Running After My Hat

Wrong, Wrong, Uncertainly Right

June 9, 2017 by John Leave a Comment

[Image: “041/365 – Skeptical,” by Artamir78 on Flickr. (Used here under a Creative Commons license; thank you!)]

You fight your superficiality, your shallowness, so as to try to come at people without unreal expectations, without an overload of bias or hope or arrogance, as untanklike as you can be, sans cannon and machine guns and steel plating half a foot thick; you come at them unmenacingly on your own ten toes instead of tearing up the turf with your caterpillar treads, take them on with an open mind, as equals, man to man, as we used to say, and yet you never fail to get them wrong. You might as well have the brain of a tank. You get them wrong before you meet them, while you’re anticipating meeting them; you get them wrong while you’re with them; and then you go home to tell somebody else about the meeting and you get them all wrong again. Since the same generally goes for them with you, the whole thing is really a dazzling illusion empty of all perception, an astonishing farce of misperception. And yet what are we to do about this terribly significant business of other people, which gets bled of the significance we think it has and takes on instead a significance that is ludicrous, so ill-equipped are we all to envision one another’s interior workings and invisible aims? Is everyone to go off and lock the door and sit secluded like the lonely writers do, in a soundproof cell, summoning people out of words and then proposing that these word people are closer to the real thing than the real people that we mangle with our ignorance every day? The fact remains that getting people right is not what living is all about anyway. It’s getting them wrong that is living, getting them wrong and wrong and wrong and then, on careful reconsideration, getting them wrong again. That’s how we know we’re alive: we’re wrong. Maybe the best thing would be to forget being right or wrong about people and just go along for the ride. But if you can do that—well, lucky you.

(Philip Roth [source])

…and:

Theories of Personal Identity

The photograph;
the past life;
the long lost
black sheep who’s become
the shoe that fits.
The ghost town,
a.k.a. the rummage bin,
that old sweet song.
The suitcase; the hotel
room; the surprise
box lunch; the plain
brown wrapper. The umbrella
someone opened in the house.
The alphabet, or perhaps
I mean a river, or a well.
The skeleton in the closet.
The writing on the wall.
The telltale heart.

(Jan Zwicky [source])

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Wait

June 2, 2017 by John Leave a Comment

[Image: painting (?) by an unknown artist, of an encounter between a sleeping man and what appears to be a kitsuno disguised as a woman. This looks like a photograph of a painting; if so, I don’t know who took the photo, either. (I found it at this page on Tumblr, which has numerous other images of the same creature, from other sources.) For more about the kitsuno legend (a version of which is alluded to in Hannah Sanghee Park’s poem, below), see the note at the foot of this post.]

From whiskey river:

The death of self of which the great writers speak is no violent act. It is merely the joining of the great rock heart of the earth in its roll. It is merely the slow cessation of the will’s spirits and the intellect’s chatter: it is waiting like a hollow bell with a stilled tongue. Fuge, tace, quiesce. The waiting itself is the thing.

(Annie Dillard [source])

…and:

The relation between what we see and what we know is never settled. Each evening we see the sun set. We know that the earth is turning away from it. Yet the knowledge, the explanation, never quite fits the sight.

(John Berger [source])

…and:

Alcaic

This forest in May. It haunts my whole life:
the invisible moving van. Singing birds.
In silent pools, mosquito larvae’s
furiously dancing question marks.

I escape to the same places and same words.
Cold breeze from the sea, the ice-dragon’s licking
the back of my neck while the sun glares.
The moving van is burning with cool flames.

(Tomas Tranströmer [source])

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Time, Time, Time, See What’s Become of Me

May 26, 2017 by John Leave a Comment

[Image: “Behind You,” by Tom Waterhouse; found it on Flickr, and used here under a Creative Commons license (thank you!). The photographer says that he first saw the stencil of the girl looking over her shoulder, then crouched down and waited about twenty minutes for the shot. He knew he’d recognize it when it came.]

From whiskey river:

Preludes
(excerpt)

II

Two truths approach each other. One comes from within,
one comes from without—and where they meet you have the chance
to catch a look at yourself.
Noticing what is about to happen, you shout desperately: “Stop!
Anything, anything, as long as I don’t have to know myself.”

And there is a boat that wants to put in—tries to, right here—
it will try again thousands of times.
Out of the forest’s dark comes a long boat hook
that’s pushed through the open window
among the party guests who have danced themselves warm.

(Tomas Tranströmer [source])

…and:

Living is moving; time is a live creek bearing changing lights. As I move, or as the world moves around me, the fullness of what I see shatters… “Last forever!” Who hasn’t prayed that prayer?… You were lucky to get it in the first place. The present is a freely given canvas. That it is constantly being ripped apart and washed downstream goes without saying; it is a canvas, nevertheless…

But there is more to the present than a series of snapshots. We are not merely sensitized film; we have feelings, a memory for information and an eidetic memory for the imagery of our pasts.

Our layered consciousness is a tiered track for an unmatched assortment of concentrically wound reels. Each one plays out for all of life its dazzle and blur of translucent shadow-pictures; each one hums at every moment its own secret melody in its own unique key. We tune in and out. But moments are not lost. Time out of mind is time nevertheless, cumulative, informing the present. From even the deepest slumber you wake with a jolt — older, closer to death, and wiser, grateful for breath…

But time is the one thing we have been given, and we have been given to time. Time gives us a whirl. We keep waking from a dream we can’t recall, looking around in surprise, and lapsing back, for years on end. All I want to do is stay awake, keep my head up, prop my eyes open, with toothpicks, with trees.

(Annie Dillard [source])

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Weekend (Sunday Afternoon) Music Break: Pistolera, and Sandra Lilia Velasquez in General

May 21, 2017 by John Leave a Comment

As I mentioned a few weeks ago, I’ve had the opportunity to research and write for Deep Roots Magazine about music, particularly “Americana” music: music performed generally using acoustic instruments, something like country, something like folk, sometimes incorporating elements of blues and/or bluegrass, often for small, intimate audiences rather than large-scale ones. It’s modest music, and it’s music which springs not from glitzy high-flown impulses, but from simple ones.

But — maybe surprisingly — it’s not always in English. I’ll have more to say about the “international Americana” genre in my next Deep Roots article; in the meantime, I’ve been spending some time exploring some very interesting and to me wholly unfamiliar niches of American-but-not-American music in general.

Pistolera, strictly speaking, was not an Americana-with-an-a-on-the-end band; the name certainly didn’t sound like a typical one. When the band was active, until a few years ago, it was described by at least one source as “Mexamerican,” and I guess that was reasonable enough, at least superficially. The lead vocalist and songwriter, Sandra Lilia Velasquez grew up in a Mexican-American household in San Diego; her lyrics with Pistolera were unapologetically in Spanish; the band’s instrumentation (drums, upright bass, accordion, soft percussion) said Mexico with each note. But they were based in Brooklyn, New York. And they were ultimately (and apparently by design) hard to classify. As Velasquez told Rolling Stone Mexico (as quoted by Mother Jones), “People think that if you are born in the United States you should play rock and if you are born in Mexico you should play banda. I was born on the border. I play both.”

More about Pistolera and Velasquez, below. In the meantime, here’s Pistolera, with their evidently final (2011) release, El Desierto Y La Ciudad.

Since Pistolera stopped performing and recording, Sandra Lilia Velasquez has branched off more or less on her own. Her main recent project, called “SLV” for obvious reasons, released its first album two years ago. As with Pistolera, SLV has resisted — flat-out defied — categorization. The single whose video appears below was described, on its release, as “Rotoscope-esque visuals meet bouncy synthpop”; as with “Mexamerican” for Pistolera, if you rely on that single verbal description to capture what the SLV album, This Kind, was all about, you’d be in for some honest-to-gods surprises. (You can stream This Kind here, at New Noise Magazine.) Here’s an excerpt from an NPR report at the time; the context is an interview by Rachel Martin (NPR Weekend Edition host) with Felix Contreras (host of the networks Alt Latino show):

MARTIN: …I need an alternative music fix. What you got?

CONTRERAS: OK. All right. Let’s go back to Latin Alternative but this time with a slight, slight pop sheen. SLV is Sandra Lilia Velasquez. Now for the long time she headed a Mexican folk band with an edge [JES: see? impossible to pigeonhole!] called Pistolera out of Brooklyn. Now she’s released two albums on [her] own. She’s got a great new album out. She’s written and produced the album with her bandmate, a guy named Sean Dixon. And it’s a wonderful collection of love songs with a band that shares her musical vision. It’s so perfectly executed. It’s so perfectly played. This is a track called “Fire Eyes.”

(SOUNDBITE OF SLV SONG, “FIRE EYES”)

SLV: I will melt you with fire and I, I, all the things you want to be. I won’t even have to say them to you, to you.

MARTIN: She has a lovely voice.

CONTRERAS: Doesn’t she?

MARTIN: Yeah.

CONTRERAS: And what she did was move from the Pistolera, from the Mexican folk which she sings in Spanish and did an all English album with a lot of different electronic layers and textures. You know, she’s not necessarily playing any Latin rhythms or any Mexican rhythms or anything. But it is her expression. Right? And for me it falls within the whole concept of Latin alternative because she’s making this music and trying to establish her identity within this contemporary sound.

Here’s “Heartbreaker,” from SLV’s This Kind debut:

Finally, if — as I am — you’re now interested enough in Velasquez’s creative arc to seek out more of her footsteps along the way, you might also check out her “kindie” group, Moona Luna. From that project’s “Bio” page:

Moona Luna delivered something fresh in its sophomore album,Vamos, Let’s Go! (2013). Songwriter and bandleader, Sandra Velasquez, found inspiration in American pop hits of the 50’s and 60’s, and staying true to her bilingual mission, crafted Spanish and English lyrics for each song. Moona Luna has performed all over the country — from the National Mall in Washington D.C. to Madison Square Park in New York City. Their third studio album celebrates their Latin roots and draws on broader musical influences from the African Diaspora. The album’s ten upbeat songs chronicle a family bus adventure through South America. P A N O R A M A was released on January 29, 2016 and won a Parents’ Choice Award.

Here’s a taste — the video for the album’s title track:

Department of Unmagical Thinking

May 19, 2017 by John Leave a Comment

[Image: “1688 miracle,” by nebojsa mladjenovic on Flickr. (Used here under a Creative Commons license; thank you!) For more information, see the note at the foot of this post.]

From whiskey river:

A certain man… once lost a diamond cuff-link in the wide blue sea, and twenty years later, on the exact day, a Friday apparently, he was eating a large fish—but there was no diamond inside. That’s what I like about coincidence.

(Vladimir Nabokov [source])

…and:

Making a Fist

We forget that we are all dead men conversing with dead men.
—Jorge Luis Borges

For the first time, on the road north of Tampico,
I felt the life sliding out of me,
a drum in the desert, harder and harder to hear.
I was seven, I lay in the car
watching palm trees swirl a sickening pattern past the glass.
My stomach was a melon split wide inside my skin.

“How do you know if you are going to die?”
I begged my mother.
We had been traveling for days.
With strange confidence she answered,
“When you can no longer make a fist.”

Years later I smile to think of that journey,
the borders we must cross separately,
stamped with our unanswerable woes.
I who did not die, who am still living,
still lying in the backseat behind all my questions,
clenching and opening one small hand.

(Naomi Shihab Nye [source])

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Doing What You Can’t Not Do

May 12, 2017 by John Leave a Comment

[Image: “12$,” by Catherine Roy. (Found it on Flickr; used here under a Creative Commons license — thank you!) The photographer seems to like taking photos which show objects (and people) of little or no consequence; although she hasn’t organized them into an official “album” as such, she has tagged (as of now) fifty-four photos with the phrase, “feeding my compulsion.” Many of these photos (although not this one, obviously) simply show toilets.]

From whiskey river:

2. Just that you do the right thing. The rest doesn’t matter.

Cold or warm.

Tired or well-rested.

Despised or honored.

Dying… or busy with other assignments. Because dying, too, is one of our assignments in life. There as well: “To do what needs doing.”

3. Look inward. Don’t let the true nature or value of anything elude you.

7. …Only there, delight and stillness

11. When jarred, unavoidably, by circumstances, revert at once to yourself, and don’t lose the rhythm more than you can help. You’ll have a better grasp of the harmony if you keep going back to it.

(Marcus Aurelius [source (various pages)]

…and:

What Gorgeous Thing

I do not know what gorgeous thing
the bluebird keeps saying,
his voice easing out of his throat,
beak, body into the pink air
of the early morning. I like it
whatever it is. Sometimes
it seems the only thing in the world
that is without dark thoughts.
Sometimes it seems the only thing
in the world that is without
questions that can’t and probably
never will be answered, the
only thing that is entirely content
with the pink, then clear white
morning and, gratefully, says so.

(Mary Oliver [source])

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Give the Kaleidoscope Its Due

May 5, 2017 by John 2 Comments

[Image: “Quiet Nature | Game of light,” by Vasile Hurghis. (Found on Flickr; used here under a Creative Commons license — thank you!) The scene is a Romanian landscape. I don’t know about you, but my own eyes resist seeing the tower on the right as what it is… especially when looking at anything else in the photo. I keep seeing it as a doorway to a world of colors which don’t exist in the foreground world. And honestly, I guess there’s no reason it can’t be that, is there — no reason it can’t be both that, and a simple rustic silo?]

From whiskey river (including the first paragraph, found elsewhere):

At 19, I read a sentence that re-terraformed my head: “The level of matter in the universe has been constant since the Big Bang.”

In all the aeons we have lost nothing, we have gained nothing — not a speck, not a grain, not a breath. The universe is simply a sealed, twisting kaleidoscope that has reordered itself a trillion trillion trillion times over.

Each baby, then, is a unique collision — a cocktail, a remix — of all that has come before: made from molecules of Napoleon and stardust and comets and whale tooth; colloidal mercury and Cleopatra’s breath: and with the same darkness that is between the stars between, and inside, our own atoms.

When you know this, you suddenly see the crowded top deck of the bus, in the rain, as a miracle: this collection of people is by way of a starburst constellation. Families are bright, irregular-shaped nebulae. Finding a person you love is like galaxies colliding. We are all peculiar, unrepeatable, perambulating micro-universes — we have never been before and we will never be again. Oh God, the sheer exuberant, unlikely face of our existences. The honour of being alive. They will never be able to make you again. Don’t you dare waste a second of it thinking something better will happen when it ends. Don’t you dare.

(Caitlin Moran [source: well, the quote is everywhere, dating back to at least 2014, but I don’t know the original])

…and:

A Child is Something Else Again

A child is something else again. Wakes up
in the afternoon and in an instant he’s full of words,
in an instant he’s humming, in an instant warm,
instant light, instant darkness.

A child is Job. They’ve already placed their bets on him
but he doesn’t know it. He scratches his body
for pleasure. Nothing hurts yet.
They’re training him to be a polite Job,
to say “Thank you” when the Lord has given,
to say “You’re welcome” when the Lord has taken away.

A child is vengeance.
A child is a missile into the coming generations.
I launched him: I’m still trembling.

A child is something else again: on a rainy spring day
glimpsing the Garden of Eden through the fence,
kissing him in his sleep,
hearing footsteps in the wet pine needles.
A child delivers you from death.
Child, Garden, Rain, Fate.

(Yehuda Amichai, translated by Chana Bloch [source])

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Midweek Music Break: Midday Swim, “Hold On Tight”

May 3, 2017 by John Leave a Comment

I know almost nothing about this song, and am not sure I’ve heard of the band. For what it’s worth, though, here’s what Midday Stream themselves say about it in the publicity release:

We’ve just released a video for “Hold On Tight” — the heart of our upcoming EP Climbing Out of Caves.

The surrealist-fantasy feel of the video came from the director, Pedja Milosavlijevic, and our mutual admiration of films like “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty,” “Pulp Fiction,” and “The Grand Budapest Hotel,” as well as the general work of directors such as David Lynch, Wes Anderson, Emir Kusturica and some classic Spielberg…

When writing this song we made an effort to capture the spirit of childhood — a time when one’s imagination can run wild. Through a child’s eyes the world looks like magic and the song suggests that even now we should try to recapture that sense of youthful wonderment. There is a spirit of perseverance both in the instrumentation and the lyrics that we also wanted to reflect in the music video.

Those are some pretty good values to work toward!

The Unbearable Lightness of Metaphor

April 28, 2017 by John Leave a Comment

[Image: “light – day two,” by Lucy Maude Ellis. (Found it on Flickr; used here under a Creative Commons license — thank you!) I came across this image while searching for images having to do with weightlessness and such; the photographer’s Flickr photostream seems to exhibit a particular fondness for “levitation pictures.” In such pictures, the human subject is posed in such a way that s/he appears to be floating in air — the photographer then edits the photo to remove all traces of whatever device(s) are used to support the model. This image, though, “felt” better to me as accompaniment to today’s theme.]

From whiskey river:

The Mountain

My students look at me expectantly.
I explain to them that the life of art is a life
of endless labor. Their expressions
hardly change; they need to know
a little more about endless labor.
So I tell them the story of Sisyphus,
how he was doomed to push
a rock up a mountain, knowing nothing
would come of this effort
but that he would repeat it
indefinitely. I tell them
there is joy in this, in the artist’s life,
that one eludes
judgment, and as I speak
I am secretly pushing a rock myself,
slyly pushing it up the steep
face of a mountain. Why do I lie
to these children? They aren’t listening,
they aren’t deceived, their fingers
tapping at the wooden desks—
So I retract
the myth; I tell them it occurs
in hell, and that the artist lies
because he is obsessed with attainment,
that he perceives the summit
as that place where he will live forever,
a place about to be
transformed by his burden: with every breath,
I am standing at the top of the mountain.
Both my hands are free. And the rock has added
height to the mountain.

(Louise Glück [source])

…and:

What Light Does

Today, I did nothing.
Light went on as usual,

throwing leaves against the white wall,
as if no one were watching, as if

there’s no meaning in the trembling
of the leaves. Later, light moves

the leaves onto the tile floor,
and once I might have thought them

dancing, or that the shadow
of a thing is more beautiful

than the thing itself, but it’s not,
it’s just ordinary light, going about

its ordinary business. Now, evening is here,
and I’ve made it through another day

of shadows. This is not metaphor, or poetry,
it’s how the unbearable is

a blade that gleams and remains
visible, long after light has gone.

(Patty Paine, Blackbird [source])

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Just Passing Through

April 21, 2017 by John Leave a Comment

[Image: “Closing Time, Office, Coat Rack, Timeless B&W,” by Lynn Friedman on Flickr. (Used here under a Creative Commons license; thank you!) The only “information” provided by the photographer is the lyrics to the song “Closing Time,” by Semisonic. You can see the video for the song here on YouTube.]

From whiskey river:

We are all bound together in a tapestry that like the sea gives the impression of movement towards something but is actually just a maternal body of material…

The flowers buzz when the vibration of the bees stimulates their pistons and their molecules swell and their petals hum like cellos. Rocks are alive, the firstborn of the natural world, somber without will.

There is no freedom from this universe we were born into, because it is our vague source of sensation, our soul, the container of our guilt.

Skins liquefy in heat. And when a bald baby swallow dies on your palm, you feel warmth pouring over your skin, a kind of burning fountain that scalds you like pepper spray.

Do you think this is a sign of the spirit ripping its energy into you to carry to the other side? I do. There are no actual objects over there, no materials but unformed steaming clouds, colors that harmonize musically, no gravity exists but elasticity composed of invisible mesh images.

Who will meet me on the other side, I ask you, to prove the error of what I say? Will it be someone who never loved me?

(Fanny Howe [source])

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