The pressure is on. Only one more day of posts in my desert island ten. What will I wrap it up with. I dunno. Today however I stray far afield in my choice.
I like trance music and electronica. I have been listening to this edge of the music spectrum since the mid-1970s. I have my old Brian Eno LPs with titles like Music for Films and Music for Airports. Music for Airports is probably my favorite electronic piece of music. In recent years Moby has caught my interest.
It is funny I first heard the first of these two pieces on an early episode of Without a Trace. I fell in love with the song the second I heard it. There is something about the brightness to the sound of ambient/electronic music that really attracts me. I don’t dance but I do appreciate the grooves.
Sometimes it isn’t anything but the music that matters.
The second track is a really beautiful piece that is a fitting compliment to my reflections in these electronic pages.
Saturday, January 30, 2010
Friday, January 29, 2010
A Desert Island Series of Musical Interludes VIII
Today’s post is a three for one. I realize this is a bit of a cheat on my part. I had one song in my but I had a couple of alternatives up the sleeve if I needed. However all the songs had problems when I was searching for them on Youtube. On two of the tunes the problem was an issue of audio quality and the third one had an issue with video that I have posted before but the music quality is good.
The artists involved on these songs are the unifying elements. Richard Shindell and Robert Earl Keen are singer/songwriters. Shindell has a wonderful voice, am excellent way with a lyric and is a damned competent guitar player. Keen, well he is a damn fine songwriter and his heart comes from a place where I have been and I think most of my friends have been. Both have caught my attention over the last ten to fifteen years.
As you may know I have been following and going to see Shindell since he was playing in church basements years ago. In an intimate setting his music has an immediacy and warmth that is hard to resist. This artist has a couple of songs that just amaze me every single time I hear them. One is the Ballad of Mary Magdalene. The other is Reunion Hill. Both have a sneaky depth to them that leaves you thinking even after you have finished humming along on the catchy choruses.
What I had intended to post was Shindell’s cover of a Robert Earl Keen song called Shades of Gray. He performed it about a decade ago with a group called Cry, Cry, Cry. The whole depiction of tipping over porta potties and doing a little dance just outside the law reminded me of Pedricktown if you had grown up there 1969-1975. The bit where the guy is referring to the main actors in the song as just a bunch of sorry kids well yeah that kind of summed it if you were male and from Oldman’s township.
Given there was no good post of it I went with the Shindell cover song of Cold Missouri Waters because the audio quality was great and the story compelling. In order to at least offer a nod to my original choice I decided to post Keen’s version of the song. Alas there are no really clean copies of the song out there. Most were from hand held concerts and the audio was dicey. Well what the heck I decided I will post the best of the mediocre renderings of the tune and tack on my favorite Robert Earl Keen tune as a bonus.
Walking Home was a CD my niece gave me back in her days as a record promoter. It took me about six months to put it in the CD player but when I did I just loved it. Being Robert Earl Keen there are a couple of throwaways on the disk, but there is also a suite of songs that reminds of Cormac McCarthy’s Border Trilogy. (If you haven’t read those books you really should at least read the first one if I remember it right it is called All the Pretty Horses. It is much better than the movie they made of it. ) Any how there was one song that just stuck out on that disk, Feels So Good to be Feeling Good Again.
Good golly that song just sounds like the perfect night. First you walk into a bar. Next you find all your friends there. Then you discover you have more cash that you thought you had. How wonderful would that be? Anyway this post was going to be Cry, Cry, Cry singing Shades of Gray, but because I couldn’t find an okay (to my taste) version you get these three songs. Enjoy.
The artists involved on these songs are the unifying elements. Richard Shindell and Robert Earl Keen are singer/songwriters. Shindell has a wonderful voice, am excellent way with a lyric and is a damned competent guitar player. Keen, well he is a damn fine songwriter and his heart comes from a place where I have been and I think most of my friends have been. Both have caught my attention over the last ten to fifteen years.
As you may know I have been following and going to see Shindell since he was playing in church basements years ago. In an intimate setting his music has an immediacy and warmth that is hard to resist. This artist has a couple of songs that just amaze me every single time I hear them. One is the Ballad of Mary Magdalene. The other is Reunion Hill. Both have a sneaky depth to them that leaves you thinking even after you have finished humming along on the catchy choruses.
What I had intended to post was Shindell’s cover of a Robert Earl Keen song called Shades of Gray. He performed it about a decade ago with a group called Cry, Cry, Cry. The whole depiction of tipping over porta potties and doing a little dance just outside the law reminded me of Pedricktown if you had grown up there 1969-1975. The bit where the guy is referring to the main actors in the song as just a bunch of sorry kids well yeah that kind of summed it if you were male and from Oldman’s township.
Given there was no good post of it I went with the Shindell cover song of Cold Missouri Waters because the audio quality was great and the story compelling. In order to at least offer a nod to my original choice I decided to post Keen’s version of the song. Alas there are no really clean copies of the song out there. Most were from hand held concerts and the audio was dicey. Well what the heck I decided I will post the best of the mediocre renderings of the tune and tack on my favorite Robert Earl Keen tune as a bonus.
Walking Home was a CD my niece gave me back in her days as a record promoter. It took me about six months to put it in the CD player but when I did I just loved it. Being Robert Earl Keen there are a couple of throwaways on the disk, but there is also a suite of songs that reminds of Cormac McCarthy’s Border Trilogy. (If you haven’t read those books you really should at least read the first one if I remember it right it is called All the Pretty Horses. It is much better than the movie they made of it. ) Any how there was one song that just stuck out on that disk, Feels So Good to be Feeling Good Again.
Good golly that song just sounds like the perfect night. First you walk into a bar. Next you find all your friends there. Then you discover you have more cash that you thought you had. How wonderful would that be? Anyway this post was going to be Cry, Cry, Cry singing Shades of Gray, but because I couldn’t find an okay (to my taste) version you get these three songs. Enjoy.
Thursday, January 28, 2010
A Desert Island Series of Musical Interludes VII
It was most likely in 1970 although it could fall a year either way in the march of time I was listening to WMMR as I dried the dishes in my south Jersey home. The deal was that my old man would wash the dishes and I would dry. As an accommodation I would get to turn the radio to FM and listen to WMMR and that damn hippie music.
Back then WMMR was the bastion of underground music and free form radio. You would hear Miles Davis, the Jefferson Airplane, Moby Grape, Long John Baldry and a ton of other artists in a row and the announcer might or might not tell you what you had just heard. Several songs and the artists involved eluded me for years. This was mostly because by the time a real format had developed for the station that free form ethos had faded and the artists had fallen from favor. Two of these artists and songs I have posted either here or on the FB page. To get a sense of what I am talking about follow my old links to Ralph McTell’s Streets of London and to the stuff off Nick Drake’s Bryter Later.
One band that did not get away from my consciousness was Fairport Convention. With raucous guitar work and odd instrumentation they played old, old songs, or so it seemed. One song they played really was an old one, it is part of the Child Ballads http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_ballad From the moment I heard this song I fell in love with Sandy Denny’s voice and Richard Thompson’s guitar. By the time I was in a place and could see the concerts I wanted Sandy Denny was dead. It was one of folk rock music’s greatest losses.
However I did get to see Richard Thompson a number of times. Every time I see him perform be it in an electric rock band or solo acoustic the music is wonderful. In college nobody knew who Fairport Convention was. While they might have been big in Philly they had not been heard in the Midwest. I would crank up all my Fairport LPs out the window of my dorm room on spring days. The English exchange students would all appreciate this a taste from home. I also got to know a number of other people would come up and say who is that and wow that was great and then we would start talking.
Even today this song still rocks.
The link is music only.
Back then WMMR was the bastion of underground music and free form radio. You would hear Miles Davis, the Jefferson Airplane, Moby Grape, Long John Baldry and a ton of other artists in a row and the announcer might or might not tell you what you had just heard. Several songs and the artists involved eluded me for years. This was mostly because by the time a real format had developed for the station that free form ethos had faded and the artists had fallen from favor. Two of these artists and songs I have posted either here or on the FB page. To get a sense of what I am talking about follow my old links to Ralph McTell’s Streets of London and to the stuff off Nick Drake’s Bryter Later.
One band that did not get away from my consciousness was Fairport Convention. With raucous guitar work and odd instrumentation they played old, old songs, or so it seemed. One song they played really was an old one, it is part of the Child Ballads http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_ballad From the moment I heard this song I fell in love with Sandy Denny’s voice and Richard Thompson’s guitar. By the time I was in a place and could see the concerts I wanted Sandy Denny was dead. It was one of folk rock music’s greatest losses.
However I did get to see Richard Thompson a number of times. Every time I see him perform be it in an electric rock band or solo acoustic the music is wonderful. In college nobody knew who Fairport Convention was. While they might have been big in Philly they had not been heard in the Midwest. I would crank up all my Fairport LPs out the window of my dorm room on spring days. The English exchange students would all appreciate this a taste from home. I also got to know a number of other people would come up and say who is that and wow that was great and then we would start talking.
Even today this song still rocks.
The link is music only.
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
A Desert Island Series of Musical Interludes VI
When I was younger say 19 years old Pat Metheny would come by East Lansing one or two times a year. When he first was passing through he would he would play at the kivas in various dorms. As I understand kiva means meeting place. The rooms were open, circular and small. For the next couple of years I would go early and would literally sit at his feet because there was no stage. There were just some pieces of plywood laid out that comprised the stage area of the room. At most the room held 200-225 people.
Sitting there, I heard what was probably some of the best live jazz playing I will ever hear. These were the years Metheny was on ECM and the album he was supporting for the first couple of tours was called Watercolors. If you haven’t heard it, find it on line and give it a listen. He was barely older than I was then and it was just amazing to see what he could do with the guitar and his band was none too shabby either.
After the concerts we would walk across the frozen tundra that was the campus of MSU here in Michigan (read 2 degrees F and wind blowing icy snow at your face wrapped in a scarf inside a parka) to the Olde World Café. A couple of bucks would buy a big fresh baked pretzel and a mug of hot mulled wine. Filled with ethereal music and hot mulled wine the nights did not seem so cold. (Well that and the fact that if you had taken a date to this fest of ethereal melody- I mean it was the 70s - you probably were going to get laid, ergo it wouldn’t be all that cold at all now would it)
Excuse my digression and just enjoy the music.
Sitting there, I heard what was probably some of the best live jazz playing I will ever hear. These were the years Metheny was on ECM and the album he was supporting for the first couple of tours was called Watercolors. If you haven’t heard it, find it on line and give it a listen. He was barely older than I was then and it was just amazing to see what he could do with the guitar and his band was none too shabby either.
After the concerts we would walk across the frozen tundra that was the campus of MSU here in Michigan (read 2 degrees F and wind blowing icy snow at your face wrapped in a scarf inside a parka) to the Olde World Café. A couple of bucks would buy a big fresh baked pretzel and a mug of hot mulled wine. Filled with ethereal music and hot mulled wine the nights did not seem so cold. (Well that and the fact that if you had taken a date to this fest of ethereal melody- I mean it was the 70s - you probably were going to get laid, ergo it wouldn’t be all that cold at all now would it)
Excuse my digression and just enjoy the music.
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
A Desert Island Series of Musical Interludes V
It seems to me like they were always there that indescribable band from San Fransico. I think the first time I heard the Grateful Dead was on a Sunday evening late night progressive show on an AM station out of Philadelphia. WIBG had some mellow voiced dude that had a couple of hours when he would play the acid rock sounds coming out of the left coast. The station could see the handwriting on the wall from FM and was trying desperately despite its history of playing rock and soul pop to hold an audience. I think the first song I remember hearing from the Dead was something like Don’t Stop on the Tracks.
Anyway a little while later one of my nefarious cousins had a purloined copy of American Beauty. It was too country for him so I bought it for a dollar. American Beauty became the anthem of my high school years. I played that record so many times that when you picked it up by the edge it became a slinky. To this day, my brain just shifts out of gear when I hear the opening strains of Box of Rain on Pandora.
When I got to college one of the first two or three records I bought was the relatively recent release by the band called Wake of the Flood. It became the soundtrack of that year of change and turmoil. Eyes of the World is special because well it was the soundtrack of, well uhm, it was my answer to Barry White albums if you get my drift.
No matter what has happened in my life the Grateful Dead have always been there. Unbroken Chain was playing when Primus was born.
Funny story. One day I was sitting talking to an anesthesiologist and we were comparing rock concerts we had attended. Damn if he hadn’t been to all the small and odd Grateful Dead shows I had been to like Masonic Hall in Detroit. The Crisler show in Ann Arbor was noted by both of us to have been real good. He had also been to the Pine Knob show where they only sold to row J. It was at that one that the hot air balloons went over and you heard 2000 people collectively say, “Wow man”. I looked at the doctor and said “From Deadhead to anesthesiologist?” He smiled and replied “You do what you love, ya know what I mean?”
Anyway a little while later one of my nefarious cousins had a purloined copy of American Beauty. It was too country for him so I bought it for a dollar. American Beauty became the anthem of my high school years. I played that record so many times that when you picked it up by the edge it became a slinky. To this day, my brain just shifts out of gear when I hear the opening strains of Box of Rain on Pandora.
When I got to college one of the first two or three records I bought was the relatively recent release by the band called Wake of the Flood. It became the soundtrack of that year of change and turmoil. Eyes of the World is special because well it was the soundtrack of, well uhm, it was my answer to Barry White albums if you get my drift.
No matter what has happened in my life the Grateful Dead have always been there. Unbroken Chain was playing when Primus was born.
Funny story. One day I was sitting talking to an anesthesiologist and we were comparing rock concerts we had attended. Damn if he hadn’t been to all the small and odd Grateful Dead shows I had been to like Masonic Hall in Detroit. The Crisler show in Ann Arbor was noted by both of us to have been real good. He had also been to the Pine Knob show where they only sold to row J. It was at that one that the hot air balloons went over and you heard 2000 people collectively say, “Wow man”. I looked at the doctor and said “From Deadhead to anesthesiologist?” He smiled and replied “You do what you love, ya know what I mean?”
Monday, January 25, 2010
A Desert Island Series of Musical Interludes IV
Ry Cooder is one of those guys that have been at the edge of the music business for decades. He has put out some incredible music. Get Rhythm is a masterwork of just snappy roots rock sensibility.
When I first got to college I bought Paradise and lunch. It had some great songs and it got played again and again. Nobody who I knew understood it. They were listening to Kiss and Styx and Thin Lizzy. No knock on those bands because he along with Bob Seger’s Live Bullet they were the soundtrack of hundred beer soaked Saturday nights. Still occasionally I would run across somebody playing Ry Cooder at a party or somewhere else and their tastes would be way cool. I found myself getting introduced to a ton of great music because once you started talking about Ry Cooder, next this up was Little Feat or maybe Captain Beefheart.
Anyway back to Get Rhythm, the album’s closing number is a heart wrenching ballad called Across the Borderline. I haven’t lived on the southern border of this country. I haven’t experienced the pain both sides in the immigration debate feel. However like a number of Bruce Springsteen’s songs and Dave Alvin’s California Snow this song conveys the heartache that the illegal migration to El Norte carries with it.
When I first got to college I bought Paradise and lunch. It had some great songs and it got played again and again. Nobody who I knew understood it. They were listening to Kiss and Styx and Thin Lizzy. No knock on those bands because he along with Bob Seger’s Live Bullet they were the soundtrack of hundred beer soaked Saturday nights. Still occasionally I would run across somebody playing Ry Cooder at a party or somewhere else and their tastes would be way cool. I found myself getting introduced to a ton of great music because once you started talking about Ry Cooder, next this up was Little Feat or maybe Captain Beefheart.
Anyway back to Get Rhythm, the album’s closing number is a heart wrenching ballad called Across the Borderline. I haven’t lived on the southern border of this country. I haven’t experienced the pain both sides in the immigration debate feel. However like a number of Bruce Springsteen’s songs and Dave Alvin’s California Snow this song conveys the heartache that the illegal migration to El Norte carries with it.
Sunday, January 24, 2010
A Desert Island Series of Musical Interludes III
In the year of 1983 my father died. At that time I was estranged from my now wife. We weren’t married then and having had her throw me out I was adrift. It was a couple of year period when I was having a time out for my bad behavior.
One night that year I was on the Outer Banks pretty much alone and trying to sort some things out. Well after a couple days of behaving very badly at a friend’s wedding I found myself making a phone call from a telephone booth out in the middle of nowhere trying to get in touch with my now wife. I think I got an answering machine. It was about as lonely a time as I can remember. I really didn’t like myself or where I was headed. But I was a bit headstrong and as of that time not very repentant. Not really.
This song is a wistful thing. It is really talking about the cost of a woman being secure in herself. Still there are lines that just paint a picture in my mind of that trip and that sense of separation I felt from pretty much everyone I thought I had loved. It is a great song and every single time I hear it I can see the phone booth and the Atlantic Ocean not but a couple of hundred yards away that night some 25 + years ago.
One night that year I was on the Outer Banks pretty much alone and trying to sort some things out. Well after a couple days of behaving very badly at a friend’s wedding I found myself making a phone call from a telephone booth out in the middle of nowhere trying to get in touch with my now wife. I think I got an answering machine. It was about as lonely a time as I can remember. I really didn’t like myself or where I was headed. But I was a bit headstrong and as of that time not very repentant. Not really.
This song is a wistful thing. It is really talking about the cost of a woman being secure in herself. Still there are lines that just paint a picture in my mind of that trip and that sense of separation I felt from pretty much everyone I thought I had loved. It is a great song and every single time I hear it I can see the phone booth and the Atlantic Ocean not but a couple of hundred yards away that night some 25 + years ago.
Saturday, January 23, 2010
A Desert Island Series of Musical Interludes II
Miles. Jazz. That is all that needs to be said.
When I heard this song the first time it was about 1 a.m. in a friend's dorm room. I had a beer in one hand and I really shouldn't have because I had more than enough that night. I had a Newport cigarette in my other hand. I think there were some candles lit and we were watching the snow come down over Brody Complex. As I took a drag off my cigarette and we commiserated over the fact we weren't getting laid that night this came on. At that point I knew I wanted to own a bar, a jazz club to be exact and I wanted to be there at closing while the musicians riffed while breaking down the equipment. Oh well I went a slightly different route. But each time I hear this I am right back there in that dream.
When I heard this song the first time it was about 1 a.m. in a friend's dorm room. I had a beer in one hand and I really shouldn't have because I had more than enough that night. I had a Newport cigarette in my other hand. I think there were some candles lit and we were watching the snow come down over Brody Complex. As I took a drag off my cigarette and we commiserated over the fact we weren't getting laid that night this came on. At that point I knew I wanted to own a bar, a jazz club to be exact and I wanted to be there at closing while the musicians riffed while breaking down the equipment. Oh well I went a slightly different route. But each time I hear this I am right back there in that dream.
Friday, January 22, 2010
A Desert Island Series of Musical Interludes I
Over the next two weeks I am going to schedule a desert island series of videos to post. These are songs that represent artists who would be in my desert island ipod mix. These songs and artists represent the music I love because I am who I am. Maybe my choices will reveal more about me than I am intending, but so be it.
The music I listen to most is acoustic, soft and normally is presented as a ballad. The singers have rich voices or maybe just unique voices. The songs normally tell a story that matters or that touches me. In some cases I know the reason, in others I don’t.
My guess as I start this is that Youtube may have some of the songs and some of the artists but not in the combination I truly want. So there will be problems. Hopefully this works well enough and through the serendipity of doing this I create a fun series of posts.
I start with the woman who changed my musical tastes forever. Joni Mitchell's record For the Roses changed what I wanted from music. Judgment of the Moon and Stars is my all time favorite. This is a decent enough video and the sound quality is very good. My original intent had been to put a song called Refuge of the Roads up because it is far more accessible. It is from a later album during her foray into LA jazz. While the links I found were personally interesting I couldn’t find a decent copy that held up as a piece that others would be interested in, even a little bit. As a result I had to wonder if this my true favorit was out there. It is the music, not the video that matters.
The music I listen to most is acoustic, soft and normally is presented as a ballad. The singers have rich voices or maybe just unique voices. The songs normally tell a story that matters or that touches me. In some cases I know the reason, in others I don’t.
My guess as I start this is that Youtube may have some of the songs and some of the artists but not in the combination I truly want. So there will be problems. Hopefully this works well enough and through the serendipity of doing this I create a fun series of posts.
I start with the woman who changed my musical tastes forever. Joni Mitchell's record For the Roses changed what I wanted from music. Judgment of the Moon and Stars is my all time favorite. This is a decent enough video and the sound quality is very good. My original intent had been to put a song called Refuge of the Roads up because it is far more accessible. It is from a later album during her foray into LA jazz. While the links I found were personally interesting I couldn’t find a decent copy that held up as a piece that others would be interested in, even a little bit. As a result I had to wonder if this my true favorit was out there. It is the music, not the video that matters.
Thursday, January 21, 2010
Simply the Most Beautiful Love Song I Know
This never got airplay on top forty radio. Hell it probably only played once or twice on free form FM as that media was fading. Still, it is one of the most beautiful songs I know. So today I share it.
I know the video is a tad bit eccentric. But at least it has a decent quality audio track.
I know the video is a tad bit eccentric. But at least it has a decent quality audio track.
Wednesday, January 20, 2010
Mid-week Musical Interlude
I have been very reflective of late. This is a bit of a throwback to another era. I understand the ambivalence people have toward Jackson Browne. I feel it too. But the song is one that really touches on areas of life other than romantic relationships.
Tuesday, January 19, 2010
Synchroncity and the Spreading of Light
Sometimes things fall funny. It just is the way it is. As you know I write a blog that is basically an old guy remembering his youth and his ill advised behaviors at that time. Occasionally I will take on the current affairs of my world or the world in general. I am not TMZ, Drudge or even Finding Dulcinea for that matter, although I do highly recommend the last site, here is the link.
http://www.findingdulcinea.com/
The other day I was listening to the radio NPR in particular and I heard a phrase I liked. It was “punching a hole in the darkness.” Having heard the phrase I decided I would write on it. I tried to do my due diligence. My spouse is a stickler for details and she motivates me to check stuff out. The speaker had attributed the quote to Robert Louis Stevenson as a child. While I did not go to Snopes to insure that he had said it I did Google the term. After wading through a number of links to sermons positing Jesus as the light in question and offering various religious interpretations I did find a Wiki that seemed to tie the quote to it purported author. Yeah I know Wiki does not equal accuracy, thank you very much Mr. Colbert.
As I related in the post I ultimately put up I wanted to use the quote in a different way. I thought it made a nice humanist maxim. For me to have written a blog post about the quote had clearly impacted my thoughts and piqued my interest. I was not alone.
My post went up midday Sunday with links to the NPR piece Weekend Edition Sunday where I had heard the quote, to my initial Google search for the quote and to a Tom Waits song (there is never enough Tom Waits on the web) that used a variation on the theme. Apparently I wasn’t the only person who was struck by the quote.
My blog usually has a readership of about 5-10 somewhat dedicated readers. These are people I grew up with, people I worked with and people who I have sat and spun yarns with over the years. Some of my readers have signed on as followers. Others just post comments to which I usually don’t respond. (I have since learned using a Google search for something else all together that not responding is a net etiquette faux pas. As a result I have been responding to comments for the past few days. We will see if that lasts.)
After I posted the piece on my take on the Stevenson quote things at my blog changed. All of a sudden I was getting comments from people I had never heard from. Some of these folks are very cool. I note one person who made a comment has trekked in Nepal and has a lovely blog associated with that journey. As the weekend continued I decided to check my basic free version of site meter to see what was going on. The tally was quite impressive. Mind you I haven’t broken a hundred hits in a day, but I had more than 10 hits in a day an awesome figure for the ranting of the lunatic husband of a very nice woman. The locations of the hits were diverse, California, Iran, Britain and well New Jersey.
I couldn’t figure out what was going on. On a lark today I decided to do some basic checks to see if anyone had linked to the post, not much there really. Finally I Googled the term “Stevenson punching a hole”. There it was, the source of my woefully personal navel lint displaying blog’s recent increase in popularity. At the time I checked the search term referenced my blog was number four entry under the query just cited. I had displaced one of the religious sites. Apparently NPR listeners had skipped over the religious sites and hit my site to see if it had anything of use to them as they too were mulling over the quotation. Apparently they liked the quote too. I mean it is very strong imagery.
Wow, I am flabbergasted. I am also humbled.
What I do with my blog is something focused on a personal deficit. As a kid (hell, as an adult) I never did well in writing courses or with writing in general. I felt that while I had a reasonably strong vocabulary I had absolutely no mechanical deftness with the pen. My blog was intended for me to try and work out my desire to translate my stories, my feelings into words that I could share. Catching a wave of interest in a random quote by talking on about a pastor’s potential Sunday sermon topic which was buried in an interview with an aging civil rights leader on NPR really is for me really punching a hole in the darkness.
http://www.findingdulcinea.com/
The other day I was listening to the radio NPR in particular and I heard a phrase I liked. It was “punching a hole in the darkness.” Having heard the phrase I decided I would write on it. I tried to do my due diligence. My spouse is a stickler for details and she motivates me to check stuff out. The speaker had attributed the quote to Robert Louis Stevenson as a child. While I did not go to Snopes to insure that he had said it I did Google the term. After wading through a number of links to sermons positing Jesus as the light in question and offering various religious interpretations I did find a Wiki that seemed to tie the quote to it purported author. Yeah I know Wiki does not equal accuracy, thank you very much Mr. Colbert.
As I related in the post I ultimately put up I wanted to use the quote in a different way. I thought it made a nice humanist maxim. For me to have written a blog post about the quote had clearly impacted my thoughts and piqued my interest. I was not alone.
My post went up midday Sunday with links to the NPR piece Weekend Edition Sunday where I had heard the quote, to my initial Google search for the quote and to a Tom Waits song (there is never enough Tom Waits on the web) that used a variation on the theme. Apparently I wasn’t the only person who was struck by the quote.
My blog usually has a readership of about 5-10 somewhat dedicated readers. These are people I grew up with, people I worked with and people who I have sat and spun yarns with over the years. Some of my readers have signed on as followers. Others just post comments to which I usually don’t respond. (I have since learned using a Google search for something else all together that not responding is a net etiquette faux pas. As a result I have been responding to comments for the past few days. We will see if that lasts.)
After I posted the piece on my take on the Stevenson quote things at my blog changed. All of a sudden I was getting comments from people I had never heard from. Some of these folks are very cool. I note one person who made a comment has trekked in Nepal and has a lovely blog associated with that journey. As the weekend continued I decided to check my basic free version of site meter to see what was going on. The tally was quite impressive. Mind you I haven’t broken a hundred hits in a day, but I had more than 10 hits in a day an awesome figure for the ranting of the lunatic husband of a very nice woman. The locations of the hits were diverse, California, Iran, Britain and well New Jersey.
I couldn’t figure out what was going on. On a lark today I decided to do some basic checks to see if anyone had linked to the post, not much there really. Finally I Googled the term “Stevenson punching a hole”. There it was, the source of my woefully personal navel lint displaying blog’s recent increase in popularity. At the time I checked the search term referenced my blog was number four entry under the query just cited. I had displaced one of the religious sites. Apparently NPR listeners had skipped over the religious sites and hit my site to see if it had anything of use to them as they too were mulling over the quotation. Apparently they liked the quote too. I mean it is very strong imagery.
Wow, I am flabbergasted. I am also humbled.
What I do with my blog is something focused on a personal deficit. As a kid (hell, as an adult) I never did well in writing courses or with writing in general. I felt that while I had a reasonably strong vocabulary I had absolutely no mechanical deftness with the pen. My blog was intended for me to try and work out my desire to translate my stories, my feelings into words that I could share. Catching a wave of interest in a random quote by talking on about a pastor’s potential Sunday sermon topic which was buried in an interview with an aging civil rights leader on NPR really is for me really punching a hole in the darkness.
Memory of the Live Oaks
My father was from North Carolina but his family was from South Carolina. Coming into this world when Taft was President the world he knew was completely different from the one I knew when John Kennedy was my childhood President.
In my youth I criss-crossed the Carolina country so many times I thought it would never end, and then it did. I moved away to college and away from home in New Jersey. While I would go home on holiday I never again would make the family trip up and down the old US highways that weaved down the tidewater to Horry County, SC.
Even from the days I first began hearing this song it always was tied to my father for me. He longed for the Carolina of his youth but by the time he was in his sixties it was gone. He had thought about moving back and talked of it a hundred times. But one day when he talked to my great uncle Vance who had moved back down south after years in New York he knew such a move would be a mistake.
Up until the day he died he was wistful about those days he spent growing up there. This song is about as wistful as they get.
In my youth I criss-crossed the Carolina country so many times I thought it would never end, and then it did. I moved away to college and away from home in New Jersey. While I would go home on holiday I never again would make the family trip up and down the old US highways that weaved down the tidewater to Horry County, SC.
Even from the days I first began hearing this song it always was tied to my father for me. He longed for the Carolina of his youth but by the time he was in his sixties it was gone. He had thought about moving back and talked of it a hundred times. But one day when he talked to my great uncle Vance who had moved back down south after years in New York he knew such a move would be a mistake.
Up until the day he died he was wistful about those days he spent growing up there. This song is about as wistful as they get.
Power Without Bounds (Are We Thinking This Through?)
There was an interesting piece in an online paper on the use of the internet and the culture that is evolving from it. The article was in the New York Times. Looking at it I find there is a bit of a hidden bias, an apologia for a coming change to the Time’s access policy. However there are a couple of points that are much broader and merit mention. The article penned by John Tierney is somewhat a book review of a tome entitled “You Are Not a Gadget,” by Jaron Lanier. It is somewhat a polemic about how writers are getting screwed by the mantra of an open internet.
Hey I agree creators of intellectual property should get paid for their endeavor. I have no problem with that. I wish I was good enough to get paid for my writing. On the pragmatic side of how writers whose work is disseminated via the internet should get paid and how much should they get paid, I haven’t worked that all out in my head. Personally I have problems with long patent durations on life saving/life sustaining drugs. Similarly I have issues with long term copyrights on manuscripts that trail on far after the creator of the work is dead. Yeah and I am okay with estate taxes too.
As interesting as the above paragraph and the ideas contained therein might be, there are at least six different blog posts possible on each sentence, what I am more interested in is the comments regarding internet group dynamics. I am reprinting the first part of the article here but if you want to read it in contact here is the link,
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/12/science/12tier.html?ref=science
Mr. Lanier, a musician and avant-garde computer scientist — he popularized the term “virtual reality” — wonders if the Web’s structure and ideology are fostering nasty group dynamics and mediocre collaborations. His new book, “You Are Not a Gadget,” is a manifesto against “hive thinking” and “digital Maoism,” by which he means the glorification of open-source software, free information and collective work at the expense of individual creativity.
He blames the Web’s tradition of “drive-by anonymity” for fostering vicious pack behavior on blogs, forums and social networks. He acknowledges the examples of generous collaboration, like Wikipedia, but argues that the mantras of “open culture” and “information wants to be free” have produced a destructive new social contract.
“The basic idea of this contract,” he writes, “is that authors, journalists, musicians and artists are encouraged to treat the fruits of their intellects and imaginations as fragments to be given without pay to the hive mind. Reciprocity takes the form of self-promotion. Culture is to become precisely nothing but advertising.”
I find his critique intriguing, partly because Mr. Lanier isn’t your ordinary Luddite crank, and partly because I’ve felt the same kind of disappointment with the Web. In the 1990s, when I was writing paeans to the dawning spirit of digital collaboration, it didn’t occur to me that the Web’s “gift culture,” as anthropologists called it, could turn into a mandatory potlatch for so many professions — including my own.
So I have selfish reasons for appreciating Mr. Lanier’s complaints about masses of “digital peasants” being forced to provide free material to a few “lords of the clouds” like Google and YouTube. But I’m not sure Mr. Lanier has correctly diagnosed the causes of our discontent, particularly when he blames software design for leading to what he calls exploitative monopolies on the Web like Google.
(emphasis added)
Two things have always bothered me about the web. These items are the lack of accountability on the macro scale relative to both bloggers and larger organizations and the pervasive nature of group think. I have always worried that demagogy would find this place an excellent and fertile group for something way beyond the fascists and the National Socialists of the 1930s. While Hitler had to rely on tracts and speeches, a really ingenious potential despot could use faked videos and faked polls and faked everything to appeal to the basest instincts of the lowest common element of society. Republican pundits would imply that this is how Obama was elected. Whatever.
But really if there was someone with broader appeal than Osama the net could be a scarily destructive force to democratic values in a way that I don’t think the general populous has considered. I don't know that I trust the hive. I am afraid that nobody will be holding back the mad vendors of hate.
Hey I agree creators of intellectual property should get paid for their endeavor. I have no problem with that. I wish I was good enough to get paid for my writing. On the pragmatic side of how writers whose work is disseminated via the internet should get paid and how much should they get paid, I haven’t worked that all out in my head. Personally I have problems with long patent durations on life saving/life sustaining drugs. Similarly I have issues with long term copyrights on manuscripts that trail on far after the creator of the work is dead. Yeah and I am okay with estate taxes too.
As interesting as the above paragraph and the ideas contained therein might be, there are at least six different blog posts possible on each sentence, what I am more interested in is the comments regarding internet group dynamics. I am reprinting the first part of the article here but if you want to read it in contact here is the link,
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/12/science/12tier.html?ref=science
Mr. Lanier, a musician and avant-garde computer scientist — he popularized the term “virtual reality” — wonders if the Web’s structure and ideology are fostering nasty group dynamics and mediocre collaborations. His new book, “You Are Not a Gadget,” is a manifesto against “hive thinking” and “digital Maoism,” by which he means the glorification of open-source software, free information and collective work at the expense of individual creativity.
He blames the Web’s tradition of “drive-by anonymity” for fostering vicious pack behavior on blogs, forums and social networks. He acknowledges the examples of generous collaboration, like Wikipedia, but argues that the mantras of “open culture” and “information wants to be free” have produced a destructive new social contract.
“The basic idea of this contract,” he writes, “is that authors, journalists, musicians and artists are encouraged to treat the fruits of their intellects and imaginations as fragments to be given without pay to the hive mind. Reciprocity takes the form of self-promotion. Culture is to become precisely nothing but advertising.”
I find his critique intriguing, partly because Mr. Lanier isn’t your ordinary Luddite crank, and partly because I’ve felt the same kind of disappointment with the Web. In the 1990s, when I was writing paeans to the dawning spirit of digital collaboration, it didn’t occur to me that the Web’s “gift culture,” as anthropologists called it, could turn into a mandatory potlatch for so many professions — including my own.
So I have selfish reasons for appreciating Mr. Lanier’s complaints about masses of “digital peasants” being forced to provide free material to a few “lords of the clouds” like Google and YouTube. But I’m not sure Mr. Lanier has correctly diagnosed the causes of our discontent, particularly when he blames software design for leading to what he calls exploitative monopolies on the Web like Google.
(emphasis added)
Two things have always bothered me about the web. These items are the lack of accountability on the macro scale relative to both bloggers and larger organizations and the pervasive nature of group think. I have always worried that demagogy would find this place an excellent and fertile group for something way beyond the fascists and the National Socialists of the 1930s. While Hitler had to rely on tracts and speeches, a really ingenious potential despot could use faked videos and faked polls and faked everything to appeal to the basest instincts of the lowest common element of society. Republican pundits would imply that this is how Obama was elected. Whatever.
But really if there was someone with broader appeal than Osama the net could be a scarily destructive force to democratic values in a way that I don’t think the general populous has considered. I don't know that I trust the hive. I am afraid that nobody will be holding back the mad vendors of hate.
Monday, January 18, 2010
Monday Musical Interlude II
Sometimes faith is easier when we are shepherding others through the darkness. It is not so easier when the din abates.
Monday Musical Interlude I
I have been haunted by this song for several weeks now. I have seen Richard Shindell a number of times. On my iphone I have a Pandora channel devoted to him. Some great stuff shows up on his channel, John Gorka, Guy Clark and Dar Williams to name a few.
For a couple of days this was the song cropped up as the opening tune. It is wistful and full of allusion and metaphor. I keep coming back to individual lines again and again. I am sorry that there really isn’t a better version of this out there to post. Still this is very pretty.
On the Passing of George Leonard
I am a child of the late 1960s but more of the early 1970s. I came too late to have an understanding of the meaning of the days of rage when they were occurring. I watched the battles of the Democratic Convention with the eyes of the young and uninformed. By the time Kent State happened I had a much better understanding of exactly how precarious the state of nation was at the time. Who I am is in great deal the result of the turmoil of that era.
As I have noted before I read the literature of the time, Vonnegut, Hesse, Bateson, Kesey and Kenneth Boulding. Apparently a noted voice of that era has died, George Leonard. I had heard of George Leonard because I had heard of Esalen. Kesey had talked about it and it had cropped up in some articles I had read in Rolling Stone. While I had heard of him but was not familiar with him.
In reading the New York Times today I came upon his obituary. Apparently Leonard came to Esalen initially as a reporter and then a convert. Surprising how such a seeker found his niche. I liked the last two paragraphs talking about Mr. Leonard and his relationship with Esalen. I print them here. They are not my words but I think they are good words. I think the last paragraph is pretty much consistent with what I have been saying for a long time. If you want to read the whole obituary the link is below the quote.
Esalen’s history is a mélange of seemingly unrelated events, people and principles: the Tibetan Book of the Dead, the cultural critic Susan Sontag, sensory awareness experiments, the nuclear war theorist Herman Kahn. Mr. Leonard said the unifying principle was, essentially, joy.
“How can we speak of joy on this dark and suffering planet?” he wrote in an early statement of Esalen’s purpose. “How can we speak of anything else? We have heard enough of despair.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/18/us/18leonard1.html?ref=todayspaper
As I have noted before I read the literature of the time, Vonnegut, Hesse, Bateson, Kesey and Kenneth Boulding. Apparently a noted voice of that era has died, George Leonard. I had heard of George Leonard because I had heard of Esalen. Kesey had talked about it and it had cropped up in some articles I had read in Rolling Stone. While I had heard of him but was not familiar with him.
In reading the New York Times today I came upon his obituary. Apparently Leonard came to Esalen initially as a reporter and then a convert. Surprising how such a seeker found his niche. I liked the last two paragraphs talking about Mr. Leonard and his relationship with Esalen. I print them here. They are not my words but I think they are good words. I think the last paragraph is pretty much consistent with what I have been saying for a long time. If you want to read the whole obituary the link is below the quote.
Esalen’s history is a mélange of seemingly unrelated events, people and principles: the Tibetan Book of the Dead, the cultural critic Susan Sontag, sensory awareness experiments, the nuclear war theorist Herman Kahn. Mr. Leonard said the unifying principle was, essentially, joy.
“How can we speak of joy on this dark and suffering planet?” he wrote in an early statement of Esalen’s purpose. “How can we speak of anything else? We have heard enough of despair.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/18/us/18leonard1.html?ref=todayspaper
Sunday, January 17, 2010
How My Brain Works or Doesn't Work
The Glass Bead Game by Herman Hesse was a book I read when I was far too young to understand its contents. Currently an old paperback copy sits on my bookshelf here. Pulled out from musty boxes filled with paperbacks with signets from the 60 and 70s, Grove, Dell, Avon, it has remained unopened since 1974 when at 18 years old I devoured it. I have had it out for about a year now with the intent that I should go back and reread this Hesse’s magnum opus when I have a few spare moments. Spare moments, ha.
The one thing I remember and my perception of this may be warped, is that the game was very convoluted and involved finding of connections between music, literature, mathematics and other disciplines. Synchronicity obviously had a role in the playing of the game. This would figure given that one of the characters in the book was a thinly disguised rendering of Frederick Nietzsche. Today as the morning progressed I felt I was playing my own Glass Bead Game as I was listening to Liane Hansen on Weekend Edition Sunday.
In commemoration of the King Holiday Weekend Edition Sunday played a piece where one of the men on the balcony with Dr. King at the moment of his assassination was telling his story, his oral history of that horrible moment. The clip was from Reverend Kyles and it was recorded more than a decade ago. The next thing that happened was they interviewed an obviously older version of the Reverend Kyles about what it felt like today looking back on all of what has occurred. Here is the piece.
http://www.npr.org/templates/player/mediaPlayer.html?action=1&t=1&islist=false&id=122670935&m=122670920
Reverend Kyles talked about what he would be preaching in his homily on this day the Sunday before the holiday. His message was going to focus on punching holes in the darkness. The Reverend stated that Robert Louis Stevenson was the source of his theme. Per Reverend Kyles the original versions of this idea were comments made when Stevenson was sickly child and the adults overseeing his care were concerned about his staring out the window. They asked Stevenson about what he could see looking out of his sickroom’s window into the dark night. Stevenson responded by saying that he was watching the old man punching holes in the night. When quizzed about he said the old man would climb up the ladder and light a light. Stevenson noted that he watched this old man repeat the process again and again as he was knocking holes in the dark.
I really liked that thought, knocking holes in the darkness. It was a metaphor for so much of what each of does in the course of day. We try to provide knowledge and reduce ignorance. We try to reduce uncertainty and bring knowledge based peace. We act to make life easier through disclosure punching holes in the empty ache of frightened unawareness. It was a very humanist theme. Before I was going to start riffing on it I decided I had better check out the original genesis of the quote by a quick Google search. It sounded too familiar.
What I found was that the quote is attributed to Stevenson. What I also found was that about every church and every pastor in America has had a sermon wherein Jesus was the awl punching the holes in the darkness. Here is the link if you want to check some of them out.
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=punching+holes+in+the+darkness&sourceid=navclient-ff&rlz=1B3DVFA_enUS313US315&ie=UTF-8&aq=0&oq=punching+hole
Jesus was not the theme I was heading for. I liked the act as a human endeavor, one of kindness and compassion. But something kept nagging at me where had I heard this phrase before? Another Google search changing the terms a couple of times followed. Finally I got it, “punching a hole in the night” It was Tom Waits of course. It is one of the most popular of Tom Wait’s songs because it has been covered by everybody.
Okay so the mental slipstream today goes like this…
The Martin Luther King Holiday -- Robert Louis Stevenson -- Tom Waits -- Glass Bead Game -- Herman Hesse -- Synchronicity -- Nietzsche
Not much point to all of this except to detail how my though process sometimes works.
The one thing I remember and my perception of this may be warped, is that the game was very convoluted and involved finding of connections between music, literature, mathematics and other disciplines. Synchronicity obviously had a role in the playing of the game. This would figure given that one of the characters in the book was a thinly disguised rendering of Frederick Nietzsche. Today as the morning progressed I felt I was playing my own Glass Bead Game as I was listening to Liane Hansen on Weekend Edition Sunday.
In commemoration of the King Holiday Weekend Edition Sunday played a piece where one of the men on the balcony with Dr. King at the moment of his assassination was telling his story, his oral history of that horrible moment. The clip was from Reverend Kyles and it was recorded more than a decade ago. The next thing that happened was they interviewed an obviously older version of the Reverend Kyles about what it felt like today looking back on all of what has occurred. Here is the piece.
http://www.npr.org/templates/player/mediaPlayer.html?action=1&t=1&islist=false&id=122670935&m=122670920
Reverend Kyles talked about what he would be preaching in his homily on this day the Sunday before the holiday. His message was going to focus on punching holes in the darkness. The Reverend stated that Robert Louis Stevenson was the source of his theme. Per Reverend Kyles the original versions of this idea were comments made when Stevenson was sickly child and the adults overseeing his care were concerned about his staring out the window. They asked Stevenson about what he could see looking out of his sickroom’s window into the dark night. Stevenson responded by saying that he was watching the old man punching holes in the night. When quizzed about he said the old man would climb up the ladder and light a light. Stevenson noted that he watched this old man repeat the process again and again as he was knocking holes in the dark.
I really liked that thought, knocking holes in the darkness. It was a metaphor for so much of what each of does in the course of day. We try to provide knowledge and reduce ignorance. We try to reduce uncertainty and bring knowledge based peace. We act to make life easier through disclosure punching holes in the empty ache of frightened unawareness. It was a very humanist theme. Before I was going to start riffing on it I decided I had better check out the original genesis of the quote by a quick Google search. It sounded too familiar.
What I found was that the quote is attributed to Stevenson. What I also found was that about every church and every pastor in America has had a sermon wherein Jesus was the awl punching the holes in the darkness. Here is the link if you want to check some of them out.
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=punching+holes+in+the+darkness&sourceid=navclient-ff&rlz=1B3DVFA_enUS313US315&ie=UTF-8&aq=0&oq=punching+hole
Jesus was not the theme I was heading for. I liked the act as a human endeavor, one of kindness and compassion. But something kept nagging at me where had I heard this phrase before? Another Google search changing the terms a couple of times followed. Finally I got it, “punching a hole in the night” It was Tom Waits of course. It is one of the most popular of Tom Wait’s songs because it has been covered by everybody.
Okay so the mental slipstream today goes like this…
The Martin Luther King Holiday -- Robert Louis Stevenson -- Tom Waits -- Glass Bead Game -- Herman Hesse -- Synchronicity -- Nietzsche
Not much point to all of this except to detail how my though process sometimes works.
Friday, January 15, 2010
Bus Moments
Warm morning this for January that is. Dead center of the month and I can stand at this bus stop writing in this eco friendly recycled journal with bare hands. Normally my digits each and every one of them, would be clawing their way into my pockets for warmth, but not today. A bit of a thaw is occurring. Standing water can be seen in the street. Looking down the road surface to the east where light is creeping into the sky the street view is ugly. Still with the air temperature hovering at a point well above freezing I will sacrifice and forgo aesthetic pleasure. The warm lets me grab this time for writing and that is something good.
Last night my dreams were tormented. From what I can remember I was at a lunch with an old friend, someone that used to matter in my life. In a very calm voice they were telling me they were dying. Okay what they were telling me was that they had a serious cancer one that is pretty drastic. Shocked I awoke and it was about 4 a.m. I lay there for a few minutes trying to figure out what was fueling the dream. The best I could come up with was that I was feeling a general sense of loss and it was rolling over into my subconscious.
In the past three years I have moved from feeling like an ageless thirty something to something more approaching old. Cancer, heart disease and all the aches and pains that creep in at odd times like when I am [insert activity here from sex to hiking]. These twinges and maladies have stripped me of about half of the good day mornings I used to have. You know those days, the ones where you wake up and think “I don’t know what I am going to do today, but it is going to be good day. I am going to make it be good.” Yeah I feel loss about that. I guess I had better start working through the steps to the point where I gain acceptance.
Oh well, on to other topics. Last night I returned to reading Chesterton again. Yes it did put me out drooling at one point but hey so does television. Despite the valium like nature of certain expositions he is among my favorite writers. My guess is that he was a good chess player. His words, sentences and paragraphs are all structured like clever and well nuances gambits on the 8 x 8 board. Each word, each sentence is picked with a view to what will happen ten moves ahead. His finishing sentence in a chapter is always an emphatic statement of “Checkmate”.
Back to the here, back to the now. Today I am riding a later bus than usual. The kids’ lives were a train wreck and I got dropped off at the bus stop late. This bus takes longer and I will be late for work. C’est la vie.
These people are real different. On the earlier bus the population has oxford shirts, ties and sack lunches in special little reusable bags. The early bus catches the frugal or eco-friendly middle managers and shuttle them off, all good civil servants dressed in grey. On this bus which will arrive downtown after the set starting time of this city of 8 a.m. the garb and the faces are a little more desperate.
Sitting directly across from me is a woman with a puffy face like a long time steroids user. She is as the term goes one of God’s special children. I have seen this woman a number of times before. She rides the bus every day and any variation in seating patterns gets her agitated. She likes a seat near the back on the curb side. If she can’t find one she makes noises and fumbles her bags and personal materials about. She will sit elsewhere but she will keep looking back to her spot. If a seat opens up she will dash back nestle in and then her world will be alright again. She will flash a little smile of victory.
Once downtown she will get off at the library. She works there doing shelving. It is most likely her highest and best occupation. My guess that by placing books in order and neat formation on shelves is the means by which she channels her particular brand of OCD into making some kind of living. She sorts books according the Dewey decimal system or some other alpha-numeric arrangement course and then finds them their rightful place. With her laser like focus she is excellent at her job.
Next to her sits the tall and lanky late teen community college student. He looks as if he has slept in his clothes. Maybe he got lucky last night and he hasn’t had the chance to go home yet. Maybe but I doubt it. His face is splotched with acne and his hair is greasy and flying wildly awry in clumps. A quick glance reveals he doesn’t have a book bag thus adding to the theory of no trip home last evening.
Tap, tap, and tap his thumbs pound away on his phone and then a blip noise. He sort of smiles, in a pained way, it is almost the look you would expect if he just passed some silent but intestine pressuring gas. Taken as a whole cloth he just looks sad and out of place in this world and in this morning light.
A man sits directly across from me. His winter knit cap is black. He has black faux leather gloves and shoes. He has cast several sideways glances at me as if he is trying place where he knows me from. Perhaps I put him on this bus (or rather keep him on this bus). His body language is tense; perhaps like me he has missed the early bus and is running late for work. He has pulled his small canvas bag that contains some oblong into his lap draping his hands over it. His hands now form an upside down v.
My bus has arrived at its stop. The air is warmer yet. Enough of the free people watching; now I move on to where I get paid money to do it.
Thursday, January 14, 2010
It beats Melatonin
Tonight I decided I would try to return to academic pursuits. I opened up G.K. Chesterton’s tome on St. Thomas Aquinas. The part where his brothers kidnapped him from the pilgrimage to Paris and threw him in a room with a hooker kept my interest. The part where he drove her out of the room with a hot poker glowing red from the fireplace had some action. And then he burned the wood which barred the door branding it with the sign of the cross, way cool. We don’t have saints like that anymore. However when he got to the part at university where he was trying to suss out Aristotelian logic and his belief structure, uh well I can still taste the ink from the book where it came to rest on my face. Can we say soporific?
Contradiction and the Divine
Many times when I am quoting Merton I try to expand on his conception of God in the lines that I write. What I mean is that while I am Christian I know, respect and love many others who are not. These are people who hold serious and considered opinions about life, death and meaning. Sometimes what Merton says has a broader application than is apparent at first blush when you read it in light of the large C Catholic context of his writing.
Personally I believe that my best conveying of what my faith is comes through my actions in living my life, not repetition of Pat Robertson like portrayals of a lake of fire to motivate capitulation of the unwashed. (My take on damnation is a little different than Mr. Robertson’s; I believe that hell is absence from the presence of the divine). So when it appears clear Merton is talking about God in the broadest unknowable sense of the term I use terms like peace or divine or the infinite depending on the context in my reposting of the text. Also I try to look at the pronouns carefully so as not to promote an XY centric world.
Today’s quote as mangled by me, “The divine reveals itself in the middle of conflict and contradiction-but we want to find the divine outside all contradiction”. AYWTM 01-14 (paraphrased).
I live with two children. One child is 14 the other twelve. They are both boys. I think you can see why I like this quote.
Personally I believe that my best conveying of what my faith is comes through my actions in living my life, not repetition of Pat Robertson like portrayals of a lake of fire to motivate capitulation of the unwashed. (My take on damnation is a little different than Mr. Robertson’s; I believe that hell is absence from the presence of the divine). So when it appears clear Merton is talking about God in the broadest unknowable sense of the term I use terms like peace or divine or the infinite depending on the context in my reposting of the text. Also I try to look at the pronouns carefully so as not to promote an XY centric world.
Today’s quote as mangled by me, “The divine reveals itself in the middle of conflict and contradiction-but we want to find the divine outside all contradiction”. AYWTM 01-14 (paraphrased).
I live with two children. One child is 14 the other twelve. They are both boys. I think you can see why I like this quote.
Wednesday, January 13, 2010
Working to Soft Music I Clean the Kitchen
Wednesday, January 13, 2010
In solitude I unlearn all tension; I rid myself of the strains that have falsified me in the presence of others and which have put harshness in my words to others. Merton paraphrased
Domestic work can be cathartic. Faced with the tough choices my current economic realities present throwing myself at an unkempt kitchen can lighten the soul. With summer camps, vacations, home repairs and sports activities all needing funding, and with my investments in auto companies and banks having under performed a little soul lightening made sense. Okay, I hear you thinking he is weird. Hey when life turns tough I turn toward cleaning.
My better half was hurting from a crushing sinus headache brought on by an infection that never seems to abate. Her aches sometimes lay her out. On Monday she stayed home. Despite her hope in staying at the house to just crawl under the covers she realizes as I often do in those situations that life in our world just does not stop. Between moments of respite she carried out the planning and cooking of our week’s meals. As she pointed out to me she cleaned up the cooking pans with one exception, a roasting pan that needed to soak.
The roasting pan is big and unwieldy. Sitting in the sink it really doesn’t allow other dishes, cups, knives and forks to accumulate with it. These get parked on the counter next to the now bubble less slime that is the soak material for the pan. Dishes back up fast with two kids and a voracious husband about.
Last night my goal was not to attack the roasting pan. I had a simple plan. Because the morning prep for school and work is often chaotic I would make lunches in advance. As I have postulated before, my life is ruled by the theory (or is it law) of multiplying antecedent steps.
To make lunches I had to have clear counter space. To have clear counter space I had to deal with the amassed dishes. To deal with the grit encrusted, mint ice cream tinted plates and flatware I had to scrub by hand the roasting pan and to load the dishwasher. To load the dishwasher I had to empty it of the clean dishes first. To effectively clean the roaster I had to empty the detritus around the sink into the kitchen waste bin. To empty the scraps and like into the bin I had to remove the completely full bag of trash that was already there and take it to the outdoor garbage can. To make that trek I had to put shoes on and shovel a path to the dumpster. Back inside I put a new bag in the waste basket relining it and thus actually beginning to get the whole job done. Oh I cleaned off the glass stove top as a bonus.
What started as a six minute job took two hours and put me to bed after midnight. When I was done I felt good. I was catharticized. Today I am dog ass tired but last night I was proud of accomplishing something tangible. With all the stresses of the world sometime you just need to clean something.
Tuesday, January 12, 2010
Quietude-Just Being Normal is Enough if Done Right
As I often quote him, I again paraphrase Merton. I have greater peace and am closer to the holy when I am not trying to be anything special, but rather when I am orienting my life fully and completely toward what seems to be required of a person like me at a time like this. What a powerful thought. It seems almost stoic as we use that term today. But what is being called for is more. The phrase is an urge to take action. We are to meet the requirements of a good life that only we can fulfill in the place of the world that only we occupy.
I really don’t have much else to say on this. For today I will try and do what is required of me and do it well. I will also try to reach out beyond my comfort zone and make something better, something I can fix.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)