Music Review: Dr Ralph Stanley in Berkeley on his Eightieth Birthday

Last night, the Freight & Salvage in Berkeley hosted Dr Ralph Stanley & the Clinch Mountain Boys at St. John's Presbyterian Church. The opening act was Laurie Lewis & the Right Hands, from round here, & they were great. Then, when the headliner & the eight men he plays with made their way to the stage, Laurie ran up & announced that it was 9pm here, so therefore midnight “Clinch Mountain Time”, Ralph Stanley's 80^th birthday. In lieu of Mayor Bates, the mayor's senior aide read a proclamation, hilariously & formally worded, that because of his eminent career in the arts, & because he has played in Berkeley so many times for the past five decades, February 25^th would therefore henceforth be Ralph Stanley Day in Berkeley. (I wish I could quote the proclamation here, but other bloggers have also had no luck finding it.) There was a cake, too.

The evening after that was fairly short, it seemed like he only sang three or four of the dozen songs. He let each member of the band do something from one of their solo projects, & introduced each one with an old-fashion Grand Ole Opry MC style, dumb jokes & all. His son & grandson tour with him. His grandson loves Jesus, & also bling, & sang a mediocre gospel tune in three-four about how Jesus is “more brighter” than the stars. Dr. Ralph sang “O Death” from O Brother Where Art Thou, for which he once won a Grammy. It sounded pretty much the same. The music was great, mostly, but there was a bizarre self-congratulatory tone to the whole evening, with Nathan Stanley reading out a long list of awards & honors his grandfather had won, & James Shelton spending fifteen minutes explaining in great detail everything you could buy in the back (including two of the instruments on stage). My favorite musician was Jack Cooke, the “bass fiddle” player, who's been with Stanley for thirty-seven years, & sings upper harmony. He sang a beautiful song with Laurie Lewis about how the cookie crumbles. I smiled at him as he walked up the aisle, & he put his hand on my shoulder as he passed.

You can hear them play "Angel Band", also from the O Brother soundtrack, on the Prairie Home Companion website, here.

Rhythm of the Bard's Dilemma

Shall I recede into a dead white literary annihilation?

The revolutionary sings

Out to a crowd of equal-minded pawns

About the hubric cruelty of kings,

But the dumpster’s heard it all before & yawns.

Who is the poet of this war? Where is the pacifist’s magnanimity?

Who will glorify the worm-feeding warrior? Where is the imagination’s salvation?

The spirit of joy! I am conceived in an instant!

In nine months I’ll be too old

To be drafted, & these magic eyes must squint

At a sun-load of stories too yellow to behold.

And the boys who prove the bitterness of victory,

Like their bard, will disappear into infinity.

In Japanese comic books I find all my answers.

Thru the gross perverted doodlings

And the incoherencies of plot & character

There is a poet’s lust for truthy things,

The stars & spheres ecstatically concur.

Those non-violent souls in stoned dreadlocks scream & articulate & scream!

Flags on bombs on graffiti on concrete, & naked machine-gun dancers.

And in an ancient epic style I pray

To Santa Claus & the I-Ching & the Nixon Dollar

That we’ll all sit at the same table one day

With the Saint & the Soldier & the Tax-collector & the Scholar.

And the girls who weep for the girls in the frontlines, in new professions extreme,

Like their bard, will resound across the hills of an ecchoing dream.

Where are the novelists who use sesquipedalians & discuss their own art in their books?

The pundit leans over during the commercial

And asks the show’s host if sooner or later

Their roles will spin in a festive reversal,

But neither will ever blip on my galactic radar.

Where is the Theater of the Judges? Where on this spec is heaven’s edge?

Am I our nation’s final poet of the divine? What use are prophets or ministers or crooks?

And with four simple rhymes I write

A love song for violence & lost ambition.

It will be read loudly at the beginning of night

Accompanied by sixteen musicians & quiet submission.

And the elders who created this whole rapturous mess will pledge,

Like their bard, not to jump like fools off a completely avoidable ledge.

Photos: Frisbee on the Cliffs, July 2005

I have had a few hundred of my pictures from the past three years digitalized. Here I'll put up photographs from one day in July 2005, when we played frisbee golf on the cliffs at Sutro Heights in San Francisco. From left to right, the competitors, Darren Southworth, Liam Jospeh Olaf Worland Golden, Alaine "Virtue" Ball, James Eliovich Quill, & James Henry Welsch. The American football was used, I believe, for an occasional splash of Calvinball.

As it happens, a federal district court has ordered the Treasury to redesign our paper money to make it friendlier to blind people. Why not take the opportunity to go further than changing sizes or adding texture? Franklin shows the way. Yes, he was a politician, but he was equally or more famous as a scientist, a diplomat, a newspaperman, an aphorist, a satirist, and a boulevardier. Let’s keep Washington on the single, and then let’s start printing bills with pictures of the other sorts of people that make us proud to be Americans. With rotating portraits, we can have a musicians’ fin (Foster, Gershwin, Ellington), a scribblers’ sawbuck (Twain, Melville, Dickinson), a performing-arts twenty (Caruso, Keaton, Balanchine), a secular saints’ fifty (Douglass, Jane Addams, King), and a scientists’ C-note (Franklin, Edison, Einstein). As a three-fer (President, saint, writer), Lincoln could have the two-dollar note all to himself. A three-spot could be introduced, with Whitman (“What you give me I cheerfully accept,/A little sustenance, a hut and garden, a little money, as I rendezvous with my poems”). As with Presidents, a decent interval would be required. The Dylan fiver will have to be deferred until another decade of the sixties rolls around.

-Hendrik Hertzberg, "Too Many Chiefs", The New Yorker, Feb. 19th & 26th, 2007

I just had to post that, because I made the same point in my Feb. 12th post, but I didn't go so far. I'm at work today, & I'm sitting here alone, & we're out of one dollar bills, & it's a bank holiday, & I just got a text message from my manager saying "dunno what's best." Where are those dollar coins?

I had the above image put on a T-shirt as a birthday present for Miss Jenny Crawford. It looks great. Anyone else who wants a copy, send me twenty dollars.

With Pantheist energy of will
The little craftsmen of the Coral Sea
Strenuous in the blue abyss,
Up-builds his marvelous gallery
And long arcade,
Erections freaked with many a fringe
Of marble garlandry,
Evincing what a worm can do.

-Herman Melville, "Venice", Timolean, &. (1891)

And it was a choice moment of irony when GOP Rep. Todd Akin of Missouri argued, "Could you picture Davy Crockett at the Alamo looking at his BlackBerry, getting a message from Congress: 'Davy Crockett, we support you. The only thing is we are not going to send any troops'?" Actually, Crockett led the "surge" at the Alamo -- it didn't end well.

-Vicki Haddock, "All talk but little action by Congress on the war", San Francisco Chronicle, Sunday, February 18th, 2007

In case you're not looking close enough, there is a person in every one of these photos, somewhere camouflaged upon the rocks. Most also have a frisbee somewhere midair. Annie told me that as a sports photographer, I seem more interested in waves & foliage.

The Ancient of Days forever is young,
Forever the scheme of Nature thrives;
I know a wind in purpose strong--
It spins against the way it drives.
What if the gulfs their slimed foundations bare?
So deep must the stones be hurled
Whereon the throes of ages rear
The final empire and the happier world.

-Herman Melville, "The Conflict of Convictions" (1860-61), ll.61-68, from Battle-Pieces

And Hand & Hyle rooted into Jerusalem by a fibre
Of strong revenge & Skofeld Vegetated by Reubens Gate

In every Nation of the Earth till the Twelve Sons of Albion
Enrooted into every Nation: a mighty Polypus growing
From Albion over the whole Earth: such is my awful Vision.

-William Blake, Jerusalem, Chap. I

Liam told me that he was by a polluted river in Brazil, & he mentioned that it was polluted to a fellow traveler. The man insisted that there was no way it could be polluted because there "just too much water." He argued that it was visibly & malodorously polluted, but the man had convinced himself that rivers have too much water in them to ever register any contamination. Similarly, I'm pissing into the bay in the above picture.

That night or the next, we climbed Twin Peaks to see the Independence Day fireworks. Liam & I had poison ivy rashes all over our bodies for the next six weeks. This photo is an eerie reminder.

Quotes: Love & its accouterments

A man just rode past my store in a motorized wheelchair with two American flags on long poles. It struck me that that is such a simple way to seem just that much crazier. Man in a wheelchair, most people feel a little pity or whatever; man in a wheelchair decked out in old glory, we think, wacko!

When I got out of high school I was still sixteen & I got a job at Wal-Mart. I didnt know what else to do. We needed the money. What little it was. Anyway, the night before I went down there I had this dream. Or it was like a dream. I think I was still about half awake. But it came to me in this dream or whatever it was that if I went down there that he would find me. At the Wal-Mart. I didnt know who he was or what his name was or what he looked like. I just knew that I'd know him when I seen him. I kept a calender & marked the days. Like when you're in jail. I mean I ain't never been in jail, but like you would probably. And on the ninety-ninth day he walked in & asked me where sportin goods was at & it was him. And I told him where it was & he looked at me & he said: What time do you get off. And that was all she wrote.

-Carla Jean, in Cormac McCarthy's No County for Old Men (2005)

List of Character Names in Cormac McCarthy's No Country for Old Men (2005)
-Llewelyn Moss
-Carla Jean Moss
-Sheriff Bell
-Loretta Bell
-Anton Chigurh
-Torbert & Wendell (Sheriff's deputies)
-Agent McIntyre

We were pronouncing Llewelyn "Yu-lin". And we were pronouncing Chigurh "Shi-gah" (because another character thinks his name is "Sugar".) He's the bad guy. Moss & the Sheriff are the good guys, & they love their wives, like good guys do. For those of you who aren't up on the scene, this beautiful little book will be the next movie by the Coen Brothers. I guess we'll see how they pronounce the names then. They actually spell Llewelyn "Llewellyn" on the back cover & call him "a good old boy", when he's only supposed to be twenty or so. Don't read back covers!

I'm a sentimental mourner,
And I couldn't be forlorner,
When you keep me on that corner,
Just waiting for you.

-Leo Robin & Lewis E. Gensler, "Love is Just Around the Corner" (1934)

Valentines can't buy her.

-Bob Dylan, "Love Minus Zero / No Limit" (1965)

I used to hate that line; & when I sang it, I would sing "artichokes can't buy her." Then, magically, one day, I got it. The idea is that valentines are a currency which she doesn't accept.

Sex boosts your immune system. Orgasm boosts the production of infection-fighting white blood cells, in some cases by as much as 20 percent.

Sex improves physical fitness. Vigorous sex burns calories. Regular sex can help tone the muscles of the entire body.

Sex improves mental health. Orgasm leaves you with a feeling of well-being. This bolsters the ego & helps you deal with life's problems.

-Dr. Judy Kuriansky, "Why Sex is Good for You", The Complete Idiot's Guide to A Healthy Relationship (1998)

Human female breasts are uniquely large among mammals. In the first place, they are a permanent feature in human adult females, whereas in other mammals they appear only when there are infants to be fed. In the second, and as an inevitable consequence of the first, it is only in humans that the breasts feature in sexual activity at all. In considering the sexual and sensual properties of the breast it is natural to ask why this is so & how it came about.

-Dr. Miriam Stoppard, The Breast Book (1996)

That's right - that's Tom Stoppard's wife writing a book about breasts. It's my weekend in five minutes! We have a day to celebrate love, & plenty to celebrate war, but whatever happened to Armistice Day?

Happy Birthday! New Web Address!

Dear Friends & loyal readers,

To celebrate the one year anniversary of this fabulous weblog, I have purchased a domain name. Namely, www.itwaslost.org. Click on it! It will take you right to this page! Please update your bookmarks accordingly. Happy Birthday! Remember fondly just twelve months ago, my first posting, a recipe for millet cookies?

If you recall, I was considering changing the name of this 'blog to Live from the Webb Block. Because, you see, I was writing it from home, where I live, my beautiful Berkeley apartment, here:


I live behind the four rectangular windows, on the second floor, on the far left. That intersection to the right is a bit noisier these days. (America! Lament! What have to done to your cities!)

However, I am now employed at a bookstore, which asks very little of me, except to sit here & read, inform about a hundred people a day that the old art supply store went out of business, & occasionally sell a book. Therefore, I will continue with the "lost" theme, chronicling these, my lost years (at least according to my autobiographer.)

So that it won't be googled, I won't mention the name of the book store or the old art supply store, but I'll tell you that I will be continuing to write the itwaslost.org 'blog from here:


You can see why people confuse it for art supplies. Much of the building has fallen into disrepair, the graffiti on some of Piet's sexy squares painted over with the wrong color. But we have dirt cheap prices on old new books! Stay tuned for more entries from this location. I'm contemplating compiling a list of all the people who come into the store during one average day. I also have a ton of new pictures, recently digitalized, which should appear soon.

Peace!

The New Dollar Coin, anticipation & New York Times blog comment

The New York Times's Lede blog had a posting about the new dollar coin, which will feature four American Presidents each year, from Washington thru Nixon, until 2016! There was quite a response to that posting, over 250 comments - many denouncing the anachronistic penny, many saying Americans would never let the bill go because coins are a "hassle". I'm sure my comment was lost at the bottom somewhere:

It's sad they're honoring so many dead white politicians, many of them corrupt or Machiavellian. What about great American authors, or even American composers? When have we ever had artists or thinkers on our currency? Britain has Darwin & Edward Elgar on their bills. We have a lot to be proud of too, not just William Henry Harrison.

Also, in England, you can buy a pint of beer with coins in your pocket. Coins are not more of a hassle! Opening your wallet stuffed full of identical bills for every single purchase, including coffee or a newspaper, is far more obnoxious.

As for pennies, it would be sad to see them go. But I've been harboring a suspicion that the treasury makes money [sic] off of how many are lost or ignored. (In a more devious way even than how they've made money off of people collecting the state quarters.) They've just been so worthless for so long, & the nickel & dime aren't far behind. Parking meters & vending machines won't even take pennies, & many merchants just bypass them. Stop making them!

I guess I shouldn't waste my time dreaming of a John Cage coin.

Party Reminder

There'll be a dual birthday party at my beautiful Webb Block Apartment tomorrow night, for Alaine Ball & Jenny Crawford. Terrified that no one will come (which is still likely), we started frantically inviting people. There was also a bit of argument about what the theme would be. I had thought the theme would simply be "green", so I had already told someone... It turns out that was a joke. So we started informing each invited guest of a different theme - a party approach I recommend. Ours might not succeed tomorrow, but hopefully there'll be at least one person dressed outrageously out-of-place.

Here were some of the themes:
-Green
-Cupcakes & Lipstick
-Disney Princess
-Character from Moby-Dick
-No Wave
-Indigenous peoples of the Southern Hemisphere
-The Ottoman Empire
-KGB

Letter to the Nations of the Earth

Stop barking at the impressive few! Stop holding hands with princesses!

If apples immunize you from doctorates of theology,

Whence comes our American mythology?

Our ears are bended upwards towards the silent hurricanoes!

On the distant horizon I see a staggering stentorian bucket of wishes!

But I've forgotten the appropriate terminology,

And she lost hers studying visionary mycology.

Can you rhyme with the goddesses? Can you appreciate Pluto's distant credibility?

The shaman is kneeling before our ancient trance, a silhouette.

And apples & bananas & oranges grow carcinogenically

From this barren desert dirt, nourishing, organically.

I am in Nevada! Our Lady of the Deep Mountain Lake is lost in annunciation,

I am in the Western Zephyr! At least I glanced the graces chasing her magic shadow.

And railways remember to comply fiscally

With demands of the land & its fecund buoyancy.

But whence comes our American Symphonies? Where's our newest cultural mecca?

Like in Mauritius, the rats & pigs ate the last Giant Turtle egg.

Like in the hills of New Zealand, they had to relocate that inflatable parrot.

Like in Canada, men with puppets & cycle-planes are rehabilitating whooping crane chicks.

Like a pot of golden toads in Central America that has been boiled & evaporated.

And like the reefs - O my God, I can't go on.

O bless the corral & may its descendants bear fruit perceived by the voyager,

Forever & ever. Amen.

Start singing the blues of futurity! Start reversing the rapture, pending an antepenultimate postponement!

If apples are the first cessation in a chain

Of metempsychosis, ending with the resurrection of Cain...

But no! The verses will grow longer! Longer than the queues of transcendental poetry at the market!

Off the page she'll blow you furiously! Down the circular library thru the craters below the Earth!

But I've forgotten where the escalator takes the rain,

And we'll finally be done with these damn'd biblical allusions, the pain.

Can you dance with harps on your loins! O can you understand these made-up words!