Mayday, Mayday, Mayday. Originated in 1923 by an air-traffic controller in London, that now-familiar term is used internationally as a distress call in radio communications. From the French venez m'aider ("come help me"), it's always, like Beetlejuice, repeated 3 times, to ensure that the listener knows it's an actual distress call and not a message about a distress call, or some mistaken radio chatter.
I've been talking recently with a few people, mostly Alice B. Fogel (alicebfogel.com, in the shameless shilling department, which probably should have been Curt's nickname although it's spelled differently) about writing these posts and about their content and about how to get through the world. You know, light, casual stuff just thrown over the shoulder as you walk out the door in the morning. Turns out I mostly can't help writing about topical stuff, about the state of the world, about "What's goin' on"-- although much of me wishes I could just let it all roll off, and only pay attention to the daily business of living my life, which has plenty of its own stresses, along with, fortunately, great measures of joy.
But there is so much to be distressed about these days, as I've said before and as we all know too well, and a lot of it's stuff I've already written about, still there and getting worse. There's the number of shootings in our area since the first of the year, which have skyrocketed almost beyond belief. There's the anger, hatred and racism rampant and maybe on the rise in the US. Ted Nugent recently, as I'm sure you know, said President Obama was like a "coyote who needed to be shot" (all coyotes do, apparently), and that, if the President is re-elected he--Nugent--"will either be dead or in jail at this time next year." Apparently this remark is so egregious that even the Secret Service was roused from its drug-and-prostitute-fueled stupor to look into it. Even if, as is likely, I suppose, he's just being his usual blowhard wackjob outrageous adolescent attention-craving asshole self and doesn't, in fact, intend to shoot Obama, how many John Hinckley/Mark Chapman types are there out there who would find their own like-minded beliefs validated by such dangerous words? If not a boast of his own plans, it's at least an implicit call to action for a nation of heavily-armed and frightened white guys.
We have lost all touch with civility in public discourse and any sense of propriety in this country, it seems. In Walpole, NH, for instance, there lives a retired cop--a representative of government and order-- from NYC who, while driving a car with an American flag fluttering in the wind as he goes to buy his lottery tickets, wears Tshirts and posts signs in his yard saying "Obama Sucks." "Protect and Serve," indeed. I'm not at all patriotic (see Vonnegut, "granfalloon"), but Jesus, that's the POTUS, not some third baseman or point guard who plays for a team you hate. How have we gotten here?
Then there's the whole issue of privacy in this country. We willingly give it up by having computers (hello!) and cellphones and facebooks and blogs (hello!), and there are cameras everywhere now, but the whole drone thing scares me to death. It's here already and it's gonna be overwhelming and entrenched soon. Before too long the skies are going to be filled with unmanned spycraft we won't be able to see. Like some ugly mid-20th century nightmare science fiction, our every move is going to be watched and catalogued by someone. How the hell have we gotten there? More importantly, how do we get out of this mess we have put ourselves in, and continue to do? Like the proverbial frog in the pot of cold water, the heat is being turned up slowly enough that we don't notice that we're getting close to the boiling point, at which time we're cooked.
So this week on the radio, a smorgasbord, a sampler of issues and ills and ideas: some "Mayday" (or month) songs, since the show is on May 1, some songs of anger and hatred, of spying and watching. As JT has it, "I can't help it if I don't feel so good." Those of you who can help it: mazel-tov. Hope you can join me on Tuesday, noon-till-two eastern at 100.1 FM, or at wool.fm on the Gore-o-phone.
By the way, the correct response to the age-old question that prompted this post's title is always, of course, "Honey, you look fabulous in everything and in nothing." Isn't it?
Sunday, April 29, 2012
Sunday, April 22, 2012
Markness Visible
We children had, for instance, proper hands; our fluid, pliant fingers joined their skin. Adults had misshapen, knuckly hands loose in their skin like bones in bags; it was a wonder they could open jars. They were loose in their skins all over, except at the wrists and ankles, like rabbits.
We were whole, we were pleasing to ourselves. Our crystalline eyes shone from firm, smooth sockets; we spoke in pure, piping voices through dark, tidy lips. Adults were coming apart, but they neither noticed nor minded.
Perhaps Annie Dillard was right, in that passage from her brilliant memoir An American Childhood: perhaps the adults in her life didn't notice or care about their incipient decrepitude. Or perhaps, brilliant and precocious observer though she was, the young Annie missed the whole and true adult reaction to their changing bodies.
One of the things I found most frustrating as a younger parent was the fact, which I have expressed many times to (too) many people, that childhood is so brief, adulthood so long. Children grow up in a flash: birth to toddlerhood takes less than a minute, preschool-to-highschool about a week, and then they're your contemporaries, in a fashion, though they'll always be your babies. Adulthood, though: even if it's just nominal, as in my case, adulthood is, if we are fortunate, a long plateau. Oh, sure, there are subtle changes along that plateau--a few extra pounds, some lines and wrinkles, aches and pains that didn't use to come, or were sloughed off quickly if they did--but, for the most part, most of us are designed for a 40 or so year cruise at the height of health and power, accumulating knowledge and wisdom, abilities and skills that further the race in our natural roles.
And then, around 60, things start to change. Hair turns gray at 20, for some people, and falls out at 30 for others. Wrinkles gradually happen. But in the 60's real and portentous change starts in earnest. Wrinkles deepen, widen, proliferate; age spots show up; aches and pains worsen and become chronic; skin does sag and loosen, as Dillard notes. Weight shifts, even if it doesn't increase any more. As the old saw has it, "As I get older, I find I have a particular furniture problem: my chest is in my drawers." Gravity is not our friend; sure, it keeps us on the planet, but increasingly it reminds us that our connection to the earth is getting even closer and will eventually be deeper. I see it happening in the mirror and in my friends and loved ones, and it is sobering.
I've been mulling an update of Allen Ginsburg's most famous work to address these issues, although re-doing the whole thing would be way too daunting. I have the first lines ("I squinted at the best bodies of my generation destroyed by gravity and excess, far from starving, hysterically naked,/dragging themselves from bed at dawn looking angrily for the Fixodent", and the title (I hope you think I do titles pretty well; I think it's my strongest suit), Jowl. If it hasn't been done, it's surely ripe for it. Maybe by you?
And then Levon Helm died last week, as I'm sure most of you know. Last of The Band's three fabulous and distinctive vocalists and maybe the best-known, for his leads on The Weight, The Night They Drove..., Rag, Mama, Rag, Cripple Creek and a slew of others, as well as for his rock-steady drumming, mandolin-playing, solo albums, and his few acting roles, most famously in Coal Miner's Daughter. At the height of psychedelic excess The Band carved out a much simpler sound, a slice of Americana (though Helm was the only American in the group), a return to three-or-four-minute story songs with understated yet virtuosic musicianship. Their very name bore out their ethos (no "Strawberry Alarm Clock"s or "Cat Mother and the All-Night Newsboys" for them), and none other than god himself, in the guise of Eric Clapton, a veteran of great excess, both musical and recreational, during stints in The Bluesbreakers, Cream, and Blind Faith, championed their music, said it changed his life, and hoped to join forces with them. They already had a pretty good guitar player in Robbie Robertson, so EC got his roots fix on a tour with Delaney and Bonnie instead. Lots of rockers flamed out early, of course, and died in rock-star ways. That Levon Helm, a determinedly "normal" star died at an age and in a manner so "normal" hit me harder, I think, than the deaths of many others. I'll play a couple of hours of Levon and The Band, then, as well as Gene Clark's "Some Misunderstanding," which I find sad and elegaic and uplifting at the same time. Hope you can join me on Tuesday, noon-till-two eastern at 100.1 FM, wool.fm intergalactically.
Life is a carnival, believe it or not....
We were whole, we were pleasing to ourselves. Our crystalline eyes shone from firm, smooth sockets; we spoke in pure, piping voices through dark, tidy lips. Adults were coming apart, but they neither noticed nor minded.
Perhaps Annie Dillard was right, in that passage from her brilliant memoir An American Childhood: perhaps the adults in her life didn't notice or care about their incipient decrepitude. Or perhaps, brilliant and precocious observer though she was, the young Annie missed the whole and true adult reaction to their changing bodies.
One of the things I found most frustrating as a younger parent was the fact, which I have expressed many times to (too) many people, that childhood is so brief, adulthood so long. Children grow up in a flash: birth to toddlerhood takes less than a minute, preschool-to-highschool about a week, and then they're your contemporaries, in a fashion, though they'll always be your babies. Adulthood, though: even if it's just nominal, as in my case, adulthood is, if we are fortunate, a long plateau. Oh, sure, there are subtle changes along that plateau--a few extra pounds, some lines and wrinkles, aches and pains that didn't use to come, or were sloughed off quickly if they did--but, for the most part, most of us are designed for a 40 or so year cruise at the height of health and power, accumulating knowledge and wisdom, abilities and skills that further the race in our natural roles.
And then, around 60, things start to change. Hair turns gray at 20, for some people, and falls out at 30 for others. Wrinkles gradually happen. But in the 60's real and portentous change starts in earnest. Wrinkles deepen, widen, proliferate; age spots show up; aches and pains worsen and become chronic; skin does sag and loosen, as Dillard notes. Weight shifts, even if it doesn't increase any more. As the old saw has it, "As I get older, I find I have a particular furniture problem: my chest is in my drawers." Gravity is not our friend; sure, it keeps us on the planet, but increasingly it reminds us that our connection to the earth is getting even closer and will eventually be deeper. I see it happening in the mirror and in my friends and loved ones, and it is sobering.
I've been mulling an update of Allen Ginsburg's most famous work to address these issues, although re-doing the whole thing would be way too daunting. I have the first lines ("I squinted at the best bodies of my generation destroyed by gravity and excess, far from starving, hysterically naked,/dragging themselves from bed at dawn looking angrily for the Fixodent", and the title (I hope you think I do titles pretty well; I think it's my strongest suit), Jowl. If it hasn't been done, it's surely ripe for it. Maybe by you?
And then Levon Helm died last week, as I'm sure most of you know. Last of The Band's three fabulous and distinctive vocalists and maybe the best-known, for his leads on The Weight, The Night They Drove..., Rag, Mama, Rag, Cripple Creek and a slew of others, as well as for his rock-steady drumming, mandolin-playing, solo albums, and his few acting roles, most famously in Coal Miner's Daughter. At the height of psychedelic excess The Band carved out a much simpler sound, a slice of Americana (though Helm was the only American in the group), a return to three-or-four-minute story songs with understated yet virtuosic musicianship. Their very name bore out their ethos (no "Strawberry Alarm Clock"s or "Cat Mother and the All-Night Newsboys" for them), and none other than god himself, in the guise of Eric Clapton, a veteran of great excess, both musical and recreational, during stints in The Bluesbreakers, Cream, and Blind Faith, championed their music, said it changed his life, and hoped to join forces with them. They already had a pretty good guitar player in Robbie Robertson, so EC got his roots fix on a tour with Delaney and Bonnie instead. Lots of rockers flamed out early, of course, and died in rock-star ways. That Levon Helm, a determinedly "normal" star died at an age and in a manner so "normal" hit me harder, I think, than the deaths of many others. I'll play a couple of hours of Levon and The Band, then, as well as Gene Clark's "Some Misunderstanding," which I find sad and elegaic and uplifting at the same time. Hope you can join me on Tuesday, noon-till-two eastern at 100.1 FM, wool.fm intergalactically.
Life is a carnival, believe it or not....
Monday, April 16, 2012
This Week's Triathlon: Pay, Run, Dodge Icebergs
There sure is lots to write and think about in our world, huh? And it sure can tire a body out, thinking and writing about all that stuff. Sometimes I seem to feel compelled to delve into an issue and explore it to some depth and volubility, which I feel, lately, is too much of each for people to read and digest, as all of us are so busy in our own lives. My friend Brock Dethier, noted professor and author, is working on a piece that asks, of bloggers, "Why would even one of the 7 billion people on the planet care what any other (non-celebrity--my addition) of those 7 billion thought about any particular thing? "Who blogs and who cares?", basically, which I think are certainly valid questions.
But I've started this damn thing and I'm'a keep going, I say. This week, I've got three events of note to turn attention to: Tax Day, Boston Marathon day, and the 100th anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic. So I have some "tax" songs, some "pay" stuff, lots of "run (ing)" songs, and some Titanic/sink(ing) stuff. Most notable of that mess is something that may not even get played, Jaime Brockett's Legend of the U.S.S Titanic, 13-plus minutes of Dylanesque talking blues from 1968, based somewhat loosely on the story of the Titanic. In 1975, I used to play softball in Newmarket, NH with the same Jaime Brockett, a condition of fame-by-association I thought would never be equaled or surpassed until I met Alice B. Fogel. The more I think about it, though, the more I think I've gotta play the song.
Tuesday, noon-till-two eastern, 100.1 FM, wool.fm.
"They said 'This ship won't haul no coal....'"
But I've started this damn thing and I'm'a keep going, I say. This week, I've got three events of note to turn attention to: Tax Day, Boston Marathon day, and the 100th anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic. So I have some "tax" songs, some "pay" stuff, lots of "run (ing)" songs, and some Titanic/sink(ing) stuff. Most notable of that mess is something that may not even get played, Jaime Brockett's Legend of the U.S.S Titanic, 13-plus minutes of Dylanesque talking blues from 1968, based somewhat loosely on the story of the Titanic. In 1975, I used to play softball in Newmarket, NH with the same Jaime Brockett, a condition of fame-by-association I thought would never be equaled or surpassed until I met Alice B. Fogel. The more I think about it, though, the more I think I've gotta play the song.
Tuesday, noon-till-two eastern, 100.1 FM, wool.fm.
"They said 'This ship won't haul no coal....'"
Sunday, April 8, 2012
Why Wear A Swimsuit When You Can Walk On Water?
Back in the day, when I used to read--and even subscribe to--Sports Illustrated, I so looked forward to the two or three weeks after the annual "swimsuit edition" was published (and yes, I read Playboy for the articles). Each of those weeks would appear, and probably still do, outraged letters from parents, librarians, ministers, generic prudes and general guardians of morality and Public Good. "Cancel my subscription," they would say, and "How can you publish such smut?" Understand, this happened or happens every effing year. Where were these people last year, or the year before, or the year before that? How could they not know, and thus continue to be outraged by the fact that, every February or March, there would be an issue which featured scantily-clad and nubile young and lovely women in exotic tropical locales, selling the same mag that, in the other 51 weeks, featured grass-stained, bloody, broken-toothed missing links?
I bring this up to ward off that same sort of firestorm of anger and outrage that could be directed toward this nascent and innocent blog, for what I am about to write.
Each year at this time an event occurs whose significance I have trouble remembering. Which is it: If Jerusalem Jesus (it has to be somehow catchy and alliterative, doesn't it, to really sell the product?) sees his shadow, we have six more weeks of eternity, or is it if he doesn't see his shadow...? There, it's out there, and it's juvenile and puerile and offensive and, really, shockingly funny (funny because it's shocking), and I hope that those who I love who are offended by it also have a large enough sense of humor and forgiveness that they'll give me a pass on it. It's Easter, after all, and that dying-and-rising-god (a metaphor from all agricultural societies to explain crop cycles) did his thing to absolve me of my sins, right?
So, anyway: Eternity. It's, like, a wicked long time, huh? Six weeks here or there probly doesn't add up to much. Then again, after 2,000 years.... Like most of you, I suspect, I have trouble wrapping my head around the idea of Eternity, as I do several cosmic concepts or physical manifestations whose very existence seem impossible: The Higgs boson, for instance, and the Hardon (did I transpose letters there? Oops....) Collider, which my friend Leon Skillings recently wrote about to very amusing effect, (and I have stolen it back, you bastard!) or Infinity, or a sensible politician willing to face Reality head-on, or Sofia Vergara.
Anyway, I'm gonna try to find enough songs to play to cover many of these issues, and maybe more: like baseball, f'rinstance, as the season (a long one for the Red Sox, I fear) has just commenced. But mostly Time and Space; as Robert Frost had it, "our place among the infinities."
Tuesday, noon-till-two eastern, 100.1FM, wool.fm on the webs.
Was Mary Baker Eddy's Casketophone (TM) really only able to make outgoing calls? If only she'd died after the invention of Skype. Now that would be interesting. "Call him up and tell him what you want...."
I bring this up to ward off that same sort of firestorm of anger and outrage that could be directed toward this nascent and innocent blog, for what I am about to write.
Each year at this time an event occurs whose significance I have trouble remembering. Which is it: If Jerusalem Jesus (it has to be somehow catchy and alliterative, doesn't it, to really sell the product?) sees his shadow, we have six more weeks of eternity, or is it if he doesn't see his shadow...? There, it's out there, and it's juvenile and puerile and offensive and, really, shockingly funny (funny because it's shocking), and I hope that those who I love who are offended by it also have a large enough sense of humor and forgiveness that they'll give me a pass on it. It's Easter, after all, and that dying-and-rising-god (a metaphor from all agricultural societies to explain crop cycles) did his thing to absolve me of my sins, right?
So, anyway: Eternity. It's, like, a wicked long time, huh? Six weeks here or there probly doesn't add up to much. Then again, after 2,000 years.... Like most of you, I suspect, I have trouble wrapping my head around the idea of Eternity, as I do several cosmic concepts or physical manifestations whose very existence seem impossible: The Higgs boson, for instance, and the Hardon (did I transpose letters there? Oops....) Collider, which my friend Leon Skillings recently wrote about to very amusing effect, (and I have stolen it back, you bastard!) or Infinity, or a sensible politician willing to face Reality head-on, or Sofia Vergara.
Anyway, I'm gonna try to find enough songs to play to cover many of these issues, and maybe more: like baseball, f'rinstance, as the season (a long one for the Red Sox, I fear) has just commenced. But mostly Time and Space; as Robert Frost had it, "our place among the infinities."
Tuesday, noon-till-two eastern, 100.1FM, wool.fm on the webs.
Was Mary Baker Eddy's Casketophone (TM) really only able to make outgoing calls? If only she'd died after the invention of Skype. Now that would be interesting. "Call him up and tell him what you want...."
Sunday, April 1, 2012
Trayvon/John Donne
John Donne was a priest, a satirist, and a metaphysical poet in the late-1500s/early 1600s. His best-known work, by line if not by title, is "Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions," whence we get "no man is an island" and "for whom the bell tolls." In an earlier post, from Jan 21, 2012, I alluded to that work, worrying that we no longer even hear the bell, never mind know enough to ask for whom it's ringing. Recent otherwise tragic events have given me hope that, though there are billions more of us on the planet now than when Donne wrote those words, we can still feel the death of one (though not everyone) totally unknown by us.
Trayvon Martin was a young man who was apparently killed for the same crime so many black people have been killed for: being black. Unarmed except for iced tea and Skittles (it sickens me just to write that), clad in a hoodie, he was perceived as suspicious and a threat by a white/Hispanic and (legally) armed man, part of an apparently crypto-vigilante "neighborhood watch" group and, under circumstances none of us will ever fully know or understand, shot to death. While the killer has yet to be arrested, some deep-thinking, sciologically-sensitive folks such as Geraldo Rivera have suggested that young men stop wearing hoodies to prevent such incidents from happening again. Of course, no one dares discuss making packing heat more difficult--that's just an accepted part of American life. But sartorial choices--look out! Remember, "Guns don't kill people; people wearing hoodies might, possibly." Until the National Hoodie Association achieves the same political clout as the NRA, that's just how it's gonna be in Amuricah. And yet, all over the country, from the streets to the Halls of Congress (see Congressman Bobby Rush, D/Ill), people are rising to seek justice. There may yet be some life in the body politic and some hope for our Humanity.
In 1983, Van Morrison released Inarticulate Speech of the Heart, which contained the song called "Rave On, John Donne" (can you see where I'm going here? That explains the title of this post...). In 1984 came the live version, which contains one of the bravest production/overdubbing decisions in recording history. Instead of saying, smoothly, "Oh, what sweet wine we drink" as on the studio album, Van elides that phrase into "Oh, what swine..." and then quickly corrects it; but he leaves it in on the album, which I find really self-confident, ballsy, even Dylanesque (the next-best example of such that I can think of is Stephen Stills's version of "49 Bye-byes" from Four Way Street, where he says in the middle of his impassioned rant "I don't know if I want white America to remember or for toget...."). Anyway, this week I'm playing both studio and live versions of Van's song, Loudo's "Hard Day on the Planet," wherein he namechecks and quotes Mr. Donne (oh, that prep-schooled Westchester boy), and lots of "island" and maybe some "bell" and "tolling" songs. Hope you can join me on Tuesday, noon till two eastern on 100.1 FM, or wool.fm on the webs.
Perhaps clothes do "make the man...?"
Trayvon Martin was a young man who was apparently killed for the same crime so many black people have been killed for: being black. Unarmed except for iced tea and Skittles (it sickens me just to write that), clad in a hoodie, he was perceived as suspicious and a threat by a white/Hispanic and (legally) armed man, part of an apparently crypto-vigilante "neighborhood watch" group and, under circumstances none of us will ever fully know or understand, shot to death. While the killer has yet to be arrested, some deep-thinking, sciologically-sensitive folks such as Geraldo Rivera have suggested that young men stop wearing hoodies to prevent such incidents from happening again. Of course, no one dares discuss making packing heat more difficult--that's just an accepted part of American life. But sartorial choices--look out! Remember, "Guns don't kill people; people wearing hoodies might, possibly." Until the National Hoodie Association achieves the same political clout as the NRA, that's just how it's gonna be in Amuricah. And yet, all over the country, from the streets to the Halls of Congress (see Congressman Bobby Rush, D/Ill), people are rising to seek justice. There may yet be some life in the body politic and some hope for our Humanity.
In 1983, Van Morrison released Inarticulate Speech of the Heart, which contained the song called "Rave On, John Donne" (can you see where I'm going here? That explains the title of this post...). In 1984 came the live version, which contains one of the bravest production/overdubbing decisions in recording history. Instead of saying, smoothly, "Oh, what sweet wine we drink" as on the studio album, Van elides that phrase into "Oh, what swine..." and then quickly corrects it; but he leaves it in on the album, which I find really self-confident, ballsy, even Dylanesque (the next-best example of such that I can think of is Stephen Stills's version of "49 Bye-byes" from Four Way Street, where he says in the middle of his impassioned rant "I don't know if I want white America to remember or for toget...."). Anyway, this week I'm playing both studio and live versions of Van's song, Loudo's "Hard Day on the Planet," wherein he namechecks and quotes Mr. Donne (oh, that prep-schooled Westchester boy), and lots of "island" and maybe some "bell" and "tolling" songs. Hope you can join me on Tuesday, noon till two eastern on 100.1 FM, or wool.fm on the webs.
Perhaps clothes do "make the man...?"
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