Time Marches On

It's so ironic that the virtual end of the move and the transition falls, almost to the day, on the anniversary of my own personal Hiroshima.

Exactly one year ago today, I came home from work to find that my mother was not sitting in her usual place, in her cat chair in the kitchen.

(You can't see it very well, but my cat Patches, self-proclaimed Queen of the Universe, is sitting in it in the photo above, taken in the old house at the height of its clutter.)

This would not have been such a distressing thing, had it not been for the scene I'd experienced that morning, described a few posts back.

There were empty cat food tins overturned on the stove. The kitties had not come to greet me as usual. The television was playing to an empty room.

I ran into my mother's bedroom hollering, "Are you all right?" and heard, faintly. . .

"no. . . I think I'd better go to the hospital."

I found her sitting on one of her stools at the end of her bed, slumped against the bedpost, breathing hard.

I called 911 from the phone that sat in the pile of dolls and stuff at the foot of her bed. They stayed on the line with me, and I stood with the receiver in one hand held to my ear, holding my mother's hand in my left, until the ambulance arrived.

It took half an hour, and when they came, unfolding their massive stretcher in the yard, I hollered at them, "There's no way you're going to get that in the house."

They ended up walking her out to the stretcher, and I ended up kicking myself and kicking myself and kicking myself.

Damn. I mean, I could have done that. I could have walked her out to my car, and driven her to the Emergency Room, and I could have saved half an hour, and maybe that would have made the difference.

Damn it. Damn it all. Oh, god, it could have made all the difference.

That night, she and I both believed that she was still going to survive this.

That night, a small part of me, something that the rest of me could not bear listening to, knew something that I could not bear to admit.

I'm going to post some music over the next few days, Highly Illegally.

So, let them sue me.

Here's the music for tonight, Let me know if it doesn't work.

To my knowledge, my mother only heard this song once, and it moved her to tears.

My first thought was to play it at her Memorial Gathering, but I made the decision early on that there would be No Sad Songs at that Event.

It will already be known to some of you. It's one of my favorites.

Take it away, Van!

Were You Dancing on Paper

For the past few days I have been sad, anxious, depressed. The routine at work has helped, but in the evenings I hardly know what to do with myself. A part of me is glad that I'm not still at the old house now that this horrible year is coming to an end. I had to look through a lot of pictures of the old house in order to find the right one for yesterday's post, and it was distressing to go there.

The new house is such an odd mix of old and new, combining many features that I've seen in other houses and other places that I've lived in, while still evoking my mother's house. It had to feel like home, after all. Sometimes I wonder what I'm doing here.

Reading the Guide to Asperger's, I see my life mapped out, and wonder if I wouldn't be better served by a book that told me how normal people think. I mean, I've been like this all my life, I was Normal for me, even though I couldn't understand most anyone else. If I could have a Travel Guide to the world they inhabit, with some good maps, maybe an itinerary of a couple of daywalks, some pictures of the key attractions so that I would recognize where I was when I got there -- that might be a good thing!

In the early days back at the old house, I would spend whole afternoons listening to records. I'd put one on and stalk and pace all along the upstairs landing, oftentimes singing, learning the song by rote even to the intonations of the singers, sometimes playing the same song over and over until someone came along and told me to knock it off.

I was never a good singer, but I was pretty good at imitating real singers and performers.

The music created pictures inside my head -- and I built the pictures into elaborate stories that were shaped by the themes I was listening to. I thought some of them were pretty good. Sometimes I wrote some of them down.

Here's the soundtrack for this post.

Some of them were good enough, I thought, to entertain the possibility of turning them into screenplays. I always wanted to make movies. (I'm so mad that I'm not in New Zealand right now!) Until just recently, there were two stories that I reserved to some day commit to paper.

But with one thing and another, I have a better understanding of myself now. Suddenly, I know what those stories were saying to me, and why I told them to myself, over and over.

It was nothing more than wishing to be normal, wishing for someone who could be my guide in the world that everyone else inhabited.

I'll never write those stories. My inner world was like a stage set: colorful and romantic, but also flat and hollow.

It's the reason why I didn't so much read books as inhabit them. Intellectual tricks (such as the Unreliable Narrator) were lost on me: the purpose of reading was to pour the void inside of me into a character that would take me into a world that was more real to me than the one I actually lived in.

Until now, my whole life has been a game of Let's Pretend. People sensed it about me. On the playgrounds they called me terrible things. Things that I knew I wasn't. Now I know why.

Caring for Mom gave my life a purpose and a focus for the whole last decade; I sometimes hated it, but it was a reason to persevere. Now all that's changed.

My friend BC read some of my posts on belief and religion, and "said" to me, "Believe in yourself!"

It was awfully nice of him, but that's the one thing I can't believe in. Turn me sideways and I disappear.

It All Comes Out in the Wash

The last few days have been bags that were too mixed for my taste. I know it can't be helped.

On Friday my new washer and dryer were delivered, so I am back in the washing business again after too long. Finally able to change the covers on both living room sofas, which needed changing badly (I'm doing that today), finally able to change the sheets on my bed after I won't say how long. But when I moved here into the new house, I deliberately did not use clean sheets on the cot because I wanted the cats to have some familiar smells around the place, and until this past Friday they still hadn't been changed out. 

Things are getting much less gamey around here.

The delivery crew were easily the best and most professional people that I've worked with through this whole process, but did they have to be so young? I'm used to workmen being older than me, or at least my age; now it seems that I've crossed the line, these guys looked like college-age kids to me.

It was so cold that day that something had frozen deep down inside the washer, so the water couldn't drain out. I had to wait a couple of hours for it to thaw out. To aid this, I opened the door that connects the laundry room with the kitchen, and it was clear right away that the screen I put up to keep the cats out was not going to work at all. So most all of them got to check out that room, and Whitey was so funny about it. He loved the washer! Was it the loud purring sound that it made? He was spinning around, wiping his face on its corners, whipping his tail about, kneading the floor with his front paws. Whazzup wid dat?

The washer itself is one of those newfangled low-energy, high-efficiency, low water use models. You even have to use special detergent with it. I almost didn't buy it for that reason, because now I have almost a whole box of detergent that I can't use. Then I realized that nearly all the machines were of the same newfangled breed, and the ones that weren't didn't have the capacity I wanted (I have a couple of comforters that wouldn't have fit). So -- eh, what's a box of detergent against the benefits? 

I read the manual while I waited and I was glad that I did. It pointed out that "you might hear different sounds than what you are used to in your old washer."

Indeed. I would have been terrified that I'd broken the thing!

I stayed out there and stared at the washer, like an idiot, for the whole first cycle. It's worse than watching a kettle boil. I kept wishing that I could open the lid to see what was going on in there.

When the first load was behind me and I knew that everything was working, I was hit quite suddenly and quite hard with a terrible depression. Dropped on me just like those 16-ton weights in the Monty Python sketches. I've tried hard to understand these things, but I could not understand this. This was a good, big task to get done. I should have felt exactly the opposite. 

Instead my whole body began to feel heavy, like a load of mud. Is there such a thing as post-washer depression? It wasn't a tearful kind of thing. I felt dazed and sad and burned out. The music I was playing didn't help: the back half of Renaissance: Turn of the Cards is almost unbelievably depressing, but it had been so long since I'd heard the album that I'd forgotten this. I ripped it out of the player and went through about five more disks trying to find something that wouldn't drag me down, without success. Even the cheerful music made it worse.

It was all I could do to keep from reaching for the vodka bottle. I could not stop thinking about it. Only the knowing that it wouldn't solve any problems, and the line that I drew in the sand months ago about not drinking during the day kept me from doing it. 

I did all the right things. I kept busy and made some progress both upstairs and with the laundry. It got a little better by late afternoon, then worsened again in the evening. I meant to go to bed early, but once again got caught up in another late night of tracking down old songs on the internet. One of the scores I made was Nat King Cole's rendition of "Stardust." Possibly the loveliest recording ever made. That helped.

To try and wind down, I took a quick, late-night stroll around the block of my new neighborhood. It was a freezing, bright night. Plumes of smoke rose out of the chimneys of most of the houses, including my own. I walked up and back, past the high school, then down and around to my own home. I stood out there looking at it for a little while. It's tall and somewhat gothic in shape, if not in materials. I like the looks of it a lot.

By the next morning, I was in full anxiety mode about the public event that I was responsible for that afternoon at the store. I was as well-prepared as could be, but the anxiety was strong enough that it made getting through my morning chores that much harder, which only added to the frustration. 

Worry about my boss was part of it. BS (yes, those are her real initials) is such an intense, controlling micro-manager that she drives nearly all of us crazy -- but recently she has been leaving me alone, and for this event she did not involve herself at all, even when I asked for input. In fact, waiting fruitlessly for answers to some of my questions actually contributed to the anxiety factor by forcing me to cut the deadlines dangerously close, and then having to make the decision myself under time constraints and hope that it was the right one. I'm not normally afraid of making a decision, but I am when it comes to BS, and there isn't a single person who works in the store who doesn't understand why.

With anyone else, her sudden and unannounced shift to non-involvement might be considered a show of confidence. But I have a strain of paranoia in my blood, and can't help but think that her motivations have more to do with distancing herself from my department so that she doesn't get cut when the long knives come out.

The first hour at work was a little frantic, but I slowly got my bearings, and my students were mostly wonderfully cooperative and helpful. One of them even brought her roommates to help out, and they did a great job, too. The event came together really well, and the relief was palpable. You can see it on my face in the picture I had taken with Arthur.

But attendance was down over last year, unit sales were down over last year, and by mid-afternoon I was letting all that get to me. Once again last night I was depressed and tired, and once again I stayed up too late scoring music. This time it was Clannad: Past Present (the first CD I ever bought. I foolishly gave it to an old girlfriend only to lose both of them!), and a compilation of Patsy Cline songs. Eclectic is an overused word, but it describes my musical taste perfectly well. 

Today I slept in an extra hour, and have been taking it easy, puttering around with the laundry, writing this post. When I'm done here I'm going to go into the kitchen and make up a big bucket of popcorn, maybe see what's on TCM. Sometime this afternoon I need to run out to the store. 

Next week ought to be easier.

-- Freder.

Grooving to the Mellow Elevator Music Sounds

I'm not so much concerned about showing my age -- what does concern me is revealing what a dweeb I am. Most of my friends prefer real manly, beef-flavored music like The Rolling Stones and Johnny Cash, and I like that sort of thing, too, in its place . . . but, secretly, in my heart of hearts, I've always harbored a shameful love of smarmy Easy Listening ballads.

I owned every album by The Partridge Family that ever came out. I still do. Don't hate me for it.

Give me The Moody Blues and The Carpenters any day over The Rolling Stones. While others were listening to Pink Floyd, I was listening to my grandmother's records by the Mystic Moods Orchestra.

I know. Most of you are now pointing at your mouths and making gagging gestures. Sorry about that, but a person has to be who they are. I love elevator music. There, I've said it. I am free, now!

So when I discovered the power of ITunes a week or so ago, I began tracking down creaking oldies like there was no tomorrow. For the past three nights I've been up until after three AM, searching, ooooh child, searching ever-y wee-yee-yee-utch way-ee-ay-ee-ayee for old musical friends.

And last night I burned a 24-song compilation onto disk, have been playing it more or less continuously since then.

Speaking as a creative person, it is not a creative act to edit a short story collection or to compile a playlist. But for the compiler it does carry a kind of creative feeling, and the selection inevitably says more about the person picking the songs than it does about the songs themselves.

Here then, is my playlist -- with some commentary along the way:

1. A Summer Place -- Percy Faith
2. One Less Bell to Answer - The Fifth Dimension (I loved this group. They contributed nothing in terms of songwriting, but they knew how to make a song their own. Once, long ago, a friend proposed a party where only LIVE albums could be played as music. I chimed in with  "I've got a Live album by The Fifth Dimension!! -- The room fell silent.)
3. We've Only Just Begun -- The Carpenters
4. I'll Never Fall in Love Again -- Dionne Warwicke (I was quite little when this one came out. I always liked Dionne a lot until she became a psychic call-line con artist).
5. Alone Again (Naturally) -- Gilbert O'Sullivan (I never did understand the words until I heard the song on the radio again last year, and then they hit me hard. In particular, the verse "I remember I cried when my father died | Never wishing to hide the tears | And at sixty-five years old, | My mother, God rest her soul, | Couldn't understand why the only man | She had ever loved had been taken | Leaving her to start with a heart So badly broken | Despite encouragement from me | No words were ever spoken | When she passed away | I cried and cried all day | Alone again, naturally" are as honest and hard as any you'll find in a bouncy little pop ballad)
6. Galveston -- Glan Campbell
7. Both Sides Now -- Judy Collins
8. Ave Maria -- The Carpenters (the song is a family favorite, and although my favorite version is the one at the end of Fantasia, Karen does a nice job with it here)
9. The Lord's Prayer -- Sister Janet Mead (this might seem like an odd entry for a crusty skeptic, but I've always loved it. Sister Mead's singing is sweet and clear, and in particular the bridge of the song is just lovely. I wore out that part of my 45 copy by playing it over and over again)
10. Jean -- Oliver (I know some people who would run screaming from the room if I played this song for them. I love it.)
11. A Daisy a Day -- Jud Strunk (I saw Strunk live once, at the Thaxter Theater, home of the Portland Players. This was before he turned up as a regular on Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In. His brand of regional comedy didn't appeal to me any more than Tim Sample's does to this day, but he wrote hisseff a nice song here.)
12. Close to You -- The Carpenters
13. My Father -- Judy Collins (I first heard this beautiful song when Melanie did a terrific cover of it on her album Good Book)
14. Sugar, Sugar -- The Archies (Pour a little sugar on it, honey!! -- somehow, I think that might sting!)
15. The Morning After -- Maureen McGovern (I'd listen to her sing one of George W. Bush's speeches if I had to)
16. The soundtrack cut for this post. Click here to find out what it is! 
17. Angel of the Morning -- Merilee Rush (the only song on the compilation that I had to pay for. I just could not find this version anywhere. Juice Newton did a very competent cover, but it doesn't create the mood that this one does)
18. San Francisco -- Scott McKenzie (I never knew until just last night that Papa John Phillips wrote this song!)
19. I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing -- The New Seekers (still can't play this without hearing the Coke lyrics in my head. Mom loved this song and I've always liked it.)
20. Top of the World -- The Carpenters
21. Can You Read My Mind -- Maureen McGovern (wish they'd used this version in Superman: The Movie instead of Margot Kidder's spoken-word rendition that bleeds the romance right out of it)
22. I Don't Like Spiders and Snakes -- Jim Stafford (yes, it really is, kind of, a love song, about lad who doesn't know what to do with a crush!)
23. Right Down the Line -- the recently late Gerry Rafferty. And the perfect closing tune:
24. Put a Little Love in Your Heart -- Jackie DeShannon

Now I can put this CD on the player and putter around the house with little hearts, flowers and stars flying out of me just like a damn cartoon character.

There was one song that I couldn't find, because I couldn't remember its name or the name of the artist. This afternoon, it finally came to me: Love is Blue.

Can you sense the beginning of another compilation?

P.S. staying up until three AM three nights in a row does not make a person a very good employee by the third morning!

-- Freder.

Working Out Warhol

Songs for Drella, a musical piece by Lou Reed and John Cale, is an internalized, introspective look at the life of Andy Warhol. It is billed as being entirely fictitious, and insofar as it tries to represent the thoughts and feelings of Warhol himself, that must be true.

But where it reflects the vagaries, the trials and the conflictedness of Reed and Cale's longtime personal and professional association with Warhol, Songs for Drella takes  on the weight of reality. Quoth Reed:

No matter what I did it never seemed enough

He said I was lazy, I said I was young

He said "How many songs did you write?"

I'd written zero, I lied and said ten

"You won't be young forever.

"You should have written fifteen.

"It's work. The most important thing is work."

Whether or not this exchange actually took place, it still rings true, and carries with it a lashing bite for anyone involved in the creative trade. Reed and Cale paint an ethical side of Warhol that's rarely discussed by people who didn't know him.

You expect interesting things from Reed and Cale; you expect complexity in the writing of both music and lyrics, but in Songs for Drella the pair deliver something that I don't believe they are much known for: emotional complexity. The piece chronicles a difficult relationship, one where mutual respect exists but accord cannot be reached, one where misunderstanding often rears its head, and love and honor come with the price of regret.

I really miss you,

I really miss your mind

I haven't heard ideas like that in such a long, long time

I loved to watch you work and watch you paint

But when I saw you last, I turned away

Here's the soundtrack for tonight's post.

Reed is thoughtful and hard-driving musically, while Cale is thoughtful and melodic. The two work together like a precision timepiece. Middle age has caused them to look backward with candor -- about Warhol, and about themselves.

They really hated you, now all that's changed

But I have some resentments that can never be unmade

You hit me where it hurt, I didn't laugh

Your diaries are not a worthy epitaph

You need not be an admirer of Mr. Warhol to find something in this work that you will recognize in yourself, perhaps painfully. While Songs for Drella makes as eloquent a case as any for the value of Warhol's contribution, it goes much farther than that.

To Middle America, Warhol was the equivalent of a Space Alien, remote and unknowable. By writing about the fragility of life and friendship, Reed and Cale bring Warhol down to Earth, and humanize him for the first time.

-- Freder.

Original Masters, or, Spanning the Dead

I've been spending money like a drunken sailor, as my friend E___ sometimes says, and it's about to get worse.

Worse, because this weekend I plan on heading over to one of those big-box Home Improvement stores, and lay a little more sticker shock onto my credit card by acquiring a clothes washer and dryer.

It's time. I have the space cleared out, and the only way to whittle down certain of the piles that have been building up is to load them into a washing machine.

Oh, I could go out to one of the local Laundromats, but I already spend too much time away from home and the cats. Why would I want to spend a couple hours cooling my heels in one of those places, when I can be at home, throw a load in, and then do something productive with the time I have?

This is the week to do it -- I have to take a day off during the week anyway, so I might as well have a washer and dryer delivered and installed. Next Saturday is a Big Event at work, and I have to be there.

All this week and much of last I've been dumping money online to feed the new computer. I'm not a huge Gamer type, but I've always had an "Arcadia" folder on my computer -- once in a while, a few times a year, it's nice to wind down with Solitaire or a puzzle game. But nothing that I already own will work on the new machine, so I knew it was time to hie myself to bigfishgames.com to see if they had anything that appealed. With prices ranging between five and seven dollars a pop, I now have a very healthy Arcadia file indeed, enough to last me for years, so that's done.

Then there's the whole all-new MP3 thing.

Here's the soundtrack for this post.

There are some musical grails that need to be replaced, and last night alone I replaced four of 'em.

When I was doing research for the "Goths" short story re-published at this blog a few months back, I listened to a lot of Goth music. Some of it I actually liked. A group called Dead Can Dance released an album called Within the Realm of a Dying Sun, and I had a copy, and then it disappeared. It's been AWOL for years. It's still in print, but why pay $13.00 for a hard copy when I can pay $8.00 and have my hard copy playing in nothing flat?

For my money, Dead Can Dance is the best of the Goth groups. The Sisters of Mercy are too close to pop, and Nox Arcana are more soundscape artists than composers or musicians. Where Nox Arcana's approach is:

"BOO!!!! AH-HAHAHAHAHA!"

Dead Can Dance is like this:

These are the sins of Xavier's past
Hung like jewels in the forest of veils.
Deep in the heart where the mysteries emerge
Eve bears the stigma of original sin.
Freedom's so hard when we all are bound by laws
Etched in the scheme of nature's own hand
Unseen by those who fail in their pursuit of fate.

Both have their place, but the one is art, and the other is a background album for your Halloween party.

But today's soundtrack is a cut from an even better group, the venerable Steeleye Span. The "original masters" as one of their own albums immodestly proclaimed.

Back in Line is one of their later albums. It's also one of their best. If they were ever out of line, they certainly were back in it for this one. Wow. The first three cuts are some of the best work of its kind I've ever heard: a blend of the classical and hard-driving electric instrumentation, with hard, real stories behind them. An Anglophobe's dream. The song I've chosen for you tonight is "Lady Diamond," part ballad, part legend, part post-modern rewhickering of classical themes. Pay attention to the lyrics as it plays. There is a romantic, but very dark tale underlying the vigorous music.

I owned it on cassette, and played it until it was completely worn out. Of course, by then it was out of print.

Not any more! Snagged!

When I hit the little "play" arrow in ITunes and these two albums wafted out of the computer at me, I just curled my toes and closed my eyes.

Old friends return. Things sometimes come back to you. It's what is needed, what is called for, and what is found again.

-- Freder.

The Word of the Day: Pianosaurus!

In the Ain't Technology Wundafil? Department, I've been messing around with my new computer over the past couple of weeks, and realizing how far advanced it is over the old one that I liked perfectly well until I started seeing what the new one could do.

The first time I slotted a music CD (it was Herb Alpert & the Tijuana Brass: What Now My Love) into this thing and opened ITunes to play it, the program asked me if I wanted to add the CD to my Library.

I didn't know what that meant. I pressed "OK" and then watched in astonishment as the computer copied the whole CD onto my hard drive in about a minute! 

Suddenly I realized why musicians and CD companies hate this development!

A few days later I copied a Renaissance CD onto the new machine. And then I thought, "Hmmmmm! I wonder if I can record it right back onto a CD-R?"

I think y'all probably know the answer, but I didn't. The next day I bought a spindle of CD-Rs, and in nothing flat I had second hard copy of Ashes Are Burning. I gave it to a student at work.

Then another coin dropped into my slow-on-the-uptake mind. 

When I was searching for Melanie CDs at Amazon, I noted that several key titles were out of print and unavailable, or available only at outlandish prices.

Or in MP3 versions.

A month ago I would never have considered paying for an MP3 version of an album. Last night I bought Melanie's Stoneground Words, otherwise unavailable in any form, downloaded it -- and burned it onto an audio CD that plays just beautifully in my little portable CD player.

Suddenly, I am part of the New World Order. 

I didn't stop there.

About a decade and a half back, maybe longer, I got together with my best friends and spent New Year's Eve in Portland, going from venue to venue, checking out the different acts. One of them, up from Boston, was a nifty little band called Pianosaurus. They played classic rock 'n' roll -- all on toy instruments. 

The drummer had a little toy drum set that came up to about his knees. I bet he went through a new set every night! The leader played a little toy guitar not more than about two feet long. They were backed by a cute gal on Toy Piano and a guy on Toy Bass. 

And y'know what? They got a great sound out of those things! I was entranced and tickled. It was completely unique, fun as all get out, delightfully charming.

The group recorded one album, Groovy Neighborhood, in their short lifetime (and appeared in the movie New York Stories). Of course I bought it. And, you know the story by now, haven't been able to listen to it in yonks.

The band is defunct now, the record long out of print. But last night I searched the MP3 store and there it was! Five minutes later I was playing a CD of it in my living room, and boppin' down to the good-time sounds!

Sometimes, technology really is wundafil!

And now -- have I got a treat for you! I am becoming so techno-logically up-to-date that I can even provide you with a cut from the album! Click on this link to download an MP3 of the song "Bubble Gum Music"

Let me know if it doesn't work!

-- Freder. 

All Those Years Ago

John Lennon was assassinated on my twenty-second birthday. The first words that I heard that morning came from my mother, hollering up the stairs, "John Lennon's been killed."

Happy Birthday.

I had already lost two grandparents by then. My fraternal Grandma Agnes had suffered a stroke years earlier, and died a vegetable in a nursing home with a feeding tube forcing mush down her throat. My fraternal grandfather Adolf had been killed several years later coming out of a Stamp Collector's show. He was hit by a young moron driving down the road with a girl on his lap.

Both of these deaths came to me with a sense of detachment. First there was the physical detachment, in that my family had moved to Maine when I was six years old and since that time I saw my grandparents only when they came to visit, once or twice a year. I was not a part of their deaths, I lived half a continent away from them, and my parents did not even see fit for me to join them at the funerals.

Beyond that, I was just so young. I hadn't begun to ask the big questions; hell fire, I did not even know the words to express the concepts in those big questions. I'm still not sure that I know them. Religion? Up to a point, my family went to church every Sunday. Then, suddenly, we stopped. I know that religion was never anything more than an abstract to me, and my sense is that my parents were starting to feel the same way about it.

When I was very, very young, and we were living in Minnesota, my mother taught Sunday School at (I think) the Lutheran Church. I remember only one particular lesson. She told of how they nailed Jesus to the cross, and I asked, out loud, "Didn't it hurt?"

I was so little that the concept of somebody doing something like that to anyone was unbelievable to me.

Now, all I have to do is turn on the television and hear about what's happening in Mexico and other places, things so horrible that crucifixion seems mildly invasive by comparison.

This is going off on a tangent. Here's where I wanted to go in the first place:

John Lennon was another thing. I believe that Lennon's murder was the first time I started to know at some level that this is real, this is all there is, and it's not permanent, it can be taken away from us at any time, if you leave your house at the wrong time (or even if you don't) you can be snuffed out just like that.

When George Harrison released his memorial song, "All Those Years Ago," I confess that I didn't understand it.  The thoughts and emotions that it expresses are a good deal more complicated than what you encounter in the average pop song, and the deceptively upbeat, bouncy tone of the melody is in one sense misleading. The song is by no means a dirge -- and I suppose that was my problem with it.

I didn't begin to understand the song until I reached the age that George was when he wrote it. The joy of the music and the pain of the words started to come together for me. Harrison's relationship with Lennon was not always the rosiest; that's the way friendships and partnerships are.

Harrison was a much more religious man than I am. As I've written in other posts, I believe it when I can see it, and sometimes not even then. But there's something awfully compelling in the very harsh, angry thought behind the lyrics:

They've forgotten all about God

He's the only reason we exist,

Yet you were the one that they thought was so weird

All those years ago

Now I'm more than a decade older than Lennon was when he was assassinated, and George has been gone an awfully long time, too. Both of them lived significantly shorter lives than anyone in my family.

Shortly after Harrison's death, I believe that I wrote a series of emails to friends, in effect asking: What's going on here? Where has it all gone? Why does it have to be like this?

My very pragmatic friend BC replied to them saying, "George Harrison isn't dead because [I honestly forget this part]. George Harrison is dead because he smoked six packs of cigarettes a day."

And he was right. Actions have consequences. The same thing is true with my mother, who shouted up the stairs to me on my birthday that John Lennon had been killed by a madman.

Her death should not have come as such a shock to me. I was paying attention, but I was running away from what I saw. I was pickling my fear and dread in a sea of alcohol. I couldn't face it. I didn't want to know.

A Renaissance of Renaissance (or, The Power of Music II)

A Song for All Seasons, the 1978 release from Renaissance.

Last night was a watershed of Renaissance at my place! About a week ago I had the same experience that I'd had earlier with Melanie, that is, remembering that I'd forgotten. Again, I hadn't listened to their music in years and years -- again, because I have it all on vinyl but nothing to play it on. Again, I hopped on line and ordered up some CDs. Last night they arrived. . . but I also had a nice surprise from my friend BC (more on him in a moment), who sent me not one, but four other albums from the band, albums that I never owned! BC is a danged nice guy when he isn't hammering me about calendars ("That's, ah say that's a joke, son!").

I went from zero to eight in about ten seconds!

I even turned off the PBS News Hour so I could instead listen to Annie and the boys while my dinner cooked. It felt like coming back to life after a decade-long sleep.

I started with Ashes Are Burning, an early effort from the reconstituted second group, and found that it had some additional music beyond the vinyl version. When the group sang "We all are atanding unafraid | On the Frontier" I had that same thrill of recognition that comes with rediscovery. It's a great feeling.

Y'know, even English Muffins are better when you haven't eaten them in a long time. Not that that has anything to do with music.

What used to be side one (do you remember the days when records had sides?) is good, but what used to be side two is great, with the perky ballad "Carpet of the Sun," the mourning, minor-keyed "At the Harbour" and the long title track. I played "Carpet" twice and sang right along with Annie. It's been years since I sang along with a recording. We sounded great!

Come along with me
Down into the world of seeing
Come and you'll be free
Take the time to find the feeling
See everything on it's own
And you'll find you know the way
And you'll know the things you're shown
Owe everything to the day

Later in the evening, I put on A Song for All Seasons, one of my favorites of theirs. It's a completely unified album, with a fanfare, overture and finale, but the individual songs are wonderful, too. Chief among these are "The Paper Lads," a theme song the group did for a British TV show that I'd love to see someday, and "Northern Lights," a real upbeat, Romantic piece.

Destination outward bound

I turn to see the Northern Lights behind the wing

Horizons seem to beckon me

Learned how to cry to young, now I live to sing

The Northern Lights are in my eyes

They guide me back to you

Renaissance have been labeled "progressive rock," but that's a meaningless term that tells you nothing about what their music is like. Their work has a strong vein of Classicism running through it, along with other sorts of "isms" -- Romanticism, Positivism, and a good dose of musical theatricality. Their lead vocalist, Annie Haslam, is not a great singer, but she is the perfect voice for the kind of music the band creates: clear, upbeat and expressive.

On many of the albums a full orchestra backs the group up, but don't let that fool you: Renaissance were no studio band, they could do it live and did so frequently, with Annie often vocalizing the orchestral parts to great effect.

Falling around me lay, parts of my life
I'm leaving them all behind
We leave with the night
Living in strange ways
Has cast me aside
I cry in another world now
I must search for all my days gone by

I first heard them on a PBS radio show called, if I remember correctly, The BBC Rock Hour. This was just such a live performance. I tuned in late, and so did not know anything of what I was hearing, only that I liked it. I quickly slapped a cassette tape into the radio and recorded the rest of the hour. It was only then that I learned the group's name. I wore that cassette tape out over time, and tracked down my first Renaissance album (Novella) at a now-defunct record chain called DeOrsey's.

Sold, said the man to the many

Work for me -- I'll only steal your time.

Quarter time for treble days

The only way to sell your soul

Midas Man

Midas Man

Most of the time, it's my friends who introduce me to bands or singers. But this time, this one time, I was able to go to my friend BC and introduce him to the group. I think he became as big a fan as I was. That's how he came to have all those Live CDs that he sent to me. He's being the opposite of Luddite me, though, and burning all his CDs onto his Ipod. That's how come he doesn't need them anymore.

Thank you, BC! I will give them a good home!

Now then, speaking of Annie. . .

My friend BC is the Associate Editor at The Library of American Comics, and also in the package was the latest volume of their spectacular hardcover reprint of Harold Gray's Little Orphan Annie. I told you he was a danged nice guy!

The Library of American Comics is reprinting, in archival quality and often for the first time, the great classics of American Newspaper Comic Strips from Dick Tracy and Terry and The Pirates to Blondie and Bloom County. After the delightful King Aroo, my second favorite is Little Orphan Annie, a sprawling Depression-era fable about a kid with nothing but spunk, grit, determination and a great dog. Each volume in the series contains approximately 1,000 daily strips (most shot from the original syndicate proofs), nine complete stories. The Sunday strips are reprinted in gloriously restored color. BC writes most of the scholarly and entertaining introductions to these volumes (including an "introduction" to the work of Noel Sickles that could fill a book by itself!), but the Annie supplementary material is written by Jeet Heer. These beautiful volumes belong on the shelves of anyone who takes “graphic novels” (I still call ’em comics) seriously.

'Nuff said! as Stan Lee used to say. . .

-- Freder.

Alone

What should have been a nice evening off went sour. The blower on the gas fire stopped working. Honey not only would not sleep with me, but disappeared -- I was so worried; it is, by my standards, a small house with no real hiding places and still no furniture to speak of, how could she vanish so completely? At four AM I was wandering through the house calling, and then screaming, her name.

I believe I am reaching the limits of what one person can cope with on his own. Those of you with partners in life -- cherish them, even if they sometimes annoy you. Here's a song lyric by Jacques Brel to cheer and amuse. The lyric actually doesn't do justice to the song, which starts low, peaks in the middle, and then diminishes as it tumbles down to the moaning final verse:

We find love, you and I
It's a new game to play
Then we tell our first lie
And see love go away
And we find... we're alone

We rush on, you and I
We don't need love at all
We need thrills, we need speed
Then we stumble and fall
And we find... we're alone

We're loyal, you and I
To flowers that are dead
We forget how to cry
We save photos instead
And we find... we're alone

We hear guns, you and I
We ask what is that
Then we open the Times
We're informed where it's at
And we find... we're alone

We're moral, you and I
We stand for what's right
We Slaughter all evil
By dawn's early light
And we find... we're alone

We're lucky you and I
We're alive and secure
But in the bank and the church
We can never feel sure
And we find... we're alone

We've made it, you and I
We have glory and fame
Yet we never know why
We feel so ashamed
And we find.. we're alone

We have power, you and I
But what good is that now
We could build a new world
If we only knew how
And we find... we're alone

We are old, you and I
We beg warmth from the sun
In the dreams that we dream
We ask what have done
And we find... we're alone

From my Evil Twin: Frosty the Raunchy Snowman

Frosty the Snowman
Was a randy sort of fellow
And he liked to play with the girls all day
When he went to the bordello.

He led them down the golden path to wrack and ruin each day
And he always used his carrot when they turned the other way!

(Whooo!)

Down to the Village
With his Broomstick in his hand
Chasing girls and boys
Waving his sex toys
Saying "Try this one, it's grand!"

'Cuz Frosty the Snowman
Was a right old letch you see
He may be cold but parts of him
Are hot eternally!

(Humpety-hump-hump
Humpety-hump-hump
Look at Frosty go!

Humpety-hump-hump
Humpety-hump-hump
Over the hills and snow!

Oooo-verrrrrrrr
The Hiiiiiiills
And Snooooooooooooooow!)

"Yes, baby!"

Read it and Weep

One of my oldest and best friends, BC, sent this selection from Rosanne Cash's new memoir, Composed. Thanks, BC!

“In the months since my father's passing I had come to understand that the loss of a parent expands you (or shrinks you, as the case may be) according to your own nature. If too much business is left unfinished, and guilt and regret take hold deep in the soul, mourning begins to diminish you, to constrict the heart, to truncate the vision of your own future, and to narrow the creative potential of the mind and spirit. If enough has been resolved (not everything, for everything will never be done, but just enough) then deep grief begins to transform the inner landscape, and space opens inside. You begin to realize that everyone has a tragedy, and that if he doesn't, he will. You recognize how much is hidden behind the small courtesies and civilities of everyday existence. Deep sorrow and traces of great loss run through everyone's lives, and yet they let others step into the elevator first, wave them ahead in a line of traffic, smile and greet their children and inquire about their lives, and never let on for a second that they, too, have lain awake at night in longing and regret, that they, too, have cried until it seemed impossible that one person could hold so many tears, that they, too, keep a picture of someone locked in their heart and bring it out in quiet, solitary moments to caress and remember.

“Loss is the great unifier, the terrible club to which we all eventually belong.”

A Theatrical Epic

Clocking in at just over three hours -- an almost unheard-of runtime for a picture made in the middle '30s -- and splashed with truckloads of sequins, The Great Ziegfeld is both a zestful discovery and an ordeal.

It's like getting two pictures in one: the first is a pretty good, fun biopic chock full of familiar faces; the second is almost a documentary re-creation of some of Ziegfeld's great shows.

William Powell is always worth watching, and here he delivers an engaging characterization of the great theatrical impresario, warts and all. Although second-billed, Myrna Loy doesn't appear until well into the final third of the film, as Ziegfeld's second wife Billie Burke, she of the quavering voice, Topper and the land of Oz. Without trying to imitate Burke, Loy evokes her splendidly, and grounds the movie so well that the billing is deserved.

But the whole cast is wonderful, really -- we get a much larger taste of Frank Morgan than in The Wizard of Oz, we get Will Rogers and Fannie Brice and Ray Bolger not just playing themselves, but recreating the very acts that attracted Hollywood to them; and it's all contained by a solid drama that Ziegfeld himself created as surely as he created his own shows.

The man was financially irresponsible to say the least, too fond of the female exterior, and too shallow to produce works of any depth. He was all surface, and so were his shows. "More steps!" Powell whispers as a cadre of Ziegfeld angels guide him out of this life. "I've got to have more steps!"

The musical numbers are indeed as spectacular as any ever filmed, but after a while, much like pornography, their sameness becomes apparent and they begin to become monotonous. Another cluster of girls arranged artfully on another spectacular set, not doing much of anything other than standing there and letting the light play over their sequin-studded costumes.

This was made and marketed as a "spectacular," and oh, how it tries. From an extravagant opening in an idealized sideshow to its final scene with Ziegfeld dying in a tiny room while the lights of his own theater glitter through the windows like a Heaven that's just out of reach, it marshals all of MGM's considerable resources to throw glamour at the screen by the trough-full. The Great Ziegfeld isn't -- not quite. But it has a lot to offer, and for the most part it rewards the endurance required to sit through it.

-- Freder.

Paris in Polychrome

An American in Paris really is just like a straight-up shot of Happiness. The songs are among Gershwin’s best, the design and settings are so vibrant and full of life (if unrealistic -- the final ballet makes it clear that Mr. Minnelli isn’t making any attempt to show us Paris; rather, he’s putting us into an Impressionist painting of the city); this really is the way color should be utilized in cinema.

Gene Kelly is such a cool cat that I can’t even hate him for being such a cool cat. Leslie Caron is possibly my favorite movie musical leading lady (why in God’s name can’t they get Lili out on DVD? That, my friends, is one of the best ever). And Oscar Levant is a hoot essentially playing a milder version of himself.

Kelly’s choreography is free and easy and full-blooded. Unlike Astaire, whose style is so light and airy that it’s almost other-worldly, Kelly is earthy, flaunting his physicality and his All-American enthusiasm.

The story? Feh. It’s just boy meets girl. But what a boy meeting what a girl in what a place, in dazzling clothes against dazzling backdrops, in dances that caress, collide and withdraw.

Kelly even comes with his own personal spotlight: that big, unending smile. An American in Paris is just infectious, and it accomplishes that which modern cinema seems to have forgotten how to do, even with all the bells, whistles and computers at its command: It charms.

P.S. – Y’know, I never thought of it this way, but if Fred Astaire is Air, and Gene Kelly is Earth, then Cyd Charisse is definitely Fire and Ginger Rogers has got to be smooth, flowing Water. The four elements of Movie Dance!

-- Freder.

Rapping, gently rapping. . .

Last night, following my nightly episode of Dark Shadows, I sat in the living room (yet another thing that would not have been possible a couple of weeks ago) and assembled Halloween treat bags with my new Nox Arcana CD playing in accompaniment.

I'm trying to acclimate Tiger Whitestockings to the house and the other cats so I can bring her in full-time. She sat on the floor, cowering beside my feet while I worked. All the cats were a little spooked by my choice of music.

I know little more about Nox Arcana than that it is a two-man group, that the founding member, Joseph Vargo, is also a painter and does all the art for their albums (the above image is a montage of his paintings for Carnival of Lost Souls), and that the group is an offshoot of another goth band, Midnight Syndicate.

A person might go nutty listening to their kind of music all the time, but for Halloween it is great stuff, a kind of new age old gothic style with sound effects and chorale backing. They do create a mood.

The first Nox Arcana album that I tried, last year around this time, was Carnival of Lost Souls, and it was a fortunate place to begin. Each of the albums has a theme, and the guys really knuckled down and got into this one. This sideshow is indeed a gruesome one, and the gypsy fortune teller doesn't have anything positive to say (unless it's that she's absolutely positive that your future looks bleak!). The circus animals are lumbering, nightmare monstrosities lashed on by demons in Harlequin costumes, and I don't even want to think about what's in the Freak Show.

Not all of their albums possess the depth of composition that's on display here. Blackthorn Asylum is a perfect example. This was their new release earlier this year, and I tried it around the time of Walpurgis Night. Unfortunately, despite a couple of effective cuts (their shock therapy cut goes right up and down my backbone), this feels like a rush job. Let's face it, after something like fifteen albums of this stuff (and more coming out all the time -- they've had two releases in the eight months or so since Asylum was issued), it's all going to start to sound the same.

Nonetheless, I tried again this week with their Poe-themed CD, Shadow of the Raven, and this was much better. After one listen, I can tell you that the music has more complexity and is less derivative than Blackthorn Asylum; once again, it may well be due to the theme. Poe is a great subject. You've got the man and his work to build upon, and this album features music based on specific stories and poems that also play as a kind of elegy to the troubled artist.

I was happily putting my treat bags together, petting Whitestockings to let her know that she was among new friends, and most of the other cats were lounging about. Once in a while one of them would come over to check her out.

Then I noticed that Pooky had woken from a sound sleep and was staring nervously at the CD player. Whitey had turned to look at it, too, and his ears were back. Whitestockings was peering around my leg, her whole body tight in anticipation. The next thing I knew, it wasn't music coming out of the CD player anymore, but cats yowling. Whitey actually started. I talked to them, saying "It's OK guys, don't worry, it's not real, it's not real!" -- but the yowling got louder and nastier and scarier and I had to drop what I was doing to keep Whitestockings from launching herself into flight. "It's OK, guys, don't worry, it's okay!"

I was about to get up and hit the fast forward on that puppy when it suddenly ended in silence. Not a moment too soon! "See guys, it's all over! Bad cats are gone! It's OK!"

A couple of them looked at me as if to say, "Don't ever do that again!"

What can I say? It's Halloween at the Duck House, and even in greatly reduced circumstances we are trying to get in the holiday spirit.

--Freder.

Halloween Movie Challenge: FAIL!

Oh, dear. I started in watching Fox's 1944 The Lodger last night, and although I found it very well done and intriguing, suddenly twenty minutes into it I got up and turned it off.

It's not the fault of the movie. I look forward to seeing the rest of it sometime. I guess that I'm just not in the mood to sit passively and watch telly when I should be up and about, doing things, getting caught up. If I'm to stay in this house for even a short period of time, I can not have boxes full of stuff sitting on the floor in the front room. I can not have things just all a-jingling. I can not have dust bunnies and rubble in the corners.

Plus, my scrapbook keeps calling to me. I never would have thought that this would be an activity for me, but there you are, I have scrapbooking supplies neatly arranged (for me) on the dining room table. I could not find a scrapbook that I liked in the stores, so when an unused ledger of my mother's turned up, I started manually blackening the pages with India ink and mounting my photos there, writing captions in white ink and adding scarp elements cut from documents, magazines, cards. It's going to be pretty arty when I get done.

I find it more comforting to be in a well-lit room working on something like that, than to be sitting in a darkened room watching old movies. When I go to bed at night, I feel as if I've accomplished something. The cats are starting to settle down and take advantage of the new arrangement. We all sit in the living room, and I put some music on (until Melanie arrives, Herb Alpert is getting a lot of play) and I work on emptying the boxes, loading the bookshelves, repacking linens into drawers, or I sit and work on the scrapbook.

The living/dining room, the kitchen and the front room are all pretty good now. But the study needs more cleaning, more furniture and more thought, and the front hall is merely storage space at the moment. I haven't even begun to clean up my mother's bedroom. I don't like going in there.

Oddly enough, the pickers took next to nothing out of her bathroom, so it's like an oasis in there at the edge of a wasteland.

Tonight maybe I'll try again, maybe not. Tomorrow I go looking at houses.

-- Freder

The Power of Music

It's a big, old-fashioned, extravagant word, but it's useful for describing big, old-fashioned, extravagant emotions: the other night I was disconsolate. I was doing the evening dishes and weeping like a fool, feeling trapped, lonely and sorry for myself.

Then I heard a familiar voice that I had not heard in years. It was playful and flirty, with an edge of roughness to it.

I got a brand new pair of roller skates

You got a brand new key

I think that we should get together

And try them out you see

I been looking around awhile

You've got something for me

Oh, I got a brand new pair of roller skates

You got a brand new key

It was Melanie. I turned to look at the television and saw a baby in a stroller shooting through traffic at high speed: a telephone commercial.

My first thought was, Good on her! The old gal will get some money for that. I brushed my tears aside and turned back to the dishes, only this time my hips were swaying.

I asked your mother if you were at home

She said yes, but you weren't alone

Oh, sometimes I think that you're avoiding me

I'm okay alone but you've got something I need...

So many associations rose up from wherever we keep them when we're not using them. I remember buying my first Melanie album at a small department store in Wisconsin the summer that I rode with my grandmother and grandfather to Minnesota from Maine. We had traveled through Canada and stopped at Niagara Falls along the way.

Slowwwwly I turned -- step by step --

But I digress that's what associations do. Everything is connected.

I don't think I knew anything about Melanie when I bought the album (it was Gather Me -- a real good place to start); but I had seen them in the record club ads and I was curious. You'd never know that Melanie Safka was a New York City girl, born and bred; she wore what were known in those days as Peasant Dresses and cultivated the Whole Earth Mother image (the Whole Earth Catalog was another thing we had back then). I knew little about folk music and am not sure if I knew that was what I was getting into. The look was what intrigued me.

Gather Me is a great album by any standard and I was hooked. I spent most of that summer with my grandmother and grandfather (two more people I miss terribly). and spent a good chunk of it lying next to their stereo listening to one Melanie album after another.

I've been celebrating way too long

And I've been drinking I'm ashamed to tell

Still feel thirsty

God I want to drink the water from the well

Still feel thirsty

God I want to drink and Ring The Living Bell

Ring the bell, ah...

By that time Melanie Safka was well along in developing as a performer. In her early years her voice was a bit nasal and rough, and she fell into the same category as Dylan: more interesting as a songwriter than as a singer. She could belt out a wailing note, but she used that trick to excess, sometimes to the point of annoyance. But beginning with Good Book, her voice had mellowed some and her delivery was greatly improved in its range. She could still wail, but she could also coax and flirt, and when she sang sad songs it was with tenderness rather than overt weeping. With sophisticated arrangements by Roger Kellaway adding to the mix, Melanie had developed into something much more than just a hippie gal with a guitar.

I entered dancing

And looked for my partner

I thought the path could be a double road

You played my heart like a drum beating warning

Oh, I guess I'm gonna dance this one alone...

Several years later I remember shopping with that same grandmother at Porteous, Mitchell & Braun, in Portland, Maine. Once a great, old-fashioned department store (the closest thing Maine had to Dayton's in Minneapolis), Porteous was already suffering from a decline brought on by the opening of the Maine Mall, and you could see that decline in the store. But they still had a record department, and I remember the joy of finding a brand-new Melanie album there: Madrugada. Grandma bought it for me. With a great opening song and full-blooded covers of "Lover's Cross," "Pretty Boy Floyd" and "Wild Horses," it was a strong effort, if not quite to the standard of Gather Me or Stoneground Words.

I'm so tired

That I can't sleep

And I already read the Bible

Inner deep

The preacher keeps me on my knees

To wander and to travel

Her songs are often melancholy and reflective, which made me her perfect target audience. During the summers at the farm there were many days of daydreaming alone in my end of the house, with the stereo playing full blast, usually The Beatles or the Moody Blues or Melanie. I still have all the vinyl records, but my stereo system is Deeply Troubled, and I haven't played any of them in many, many years.

By 1976 Melanie had been without a recording contract for a few years. She had fallen out of fashion with the record companies, more than with her fans. Ahmet Ertigun (sp?) at Atlantic Records gave her a chance and her "comeback" album, Photograph, was released. The New York Times gave it a rave review, but it was not widely distributed. I remember finding my copy in the record store: one of those moments when you suck in a load of breath in excitement. That's one experience the internet has largely killed. The art of browsing, and the moment of pleasure when you make a find or a discovery.

Photograph is probably Melanie's best and most sophisticated album, with a powerful, stirring opening song, a reflective remake of her own "Nickel Song," and a pleasing range of autobiographical songs. It deserved a much wider audience. Instead, it was her first real step into obscurity.


By this time I was in my senior year of high school and about to make the worst decision of my life.

Too much singing for my living tonight

Do a song for friends and company

Too much is the matter with the giving on spite

Here's one for the giving, and the other for free

Here's a link to Melanie's web site. She appears to be keeping herself busy.


For my part, last night as I was once again doing up the evening dishes (and having a better time of it, for all the Melanie music going around in my head, plus the knowledge that I had just ordered up a couple of CD's online and will soon be able to listen to some old Melanie favorites once again), I realized that Ms. Safka even had a number in her songbook for my current crisis. All I had to do was change one word.

Look what they done to your song, Ma

Look what they done to your song.

You know they tied it up in a plastic bag

And they turned it upside down, Ma

Look what they done to your song.

-- Freder.