Bound By The Beauty/Not Fade Away(Reprise)

Close and faithful readers may remember this post, sort of.  It first appeared on Sept. 23, 2012 in slightly different form, but with a whole different list of songs.  It's one of my favorites, if I'm allowed to say that, and I'm right back in that same place now, so, rather than re-inventing the wheel, I'm riding it again.

I remember it like it was yesterday:  I was taking a test in Miss McDonald's (poor, tragic Libby) fifth-grade class when suddenly, for no apparent reason, I sat bolt upright, put down my pencil and looked around the room at my classmates, my teacher, the desks, chairs, blackboard, the clock,  and thought "Holy shit" (or something like it--I used bad words even then)-- "I'm in fifth grade already;  I'm ten years old!"  My near-constant awareness of and absorption in the passage of time, how fleeting is our--and all our loved ones' --time here,  an awareness which had likely always been there, but subliminal, was now right at the front of my brain, where it has remained to this moment.

I've had a love/hate relationship with Autumn all of my life, an ambivalence which is directly related to the above anecdote, I'm sure.  On the one hand, here in New England, at least, it's the most dazzlingly glorious time of year; on the other, it's a harbinger of the cold and death soon to follow.  The trees blaze with vivid reds, yellows, golds and that peculiar  hue which is green-going-to-yellow, itself a return, as Frost noted so brilliantly in "Nothing Gold Can Stay," which begins  with "Nature's first green is gold...."  And the sky: is it just my imagination, or is it actually a deeper blue than at any other time of the year?  Late-blooming flowers, fire-red sumacs, even the dun-colored grasses in meadows contribute to the almost overwhelming ecstatic riot of sensory stimulation all around us.  You can practically hear the color.

For about two weeks.  Then it all changes again.  The first colors to go are the birds. Those  we've been feeding all summer long, particularly the finches, my favorites because they're most colorful, are suddenly ravenous.  The feeders need re-filling constantly, it seems, as the gold, red, and olive green creatures fatten themselves for their arduous flight south.  One day, it dawns on us that they've vanished, just like that: "See ya next year, maybe." That happened this past Thursday.  The leaves, meanwhile, have continued their inexorable, biologically-driven march to brown and crispy.  One night there's a wind-driven rainstorm and the next day they, too, are suddenly gone.  We are left bereft of vibrancy, resigned to subdued hues of brown, black, gray and white, of tree and chickadee, stone and snow, broken occasionally by a splash of evergreen or flash of blue jay.

For me, ever since at least the age of 10, this annual demonstration of death, albeit temporary, puts me in mind of the inevitability of real and permanent death.  Every goddam year is a metaphor for every other goddam year, right up to the end. It's sorta like having a full-scale map of the world.

Poets, writers, thinkers of every stripe have dealt with this down through the ages, of course.  The whole dying-and-rising god thing which has been the basis of so many religions arises (yes, I saw that) from this cycle.  If the earth is reborn, why not we?  Keats, in To Autumn ("Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness..."), concentrates on the beauty and bounty of early autumn, while Shelley, his friend and contemporary focuses on the other end of the season in  "Autumn: A Dirge ("The warm sun is failing, the/bleak wind is wailing.");  Andrew Marvell in To His Coy Mistress ("But at my back I always hear/ Time's winged chariot hurrying near," and Billy Collins in, ironically, "On Turning Ten," ("This is the beginning of sadness, I say to myself") have obviously felt it too.  We all must; I'm curious at what age it really strikes each of us, this awareness, this knowledge.  Why are we the only species, so far as we know, which is aware of our mortality?  Wouldn't it be better to have no knowledge it was gonna come?  Just live your life, find your acorns, eat your grass, your plankton, synthesize your photos, and then BAM, it's done.  No dread, no sadness or longing, just the fact, which was there all along, unbeknownst.

Here are some songs to celebrate the beauty and mourn the fading:


All This Useless Beauty                                            June Tabor
Beauty                                                                        Linda Thompson
The Beauty Of The Days Gone By                            Van Morrison
The Beauty Of The Rain                                            Dar Williams
Bird Of Beauty                                                           Stevie Wonder
Bound By The Beauty                                                Jane Siberry
Came So Far For Beauty                                            Jennifer Warnes
Chi-Wahwah Beauty                                                  Ottmar Liebert
For The Beauty Of The Earth                                     Paul Winter Consort
For The Beauty Of Wynona                                       Daniel Lanois
Hesitating Beauty                                                       Billy Bragg/Wilco
Temporary Beauty                                                      Graham Parker
Thing Of Beauty                                                         Hothouse Flowers
Ugly Beauty                                                                Friends Of Dean Martinez
Daylight Fading                                                          Counting Crows
Fading Away                                                               James Taylor
Fading Memory                                                          Eilen Jewell
Don't Fade Away                                                        Dead Can Dance
Don't fade Away                                                         Milla
Don't Fade Away                                                        Willie Nelson
Don't Fade On Me                                                      Tom Petty
Fade Away                                                                  Ernest Ranglin
Fade Into Light                                                           Boz Scaggs
Fade To Black                                                             Dire Straits
Fadeaway                                                                    The BoDeans
Not Fade Away                                                            James Taylor
Not Fade Away                                                            Stones


Noon till two on Tuesday, 91.5 FM, www.wool.fm on the webs.  See ya there?

Is it a coincidence that we refer to Adam and Eve's transgression as "the Fall?"  That's why we're mortal and know it.  Damn.

"Oh, How We Danced..."

I first heard that song, with an appended parenthetical to the title ("...Anniversary Song") on a Jim Capaldi album in 1972.  The credited composers were Al Jolson and Saul Chaplin, but it turns out that they adapted the tune from an apparently quite famous Romanian composition, Waves Of The Danube, and Jolson wrote new lyrics, the first line of which is "Oh, how we danced on the night we were wed."

Yesterday I went to a 40th Anniversary celebration for two good friends whose wedding I was an usher in, one my friend of longest duration (Alice once had a young woman write in a composition about her "longest boyfriend;" we assumed that she, too, was referring to duration of the relationship, but I guess you never know...).  To protect their identities I'll call them "Roberta (Bert)" and "Eric." Surviving 40 years of marriage is pretty mind-blowing, even if you're not married to Bert for that time; turns out Eric is superhuman. Anyway, it's kind of shocking to have contemporaries celebrating a 40th, given that I'm barely over 40 myself; some sort of time warp somewhere, I guess.

I looked up the socially-dictated, or accepted, traditional 40th anniversary gift, and found that it's ruby.  So I wore a ruby-colored shirt to the festivities but, me being me and trying to force my proclivities and obsessions on others, I also put together a CD of all of the songs in my collection whose title contained the word "ruby" or "rubies."  Turned out that I thought it was a great collection of songs, so I've decided to build the bulk of Tuesday's show around it.  And by the way, when I told Eric that the traditional 40th thing was Ruby, he said "I thought it was Prozac."  I told him I was pretty sure that that was for each of the first 39 years.

This week's show, though, will be--and I cast no aspersions here-- like a marsupial's penis: two-pronged (you could look it up...!).  For on Saturday night I worked at a Billy Bragg concert at The Opera House in Bellows Falls, VT., and it was fabulous.  I know, I should have written something before the show, to entice folks to go, but Mr. Bragg doesn't need that: the place was just 20 tickets shy of being sold out.  Bragg is a committed Lefty, an often brilliant (and frequently very touching) songwriter, has something of a signature guitar sound, is very well-read and learned, and tells great stories.  In fact, at one point near the end of the show, someone yelled out a request; Mr. Bragg, in as gentle a refusal as I believe I've ever heard, said "Well now, you see, madam, all you need to remember is the title: I, however, have to remember the title, the chords, the key, all of the lyrics, and the usual 5 minute bullshit introduction I probably used to give it."  How do you not love that?

So, sort of two disparate playlists this week, perhaps linked by the fact that, as Bragg sings, "There is power in a union:"

Ruby                                                                         Dave Rawlings Machine
Ruby                                                                         Ray Charles
Ruby's Arms                                                             Tom Waits
Ruby's Eyes                                                              Tommy Emmanuel
Ruby Baby                                                                Donald Fagen
Ruby Dear                                                                 Talking Heads
Ruby Heart                                                                The Guggenheim Grotto
Ruby Lane                                                                 Milla
Ruby Lee                                                                   Joe Cocker
Ruby On The Morning                                              Brewer And Shipley
Ruby Sees All                                                            Cake
Ruby Tuesday                                                            Dual Sessions
Ruby Tuesday                                                            Melanie
Ruby Tuesday                                                            Rolling Septuagenarians
See Ruby Fall                                                             Johnny Cash
Rubylove                                                                    Cat Stevens
Rubies & Diamonds                                                   Carla Olson & Mick Taylor
Ruby, My Dear                                                           Thelonius Monk & John Coltrane
Ruby, Don't Take Your Love To Town                       Cake
Oh How We Danced (Anniversary Song)                  Jim Capaldi
Anniversary                                                                Graham Parker
Anniversary                                                                Ronnie Lane & Slim Chance
Greetings To The New Brunette                                 Billy Bragg
Ideology
Levi Stubbs' Tears
Must I Paint You A Picture
A New England
She's Got A New Spell
There is Power In A Union
Way Over Yonder In The Minor Key
Waiting For The Great Leap Forwards                       Billy Bragg

Yeah, three "Ruby Tuesday"'s but they're wicked different, so I'm playin' 'em all.

Tuesday, noon till two, the same old place, or the old Same Place, for you Nick Dangerists:
 91.5 FM, wool.fm.   And here's to the next 40!   

To Be Or Not To Be--Richard Cory

I haven't weighed in on much of anything, lately; the thing I most want to address, Robin Williams's suicide, may be passe already (what a world, what a world, 24/7 news cycles, beheadings, and all), but I feel a need to speak up for and defend depressives, given that I've already acknowledged belonging to that group in previous posts.

Edwin Arlington Robinson saw it this way:

Whenever Richard Cory went down town,
We people on the pavement looked at him:
He was a gentleman from sole to crown,
Clean favored, and imperially slim.

And he was always quietly arrayed,
And he was always human when he talked;
But still he fluttered pulses when he said,
"Good-morning," and he glittered when he walked.

And he was rich--yes, richer than a king--
And admirably schooled in every grace:
In fine, we thought he was everything
To make us wish that we were in his place.

So on we worked, and waited for the light,
And went without the meat, and cursed the bread;
And Richard Corey, one calm summer night,
Went home and put a bullet through his head.

Bob Dylan once put it another way:  "Don't go mistaking Paradise/For that home across the road."   Shakespeare said "The eyes are the window to your soul,"  and The Hollies encouraged us to "Look through any window (yeah)," but our own myopia may be keeping us from seeing what's really inside.

I'm here to say that one can never, ever know what another's life is like.  We may look in and see "riches" and "success," but what needs consideration are (is?) the demons within.

Depression is a terrible disease with which to contend.  Its symptoms and effects are often not readily apparent, and it's not something with which we all have to live, which I think may inhibit understanding of the disease.  Everyone, I daresay, is familiar with with situational depression, which is, I think, more correctly called "disappointment."  Who hasn't had to cope with bad grades, or relationships gone awry, or jobs that don't work out, or that we don't get in the first place?  Things don't go right for us, we have disappointments, we may sit with them for a while, but we cope, and we move on.

Clinical depression (or what I like to call "My Depression") is a whole 'nother beast.  Circumstances don't matter, fame and fortune don't matter:  what matters is the inner demons, the inner voices, that tell you that you fall short, that you're not good enough, that, no matter what the outer world sees, the inner world will never, ever, be satisfied.  And that, my friends, is what I'm pretty sure Robin Williams was dealing with, as was the fictional Richard Cory, as are many of your friends, loved ones, and acquaintances,  whether it's apparent or not.  Riches, adulation, what is commonly thought of as "Success" are of no consequence.  All of those are conquered, drowned out by the Inner Voice, which in many cases cannot be mollified:  "our own worst enemy" is not an idle phrase.

Is this me condoning suicide?  Not really.  Is this me understanding the circumstances that might lead one to take its own life?  Yeah, pretty sure that's it.  Judge not, et cetera: as I have asserted here before, we all do what we have to to "make it through this life, if (we) can."  And if we can't, others need to understand and make room for that decision.  We're all going to the same place, anyway, whether we kill ourselves by rope, or by gun, or by booze or tobacco or other lifestyle choices, or by genetic fortune.  As Ben Sidran says "See ya' on the other side."  He was referring to an album (What, now?),  but it's all the same.

So, am I gonna play something relevant to this post on my show this week?  Nah--that'd be quite a bummer n'est-ce pas?  I found a great Van bootleg from 1984 at Turn It Up last week, so I'm'a play that.  It includes Dweller On The Threshold;  I think that Mr. Morrison had something spiritual in mind, but for me it's a secular fact: we're all "dwellers on the threshold;"  what lies on the other side is the mystery, and the adventure.

So, these songs this week, from Van Morrison:

Inarticulate Speech Of The Heart
Dweller On The Threshold
Vanlose Stairway
It's All In The Game
She Gives Me Religion
Help Me
Beautiful Vision
Northern Muse (Solid Ground)
Bright Side Of The Road
Celtic Ray
Higher Than The World
River Of Time
The Street Only Knew Your Name
Cry For Home
Haunts Of Ancient Peace
Cleaning Windows
Summertime In England
Full Force Gale

Also, Joe Sample died today, so I'm gonna play a few Crusaders songs, like "Hard Times," "Keep That Same Old Feeling," "It Happens Every Day," and Carole King's "So Far Away," among, possibly, others.  See you Tuesday, maybe, from noon till two on WOOL FM, 91.5, or wool.fm on the webs.

"Oh, I wish that I could be Richard Cory:" maybe not so much....