Present Tense Memory

Dad and I made it to Springerville today.  It's beautiful here, in a breathtakingly rugged way.  The last time I was here, I remember feeling like the whole community bordered on the depressing, and was ready to leave.  For some reason, this time I feel like I love it all the way down to my bones.  It's cold here today, and it's been raining of and on all day.  And yet, the mountains...the clear sky...it's all so beautiful.

I don't know why I never saw it before.

The business we have been here to attend to has gone smoothly thus far.  Uncle Don's house is a treasure chest of unimaginable family history discoveries.  He was a collector, and didn't throw many things away, but even in the few hours dad and I were there today I was able to uncover so many priceless artifacts.  Amongst these are dozens of previously unseen (by me) photos of family from decades past, including the clearest pictures I have ever seen of my dad's parents when they were young.  In fact, I had only seen one photo of my grandpa prior to today - a medium distance shot where his face was mostly obscured by shadow thrown from a large hat.  Today, I found a full-face studio portrait of him taken sometime during his twenties.  It's small, but it's clear as a bell.  There's the man - full face, straight on, clear as day.  It's breathtaking.  It would mean so little to anyone else, but it means everything to me.

Adventure continues - discovery yet to come fills my heart with anticipation.  Being here in the cradle of my lineage is staggering.  Across the street from our motel is the school my dad went to 7th grade in.  That would have been over 60 years ago.  A child called Bobby ran into that building every day with (most likely) a twinkle in his eye and an ornery grin on his face.  This whole little town is FILLED with those stories, from family members I met, and some that only exist to me through stories - and now some precious pictures.

It's an interesting phenomenon how age bestows upon us a certain amount of myth.  The things we do today without a second thought could carry tremendous amounts of weight and import with following generations.  My dad grew up here.  He just did what we all do.  But something about that fact is AMAZING to me now.  There's a house behind Uncle Don's house that dad grew up in as a kid.  He had to live somewhere, you know?  But the fact that he lived there is AMAZING to me.  I will bring Joanna back here and show her that house and say, "HE LIVED HERE!  AND GRANDMA DID, TOO!!!  AND THEY WERE ALL SO YOUNG!!!!!"  Well, it's a house, and he lived in it.  But he also ATE CEREAL and DREW PICTURES and SANG SONGS there.  Don't you see?!?

It's an amazing thing.  It makes me want to take my current days more seriously, as you never know who will come back to the area where I live in 60 years, and say, "Mark lived HERE, and he ATE food here, and he had SUCH A COOL TV!"  And they'll look at me and say, "You really did?"  And I'll say, "Well, yeah, and I even listened to music on huge speakers."

"Wow..." 

Somewhere Out There

The West looms large in my personal and genealogical history.  I've been west many times, but never been farther east than the western-most part of Illinois.  I know there's a whole world that lies to the east, but my entire life experience thus far has revolved around the wide-open spaces of the west.  The sweeping vistas, the lonesome mountains forever in the distance. 

The little town of Springerville, AZ.

My dad's hometown, and the lifelong (with a few short exceptions) residence of my Uncle Don.  A resilient, wise loner, Uncle Don recently passed away, and Dad and I are on our way west to the little hamlet in the sky (altitude - 7,000 feet) to see to caring for some final arrangements, and to secure Don's house and remove items of extreme sentimental and/or practical value.

It's not a fun reason to be here, but there is still magic in the west that cannot be denied. 

The best place names passed today include Roman Nose, Oklahoma, Corn, Oklahoma, and Zuzax, New Mexico.  Somewhere in Texas we passed a truck stop called (I'm not kidding) Jesus Christ is the Savior Not a Swear Word Truck Stop.  That was fun.

I'm spoiled to majestic views after living in Eureka Springs for the last year - there's something truly breathtaking about endless vistas filled with trees - living things, versus endless vistas filled with dirt and rocks.  Big rocks, for sure, but still rocks.  But there's something liberating about the space.  And the dry air.  And the moderate winter temperatures. 

And the history.

The passing of Uncle Don likely marks the end of my connection to Springerville, AZ.  At least, the last living connection.  But some connections are far deeper - some connections are intangible.  They consist of the fibers of memory and the love that lingers in the heart.  I'm glad I got to see Uncle Don not too awful long ago (about two years) and I'm glad I have a reason to return to the rural mountain region of Northeastern Arizona.

As I've gotten older and experienced travels I've learned how small the country really is.  This morning, I was in Joplin, MO.  This evening I'm in Albuquerque, NM.  Tomorrow I'll be in Springerville.  The country is small, but our own lives - our tiny little worlds - are smaller still.  Like I said, the situation isn't particularly happy, but it is nice to get back out on the road (with shorter notice than I've ever experienced a similar trip before) and revisit these parts of the story of my life.

Perhaps Uncle Don's world was the smallest of all, but by visiting it and taking memories and stories away with me, I make it larger.  And by telling the stories - keeping them alive - I make it eternal.

Beautiful Bummer

 

"I'm a leaf on a windy day...pretty soon I'll be blown away."

Nobody has ever been able to express sadness quite as beautifully as Brian Wilson.  There are a handful of songs in the world that can grab my heart and move me to tears almost every time I hear them.  90% of those were written by Wilson.

In the world of Brian Wilson, life is a long, drawn out series of reflections on past glories and the knowledge that one only grows older, eventually to come to the end of the road.  One gets the feeling Wilson has been resigned to his end of the road for decades, and the fact that he's still around probably comes as a shock to him as much as anyone else.

His best work - the work that resonates most deeply with me - is the work in which one can feel the lid being lifted off the great, deep well of his mind and heart, and the darkness inside being given room to breathe.  Early Beach Boys tunes like "In My Room," "The Lonely Sea," and "The Warmth of the Sun" hint at this melancholy beautifully, while retaining the mask of candy corn artifice that made the group such a smash in the Kennedy era.

Brian was young when he wrote those songs.  Really young.  One gets the feeling that he was born sad.  As he matured, the themes only got darker.  "'Til I Die" is perhaps the quintessential Brian Wilson bummer song - dark, sad, and yet somehow tremendously uplifting in its sheer beauty.  Something about the sad message coupled with the beautiful delivery, fueled by the fathomless genius of the man, is positively harrowing.  Any message, powerfully told, becomes more effective.

Brian's bio - the drugs, the mental illness, the long stretch of isolation and obesity - destroys me when I think that all it could have taken would have been a little more patience, a little more understanding, at very formative years in his life, to keep him on the right track.  That's another part of his genius - he makes me feel like I could have had something to offer him were I to have been that one to reach out in the darkness.  It's the same way I feel about Michael Jackson, who once said he would walk around his neighborhood at night so lonely, hoping to run into someone he could talk to.  That person totally could have been me!  I could have saved him!

And yet, in the end, I suppose nobody can really save us from ourselves.

I love that Brian's bio took a turn for the brighter as time went on.  As he exorcised ghosts from his past - "Pet Sounds" performed live, finishing and performing "SMiLE" (one of my top 5 albums of all time), one can feel the weight slipping off of him, even if the darkness stayed firmly in place.

His new works - that is, his works created exclusively after the catharsis of the SMiLE resurrection, are vibrant, playful, and full of that same sweet melancholy.  Whether original material or covers of Gershwin and Disney tunes, Brian's beautiful sound - the sound of a thousand voices joined in harmony; the sound of an eternal "teenage symphony to God" - is alive and well, and beautiful to behold.

The Beach Boys reunited for their 50th anniversary, and convened to record and release an album.  Against the weight of tremendous potential for failure, the album fits perfectly within the oeuvre, the world, of Brian Wilson.  The last half of the album is where he gets personal, culminating in the beautiful bummer "Summer's Gone."

Another summer gone...

Summer's gone
It's finally sinking in
One day begins
Another ends
I live them all and back again

Summer's gone
I'm gonna sit and watch the waves
We laugh, we cry
We live then die
And dream about our yesterday

The track begins and ends with piano (eerily reflective of "Wouldn't It Be Nice") that drifts in and out as if on a dream.  The past is not the worst place to live, and even present events quickly become burnished with the golden sheen of memory.  It's easy to wander around in a romantic haze, forever mythologizing our own pasts.  Nothing is as great, or clean, as we remember it, and that's why memory can be so comforting.

It seems like every artistic statement Brian Wilson has made has been devised in such a way that, were it to be the last thing he ever did, it would serve as a suitable epitaph to a tortured career.  He is still waiting for the end of the road; still resigned to it.  But in the meantime, he may as well keep working - keep creating - keep exorcising his beautiful demons. 

Thank you, Brian, for your beautiful yesterdays, and the promise of an equally beautiful tomorrow.  The world is a better place for your having been in it.  

  

Be Still, My Beating Heart

I love love love love love the Criterion Collection.  I can still recall the tremendous thrill I felt when I first found out about the company.  I was deep in the throes of obsessive movie fanboy geekdom, and was feeling overwhelmed at the prospect of tracking down all of the things I was learning about.  A regular attendee of the annual film festival held at the university in my town, I was thrilled for the chance to see the movies, but often frustrated to no end by the horrible quality of the picture and sound (the films were shown on 16mm prints - nothing wrecks the beautiful silence of an Ozu film like an optical soundtrack that is so battered it sounds like a thunderstorm in the theater), not to mention the ancient projector barely ever made it through a show without breaking down.  At least once. 

"If only there was some company who dedicated itself to releasing definitive home video releases of these classic and important movies, with sterling picture and sound and an array of beneficial supplements," I would lament.

I put two and two together after realizing that a couple of my favorite movies - Kevin Smith's "Chasing Amy," and Wes Anderson's "Rushmore," were available in two DVD editions, one that was cheaper and more bare bones, and another as part of something called "The Criterion Collection."  And then when I got to digging around in local entertainment stores (usually in the foreign films section) I began to notice more and more.  The films of Fellini, Godard, Truffaut, Renoir...all in this mysterious collection.  My mind began to race.

I can't recall the first Criterion DVD I purchased, but I'm pretty sure there were two - Alfred Hitchcock's "Notorious" and "Rebecca"  Looking back on the list of titles in the collection, I got into it around Spine 130 (all releases are given consecutive spine numbers) in the DVD series (they had done laser discs previously, and basically invented the concept of the "special edition," with different audio tracks and supplements).  I guess that would have been in the early 2000's.  I was obsessed with DVD technology, and the Criterion discs were the ultimate extension of that.  Now that we are in the age of Blu, my obsession has only grown deeper.

For a movie nerd, there is nothing sweeter than a Criterion Collection release.  They cost more, but are unmatched in terms of quality.  When a person buys a movie with the Criterion imprint, they can rest assured they are receiving the best whatever home video format has to offer.  I had seen "The Seventh Seal" before, but I never flat-out enjoyed it until I saw it on Criterion blu-ray.  The last ten years of my movie-nerd life are filled with such stories.

The collection is closing in on Spine 700, and I have spent the 15th of every month for the last several years without fail checking the Criterion website for news of upcoming releases.  They announce on the 15th the movies that will be released in three months time.  So, today they announced the releases for April.  For the record, I am pumped about Alex Cox's "Repo Man" and a series by Pierre Etaix on blu-ray.  Again for the record, I had never heard of Pierre Etaix before I read about the blu-ray set today.  But the movies are from the 1960's, and are comedies that fit into the world of Jacques Tati and Jerry Lewis.  Count me in!

I've had to be selective - I am less likely to take blind chances on movies that are completely outside my usual tastes than I used to be (for example, Laurence Olivier's "Richard III" also comes out in April...while I know it's a classic, I have little interest in ever watching it) - but over the years I've accumulated quite a stash, and they are the crown jewels in my collection.

I'm sure fellow movie nerds are well aware of the treasures held within "the collection," but if you haven't checked out their holdings for a while, you may want to give them another look.  The site is reachable by clicking here.   

Bowie

From time to time (usually in the throes of manic musical obsequiousness - a state I find myself in often) I ponder the magnificence of David Bowie and the impact he has had upon my life in regards to injecting my thought patterns with a certain slippery androgyny and a penchant for changing directions often, and with little regard for current trends in the use of sequins in female cowboy hats.

By androgynous thought patters I suppose I do mean, literally, possessing both male and female characteristics, but my true intention with the phrase is to indicate a willingness - perhaps even a hunger - to see the other side.  This has led to incredible amounts of frustration and twitching eyelids.  Prejudices are easy and simple and clean.  However, I make it a point, should I feel one festering inside myself, to examine it and try to understand it, if not flat out reverse it.

Sometimes reversal is not possible, but I believe it is a worthwhile goal.  And prejudice does not solely constitute my feelings about other people or things, but my feelings about myself, as well.  It's fun to try and tear things apart and evolve - I maybe make a pretty solid hard rock album somewhat akin to a lighter, more literate Black Sabbath (Lavender Sabbath?), and it's successful and the motivation is there to repeat the formula that brought the most success with the least amount of sacrifice and pain.

But what do I do?  I go all introspective singer-songwriter and write songs like "Changes" and "Life on Mars?"  And THAT is even bigger than the hard rock thing, but before people really even have time to get completely familiar with this new sound, I have gone in another direction yet again, staking out a territory somewhere in between my previous two records and covering it with a thick salve of Vaseline, glitter, sequins, lip gloss, mascara, and general hairlessness.  That move makes me a legend.

Perhaps nothing that came after equaled the widespread cultural impact of Ziggy Stardust, but I keep shifting - keep evolving - as if afraid of standing still.  Like I'm trying to outrun something.  I couldn't possibly have done it any other way.

As I embrace my inner David Bowie, I try not to get lost in the clouds of hazy cosmic jive or my fear of Americans...my fear of the world.  I make it my goal to attempt to understand the opposition, and perhaps even relate to them.  Sometimes, if my worldview is rightfully shaken up enough, I may even embrace them outright.

And yet, the process is unending, and in the end I suppose I am bound to fail.  Bound to crawl comfortably into the nest of prejudices that seem to engulf so many of us eventually.  That I will become one of those old people who can't refer to anyone who isn't the same color as me without mentioning what color they are is scary to me, but even if I go in the other direction - pretentiously and self-consciously embracing diversity to the point where I look down my nose at anyone who isn't as "open-minded" as myself - I suppose the writing is on the wall.

In fact, that latter option is what I find myself struggling with more and more.  I am a hipper-than-thou 'tard butt most of the time, and I'll admit it.  I hate those who hate others.  But is my pose truly one of a diverse acceptance and worldly love of brother, or is it merely as shallow an affectation as those who hate based solely on race, religion, or creed?  If, by hating those who hate others, do I not, in turn, end up hating the hated as well?  And is not my hate of others truly a reflection of a hatred of myself?

How do I hate me?  Let me count the ways...

Just kidding.  Not enough time for that right now.  Meanwhile, that still, small voice in the back of my head I call Bowie croons on.  For his love is like the wind.  And wild is the wind.  "Don't let me hear you say life's taking you nowhere, angel," he says.  "But, Bowie, life is so short - my time so brief - what in the world am I supposed to be doing?"

"Oh, baby, just you shut your mouth."

Part of the experience of life is figuring out where we fit inside the spectrum, and to attempt to make sense of the world around us and those in it.  The world is incomprehensible, but it's cake compared to the antics of mankind.  And is there a Starman waiting in the sky who'd like to come and meet us but for a fear of blowing our minds?

I wish I could pick one answer or another and just stick with it.  But the Bowie inside my head won't let me.  And I suppose that's for the best.  Rigidity causes cracking and breaking - flexibility is much healthier, in life as it is in skyscraper construction.  I plan to continue the endless process of introspection.  When I sense the wheels of glam beginning to spin, I will head off to a mental landscape of plastic soul before heading to a spiritual Berlin for an extended period of chilly electronic experimentation.  Eventually, I may end up walking the streets of New York carrying oversized shopping bags, flitting between the pillars of commercialism and whatever Zen fortress of solitude I have constructed for myself, having blissfully removed myself from the public eye.  But always inside...thinking, and plotting the next move.

As if I could control it.

Accountability

In the interest of full disclosure and accountability -

As of this morning I weigh 307.8 pounds.  I have been making an effort to eat better for about a week now, and I've probably lost a couple since I started.  Luckily, weight does tend to drop when I set my mind to making it happen.

I am not happy that I weigh 307.8 pounds.  It does nothing but make my life harder.  Even taking out of the equation all of the perfectly lovely clothing in my closet that I can no longer wear, and how embarrassing it is to me to see photos of myself splitting the seams on all my 2x shirts, I have to deal with the practical ramifications of:

1. Low energy - I feel tired all the time, which is likely compounded by
2. Constant pain - my back never stops aching completely, and I have not made it through the night without being woken up by pain in my back in months.
3. Scoliosis - I have developed this condition as my back continues to deteriorate.  Years ago I saw a specialist who advised me to strengthen my core and "get a six-pack."  He said my back was weak and my gut was constantly pulling on it (in the wrong direction).  I don't carry the illusion that losing weight will be a magical cure-all, but it would certainly help!
4. Poor stamina - I can't make it through a story time without huffing and puffing.
5. Depression - underscored and compounded by all of the above

I've struggled with my weight for most of my life.  I've always been a "big boy," although not nearly as big as some.  It's always seemed worse in my head than it really is.  Funny thing is, I can look back on pictures of myself from years ago and think how slim I looked, but even at lower weights I always felt about my appearance exactly as I do now.  I always felt ashamed of how I was "letting myself go."

What it takes to reverse this is a fundamental shift in lifestyle and in the way I approach food.  My usual m.o. when eating is to eat like it's the last meal I will ever have.  I never set out consciously to take this course - it has just sorta always been the case.  Convincing myself that it's okay to not eat an entire pizza because, hey, I can always go out tomorrow and have pizza again, seems easy on paper but in practice...not so much.

So I am making this shift.  And for accountability, I document it here.  The last time I made a serious and concerted effort to lose weight I dropped from around 312 to 244.  I would have liked, and would still like, to aim for 220.  Joanna thinks that is too much to lose.  But that is still 20 pounds more than even the most liberal medical statistics show I should be.  I will weigh myself every Monday and keep track.  My (basically dormant) membership to the Berryville Community Center is coming up for renewal.  I can work in exercise.

But for now I will focus on eating.  A coworker said, "Hey, I keep telling myself it's so easy - it's just NOT doing something.  How easy is that?"  And then we laughed because, well, it's never that easy.  But really, it is.  Here I go down this road.  My mind is there.  The cards are in place.  My strategy involves more portion control rather than denial.  I don't NOT have pizza - I had some the other night made out of english muffins (2 split in half) - I just don't have the ENTIRE pizza.  I don't NOT have french fries - I just don't get the large.  Two things I have cut out are soda and ice cream.  For caffeine, I focus on black coffee (or with skim milk) or unsweetened tea.  For ice cream, well, so far I don't really feel a catastrophic need for it.   

That's it for now.  In seven days, I'll see where I'm at. 

Warm, Soft Video Lard

Three movies that have been sitting in my house, checked out from the library, and kept WAY too long, are:

1. "Touch of Evil"
2. "The Searchers"
3. "Sunday, Bloody Sunday"

When I was in 8th grade, a freshly minted Junior High student in my hometown of Neosho, MO, I fell head-over-heels in love with the school's library.  I was amazed at the breadth and depth of the selection, and pored greedily through its holdings every chance I could get.  I tried more than once to land a premium gig as a "library assistant" for school credit.  In my junior year, I finally got it, and that one fateful occurence started the long train of destiny that has led me to where I am today. 

But I digress...

One book which I found particularly delightful was a volume called "The Great Movies."  The cover claimed that, "in all of cinema history, sixty films deserve to be called...the great movies."  I pored through the contents, and educated myself to things that I had never before encountered, including thrillingly obscure foreign films and classic genre cinema.  I made a list of the titles from the book (although I came to be able to almost recite them by heart), and set out to acquire as many as I could. 

The fact that this was in the late 90's and the book had been published in 1972 didn't deter me.  Most of my interests at that time coincided with that particular period of history, anyway, so it was perfect.

Over the years, I managed to find several of the movies listed in the book.  Some I hunted down and paid exorbitant amounts for on VHS (prior to the age of DVD), and others I had to wait years to finally view.  One of the most obscure titles, Robert Bresson's "Au Hasard, Balthazar," was released for the first time on home video in North America in 2005, at least 8 years after I first read about it.  8 years after I first put it on my list with a little star next to it to indicate that it was of particular importance.  It wasn't as life-affirming as I had hoped (Godard famously said it was "the world in 90 minutes"), but I was still thrilled to have finally gotten a chance to mark it off my list.

Not all of the movies were so hard to track down.  Anything by Chaplin was always available, and probably always WILL be.  Orson Welle's "Touch of Evil" and the great John Wayne western vehicle "The Searchers" were no farther away than my public library.  Yet, I avoided them.  Until recently, 15 years after I first composed the list, I found it again stuck inside a copy of "The Great Movies" I found unexpectedly at a flea market some time in the early 2000's.  In a rush of inspiration, I snagged a bunch of the movies that I had been avoiding over the years.

First came George Stevens' "Shane," starring Alan Ladd as a mythical gunslinger in a truly wild west.  All of the classic western archetypes were fully in play - the man with mad gun skills who has sworn himself to a life of peace, the corrupt landowner who tries to force decent homesteaders off nearby claims, and the dark clad ringer brought in to do final and definitive battle against the hero to decide the outcome of the universe for these poor farmers. 

Then came "Children of Paradise," a 3-hour French epic about vaudeville that many consider the European answer to "Gone With the Wind."  Whoa - too much pressure, man!  But I watched it, and it was wonderful. 

Then came "Seven Samurai," which I've had for some time, and which I started on more than one occasion, only to chicken out.  There's a number of reasons it would be easier not to watch another 3-plus hour epic with subtitles.  No worries - I'll come back to it someday.

And then I snagged "The Searchers" and "Touch of Evil."  And they have sat...and sat...and sat.  Some of the things I've watched in the meantime include:

"Sleepaway Camp"
"Sleepaway Camp 2"
"Black Belt Jones"
"In Like Flint"
"Our Man Flint"

Amongst many, many others.  I think I'm going to have to give up on the list for now.  It's gotten to the point where I have begun to think of the movies as homework, rather than entertainment.  You HAVE to watch these things!  Hell, man, I ain't gotta watch NOTHIN!  I, uhh, say to myself. 

The dream of that 14 year old still lives on, and the list still is a worthy task to conquer.  I still want to be that truly cultured cinephile who can wax rhapsodic about Fellini, or Bergman, or Kurosawa.  It's sort of like going to the opera, though.  You know it will be good and worthwile, but sometimes you just don't feel like putting on a tuxedo, you know?  Sometimes you want to hug the shadows with your crazy eyes and wild, unkempt hair as you creep towards the RedBox, hoping "Final Destination 19" will be in stock in Blu-Ray.  And then you slink home and slather your mind in warm, soft video lard.  And you feel content and happy.

Cos you didn't have to work at it.  Sometimes, you just want to be entertained.  Sometimes, that is enough.

Love My Lovething, Love is Surely Gospel

Laura Nyro's 1968 album "Eli and the Thirteenth Confession" ranks in my top five albums of all time, but it is unsurpassed in terms of albums I have enthusiastically recommended to friends only to have them say, "Yeah, I pretty much hated that."  I will never understand why this is so.  I understand that the album was ahead of its time in 1968, and that its time had passed by the dawning of the female singer-songwriter era led by the likes of Carole King a mere few years later, but to me "Eli" is absolutely timeless, a breathless sky's-the-limit cross-genre melting pot as impeccably arranged and produced an album as I've ever heard.

Nyro was probably more popular amongst her music industry peers than the public at large.  Her reputation as a songwriter of unique talent became further established as more groups (such as The Fifth Dimension and Three Dog Night) pilfered her log of songs and turned them into mega hits.  Songs such as "Wedding Bell Blues," "And When I Die...," and "Stoned Soul Picnic" are oldies radio fodder in their watered-down cover versions, but Nyro's quicksilver soul originals are still definitive.

  

Nyro, soul chanteuse supreme

By the time "Eli" was recorded, Nyro was a seasoned music industry veteran.  She was 20 years old.  Even in her discography, the album is unique.  Subsequent releases dug deeper, became more introspective, and dramatically pared down the musical landscape to sometimes spartan extremes.  "Eli," though, is more universal, more immediately gripping, and far more lush in soundscapes and instrumentation.  The album features some of the most densely arranged pop songs of all time, crafting beautiful mini-suites inside the three minute pop radio standard.  The first three songs alone comprise perhaps the fastest nine-minute run of any pop album.  So packed with ideas that they seem to grow wings and fly, the songs (no matter how many times I listen to them) never seem to last as long as they do.

The rest of the album branches out a bit musically, including smoky jazz lamentations on the state of "Lonely Women," avant-garde pop ("December's Boudoir," which Nyro seemed to use as the starting point for her next album, "New York Tendaberry"), blistering gospel soul ("Eli's Comin'" - a huge hit for Three Dog Night pathetically outclassed by Nyro's original), and a smattering of Tin Pan Alley and Broadway thrown in for good measure.  One particularly wonderful legend surrounding the creation of the album was that Miles Davis (a Columbia label-mate of Nyro) was brought in at Nyro's request to add trumpet flourishes to the album, but when Davis heard the tapes he told the young woman there was absolutely nothing he could add - the album was flawless.  

Nyro's wailing delivery is either a majestic thing of beauty or a total turn-off.  I guess there's no way to acquire a taste for her music - you either love it right away or you never will.  That's probably why I've had such awful luck introducing the album to friends.  I literally cannot recall one person who liked it, let alone loving it to pieces as I do.  I first bought the record at a vintage shop for probably $2.50 or $3.00 and was electrified as soon as I dropped the needle.  It changed my life, and I immediately listened to it again.  And again.  And again.  I'm still listening to it today, years later, and it still floors me every time I hear it.

Perhaps I mention it now in yet another attempt to introduce people to this marvelous artistic creation that has meant so much to me in my life.  I can't shake this sort of compulsion I have to exhaustively share my point of view about things like this in some sort of effort (I guess) to try to make people see the same way I do.  "I love it, so you will, too!"  I don't know if I subconsciously reach out for that sort of outside validation so that I will know my feelings are correct.  Like I can't trust myself to know that, yes, you were moved by this thing, and that means its good.  I get my socks knocked off, and then, well, what does everyone else think?  That's a point I hadn't considered before, and which bears more introspection in the future.  

Whatever the case may be, "Eli" is a singular experience in my forever unchanging opinion, and everyone deserves to give it a shot.  It may not change your life, but then again, it may.  It really may. 

Click the link below for a sample of the album's riches:

"Luckie," the opener from "Eli and the Thirteenth Confession"

Cracker Jacks

I'm pretty sure if I walked into a Last Poets concert all the music would stop and everyone would stare at me a'la the scene in "Animal House" when the gang unknowingly take their dates to a "negro" bar.  I wouldn't belong, and I don't imagine I would be too welcome. 

"Hey, fellas, howsitgoin?  You fellas playin some music?  Aww, good gravy, I love me a good hootenanny!"

Thinking about it makes me want to slap MYSELF upside the head and tell myself to go back where I came from.  You know, at home watching "Hee Haw" reruns.  Pretty much as far away from the origins of The Last Poets - formed in Harlem in 1968 on Malcolm X's birthday - as one can get.

The Last Poets, circa 1970.  Bongo blasters and prophets of doom.

It's a strange phenomenon to enjoy art that is antagonistic towards whatever group of people you belong to.  I can't really relate to the daily life situations described in the music of The Last Poets (black people "drowning in a puddle of the white man's piss"), and their liberal use of racial epithets means I have to be careful not to start singing their songs in line at the post office, but I find the music entirely funky, compelling, and enjoyable.

From the rawness of the first album (1970's "The Last Poets") - basically the sound of a group of dudes in a room with a tape recorder running, hammering out hypnotic bongo rhythms and spitting righteous fury over the various states of the black experience - to the smooth, almost acid-jazz sounds of the later work, there's something greater than mere politics, rap, or poetry going on.  The fusion creates an incideniary sort of art. 

I spend probably way too much time wondering WHY certain things appeal to me - trying to pick apart the motives behind a set of tastes that are undefinable.  I always come back to the catchphrase from the Apple Jacks cereal commercials I grew up watching - "we eat what we like!"  I'm not so much a product of environment - a white boy who grew up on a fruit farm in the buckle of the bible belt and who spent nary a day without seeing cows everywhere he looked - so much as I am just a dude who likes what he likes. 

And if I derive a perverse thrill from blasting Gil Scott-Heron's "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised," or The Last Poets' "Niggers are Scared of Revolution" in the drive through of the Cassville, MO, McDonald's, so be it.  It's no joke.  I don't change it to Trace Adkins when I pull over to eat my nuggets.  Somewhere inside that cacophony of racial fury is something for me.  Somewhere in there is something universal.  I may never be admitted to a Last Poets concert, but no matter.  I take the concert with me everywhere I go.   

Your Anger is a Gift

A few albums I consider groundbreaking that I wish I had been old enough to appreciate when they first appeared:

Nine Inch Nails - "Pretty Hate Machine" (I was 6)
Rage Against the Machine - "Self-Titled" (I was 9)
Nine Inch Nails - "The Downward Spiral" (I was 11)

God, I was such a lame-ass first grader to not even be AWARE of Nine Inch Nails.  I was listening to my mom's Simon & Garfunkel records when I could have been contemplating the finer points of industrial metal and all of the inherent commentary on the dehumanization of modern society that goes along with it.  I spent my early childhood feelin' groovy and bowing down before the one I served (Big Bird).  Eventually, i got what I deserved. 

I guess there's not a lot that I could have done to change when I was born, or the things I happened to be interested in so early in life, but when I ponder the above albums I can't help but wish I'd been old enough to be interested in popular music at the time they came out, and I like to think I would have been hip enough to realize it was both brand new and vitally important.

Eventually, my time for these albums came.  I was 15 when I first heard all three of them, and I was mad, frustrated, and oily (even more so than I am now).  Trent Reznor's throbbing and buzzing meditations on religion, love (well, sex) and self-loathing struck a chord, but Rage Against the Machine's somewhat cheerier brand of fury - one that said, "YOU are fine.  YOU are awesome.  YOU are not the problem.  The problem is THEM" was far more immediately accessible to me.

Now that the debut album is 20 years old, I find myself revisiting it more and more and it hasn't lost an ounce of its energy or freshness in all that time.  The primal roar of "Killing in the Name" still rocks my socks as much as it did when I was 15 and played it on a seemingly endless loop for about 6 months.  The latter part of the album, particularly the tracks "Fistful of Steel" and "Township Rebellion" come dangerously close to feeling like the sound of wheels spinning, but they never quite tip definitively into filler territory.  And any doubts that linger by those tracks are immediately erased by the thunder of closer "Freedom."

I read critics lament that RATM is hindered by the fact that its targets are diffuse and vague.  But I think that is where the group draws its strength, and why its music still sounds fresh and vital today.  How many folk-songs of the past crested on a definite moment in time only to be rendered hopelessly obscure when their timely topics fell out of the public eye?  RATM encourages anger at any and all real or perceived threats to our personal freedom, or even lame elements of our lives that cramp our style.  Feeling bitter because the lunch lady didn't give you enough green beans?  There's a Rage for that.  Feeling angry because you just caught your wife in the arms of another man?  There's a Rage for that. 

In the ensuing 14 years that the debut RATM album has been part of my life, it has been my go-to musical catharsis of choice whenever I've felt scorned, humiliated, betrayed, angry, or simply when I need a quick edge before facing another day.  Sometimes, we all need to be reminded that our anger is a gift.  And sometimes, music can keep us from expressing that gift in dangerous, destructive ways.  There have been other, more complex, darker albums that loom large in my musical consciousness, but none that affected me quite as potently as the debut of RATM.  Perhaps it hit me at just the right time in my life, but unlike other albums from that time that I have "grown out of," RATM's debut still moves me as much as it ever did.  And it makes facing an uncertain future a little easier knowing it will always be there to wrap me in its violent embrace.
  

All Hail the Prince of Dorkness

I will admit to a fleeting fascination with Anton LaVey and his "Church of Satan" experienced during my younger, formative days.  I found it amusing that "The Satanic Bible," LaVey's infamous treatise detailing his philosophy and various "magical" spells was published by Avon Paperbacks.  I imagined the local Avon representative with the sprayed hair and the periwinkle pantsuit having it in special storage in a box in the spare tire well in the back of her station wagon.  I imagined her requiring a password and a blood contract to view the book and any number of other dark goodies she would have stored.

I acquired, pored over, and secreted away a copy of "The Satanic Bible" at some point during my teenage years.  The entire Satanic "religion" is based on selfishness, indulgence (basic human traits Christianity teaches us to hate about ourselves, according to LaVey), and concerning oneself with living as regret-free, experience-filled a life as possible, as this time is the only time we have.  It doesn't believe in a literal entity called "Satan;" rather, Satan is representative of the darkness inside each of us.  Just as God is representative of the light.  It really isn't a religion so much as LaVey's personal philosophy, and many adherents to the organization claim as much.  I found the work thought provoking and reasonable in its philosophical portion, and utterly hokey in the "magic spells" portion that concludes the book.  I got the feeling that LaVey was nothing if not a masterful showman and knew that philosophy by itself is all well and good, but it's the smoke and mirrors that get people in the door.

Anton LaVey, sans devil horned cloak

In 1969, at the peak of the "movement," an enterprising filmmaker made a documentary on LaVey and the church.  Consisting mostly of talking head interviews with LaVey himself, various members of the church, and neighbors of the legendary "Black Mansion" in San Francisco (really just an average single-family home, albeit one painted totally black - quite a statement amongst the legendary vividness of the city's "painted ladies") where the group held its meetings and rituals, as well as footage of satanic rituals that I find as corny now as I did when I read about them as a teenager, "Satanis/The Devil's Mass" proves that the more one learns about something, the less interesting it may become.  Even all these years later, the mystery and mystique - the danger of this man and his group whose values so contradicted my upbringing - was enough reason for me to seek the movie out on Netflix (gotta love it) and give it a chance.

The "Black Mansion" in San Francisco - where LaVey lived until his passing in 2001, and demolished thereafter.  Notice the garbage cans filled with Satanic trash.

LaVey strikes an imposing figure in photographs, since he is essentially black and white even in full color.  Pale, bald, goateed, with a black suit and a "blasphemous" priest's collar, LaVey's face peering out of the back of "The Satanic Bible" held a queasy fascination.  In movement, though, LaVey appears like a stereotype of the pudgy, hyper-intelligent loners we all remember from high school, albeit vastly more eloquent and charismatic.  

As a philosopher, LaVey is compelling, articulately railing against God and the hypocrisy of organized religion.  He seems like he'd be an interesting guy to shoot the breeze with or debate.  As a group, though, the Satanists come across as "holier-than-thou" as many of the Christians that undoubtedly inspired their defection from God in the first place.  They laugh about the small-minded "devout hypocrites" of mainstream religious society and congratulate themselves on their hipness.  

In evolving the group from a loose coalition of "magical practitioners" to something more akin to, well, a religion, LaVey always seemed to me (even as a teenager) to have undermined his very thesis and mired himself in the hypocrisy he claimed to despise.  And this "beast," once unleashed, seemed quickly to spiral out of the man's control - further research revealed the infighting and lack of organization that crippled the organization in the ensuing decades.  

And the rituals - oh, boy, the rituals.  LaVey in a cloak with plastic devil horns spewing incantations of darkness while his followers hope for stronger erections or for their enemies to develop warts while a nude 50-something woman sits placidly in the background serving her symbolic purpose as a human alter and a man dressed as a Catholic bishop gets his pale ass beat with a paddle...campy, for sure, but also just sorta pathetic.  

I guess my fascination with men like LaVey lies not so much in what they say, but how effectively they are able to convince people to believe it.  Satanism is just as hokey in ritual as so many other belief systems, and the adherents to it just as docile and hungry for someone else to make up their minds for them.  And in the end, the man who united them all never claimed to be anything other than what he was - a carnival barker with a hatred of religion and a fierce way with words.  In the end, that was enough.  True, once he obtained the cult status he seemed to crave he didn't know what to do with it, but the fact he got as far as he did says more about the human condition than any religion ever could. 

The Truth is Always Beautiful

Ted: "Okay, if you want to know the truth, I think your hair is absolutely ridiculous."
Bob: "That's beautiful, man, just beautiful.  The truth is always beautiful."

"Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice" is a funny movie.  It's also a painful one, and when I watch it I feel like it is true in a way few movies (especially comedies - especially ones from the 1960's) about the adult human animal and its endless pursuit of sex manage to be.

Bob, a documentary filmmaker, and his wife, Carol, a couple clinging to youth in the rapidly evolving Age of Aquarius, book a weekend retreat at a new-age spa that features nude sunbathing, primal scream therapy, and 24-hour marathon group therapy sessions designed to break down all of a person's walls through a cumulative effect of utter exhaustion.  Renewed and thrilled by their "breakthrough" at the retreat, Bob and Carol return to their daily lives newly indoctrinated prophets of free love and a single-minded pursuit of "the truth."  

Ted and Alice are the straight-laced friends of Bob and Carol who find themselves at first bemused by the stories and antics of their friends, and eventually rethinking their own positions on the virtues of marital fidelity.  As revelations mount and walls crumble, both couples will end up facing the naked truth about their "trips," their hang-ups, and the true value of absolute freedom.

The movie is immaculately acted all around, with the added eye-candy benefit of the immortally beautiful Natalie Wood displayed in her doe-eyed prime.  It is also a touching meditation on aging and finding ones place within a youth-oriented society that can often seem to be swiftly slipping from grasp.  The ending of the movie, a classic sequence in its own right, seems both honest and inevitable, and is touching in its simplicity.  

"Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice" is a morality play from the wild and swinging 60's, a time-capsule full of love beads and bell-bottoms, that manages to carry enough timeless truth to make it worth watching well into the new millennium. 

Movies I'm looking forward to in 2013, part two

I must have been living under a rock, but I hadn't heard about this movie until last night when I saw a preview for it during an infomercial for nipple blasters (something about how, if you aren't happy how they look, these little electrodes will turn them rock hard and make all the other beach goers envious - "ever wanted to work out your nips but were never sure how - we've got the answer!"). 

I love, as do many Americans, "The Wizard of Oz," but I REALLY love the much darker sequel from the 80's, "Return to Oz."  And this movie, "Oz, the Great and Powerful" seems to go in that darker direction, while totally rocking modern technology.  I can't believe nobody has made a new OZ movie before this, but I'm totally pumped it's coming! 

The trailer may be viewed here.

Movies I'm looking forward to in 2013, part one

This is the kind of thing that makes it worth getting up in the morning.  Last night, I had never heard of this movie, and this morning I see a teeny-weeny little ad for it on Facebook.  "Bill Murray as a cowboy - do you love it?" the ad asked, and I must admit that I did.  Very much.  So I click the link and it takes me to a zany website with new and old images of scenes from the movie, advertisements, some classy nudity...what's not to love? 

Based on the trailer the movie probably won't be quite as fantasmagorically spectacular as the website hints at, but any time a Coppola directs a zany throwback comedy starring Charlie Sheen, Jason Schwartzman (with a perm!) and (be still my movie-nerd heart) Bill Murray, things are bound to be awesome.

So, even though I only found out about it 30 minutes ago - here is my first "movie I'm looking forward to in 2013" - "A Glimpse Inside the Mind of Charlie Swan III."

The trailer may be viewed here.