The Dying Californian - Lyrics & Chords - The Blue Myself

This is my version of "The Dying Californian," a traditional American folk hymn. It's another homemade demo recording under the name The Blue Myself (a band alternately known as Friends Around the Campfire, Wizard Pit, Sandy Mary, and, very rarely, Pandoraz Kunt - an offshoot of The Manna Tease created for songwriting / workshopping purposes.) I used my Les Paul, my turtleback mandolin, and an ancient Yamaha PSR-500M for the recording.

The melody follows roughly the same shape as the folk hymn (410 in the Sacred Harp, pictured at the very top), but this version is in D minor key (what Nigel Tufnel calls "the saddest of all keys") and in a loping 4/4. 

The chords are basically:

Dmin / / Gmin / / Dmin / /  Bb / A7 / Dmin

In the Sacred Harp, the words are credited to "Ball & Drinkard, 1859" - my favorite lyrics-writing duo since "Koch & Tokup." 

Lay up nearer, brother, nearer,
For my limbs are growing cold,
And thy presence seemeth dearer
When thy arms around me fold.  

 I am dying, brother, dying,
Soon you will miss me in your berth,
And my form will soon be lying
Beneath the ocean's briny surf.  

 Hearken to me, brother, hearken,
I have something I would say,
Ere this veil my vision darken
And I go from hence away,  

 I am going, surely going,
But my hopes in God are strong,
I am willing, brother, knowing
That He doeth nothing wrong.

Please "like" The Blue Myself on facebooks:

Dear Yoko, John will never ever ever ever let you go

Or so he said in this beautiful late song of his. Mr Lennon was shot thirty years ago today. Here's a neat video of him practicing "Dear Yoko" in 1980.

Yoko's short and simple piece in the New York Times today ended:

They say teenagers laugh at the drop of a hat. Nowadays I see many teenagers sad and angry with each other. John and I were hardly teenagers. But my memory of us is that we were a couple who laughed.

News UPDATE: RIP Adolfo Bravo!

More information was published today about the shooting across the street from my house. It doesn't actually say this, but I believe the murderers are wanted dead or alive, so proceed accordingly. From the San Francisco Chronicle:

A $17,000 reward is being offered for tips leading to the conviction of the person who shot and killed a Berkeley man as he was walking home with his fiancee, police said today.

Adolfo Ignacio Celedon Bravo, 35, and his fiancee were walking home from a party when they were attacked by two robbers at Adeline and Emerson streets in south Berkeley about 3:40 a.m. Sunday, police said.

Celedon was shot numerous times and died at Highland Hospital in Oakland later Sunday. It was the Chilean native's 35th birthday.

The woman, whose name was not released, was punched and suffered minor injuries.

"I hope that this pain and this bad feeling will begin to pass within the days and the months, and finally we will remember Adolfo the way he was, a funny guy who loved life and was very happy to be in San Francisco with the love of his life, preparing to marry and looking forward to the future," said Alvaro Farru Betinyani, Celedon's brother-in-law.

The killers were described only as two black men between 25 and 35 years old. They fled in an older model, two-tone sport utility vehicle that was last seen heading west on Ashby Avenue, police said.

The city is offering a $15,000 reward, and Bay Area Crime Stoppers is offering a $2,000 reward. Anyone with information is asked to call homicide investigators at (510) 981-5741 or Crime Stoppers at (800) 222-8477.

This Eulogy What Was Read at Charles Crocker’s Grave in Mountain View Cemetery, Oakland, California on August First, in the year Two Thousand & Ten.

In Memoriam: Charles Crocker, in whose name we announce a dolorous Fake Wake, open to the masses.

Death, as it must to all men, has come to Charles Crocker.
In commemorating & celebrating the ending of his life, we must take the good with the bad. Yes, he was an asshole, but he was a rich asshole.
Guests, in appropriate mourning garments, are invited to gather at Mountain View Cemetery in Oakland, California, where we will stroll together to his mausoleum. There we briefly eulogize the deceased (2pm!), gazing upon the beautiful bay area cityscape which he so dearly loved with his tiny, tiny heart. A small potluck picnic to follow around the back of the hill, including IRISH WAKE AMUSEMENTS. (I encourage guests perhaps, in addition to a picnic item, to bring cheap champagne &/or guinness, to make Black Velvets.)

After we are either bored with the moroseness or physically ejected by the Mountain View security, there will be a RECEPTION & AFTERPARTY at the Webb Block, the apartment of Mr J____ (1985 Ashby Ave). If you cannot make it to the cemetery (too soon?) please join us for additional beer drinking & eulogizing at this location, to go on until the resurrection of the morning.

This Eulogy What Was Read at Charles Crocker's Grave

Photographs from Sunday's waking coming soon...

R.I.P Lhasa de Sela

I was not previously familiar with this singer, but friend-of-the-blog Muffy Sainte-Marie posted this beautiful song with the following obituary:

I blogged about Lhasa's new album back in April and have been listening to it (and her other two albums) ever since. I didn't know she was sick, and was floored to hear the news via CBC radio a few days ago that Lhasa died on New Year's Day of breast cancer. I feel such a huge sense of loss - I did not know her personally, but her music has been with me since La Llorona (a magical, magical album!) - I consider her to be one of the greatest talents ever to grace this planet. Her passing is so hard to believe. God bless Lhasa, and God bless her family in what must be an incredibly difficult time. Lhasa, you will be deeply, deeply missed by all who knew you and loved you. Thank you for all you gave us.

The Parents at the Great-Grandparents' Graves

My folks are on a camping trip Eastward along the Lincoln Highway, which we've been constantly reminded to follow on the facebooks. Good pictures have been resulting: These photos of them visiting their respective grandparents' grave sites in the Middle West. I'll have to do this trip myself someday.

The Dead

Dinner For Two is a restaurant in Santa Fe which I believe is staffed entirely with the UN-Dead (or non-dead, living dead). Yet to have eaten there, I now realize this inevitability to be my resolution for 2009. I will eat a dinner for two in Dinner For Two. I will stare at the patrons and the staff (my usual) and try to decipher if those enjoying their New York Strip are as dead, but all the while more animated, than their meal. I hope that while I dine, I will cross through some time-space-life/death portal so that it is my undeadness which washes down my complimentary bread with red table wine. The difficulty of my translation of this sure-feeling will have to suffice. Please take my blog word for it. Maybe one of you would care to join me.

O-bituaries for ever: It Happens Every Day

Rudy Ray Moore
(March 17, 1927 – October 19, 2008)
American Comedian, Film Producer, Singer, Actor

Walter "Killer" Kawolski
(October 13, 1926 - August 3o, 2008)
Canadian Professional Wrestler

Jacques Piccard
(July 28, 1922 - November 1, 2008)
Swiss Oceanographer, Adventurer

O-bituaries for ever!

My Brother, Thomas Patrick Golden, begins each day scanning the San Francsico Chronicle's Obituaries. "I start with the Mc's and then go to the O' -'s, to see if anyone I know has died." This is absolutely true, inevitable. I have seen my brother in the middle of a morning, reckless, confused, searching a hotel lobby, then the breakfast diner racks for any word of the dead. He cannot begin to breath until he has this knowledge of his brethren's passing into that world beyond, crossing back over that thick river, tipping his bloody mary, clearing his eggs away with the crispy bacon, preparing for that first Powers, "To your health in this world and may you be a baker's hour in heaven before the devil knows you're dead." so to speak. Well, I am my brother's brother and have found a fondness for the Obituary page of any rag, digital or otherwise, and so will subject you to the dead on occasion to occassion in you those mortal thoughts, so precious.
In this our first O - for ever installment I choose to focus on the many musicians passed in this year of our passing, 2008. It seems many folks very dear to me have called it quits lately. Click on the pictures below, they may have something hidden within.

Jimmy Carl Black
Miriam MakebaBo Diddley
Alton EllisDorival Caymmi
Raymond Kane
Andy Palacio
Saban Bajramovic
Israel "Cachao" Lopez
Dee Dee Warwick
Levi Stubbs
Ruedi Rymann
Hakurotwi Mude
Ira B. Tucker
Lili Boniche
Ronnie Drew
Isaac Hayes

I have never read David Foster Wallace, A Moment For The Dead

Hello All. These are the only words I have ever read by Mr. Wallace. I find them to be nice and something akin to how I like to practice living. Well, I thought this could be a sort of break from all of our recent politicking.

But most days, if you’re aware enough to give yourself a choice, you can choose to look differently at this fat, dead-eyed, over-made-up lady who just screamed at her kid in the checkout line. Maybe she’s not usually like this. Maybe she’s been up three straight nights holding the hand of a husband who is dying of bone cancer. Or maybe this very lady is the low-wage clerk at the motor vehicle department, who just yesterday helped your spouse resolve a horrific, infuriating, red-tape problem through some small act of bureaucratic kindness. Of course, none of this is likely, but it’s also not impossible. It just depends what you what to consider. If you’re automatically sure that you know what reality is, and you are operating on your default setting, then you, like me, probably won’t consider possibilities that aren’t annoying and miserable. But if you really learn how to pay attention, then you will know there are other options. It will actually be within your power to experience a crowded, hot, slow, consumer-hell type situation as not only meaningful, but sacred, on fire with the same force that made the stars: love, fellowship, the mystical oneness of all things deep down.

as usual, click picture above for further illumination, or if not working go here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xYqwYrbwHeM

R.I.P.

I am very sad about Kurt Vonnegut's death, & haven't really been able to find the words to write about it. I cannot believe what's just happened today, several dozen people gunned down on the Virginia Tech campus (not to mention the cow that died to make the gunman's jacket.) This is a terribly sad event which will dwarf discussions of all artist mortalities for a while. Many hundred people have already posted responses to the Times Lede blog, many very angry, with all sorts of political beliefs. I didn't want to enter into this discussion, but I couldn't believe how many people suggested that more students & professors should be armed to prevent against this kind of thing. More professors be armed!!?? Have you all lost your minds?

As for campus security, which many people seem to all of a sudden have tons of ideas about, this is surely not opening a floodgate of campus violence. More students will still die from binge drinking than lone gunmen. As for "freakanomics", which my father keeps telling me about, I like to bounce around this statistic: There are 3,000 Americans on Death Row (many of whom will not be executed); 3,000 people died in the September 11th bombings; there have been more than 3,000 American Deaths in Iraq since April 2004; and, for your comparison, there have been almost 250,000 American deaths from automobile accidents since the Iraq War. The point is that priorities and national anxieties rarely correspond with the numbers. In the next few weeks, this terrible shooting will be dragged up by everyone to talk about gun control, the Second Amendment (which was written in 1791, long before automatic weapons), violence from the entertainment industry, & campus security. But please, let's not turn our campuses into airports!