Ridiculous pursuits, matters solemn and less so
[Above still from director Alex Cox’s Walker (1987), which sounds like one of the most
interesting films I’ve never seen. Click image for more info.]
My regular Friday post inspired by the mysteries of the past seven days’ entries at the whiskey river blog. This one’s a little more complex than most — one or two more selections, and a small cluster of strangely relevant associations from elsewhere around the Web.
From whiskey river:
It’s true, I think, as Kenko says in his Idleness,
That all beauty depends upon disappearance,
The bitten edges of things,
the gradual sliding away
Into tissue and memory,
the uncertainty
And dazzling impermanence of days we beg our meanings from,
And their frayed loveliness.
(Charles Wright, The World of the Ten Thousand Things)
Those without stories are preordained to repeat them,
I saw once in the stars.
Unclear who underwrote that,
But since then I’ve seen it everywhere
I’ve looked, staggering
Noon light and night’s meridian wandering wide and the single sky.
And here it is in the meadow grass, a brutish script.We tend to repeat what we don’t know
Instead of the other way around —
thus mojo, thus misericordia,
Old cross-work and signature, the catechism in the wind.
We tend to repeat what hurts us, things, and ghosts of things,
The actual green of summer, and summer’s half-truth.
We tend to repeat ourselves.
(Charles Wright, A Short History of the Shadow)
…and:
We are called to wake our hearts from the dark dreariness of never being good enough — a pretty startling call for anyone not suffering terminal arrogance. Since most of us suffer an oddly modern mix of anxiety and arrogance, there are few among us who make it through our lives without some hours (years, decades…) in that dark, self-doubting territory where anxiety defines the very air itself. That we are whole, and home, and needed by all of life is where Buddhism begins, in a sense. Most of us, though, have to take quite a journey to arrive where we’ve always been. Like the love that has no opposite or end, suchness is unconditional, in that it reaches absolutely every condition of experience. We intrinsically have the countenance of the person of suchness — nothing we can do or have ever done places us outside that embrace.
(Bonnie Myotai Treace)
Not from whiskey river:
“You can draw water out of a water-well,” said the Hatter; “so I should think you could draw treacle out of a treacle-well — eh, stupid?”
“But they were in the well,” Alice said to the Dormouse, not choosing to notice this last remark.
“Of course they were,” said the Dormouse; ” — well in.”
This answer so confused poor Alice, that she let the Dormouse go on for some time without interrupting it.
“They were learning to draw,” the Dormouse went on, yawning and rubbing its eyes, for it was getting very sleepy; “and they drew all manner of things — everything that begins with an M — ”
“Why with an M?” said Alice.
“Why not?” said the March Hare.
Alice was silent.
The Dormouse had closed its eyes by this time, and was going off into a doze; but, on being pinched by the Hatter, it woke up again with a little shriek, and went on: “– that begins with an M, such as mouse-traps, and the moon, and memory, and muchness — you know you say things are ‘much of a muchness’ — did you ever see such a thing as a drawing of a muchness?”
(Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland)
Finally, Andrew Bird discusses the thin border between suchness and muchness, at the Bonnaroo Festival in 2006 [lyrics]:
Okay, let’s do this playlist thing… These artists and numbers appear, back-to-back, in the playlist:
(Note: After some experimentation, I’ve found there doesn’t seem to be a simple way — like a single button to push — to fast-forward to the end of a number. What you do instead is drag the little progress-meter thing all the way to the right, to the end of the track; this cues up the next number in the list.)
Next: I can’t put a YouTube video into this audio-playlist thing, but Christmas music doesn’t get any better than this. Judy Garland, in Meet Me in St. Louis, introduces the world to “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” — and more or less ruins it for every succeeding performer:
(As Jordan Baker of the Dealing in Subterfuges blog recently reminded readers, the original version has none of this hang-a-shining-star/highest-bough stuff. What that verse actually — much more piercingly poignantly — says is:
Someday soon, we all will be together —
If the fates allow.
Until then, we’ll have to muddle through somehow…
So have yourself a Merry Little Christmas now.
Got that???)
Finally, the music of Christmas writing. Dylan Thomas reads his own A Child’s Christmas in Wales (in two parts, back-to-back — thanks, WordPress Audio Player plugin!):
(The complete text is here, if you’d like to follow along; link opens in a new window/tab, so you can move back and forth from the text to the audio stream.)
________________________
Bonus: Video from 1979’s Christmas Together special, which shows John Denver and The Muppets singing the Twelve Days of Christmas (audio only is in the above playlist, obviously):
Don’t you wish you could see the chaos “backstage” as all the Muppeteers, their arms waving, squeezed in around John Denver?
At least one thing has surprised me about Running After My Hat so far: the extent to which I’m blogging about and incorporating music in my posts.
I mean, it’s not as though I actually know anything about the subject. I’m not a musician or musicologist or, well, much of anything regarding music — except maybe a dilettante fan, skipping from one genre to another…
Anyway, if you’ve visited (almost?) any of the posts in the Music category over there in the left sidebar, you’ve encountered a little gizmo which plays music. It’s got a couple of little VCR-style play/pause buttons, and you can adjust the volume up or down with a little slider (on the left) that looks like the reception-strength bars in a certain company’s cellular-service advertisements.
For instance, here’s the one from last Friday’s post, “A Gift of Frozen Words“:
(For the information of those of you with WordPress-based blogs, for this purpose I use a plugin called, logically enough, the WordPress Audio Player. Find it here, if you’re interested, although here there’s a better set of usage examples and other notes.)
I’ve been meaning to explore using the audio-player thingum to play back an entire playlist, not just a single song. (I have long-term ulterior motives for knowing how to do this.) Christmas music seems an obvious choice for such a playlist, and that’s what I’m experimenting with at the moment.
Back soon. Hopefully with a playlist. :)
Soundtrack to today’s post: “Some Children See Him”
(piano solo by George Winston from his album December;
click Play button to start, and adjust volume with the little row of bars at the left):
From the previous post‘s ridiculous heart, to this one’s sublime:
Per the “more info” box at this video’s YouTube page:
From the award-winning documentary, “Playing For Change: Peace Through Music”, comes the first of many “songs around the world” being released independently. Featured is a cover of the Ben E. King classic by musicians around the world adding their part to the song as it travelled the globe. This and other songs such as “One Love” will be released as digital downloads soon; followed by the film soundtrack and DVD early next year.
Sign up at www.playingforchange.com for updates and exclusive content available only to those who…
Join the Movement to help build schools, connect students, and inspire communities in need through music.
Goosebumping stuff…
Knowing me to be a fan of director Giuseppe Tornatore’s Cinema Paradiso, she brought home his 1998 English-language debut, The Legend of 1900. Which we (well, I) watched last night.
What an interesting premise, with all sorts of opportunities for metaphor and sentiment:
[Photo of a giant Archimedes screw. Funny, isn’t it — how
a giant screw can be both a problem and a solution?]
From whiskey river:
Starfish
This is what life does. It lets you walk up to
the store to buy breakfast and the paper, on a
stiff knee. It lets you choose the way you have
your eggs, your coffee. Then it sits a fisherman
down beside you at the counter who says, Last night,
the channel was full of starfish. And you wonder,
is this a message, finally, or just another day?Life lets you take the dog for a walk down to the
pond, where whole generations of biological
processes are boiling beneath the mud. Reeds
speak to you of the natural world: they whisper,
they sing. And herons pass by. Are you old
enough to appreciate the moment? Too old?
There is movement beneath the water, but it
may be nothing. There may be nothing going on.And then life suggests that you remember the
years you ran around, the years you developed
a shocking lifestyle, advocated careless abandon,
owned a chilly heart. Upon reflection, you are
genuinely surprised to find how quiet you have
become. And then life lets you go home to think
about all this. Which you do, for quite a long time.Later, you wake up beside your old love, the one
who never had any conditions, the one who waited
you out. This is life’s way of letting you know that
you are lucky. (It won’t give you smart or brave,
so you’ll have to settle for lucky.) Because you
were born at a good time. Because you were able
to listen when people spoke to you. Because you
stopped when you should have and started again.So life lets you have a sandwich, and pie for your
late night dessert. (Pie for the dog, as well.) And
then life sends you back to bed, to dreamland,
while outside, the starfish drift through the channel,
with smiles on their starry faces as they head
out to deep water, to the far and boundless sea.
(by Eleanor Lerman)
From whiskey river:
The wonder of a moment in which there is nothing but an upwelling of simple happiness is utterly awesome. Gratitude is so close to the bone of life, pure and true, that it instantly stops the rational mind, and all its planning and plotting. That kind of let go is fiercely threatening. I mean, where might such gratitude end?
(Regina Sara Ryan, Praying Dangerously)
Not from whiskey river:
Don’t pray when it rains if you don’t pray when the sun shines.
(Leroy “Satchel” Paige, New York Post, October 4, 1959)
…and:
My advice to you is not to inquire why or whither, but just enjoy your ice cream while it’s on your plate — that’s my philosophy.
(Thornton Wilder, “Sabiba,” The Skin of Our Teeth)
Finally, the song chosen to wrap up the Northern Exposure series. Not everyone is a fan of Iris Dement’s voice, but I think this is a great song. The performance was on Austin City Limits. (If you’d prefer to see the Northern Exposure version, it’s on YouTube as well — in a shorter and quite darkly lit video.)
Lyrics:
Our Town
(words and music by Iris Dement)And you know the sun’s settin’ fast
and just like they say nothing good ever lasts
Well, go on now and kiss it goodbye but hold on to your lover
’cause your heart’s bound to die
Go on now and say goodbye to our town, to our town
Can’t you see the sun’s settin’ down on our town, on our town
goodnight
Up the street beside that red neon light
that’s where I met my baby on one hot summer night
He was the tender and I ordered a beer
It’s been forty years and I’m still sitting hereBut you know the sun’s settin’ fast
and just like they say nothing good ever lasts
Well, go on now and kiss it goodbye but hold on to your lover
’cause your heart’s bound to die
Go on now and say goodbye to our town, to our town
Can’t you see the sun’s settin’ down on our town, on our town
goodnightIt’s here I had my baby’s and I had my first kiss
I’ve walked down Main Street in the cold morning mist
Over there is where I bought my first car
it turned over once but then it never went farAnd I can see the sun settin’ fast
and just like they say nothing good ever lasts
Well, go on now and kiss it goodbye but hold on to your lover
’cause your heart’s bound to die
Go on now and say goodbye to our town, to our town
Can’t you see the sun’s settin’ down on our town, on our town
goodnightI buried my Mama and I buried my Pa
They sleep up the street beside that pretty brick wall
I bring them flowers about every day
but I just gotta cry when I think what they’d sayIf they could see how the sun’s settin’ fast
and just like they say nothing good ever lasts
Well, go on now and kiss it goodbye but hold on to your lover
’cause your heart’s bound to die
Go on now and say goodbye to our town, to our town
Can’t you see the sun’s settin’ down on our town, on our town
goodnightNow I sit on the porch and watch the lightning-bugs fly
but I can’t see too good, I got tears in my eyes
I’m leaving tomorrow but I don’t wanna go
I love you my town, you’ll always live in my soulBut I can see the sun’s settin’ fast
and just like they say nothing good ever lasts
Well, go on I gotta kiss you goodbye but I’ll hold to my lover
’cause my heart’s ’bout to die
Go on now and say goodbye to my town, to my town
Can’t you see the sun’s settin’ down on my town, on my town
Goodnight, goodnight
Despite having spent 40 years of my life in one area of New Jersey or another, and despite having gone into New York City many times, I’ve never seen the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade live.
Oh, it’s been tempting, all right. I do like going to parades — something about them, their not-quite-cheesy sentimentality, their infectious mass giddiness, the tinniness of the music and the general professionalism but occasional ineptitude of the performers, something about them always manages to stir my blood. (This would be blood shared with my late drum-and-bugle-corps Dad and erstwhile drum-majorette Mom, so perhaps it’s not just coincidence.)
But the Macy’s Parade — like Times Square on New Year’s Eve — just seems one of those crowd experiences enjoyed better from the comfort of one’s living room. The views are better. The sound is better. In recent years, with the advent of closed captioning, even more esoteric rewards can be found in the commentary and lyrics previously only guessed at.
