Running After My Hat

The (Generally Sweet) Awakening

February 14, 2014 by John 2 Comments

[Image: the Yeti crab. (See here, here, and here for more information.) I’m no connoisseur of deep-sea life, but this fairly recent discovery — 2005 — woke even me up. Gently. In a way, it woke up even its discoverers.*]

From whiskey river:

In order to awaken, first of all one must realize that one is in a state of sleep. And in order to realize that one is indeed in a state of sleep, one must recognize and fully understand the nature of the forces which operate to keep one in the state of sleep, or hypnosis. It is absurd to think that this can be done by seeking information from the very source which induces the hypnosis.

(George Ivanovich Gurdjieff [source unknown])

I should say that I couldn’t find a source for these specific words. But this passage is a coda of sorts to Gurdjieff’s tale of the magician and the sheep, recounted in various places around the Web.

…and:

When you consider something like death, after which (there being no news flash to the contrary) we may well go out like a candle flame, then it probably doesn’t matter if we try too hard, are awkward sometimes, care for one another too deeply, are excessively curious about nature, are too open to experience, enjoy a nonstop expense of the senses in an effort to know life intimately and lovingly. It probably doesn’t matter if, while trying to be modest and eager watchers of life’s many spectacles, we sometimes look clumsy or get dirty or ask stupid questions or reveal our ignorance or say the wrong thing or light up with wonder like the children we all are. It probably doesn’t matter if a passerby sees us dipping a finger into the moist pouches of dozens of lady’s slippers to find out what bugs tend to fall into them, and thinks us a bit eccentric. Or a neighbor, fetching her mail, sees us standing in the cold with our own letters in one hand and a seismically red autumn leaf in the other, its color hitting our sense like a blow from a stun gun, as we stand with a huge grin, too paralyzed by the intricately veined gaudiness of the leaf to move.

(Diane Ackerman, A Natural History of the Senses)

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Midweek Music Break: The Rockin’ Rebels, “Wild Weekend”

February 12, 2014 by John Leave a Comment

'Wild Weekend,' by The Rebels (no 'Rockin'') Back in 2007, I started a Valentine’s Day tradition for The Missus. (Like many/most such things, it didn’t become a tradition until the third time around.) It’s not a big deal — just something in the Things I Do category: I work up a mix CD for her.

All of these CDs share a common series title, which is something of an in-joke between us (and so not shared here). Each year’s CD, furthermore, has its own theme, usually based on the title of the first or last song on the disc; the songs are selected because the theme plays a major role in their title, source, context, lyrics… whatever. I usually start coming up with possible themes during the preceding fall. I forget most of these preliminary ideas, but pretty much have the final one selected by sometime in January. The master list of possibles — dozens of songs — gets put together by the first week of February. And from then on, it’s a matter of whittling things down so they fit onto one side of a disc — roughly 21 or 22 songs, of about an hour’s total length — in a sequence which both makes sense and sounds right.

All of which may sound wonderfully romantic.

But in fact, by the time I’ve spent a few hours during that last marathon through the full list I start to get a little tired, tired and bored and punchy. I start to grab at and cling to songs because they’re “interesting” to me, or (worse) “funny” to me — but not necessarily to her. Alas, in a few cases these songs have made it into the final cut. But I do fight this impulse (the expression “Kill your darlings,” y’know, doesn’t refer only to editing your own writing). Some of the oddest songs end up on the last-minute cutting-room floor.

Today’s selection here at RAMH was one of the oddballs culled from this year’s mix.

It never became a Monster Hit; I think the highest it went on the charts was around #7 or #8. Written by a trio of high-school students in the late 1950s, it was first released in 1960 — on a label owned by Tom Shannon, the DJ who first set words to it as a theme song for his Buffalo (NY) radio program.

A couple of odd things in the above photo: First, most obviously, there’s no Rockin’ in the group’s name. They came up with that “enhancement” to avoid possible problems with another band called The Rebels, fronted by Duane Eddy. Second, the “Todaro-Shannon” credited as the song’s writers were, respectively, the guy who owned the studio where the band first did their recording, and — yes — the DJ.

I’d never known the song had even commercial lyrics until seeing The Rebels’ Wikipedia article, which lists one version (maybe the original jingle) like this:

Tommy Shannon Show
KB Radio
Great times, news and weather
This is the place where things get better
On the…… Tom Shannon Show
KB radio…

Nevertheless, by the time the song finally took off, the lyrics were gone. (The first time I heard it was on an album which also introduced me to “96 Teardrops,” by ? and the Mysterians. I covered that song in a post here, in 2009.)

[Below, click Play button to begin Wild Weekend. While audio is playing, volume control appears at left — a row of little vertical bars. This clip is 2:18 long.]

[audio:wildweekend_rockinrebels.mp3|titles=’Wild Weekend’|artists=The Rockin’ Rebels]

“Wild Weekend” was recast as (no kidding) “Wild Weekend Cha-Cha,” which appeared on the flip side of later releases of the 45rpm record. You can hear that version over on YouTube. It was also given real lyrics in the 1980s by NRBQ — one of those long-lived bands (like the Dead, or Phish) with a devoted following, and possibly worthy of multiple blog posts in its own right. Their version was slightly retitled to “It’s a Wild Weekend,” and NRBQ uses no saxophones, but otherwise, yeah, it’s the same song:

[Below, click Play button to begin It’s a Wild Weekend. While audio is playing, volume control appears at left — a row of little vertical bars. This clip is 3:30 long.]

[audio:itsawildweekend_nrbq.mp3|titles=’It’s a Wild Weekend’|artists=NRBQ]

[Lyrics]

Breath of Life

February 7, 2014 by John Leave a Comment

[Image: “Termite Lunch,” by bananeman (Edgar Vonk) on Flickr.com. Used under a Creative Commons license. Wondering about the title? See Wikipedia.]

From whiskey river:

Wonder, to preserve itself, withdraws. It withdraws from the mind, from the willing mind, which would make of mystery a category.

I remember being told a story about an old culture that believed the center of the forest was holy and could not be entered into. Even in the heat of the hunt, should the chased beast enter into the sacred center, the hunter would stop and not pursue. I think often about that line — which is not a line in any definite sense, is no certain marking, but rather is itself somehow without definition, a hazy line, a faulty boundary — that marks the periphery. One side of the line is the daily world where we who have appetites must fill our mouths, we who have thoughts must fill our minds. The other side is within the world and beyond, where appetite isn’t to be sated, where desire is not to be fulfilled, and where thoughts refuse to lead to knowledge. I like the moment of failure that finds us on that line, abandoned of intent, caught in an experience of a different order, stalking the line between two different worlds and imperfectly taking part in both. Such a place risks blasphemy at the same time that it returns reverence to risk.

(Dan Beachy-Quick [source])

…and:

The Snow Man

One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine trees crusted with snow;

And have been cold a long time
To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
The spruces rough in the distant glitter

Of the January sun; and not to think
Of any misery in the sound of the wind,
In the sound of a few leaves,

Which is the sound of the land
Full of the same wind
That is blowing in the same bare place

For the listener, who listens in the snow,
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.

(Wallace Stevens [source])

…and:

I’ve been thinking about something for a long time, and I keep noticing that most human speech — if not all human speech — is made with the outgoing breath. This is the strange thing about presence and absence. When we breathe in, our bodies are filled with nutrients and nourishment. Our blood is filled with oxygen, our skin gets flush; our bones get harder — they get compacted. Our muscles get toned and we feel very present when we’re breathing in. The problem is, that when we’re breathing in, we can’t speak. So presence and silence have something to do with each other.

(Li-Young Lee [source])

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Scraps and Leavings: What I’ve Been Working On

February 1, 2014 by John 2 Comments

Cover: 'Night of the Living Dregs,' by the Dixie Dregs

[Image: album cover for Night of the Living Dregs (1979), by the Dixie Dregs]

For some time, I haven’t talked much at all here — anywhere — about what sorts of things I might have been writing since I finished the putative final draft of Seems to Fit, now a couple of years ago. I haven’t talked about it because it’s hard to classify:

No books, certainly not completed ones [Update: see the note at the foot of this post] — although much of what I’ve been writing has (you might say) potential in a bookwards direction. Instead, I have been sort of puttering around with well over a dozen short projects. A handful of these are complete, more or less; most just stop — some in mid-page. I don’t even remember a few of them: the act of writing, or even where the story was headed. But every one of them contains something, some scrap of verbiage and/or some scene or scrap of dialogue, which I was happy to encounter today, as I set about revisiting (not revising) them.

Here are some samples.

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Nobody Better, Better Than Nobody

January 31, 2014 by John 4 Comments

[Video: Sinéad O’Connor, “Nothing Compares 2 U.” ([Lyrics]) See the note at the foot of this post.]

From whiskey river:

You’re always presented as a kind of loner in the mountains, the man from the farm…

What can you do. You get a name, you’re called “Thomas Bernhard,” and it stays that way for the rest of your life. And if at some point you go for a walk in the woods, and someone takes a photo of you, then for the next eighty years you’re always walking in the woods. There’s nothing you can do about it.

(Thomas Bernhard [source])

…and:

There will come an intermediate, joyous point where you find that certain techniques work even better than the scriptures claim. In the wake of these discoveries, you will also find that life continues to be just as thorny and problematic as ever. Does this mean that the study of Tao is useless? No. It only means that you have been laboring to equip yourself with skill. You must still go out and live your life to the end.

(Deng Ming-Dao [source])

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Here (for Now)

January 24, 2014 by John 2 Comments

[Image: cartoon by Barney Tobey in The New Yorker of September 13, 1982 (source)]

From whiskey river (italicized portion):

The Sensual World

I call to you across a monstrous river or chasm
to caution you, to prepare you.

Earth will seduce you, slowly, imperceptibly,
subtly, not to say with connivance.

I was not prepared: I stood in my granmother’s kitchen,
holding out my glass. Stewed plums, stewed apricots —

the juice poured off into the glass of ice.
And the water added, patiently, in small increments,

the various cousins discriminating, tasting
with each addition —

aroma of summer fruit, intensity of concentration:
the colored liquid turning gradually lighter, more radiant,

more light passing through it.
Delight, then solace. My grandmother waiting,

to see if more was wanted. Solace, then deep immersion.
I loved nothing more: deep privacy of the sensual life,

the self disappearing into it or inseparable from it,
somehow suspended, floating, its needs

fully exposed, awakened, fully alive —
Deep immersion, and with it

mysterious safety. Far away, the fruit glowing in its glass bowls.
Outside the kitchen, the sun setting.

I was not prepared: sunset, end of summer. Demonstrations
of time as a continuum, as something coming to an end,

not a suspension; the senses wouldn’t protect me.
I caution you as I was never cautioned:

you will never let go, you will never be satiated.
You will be damaged and scarred, you will continue to hunger.

Your body will age, you will continue to need.
You will want the earth, then more of the earth —

Sublime, indifferent, it is present, it will not respond.
It is encompassing, it will not minister.

Meaning, it will feed you, it will ravish you,
it will not keep you alive.

(Louise Glück [source])

…and:

Aphorism #33

One of the best means for arousing the wish to work on yourself is to realize that you may die at any moment. But first you must learn how to keep it in mind.

(George Ivanovich Gurdjieff [source])

…and (italicized portion):

Sabbaths: VII

Again I resume the long
lesson: how small a thing
can be pleasing, how little
in this hard world it takes
to satisfy the mind
and bring it to its rest.

With the ongoing havoc
the woods this morning is
almost unnaturally still.
Through stalled air, unshadowed
light, a few leaves fall
of their own weight.

The sky
is gray. It begins in mist
almost at the ground
and rises forever. The trees
rise in silence almost
natural, but not quite,
almost eternal, but
not quite.
What more did I
think I wanted? Here is
what has always been.
Here is what will always
be. Even in me,
the Maker of all this
returns in rest, even
to the slightest of His works,
a yellow leaf slowly
falling, and is pleased.

(Wendell Berry [source])

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Midweek Music Break: Modest Mouse, “Dashboard”

January 22, 2014 by John Leave a Comment

Modest Mouse is one of those bands I’ve heard about all the time — for years — without ever knowing much about them. In fact, for the longest time I assumed it was an individual, not a whole group. The name kept showing up in reviews of albums and songs by other artists, often in a “Featuring Modest Mouse” or “w/Modest Mouse” sort of phrasing. I figured it was a stage name for a producer who didn’t care (for whatever reason) to use his real name. Snoop Dogg, Modest Mouse. Made sense, right? [See addendum below]

Well, duh.

Some things to like about this song (from 2007) and this video:

Per Wikipedia: “The lyric, ‘The dashboard melted but we still have the radio’ references Planes, Trains, and Automobiles when Del (John Candy) is telling the police officer about the car after it is burned.” (The line does crack me up. It shares the ironic, mordant sensibility of the old line about a medical procedure: The operation was a success but the patient died.)
The story told in the video really has nothing to do with the lyrics, except in the most distant, hint-of-an-allegory way. But the video consistently entertains nonetheless — especially at the song’s end.
Guitarist Johnny Marr (originally with The Smiths) became a semi-regular member of Modest Mouse around the time this video was shot. In an interview with David Todd, he reported on his favorite thing about the video:

One of the best objects that I’ve ever come across, I got when we did the “Dashboard” video for Modest Mouse. I’m only in it for a split second*, but I’m playing a guitar that is a record deck with a guitar neck on it. That was the device I’ve been looking for all my life. That’s what I’m trying to do, using the guitar as a record player.

I really do like the lyrics to this song, looooong lines and all. Also according to Marr, Modest Mouse’s Isaac Brock more or less wrote them on the fly.

Finally, in the course of preparing this Midweek Music Break, I at last learned the source of the band’s name — a line from a Virginia Woolf story, of all things:

I wish I could hit upon a pleasant track of thought, a track indirectly reflecting credit upon myself, for those are the pleasantest thoughts, and very frequent even in the minds of modest, mouse-coloured people, who believe genuinely that they dislike to hear their own praises.

[Lyrics]

Addendum: oh, this is funny — I knew the band okay, but somehow in my head they got conflated with the musician/producer Brian Joseph Burton, a/k/a… Danger Mouse. This revelation came to me a second after I turned out the light at bedtime last night; I suppose I should be happy it came to me just a couple of days too late. Or ever.
_________________

* The “split-second” in question comes at around the 3:26-3:27 mark.

Uncanny Revelation

January 17, 2014 by John 4 Comments

[Image: photograph of an exhibit, Always Becoming, at the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, DC. The sculptures — “Moon Woman” on the left, and “Mountain Bird” on the right — are the work of artist Nora Naranjo-Morse. For more information, see the description at the photographer’s Flickr page… or, of course, at the Always Becoming site linked above.]

From whiskey river:

Often, change doesn’t come trumpeting itself in. It comes in quiet, barely noticed ways. No bolts of lightning and grand entrances here. Just a subtle relaxation into the body. A tiny shift towards where you are. An old belief, an outdated story, seen for what it is. A new path emerging in the darkness. A vague, unspeakable hope dawning in the first light of the day you imagined would never come. Everything the same, everything different, everything always resting in motion, and the mysteries of change forever unresolved.

(Jeff Foster [source])

…and:

Of Love

I have been in love more times than one,
thank the Lord. Sometimes it was lasting
whether active or not. Sometimes
it was all but ephemeral, maybe only
an afternoon, but not less real for that.
They stay in my mind, these beautiful people,
or anyway beautiful people to me, of which
there are so many. You, and you, and you,
whom I had the fortune to meet, or maybe
missed. Love, love, love, it was the
core of my life, from which, of course, comes
the word for the heart. And, oh, have I mentioned
that some of them were men and some were women
and some — now carry my revelation with you —
were trees. Or places. Or music flying above
the names of their makers. Or clouds, or the sun
which was the first, and the best, the most
loyal for certain, who looked so faithfully into
my eyes, every morning. So I imagine
such love of the world — its fervency, its shining, its
innocence and hunger to give of itself — I imagine
this is how it began.

(Mary Oliver [source])

…and:

Factual information alone isn’t sufficient to guide you through life’s labyrinthine tests. You need and deserve regular deliveries of uncanny revelation. One of your inalienable rights as a human being should therefore be to receive a mysteriously useful omen every day of your life.

(Rob Brezsny [source])

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Midweek Music Break: Nicola Benedetti, “Concerto for violin and strings in D major, RV 208 ‘Grosso Mogul'” (Vivaldi)

January 15, 2014 by John 1 Comment

[Image: Nicola Benedetti and friend. Photo by Simon Fowler.]

Violinist Nicola Benedetti, currently all of age 26, has been rocking critics and audiences back on their heels for nearly two decades. From Wikipedia:

She started learning to play the violin at the age of four. At age eight, she became the leader of the National Children’s Orchestra of Great Britain. By the age of nine, she had already passed the eight grades of musical examinations while attending the independent Wellington School, Ayr, and in September 1997 began to study at the Yehudi Menuhin School for young musicians under Lord Menuhin and Natasha Boyarskaya in rural Surrey, England…

At the end of 2004, she agreed to a £1m six-album recording contract with Deutsche Grammophon/Universal Music Group Classics and Jazz.

Of course, it can’t hurt that she’s photogenic, evidently very pleasant-natured and mature, and dedicated to various philanthropic causes. But the only thing that counts, really, is what happens when she raises the violin to her chin, and her bow to the violin. (Which violin is a 1717 Stradivarius, reportedly worth some $10 million.)

Here she performs the three movements of a concerto by Antonio Vivaldi. The digital liner notes (by Michael Talbot) which accompany this album, Italia, say:

This exuberant violin concerto entitled “Grosso Mogul” is probably from the late 1710s. Vivaldi experts puzzle over the significance of its title. “Grand Mogul” refers to the contemporary ruler of India or his territory, but this is not a descriptive concerto. My guess is that it was played by Vivaldi during the performance of an opera set in India. Like a few other “theatre” concertos, it has demanding cadenzas in each of the outer movements…

The D major Concerto with the title “Grosso Mogul” offers a wonderful opportunity for “extreme” violin-playing, particularly in its long, fully written-out cadenzas. It has nearly the same name as a Vivaldi flute concerto (“Il Gran Mogol”) that came to light only recently in the National Archives of Scotland, but is an entirely unrelated work. Benedetti comments on the slow movement: “You’ll be shocked when you hear it! It sounds like a mixture between Indian classical music and gypsy violin improvisation, yet within the Italian Baroque style. It’s maybe the most unusual movement of all.”

Of all genres of music, I’m least qualified (amateur that I am) to comment knowledgeably on classical (from Italy, India, or anywhere else). I can only fall back on the classic excuse of Philistines since, well, I guess since Old Testament times: …but I know what I like. I could listen to music like this for hours and lose — happily — all sense of the passage of time.

______________________

Aside: Benedetti ~~will be performing~~ performed here in February 2014, as a part of the big local university’s annual arts festival. We ~~probably won’t~~ didn’t attend, alas. Still, whatever else you can say about recorded music, digital or otherwise, I’m very glad it’s an option!

Counter-Existence

January 10, 2014 by John 2 Comments

[Images: Original (as far as I can determine) on the left; as often circulated/reposted on social-media sites, on the right. (Click either for a larger version.) While both carry meanings I appreciate, it’s interesting — if unsurprising — that the original seems to have made much less of an impression on people.]

From whiskey river:

Wake up in the morning and say to yourself, “I do not exist now, I have never existed previously, and I will never exist in the future.” When your mind is calm in the morning hours when you awaken, you say something like this, you will get a beautiful warm good feeling. You will feel wonderful, for it relieves you of the responsibility of taking care of yourself to an extent. You will still take care of yourself, but it’ll be completely different. You will brush your teeth, you will take a shower, you will go to work, you will eat breakfast. Yet when you feel that you do not exist, you are totally free from the reactions to the things that are going on. There is no one to react any longer. Therefore, everything that appears to be done by you, will be done in a wonderful way, all the time knowing that you are not the doer.

I know the teaching sounds absurd to most people. Yet this is the teaching that has been propagated by rishis, sages, since the beginning of time. This is it. This is your opportunity to awaken. Why not use it? Do not let another moment go by where you’re sitting there and believing and thinking something is wrong somewhere.

(Robert Adams [quoted at various sites around the Web — no specific source as far as I can tell])

…and:

To the Hand

What the eye sees is a dream of sight
what it wakes to
is a dream of sight

and in the dream
for every real lock
there is only one real key
and it’s in some other dream
now invisible

it’s the key to the one real door
it opens the river and the sky both at once
it’s already in the downward river
with my hand on it
my real hand

and I am saying to the hand
turn

open the river

(W. S. Merwin [source])

…and:

Staying very still in the darkness, I became less and less convinced of the fact that I actually existed.

(Haruki Murakami [source])

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