I’m in the middle of a compelling book I know I’ll discuss when I finish, Andrew Bacevich’s 2008, The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism. I don’t read all that fast, and there is so much to consider here that it will be a few days, but tonight I took a break to cruise around a bit, and I found a fun and interesting music poll on NPR.
It’s old news, really – it was posted a week ago, but there’s no clear time limit on this one. Questions of taste and why certain pieces of music move us were posed in a recent article in The Guardian by Oxford professor and musicologist, Eric Clarke. The Guardian has launched a website, “Six Songs of Me,” to map as many personal playlists as possible. You can access the NPR story and the Guardian site here: http://www.npr.org/blogs/deceptivecadence/2012/08/08/158442642/you-are-what-you-hear-what-your-favorite-music-says-about-you
A followup piece on NPR today covered some of the thousands of responses received, which range from serious to funny. For instance, in the category of “What would you want played at your funeral?” one person answered, “Stayin Alive,” and another, “Ding Dong the Witch is Dead.”
Here is the poll along with my answers. Please feel free to list your songs in comments here as well as on the website. Music is such an important and personal thing to so many, but it’s also fun to share.
What was the first song you ever bought?
El Paso by Marty Robbins
What song always gets you dancing?
Sultans of Swing by Dire Straits
What song takes you back to your childhood?
Medicine Wheel by Kate Wolf
What is your perfect love song?
Wedding Song by Bob Dylan
What song would you want at your funeral?
Barricades of Heaven by Jackson Browne
Time for an encore. One last song that makes you, you.
Box of Rain by the Grateful Dead
Meanwhile, this whole exercise brought to mind an exceptional clip of my choice for category two. This may be my favorite YouTube clip of all time – Mark Knopfler and Eric Clapton doing Sultans of Swing at the 1988 celebration of Nelson Mandela’s 70th birthday. You absolutely cannot sit still when you hear this. Enjoy!
Woody was born 100 years ago today, on July 14, 1912. This may be his best known song, one that is cherished around the world.
And here’s something that’s not as well known, but great to listen to. Woody left behind thousands of complete lyrics to songs that were never set to music. After she heard him perform a tribute concert for her father, Nora Guthrie, hired British musician, Billy Bragg, and the American band, Wilco, to set the songs to music. In 1998 they released a first album called Mermaid Avenue, and a second in 2000.
Here’s one of my favorite cuts from the first Mermaid Avenue, called “California Stars.”
David Brooks, a writer for The New York Times, and several friends “threw financial sanity to the winds” to follow Bruce Springsteen on tour through France and Spain , because supposedly the crowds are even more intense than their American counterparts.
Young European fans know every word of songs The Boss recorded twenty years before they were born. Their enthusiasm “sometimes overshadows what’s happening onstage,” says Brooks. The moment that spawned his article was seeing “56,000 enraptured Spaniards, pumping their fists in the air…and bellowing at the top of their lungs, ‘I was born in the USA.‘”
How could this be, especially since in Springsteen’s music, USA often means New Jersey?
Brooks asked himself the same question and borrowed a term from child psychology to help understand it. The word is paracosm, meaning a world in imagination, “sometimes complete with with imaginary beasts, heroes and laws that help us orient ourselves in reality. They are structured mental communities that help us understand the wider world.”
Children do it, says Brooks, and as adults we continue the habit. Then he adds the observation that is the point of this post:
“It’s a paradox that the artists who have the widest global purchase are also the ones who have created the most local and distinctive story landscapes.”
Springsteen’s New Jersey. J.K. Rowling’s English boarding school. Tony Hillerman’s Navajo country. 221B Baker Street. Downton Abbey. Tolkein’s Edwardian rural England, aka, The Shire.
Hob Lane, near where Tolkien lived as a boy
I often think of the books I hate to see end, the kind that inspire fans to continue the story on their own, as I described in a recent post on fan fiction http://wp.me/pYql4-298. Character remains the essential ingredient – we want to follow Harry, Ron, and Hermione wherever they may lead us – but in his article David Brooks points out the critical nature of the world where they more and act and love and fight. We wouldn’t really want to see the Hogwarts gang on Sunset Boulevard anymore than we’d want Sam Spade in St. Mary Meade, working a case with Miss Marple.
“If you build a passionate and highly localized moral landscape, people will come,” says Brooks, echoing Field of Dreams, a movie that largely took place in a cornfield. “If your identity is formed by hard boundaries, if you come from a specific place…if your concerns are expressed through a specific paracosm, you are going to have more depth and definition than if you grew up in the far-flung networks of pluralism and eclecticism…sampling one style then the next, your identity formed by soft boundaries, or none at all.”
I think this is an important thing to consider – one you seldom read about in books on writing but which instantly resonates when called to mind in the context of our favorite fiction.
But let’s end with The Boss
One of Springsteen’s best known songs, “My Hometown,” moves me the way “Born in the USA” moved a stadium full of Spaniards. Hometown for me is part of a paracosm, a special kind of imaginary landscape. I’ve said elsewhere that when I was young, we moved around too often for me to have any sense of a hometown, yet the moment I say the word I can see it vividly, with eyes opened or closed.
We’ll let the master paint the picture, since someone (I forget who) once observed that only a troubadour of Springsteen’s calibre could make you nostalgic for New Jersey.
While sitting with friends the other day, I heard a woman describe her extended family as “all about issues.” At holidays and picnics, arguments erupt over politics, gender, economics, and all the social concerns du jour – right-to-life vs. right-to-choose, and who can and should get married. The woman shook her head and said, “I think I want to live a life without issues.”
That phrase really clicked with me, and the more I thought about it, the more it explained certain “issue oriented” posts that I started recently but never finished. I’d wondered if it was summer laziness, or if I needed a break from blogging, but no – I saw it in a flash – I need a break from issues! Not an ostrich move, but an issue fast.
A voice in my head objected – “But…but…but…now that the presidential race is really on, aren’t these issues more important than ever? Doesn’t the future of the Republic and who knows what else hang in the balance?” One thought led to another, and the phrase, “ship of fools” came to mind. I found myself humming The Grateful Dead’s, “Ship of Fools.” I cranked it up when I got home and logged in to explore the theme. What follows is just a hint of the history of the image and its vast metaphoric possibilities.
And yes, there’s a nice Grateful Dead clip at the end of the post you can listen to while you read…
Hieronymus Bosh, “Ship of Fools,” c. 1490-1500, detail
Wikipedia says, “The ship of fools is an allegory that has long been a fixture in Western literature and art. The allegory depicts a vessel populated by human inhabitants who are deranged, frivolous, or oblivious passengers aboard a ship without a pilot, and seemingly ignorant of their own direction.“
It’s surprising that the Ship of Fools/Ship of State analogy has yet to be picked up this year, with its “deranged, frivolous, or oblivious passengers,” but there’s more than allegory bound up with the phrase. The same Wikipedia entry details the origin of the image:
“Renaissance men developed a delightful, yet horrible way of dealing with their mad denizens: they were put on a ship and entrusted to mariners because folly, water, and sea, as everyone then ‘knew’, had an affinity for each other. Thus, ‘Ship of Fools’ crisscrossed the sea and canals of Europe with their comic and pathetic cargo of souls. Some of them found pleasure and even a cure in the changing surroundings, in the isolation of being cast off, while others withdrew further, became worse, or died alone and away from their families. The cities and villages which had thus rid themselves of their crazed and crazy, could now take pleasure in watching the exciting sideshow when a ship full of foreign lunatics would dock at their harbors.” – Jose Barchilon’s introduction to Madness and Civilization, by Michel Foucault.
On the literal level, this “delightful, yet horrible” custom is not entirely a thing of the past. We can think of New York City in 2009, with it’s offer to homeless people of free one-way tickets to anywhere else. The same thing happens here, when overworked neighboring social service agencies “dump” their homeless in Sacramento county.
As an imaginal image, The Fool still evokes powerful responses of fear and fascination in the Western psyche. The Fool is the first card of the Major Arcana in the Tarot, evoking “beginner’s mind,” that mix of wisdom and naiveté with which we begin the spiritual path, or depending on your belief system, each new incarnation in the world (or both).
From his studies of Irish folklore, Yeats learned that among the fairies, the Queen and the Fool each share tremendous power. A mortal may survive a “stroke” given by one of the other fairies, but nothing in heaven or earth can save you if you get on the wrong side of the Fool or the Queen.
While Europeans consigned them to ships, and later to institutions like Bedlam, some native American tribes considered their “fools” as sacred, for they had clearly been touched by the spirits. I’m reminded of Theodore Roethke’s poem, In a Dark Time, when he says, “What’s madness but nobility of soul at odds with circumstance?”
The image of the Ship of Fools turns up in movies, music and books, most recently in Ship of Fools, 2009, by Fintan O’Toole, an Irish journalist who uses the metaphor to describe “the Irish political establishment and their self-deception regarding the economic situation in the country.”
This wanders into dangerous territory for someone on an issue-fast – it cuts too close to certain Americans seeking office – “deranged, frivolous, or oblivious passengers aboard a ship without a pilot, and seemingly ignorant of their own direction.”
So let’s adjourn to the Grateful Dead! “Ship of Fools,” by Jerry Garcia and Robert Hunter, was first performed in 1974. Here is an excellent clip from the 1989 summer solstice show at Shoreline Amphitheater. Enjoy!
Went to see the captain strangest I could find Laid my proposition down Laid it on the line; I won’t slave for beggar’s pay likewise gold and jewels but I would slave to learn the way to sink your ship of fools.
Doc Watson was born in the Blue Ridge Mountain town of Deep Gap, North Carolina, 89 years ago. When he was a year old, he went blind of an untreated eye infection. When he was 11, his father made him a banjo from the skin of a dead cat. “He brought it to me and put it in my hands, and said, ‘Son, I want you to learn to play this thing real well. One of these days we’ll get you a better one,’ he said. ‘Might help you get through the world,’ ” Watson recalled.http://www.npr.org/blogs/therecord/2012/05/29/153697428/doc-watson-folk-music-icon-dies-at-89
Doc Watson
His parents did everything they could to see that their son had tools to make his way in the world. His father paid a week’s wages at the sawmill where he worked for a phonograph and 50 records. Watson earned the money for his first mail order guitar by cutting trees on his father’s farm. He played on street corners and with dance bands until he was “discovered” by a Smithsonian folklorist who was looking for another musician in the ’60’s.
Statue of Watson in Boone, NC, where he used to play for tips to support his family
Since then, Doc Watson has given his own unique take on bluegrass and mountain music to the entire world. He died today, after surgery a week ago. There will never be another musician like him.
Here is a great rendition of “Shady Grove,” one of my all time favorite bluegrass pieces, by Doc Watson, David Grisman, and David Holt.
Yesterday NPR interviewed two monks of the Benedictine Abbey of Christ in the Desert in Abiquiu, New Mexico, concerning the Gregorian Chants that are part of the fabric of their lives.
Monastery of Christ in the Desert
The occasion was the release of a CD of their music, “Blessings, Peace, and Harmony.” Brother Christian Leisy explained that an email from Sony arrived proposing the recording. “We thought at first it was spam,” he said, “but apparently someone at Sony felt the world wasn’t getting any better, and they wanted to work with a community that might focus on some of the peace elements.”
Chanting does exactly this. Abbot Phillip Lawrence explained that scientific studies of the effects of contemplative chanting match those of meditative practice: relaxation, stress reduction, lowered blood pressure and a general sense of wellbeing.
I bought my first album of Gregorian Chants in high school. Even though I was usually given to rock n roll, there were times when I was drawn to this seemingly strange music with the power to draw me outside of ordinary concerns. I’ve collected other music like it since then. Abbot Lawrence understands the power of different types of contemplative music. He stayed for a time in a Tibetan monastery and found that the deep chanting that is part of that spiritual discipline has the same power as the music he is familiar with.
I happened upon this theme while geeking around with an iPhone app. While looking for a way to create custom ringtones, I found, “Ringtone Converter” on iTunes. This is a free app, designed to make 30 second ringtones from any song in your iTunes library. Some of the songs don’t load, though most of them do, and I roamed through my library, auditioning songs as potential ring tones until I came to a clear winner – Israel Kamakawiwo’ole’s version of “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.”
As I listened to IZ’s voice, I looked up the song on Google. It was written by Harold Arlen and E.Y. Harburg in 1939, for The Wizard of Oz, and almost cut from the movie by MGM CEO Louis Mayer who said it slowed down the action. “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” went on to win the Academy Award and become one of the most covered songs of all time. It’s number one on a list of “Songs of the Century “compiled by the National Endowment for the Arts. In a letter to Howard Arlen, Judy Garland said,
“‘Over the Rainbow’ has become part of my life. It’s so symbolic of everybody’s dreams and wishes that I’m sure that’s why some people get tears in their eyes when they hear it. I’ve sung it thousands of times and it’s still the song that’s closest to my heart.”
The voice of Israel Kamakawiwo’ole speaks for itself. It’s a good time of year to listen to this man who brought so much beauty into the world – his birthday was May 20. When he died in 1997, Hawaii state flags were flown at half-mast, and his body lay in state in the capitol rotunda. He was only the third person given this honor. This video commemorates Israel’s voice and legacy, and records the thousands who came out to celebrate his life on July 12, 1997, as his ashes were given to the ocean and his spirit journeyed over the rainbow.
Music has always influenced me, especially while I was growing up. One of the poet/songwriters I really loved was Phil Ochs, who died in April, 1976. Ochs corrected the people who labelled him a protest singer – “topical singer” was his phrase. Though his music extended beyond topical songs, his anti-war songs, and music that demanded social justice remain his best known pieces.
Ochs was born in El Paso in 1940. His father, a doctor, had been drafted during WWII and suffered from depression after his discharge. The moved a lot as he had trouble establishing a medical practice. Phil dropped out of college, but after an arrest for vagrancy in Florida, decided to become a writer and journalist. He enrolled at Ohio state where he discussed politics and learned the guitar from a fellow student who turned him on to Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, and the Weavers.
Ochs learned quickly and was invited to the 1963 Newport Folk Festival, where Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, and Peter, Paul, and Mary also appeared. During the ’60’s, he wrote hundreds of songs. One of his best known was “I ain’t a marchin’ anymore.” Ochs quoted the lyrics when called to testify at the Chicago Seven trial after the 1968 police riot during the Democratic Convention.
It’s always the old to lead us to the wars, always the young to fall. Now look at all we’ve won with the saber and the gun, Tell me is it worth it all?
Several of Ochs’ most haunting ballads center on Christian themes. I haven’t read either of the two biographies, so I don’t know the role of faith in his life, but these songs are filled with poetry, sadness, and a vision of Jesus that lies on the opposite end of the spectrum from those who invoke Christian themes to support their political views nowadays. Here’s a clip of the first two minutes of a live version of, “The Crucifiction,” performed in Stockholm in 1969. The recorded version runs to almost nine minutes and is available on iTunes for anyone interested.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c-bL3YbG_Lg In the green fields a turnin’, a baby is born His cries crease the wind and mingle with the morn An assault upon the order, the changing of the guard Chosen for a challenge that is hopelessly hard And the only single sound is the sighing of the stars But to the silence of distance they are sworn
Images of innocence charge him go on But the decadence of destiny is looking for a pawn To a nightmare of knowledge he opens up the gate And a blinding revelation is laid upon his plate That beneath the greatest love is a hurricane of hate And God help the critic of the dawn.
So he stands on the sea and shouts to the shore, But the louder that he screams the longer he’s ignored For the wine of oblivion is drunk to the dregs And the merchants of the masses almost have to be begged ‘Till the giant is aware, someone’s pulling at his leg, And someone is tapping at the door.
So dance dance dance Teach us to be true Come dance dance dance ‘Cause we love you
Another one of my favorites has always been the “Ballad of a Carpenter.”
Two thousand years have come and gone
many a hero too.
But the dream of this poor carpenter
remains in the hands of you
remains in the hands of you.
The events during and after the 1968 election convinced Ochs that no one was listening to “topical songs.” He tried to return to his musical roots – Buddy Holly, Elvis, and Merle Haggard – hoping that would open better avenues of communication, but he began to rely more heavily on valium and alcohol to keep him going while touring.
He travelled to Chile in support of Salvatore Allende, a democratically elected Marxist. He and another Chilean folksinger barely escaped with their lives after visiting other South American countries. In 1973, he was attacked by robbers during a trip to Africa and his vocal cords were damaged as the attackers tried to strangle him. Ochs believed the CIA might have arranged the attack. Paranoid? Perhaps, although after his death, the freedom of information act revealed that his dossier was 500 pages long.
The final recording on Ochs’ final album was the haunting, “No More Songs.” Plagued by bipolar disorder and alcoholism, Phil Ochs took his own life on April 9, 1976.
A star is in the sky, it’s time to say goodbye, A whale is on the beach, he’s dying. A white flag in my hand, and a white bone in the sand, And it seems that there are no more songs.
Hello, hello, hello, is there anybody home? I’ve only called to say I’m sorry The drums are in the dawn and all the voices gone And it seems that there are no more songs.
To paraphrase what he sang in “The Carpenter,” the dreams Phil Ochs tried to embody, remain in our hands. May he rest in peace.
The First Gates 