Running After My Hat

Reimagining the World

November 22, 2013 by John 8 Comments

[Image: “Imagination,” one of a series posted on Flickr by Inara Pey. (Click image for full-size original.) The images in this set are all digital creations — scenes from the Second Life alternate-universe “game”/virtual world. See Pey’s blog post about it for more information. Image used under a Creative Commons license.]

From whiskey river:

Imagination can so easily be trapped by the wish to escape painful facts and unbearable conclusions. The New Age idea that one can wish oneself out of any circumstance, disease, or bad fortune is not only sadly disrespectful toward suffering, it is also, in the end, dangerous if escape replaces awareness.

At the same time, the act of seeing changes those who see. This is perhaps most clear with self-perception. By my perceptions of who I am or what I feel, not only do I re-create my idea of who I am but I also change myself. Perception is not simply a reflection of reality but a powerful element of reality. Anyone who meditates has had this experience: Observing the activities of the mind changes the mind until, bit by bit, observation creates great changes in the soul. And the effect is the same when the act of perception is collective. A change in public perception will change the public. This is why acts of imagination are so important.

Like artistic and literary movements, social movements are driven by imagination. I am not speaking here only of the songs and poems and paintings that have always been part of movements for political and social change, but of the movements themselves, their political ideas and forms of protest. Every important social movement reconfigures the world in the imagination. What was obscure comes forward, lies are revealed, memory shaken, new delineations drawn over the old maps: it is from this new way of seeing the present that hope for the future emerges.

(Susan Griffin [source])

…and:

Love brings something inside you to life. Perhaps it is just the full dimensionality of your own capacity to feel that returns. In this state you think no impediment can be large enough to interrupt your passion. The feeling spills beyond the object of your love to color the whole world. The mood is not unlike the mood of revolutionaries in the first blush of victory, at the dawn of hope. Anything seems possible.

(Susan Griffin [source])

…and:

Uley, Glos

The moonlight is suddenly large:
a brightness on the fields that only shows
when this house dims
and something clearer rises
through the parish I know by heart, bricks and glass, the dead
immersed in stone,
subtle erasures, siftings of blood and bone,
as if this was the story of a place
that I could tell without impediment:
first thought, then form, a drift of native souls
scattered across the land like seed or snow,
ordered and lost; a sieve of consciousness
the making of this commonplace domain:
respected borders, marriages and births,
the giving up and taking on of names.

(John Burnside [source])

[Read more…]

Midweek Music Break: Carrie Rodriguez, “Lake Harriet”

November 20, 2013 by John 2 Comments

Carrie Rodriguez has had what may be viewed as a “simple” path to career success. She grew up in Austin at the feet of her father, folk songwriter/musician David Rodriguez. Her bio continues:

After sitting in on a sound check with her dad’s old Houston pal Lyle Lovett, she detoured from a degree as a classical violinist at Oberlin Conservatory and set herself on course to become a fiddler at the Berklee College of Music. There, her teacher, Matt Glaser, and her fellow students, including roommate Casey Driessen, helped her “find my groove and let go of that wall I had put up as a classical player.”

Another turning point came when Rodriguez met veteran songwriter Chip Taylor (“Wild Thing,” “Angel of the Morning”), who soon had Rodriguez touring and recording, and encouraged her to sing and write.

She recorded four albums with Taylor before going solo in 2006. And since then, I gather, she has not needed to look back. Her sixth album, Give Me All You Got, was released early this year.

In truth, I don’t know how “straightforward” or “simple” this career path has been. I also don’t think it matters, at least to a music outsider: all that counts is the music. If you’re good enough to listen to twice, let alone three or four times, that’s good enough for me.

“Lake Harriet” appears on that sixth album. In this live performance, Rodriguez and her backup musicians flirt with the lyrics and melody — turning the number into less a plain love song than a subtle tease, complete with fingersnaps. I love it.

[Lyrics]

By the way, in case you’re wondering: yes, there really is a Lake Harriet in Minneapolis. Wikipedia reports all the usual straightforward facts, then adds this little twist:

On the walking path near where Queen Avenue T’s into the perimeter drive around the lake, there is an “elf house” carved into the base of an ash tree. For several years, one could leave a letter for the elf supposedly living there and find a letter in reply sometime in the next few days. During the winter season, the elf door is shut and a plank appears stating he has “moved to his castle in the east.” It reopens around springtime.

(Of course that’s the ~~elk~~ elf house in the photo at right; click for a larger view, including more of the surroundings for scale.)

Leavings

November 15, 2013 by John Leave a Comment

[Image: one of the photos in photographer Amy Regalia’s 2007 exhibit, Leavings.
For more information, see the note at the foot of this post.]

From whiskey river:

Every spirit passing through the world fingers the tangible and mars the mutable and finally has come to look and not to buy. So shoes are worn and hassocks are sat upon and finally everything is left where it was and the spirit passes on, just as the wind in the orchard picks up the leaves from the ground as if there were no other pleasure in the world but brown leaves, as if it would deck, clothe, flesh itself in flourishes of dusty brown apple leaves and then drops them all in a heap at the side of the house and goes on.

(Marilynne Robinson [source])

…and:

Early Morning in Your Room

It’s morning. The brown scoops of coffee, the wasp-like
Coffee grinder, the neighbors still asleep.
The gray light as you pour gleaming water —
It seems you’ve traveled years to get here.

Finally you deserve a house. If not deserve
It, have it; no one can get you out. Misery
Had its way, poverty, no money at least.
Or maybe it was confusion. But that’s over.

Now you have a room. Those lighthearted books:
The Anatomy of Melancholy, Kafka’s Letter
to His Father, are all here. You can dance
With only one leg, and see the snowflake falling

With only one eye. Even the blind man
Can see. That’s what they say. If you had
A sad childhood, so what? When Robert Burton
Said he was melancholy, he meant he was home.

(Robert Bly [source])

[Read more…]

Midweek Music Break: The Chiffons, “One Fine Day”

November 13, 2013 by John 1 Comment

One Fine Day Over the weekend I dedicated a few hours to straightening up my office. As I worked, I listened to the oldies I’ve bothered so far to assemble into a single playlist on “the cloud” — there’s about 450 of them, and putting the list into play-once/shuffle mode pretty much assures I won’t hear any repeats for most sustained activity. (Because nothing’s worse than boredom, right?)

Almost always, when I listen to music I wear headphones; this time, though, I wanted to give the new computer’s speakers a rare workout. The office is a room over our garage, and when the subwoofer kicks in you can really feel the floor shuddering beneath your feet…

I’ve always liked “One Fine Day,” despite the decidedly gender-unlightened lyrics; even without them, the music just sings giddy optimism. But on a “Clean up your room!” soundtrack rippling through a wooden floor, it really kicks — especially that jackhammer piano.

[Below, click Play button to begin One Fine Day. While audio is playing, volume control appears at left — a row of little vertical bars. This clip is 2:12 long.]

[audio:onefineday_thechiffons.mp3|titles=’One Fine Day’|artists=The Chiffons]

The piano, as it happens, was played by Carole King herself. After she’d written the music for then-husband Gerry Goffin’s lyrics, they recorded her at the piano with singer Little Eva (who’d had a hit with “The Locomotion,” and who also — cough, cough — coincidentally was the King-Goffin household’s babysitter). They weren’t crazy with her vocal, though, so they stripped it from the recording… and kept the instrumental when they turned it over to The Chiffons.

(Why to The Chiffons? Apparently, some whimsical genius with the record label wanted to follow up their previous hit — “He’s So Fine,” with that crazy doo-lang doo-lang hook — with another song which had “fine” in the title. Always good to know that caprice in pop-culture decision-making isn’t limited to publishing! :))

Book Review: The Blue Jar, by Marta Pelrine-Bacon

November 11, 2013 by John 5 Comments

[Note: please be sure to read the disclosure at the foot of this review.]

Marta Pelrine-Bacon is a fan of the old Twin Peaks TV series; she has actually named one of her several online abodes Searching for Agent Dale Cooper (the FBI agent in the series, played by Kyle Maclachlan). In the promotional copy for her debut novel, The Blue Jar, her publisher says:

Fans of the quirky and off-beat will love this atmospheric, psychological tale of revenge and obsession with its unexpected twists and turns. Lake Belle, reminiscent of Twin Peaks set in the deep American South, provides the atmospheric setting for this thrilling psycho-drama with its underlying theme of weird justice. Is it magic? Or is something else at work?

All of which pretty much lays it out there for anyone else familiar with the program — or its reputation, for that matter: expect the off-center.

So, how off-center is it? Let’s see…

[Read more…]

Whist. Peace. Easy: No Fear, No Regret (But Maybe an Apology or Two)

November 8, 2013 by John 1 Comment

[Image: “Wangerooge Island / noise,” by user hom26 on Flickr. Used under a Creative Commons license.]

From whiskey river:

Zwijgen

I slept before a wall of books and they
calmed everything in the room, even
their contents, even me, woken
by the cold and thrill, and still
they said, like the Dutch verb for falling
silent that English has no accommodation for
in the attics and rafters of its intimacies.

(Saskia Hamilton [source])

…and:

People are frightened of themselves. It’s like Freud saying that the best thing is to have no sensation at all, as if we’re supposed to live painlessly and unconsciously in the world. I have a much different view. The ancients are right: the dear old human experience is a singular, difficult, shadowed, brilliant experience that does not resolve into being comfortable in the world. The valley of the shadow is part of that, and you are depriving yourself if you do not experience what humankind has experienced, including doubt and sorrow. We experience pain and difficulty as failure instead of saying, I will pass through this, everyone I have ever admired has passed through this, music has come out of this, literature has come out of it. We should think of our humanity as a privilege.

(Marilynne Robinson [source])

…and:

When I Am Among the Trees

When I am among the trees,
especially the willows and the honey locust,
equally the beech, the oaks and the pines,
they give off such hints of gladness.
I would almost say that they save me, and daily.

I am so distant from the hope of myself,
in which I have goodness, and discernment,
and never hurry through the world
but walk slowly, and bow often.

Around me the trees stir in their leaves
and call out, “Stay awhile.”
The light flows from their branches.

And they call again, “It’s simple,” they say,
“and you too have come
into the world to do this, to go easy, to be filled
with light, and to shine.”

(Mary Oliver [source])

[Read more…]

Midweek Music Break: Creedence Clearwater Revival, “Suzie Q”

November 6, 2013 by John 2 Comments

Creedence Clearwater Revival recorded this song for their self-titled debut album of 1968. It had originally been written (as with-an-s-not-z “Susie Q”) in 1956 by a rockabilly star named Dale Hawkins, and the Rolling Stones and Johnny Rivers (among others) had covered it already. (You can catch both of their performances on YouTube.) CCR — recently so renamed from (egad) The Golliwogs — were looking about for a song and a sound which would set them apart from the mass of psychedelia-driven bands in the San Francisco area. They didn’t quite succeed right away on that score; the guitar flourishes took a sort of trippy flight every now and then. But John Fogerty’s voice sounded nothing like anyone else’s.

[Read more…]

…Who from Their Labours Rest

November 1, 2013 by John 1 Comment

[About the image: apparently in June of every year, the English village of Fornham All Saints* holds a Scarecrow Festival, for which residents and businesses create scarecrows — such as the entries above — which they place all around town. The theme this year was “Characters from Cartoons or Adverts.” (For more, see Dave Catchpole’s album on Flickr.) I don’t recognize the cartoons or adverts from which these were drawn, but I do like the scarecrows!]

From whiskey river, in fine holiday form this week:

At no other time does the earth let itself be inhaled in one smell, the ripe earth; in a smell that is in no way inferior to the smell of the sea, bitter where it borders on taste, and more honeysweet where you feel it touching the first sounds. Containing depth within itself, darkness, something of the grave almost.

(Rainer Maria Rilke)

…and:

There was a time when the coming of this night meant something. A dark Europe, groaning in superstitious fear, dedicated this Eve to the grinning Unknown. A million doors had once been barred against the evil visitants, a million prayers mumbled, a million candles lit. There was something majestic about the idea.

(Robert Bloch)

…and:

It is not our job to remain whole.
We came to lose our leaves
Like the trees, and be born again,
Drawing up from the great roots.

(Robert Bly)

[Read more…]

Skimming Tangentially Against the Agented Universe, and the Scriptwriting One

October 31, 2013 by John 3 Comments

[Don’t read too much into this RAMH post’s title.]

Last night, I and 40+ others participated in an interesting webinar called Agent Reads the Slush Pile. It lasted from 8pm Eastern time until close to 10:30. Each of about forty authors submitted the first two pages of a manuscript, including as “identifying” information only the title and genre — i.e., no names. Each of these mini-manuscripts was assigned a random number, which determined the order in which they’d be read. And then the agent… well, the agent read them. Commenting as she went. The idea was to reproduce, aloud, what it was like for an agent to just dive into a batch of unsolicited manuscripts. (And to answer the unspoken question: no, she hadn’t seen any of the submissions in advance.)

How it worked, more precisely: an agent at the agency read the mini-MSS aloud, one at a time, while the lead agent moderated her progress through the reading with little instructions like, “Okay, stop right there for a second…” and “Okay, pick up at the next paragraph.” At each point of interruption or discontinuity she’d point out something like a pattern of word choices or details which were helping (or, more often, hurting) the story at this point. (Considering that it’s the first two pages of a novel, one definitely wants not to include anything like impediments.)

We also had plenty of opportunities to ask questions, which didn’t need to be restricted to the reading/critiques.

I won’t get into details of the critiques. But I will say that it all drove home to me the importance of three precepts, as if you don’t already know these things:

Choose your genre well and carefully.
Choose the details you include — also both well and carefully.
Rewrite, rewrite, rewrite.

[Read more…]

Midweek Music Break: Rising Appalachia, “Swoon” and “St. James Infirmary”

October 30, 2013 by John 2 Comments

My brother and I (and The respective Missuses) have, quite independently, developed great fondness for the Asheville, NC area. It’s one of those little pockets of the universe where elements of climate, scenic beauty, services, and culture have all somehow come to pool together in a broth of magic.

When he recently returned from a visit there, he shared a couple of musical discoveries. They included a group with the (to me, at first) unpromising name Rising Appalachia. Before I actually checked them out, I figured it to be a bluegrass/New Americana/mountain-music collective, maybe. What a surprise, then, to find in Rising Appalachia a duo — sisters, raised in the South — with a taste for music almost independent of genre:

“world, folk, soul” (Wikipedia)
“They grew up playing traditional Appalachian music and soul, kind of gospel styles of music. They play banjo, fiddle, guitar, and single two part female harmonies.” (David Block, who works with them on a joint project called the Human Experience)
“…poetic harmonies, soul singing, spoken word rallies, banjos, fiddles, organic bass and groove rhythms, and community building through SOUND. With an array of incredible collaborators, they are joined by everything from jazz trumpet to beat boxing, Afro-cuban percussion to Appalachian fiddlers, poets to burlesque and circus art.” (Their own site)
“Appalachian-swamp-string-sister soul album complete with live percussion and bass beats, lyrical magic and spoken word, trumpet and cello wails, and double vocals-double banjos-double fiddles. Crunk-folk as well as soothing songs to heal the global soul.” (Promotional copy at various sites (e.g., CDBaby, re: their Kickstarter-funded new release, Dirty Filthy South)

…all of which bumped them, in my mind, from “unpromising” to “unlikely.” What the heck were they, anyhow?

Herewith, to illustrate the classification (non-)problem, a couple of selections from 2010’s The Sails of Self. First up, their video for “Swoon” — whose lyrics focus not on the one swooning, I think, but on the one provoking that response.

[Lyrics]

I really like that the heart of that song switches from the overt “I seduce you” message to one more personal to the protagonist, if not the songwriter: I don’t know what it is about me, I just know that I love this sound. In a PBS interview with Billy Collins which I caught last night, he spoke of how the poet is never alone when writing a poem — at a minimum, s/he is always in dialogue with the form of the poem. This line in “Swoon” cracks open a door into songwriting and lets us see a similar conversation taking place in that medium.

Below, they put a reverb-drenched, swirling-voodoo-priestess jazz spin on a classic, “St. James Infirmary”:

[Lyrics]

If you look around the Web for photos of Rising Appalachia, you’ll encounter a lot of silvery bangles, apparent body piercings, bandannas and scarves, and (temporary) tattoos and other body art. Other than in performance, these photos often feature them in run-down urban settings like old factories, warehouses, and chain-linked dirt lots full of big corrugated-steel shipping containers. Maybe they’ve adopted this witchy-punk-queen aesthetic just for promotional purposes; I don’t know. But it’s of a piece with what seems to be their musical persona: a haunting mix of old and new sound, and of interior mental state and outer form.

Hat tip to The Brother for passing along the word.