stamp on it; I doubt that I’m the only one who knew it first, and presumably always, as the vehicle for Eric Burdon’s howling vocals and that maddeningly relentless guitar. (The latter can likely induce motion sickness in sensitive individuals.)

To get back to the real (or otherwise) house of the title: it’s been claimed, variously, to have been a brothel, maybe a proto-casino or prison, dating back as early as 1821. That site was excavated by archaeologists within the last few years, which turned up evidence that it in fact may have been a bordello, or at least a house where “gentlemen” could “relax.”

The Times-Picayune of New Orleans, back in 2003, ran this letter on the issue:

Fact: It’s Been the Ruin of Many a Poor Myth

As a reference librarian for many years specializing in local history and lore, as well as a long-time fan of The Animals and that group’s rendition of “House of the Rising Sun,” I was very interested in Chris Rose’s Jan. 12 article, “The rising son.” I have made a study of the history of prostitution in New Orleans and have often confronted the perennial question, “Where is the House of the Rising Sun?” without finding a satisfactory answer. Although it is generally assumed that the singer is referring to a brothel, there is actually nothing in the lyrics that indicate that the “house” is a brothel. Many knowledgeable persons have conjectured that a better case can be made for either a gambling hall or a prison; however, to paraphrase Freud: sometimes lyrics are just lyrics.

After having discussed the “rising sun,” a popular decorative device, with a colleague who has just completed her doctoral work on the history of prostitution in New Orleans and a historian who has written about Shreveport’s red-light district, as well as being personally familiar with a number of general works on the “oldest profession,” there is no evidence or even a mention of the use of a rising sun as a universally recognized symbol of prostitution.

In examining property records for 826-832 St. Louis Street and numerous other resources on prominent pre-Storyville madams and prostitution in the Crescent City, I find it interesting, too, that any reference at all to the “notorious” House of the Rising Sun is conspicuously missing. Public records simply don’t confirm it.

Pamela D. Arceneaux

(“Sometimes lyrics are just lyrics”: love it. That whooshing you hear is a collective sigh of relief of from a thousand songwriters.)

If you’re interested in the definitive answers to the song’s mysteries, you might find them in Ted Anthony’s 2007 book, Chasing the Rising Sun [Amazon / Google Books]. Disclaimer: I haven’t read it myself! However, he does include this little item towards the end of the book (from “January 27, 1821, on page two of a New Orleans newspaper called the Louisiana Gazette“):

Rising Sun
Hotel,
Conti Street,
Nearly Opposite the State Bank.

The undersigned inform their friends and the public that they have bought out the interest of JOHN HULL & CO. in the above establishment. No pains or expence will be spared by the new proprietors to give general satisfaction, and maintain the character of giving the best entertainment, which this house has enjoyed for twenty years past.

Gentlemen may here rely upon finding attentive Servants. The bar will be supplied with genuine good Liquors; and at the Table, the fare will be of the best the market or the season will afford.

The business will be carried on under the firm of L.S. Hotchkiss & Co.
Jan.27

“Attentive Servants”; “general satisfaction” and “best entertainment”… Mmm-hmm.

[Below, click Play button to begin The House of the Rising Sun. While audio is playing, volume control appears at left — a row of little vertical bars. This clip is 4:24 long.]

[audio:houseofrisingsun_theanimals.mp3|titles=’The House of the Rising Sun’|artists=The Animals]

[Lyrics]

One interesting thing about the song’s lyrics over time: they’ve switched genders. Early versions were often sung by women, about the ruination not of “poor boys” but “poor girls.” I don’t want to guess what it says about our culture — even in the “enlightened” world of 1960s rock — that in the song’s most successful version the real victims of such places can be found among the patrons.

_______________________________

* Well, as it happens, there is a house in New Orleans they call the Rising Sun: it’s a bed-and-breakfast (apparently quite nice) which opened its doors in 1999. (WARNING: Before following that link, you should know that the song will start playing, unbidden and fairly loudly; it took me a while to find the little audio-control widget which controls it, but it’s over in the left-hand sidebar, close to the top.) Their site includes a good page of information on the various legends about the “real” (or otherwise) Rising Sun, and the song which commemorates it. And I had to laugh when I read this:

We named our former bed & breakfast the “House of the Rising Sun” for the obvious reason… the way the song starts. What else could we call it… “Dunroamin”?

I’m not sure what they mean by “former” — as far as I can tell, it’s getting along just fine — but you’ve gotta give credit to business owners who poke fun at their own naked commercial moxie. :)

Midweek Music Break: Collins H. Driggs (on the Novachord), “Estudiantina,” and… Beer

March 21, 2012 by John 13 Comments

[The Novachord, closed and open (click either photo for an enlargement); both photos per Wikipedia]

When you grew up in the US during a certain window of time (and maybe in certain geographic areas, within certain socioeconomic strata), the culture you could absorb from the adult world was this weird amalgam of past and present. The mass media hadn’t quite figured out what “mass media” might mean. Television still felt like an extravagance. Pop-culture artifacts from the early decades of the 20th century could still be found lying around in basements and attics, waiting for (re)discovery by kids with maybe a little too much time on their hands.

One such sort of artifact in our household was 78rpm record albums. I have no idea from which side of the family most of these things might have come to us — or, rather, to the cardboard boxes in the second-floor “storage room” and in dark back corners of the basement. If they were Big Band-related, odds were good that they’d arrived trailing in Dad’s wake. But the others…?

We had a couple of records by Arthur Godfrey, for instance, including one on which he and a would-be comic country-singin’ group sang an embarrassing number called “Slap Her Down Again, Paw.” (That was the refrain, in a narrative about an adolescent girl who’d stayed out later than her parents allowed — but finally came in at sunrise.)

And we also had a collection of recordings on a musical instrument called the Novachord.

Like the Mellotron (covered here in a Midweek Music Break some time ago), the Novachord was an experimental keyboard instrument straddling the analog/digital divide. Wikipedia says only about a thousand were manufactured by Hammond (the organ company) between 1939 and 1942; production lapsed during World War II because of the shortage of parts, and never resumed afterwards because, apparently, the thing just hadn’t caught on anyway.

I don’t ever remember Mom or Dad playing the Novachord records on the family hi-fi (or later, stereo). But I listened to them myself, for some reason, and often enough that one song really lodged in my head. The label identified it as “Estudiantina,” a waltz by a composer named Émile Waldteufel. Although (as Wikipedia says) Waldteufel is considered a French composer, he was born in Strasbourg — as German a city as a French city may be, right down to the geography. (And his surname is German, meaning — I love this — forest devil.)

Given all that, maybe it should not surprise that “Estudiantina” — certainly as rendered by the Novachord, in the hands of someone named Collins H. Driggs — has so much a lilting, oomp-pa-pah beer-hall quality:

Maybe the main reason why this performance struck me with such force was that I recognized the tune well before I heard it from the Novachord recording — and even then, when I must’ve been only ten or twelve years old or so, I recognized it for an unlikely reason: it provided the melody to the advertising jingle for (yes!) a Germanic-sounding brand of beer, Rheingold. That’s Miss Rheingold* of 1949 in the ad over there on the right. I can almost hear “Estudiantina” tootling from her concertina, which perhaps sounded much like the Novachord: thin, reedy, and rather, well, burbly. I can even almost hear her singing the jingle — whose words, indeed, included the announcement: My beer is Rheingold, the dry beer…!

Background: When I set out a couple days ago on this general topic, for no reason that I can put my finger on, I had exactly two facts at my disposal:

The word “Novachord.”
The remembered connection between that old 78rpm record, and the Rheingold jingle.

I certainly couldn’t remember the song title, “Estudiantina.” And I don’t think I’d ever even registered the name of Émile Waldteufel.

But as I continued to think about the recording, I vaguely remembered that the overall album title coupled Novachord somehow with the word magic. It wasn’t Novachord Magic… nor The Magical Novachord… it was… was… was it The Magic of the Novachord?

And folks, I wanna tell you: I just about fell out of my chair when a quick check of Google led me to that very album on iTunes.

I love the Internet.

________________________

* The very first Miss Rheingold, in 1940, was Jinx Falkenburg. (I might have been able to invent that name, but I’d never have had the nerve to use it in a story. Too implausible.) Her autobiography, Jinx, came out in 1951, but apparently went out of print long ago. (Hers, I’d wager, is a potential best-selling story in search of the right biographer or filmmaker, especially in our beautiful-celebrity culture.) There are many pictures of her online (and yes, Jinx appears to have been something of a minx), but one of my favorites is the one at the right. She is here not signing the accordion, as it appears. She’s signing a short snorter. You can be forgiven for not knowing what a short snorter is; according to the site of The Short Snorter Project (where I found the photo), it is:

…a banknote which was signed by various persons traveling together or meeting up at different events and records who was met. The tradition was started by bush pilots in Alaska in the 1920’s and subsequently spread through the growth of military and commercial aviation. If you signed a short snorter and that person could not produce it upon request, they owed you a dollar or a drink (a “short snort”, aviation and alcohol do not mix!).

Did I say, I love the Internet?

The Propagational Library (3): A Barrel of Monkeys

March 10, 2012 by John Leave a Comment

[Here by accident? You might want to first read what came before: Introduction, Chapter 1: The Finding, and Chapter 2: Kali.]

Gabe knew, by now, he had little chance of returning productively to the darkroom for the rest of the afternoon and evening. He was a little hungry, not remotely famished (and not at all sure he saw the point in eating, maybe ever again). But he told the Lanes of a WorldKitchen a few blocks away which offered good delivery service; it specialized in Kazakh and Samoan cuisines, as well as the rest of the chain’s full menu. If they wanted, they should feel free to order something and have it brought here, on Gabe’s tab. (Later, he’d think how funny that must have sounded — offering to pay a fast-food check for Matthew freaking Burghar‘s daughter and son-in-law.)

Then, on the pretext of cleaning up some chemicals he’d left open, he went downstairs to the basement and into the darkroom. There he switched on the safelight, extinguished the overhead CCFLs, and sat on the stool in the murky half-light to gather his thoughts.

By the time the doorbell rang — the WorldKitchen delivery — he’d returned upstairs, made vague, forgettable small talk with the Lanes, and sharpened his questions. The tins of darkroom chemicals downstairs remained open.

—-

[Continue reading here.]

Surprise, Surprise

March 9, 2012 by John 2 Comments

[Video: high-speed footage (1000fps) of an “eagle owl” in flight. This film has apparently been around for a while, but I don’t think I’ve seen it before this week. Chief virtue, for me: shows me something I couldn’t have imagined on my own!]

From whiskey river:

I cannot help you understand. In the realm of the ultimate, each person must figure out things for themselves. Remember that. Teachers who offer you the ultimate answers do not possess the ultimate answers, for if they did, they would know that the ultimate answers cannot be given, they can only be received.

(Tom Robbins [source])

…and:

The Poems of Our Climate

I
Clear water in a brilliant bowl,
pink and white carnations. The light
in the room more like a snowy air,
reflecting snow. A newly-fallen snow
at the end of winter when afternoons return.
Pink and white carnations — one desires
so much more than that. The day itself
is simplified: a bowl of white,
cold, a cold porcelain, low and round,
with nothing more than the carnations there.

II
Say even that this complete simplicity
stripped one of all one’s torments, concealed
the evilly compounded, vital I
and made it fresh in a world of white,
a world of clear water, brilliant-edged,
still one would want more, one would need more,
more than a world of white and snowy scents.

III
There would still remain the never-resting mind,
so that one would want to escape, come back
to what had been so long composed.
The imperfect is our paradise.
Note that, in this bitterness, delight,
since the imperfect is so hot in us,
lies in flawed words and stubborn sounds.

(Wallace Stevens [source])

[Read more…]

The Propagational Library (2): Kali

March 3, 2012 by John 2 Comments

[Here by accident? You might want to first read the Introduction and Chapter 1.]

After his next hour with them, Gabe sincerely hoped the Lanes would tell him something to summon up his sense of humor. He wondered if he’d ever laugh again.

Still not moving beyond the entry hall, Gabe asked them to provide one good reason — “Two would be better” — not to show them the door. They looked back and forth at each other, and then quickly dispensed with the formalities of introduction: identifying themselves beyond mere names, and establishing their bona fides. Adrienne went first.

“I’m a trust-fund baby,” she said. “My surname before marrying Eldon was Burghar — yes, with an h and an a.”

“No way. You—”

“Yep. My dad was Matt Burghar. That Matt Burghar.” Like ninety percent of the rest of the world, Gabe didn’t need to be told who that Matt Burghar had been: founder and chief of research for MagBurg Labs. (The “Mag” came from magnetic, popular theory supposed. In fact, it came from Magaziner, the maiden name of Matt’s wife Dolly.) Thirty-some years ago, MagBurg had introduced the world to the MagDrive Engine. Everybody thought it would reverse or at least slow the effects of centuries of hydrocarbon-burning machinery. Everybody was proved wrong, but in the meantime Matt and Dolly and, evidently, little Adrienne had become almost ridiculously wealthy.

“I don’t suppose you can offer me more than just your word of honor on that.”

She smiled, and pulled from the pocket of her coat two laminated-plastic cards. The first was a simple photo ID: a security badge for MagBurg Labs, identifying her as employee number 000003. The second was a standard state-supplied RFID card. “Got a swiper?”

Gabe gestured at a small table against the wall, close to the door. “The vase with the fake flowers there.”

Adrienne waved the RFID past the vase and a display lit up alongside the door jamb. Adrienne Lane, it confirmed, née Burghar, husband Eldon, current address out on the mountainside at the far side of the city, current employer MagBurg Laboratories LLC, date of birth thirty-seven years ago. She moved the card up to her right eye, held it there for a beat, and re-swiped the vase. CONFIRMED, said the display.

Not quite wanting to accept yet that Matt Burghar’s freaking daughter stood before him in his foyer, Gabe tried one more test: “You’re kinda young to be MagBurg employee number 3, aren’t you?”

“Dad’s little joke. It was my seventh-birthday present.”

“‘It’ the card?”

“No, ‘it’ the employee number. The card’s legitimate, don’t worry. It’s always worked there. And so have I.”

“How about you?” Gabe said, turning to Eldon. “You with MagBurg, too?”

Eldon laughed again. “Oh, heck no. I don’t have a job at all, just ride around on my wife’s coattails. A wastrel and a dilettante.”

“Don’t take him seriously,” said Adrienne. “He won’t let you if you try. He’s not—”

“She’s right, I’m sorry, I need to take you seriously — no: I’m not a MagBurg employee. I’m an amateur astronomer. Or let’s say, well, technically not an astronomer. Not so much stars and planets, you know, but galaxies and universes. Nebulas. Quasars, pulsars, black holes. All that.”

He moved to the table and vase before Gabe could ask him. His RFID confirmed his identity, too. Current employer: N/A. His readout, however, included a supplemental affiliation: the International Amateur Cosmological Union.

Now Gabe was really stumped. His rational mind knew that you could find harmless (or not so harmless) nutcases even among the idle (or not so idle) wealthy. But that didn’t quite explain the presence of this couple in his home. He stalled for time.

“My RFID’s upstairs—”

“We don’t need it,” said Eldon. “Full name Gabriel Mazarin Naude, photographer, late wife Carolyn, et cetera, et cetera, am I right?”

Whoa. They could’ve dug up the stuff on photography and Caro from any of dozens of public sources. But the middle name — the Mazarin? That was documented nowhere, not even on the RFID. His family had passed that middle name down for centuries…

“Okay,” he said, “let’s just take it for granted that we’re all who we say we are. Let’s move into the living room and you can tell me what you’re really here for. ‘Cause for the life of me, I can’t imagine what ‘help’ people like you think you can get from a guy like me.”

[Read more…]