Running After My Hat

Ridiculous pursuits, matters solemn and less so

What Doesn’t Change

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[Video: “Every Day the Same Dream,” based on the Flash-based game of the same name]

From whiskey river:

I do not believe the meaning of life is a puzzle to be solved. Life is. Anything might happen. And I believe I may invest my life with meaning. The uncertainty is a blessing in disguise. If I were absolutely certain about all things, I would spend my life in anxious misery, fearful of losing my way. But since everything and anything are always possible, the miraculous is always nearby and wonders shall never, ever cease.

(Robert Fulghum)

… and:

Formaggio

The world
was whole because
it shattered. When it shattered,
then we knew what it was.

It never healed itself.
But in the deep fissures, smaller worlds appeared:
it was a good thing that human beings made them;
human beings know what they need,
better than any god.

On Huron Avenue they became
a block of stores; they became
Fishmonger, Formaggio. Whatever
they were or sold, they were
alike in their function: they were
visions of safety. Like
a resting place. The salespeople
were like parents; they appeared
to live there. On the whole,
kinder than parents.

Tributaries
feeding into a large river: I had
many lives. In the provisional world,
I stood where the fruit was,
flats of cherries, clementines,
under Hallie’s flowers.

I had many lives. Feeding
into a river, the river
feeding into a great ocean. If the self
becomes invisible has it disappeared?

I thrived. I lived
not completely alone, alone
but not completely, strangers
surging around me.

That’s what the sea is:
we exist in secret.

I had lives before this, stems
of a spray of flowers: they became
one thing, held by a ribbon at the center, a ribbon
visible under the hand. Above the hand,
the branching future, stems
ending in flowers. And the gripped fist —
that would be the self in the present.

(Louise Glück)

…and:

You normally have to be bashed about a bit by life to see the point of daffodils, sunsets and uneventful nice days.

(Alain de Botton)

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The World Was Too Much With Them All

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I just finished reading Susan Orlean‘s Rin Tin Tin: The Life and the Legend. Aside from the heart (and I mean heart) of the main story itself, after something like ten years of borderline-obsessive research Orlean managed to weave into the book dozens of little stray details about the lives and personalities of the many people whose lives drifted into and out of the great movie and TV dog‘s* orbit. Here’s one such side story.

Background: TV producer H.B. “Bert” Leonard ran into financial difficulties and ended up owing his lawyer, a man named James Tierney, a ton of cash. To partially settle the debt, he gave Tierney his shares of two TV programs whose rights Leonard had retained over the years: Naked City and Route 66. Orlean writes:

…this cinematic windfall couldn’t distract [Tierney] from his own troubles. A year earlier, in 1992, one of his clients told him he needed some cash. The client owned a number of valuable paintings, including a Monet and a Picasso, and, he explained, if the paintings disappeared, he could file a $17 million insurance claim for them. Tierney agreed to help him out. By their arrangement, Tierney broke into the client’s house and stole the paintings. Then he gave the paintings to a young lawyer in his firm for safekeeping. The young lawyer decided to stash the paintings in a warehouse in Cleveland.

Unfortunately, the young lawyer also had some problems, including a volatile ex-wife, who happened to be the first California highway patrolwoman to pose for Playboy, a jealous girlfriend, and a crack cocaine addiction. He was also, evidently, unable to keep a secret and ended up telling both his ex-wife and his girlfriend about the stolen paintings; they, in turn, both informed on him to the police, each hoping to beat the other to the $250,000 reward being offered for information on the case. When the young lawyer was arrested, he immediately pointed the police back to Tierney. Before long, Tierney ended up in prison and lost his law license, his house, and his marriage.

No word on whether either the ex-wife or the girlfriend scored the hoped-for reward. I did love this story, though.

____________________

* Technically, that should be dogs’ — plural possessive — as Rin Tin Tin was and continues to be played (in film, on TV, in hundreds of personal appearances) by a whole list of German shepherd dogs, from only one or two paternal bloodlines. The current incarnation is up to somewhere around Rin Tin Tin X or XI.

Midweek Music Break: David Byrne and Brian Eno, “Home”

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Several of Running After My Hat‘s regular commenthood are overhauling what “home” means to them:

Nance — and Mr. Mature, of course — are caught up in readying their house for a (dearly longed-for) sale. Marta — amongst writing a flash-fiction story every day this month, and competitive skating, and teaching, and the gods know what else — has moved with her family into their first house, with all the attendant packing and unpacking, inspections, signings of documents, painting, arranging and re-arranging, and re-assessment of what counts (and how much). And in a turn almost unimaginable, at least to me — having followed his blog for four years — Brit ex-pat Froog prepares to leave China altogether, bound for… Lithuania? Uruguay? parts unknown (but presumably with no shortage of watering holes)?

From At Home: A Short History of Private Life, by Bill Bryson:

Houses are amazingly complex repositories. What I found, to my great surprise, is that whatever happens in the world — whatever is discovered or created or bitterly fought over — eventually ends up, in one way or another, in your house. Wars, famines, the Industrial Revolution, the Enlightenment — they are all there in your sofas and chests of drawers, tucked into the folds of your curtains, in the downy softness of your pillows, in the paint on your walls and the water in your pipes. So the history of household life isn’t just a history of beds and sofas and kitchen stoves, as I had vaguely supposed it would be, but of scurvy and guano and the Eiffel Tower and bedbugs and body-snatching and just about everything else that has happened. Houses aren’t refuges from history. They are where history ends up.

From Brian Eno, writing on davidbyrne.com (speaking of 2008’s Everything That Happens Will Happen Today album):

This record was born as a dinner conversation. While dining in New York with David and some other friends, I mentioned that I had accumulated a lot of music, which, despite my intentions, I had never formed into songs. David volunteered to give them a try…

Upon starting this project, we quickly realized we were making something like electronic gospel, music in which singing becomes the central event, but whose sonic landscapes are atypical of such vocal-centered tracks.

David Byrne himself adds:

The challenge was more emotional than technical: to write simple, heartfelt tunes without drawing on cliché. The results, in many cases, are uplifting, hopeful, and positive, even though some lyrics describe cars exploding, war, and similarly dark scenarios.

These songs have elements of our previous work — no surprise there — but something new has emerged here as well. Where does the sanguine and heartening tone come from, particularly in these troubled times? …some of my lyrics and melodies were a response to what I sensed lay buried in the music. My task was to bring forth into language what was originally non-verbal. In the end, we have made something together that neither of us could have made on our own.

This particular number, I think, doesn’t fall quite into the “electronic gospel” genre. There’s a nearly martial, rolling-snare-drum effect which plays well behind Byrne’s vocals, and that voice verges on strident. But the lyrics speak of both the universal and the deeply personal meanings of home. Especially when the song is overlaid (as here) by dozens of still photos of dozens of types of houses, it’s easy to imagine an utterly different performance: solo, acoustic, nothing at all electronic — a plucked string fastened at one end in the present day and at the other, deep in history.

[Lyrics]

The Propagational Library (8): Dreamtime

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See the latest installment in the ongoing Propagational Library series, here:

…in which The Librarian (having discovered four additional dimensions of time)
drifts off to sleep, and more than one light winks on as he encounters someone very familiar.

As always, if you’re unfamiliar with the series, I encourage you to begin instead with the Table of Contents/Overview page.

Who, What, When, Where, Why, How, and Whether to Ask (or Not)

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[Image: Many Questions No Answers, by Norwegian artist Trine Meyer Vogsland
(acrylic on watercolor paper; 24x32cm)]

From whiskey river:

LXXII

If all rivers are sweet
where does the sea get its salt?

How do the seasons know
they must change their shirt?

Why so slowly in winter
and later with such a rapid shudder?

And how do the roots know
they must climb toward the light?

And then greet the air
with so many flowers and colors?

Is it always the same spring
who revives her role?

(Pablo Neruda [source])

…and:

Self-inquiry is simple. It does not require you to do anything, change anything, think anything, or understand anything. It only asks you to pay careful attention to what is real.

I have two sons. When they were about four, they both went through a phase of having nightmares. I would go into the room and switch on the light. Two small eyes blinked at me from the corner.

“What’s the problem?” I’d ask.

“Daddy, there’s a monster in the room,” a timid voice would reply. Now, I had more than one choice of how to respond. I could tell my frightened boy that it was not true, there was no monster, go back to sleep. That response is the equivalent of reading a book that says, “We’re all one, there is no problem, just be with what is.” Fine ideas, but they don’t help much. I could also have offered to feed the monster cookies, talk with the monster, negotiate. That approach is like some kinds of psychotherapy. Treat the problem as real, then fix it on its own terms. But the only real solution I ever found was to have a good look. Under the bed, in the closet, behind the curtains, we undertook an exhaustive search.

Eventually my sons would let out a deep sigh, smile at me, and fall back to sleep. The problem was not solved but dissolved. It was never real in the first place, but it took investigation to make that a reality.

(Arjuna Ardagh [source])

…and:

XIV

And what did the rubies say
standing before the juice of pomegranates?

Why doesn’t Thursday talk itself
into coming after Friday?

Who shouted with glee
when the color blue was born?

Why does the earth grieve
when the violets appear?

(Pablo Neruda [source])

…and:

The best way to find out things… is not to ask questions at all. If you fire off a question, it is like firing off a gun; bang it goes, and everything takes flight and runs for shelter. But if you sit quite still and pretend not to be looking, all the little facts will come and peck round your feet, situations will venture forth from thickets and intentions will creep out and sun themselves on a stone; and if you are very patient, you will see and understand a great deal more than a man with a gun.

(Elspeth Huxley [source])

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Midweek Music Break: Cowboy Junkies, “Angels in the Wilderness”

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[Image: Cowboy Junkies (from top: Alan Anton, bass; Margo Timmins, vocals; Peter Timmins, drums; and Michael Timmins, guitar)]

Cowboy Junkies was the first band I ever listened two who’d been dubbed “alt”-anything. (It may have been alt-country, but I’m pretty sure it was plain old alternative rock.) This made me feel all, y’know, not quite dangerous, more like adventurous — life on the edge! — because I tend toward the plain-brown-wrapper end of most spectra. For starters, I couldn’t imagine ever talking to anyone I knew about a band with the word “junkies” in its name. My family and friends would wonder with whom I’d been hanging out.

In truth, I don’t remember. I may have first heard of the Junkies from a magazine, Rolling Stone maybe, in a review of their great Trinity Session album. (I’ve featured one song from that album here, a good while ago, as one of the selections in the first What’s in a Song post, about “Blue Moon.”)

Well, whatever the circumstances in which they first crossed my radar screen, Cowboy Junkies have continued for around twenty-five years to crank out whatever music they want to make, and to tour widely in its support. And they still consist of the same four members (two brothers, a sister, and a childhood friend). Most recently, they challenged themselves: write, produce, and release a series of four interconnected albums… in eighteen months. It actually took them a couple-three months longer than that, but the final piece of the Nomad Series, the album called Wilderness, finally dropped a few weeks ago.

Here’s one number from the new release, which (to me) feels very comfortably both familiar and, yes, alternative.

[Below, click Play button to begin Angels in the Wilderness. While audio is playing, volume control appears at left — a row of little vertical bars. This clip is 4:42 long.

[audio:angelsinthewilderness_cowboyjunkies.mp3|titles=’Angels in the Wildernss’|artists=Cowboy Junkies]

[Lyrics]

If you’re a Cowboy Junkies fan, you’ll almost certainly want to see their Tiny Desk Concert recorded at the NPR offices recently. It’s a fourteen-plus-minute session, featuring both “Angels in the Wilderness” and “Fairytale” from the new album, bracketing the one number which has come closest to a hit for them, from that Trinity Session album: “Misguided Angel.”

 

The Propagational Library (7): Thenward

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See the latest installment in the ongoing Propagational Library series, here:

…in which The Librarian learns what it means to lunge, just so —
and discovers a previously unknown sense.

If you’re unfamiliar with the series, you almost certainly will prefer to begin instead with the Table of Contents/Overview page.

Sleepwaking, Blindsighted, and a Little Bit of Movies in the Night

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[Video: one of the best cinematic commentaries on ignoring (and paying attention to) the wrong things turned 71 the other day. Above, its trailer — complete with telephone commentary not actually in the film… and not showing its title character for even a single second.]

From whiskey river:

Solar

On a gray day, when the sun
has been abducted, and it’s chill
end-of-the-world weather,
I must be the sun.
I must be the one
to encourage the young
sidetracked physicist
working his father’s cash register
to come up with a law of nature
that says brain waves can change
the dismal sky. I must be the one
to remind the ginger plant
not to rest on the reputation
of its pungent roots, but to unveil
those buttery tendrils from the other world.
When the sky is an iron lid
I must be the one to simmer
in the piquant juices of possibility,
though the ingredients are unknown
and the day begins with a yawn.
I must issue forth a warmth
without discrimination, and any guarantee
it will come back to me.
On a dark day I must be willing
to keep my disposition light,
I have to be at the very least
one stray intact ray
of local energy, one small
but critical fraction
of illumination. Even on a day
that doesn’t look gray
but still lacks comfort or sense,
I have to be the sun,
I have to shine as if
sorry life itself depended on it.
I have to make all the difference.

(Thomas Centolella [source])

…and:

Eyesight

It was May before my
attention came
to spring and

my word I said
to the southern slopes
I’ve

missed it, it
came and went before
I got right to see:

don’t worry, said the mountain,
try the later northern slopes
or if

you can climb, climb
into spring: but
said the mountain

it’s not that way
with all things, some
that go are gone

(A.R. Ammons [source])

…and:

Your problem is how you are going to spend this one and precious life you have been issued. Whether you’re going to spend it trying to look good and creating the illusion that you have power over circumstances, or whether you are going to taste it, enjoy it and find out the truth about who you are.

(Anne Lamott [source])

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Midweek Music Break: Water Liars, “Dog Eaten”

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[Image(s): Water Liars. You’d never imagine that a couple of guys who look like this would
write, play, and sing so sweetly, would you?]

I don’t know how the duo who call themselves Water Liars came up with that name. I do know, however, that it’s the title of the first story in a collection by the late Mississippi writer Barry Hannah, 1978’s Airships. You can read the story here or here; briefly, it’s a first-person narrative of a man who’s come to the sudden awareness that he was not his wife’s, y’know, first. (In short order, he remembers that she wasn’t his, either — but he seems to dismiss this little dissonant factoid with ease, not to say convenience.)

Before coming together as Water Liars, the two guys — Justin Kinkel-Schuster and Andrew Bryant — had been performing alone or with other bands. For their first album, Phantom Limb, they just sort of shut themselves away in a room in a small Mississippi town, with a single microphone, their instruments, and a handful of songs. Among them, the lovely, haunting “Dog Eaten”:

Lyrics (if anyone can fill in the gap for me, I’d be grateful!):

Dog Eaten
(by Water Liars) 

The smallest hours of the morning,
When I was busy dreaming
Of tender-hearted girls
And the world without end
Forever and ever amen

My father was quietly takin’
The money I was makin’
From the dog-eaten wallet
He gave me that year

Our blood is our own but it does what it pleases and there
Ain’t much more to say
I’m alive on the highway
Dead on arrival and that’s no way to live this life

We lay on a Mexican blanket
[…inaudible…] by a carillon and some roses
And I was an owl’s ghost
And died on the side of the road

She laid her head on my shoulder
She nibbled on my ear lobe
And that was about all

My blood was my own, it done what it pleased to, and there
Ain’t much more to say
I’m alive on the highway
Dead on arrivin’ and that’s no way to live this life

Whether or not Water Liars intended the connection, it’s not hard to trace a dotted line from Hannah’s story of broken, childish illusions to the sorry tale told by this song’s protagonist.

____________________________

P.S. From a good interview at No Depression (the speaker is Andrew Bryant):

Lately, my biggest influences have been writers. We all love music of all kinds. That’s should go without saying. But I’ve been really into stories and poetry lately. My favorite writer at the moment is a Mississippi writer named Barry Hannah. He wrote this book called Airships and it really shook me. He did his own thing, and he did from his gut. I’d never read anything like it.

I guess the connection between the band’s name and Hannah’s story isn’t so coincidental!

Update 2012-05-05: I’ve received a genial email from one of the members of Water Liars to “de-mystify a couple areas you touched on.” First up was a clarification of the lyrics (I’ve made that correction above). Second, no need to wonder further about the band’s name:

…we did in fact name ourselves after Barry Hannah’s “Water Liars”. It’s one of the best book-opening stories of all time, not to mention one of our favorite stories in one of our favorite books by one of our favorite writers of all time.

Thanks, Pete!

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