Anyone who knows me well will appreciate how ridiculous it is for me to be writing a piece about flying: never been in an airplane, hope never to be. I dream of flying occasionally, but it's never in a plane; it's always by dint of flapping arms. Since we went to the moon last week (in this space, at least), though, I thought we'd get just a little closer to terra-firma-- but SLOWLY, ssslooowly. I don't know if you've noticed it, but airplanes have been having an increasingly difficult time staying in the air.
It's not always their fault, I get that: bombs, birds, and Russian anti-aircraft missiles--to name just a few things-- all can have their effect on a craft's ability to stay aloft. And I get all of the stats about the safety of flight in general, and certainly when compared with travel by car; nevertheless, it's been a bad few weeks for airplanes, and gravity's winning.
But ever since Daedalus handed Icarus his lovely wings, since Newton got bonked on the noggin by Granny Smith, we've known that if it goes up it's comin' down. The best we can hope is to have some modicum of control over the descent, which come to think of it is probably a pretty good metaphor for the trip through life in general. I guess it's been on my mind more because the usual all-too-human combination of hubris, stupidity and mistake leads to horrifying events like the removal from the sky of the Malaysian Airlines plane we could find. And the fact that Jake leaves next week for 10 days in Israel via El Al airlines to the LZ known as Tel Aviv airport. Oy Vey.
So thinking of flight and planes and stuff led me to this playlist:
Airplane Rusted Root
Airplaneshadows Kiln
Blues From An Airplane Jefferson Airplane
Fat Angel Jefferson Airplane
Aeroplane Red Hot Chili Peppers
Jet Plane Johnny "Guitar" Watson
Leaving On A Jet Plane John Denver
Jet Plane In A Rocking Chair Richard & Linda Thompson
Planes & Satellites Sonia Dada
Steam Powered Aereo Plane John Hartford
Terraplane Blues Rory Block
Deportees (Plane Wreck at Los Gatos) Arlo Guthrie
Jet McCartney/Wings
Jet Airliner Paul Pena
Come Fly With Me Frank Sinatra
Expecting To Fly Buffalo Springfield
Fear With Flying Loudon Wainwright
Fly Nick Drake
Fly Steve Winwood
Fly Away Brother Jack McDuff
Flyin' High (In The Friendly Sky) Marvin gaye
Flyin' Shoes Townes Van Zandt
Flying The Beatles
Flying The Faces
Flying Michael Nesmith
Flying High Country Joe & The Fish
Flying Home Duke Robillard & Herb Ellis
Flying On The Ground Is Wrong Buffalo Springfield
Learning To Fly Pink Floyd
Join me, woncha, on Tuesday from noon till two on WOOL FM, 91.5 or wool.fm? It could be fun.
Just happened to hear on VT Public Radio the other day about a controversy about noise at Burlington Int'l Airport. Residents of a nearby neighborhood complained about the noise, it turned out that noise did in fact exceed allowable limits. Fortunately, they were able to reach a fair and equitable solution to the issue: the airport bought an entire neighborhood in order to level it. If a jet flies over a razed neighborhood, does it exceed allowable noise levels...?
Sunday, July 27, 2014
Sunday, July 20, 2014
One Small Step
Sunday, July 20, 2014 marked the 45th anniversary of humans first setting foot on an orb floating in space other than Earth, at least so far as we know. On that July afternoon (Earth time), Neil Armstrong stepped onto the moon and spoke one of the best-known (mis) quotes, I think, in human history (excepting, perhaps, McCartney's wrongly-quoted line from "Live And Let Die"), "That's one small step for (a) man, one giant leap for Mankind."
And the jury's still out, I think, on whether or not this was a good thing. The US is, of course, the only country to have landed men there (six times between 1969 and 1972), but we haven't done it since, which is really somewhat surprising. I heard Neil deGrasse Tyson, the new, black, Carl Sagan, on NPR as I was brush-hogging my little section of Earth yesterday, and he said he was 10 years old for that first landing, and figured that it would be a pretty regular occurrence after that, at least a monthly thing.
Why did we stop so completely? Some blame staggering costs; the money that would otherwise be spent on such an ambitious Space Program would be far better spent on terrestrial projects. As a staunch stay-at-home Yankee, I heartily endorse that position, but wonder why, then, we aren't in fact spending that money on those in need. Others blame lack of political will, which kind of goes hand-in-hand with the financial piece, I'm sure. Still others say that we don't have the ability to plan and see through such long-term projects; on the face of it that seems odd: if we could do it back then, why would we have lost the ability? But, then, given the frenetic, decreased-attention-span, 140 characters-at a-time-society (is this a hyphen-heavy post, or what?) we've become, maybe that's true. And of course there are people who insist that we've never really done it at all, that those "landings" all took place on Hollywood soundstages. Whatever the reason, we've certainly folded the lunar tent; it's not unlikely that the next person on the moon will be Chinese. And some people believe that it's too late anyway, that our ever having gone there has screwed the moon up, that the moon we used to know is no longer.
In 1977, I did my first stint as an Acworth resident, for about 8 months. I rented a little timber-framed house on Rte. 123A, really quite a charming place for the most part. During that time I subscribed to (or "took," as old-timers would say) The Keene Sentinel, an afternoon daily newspaper. My paper"boy" was himself an old Yankee, in his seventies, who drove a battered old Jeep Cherokee. One evening, after getting home from work, I walked down the driveway to see if the paper had arrived, at just the time he pulled up to the delivery tube. There was a nearly-full moon that evening, with a large ring around it, which everyone I knew knew meant rain coming soon. We shot the breeze for a few minutes, the paperoldtimer and I, and eventually talk came around to that celestial sight and its forecasting properties. His view? "Yep, time was you could tell the weather from a ring around the moon like that, but ever since we went there, you can't tell nuthin' from it." As my favorite plumber is fond of saying, "Shit luck beats science every time."
Below you'll find a real writer's take on the above anecdote. It's a poem from Alice B. Fogel's collection titled Elemental:
And the jury's still out, I think, on whether or not this was a good thing. The US is, of course, the only country to have landed men there (six times between 1969 and 1972), but we haven't done it since, which is really somewhat surprising. I heard Neil deGrasse Tyson, the new, black, Carl Sagan, on NPR as I was brush-hogging my little section of Earth yesterday, and he said he was 10 years old for that first landing, and figured that it would be a pretty regular occurrence after that, at least a monthly thing.
Why did we stop so completely? Some blame staggering costs; the money that would otherwise be spent on such an ambitious Space Program would be far better spent on terrestrial projects. As a staunch stay-at-home Yankee, I heartily endorse that position, but wonder why, then, we aren't in fact spending that money on those in need. Others blame lack of political will, which kind of goes hand-in-hand with the financial piece, I'm sure. Still others say that we don't have the ability to plan and see through such long-term projects; on the face of it that seems odd: if we could do it back then, why would we have lost the ability? But, then, given the frenetic, decreased-attention-span, 140 characters-at a-time-society (is this a hyphen-heavy post, or what?) we've become, maybe that's true. And of course there are people who insist that we've never really done it at all, that those "landings" all took place on Hollywood soundstages. Whatever the reason, we've certainly folded the lunar tent; it's not unlikely that the next person on the moon will be Chinese. And some people believe that it's too late anyway, that our ever having gone there has screwed the moon up, that the moon we used to know is no longer.
In 1977, I did my first stint as an Acworth resident, for about 8 months. I rented a little timber-framed house on Rte. 123A, really quite a charming place for the most part. During that time I subscribed to (or "took," as old-timers would say) The Keene Sentinel, an afternoon daily newspaper. My paper"boy" was himself an old Yankee, in his seventies, who drove a battered old Jeep Cherokee. One evening, after getting home from work, I walked down the driveway to see if the paper had arrived, at just the time he pulled up to the delivery tube. There was a nearly-full moon that evening, with a large ring around it, which everyone I knew knew meant rain coming soon. We shot the breeze for a few minutes, the paperoldtimer and I, and eventually talk came around to that celestial sight and its forecasting properties. His view? "Yep, time was you could tell the weather from a ring around the moon like that, but ever since we went there, you can't tell nuthin' from it." As my favorite plumber is fond of saying, "Shit luck beats science every time."
Below you'll find a real writer's take on the above anecdote. It's a poem from Alice B. Fogel's collection titled Elemental:
Objects In Mirror Are
Closer Than They Appear
It’s
hard to tell
that
the face of the moon
is
as much like a man’s
as
god’s. Out yonder,
in
the world without us,
who’s
to say? –
Either
we get in the way,
or
things make use of us.
Half-way
around the globe
from
where they started,
the
static sound of starlings
echoes
off the barn roof.
Spiders
weave in the spokes
of
wheels, and stars
circle
unsuspecting suns.
Little
do we know,
the
world has a talent
for
making itself at home.
Meanwhile,
we paint our self-
portraits
on everything
imaginable,
then hold
them
up like mirrors.
Our
mercurial brushes
grow
longer, our skills
more
acute. Dust clouds
the
vision, tinder
to
the eye. So we burn
trees
to save the forests, burn
air
to fly afar. We do, we say.
We
can. The time
is
close at hand. Time was
(said
a man)
you
could tell the weather from the moon.
That
was before another
broke
the quicksilver distance
and
walked all over it.
Now
you can’t tell a thing.
So there'll be lots of "moon" songs this week, although they barely scratch the surface of possibilities from my collection. Herewith, what I think is my favorite playlist in my 4 year DJ career:
Bad Moon Rising Creedence Clearwater Revival
Banjo Moon Greg Brown
Beautiful Moons Benny Green
Billboard On The Moon (Live) Dirk Hamilton
Blue Moon Dylan
Black Moon Wilco
Blue Moon Beck
Bringing Down The Moon John Stewart
Cajun Moon J.J. Cale
Calling The Moon Dar Williams
Casablanca Moonlight Michael Nesmith
Child Of The Moon Rolling Septuagenarians
Circus On The Moon Bruce Hornsby
Clocks And Spoons John Prine
Shoot The Moonlight Out Garland Jeffreys
Man On The Moon R.E.M.
Armstrong John Stewart
Drunk On The Moon Tom Waits
Every Inch A Moon Dirk Hamilton
Drawing Down The Moon Steve Tibbets
Eldorado To The Moon Michael Nesmith
Fly Me To The Moon Bobby Womack
Goodnight Moon Shivaree
Grapefruit Moon Tom Waits
Hey You (Looking At The Moon) Graham Nash
Here Comes The Moon George Harrison
How High The Moon Emmylou Harris
It's Only A Paper Moon Barney Kessel/Stephane Grappelli
Kiko And The Lavender Moon Los Lobos
Moonage Daydream David Bowie
The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress Charlie Haden/ Pat Metheny
Pink Moon Nick Drake
Sun Loves Moon Nick Robertson
Once In A Blue Moon Van Morrison
Moonlight Sonata Ludwig Van Beethoven
I'm sure I've left out some of your favorites but, basically, tough shit-- so I sure hope you'll tune in Tuesday, from noon till two on Wool FM, 91.5, or wool.fm on the webs.
A couple more things: Charlie Haden and Bobby Womack both recently passed, so their songs are both doing double-duty, as songs for the theme and as tributes.
And I saw a bumper sticker yesterday in Alstead on a truck with Vermont plates that said "Guns Don't Kill People:Abortion Clinics Do." I was impressed by that. In 7 short words, 2 assertions, both of which I vehemently disagree with. A-plus for conciseness, at least....
Saturday, July 5, 2014
Creation Myth: Such Are The Days Of Our Lives
As many of you know, I recently spent a week at Chautauqua Institution (you should Google it--it's pretty amazing), my little slice o' heaven here on Earth. I always try to go during "Literary Week," during which Roger Rosenblatt invites 5 of his friends from the writerly world to be interviewed for an hour in front of several thousand people, after which they also read from their work. Hey--I can't let all of my schoolin' go completely to waste.
This year's group was comprised of Tom Brokaw, Margaret Atwood, Elizabeth Strout, Jules Feiffer (I didn't even know he was still alive, and he was fabulous, especially given that he's 85), and Paul Muldoon. During the conversation with "Liz," as Rosenblatt called Ms. Strout, the question arose, since writers, consciously or no, draw so much material from the "facts" of their lives, how many of those "facts" may be wrong. How much of what we remember about our lives, how much of what we know to be true, really happened that way or, indeed, happened at all?
What we remember of our lives may, in fact, be fiction: Life as a novel, if you will. And a novel whose main character may be based on fact, but perhaps fictionalized my the author, if in fact we're writing our lives ourselves. It seems a little weird to think of it that way, but I've certainly experienced it. As I sit here writing this I can look up at a picture from the Bellows Falls Times of me sitting on the arm of my great-grandmother's chair. The photo appeared in early August of 1961, as I was about to observe my 8th birthday and Arabelle her 94th, both on August 12. Until I dredged that clipping up a few years ago, I would have sworn to, and indeed marveled at to classes I taught, the fact that I used to sit on the lap of someone born during the Civil War. Close, but no cigar, General Grant: turns out she was born in 1867, then, not 1865, as I had always remembered it.
There's no great harm in that mistake, of course, but it does make me pause to consider what other things I "know" that may be wrong. Mis-remembering the year my great-grandmother was born doesn't change the essential truth of my life in any material way that I can see, but are there other facts or stories that do? I've personally, seen and read in ostensibly non-fiction articles, instances when other people have very different recollections of events than I, or others who were there, do.
But we all know, don't we, that there's a difference between truth and Truth? That's what makes novels, "fiction," superior to me to nonfiction, to "the facts." Truth is made up of so much more than fact: it's comprised of facts, or at least of "truthy" things, as Colbert might have it, but also our processing of those facts, mixed with emotions, sensations, feelings, intuition. The result of such processing, ideally, leads us to an understanding of the great commonality which grows out of particular experience and unites us all in our collective humanity. For instance, the fact that I misspoke the year of my great-grandmother's birth does not take away from the larger point I was trying to make, that the past is NOT way back there, but right here, still affecting all of us. Often, commonly-accepted facts actually get in the way of the Truth, as we see again and again, perhaps most glaringly in the fairly recent past in the justification for invading Iraq. As Thoreau said, "Read not The Times, read the Eternities."
Anyway, among the songs it's a fact that I'll be choosing from:
A Bedtime Story Danny O'Keefe
Boomer's Story Ry Cooder
Every Picture Tells A Story Rod Stewart
Farewell To Storyville Danny O'Keefe
Love Story Harry Nilsson
Love Story Stephen Stills
Philadelphia Story Wild Colonials
The Story Brandi Carlisle
The Story In Your Eyes Moody Blues
A Story Within A Story Pat Metheny
This Story In Me Tanita Tikaram
What's The Story? Grant Geissman
Deeper Truth Ben Arnold
Give Me Some Truth John Lennon
We Meet, We Part, We Remember The Holmes Brothers
All Of Your Stories Jesse Winchester
Five Short Stories Weather Report
Hand Me Down All Stories Robin Holcomb
Hard Luck Stories Richard & Linda Thompson
New York Stories Grant Geissman
Short Stories Leo Kottke
(Someone's Been) Telling You Stories Dan Fogelberg
Stories We Could Tell John Sebastian
Stories Don't End Dawes
Ugly Stories Josh Rouse
Wond'rous Stories Yes
Low On Memory Mike Andrews
Memory Motel Rolling Septuagenarians
Memories Van Morrison
Hope you can join me, and we can compare notes afterward about what really happened, on Tuesday from noon til two on the fabulous WOOL FM, 91.5, or at www.wool.fm on the webs.
But if I'm not me, who am?
This year's group was comprised of Tom Brokaw, Margaret Atwood, Elizabeth Strout, Jules Feiffer (I didn't even know he was still alive, and he was fabulous, especially given that he's 85), and Paul Muldoon. During the conversation with "Liz," as Rosenblatt called Ms. Strout, the question arose, since writers, consciously or no, draw so much material from the "facts" of their lives, how many of those "facts" may be wrong. How much of what we remember about our lives, how much of what we know to be true, really happened that way or, indeed, happened at all?
What we remember of our lives may, in fact, be fiction: Life as a novel, if you will. And a novel whose main character may be based on fact, but perhaps fictionalized my the author, if in fact we're writing our lives ourselves. It seems a little weird to think of it that way, but I've certainly experienced it. As I sit here writing this I can look up at a picture from the Bellows Falls Times of me sitting on the arm of my great-grandmother's chair. The photo appeared in early August of 1961, as I was about to observe my 8th birthday and Arabelle her 94th, both on August 12. Until I dredged that clipping up a few years ago, I would have sworn to, and indeed marveled at to classes I taught, the fact that I used to sit on the lap of someone born during the Civil War. Close, but no cigar, General Grant: turns out she was born in 1867, then, not 1865, as I had always remembered it.
There's no great harm in that mistake, of course, but it does make me pause to consider what other things I "know" that may be wrong. Mis-remembering the year my great-grandmother was born doesn't change the essential truth of my life in any material way that I can see, but are there other facts or stories that do? I've personally, seen and read in ostensibly non-fiction articles, instances when other people have very different recollections of events than I, or others who were there, do.
But we all know, don't we, that there's a difference between truth and Truth? That's what makes novels, "fiction," superior to me to nonfiction, to "the facts." Truth is made up of so much more than fact: it's comprised of facts, or at least of "truthy" things, as Colbert might have it, but also our processing of those facts, mixed with emotions, sensations, feelings, intuition. The result of such processing, ideally, leads us to an understanding of the great commonality which grows out of particular experience and unites us all in our collective humanity. For instance, the fact that I misspoke the year of my great-grandmother's birth does not take away from the larger point I was trying to make, that the past is NOT way back there, but right here, still affecting all of us. Often, commonly-accepted facts actually get in the way of the Truth, as we see again and again, perhaps most glaringly in the fairly recent past in the justification for invading Iraq. As Thoreau said, "Read not The Times, read the Eternities."
Anyway, among the songs it's a fact that I'll be choosing from:
A Bedtime Story Danny O'Keefe
Boomer's Story Ry Cooder
Every Picture Tells A Story Rod Stewart
Farewell To Storyville Danny O'Keefe
Love Story Harry Nilsson
Love Story Stephen Stills
Philadelphia Story Wild Colonials
The Story Brandi Carlisle
The Story In Your Eyes Moody Blues
A Story Within A Story Pat Metheny
This Story In Me Tanita Tikaram
What's The Story? Grant Geissman
Deeper Truth Ben Arnold
Give Me Some Truth John Lennon
We Meet, We Part, We Remember The Holmes Brothers
All Of Your Stories Jesse Winchester
Five Short Stories Weather Report
Hand Me Down All Stories Robin Holcomb
Hard Luck Stories Richard & Linda Thompson
New York Stories Grant Geissman
Short Stories Leo Kottke
(Someone's Been) Telling You Stories Dan Fogelberg
Stories We Could Tell John Sebastian
Stories Don't End Dawes
Ugly Stories Josh Rouse
Wond'rous Stories Yes
Low On Memory Mike Andrews
Memory Motel Rolling Septuagenarians
Memories Van Morrison
Hope you can join me, and we can compare notes afterward about what really happened, on Tuesday from noon til two on the fabulous WOOL FM, 91.5, or at www.wool.fm on the webs.
But if I'm not me, who am?
Sunday, June 15, 2014
I Pity The Poor Inuit
As faithful readers of this space (and this is Post # 100--raise your hand if you've read them all, then send in the attached postcard for your fabulous gift!) know, I find it hard to cope with the madness that is our world. I want daisies and puppies and banks of snowy white clouds in all sorts of cute animal shapes, and Love and Happiness everywhere, for Everyone. Instead I get the Koch Brothers, the NRA and gun crazies (74 school shootings and counting since Newtown), sectarian conflict and violence in nearly every country of the world, the resurgence of neo-Nazis and the far right the world around, and Fox Noise and its relentless disinformation and indoctrination campaign in the U.S. What's a poor aging (naw, let's be honest: "old") boy to do?
Well, I guess, go with the flow. Throughout human history, there have been three or four or five primary drives, depending upon whose thinking one follows: food, shelter, clothing, procreation, and altered consciousness. Right now, I wanna focus on the consciousness part, although praps in a slightly different form, like maybe unconsciousness.
Michael Pollan, in The Botany Of Desire, put forth the proposition that all societies have looked for means of coping with, as Robert Frost put it "our place among the infinities." As Pollan has it,
In every society except the Inuit, whose climate is too
harsh for vegetation, people have sought to change the
way they experience the world by using a variety of mind-
altering plants. Some of them, such as coca, poppy, and
cannabis, are considered intoxicating because they can
cause profound changes to our consciousness. Other plants
that yield psychoactive products ... like coffee, tobacco and
tea, affect our thoughts and perceptions in subtler ways.
The relationships between these various plants and the people
who use them have evolved over time, both influencing and
reflecting the values of the societies in which they are used.
And all of these plants contain molecules that cause changes
to the biochemical processes that go on deep inside our brains.
Now I know that I'm not the first to suggest this, nor, by far, the smartest or most knowledgeable, even in my own home, never mind the world at large, but doesn't the above
paragraph also describe societal experience of god, or at least religion, over the millenia? We're all looking for ways to cope, to, as John Lennon put it, "get...through the night." It seems to me that we've all always been choosing various means of putting a distance between us and what we, alone, as a species, as far as we know, know to to be our inevitable fate: "the wages of sin is death" and, while there may be "no such thing as an original sin," as Elvis Costello sang it, regardless of how death came into being, it came, and it comes for us all, and we know that, and that's a huge burden to bear.
So we--and in that "we" is absolutely, incontrovertibly, a huge, neon "I"-- look to psychotropic drugs, alcohol, sex, sports, religion--something, anything--to act as a buffer between, and passage through, the exploding plastic inevitable, and whatever awaits us on the other side. Knowledge, indeed, as the story of Adam and Eve teaches us, can be a terrible thing.
What I'm about here, then, while nothing new (c.f. Marx and "opiate of the masses," which is why I'm choosing religion and drugs as the polarities of example here) is simply to suggest that we make our choice of buffer between us and our ultimate fate, follow the path that seems most appealing at the time (and is eminently changeable), and that all choices are, when you boil them down, the same: a way to explain, to ease, to enable us to get through the life thrust upon us. No one way is correct, or better than another; they are all just means to get us to our ends, and they all have their benefits and drawbacks. The problem is that, as with all things humans touch, some of us are excessive with each, and so find a way to fuck it up: drug and alcohol abuse and addiction, sexual addiction or perversion (whatever that means to you), sports fanaticism at the expense of attention to real life's duties, religious extremism, the belief that any one religion is better than another, is "the one true religion," leading to, ultimately, the sectarian-violence-cum-civil-war we're seeing happening in Iraq right now, thanks in no small part to our meddling there.
Here's a bunch of songs that (I think) address this whole mess:
Choose Drugs Juliana Hatfield
Jen Is Bringin' The Drugs Margo & The Nuclear So And So's
Let's Take Some Drugs And Drive Around The Silos
Electricity (Drugs) Talking Heads
Drugs (Electricity) Talking Heads
Summer Of Drugs Victoria Williams
Handshake Drugs Wilco
Rainy Day Women #s 12 & 35 Dylan
Let's Go Get Stoned Joe Cocker
And It Stoned Me Van Morrison
How Long Have You Been Stoned Ohio
Acid Tongue Jenny Lewis
The Acid Song Loudon Wainwright III
Ball Of Confusion The Temptations
Whatever Gets You Through The Night John Lennon
Losing My Religion R.E.M.
No Religion Van Morrison
Dirty Little Religion Warren Zevon
Oh God (Prayer) Annie Lennox
God Song Beth Orton
God's Great Banana Skin Chris Rea
God Shuffled His Feet Crash Test Dummies
God Said No Dan Bern
The walk to the god house Dan Reeder
Little Tin God Don Henley
In God's Waiting Room Garland Jeffreys
Good For God Harry Nilsson
My God Jethro Tull
Go With God (Topless Shoeshine) Joe Henry
God John Lennon
God Ain't No Stained Glass Window Mark Germino
Only God Can Save Us Now Over The Rhine
If There's A God Ry Cooder
God's Song (That's Why I Love Mankind) Randy Newman
He Gives Us All His Love Randy Newman
Beneath The Vast Indifference Of Heaven David Lindley
This'll be happening, as usual, on Tuesday, starting at noon. There're way more songs here than'll fit into a two hour show, so it'll end when it's done, the radio gods willing. WOOL FM, 91.5, WOOL.FM on the webs. See you then, I hope.
And remember: in all things, moderation.
Well, I guess, go with the flow. Throughout human history, there have been three or four or five primary drives, depending upon whose thinking one follows: food, shelter, clothing, procreation, and altered consciousness. Right now, I wanna focus on the consciousness part, although praps in a slightly different form, like maybe unconsciousness.
Michael Pollan, in The Botany Of Desire, put forth the proposition that all societies have looked for means of coping with, as Robert Frost put it "our place among the infinities." As Pollan has it,
In every society except the Inuit, whose climate is too
harsh for vegetation, people have sought to change the
way they experience the world by using a variety of mind-
altering plants. Some of them, such as coca, poppy, and
cannabis, are considered intoxicating because they can
cause profound changes to our consciousness. Other plants
that yield psychoactive products ... like coffee, tobacco and
tea, affect our thoughts and perceptions in subtler ways.
The relationships between these various plants and the people
who use them have evolved over time, both influencing and
reflecting the values of the societies in which they are used.
And all of these plants contain molecules that cause changes
to the biochemical processes that go on deep inside our brains.
Now I know that I'm not the first to suggest this, nor, by far, the smartest or most knowledgeable, even in my own home, never mind the world at large, but doesn't the above
paragraph also describe societal experience of god, or at least religion, over the millenia? We're all looking for ways to cope, to, as John Lennon put it, "get...through the night." It seems to me that we've all always been choosing various means of putting a distance between us and what we, alone, as a species, as far as we know, know to to be our inevitable fate: "the wages of sin is death" and, while there may be "no such thing as an original sin," as Elvis Costello sang it, regardless of how death came into being, it came, and it comes for us all, and we know that, and that's a huge burden to bear.
So we--and in that "we" is absolutely, incontrovertibly, a huge, neon "I"-- look to psychotropic drugs, alcohol, sex, sports, religion--something, anything--to act as a buffer between, and passage through, the exploding plastic inevitable, and whatever awaits us on the other side. Knowledge, indeed, as the story of Adam and Eve teaches us, can be a terrible thing.
What I'm about here, then, while nothing new (c.f. Marx and "opiate of the masses," which is why I'm choosing religion and drugs as the polarities of example here) is simply to suggest that we make our choice of buffer between us and our ultimate fate, follow the path that seems most appealing at the time (and is eminently changeable), and that all choices are, when you boil them down, the same: a way to explain, to ease, to enable us to get through the life thrust upon us. No one way is correct, or better than another; they are all just means to get us to our ends, and they all have their benefits and drawbacks. The problem is that, as with all things humans touch, some of us are excessive with each, and so find a way to fuck it up: drug and alcohol abuse and addiction, sexual addiction or perversion (whatever that means to you), sports fanaticism at the expense of attention to real life's duties, religious extremism, the belief that any one religion is better than another, is "the one true religion," leading to, ultimately, the sectarian-violence-cum-civil-war we're seeing happening in Iraq right now, thanks in no small part to our meddling there.
Here's a bunch of songs that (I think) address this whole mess:
Choose Drugs Juliana Hatfield
Jen Is Bringin' The Drugs Margo & The Nuclear So And So's
Let's Take Some Drugs And Drive Around The Silos
Electricity (Drugs) Talking Heads
Drugs (Electricity) Talking Heads
Summer Of Drugs Victoria Williams
Handshake Drugs Wilco
Rainy Day Women #s 12 & 35 Dylan
Let's Go Get Stoned Joe Cocker
And It Stoned Me Van Morrison
How Long Have You Been Stoned Ohio
Acid Tongue Jenny Lewis
The Acid Song Loudon Wainwright III
Ball Of Confusion The Temptations
Whatever Gets You Through The Night John Lennon
Losing My Religion R.E.M.
No Religion Van Morrison
Dirty Little Religion Warren Zevon
Oh God (Prayer) Annie Lennox
God Song Beth Orton
God's Great Banana Skin Chris Rea
God Shuffled His Feet Crash Test Dummies
God Said No Dan Bern
The walk to the god house Dan Reeder
Little Tin God Don Henley
In God's Waiting Room Garland Jeffreys
Good For God Harry Nilsson
My God Jethro Tull
Go With God (Topless Shoeshine) Joe Henry
God John Lennon
God Ain't No Stained Glass Window Mark Germino
Only God Can Save Us Now Over The Rhine
If There's A God Ry Cooder
God's Song (That's Why I Love Mankind) Randy Newman
He Gives Us All His Love Randy Newman
Beneath The Vast Indifference Of Heaven David Lindley
This'll be happening, as usual, on Tuesday, starting at noon. There're way more songs here than'll fit into a two hour show, so it'll end when it's done, the radio gods willing. WOOL FM, 91.5, WOOL.FM on the webs. See you then, I hope.
And remember: in all things, moderation.
Sunday, June 1, 2014
The King Of Polyester
When I started this foolishness, this blog, at the urging of my friend Travis, in his mind it was simply a way to promote my show on WOOL-FM, to talk about the music, the songs, the important stuff. I subsequently took that idea and twisted it and ran with it, using the blog and the show to espouse my lefty views, to address controversial (mostly) issues, and to tie them to the show's weekly theme. This week, a return to the original purity of intention.
On Tuesday, after my show, Travis and I are heading down I-91 to Northampton, MA, to the hallowed Iron Horse Music Hall to see David Lindley, stringed-instrument wizard and sideman extraordinaire. You've heard him, even if you've never heard of him. I would guess that, for most of us, the first exposure would have been the opening fiddle notes of The Youngbloods' classic "Darkness, Darkness;" most familiarly, though, he was Jackson Browne's sidekick and lead guitar and lap-steel (among other stringed instuments) player on Browne's first four albums. I first saw him on the "Running On Empty" tour, at the Orpheum Theater in Boston in 1977. That album was probably the first time any of us heard Lindley sing, too; on "The Load Out/Stay," Lindley's is the falsetto star turn that culminates the increasingly high-pitched series of verses in the "Stay" portion: Browne to Rosemary Butler to Lindley.
David Lindley is a gnomish figure, dressing, at his shows, at least, almost entirely in polyester, using the cheapest guitars Sears sells, just for their sound and what he can do with them. His muttonchop sideburns, which put Neil Young's to shame, have long since turned white (the guy's 70, after all), although his long and curly hair has, for the most part, remained dark. His travels around the world have led to his introduction to, and subsequent mastery of, such exotic instruments as the oud and the bouzouki, among others. He's appeared on nearly countless albums, hired string-slinger to the stars; as is so often is the case, those behind the scenes are responsible for the reputations of the folks with the great name-recognition.
Here's the playlist, then; the first batch is Lindley accompanying those of, perhaps, greater renown, while the second is Lindley on his own:
Darkness, Darkness The Youngbloods
Stay Jackson Browne
Sing My Songs To Me/For Everyman Jackson Browne
Face Of Appalachia John Sebastian
Yodelling Song Tanita Tikaram
Coming Back To You Jennifer Warnes
World Outside Your Window Tanita Tikaram
Pictures Of You Rory Block
It's A Big Old Goofy World John Prine
Save The Last Dance For Me David Bromberg
Heart Like A Wheel Linda Ronstadt
Simple Man Graham Nash
Wild Tales Graham Nash
Grave Concern Graham Nash
Scattered Taj Mahal
Nothing Like A Hundred Miles James Taylor
Monkey Wash, Donkey Rinse David Lindley
Tu-Ber-Cu-Lucas And The Sinus Blues David Lindley
Pay The Man David Lindley
Ain't No Way David Lindley
7/8 Suite II David Lindley
Gimme Da'ting David Lindley
Do You Wanna Dance David Lindley
Tiki Torches At Twilight David Lindley
Jah Reggae David Lindley
Talk To The Lawyer David Lindley & El Rayo-X
Premature David Lindley & El Rayo-X
Mercury Blues David Lindley & Ry Cooder
Jesus On The Mainline David Lindley & Ry Cooder
Hope to see you Tuesday, noon till two, on Wool FM, 91.5, WOOL.fm on the webs--or at the Iron Horse Tuesday eve.
On Tuesday, after my show, Travis and I are heading down I-91 to Northampton, MA, to the hallowed Iron Horse Music Hall to see David Lindley, stringed-instrument wizard and sideman extraordinaire. You've heard him, even if you've never heard of him. I would guess that, for most of us, the first exposure would have been the opening fiddle notes of The Youngbloods' classic "Darkness, Darkness;" most familiarly, though, he was Jackson Browne's sidekick and lead guitar and lap-steel (among other stringed instuments) player on Browne's first four albums. I first saw him on the "Running On Empty" tour, at the Orpheum Theater in Boston in 1977. That album was probably the first time any of us heard Lindley sing, too; on "The Load Out/Stay," Lindley's is the falsetto star turn that culminates the increasingly high-pitched series of verses in the "Stay" portion: Browne to Rosemary Butler to Lindley.
David Lindley is a gnomish figure, dressing, at his shows, at least, almost entirely in polyester, using the cheapest guitars Sears sells, just for their sound and what he can do with them. His muttonchop sideburns, which put Neil Young's to shame, have long since turned white (the guy's 70, after all), although his long and curly hair has, for the most part, remained dark. His travels around the world have led to his introduction to, and subsequent mastery of, such exotic instruments as the oud and the bouzouki, among others. He's appeared on nearly countless albums, hired string-slinger to the stars; as is so often is the case, those behind the scenes are responsible for the reputations of the folks with the great name-recognition.
Here's the playlist, then; the first batch is Lindley accompanying those of, perhaps, greater renown, while the second is Lindley on his own:
Darkness, Darkness The Youngbloods
Stay Jackson Browne
Sing My Songs To Me/For Everyman Jackson Browne
Face Of Appalachia John Sebastian
Yodelling Song Tanita Tikaram
Coming Back To You Jennifer Warnes
World Outside Your Window Tanita Tikaram
Pictures Of You Rory Block
It's A Big Old Goofy World John Prine
Save The Last Dance For Me David Bromberg
Heart Like A Wheel Linda Ronstadt
Simple Man Graham Nash
Wild Tales Graham Nash
Grave Concern Graham Nash
Scattered Taj Mahal
Nothing Like A Hundred Miles James Taylor
Monkey Wash, Donkey Rinse David Lindley
Tu-Ber-Cu-Lucas And The Sinus Blues David Lindley
Pay The Man David Lindley
Ain't No Way David Lindley
7/8 Suite II David Lindley
Gimme Da'ting David Lindley
Do You Wanna Dance David Lindley
Tiki Torches At Twilight David Lindley
Jah Reggae David Lindley
Talk To The Lawyer David Lindley & El Rayo-X
Premature David Lindley & El Rayo-X
Mercury Blues David Lindley & Ry Cooder
Jesus On The Mainline David Lindley & Ry Cooder
Hope to see you Tuesday, noon till two, on Wool FM, 91.5, WOOL.fm on the webs--or at the Iron Horse Tuesday eve.
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