Perfect Moments: Stone Harbor; Late ’70s; Night

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Stone Harbor beach

A series of professional and personal disappointments. A young man on the brink of his 30s. No idea where his life is bound — forward, over the precipice? or backward, over that one? — or what he’ll find once he gets there. A motorcycle.

The details of the disappointments aren’t important. (Once you reach a certain age, they never do — and not just because the memory isn’t as reliable as it once was.) Suffice it to say, I really had no freaking idea what was going to become of me. It wasn’t quite despair, this feeling — not the stereotypical “my life is in the toilet,” you know. More like fear, maybe: was my life in the toilet?

Nothing seemed to be working out quite as I’d imagined it would, and a large part of that failure translated to: I myself wasn’t working out quite as I’d imagined.

Nothing doing on the writing front. Interesting but crapola jobs, plus an interesting but decidedly not crapola job that I’d still managed to fail at. Friends and classmates settling in to comfortable niches. One marriage flushed away after just a couple years. Nothing like a satisfying relationship within the horizons I could see. I had the bike, yeah, but I’d already taken the “finding-myself” tour on the road with it, camping around New England. Found some great photographs on that trip, and then of course I’d found New England itself (which I still love). But myself…?

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Salvaging the Honey at Heaven’s Edge

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You know how in the Warner Brothers “Road Runner” cartoons, the coyote is forever running (or riding a rocket, or pogo-sticking, or being launched by an ACME Giant Slingshot) off a cliff? and at some moment he realizes that he’s done so, and as soon as he realizes it he loses all forward motion, waves morosely to the audience, and drops out of the bottom of the frame?

For this Friday’s meditations from whiskey river and elsewhere, I wanted to do a “theme post.” This is a tribute to people who’ve recently shot off the edge of a personal or professional cliff, with plenty of forward momentum — and who know better than to look down.

From whiskey river:

It is hard to let old beliefs go. They are familiar. We are comfortable with them and have spent years building systems and developing habits that depend on them. Like a man who has worn eyeglasses so long that he forgets he has them on, we forget that the world looks to us the way it does because we have become used to seeing it that way through a particular set of lenses. Today, however, we need new lenses. And we need to throw the old ones away.

(Kenichi Ohmae)

…and:

Nothing can hold you back — not your childhood, not the history of a lifetime, not even the very last moment before now. In a moment you can abandon your past. And once abandoned, you can redefine it.

If the past was a ring of futility, let it become a wheel of yearning that drives you forward. If the past was a brick wall, let it become a dam to unleash your power.

The very first step of change is so powerful, the boundaries of time fall aside. In one bittersweet moment, the sting of the past is dissolved and its honey salvaged.

(Tzvi Freeman, The Illlustrated Encyclopedia of an Imaginary Universe)

…and:

Withered vines, gnarled trees, twilight crows,
river flowing beneath the little bridge,
past someone’s home.
The wind blows from the west
where the sun sets, it blows
across the ancient road,
across the bony horse,
across the despairing man
who stands at heaven’s edge.

(Ma Chih-Yuan, “Meditation in Autumn”)

Finally (lyrics below — not from whiskey river), a sort of meditation on dilemmas in general:

Crossfire
(words & music by Tommy Shannon, Chris Layton,
Reese Wynans, B.Carter, and Ruth Ellsworth;
performance by Stevie Ray Vaughan)

Day by day, night after night,
blinded by the neon lights
Hurry here, hustlin’ there,
no one’s got the time to spare
Money’s tight, nothin’ free,
won’t somebody come and rescue me
I am stranded, caught in the crossfire
Stranded, caught in the crossfire

Tooth for tooth, eye for an eye,
sell your soul, just to buy buy buy,
Beggin’ a dollar stealin’ a dime,
come on can’t you see that I
I am stranded, caught in the crossfire
I am stranded, caught in the crossfire

I need some kind of kindness,
some kind of sympathy — oh no
We’re stranded, caught in the crossfire

Save the strong, lose the weak,
never turning the other cheek,
Trust nobody, don’t be no fool,
whatever happened to the golden rule?
We got stranded, caught in the crossfire
We got stranded, caught in the crossfire
We got stranded, caught in the crossfire
Stranded, caught in the crossfire
Help me

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The Thing That Happened, Once

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From whiskey river:

At Blackwater Pond

At Blackwater Pond the tossed waters have
settled
after a night of rain.
I dip my cupped hands. I drink
a long time. It tastes
like stone, leaves, fire. It falls cold
into my body, waking the bones. I hear them
deep inside me, whispering
oh what is that beautiful thing
that just happened?

(Mary Oliver)

And:

In the tea ceremony, the expression “once in a lifetime, this one encounter” is often used. The usual way this is interpreted is “a one-and-only encounter.” In Zen, though, we interpret this expression in the following way: In the course of our lifetime, there is one person we must meet. No matter through which grasslands we may walk or which mountains we may climb, we must meet this person. This person is in this world. Who is this person? It is the true self. You must meet the true self. As long as you don’t, it will not be possible to be truly satisfied in the depths of your heart. You will never lose the sense that something is lacking. Nor will you be able to clarify the way things are.

This is the objective of life as well as of the teaching of Buddhism — to meet yourself.

(Sekkei Harada)

And the obvious musical bit (lyrics follow), although the video is a bit… unusual:

Once in a Lifetime
(words and music by Talking Heads;
performance is emphatically not)

And you may find yourself living in a shotgun shack
And you may find yourself in another part of the world
And you may find yourself behind the wheel of a large automobile
And you may find yourself in a beautiful house,
with a beautiful wife
And you may ask yourself: Well… how did I get here?

Letting the days go by/Let the water hold me down
Letting the days go by/Water flowing underground
Into the blue again/After the money’s gone
Once in a lifetime/Water flowing underground.

And you may ask yourself
How do I work this?
And you may ask yourself
Where is that large automobile?
And you may tell yourself
This is not my beautiful house!
And you may tell yourself
This is not my beautiful wife!

Letting the days go by/Let the water hold me down
Letting the days go by/Water flowing underground
Into the blue again/After the money’s gone
Once in a lifetime/Water flowing underground.

Same as it ever was… same as it ever was …same as it ever was…
Same as it ever was… same as it ever was… same as it ever was…
Same as it ever was… same as it ever was…

(Followed by Statler and Waldorf: “Same as it ever was! Same as it ever was! Yeah—” “An hour ago!” [laughter])

Original, longer version, from the concert film Stop Making Sense, can be viewed here.

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Transparent, and Not Quite So

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Per usual, the Friday selection from whiskey river:

We suffer not from our vices and our weaknesses, but from our illusions. We are haunted, not by reality, but by those images we have put in place of reality.

(by Daniel J. Boorstin)

…and a bonus:

Our greatest pretenses are built up not to hide the evil and the ugly in us, but our emptiness. The hardest thing to hide is something that is not there.

(by Eric Hoffer)

…and — not from whiskey river — this:

Introduction To Poetry

I ask them to take a poem
and hold it up to the light
like a color slide

or press an ear against its hive.

I say drop a mouse into a poem
and watch him probe his way out,

or walk inside the poem’s room
and feel the walls for a light switch.

I want them to waterski
across the surface of a poem
waving at the author’s name on the shore.

But all they want to do
is tie the poem to a chair with rope
and torture a confession out of it.

They begin beating it with a hose
to find out what it really means.

(by Billy Collins)

Finally, the deep-blue version (lyrics follow):

You Don’t Know Me

You give your hand to me
Then you say hello
I can hardly speak
My heart is beating so
And anyone can tell
You think you know me well
But you don’t know me

No, you don’t know the one
Who dreams of you at night
And longs to kiss your lips
And longs to hold you tight
Oh I’m just a friend
That’s all I’ve ever been
’cause you don’t know me

I never knew
The art of making love
Though my heart aches
With love for you
Afraid and shy
I’ve let my chance to go by
The chance that you might
Love me, too

You give your hand to me
And then you say good-bye
I watch you walk away
Beside the lucky guy
You’ll never never know
The one who loves you so
Well, you don’t know me

[break]

You give your hand to me, baby
Then you say good-bye
I watch you walk away
Beside the lucky guy
No, no, you’ll never ever know
The one who loves you so
Well, you don’t know me

(by Cindy Walker and Eddy Arnold, performed by B.B. King and Diane Schuur)

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A Silence, Serving It Up

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The scene: an elegant restaurant.

A waiter crosses the floor, headed your way. His dress is formal, his manner both imperious and humble. As he approaches, you can’t help admiring the grace with which he avoids other diners, other staff, furniture placed apparently where he’s most likely to collide with it. You wonder — you doubt — whether you could ever move with such assurance.

The waiter arrives at your table. He raises an eyebrow, ever so slightly. He bends at the waist. The beverage is yours for the taking; he will not presume to touch it or place it before you.

A pause.

You raise your hand to the serving tray. Your fingers close around the stem of a glass…

What I don’t know about music theory could fit in a stadium, if I was lucky. (Yes, be patient, I’m not really changing the subject.) And as you know if you’ve been around here for even a few weeks, my hearing presents some obstacles when listening to anything at all.

But with music, the obstacles are minor as long as there aren’t any words involved. I can hear the instruments and the notes and rhythms just fine. And every now and then, I think I hear music do something interesting. And then I hear it again, in some other piece. And then I wonder if there’s a name for this something, or if I’m just imagining things…

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Ideas Whose Time You Never Saw Coming

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Like many — most? — people who like to think of themselves as creative, I’ve had my share of disappointments with the success of others‘ ideas:

  • Sometimes I’ve used a plot device, a character type, even a simple phrase in something I hope to have published… only to find it in some other work already published by some other author — who’s become fabulously successful. Argh, I think, why couldn’t that have been ME? Why did I wait so long? As though the gimmick (whatever it is) somehow caused the success.
  • Sometimes somebody uses a plot device, character type, etc…. and the work tanks miserably. Argh, I think, I could have done so much better with that! And been successful, too! As though the (mostly imaginary) mishandling of the gimmick (whatever it is) somehow caused the failure.
  • I once wrote a horror story which, even now, I think is publishable. Except for one thing: After I’d sent it to exactly one publication (where it was rejected — surprise! — because it was too long), a horror movie came out in which the “monster” might have been the one in my story. Argh, I thought, now I’ll have to hold off for a few years to give people time to forget the film. And then, a few years later, came the sequel. Which wallowed at the box office, much to fans’ surprise. So far I’ve been holding off for over ten years.

And then there are ideas which don’t fall into the disappointing category at all. You think to yourself, Why didn’t I think of that myself? or at least, Why didn’t SOMEBODY think of that sooner? (Think Harry Potter here, kiddies.) All you can do is applaud in wonder.

And finally there are the ideas — especially combinations of two or more other ideas — which are so bizarre that you’re surprised anyone at all ever thought to put them together.

I think this falls into that category. I give you the Ukelele Orchestra of Great Britain, performing… the theme from Shaft:

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Things Pass Away

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2 Autumn Leaves, by Kristie Shureen PhotographyFrom whiskey river:

September: it was the most beautiful of words, he’d always felt, evoking orange-flowers, swallows, and regret.

(Alexander Theroux)

For summer there, bear in mind, is a loitering gossip, that only begins to talk of leaving when September rises to go.

(George Washington Cable)

…and:

If we were not beings who pass quickly away like all other things, none of this would matter.

(Susan Murphy, Upside-Down Zen)

…and (the single word don’t ringing loudly):

Why we don’t die

In late September many voices
Tell you you will die.
That leaf says it. That coolness.
All of them are right.

Our many souls — what
Can they do about it?
Nothing. They’re already
Part of the invisible.

Our souls have been
Longing to go home
Anyway. “It’s late,” they say.
“Lock the door, let’s go.”

The body doesn’t agree. It says,
“We buried a little iron
Ball under that tree.

Let’s go get it.”

(Robert Bly, Eating The Honey of Words: New and Selected Poems)

…and — not from whiskey river, just because I was curious about Bly’s “iron ball” and found this video, likewise on the theme of time, and of things which can happen too quickly to see or even imagine:

…and finally, because obvious though the selection is, this post just wouldn’t be complete without it:

[audio:trytoremember_jerryorbach.mp3|titles=Try to Remember (The Fantasticks)|artists=Jerry Orbach]
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Learning to See

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Continuing last Friday’s meditation on the topic of sight, and the things which we might see differently “if only”…

First, from whiskey river‘s commonplace book*:

Picasso is riding on a train and someone sits down next to him.

Recognizing who he is, the person asks, “Why don’t you paint people the way they really are?”

Picasso asks, “What do you mean by the way they really are?”

The man eagerly pulls out his wallet and shows Picasso a picture of his wife and says, “This is my wife.”

Picasso responds, “She looks rather small and flat, don’t you think?”

(by Bonnie Myotai Treace, Sensei; story also recounted elsewhere)

Not from whiskey river:

Jack London, by Arnold Genthe (taken 1906-1916)

When Jack London had his portrait made by the noted San Francisco photographer Arnold Genthe, London began the encounter with effusive praise for the photographic art of his friend and fellow bohemian, Genthe: “You must have a wonderful camera… It must be the best camera in the world… You must show me your camera.”

Genthe then used his standard studio camera to make what has since become a classic picture of Jack London.

When the sitting was finished, Genthe could not contain himself: “I have read your books, Jack, and I think they are important works of art. You must have a wonderful typewriter.”

(quoted at PhotoQuotes.com)

From The Luminous Landscape:

…a good photograph isn’t measured in line pairs per millimeter, MTF functions, S/N calculations, or any of the other measurements that photography enthusiasts recite like religious mantras. The most important tools that are used to take good photographs are the human eye, the human brain, and the human heart.

And finally, a little music. I’m not going to provide a bunch of links to online information about Ry Cooder — there’s a ton of it out there. I will say that if you don’t know his work, at all, I think you’re in for a treat. The number which follows (not one of his hits, but a performance I’ve always been fond of) is a straight-up instrumental version — a re-visioning — of an Ike & Tina Turner number called “I Think It’s Going to Work Out Fine.” Here’s what Rolling Stone said of the number in its review of Cooder’s 1979 Bop Till You Drop:

Cooder’s instrumental version of “I Think It’s Going to Work Out Fine” takes the sweet growl of the Ike and Tina Turner original and sets it against some easy, sexy self-assurance. Ike and Tina made this number into a toe-to-toe at midnight, but Cooder’s version is full of relaxed and low-slung afterglow.

“Relaxed and low-slung afterglow”: love that.

[audio:thinkitsgoingtoworkoutfine_cooder.mp3|titles=I Think It’s Going to Work Out Fine|artists=Ry Cooder]

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* whiskey river’s “commonplace book” is what the site’s author calls its archives. Unlike most blog archives, though, whiskey river’s are not strictly speaking chronologically organized: “They are arranged here in random order, the way they were found.”

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Puzzlin’ Evidence… Done Hardened in Your Heart

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Talking Heads was one of those bands which I probably never would have picked up on — not on my own, anyhow. Predictably, in retrospect, it took a nudge from my brother.

Or rather, a couple of different nudges. One of the later ones came in 1986, with the release of the musical film True Stories. Mike pointed me to a couple of reviews and then, somehow, he managed to corral a bunch of us to accompany him to Philadelphia to see it one night.

Nominally, it’s a Talking Heads film: the group released a not-quite-soundtrack album containing its versions of the songs. But in the film — written and directed by, and “starring,” the Heads’ lead singer, David Byrne — with few exceptions, the songs are performed by other people in the cast. For instance, a voodoo priest (played by gospel/R&B star Pops Staples) sings a song called “Papa Legba” to bring love and good fortune to Louis (The Dancing Bear) Fyne (played by John Goodman).

The general idea for the film came to him, Byrne has said, from tabloid stories — how they might represent people from a single town.

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Nouveau Retro: Big Daddy

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Brief post today… Worked way later on writing-type stuff than I’d meant to. (So I guess that counts as an excuse, huh?) In any case, this one has decidedly nothing at all to do with writing.

Sometime back in 1991-92, I got a very curious gift from my brother. It was a cassette tape (I later upgraded to CD) of music by a group called “Big Daddy”; the title was Cutting Their Own Groove.

On the front, an antique-looking record player seemed to be playing, was it? yes! an old 45-rpm vinyl record. A rainbow of sparks was shooting from the needle at the end of the tone arm. I flipped the cassette over, curious to see what the playlist might be. As my brother knew, my preferred musical genre at the time was oldies, so maybe…

What was this?!? All the tracks were recent hits! Whitney Houston’s “The Greatest Love of All.” Madonna’s “Like a Virgin.” “Graceland,” by Paul Simon…

This was a stupid cover band! What was Mike thinking, sending me this crap?!?

Long story short: a cover band, all right. But a cover band with a difference. A difference which Mike knew would appeal to me.

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