Saturday, February 23, 2013
Monday, February 18, 2013
The Rollilng Stones were not hippies
Honestly,
I think this is one of the weakest songs from their most interesting
and innovative period. The psychedelic sound and the druggy hippie vibe
never suited them, and it shows in the general directionless sway of the
music. So much is heaped on this track--angelic chorus,
harpsichord--that is something of a bottomless pit of effects and fake
sentiment.
I doubt Jagger and Richard believed this stuff for a moment;sometimes great artists do great work in pandering to what they think is what the public flavor of the minute is, but this happens when there is an angry energy that distances the nuanced likes of The Stones from the base sentiments the lyrics and the song's ragged pastiche of elements espouse. It's as if they wanted us to believe that they were on with the Haight-Ashbury thing. Perhaps they were, though I suspect ambivalence more than belief was a more likely response from them regarding the Utopian thinking of the more addled minded in the counter culture.
It is interesting for historical reasons, though, one of the few times
the Rolling Stones ever followed the Beatles lead for a musical idea.
We can be thankful that the Stones stopped making music that reflected
the way they dressed--like dandies--and returned to the rhythm and blues
and cynical realism that keeps them musically brilliant and
philosophically relevant. 'Musically brilliant" you repeat, eyes squinting, head skeptically tilted. Yes, emphatically . Technique is the accumulation of what ever level of expertise you manage to make second nature in your professional-artistic skill set. Talent is something else, being that particular human element that gives the sum of one's know how a humanity that convincingly adds some other wise inexpressible perception of existence to the common tongue. That the Stones have been able to make compelling music-randy, raucous, rude, insightful,poetic,ironic, compassionate, raging, spiritual, experimental, temperamental,even-keeled-for the better part of a century is the expression of a genius of some sort. Precisely what kind will be the tasks of smarter critics than myself .
Think about it: how many times have we had designs, made plans, had reasonable and out-of-proportion expectations of what we thought our lives, short and long term, would amount to, only to have our daydreams thwarted in business, love, art, friendship? Plenty , I suspect.Things break, plans don't work out, people grow apart. Life, as it happens, has no interests in what plans, whatever the scale, we might have cobbled together in order to conquer the world.
And how many times have you just sang the refrain from the Stones tune, "...you can't always get what you want..." as a means of gaining perspective. At first you might not believe it, but in time, choosing not to do drugs commit suicide, you accept the premise out need. A wise reflection needn't be verbose nor poetic, just direct.
Friday, February 15, 2013
Traci Brimhall's renegotiates the marriage contract
The poem ""If Marriage is a Duel at 10 Paces" by Traci Brimhall is less a ritualized settling of grudges than it is a supremely phrased and acidly etched sequence of couplets lampooning the
hackneyed metaphors that are applied to timeless institutions .In this
instance absurd comparisons between marriage and something other. Brimhall seems to draw from a period of having to listen to
platitude-dripping testaments from husbands, her own and likely the
remarks of other nervous men, who needed reassurances about he stability
of the contract with bromides and sage cliches that were a form of
emotional blackmail. Brimhall takes up the game and posits her own thinking , mimicking the analogies and interrogating the logic; every
statement contains it own contradiction and counter argument."
"If marriage is a war for independence, I’ll find a feather
for my cap and shoot you from your horse. Darling.
If it’s a hunt, salt and cure me. If it’s a plague for two,
my dear, let’s quarantine ourselves in the cemetery wearing
aprons and snakeskin belts. Let’s disfigure each other
with praise. My beautiful. My fugitive..."
There is a tangible anger at the entire "'til-death-us-part" solemnity of the wedding vow , which sets the poet up splendidly for an extended take down of the premise. There is , of course, the issue that this only one side of the story and what we lack is a the complexity that would make this poem even more dynamic; honestly, that does not bother so much if for reason that Brimhall gets the tone and the poking-finger earnestness of the stream right. The story that happens off stage, that is unmentioned during this narrator's confession of resentment, is palable, conspicuous by the lack of reference. Anger, frustration, bristling irritation has given the tongue , or at least the mind, an articulation it may well not had seen before.
The strength of this power, its power , in fact, is that the poet simulates the verbal dexterity a long brewing dissatisfaction can give you and which comes out in one especially articulate explosion of well-turned sarcasm. Reading this made me think of those times when I had entered someone's living room by invitation only to get the sense that there is a narrative under the subterfuge of polite chatter and mannered hospitality, that at any second the lid might blow off the pressure cooker. This poem is one of those moments when it finally does.
This is a caustic rant and it would be a fitting speech for a character in a yet to be written play ; the wife, fed up with years of her husband's laziness, stupidity, infidelity , financial irresponsible and an over reliance on the easiest phrase that comes to mind when justifying his onerous acts, responds at once with bazooka and blow torch. There is the neat, efficient trick of mocking with great exaggeration while revealing the harm cliches, evasions and lies cause, as in "let's disfigure ourselves with praise..." While the truth sets you free by liberating you from falsehoods that coerce you into making amazingly bad decisions, lies mar the landscape, destroy trust, create unhappiness for all those involves, makes it a requirement that one carry equal amounts of dread, self loathing and resentment under a cracking veneer of calm resignation.
The strength of this power, its power , in fact, is that the poet simulates the verbal dexterity a long brewing dissatisfaction can give you and which comes out in one especially articulate explosion of well-turned sarcasm. Reading this made me think of those times when I had entered someone's living room by invitation only to get the sense that there is a narrative under the subterfuge of polite chatter and mannered hospitality, that at any second the lid might blow off the pressure cooker. This poem is one of those moments when it finally does.
This is a caustic rant and it would be a fitting speech for a character in a yet to be written play ; the wife, fed up with years of her husband's laziness, stupidity, infidelity , financial irresponsible and an over reliance on the easiest phrase that comes to mind when justifying his onerous acts, responds at once with bazooka and blow torch. There is the neat, efficient trick of mocking with great exaggeration while revealing the harm cliches, evasions and lies cause, as in "let's disfigure ourselves with praise..." While the truth sets you free by liberating you from falsehoods that coerce you into making amazingly bad decisions, lies mar the landscape, destroy trust, create unhappiness for all those involves, makes it a requirement that one carry equal amounts of dread, self loathing and resentment under a cracking veneer of calm resignation.
Brimhall's poem starts from the point where her
narrator seems to have dropped the last dish to the floor, stands
straight, hands on hips , and begins a thorough dismantling of each lie
she participated in. This is a powerful poem, unusual, punchy and full
of a crackling good wit. This is a warning to readers to not flatter their spouses with the foul essence of stale sentiment , promises and vague assurances that destiny will be great if you just stay the course. Talk long enough and you will create the verbal rope that will coil around your neck even as you speak the words, or someone speaks them back to you.t
Sunday, February 10, 2013
How To Glow: a poem by Dean Young
How to Glow by Dean Young.
A chaotic poem at first reading,
but it does have a rhythm and vibrant sense of starting off with one
proposition and concluding with an end , a result, that one did not expect.
"And end" is just the word, as in death, because each of the concrete
things that poet Dean Young mentions seem find a connection with death ; all
things lead to demise here, peaceful, painful, glorious, infamous, mundane. Dean's attack is a credible simulation of someone under anesthetic narrating the stream of images and attending conversations of his life, a slurred and surreal accounting of various transactions with doctors, families, friends, bright ideas and bad faith all, with a mind that discerns where all agendas wind up.
That which we busy ourselves with in order to
adhere to an existentialist principle that our lives have meaning drawn from
only the decisions we make and our commitment to live by the results of our
projects has , as well, a parallel function, to distract us from obsessing from
that which we know is inevitable. Young, who I understand was once in need of a
heart transplant and was fortunate enough to receive one, is fatalistic in this
poem, but not without being playful as he inspects the dead ends of the
propositions and ideas that are initially championed. One might despair and declare that the poem
means to tell us that what we do and dream and build is all for naught because
each endeavor results in a metaphorical dustbin ; I sense something else,
hinted at in the title; if you want to glow, to seem holy and spiritual, shine
at what you do, aspire and achieve. Go forth and do good works.Appreciate the abyss, step away
from it and return to the business of being alive, in this moment.
Saturday, February 9, 2013
Mother of God, turn that shit down granpa!
Truthfully, I used to like Aerosmith quite a bit and still get an adrenaline rush when I hear their best tunes. Guitar-centric rock was my preference in the Sports Arena days, but where other bands of the era now bore me and dated themselves badly, AS were pretty much the best at catchy riffs, savage, terse guitar solos and absurdly clever double -signifying lyrics.
The combination of riff -craft and professed cocksmanship was made to order for any frustrated 20-year-old genius yearning to abandon his book learning' and take up the microphone, center stage, instead. As you know, my tastes have gravitated, gratefully, towards mainstream jazz and blues over the last thirty five years--classic Miles, Coltrane, Mel Lewis, Wayne Shorter, Joe Pass, lots of Blue Note, Atlantic, ECM, Pacific Jazz, Verve, Impulse, Fantasy record releases--and rock and roll no longer interests me in large measure. But I still get a charge when a good AS is played--I rather like Tyler's rusty drainpipe screaming and I believe Joe Perry is one heck of a good chunk-chording guitarist. It helps, I guess, that these guys never got far from some rhythm and blues roots, even if those roots come from the Stones and not Motown or Stax. This may be damning with faint praise, but they were a brilliant expression of a young glandular confusion.
What makes this art is this band's skill at sounding like they never learned anything fifty feet past the schoolyard and not much else beyond the age of 25. As we age and suffer the sprains, creaks and cancer symptoms, inherited and self-inflicted, our past gets more gloriously delinquent more we talk about it and we find ourselves gravitating to those acts of yore who seemed to maintain a genuine scowl and foul attitude. Nearly any rock band based on rebellion and extreme bouts of immaturity just seems ridiculous after a while--Peter Townsend is lucky enough to have had more ambition in his songwriting with Tommy and Who's Next to have lived down the dubious distinction of having written the lyric that exclaimed that he would rather die before he got old. Aerosmith, in turn, still sounds good and rocking as often as not simply because they have mastered their formula. The sound a generation of us newly minted seniors occasionally pined for remains the audio clue to an idea of integrity and idealism; what is disheartening, if only for a moment, is that this band's skill at sounding 21 and collectively wasted is a matter of professionalism and not an impulse to smash The State.
Rock and roll is all about professionalism , which is to say that some oen of the alienated and consequently alienating species trying to make their way in the world subsisting on the seeming authenticity of their anger, ire and anxiety has to make sure that they take care of their talent, respect their audiences expectations even as they try to make the curdled masses learn something new, and to makes sure that what they are writing about /singing about/yammering about is framed in choice riffs and frenzied backbeat. It is always about professionalism; the MC5 used to have manager John Sinclair, story goes, turn off the power in middle of one of their teen club gigs in Detroit to make it seem that the Man was trying to shut down their revolutionary oooopha. The 5 would get the crowd into a frenzy, making noise on the dark stage until the crowd was in a sufficient ranting lather. At that point Sinclair would switch the power back on and the band would continue, praising the crowd for sticking it to the Pigs. This was pure show business, not actual revolutionary fervor inspired by acne scars and blue balls; I would dare say that it had its own bizarre integetity, and was legitimate on terms we are too embarrassed to discuss. In a way, one needs to admire bands like the Stones or Aerosmith for remembering what it was that excited them when they were younger, and what kept their fan base loyal.
All I would say is that it's not a matter of rock and roll ceasing to be an authentic trumpet of the troubled young soul once it became a brand; rather, rock and roll has always been a brand once white producers, record company owners and music publishers got a hold of it early on and geared a greatly tamed version of it to a wide and profitable audience of white teenagers. In any event, whether most of the music being made by Elvis, Jerry Lee Lewis and others was a weaker version of what was done originally by Howlin Wolf, Muddy Waters et al is beside the point. It coalesced, all the same, into a style that perfectly framed an attitude of restlessness among mostly middle class white teenagers who were excited by the sheer exotica, daring and the sense of the verboten the music radiated. It got named, it got classified, the conventions of its style were defined, and over time , through both record company hype and the endless stream of Consciousness that most white rock critics produced, rock and roll became a brand.
It was always a brand once it was removed from the black communities and poor Southern white districts from which it originated. I have no doubt that the artist's intention, in the intervening years, was to produce a revolution in the conscious of their time with the music they wrote and performed, but the decision to be a musician was a career choice at the most rudimentary level, a means to make a living or, better yet , to get rich. It is that rare to a non-existent musician who prefers to remain true to whatever vaporous sense of integrity and poor.
Even Chuck Berry, in my opinion, the most important singer-songwriter musician to work in rock and roll--Berry, I believe, created the template with which all other rock and rollers made their careers in music--has described his songwriting style as geared for young white audiences. Berry was a man raised on the music of Ellington and Louie Jardin, strictly old school stuff, and who considered himself a contemporary of Muddy Waters, but he was also An entrepreneur as well as an artist. He was a working artist who rethought his brand and created a new one; he created something wholly new, a combination of rhythm and blues, country guitar phrasing and narratives that wittily, cleverly, indelibly spoke to a collective experience that had not been previously served. Critics and historians have been correct in callings this music Revolutionary, in that it changed the course of music, but it was also a Career change. All this, though, does not make what the power of Berry's music--or the music of Dylan, Beatles, Stones, MC5, Bruce or The High Fiving White Guys -- false, dishonest, sans value altogether. What I concern myself with is how well the musicians are writing, playing, singing on their albums, with whether they are inspired, being fair to middlin', or seem out of ideas, out of breath; it is a useless and vain activity to judge musicians, or whole genres of music by how well they/it align themselves with a metaphysical standard of genuine, real, vital art making. That standard is unknowable and those putting themselves of pretending they know what it is are improvising at best.
notes on a poem by Mark Strand
The quiet side appeals to me as well, much as I love
abrasive post-bop jazz improvisation ala Cecil Taylor or the raucous cacophony
of Charles Ives; there are those moods
when what I need from art—and art is something which is a need—is a short
harmonica solo, a small water color in a simple frame, or a lyric poem that
dwells comfortably, musically on it’s surface qualities. One loves grit, but
that doesn’t exclude finess. Mark Strand’s poem here won me over with it’s
surely played music.
My Mother on an Evening in Late Summer
by Mark Strand
1
When the moon appears
and a few wind-stricken barns stand
out
in the low-domed hills
and shine with a light
that is veiled and dust-filled
and that floats upon the fields,
my mother, with her hair in a bun,
her face in shadow, and the smoke
from her cigarette coiling close
to the faint yellow sheen of her
dress,
stands near the house
and watches the seepage of late
light
down through the sedges,
the last gray islands of cloud
taken from view, and the wind
ruffling the moon's ash-colored
coat
on the black bay.
2
Soon the house, with its shades
drawn closed, will send
small carpets of lampglow
into the haze and the bay
will begin its loud heaving
and the pines, frayed finials
climbing the hill, will seem to
graze
the dim cinders of heaven.
And my mother will stare into the
starlanes,
the endless tunnels of nothing,
and as she gazes,
under the hour's spell,
she will think how we yield each
night
to the soundless storms of decay
that tear at the folding flesh,
and she will not know
why she is here
or what she is prisoner of
if not the conditions of love that
brought her to this.
3
My mother will go indoors
and the fields, the bare stones
will drift in peace, small
creatures --
the mouse and the swift -- will
sleep
at opposite ends of the house.
Only the cricket will be up,
repeating its one shrill note
to the rotten boards of the porch,
to the rusted screens, to the air,
to the rimless dark,
to the sea that keeps to itself.
Why should my mother awake?
The earth is not yet a garden
about to be turned. The stars
are not yet bells that ring
at night for the lost.
Mark Strand is someone who often works overtime to make the
small things he chooses to write about into subjects that are poetically
overpowering. Though he wouldn't be guilty of some fever pitched overwriting
that makes the work of Nobel Prize Winner Derek Walcott seem like a riotous
thicket of over simile’d commonplaces--it has been said that the prize winner
has never met a qualifier he didn't fall in love with and promise a home
to--Strand has always seemed to fall just short of adding an item too many to
his verses.
He does have a leaner, more genuinely lyric movement than
does Walcott, whom I find more ornate than satisfying. Strand
, to his credit , doesn't obscure the emotion nor the place from which is
figurative language is inspired, arch as it occasionally reads. Walcott the
poet, the world traveller, the cultivated Other in the presence of an Imperial
Culture, reads like someone how is trying to have an experience. Strand convinces you that he has had one, indeed, but
that he over estimates the measure of words to their finessed narrative.
That said, I like this, in that Strand
trusts what his eyes sees, a series of things his mother was doing in a
wonderfully framed triptyche that might have been conveyed by Andrew Wyeth. It
is a little idealized--the lyric spirit is not interested in the precise
qualifier,but that adjective or verb , that rather, that both makes the image
more musical and reveals some commonly felt impression about the objects in the
frame--but Strand here has a relaxed
confidence that is very effective. Brush strokes, we could say, both
impressionistic and yet exact.
Soon the house, with its shades
drawn closed, will send
small carpets of lampglow
into the haze and the bay
will begin its loud heaving
and the pines, frayed finials
climbing the hill, will seem to
graze
the dim cinders of heaven.
And my mother will stare into the
starlanes,
the endless tunnels of nothing,
and as she gazes,
under the hour's spell,
she will think how we yield each
night
to the soundless storms of decay
that tear at the folding flesh,
and she will not know
why she is here
or what she is prisoner of
if not the conditions of love that
brought her to this.
This is the image of someone going about there daily chores
and fulfilling their obligations thinking they are out anyone else's view, or
better, the agenda of someone who hasn't interest in impressing any set of
prying eyes. The mother seems less a figure in solitude than she does to
contain solitude itself, comfortable and with intimate knowledge of the grain
of the wood the floor is made of, the smell of the changing weather, the
different pitches of silence and what the nuances of small sounds forecast for
that evening and the following day. Most of all, this is about watching the
world, the smallest world , both grow up, grow old, become frail and die,
finally, aware of the seamlessness of going about one's tasks and the
preparation for the end. This is a poem about preparation, I think; we, like
the Mother, come to a point in their life when the gravity of things are
finally felt through accumulated experience, as one's responsibilities have
been added too over the years, and one develops a sense that what one does
isn't so much about setting ourselves up for the rest of our lives, but rather
in preparing the ground for what comes next, who comes next.
Somewhere in the work , toil , the bothersome details we get
to rest and earn an extra couple of hours to keep our eyes close. The change
happens slowly, unperceived,but it does happen, and the planet is a constant
state of becoming, of change, and what changes too are the metaphors one would
use to determine their next indicated jobs.
Why should my mother awake?
The earth is not yet a garden
about to be turned. The stars
are not yet bells that ring
at night for the lost.
While Strand writes of his mother's preparing the day for the days that will follow,May Swenson finds comedy and tragedy lurking in the same set of skewed images with this poem. It has a fine elegance that nearly obscures the ominous tone that clouds the final lines, an effect that's artfully deferred.
While Strand writes of his mother's preparing the day for the days that will follow,May Swenson finds comedy and tragedy lurking in the same set of skewed images with this poem. It has a fine elegance that nearly obscures the ominous tone that clouds the final lines, an effect that's artfully deferred.
Wednesday, February 6, 2013
Randroids punk the canon
A bill brought forth in Idaho would make it a requirement for students to have read Ayn Rand's free market fantasia Atlas Shrugged and past a test on the novel in order to graduate. There's no need to go into my usual harangue against Rand's beliefs and her writings, or to reiterate that her fiction , both as art and reading experience, is an experience , seemingly,only devotees of miserable experiences would praise. No, this shows us the heart, or lack of heart, at the center of the Randroid mind set, the walking contradiction: an army of free thinking libertarians, self-confessed protectors of liberty want desperately to be the boss.
This proposed law reveals the lie contained in the Cult of Rand: the mistress of misery advocates on the one hand absolute , unconditional individual liberty, and on the other hand, and in practice, she and her followers excoriate, punish and shun those who do not kiss her ring , her feet and rubber stamp her irrational, reductionist, hairbrained philosophy.
In other words, these folks are closeted elitists and totalitarians. They do not believe in freedom, they do not believe in democratic values or practice. Requiring , by law, that any student should have to read ANYTHING extrinsic to his field of study ought to repulse true Randians. But I guess it doesn't. So much for their brand of freedom, free will and free inquiry.
This proposed law reveals the lie contained in the Cult of Rand: the mistress of misery advocates on the one hand absolute , unconditional individual liberty, and on the other hand, and in practice, she and her followers excoriate, punish and shun those who do not kiss her ring , her feet and rubber stamp her irrational, reductionist, hairbrained philosophy.
In other words, these folks are closeted elitists and totalitarians. They do not believe in freedom, they do not believe in democratic values or practice. Requiring , by law, that any student should have to read ANYTHING extrinsic to his field of study ought to repulse true Randians. But I guess it doesn't. So much for their brand of freedom, free will and free inquiry.
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The Atlantic a month ago ran a pig-headed bit of snark-slamming prog rock as "The Whitest Music Ever, "a catchy bit of clickbait...