Running After My Hat

Ridiculous pursuits, matters solemn and less so

Midweek Music Break: Jazzy Joni

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Joni Mitchell, or so I thought around the time I first heard of her, epitomized the sweet-and-fragile visuals of hippie-folk culture.

(With her long straight blonde hair, oh-so-slender frame and a voice to match, with her acoustic guitar and simple attire, she seemed a Mary Travers wannabe — maybe her gawky delicate second or third cousin, who admired her from a distance at family reunions and weddings.)

Sometimes her songs seemed to come out of that culture, too, especially the hits like “Both Sides Now” and “Big Yellow Taxi.” They cemented (in my mind) the image of a dreamy mystic tinged with social consciousness. I saw her in person in 1969, at the Atlantic City Pop Festival held a couple weeks before Woodstock; that restive crowd, especially in the context of her preference for small clubs, drove her from the stage in tears before she’d even finished a single song. (I vaguely remember thinking something adolescent-male shallow like, What the heck is her problem?!?) Obviously — obviously — she was way too delicate and inconsequential to have much staying power in the rough-and-tumble of rock…

Haha. Yeah, I know: what a jerk.

Eventually it sank in that her songs were complex little bundles of sound and sense, which only seemed simple if, like me, you had never really listened to them. Even when it’s just her and her guitar or piano, she interacts with her music, plays with it, responds to it — especially when she moves out of contemplative mode, relaxes, and takes up the rhythms of jazz.

Her first song which hit me that way was “You Turn Me On, I’m a Radio,” from 1972’s For the Roses. The grinning-over-her-shoulder, winking lilt fits the lyrics like a saddle. “If your head says forget it / But your heart’s still smoking”: oh, what I’d give to have written such a poised, nuanced line!

[Below, click Play button to begin You Turn Me On, I’m a Radio. While audio is playing, volume control appears at left — a row of little vertical bars. This clip is 2:39 long.

[audio:youturnmeonimaradio_jonimitchell.mp3|titles=’You Turn Me On, I’m a Radio’|artists=Joni Mitchell]

Lyrics:

You Turn Me On, I’m a Radio
(Joni Mitchell)

If you’re driving into town
With a dark cloud above you
Dial in the number
Who’s bound to love you

Oh honey you turn me on
I’m a radio
I’m a country station
I’m a little bit corny
I’m a wildwood flower
Waving for you
Broadcasting tower
Waving for you

And I’m sending you out
This signal here
I hope you can pick it up
Loud and clear
I know you don’t like weak women
You get bored so quick
And you don’t like strong women
‘Cause they’re hip to your tricks

It’s been dirty for dirty
Down the line
But you know
I come when you whistle
When you’re loving and kind

But if you’ve got too many doubts
If there’s no good reception for me
Then tune me out, ’cause honey
Who needs the static
It hurts the head
And you wind up cracking
And the day goes dismal

From “Breakfast Barney”
To the sign-off prayer
What a sorry face you get to wear
I’m going to tell you again now
If you’re still listening there

If you’re driving into town
With a dark cloud above you
Dial in the number
Who’s bound to love you

If you’re lying on the beach
With the transistor going
Kick off the sandflies honey
The love’s still flowing
If your head says forget it
But your heart’s still smoking
Call me at the station
The lines are open

Happy Birthday, the Erstwhile “Music” Television

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MTV turned 30 years old at a minute past midnight today. After a voiceover saying,”Ladies and gentlemen: rock and roll!” and some promotional pieces, they overturned the music business with their very first video: The Buggles, and “Video Killed the Radio Star.”

Lyrics:

Video Killed the Radio Star
(The Buggles)

I heard you on the wireless back in ’52
Lying awake intent at tuning in on you
If I was young it didn’t stop you coming through

Oh-a oh

They took the credit for your second symphony
Rewritten by machine and new technology
And now I understand the problems you can see

Oh-a oh
I met your children
Oh-a oh
What did you tell them?

Video killed the radio star
Video killed the radio star

Pictures came and broke your heart
Oh-a-a-a oh

And now we meet in an abandoned studio
We hear the playback and it seems so long ago
And you remember the jingles used to go

Oh-a oh
You were the first one
Oh-a oh
You were the last one

Video killed the radio star
Video killed the radio star

In my mind and in my car
We can’t rewind we’ve gone to0 far

Oh-a-aho oh
Oh-a-aho oh

Video killed the radio star
Video killed the radio star

In my mind and in my car
We can’t rewind we’ve gone to0 far
Pictures came and broke your heart
Put the blame on VCR*

You are a radio star
You are a radio star

Video killed the radio star
Video killed the radio star

Video killed the radio star
Video killed the radio star

Video killed the radio star
(You are a radio star)
Video killed the radio star
Video killed the radio star
(You are a radio star)

Oh-a oh
Oh-a oh
Oh-a oh

Right on its heels, the incomparable Pat Benatar: “You Better Run.”

Lyrics:

You Better Run
(Pat Benatar)

Whatcha’ tryin’ t’ do to my heart?
Whatcha’ tryin’ t’ do to my heart?
You go around tellin’ lies
And now you want to compromise
Whatcha’ tryin’ t’ do to my heart?
You better run!
You better hide!
You better leave from my sight! Yeah

Whatcha’ tryin’ t’ do to my soul?
Whatcha’ tryin’ t’ do to my soul?
Well everything I had was yours
And now I’m closin’ all the doors
Whatcha’ tryin’ t’ do to my soul?

You better run!
You better hide!
You better leave from my sight! Yeah

I love you oh, I love you so
Can’t you see it? Don’t you know?
I can’t stand your alibis
Your tellin’ lies, you drive me wild! Yeah

I said, what are ya tryin’ t’ do to my head?
Said, whatcha’ tryin’ t’ do to my head?
Well now I’ve gotta draw the line
Cause you ain’t gonna take my mind!
What are ya tryin’ t’ do to my head?

You better run!
You better hide!
You better leave from my sight!
You better run!
You better hide!
You better leave from my sight!
Let me go! Yeah

I said go away, and leave me alone!
I can’t stand you no more!

Moonrat , irrepressible but stubbornly non-blogging , still pops up on Twitter and Facebook from time to time. She did so today with a link to the Gawker site: a three-minute video history of MTV (not embeddable, alas), documenting the rise, decline, and further decline.

____________________

* Some sites say that the proper abbreviation here is “VTR,” for “video tape recording” (vs. C-for-cassette). That’s probably more generic and hence maybe more “accurate,” i.e.,  it doesn’t put the blame on a specific technology. Commenters here seem to focus on a lip-reading, insisting that the singer clearly forms a T at that point. Okaaaaay… Either way works for me!

Step by Step, and an Ounce at a Time

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[Image: Beast of Burden, a sculpture by Sarah Perry. For more information, see the note at the foot of this post.]

From whiskey river:

Burlap Sack

A person is full of sorrow
the way a burlap sack is full of stones or sand.
We say, “Hand me the sack,”
but we get the weight.
Heavier if left out in the rain.
To think that the stones or sand are the self is an error.
To think that grief is the self is an error.
Self carries grief as a pack mule carries the side bags,
being careful between the trees to leave extra room.
The mule is not the load of ropes and nails and axes.
The self is not the miner nor builder nor driver.
What would it be to take the bride
and leave behind the heavy dowry?
To let the thick ribbed mule browse in tall grasses,
its long ears waggling like the tails of two happy dogs?

(Jane Hirshfield [source])

…and:

I think there is choice possible at any moment to us, as long as we live. But there is no sacrifice. There is a choice, and the rest falls away. Second choice does not exist. Beware of those who talk about sacrifice.

(Muriel Rukeyser)

…and:

I have been a lucky man. To feel the intimacy of brothers is a marvelous thing in life. To feel the love of people whom we love is a fire that feeds our life. But to feel the affection that comes from those whom we do not know, from those unknown to us, who are watching over our sleep and solitude, over our dangers and our weaknesses — that is something still greater and more beautiful because it widens out the boundaries of our being, and unites all living things.

(Pablo Neruda)

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Making an Illuminated Manuscript

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In the category of “Things Our Ancestors Did to Humble Us,” this mini-documentary [UPDATE: a little over six minutes long] from the J. Paul Getty Museum:

(If you go to the page at the ArtBabble site where I found this, you might also like some of the “related videos” in the right sidebar there.)

Midweek Music Break: Theme-Park Earworms

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The Missus and I took a much-needed mini-vacation this past weekend, trekking off to central Florida for (among other things) our first visit to the other theme park in that neighborhood. We love amusement parks and fairs (county, state, you name it), but neither of us is a big roller-coaster fan; most of the rides at our destination park were pure roller coasters, or adaptations of the genre. And if you look through the place’s Web site, you will observe that pretty much all the happy, screaming people in the photos are no more than half our age, and the majority much younger.

Still, we found plenty to do, although we spent only about five or six hours at the park itself (counting a full dinner).

The single activity I spent most of the four days engaged in — other than driving, haha — was reading. It felt almost irresponsible, reading so much. I finished one book I’d been reading for weeks; started and finished another in the next 24 hours; and put a huge dent in a third. I read for hours at a clip. (Of course, it helped that I’d sorta-but-not-quiiiiiite-finished this draft of Seems to Fit a couple days before. The very last chapter still needs work, but even so, my head was largely empty of responsibility to my own story.)

Anyway, headed into the midweek I got thinking about theme- and amusement-park music. Usually — at least to my mind — this music is associated with carousels, merry-go-rounds, whatever-you-call them, and often has that characteristic hurdy-gurdy sound. (The rides’ up-and-down round-and-round rhythms favor short songs played over, and over, and over, and over…) When I was a kid, a carousel appeared on the streets of our own town every now and again in summer, and the single number I remember it playing was (maybe unsurprisingly) “The Merry-Go-Round Broke Down.”

Wikipedia says:

[It was] written in 1937 by Cliff Friend and Dave Franklin. It is best known as the theme tune for the Looney Tunes cartoon series produced by Warner Bros. Cartoons, used from 1937 to 1969.

Here’s one Looney Tunes rendition, not the opening-titles instrumental but as sung by an early version of guess-who in “Daffy Duck and Egghead” (1938):

But the cartoon version was (is) waaay too fast to be played by any carousel other than one about to fly apart at its welded seams. The one I remember was paced more like this disturbing version from television’s old Lawrence Welk Show:

(The cartoon version of the song, though, provided me with the title for Merry-Go-Round. The sequel to that, called Merrily We Roll Along, gets its title from the theme song for the Merry Melodies cartoon series — also by Warner Brothers.)

Now it occurs to me that another carousel song was adapted for use in short comedies from the same mid-1930s era: “Listen to the Mockingbird,” the first theme song for The Three Stooges’ films. (They later switched to “Three Blind Mice,” but I’ve never heard a carousel play that one. Maybe the transference works in only one direction.)

At any rate, no matter how much I enjoy theme and amusement parks, especially those in central Florida, I can never dissociate them from this song:

Yeah. That (the 1964-65 New York World’s Fair) was the first place I ever heard it, too — maybe fifteen, twenty years before first re-encountering it at Disney World. What a surprise *cough* that it stayed with me during all that time in between!

In the above clip, the voiceover celebrates how many languages sing the song during the ride. Of course, the more languages in which it’s sung and instruments on which it’s played, the more times the maddening tune must be played, and the more desperate the riders grow to be freed from the little boats they’re trapped in. I like to imagine the Disney crew in their white short-sleeved shirts and ties, brainstorming around a table in a bar in late-1950s Southern California, laughing, growing ever drunker as they call out, “We’ve gotta do it in Sanskrit!” “Wait — Tagalog!” “Don’t forget Urdu!” “Old Norse!” “Pygmy Bantu!”…

I opted here not to use any of the videos which play all of “It’s a Small World.” If you’re a glutton for punishment, you’ve got a lot of them to choose from.

Knowing What You’re Looking At

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[Image: graffiti artist Bansky visited a subway archway in central London, adding a caption to a wall which just happens to fall within the view of a surveillance camera.]

From whiskey river:

All men, at one time or another, have fallen in love with the veiled Isis whom they call Truth. With most, this has been a passing passion: they have early seen its hopelessness and turned to more practical things. But others remain all their lives the devout lovers of reality: though the manner of their love, the vision which they make to themselves of the beloved object varies enormously. Some see Truth as Dante saw Beatrice: an adorable yet intangible figure, found in this world yet revealing the next. To others she seems rather an evil but an irresistible enchantress: enticing, demanding payment and betraying her lover at the last. Some have seen her in a test tube, and some in a poet’s dream: some before the altar, others in the slime. The extreme pragmatists have even sought her in the kitchen; declaring that she may best be recognized by her utility. Last stage of all, the philosophic skeptic, has comforted an unsuccessful courtship by assuring himself that his mistress is not really there.

(Evelyn Underhill, Mysticism [source])

…and:

You’re like a witness. You’re the one who goes to the museum and looks at the paintings. I mean the paintings are there and you’re in the museum too, near and far away at the same time. I’m a painting. Rocamadour is a painting. Etienne is a painting, this room is a painting. You think that you’re in the room but you’re not. You’re looking at the room, you’re not in the room.

(Julio Cortázar [source])

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Midweek Music Break: BettySoo, “Never Knew No Love” and “Boxcars”

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Like Patty Griffin (to whom I’ve seen her compared), BettySoo knows how to love a musical note, how to hold it, shake it, and/or bend it for maximum emotional effect. Like Griffin, she specializes in a genre which both is and is not quite country, folk, pop, and/or rock. And like Griffin, the woman knows how to write a song.

All of which triggers a bit of cognitive dissonance when you find out that BettySoo is a five-foot-tall, apparently twenty-something Korean-American. Say what?!?

Let’s start this off with one of her own tunes, the driving “Never Knew No Love.” The video’s unofficial; while L.A.-noir-style film stills at first glance might seem a long distance away from the lyrics, the combination (“Never knew no man like the one you been missing / Never knew no love could break love’s vow”) actually works pretty well.

Lyrics:

Never Knew No Love
(BettySoo)

When the sun’s still beating down September
Can’t touch your toes to the pavement in the afternoon
Swinging out front, wondering whether
Sins of the summer gonna come
Catch up with you soon

Never knew no dirt didn’t come off in the kitchen
Never knew no stain like the one you’re hiding now
Never knew no man like the one you been missing
Never knew no love could break love’s vow

Fan my face but the moving just makes me hotter
Try to sit still as the creek down by the way
That dry bed ain’t seen no fresh water
Spent the last two months drying out without the rain

Never knew no dirt didn’t come off in the kitchen
Never knew no stain like the one I’m hiding now
Never knew no man like the one I been missing
Never knew no love could break love’s vow

Can’t go back to the water’s edge
ain’t no water…
Can’t go back to his arms
ain’t no water…
Can’t go dip beneath the glass surface
ain’t no water…
Can’t dry off in the summer sun

Never knew no dirt didn’t come off in the kitchen
Never knew no stain like the one I’m hiding now
Never knew no man like the one I been missing
Never knew no love could break love’s vow

Now dial the energy way down. Here she is with dobro-/guitarist Doug Cox, in a twosome they call Across the Borderline, performing Butch Hancock‘s “Boxcars.” Again, this does not appear to be an official video: it’s barely a video at all, just a single still photo which gradually fades in from a black background (and eventually fades back out). I think this helps to focus the mind on the lyrics, the shambling-blues rhythm, and the undiluted talent running out of the speakers.

Lyrics (note: these are the original lyrics; BettySoo throws in numerous free-form twists and swirls of her own):

Boxcars
(by Butch Hancock; performance by Across the Borderline)

Well, I gave all my money to the banker this month
Now I got no more money to spend
She smiled when she saw me comin’ through that door
When I left, she said “Come back again”

Well I watched some lonesome boxcar wheels turnin’
down the tracks out of town
And it’s on that lonesome railroad track
I’m gonna lay my burden down

I looked for my little lady in the lost and found
But she had already been claimed
I’m gonna find me a ticket to ride
Through a town that never had no name

Nobody may care where I go tonight
But baby if the truth be told
I’m goin’ down to the railroad tracks
Watch them lonesome boxcars roll

[instrumental break]

I was raised on a farm the first years of my life
And life was pretty good, they say
I’ll probably live to be some ripe old age
If that dirty dog death won’t stay outa my way

This world can take my money and my time
But it sure can’t take my soul
An’ I’m goin’ down to the railroad tracks
Watch them lonesome boxcars roll

There’s some big ol’ Buicks by the Baptist Church
Cadillacs at the Church of Christ
I parked my camel by an ol’ haystack
I’ll be lookin’ for that needle all night

You know there ain’t a gonna be no radial tires
turnin’ down the streets of gold
I’m goin’ down to the railroad tracks
Watch them lonesome boxcars roll

[instrumental break]

Have you ever hear the whistle on a fast freight train
beatin’ out a beautiful tune
If you ever seen the cold blue railroad tracks shinin’
by the light of the moon

If you ever felt the locomotive shake the ground
I know you don’t need to be told
Why I’m goin’ down to the railroad tracks
Watch them lonesome boxcars roll

I know even less about playing or singing music than I do about why music works. But really, that is some stringwork there. And that is some voice.

___________________________

Addendum: Something about “Never Knew No Love” sounded familiar to me… not the lyrics but the actual sound, the music. I might be thinking of early-1990s Melissa Etheridge. “,” maybe. Or, no, even more, “Ain’t It Heavy”:

[Below, click Play button to begin Ain’t It Heavy. While audio is playing, volume control appears at left — a row of little vertical bars. This clip is 4:24 long.

[audio:aintitheavy_melissaetheridge.mp3|titles=’Ain’t It Heavy’|artists=Melissa Etheridge]

What We Owe Our Characters

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In about four hours’ work today on Seems to Fit, I wrote just about two thousand words. Which was neither bad nor exceptional, and just fine — not least, because it brings me within perhaps a thousand words (but probably less) of The End.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the structure of this last portion of the book:

  • It departs from the structure of earlier drafts. For most of their length, they had consisted of a rotation of chapters, each from the point of view of a single character. But what I have always thought of as The Climactic Scene filled one enormous chapter, broken up into sections — one character per section, with some characters getting more than one section apiece. The Climactic Scene was followed by a chapter of denouement.
  • Here in this draft, The Climactic Scene has been blown apart into — I don’t know — maybe ten or a dozen fragments: very very short chapters with (I hope) a sort of rising urgency. The action is much the same (and also much different, because I’ve now got an additional character in the mix: an active antagonist). But also, some of these short chapters are broken into sections: one character’s POV apiece. I’m hoping the effect will be that of, well, not chaos exactly, but of (y’know) Jesus Mary and Joseph there’s a lot going on…! We’ll see about that.
  • But also in this draft there is not a denouement. More precisely, there are two of the things. The first (which I just completed) draws things to a close for every character but one. The second (coming up) will tie up the loose ends for the remaining character, as well as for the book as a whole.

This last-bulleted feature of the book’s construction feels unconventional to me. And — who knows? — I mean, on the one hand perhaps messing with convention just gives Agent X, Editor Y, and/or Reader Z one more potential reason not to bother committing to Seems to Fit. Which could even be the fatal reason, right?

So shouldn’t I play it safe, follow the “rules” (at least as I imagine them) and combine the two denouements into one?

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Do We Ever Really Get It?

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[Image: looking up into the Ring Around a Tree playspace/bus shelter in Fuji, Japan. Click to enlarge; see the note at the foot of this post for more information.]

From whiskey river:

I always gained something from making myself better,
better than I am, better than I was,
that most subtle citation:
to recover some lost petal
of the sadness I inherited:
to search once more for the light that sings
inside of me, the unwavering light.

(Pablo Neruda)

…and:

We must know that it is not enough just to see what the Mind is, we must put into practice all that makes it up in our daily life. We may talk about it glibly, we may write books to explain it, but that is far from being enough. However much we may talk about water and describe it quite intelligently, that does not make it real water. So with fire. Mere talking of it will not make the mouth burn. To know what they are means to experience them in actual concreteness. A book on cooking will not cure our hunger. To feel satisfied we must have actual food. So long as we do not go beyond mere talking, we are not true knowers.

(Takuan Soho)

…and:

If you were to put aside what you know because of what other people told you, how much of what you know do you truly know for yourself?

(John Tarrant)

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