Stones: the Weight of Liberation (Neil Diamond's "I Am I Said," Bono's "Yahweh," and Bill Flanagan's Stupidity)

Somehow not even Bono can make it artistically kosher to love Neil Diamond.  I'm not sure how that happened. Diamond was once a respected songwriter whose music was covered by the Monkeys, Deep Purple, Elvis and UB40.  True, he did write one incredibly stupid hit about that little alien who wants to phone home.  But, come-on, he's not the only one whose sentimental heart lit up when that insipid green munchkin rode a bike across the silver screen.  Besides, we've forgiven Elton John for "Don't Go Breaking My Heart" and Paul McCartney for "Ebony and Ivory."  Why doesn't the artistic atonement apply to Neil Diamond?  Why, despite all of his good works, is he cut off from grace because of one or two lousy mistakes?

Stones is an amazing album.  Perhaps one of the best.  Like the Beatles white album or Fleetwood Mac's Tusk, even the cover is art.  My copy, handed down from my mother who purchased it in 1971, has a subdued canvas colored background with a course linen fiber printed on it.  In the middle of it is a photograph of Neil Diamond sitting on a park bench in front of a massive stone Italian-styled garden wall.   An old and twisted tree stands in the right hand corner; a stone bust sits in a niche in the wall just left of center, just to right of Diamond, who sits stoically arms folded, his stone face looking out at the audience with no expression.  He is barefoot, which with his stoic look and the old-world setting, gives his form the feel of a statue, adding to the crumbling, classical feel of the mostly monotone photograph of gray and olive. The cover reminds me slightly of Led Zeppelin's "Stairway to Heaven" album with the crumbling wall and portrait of the old man.  There is the same heaviness about it.

The entire album is worth listening to, but I'll focus on side two.  I believe this one side of vinyl contains some of the greatest lyrics ever written, although Neil Diamond only wrote two of the songs.  I don't think that is a coincidence.  Like Elton John's Blue Moves, this album is, in part, a reflective evaluation of the cost of fame. Elton John dealt with that by returning to his classical, jazz and blues roots.  Perhaps, Diamond's decision to use other people's material is a reaching out to the void, hoping for an answer more significant than his own name.  "I Am, I Said," his own song, definitely demonstrates the desire to be grounded in significance.

First, we have the title track, "Stones," one of Diamond's own:

The song starts with a simple strum of the guitar, and then enters the line "Stones would play inside her head," a startling image of uncomfortable weight and solidity oddly placed within the mind.  He follows this up with the image of her bed being made of stones--no peace of mind and no rest for the body due to a solid mass that must be dealt with.

But, it's not a mass without meaning.  We are not shoved into the nihilism of Hemingway here.  This is not a world of nada y pues nada.  The stones may be uncomfortable; they may be there to be dealt with; but they also provide shelter and shade for new beginnings:

You and me, a time for planting
You and me, a harvest granting
The every prayer ever prayed
For just two wild flowers that grow

on stones.

There is beauty here, but it isn't an easy beauty.  It's more like the beauty the atonement brings, a grace that comes after the old has been broken down and something new takes root in the rubble.

This contrast of dark and light, of the jeweled flower among the rock, continues in the second song, "If You Go Away" written by Jacques Brel and Rod McKuen.

And then there's "Suzanne."  Ah "Suzanne," what to say?... Leonard Cohen's lyrical masterpiece, but Diamond brings a weight to song that Cohen just wasn't able to do.

The song starts in the sensual world of materialism:

Suzanne takes you down to her place near the river
You can hear the boats go by, you can spend the night forever
And you know that she's half-crazy but that's why you want to be there
And she feeds you tea and oranges that come all the way from China

Cohen concludes the first third of the song with "For you've touched her perfect body with your mind."  Then, the song pivots from sensual world of light and aroma to the weighty divine:

And Jesus was a sailor when he walked upon the water
And he spent a long time watching from his lonely wooden tower
And when he knew for certain only drowning men could see him
He said all men will be sailors then until the sea shall free them
But he himself was broken, long before the sky would open
Forsaken, almost human, he sank beneath your wisdom like a stone.

Next, comes Randy Newman's composition, "I Think It's Going to Rain Today," which also swings on a fulcrum.  The first half of the song describes interior bleakness:

Broken windows and empty hallways
A pale dead moon in the sky streaked with gray
Human kindness is overflowing
And I think it's going to rain today.

Here, "Human kindness is overflowing" is sarcasm, as indicated by both the music accompaniment and the lines that follow:

Lonely, lonely
Tin can at my feet
Think I'll kick it down the street
That's the way to treat a friend

Human kindness is not overflowing.

Then comes the pivot.  The music changes, becomes upbeat, and similar words take on new meaning:

Bright before me the signs implore me
To help the needy and show them the way
Human kindness is overflowing
And I think it's going to rain today.

Here, it's not the weather that will rain, but the human kindness that is overflowing, love filling the cup up to the brim and raining down on humanity.

Notice the repletion of imagery and themes here.  "Stones" starts with the hard imagery of rocks, but ends by noting that the stones provide shelter for "two wildflowers that grow."  "Suzanne" echoes the flower imagery:  "And she shows you where to look /Among the garbage and the flowers," here garbage providing shelter for the flowers.   "Suzanne" also repeats the imagery of stone in, "he sank beneath your wisdom like a stone".  Here, that weight is ambiguous, depending on how you read the lyrics.  The line could mean, his wisdom sank unnoticed by those that executed Him.  Or, as the "you" in the song seems to refer to the speaker, as we don't all know a "Suzanne," it can also mean his that His presence sank deep into the speaker's soul with great redeeming weight, which is how I read it.

Although Diamond is Jewish, I would argue that in purposefully selecting the songs he has chosen, Diamond is setting up Christ as a symbol for human redemption, which is carried to its climax in "I Am, I Said."

Diamond begins by comparing his new home of L.A. with his roots in New York, saying that he feels "lost between two shores."  Although this is clearly biographical and must be taken literally, I will argue that he extends the literal image out into a metaphor for the human predicament.  We are all lost between two shores.  We are here in this temporal world, "among the garbage and flowers" as noted in "Suzanne," but we also have a divine, spiritual origin that deep down we can't forget, which leaves us feeling lost, ghostlike, unreal, like Christ, "almost human" and yet "almost divine," "lost between two shores."

And so we cry out--not to other men--but to the void, the divine, the spark that brought us into being because the "emptiness deep inside" calls us back to our true home, that distant memory before we were here.

In U2 at the End of the World, Bill Flanagan makes light of Bono's claim that Neil Diamond is a serious song writer. 

Bono looked down his nose at my sarcasm and asked, "Do you know what 'I Am, I Said' is all about?

Flanagan spews out the surface meaning with the depth of understanding of a Pharisee, giving the literal background which inspired Diamond to write the song with little awareness that poetry gains weight as it is written that moves it beyond the initial impulse in scope.

Bono, not flinching, asserts, "God is described as the great I am.  So, in that song Diamond is calling out to Jehovah.  'I am, I said," means, 'God, I said.'  To who?  To no one there!  And no one heard at all, not even chair!  Do you see?  It is a song of despair and lost faith by a man calling out to a God who isn't interested!"

I agree.  Well, mostly.  If you take only "I Am, I Said" by itself  that is true.  It is Christ calling out, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" before being transformed.  But, taking in all of Stones it is the calling out to God in pain the moment before rebirth.

It matters not that Diamond is Jewish.  Poets borrow metaphors all the time.  Christian poets tapped into Greek mythology for centuries.  Besides Jews do believe in Christ--they just don't believe he has already been born and died; but the idea of rebirth out of hardship is nothing new to them. 

In "Yahweh," Bono puts it this way:

Take this shirt
Polyester white trash made in nowhere
Take this shirt
And make it clean, clean
Take this soul
Stranded in some skin and bones
Take this soul
And make it sing, sing

Yahweh, Yahweh
Always pain before a child is born
Yahweh, Yahweh
Still, I'm waiting for the dawn

It is almost as if Bono said to himself, alright the critics won't take "I Am, I Said," seriously because they won't take Neil Diamond seriously, I'll show them.  I'll write my own "I Am, I Said," and they will take that seriously because "I Am Bono."

Of course I don't really think Bill Flanagan is an idiot.   I think his U2 at the End of the World is a fine book.  But, Flannigan is just one among many who for some bizarre reason are out to stone one of our finest song writers, Neil Diamond.  Perhaps some day he will see the errors of ways and tap into the beauty of Stones.  There is certainly sustenance there for those willing to listen.

 

 

Dry Creek and a Sunday Song: "Nearer My God to Thee" (Mormon Tabernacle Choir, Anna Weatherup and BYU Men's Chorus)

9 inches of fresh snow for Christmas, Dry Creek 2015.

I haven't posted one of these in a while.  My illness made it difficult to get around Dry Creek to take pictures.  I haven't been down by the cabin since last spring, and I haven't been down in the main canyon for more than a year.  Our 90 acres, from my perspective, shrank considerably, to mainly the field.  However, even the view from the living room window is pretty spectacular, and I pull up to wild turkey and deer after work on a daily basis, so I shouldn't complain.

Anyway, it's two days after Christmas, the sun is shining bright on a healthy blanket of snow, clumps of snow nestled in the gnarled arms of the oaks out front.  Christmas was amazing.  It snowed pretty much the entire day.  Yesterday, I went out to get some firewood and extended my knee, collapsing to the ground in the old pig shed beside the ATV.  It hurt something awful--and still does--but you can't get too down when the air is that soft alpine blue--deep and vibrant when you look up, but frosted towards the horizons with tints of lavender, the smudgy sky almost the color of snow where it meets the land. Amazing.

The old pig shed from across the field, 2006, before our house was built.
It's amazing how much the pines have grown in that time.

I love the bitter-sharp air, the intense light, the soft silence around.  It brings me "Nearer My God to Thee."

It's not like I'm always aware of that.  I certainly wasn't yesterday, collapsed on the ground beside the ATV. I thought "Oh crap," and lets be honest, some other choice phrases as I hobbled back to the house in pain, but I was also aware of how freaking glorious it was outside.

These are the same small pines you see in the 2006 photo above.

This one wasn't even visible in 2006; it was small enough to be buried.

This morning, I woke up with the tune in my head and thought I'd do a "Dry Creek and a Sunday Song" post once again.

According to Wikipedia, the lyrics were written by the English poet Sara Adams in 1841 at her home in Sunnybank, Loughton, England.

Loughton seems like the perfect parish for such a song to arrive: pastoral, with deep roots.    The earliest structure is from 500 B.C.  The town of Loughton itself remained small until the early 17th Century when a new road made it an important stop on the way to London, and with the new wealth came the great houses of the rich, such as Loughton Hall, which was once owned by Mary Tudor before she became Queen Mary of England. The house also received important guest like Ben Johnson.

Even today, located next to the famed Epping forest, which has long attracted and inspired artists and writers with its beauty, the area--at least from the internet--seems like the perfect place for such a song to be composed.

The verse was first put to music by Adams' sister, composer, Eliza Flower, but the version we know best in the United States (as well as most of the world) is sang to the tune "Bethany" by Lowell Mason, which was composed in 1856.

I've included three renditions, the first by the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, the second by Anna Weatherup, and the third by BYU Men's Chorus.

Enjoy.

Of the Barking Strings: One Account of Growing Up in the 80s, Part I: Start with Nancy Sinatra Reclining on Stage in her Pink, Pseudo-Native American Dress and Pink Boots

The other day a friend asked me how I would start film about the old gang.  It was a reciprocal question; I'd asked all of them the same thing.  They gave me history--how it all started at Bill's Ice Cream in a large and sprawling city on a great, humid plain.  Now, what am I suppose to do with that?

I do feel the stickiness of dried ice cream up to my elbow from reaching way down into the square carton, making sure I "square dipped" appropriately so that we wouldn't have shrinkage.

I remember working the line on those hot August nights when it snaked around the metal bars and people stood with the glass front doors open waiting outside to get out of the heat and have some cool ice cream.  I remember picturing them as flies and wishing I had a great can of bug spray to knock them down, so we could sweep their buzzing, bumbling bodies out the door with a push broom and and shut down.  But the fools just continued to come in.

But what am I to do with that?

I remember Jim belching out the Boss while stocking the milk room--how it was low and muffled until Andrea opened the glass door to Windex it, and it then blasted through the store--

I ain't nothing but tired
Man I'm just tired and bored with myself
Hey there baby, I could use just a little help

Or I remember some chubby, blond punk-ass kid, saying "squeeze-me" for "excuse me" each time he passed a girl behind ice cream counter on his way to get a broom or rag from the back.

But what am I to do with that?

I remember one time Phil asked Andrea if she could invite anyone over for Thanksgiving, who would it be? and she replied, "Sid Vicious."

Okay, maybe I could use that.

But I think I'd start instead with Nancy Sinatra reclining on stage in her pink, pseudo-Native American dress and pink boots singing, "Bang, Bang--My Baby Shot Me Dead."  It's stark--that black background against that shocking pink; it's glamorous--oh that thick, deep 60s long, blond hair; and it has nothing what-so-ever to do with the story-line, which would have been my take on things at the time.

Then, perhaps, there'd be a shot of the gang at the zoo feeding flamingos.  Marsh, here after known as Swamp, would be looking into the camera with strait, dark brown shoulder length hair, Lennon-specs and a cheesy smile.  He'd be wearing a white U2 Joshua Tree t-shirt.  Andrea would be bending over the metal bar, wearing a bright blue t-shirt and blue and black checkered Capris talking to a flamingo directly below her. Here, her hair would be auburn and straight, but it could be any color from neon orange to purple.  Each scene it will be different.  The movie will end with Andrea as Nancy Sinatra, only she will be dressed like Sinead O'Connor and will have a shaved head.  She won't like that.  She won't like any of it.  Jim, I'm not sure what Jim does.  He wears a concert shirt of the Police.  It has the arms ripped off.  He's showing off his muscle.  Oh, I got it, he stands next to Andrea, but faces towards the camera while she faces away.  He looks down at the concrete wearing dark sun-glasses, the type Buddy Holly would wear if Buddy Holly wore sunglasses.  He's counting ants on the ground.  He's up to twenty-four.  I'm not sure why.

The Barking Strings are never sure why.

Phil is pelting the flamingos with bread.  Or, rather Phil, here after known as Glasses, is trying to pelt the flamingos with bread.  Bread doesn't make very good stones.  He looks like Neil Young.  He will hate that.

He doesn't hate Neil Young.  That will soon become very apparent.  But, he will hate that he looks like Neil Young.

Lucy, she now prefers to be called Lucia, will be telling Phil, I mean Glasses, to stop it, that he's mean.  She is the 1960s counter-culture type--two braided pony tails, leather headband, tie-died t-shirt, flowing skirt and all.

Me.  Well, I'm skinny with a white dress shirt that is big and sloppy.  I wear blue-gray dress slacks and canvas vans.  I have a bit of mullet, and if I looked cool, I'd look a bit like Cy Curnin of the Fixx (see video below), but I'm not cool.  I'm a geek with a great unused mind instead.

I hold up a copy of Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited, open the cover, and show the author's note to the audience.  The camera zooms in on the following:

I am not I; thou art not he or she;

they are not they.

--E.W.

There is a black and white shot of U2 by the Mississippi River.  "Heartland" plays.  Scene fades. 

    

The Soundtrack of One Life out of 108 Billion, Entry 8: "All By Myself" by Eric Carmen and "Over & Over" by Fleetwood Mac

Something happened in eighth grade.  I'm not sure what or why.  It wasn't all good.  It wasn't all bad.  But I was somehow sucked from a primarily external world into a primarily internal world--from doing to observing.  I noticed deeply the world around--the lights, the shadows, the stark winter light on blue boned trees.  Everything gained a richness, a complexity, a texture I'd never noticed, never knew.  It was quite startling.  I didn't know how to react.  I didn't know if anyone else experienced this new world.  I felt awkward, a bit like an alien.

Although in many ways I was less mature than other kids my age, definitely more socially awkward, in some ways I all of the sudden was an old soul.   I understood the adult world more than my own.  In music, I was drawn to songs with adult themes, like Eric Carmen's "All By Myself".

Outwardly, I still tried to be the kid I knew how to be, but it didn't work.  I felt fake, and I think I seemed fake to others.  All of the sudden, everything was hard.  And yet, there was a clarity, a complexity I saw in life that thrilled me.

I was interested in layers.  In the natural world, I loved the layers of leaves along the canyon bottom at Dry Creek--how on the top layer they'd be crisp and crunchy; and in the layer below, the leaves would be soft and partially eaten with little squares nibbled out between the fibers; and finally, the later below them would be leaf-skeletons among potato bugs.  Below that would be rich, black dirt.

In music, I liked layers also.  Fleetwood Mac's Tusk album had that.  "Over and Over" had the complexity in sound and lyrics I was looking for.

A richness, a Rembrandt brown in tones, an uncertain hope in the lyrics--hoping something might be, but knowing it just as likely might not be.  Hoping, yearning, over and over.

I don't know what caused it.  I loved a girl, but I'd loved her since fifth grade.

No dramatic event happened in my life.

My family was good, stable.

It's almost as if I was invaded by a knowledge unwarranted.

That person who moved in during 8th Grade has been who I've remained the rest of my life.  I haven't necessarily done much with him other than that I've become a little more comfortable letting the world know it's alright to see shadows in the rain.

But I live in a complex world, a world hope and broken dreams, of love and heartache.  Not because that is my reality necessarily.  But because I see the shadow lives around me--those pretending because not pretending is too damn scary.  Because of this, I don't have a lot of tolerance for those who have no empathy.

But, I'm not sure they can help it.  I too once lived in a world without shadows.  I'm glad that for whatever reason, complexity was thrust upon me.  It's not necessarily an ingredient for success, but it is an ingredient for humanity.

The Soundtrack of One Life out of 108 Billion, Entry 7: The Mormon Missionaries and Led Zeppelin's "Black Dog"

My step dad was a pretty mild-mannered man, a good guy, very much like Atticus Finch; perhaps he didn't have as much courage, but overall, he was a man of manners and integrity.  Everyone in town respected him. He was a teacher and his students loved him.

As a child, it was pretty hard to get him riled.  He was thrifty, so spending money could do it.  Mom and Dad argued about money sometimes.  But, he was pretty tolerant of us kids.  Lloyd played music all the time and at extraordinary levels.  Kim slept in until noon on the living room sofa after coming home late.  Angelo and I fought frequently.

When you did get him angry though, he usually flashed a look rather than words.  He wore dark-rimmed glasses, again not unlike Gregory Peck as Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird, and he would tilt his head down slightly and glare over them with steely eyes.  That was usually all it took to squelch any inclination of rebellion.  Mom, on the other hand, would rant and rave, and leave open lots of vulnerable spots for counter attack.  Besides, she always presented illogical reasons for her authority, such as "Because I'm your mother!" or "Because I said so!"  Always a stickler for logical fallacies, I was compelled to correct her mode of thinking and would infuriate her by saying things like, "Being older doesn't make your right" or "What type of argument is 'Because I said so'?"

Once she got sick and tired of picking up after me--which I now totally get--and threw all my clothes in yard.   I happened to notice she too left things around, so I threw her shoes out in the yard.  Needless to say, that did not go over.

But all Dad had to do was stare over his glasses and my rebellion was over--both because the look truly did make you squirm and because he was almost always fair and so you knew he was right, which is something I cared a lot about.  I had no respect for authority as a kid, but I did have respect for morality.  If anything, I was obsessed with it.  All my life I've been obsessed with the notion things should be just and right.  As Dad usually seemed just and right, I had very little conflict with him.

There was one time though that I got him rather riled.  He had invited the missionaries over for dinner.  For whatever reason, he decided we should have dinner music.

"Steve, go put on a record."

"What record?"

"I don't care.  Whatever one is on there."

"I don't think you want me to do that."

He flashed me that look over his glasses.  Very reluctantly, I complied for I knew what album was on the phonograph.    I flicked the switch, the automatic arm began its process of delivering the needle to the first groove.  By the time the riff started, I was back in my seat around the kitchen table--there to see the shock and horror spread across his face as Robert Plant started belching out...

Hey, hey, mama, said the way you move
Gonna make you sweat, gonna make you groove.
Oh, oh, child, way you shake that thingGonna make you burn, gonna make you sting.Hey, hey, baby, when you walk that wayWatch your honey drip, cant keep away.


Perhaps, even in these days when singers casually sing about lady humps (whatever that describes, I'm pretty sure it's not describing the slouched shoulders of an old woman), perhaps "Black Dog" is still shocking, because when I went to select a live video of it, I couldn't bring myself to do it.  Quite frankly, I found Robert Plant dancing around on stage with a lady's shirt on and unbuttoned, simply strange and repulsive, nothing like U2 singing with the Harlem Gospel Choir.

Although I like Led Zeppelin, I'm glad U2 came into this world--a band that stands for more than bedding girls.

The Soundtrack of One Life out of 108 Billion, Entry 6: "Saturday Night Live" by the Bay City Rollers and "Fooled Around and Fell in Love" by Elvin Bishop

There was the blue room, a lean-to add-on, no insulation.  It was cold, very cold.  We used the closet to keep the apples crisp all winter long.  But at last I had my own room.  No more sharing the partial, unfinished basement with my foster brother and the furnace.  No more sharing the utility room with my foster brother, the hot water heater and the deep freeze.  No more sharing the unfinished garage.

And to top it off, I got my own stereo for Christmas.  Sort of.  It was a small, blue kid's stereo Mom ordered from Sears & Roebuck.  It had two separate speakers unlike most kids' record players.  I remember, we'd ordered one for $35, but Sears goofed and sent the more expensive $45 model to the store--the one I had wanted but was told we couldn't afford.  As it came in right before the big day, they just told Mom to keep it instead of sending it back.  Even so, the speakers were probably only 6" wide and 12" tall.  Records were wider than the cabinet, so I had to lift the dark plastic cover to play one.

I had some 45s, but no albums, so my sister gave me a couple of hers when she got married:  the Ronco collections Far Out and Hit After Hit.  Having no personal space before, I hated going to bed.  Sleeping equipment for kids seemed low priority to Mom.  We always had new couches, but Angelo (my step-brother) and I always slept on trunks or cots.  With Lloyd and Kim out of the house, I had a bedroom with a real bed, and more importantly, a stereo.  And thanks to Kim, I had a couple of records.

As soon as 8:00 rolled around, I was off to bed even though my bedtime was 9:00.  In my dark room, stereo on, eyes shut, I entered my own world.  I became a star.  I became the lead singer of the Bay City Rollers and sang "Saturday Night" before thousands of screaming fans.  I became Elvin Bishop and brought Kelly, the girl I was crazy about, up on stage and sang "Fooled Around and Fell In Love."

Through my teens and twenties, I had a hard time functioning in society, partially because those cold nights in a dark room with the music blasting when I was a child.  Truth is, I loved the life I was living in my head far more than the life I was living in the world.

Since then, I've become better at functioning in the world, but the truth is, I'm still not a big fan of reality, at least not the version promoted by society.

I'd still rather escape into a song, a poem, or a painting than deal with health insurance or taxes.  Material goods don't mean much to me, but time in my own mind does.

Balance, of course, is healthy.  I'm no more healthy than the next guy.  Instead of getting lost seeking things, I get lost seeking dreams, which can leave you just as empty.  It is still avoiding the concrete moments of day to day life.

Being doesn't come easy.

The Soundtrack of One Life out of 108 Billion, Entry 5: The Year I Discovered Continental Drift and Wrote a #1 Hit

Sixth-grade was a remarkable year for me. I discovered continental drift and wrote a #1 hit.  Really.  Well, sort of.  The first was in fact a true discovery.  I was "silent reading" during the dummy-reading class.   The five or six of us would place chairs in a circle with Mr. Robins and read from whatever painfully old text it was, something like Old Yeller, and we'd take turns stumbling aloud over incredibly difficult passages like the following:

We called him Old Yeller.  The name had a sort of double meaning.  One part meant that his short hair was a dingy yellow color, a color that we called "yeller" in those days.  The other meant when he opened his head, the sound he let out came closer to being a yell than a bark.

I hated it.  I was always terrified I'd mispronounce some difficult word, like "meant" as Me-Aunt and everyone would laugh.  "Ha, ha, ha--you sound so British. Me aunt! Me aunt!  Me aunt!"  The only silver lining was that Kelly wasn't there to witness it.  She was outside with Mr. Larson and the accomplished readers having recess.  Good thing.  That would have killed me.  She already made fun of the fact that I had Peanuts Treasury checked out from the Bookmobile for six weeks.  All she had to say was, "I can't believe you're still reading that" and I immediately wanted to take what had previously been my greatest reading treasure and burn it.

Anyway, after the torture of communal oral sacrifice of what was probably someone's proud literary accomplishment, we were allowed to remove our desks from the sacred circle and find peace in isolation and the jumble of words in our very own Bookmobile books.  I always made sure to check out National Geographic books like Volcano or Earthquake because there were lots of pictures, and you could learn everything you needed to know without ever reading a word.  But, mostly I just stared at the walls during silent reading.

On this particular day, I stared at a colored mimeographed map of the world and all of the sudden it hit me: Holy shit, all the continents fit together!  I felt like Moses.  This was life-changing.  No, this was world-changing.  I'd be famous!  Kelly, Kelly, Kelly!  She'd have to be impressed.  As far as I knew, no other sixth-grade boy had discovered all the continents use to be gathered as one.  In fact, no other human being had discovered that.

I rushed home to tell my brother.  I couldn't just tell anyone.  They might beat me to it.  But he'd listen.  He'd know how to proceed.

Yeah, right.  What he did know was how to kill dreams:  "Oh yeah, that, that's called continental drift; it's been known about forever."

But not all was lost.  There was a warm, sloppy spring day with lots of mud and tender green grass.  The sun was hot, the snow was melting.  Richard, Jason and I were all out at the swings doing spiders  with Kelley and I don't remember who, and a spider is where on separate swings you hook your legs together in some convoluted way that I don't recall, and swing in unison, as one, and somehow it had all gone horribly wrong, and Richard and Kelly were spidering gleefully while Jason and I, their servants, ran back and fourth between the swing set and the water fountain in the building, which was no small journey, and using small Dixie cups left over from the lunch ladies serving us warm cider in the morning, we had to bring them fresh water, which they quickly downed laughing hysterically, before sending us on our way again.

Then, to make things worse--or better, I couldn't quite decide which--my old girlfriend, Lynn, started slapping the cups of water out of our hands half way through our journey back to please Kelly, my woman, my goddess.  And dang, the devilish smile on Lynn's face was so damn cute, I didn't know what meant more: to get the cups of water back to Kelly so she'd know how much I truly did love her, or to watch the gleam in those dark brown eyes of my new antagonist.

By the time school was out, I was on cloud nine.  I was in love.  With who, I wasn't sure, but that didn't matter.  What was clear was that girls were amazing.

I spun home in circles, writing a song as I went:

Baby, I am a want you
Baby, I am a need you,
Baby, I am gonna buy your love

I think I was thinking in the upper-middle class, shower-you-in-presents sort of way with the last line here, rather than the prostitute-down-on-some-dark-corner sort of way, but I was definitely too high, no matter how bright I was, to be doing any relevant sociological analysis that either way it amounts to sort of the same thing.

But here's the kicker, as amazing as those lines were, after the whole symphonic transition (sort of like in "A Day in a Life") there was this amazing couplet to a tune I absolutely knew would someday take hold:

And I can't help falling in love with you,
No, I can't help falling in love with you.

I knew I had a hit.  Absolutely.  There is no way the world would ever let such a remarkable song go by unnoticed.  I just had to figure out how to write it down.

I kept my secret until ninth grade when I first consciously heard Elvis on the radio and realized that amazing couplet wasn't mine after all.

 

Pulse (Love, Poetry & Paulo Nutini)

            for Marci

Listening to you listen

to music is a slow

unwinding, a deep

letting go, a blue

knowing, deep

and growing

underground.

There is soil here.

Years of experience

broken down by time

memories layered up, thick

black and real,

two trees

sending signals

underground.

Vibes.   Sounds cliché.

Sleek silver bullet train.

The way you move

through me.

If there was an empty

parking lot in a horribly large and unkind

city, and I found myself

staring down at moonlight

reflected in dreams

busted on the pavement

like so many vodka bottles,

the razor wire

coiled along the chain

link fence calling

my name

like long ago

before you came

into my life

wonderful

I hope

by some

unlikely

coincidence

a car would pass

playing

Paulo Nutini

letting go,

that primal yearning

unwinding so real

and rooted

that I’d

find my way

home to you

the only place

I’ve ever fully

belonged.

The Soundtrack of One Life out of 108 Billion, Entry 4: What Does the Fall of Saigon Have to Do with "That's the Way I Like It" by KC and the Sunshine Band and Central Utah?

Photo by Steve Brown: U.S.S. Midway, San Diego 2012

April 30th, 1975.  Dense gray topical skies.  Palm fronds whip every which way as helicopters touch down outside the American Embassy.  Petroleum burns black along the skyline. Panicked people run down the street, bright, silk floral print shirts, trailing them.  A mother caries a baby in her one arm, drags another child (half running, half falling) behind.  There is pushing, shoving at a white iron gate, terror in the eyes, dread for those too late.  A mother turned a way, sobs and collapses to the ground.  Men claw their way up a wall. Over all the noise is the steady rhythm of the blades.

Lan, age 9, is part of the symphony that is the Fall of Saigon.  What specific clamor wakes her up in the middle of the night while sleeping next to her little sister in the belly of an aircraft carrier on her way to a distant land, I do not know.

Reports came in from the outskirts that the North Vietnamese were moving in.  10:48  Kissinger was notified of the desire to activate "the Frequent Wind" evacuation plan.  Approved minutes later.  The radio was to play Irvin Berlin's "White Christmas," the signal for American personnel to move immediately to the evacuation points.  Technology is always at the hands of humans.  Helicopters moved in.  American service men would be the first.  South Vietnamese elite (those who would be retaliated against) had a chance if they had the money, the political ties, the luck at being at the right place at the right time.  It happened so incredibly fast.

What is her story?  What are the images that flash behind her soft eyelids kicked about during REM like silk sheets on hot humid night while she cuddles close to her little sister?

None of this I know about while playing on the merry-go-round behind the swimming pool or floating a pop can down an irrigation ditch while walking home from school.  None of this can I even imagine when my stepfather asks me if I want to drive out to the trailer park by the mushroom plant (an indoor farm) to meet the new families from Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia.

I don't believe I saw her that day.  I could have.  There were so many.  Four cultures briefly coming together.  There was sweet tea that I'd never tasted, chicken fights (boys carrying each other on their shoulders) in the gravel lane, and delicious dishes of meat and rice that men brought out from their single-wide trailers to show hospitality.  There was lot of pointing, a lot of laughing (the only common language), a lot of saying "that number 1," meaning good, and a lot of saying "that number 10," meaning bad, and I suppose a lot of pretending too as worlds collided in a small trailer court next to an indoor mushroom farm beside a freeway in a big, western valley filled with yellow wild rye, sage brush, and black rubble-rocked extinct volcanoes.

When I do see her a few weeks before the end of third grade, I'm drawn to her beauty the way only a child can be: intently, unpretentiously, without fear or guile.  The two third-grade classes have combined, and we are watching a film about these two science guys who journey through the body. It's set up like a news cast, and they are following the spread of influenza through the blood stream. The class has seen it a couple of times, but it's our favorite.  We're on the floor, and I'm throwing pieces of paper at Lynn because I like her. The secretary walks in with three Asian kids and our teacher stops the movie.  The two boys I already know from the evening my dad took me down to the trailer court.  But I don't look at them long.  Lan is all I see. Her long black hair and dark, warm, almond shaped eyes have me.  And she dresses cool too. Tight, white bell-bottom slacks, a white t-shirt, and a silk flower-print disco shirt, untucked and unbuttoned.

This is before my body chemistry changes in seventh grade and shyness kicks in.  It's not long until we are chasing each other during recess, not long before she's at the top of the slide, swinging her hips, that silk shirt open, blowing in the breeze as she sings, "That's the way, uh-huh, uh-huh, I like it," her long black hair swaying side to side.

All at once I get disco.

But I know nothing, absolutely nothing of what she has seen or the world she has come from.  All I know is that smile has no boundaries.

I was a child growing up in a big, western valley, almost cut off from the realities of the twentieth century, but not quite.  A human catastrophe on the other side of the world gave me a great third and fourth grade that I otherwise wouldn't have experienced, a bit of positive fallout from a war destroyed the lives of millions.

See related post:  That's the Way, Uh-huh Uh-huh, I Like It: Second-Hand Memories of the USS Midway’s Rescue of 3,000 Vietnamese Political Refugees

The Soundtrack of One Life out of 108 Billion: Entry 3: "Monkberry Moon Delight" by Paul McCartney (Nonsense Poetry, Writing and the Creative Process)

It's nineteen-seventy-something.  I'm in second grade, and I've ditched Lynn, my girlfriend, somewhere over by the POD, an octagonal lunchroom separate from the school.  We're playing kissing tag, and it's not that I'm so stupid that I don't know that the purpose of kissing tag is to get caught, it's that her cousin, Lucinda, is more into pinching, and she's very good at it.  So, I've split the scene.

It's warm and snow melting off the comparatively hot pavement creates steam that rises in thin clouds about waste high, and they are golden glorious in the noontime sun.  I've got spring fever and am feeling freaking high. I bellow out Paul McCartney's "Monkberry Moon Delight."  I don't have a clue what it's about, but I love the feel of the words on the end of my tongue:

So I sat in the attic, a piano up my nose,
And the wind played a dreadful cantata.
Sore was I from a crack of an enemy's hose
And the horrible sound of tomato.

Ketchup,
Soup and puree,
Don't get left behind.
Ketchup,
Soup and puree,
Don't get left behind.

I never did figure out the exact meaning of the song.  As I grew older, it seemed to me it might have been inspired by B-grade monster movies, but it also seemed a finger to expectations--artistic, social, political and otherwise, Paul McCartney saying I'll be who I please and do what I please.  It felt very revolutionary to me, and I loved its pure celebration of the sound of language.

Whenever, I'd get upset in high school or early years of college, I'd just fling words down on the page and play with them, make slightly irreverent, irrelevant nonsense out of them, like this:

 More Talk

... Instead I gnarl on a bark stick,
pour on the cats
and say,
"Gee this is very good,
this is very meaty for a stick of wood."

The termites tingle as they slide down my throat.
What would I do for a feast on fat goat?
I'd slit my mother's own throat!

I definitely had nothing against my mom.  I just had something against propriety.  I still do.  I just fight the impulse more.  I'm not so sure that's good.  I think real reverence comes about when you're at least a little open to irreverence.  Paul McCartney could write "Let It Be" and be sincere because he could also write "Monkberry Moon Delight."  If he sat around always trying to write lofty songs, they'd have the impact of Hallmark Cards or the music of Air Supply.

So, to quote Paul--sort of--if you want to write well, leave your cats to Billy Budapest and let your piano be boldly outspoken.

The Soundtrack of One Life out of 108 Billion: Entry 2: On Top of the World with Men Without Mouths (Carpenters, CBS Radio Mystery Theater)

There are a couple of deep, spring memories from Cache Valley.  The first: I stand on the bridge over Spring Creek.  The water is high, almost ready to creep over the road. It's swift, but glassy.  Black stemmed willows arch over.  They reflect, bend, break, bleed into blue sky in the creek below.

"On Top of the World" by the Carpenters plays in my head. I sing along.   I am seven, maybe eight.

A pipe runs under the road, carrying Spring Creek from one side to the other.  With the water so high, it is invisible.  A large whirlpool twists and turns, bending light, torturing the reflected world, occasionally sucking down a passing twig into the unseen.  I stand there and watch and sing.

I move on.  The creek is so high the fields are under water.  A vast shallow lake stretches east towards the Logan Mountains, great trees turned upside down in the reflection.

Everything is submerged except the lane, the house of the elderly couple we lease the ranch from, the milk barn, and the great concrete bull barn where our apartment is.

The next: I play with my race car set in the hay loft above the bulls.  It is an enormous space with two bunkhouses.  I keep my stuffed animals on a bed in one. Mice have moved into my mother tiger.

Out in the hay loft is my play area among a few scattered bales of hay: a Matchbox City carrying case, electronic car park, an electric crane, and race car set between mesas of hay.




There must be a radio too, for I've turned on the CBS Radio Mystery Theater.  Why I listen to it up here, I don't know.  We usually gather in the the living room around the new quadraphonic stereo.

I wish I hadn't.  I have never pictured men without mouths before. My mind won't let it go no matter how many times I sing the Budweiser jingle--and here's to you, the king of beers is coming through--to make it go away.

I creep down the tight spiral staircase to the saddle room, very dark below.

The Soundtrack of One Life out of 108 Billion: Entry 1, "Let It Be" by the Beatles (Moments, Memory and Music)

There is something dangerous about tapping into memory and writing about the past.  It's like trying to make use of good spring water.  Anything you do to improve the flow, no matter how careful you are, changes both the spring and stream forever.  Basically, you can only tap a deep memory once and receive pure writing from it.  After that, it's muddied by the mind's desire for theme and structure.

It is what it is.  One of my first memories is walking up a spiral staircase to my brother's bedroom.  I remember the carpet was gray, tight weaved, like industrial carpet, and there was dust along the edges that my mother's fierce vacuuming never reached.  Up above, a room opened up with yellow light, and glorious music spilled down the stairway, swirling around me.

Let It Be.  I was only four.  I've checked the accuracy of the memory with my brother, and the spiral staircase was three or four steps at the very most, and didn't twist at all.  But, I know the moment happened despite the mythic elements of memory and time.  That is probably the moment I became both a hippie and a Christian, which I have remained at heart, at some level or another, throughout my life.  It's so simple, but it says it all:

And when the broken-hearted people
Living in the world agree
There will be an answer, let it be
For though they may be parted
There is still a chance that they will see
There will be an answer, let it be

A compassion for the less fortunate, a desire for a universal brotherhood, and a faith in a higher power has always been my center.  Outwardly, I have not lived a large life; but inwardly, I have. When I was younger, that bothered me.  I thought I had things that needed to be said, things that should be heard.  I dreamed of stardom so I could have a large podium from which to speak.  As I've aged, I've realized that is true of everyone.  Each person has much the world should hear, but with 108 billion souls calling earth home at some point, there simply hasn't been enough air time.  We tend to want that--to have impact, to think our life has given others meaning.  Sometimes that is true, sometimes not.  But, what I think now is that we are ultimately here for one reason only--to soften, to open, to let more sorrow in, and by doing so, more light also.

"Let It Be," my first musical memory, is probably my purest, despite the distortions of my young mythic mind. That only makes sense.  We come into this world open and learn to become guarded with time until we learn to let go and open again--if  we learn that at all.

Some do.
Some don't.
Let it be.

Is Etta James the Heart and Soul of Poetry?: Etta James, Van Morrison, and the Art of the Repeated Line

I dreamt that the key to poetry is the music of Etta James.  As I really didn’t have a clue who Etta James was, I thought this is either ridiculous or quite significant.  (Note:  a couple of weeks earlier I dreamt I would be the father of a major school of poetics, Rammed-Earth Poetry, so clearly my id is searching for some sort of significance here.)  Still, could a dead relative of mine, or Etta herself, or perhaps even God Almighty be directing my artistic pursuit from the other side?  I don’t know.  Part of me always wants to write off the muse as pure crap, but some of my best poems have come to me in dreams.  So, then I think, well, it’s just the workings of the subconscious.  But, when I put on Etta this morning, I thought sweet damn that lady do sing the blues so sweetly redemption is hanging out on the street corner just waitin to smile up at me with great big, black eyes that contain all the love in the universe!

And I thought there might be something to this crazy dream after all.  Now, I’m not ready to toss William Carlos Williams in the trashcan yet, but maybe there is something other, something just as real, but different than the right-on images, perfect line breaks, and plain ol’ American dialect--something that’s missing not only from my own work, but also the work of my heroes.

I know repetition draws me, the chant, and going back mid-step, before your foot is fully forward, like Van Morrison does:

 

 

But how do you get that on the page independent of the blues band?  If, I say if, I say, if it’s the ramble and the row, the slow winding out, then pulling back in, then bellowing out heart and soul that drives poetry, the eye has to be able to pick that up, line by line, so the music forms in the reader’s mind.

Is it doable?  I don’t know.  Or is that even why Etta James is the heart and soul of poetry?

But, I do know this: although I woke up thinking I had a crazy dream, after listing to Etta, I do believe she is indeed the heart and soul of poetry and I’m more than willing to explore possibility that some of her spirit can be captured in the unaccompanied line. 

Besides, it’s kind of like deciding that Julia Roberts holds the secret to acting.  Even if you’re wrong, after seeing her smile, quite frankly, who gives a damn?  After hearing Etta, my life aint gonna never be the same nohow.  And I thank whatever dead relative cared enough about to let me in on that secret.