I Will to Oneness Ascend.

I find myself having more visceral experiences in the presence of beauty. The revelation for me has been that the experience of beauty cannot be passive; now when I come across a flawless flower, I walk up to it, touch it, smell it, contemplate it; I consider the harmonious symmetry of it’s seed carrying ovaries; I focus on the contrast of its color with the dark dirt it blossomed from, I consider the ephemeral nature of it’s against-all-odds existence and in doing so, consider mine;
I wonder if the honey-stuffed bumble bee that prances up and down it’s prickly pedals made a consciences choice to climb this particular flower, and I wonder if it was a similar bee that carried this plant’s pollen here, from some other place. What will it feel like I wonder, if I am stung...if only I am stung.

So now, if by happenstance I find myself under a white flowering dogwood tree
and drips of spring mist
drop on my tilted-back forehead...I will feel the urge to
drop to my knees, spread open my chest, and let some tears of joy
drop onto the leaves of grass below.
I will to oneness ascend.

dancing under moon on a rainy day

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R42C6xhNvLI&feature=related

This is the Van Morrison performance we experienced at Jazz Fest. Notice Van solo on this harmonica (one of five instruments he played) with the effusive energy of an indomitable 25-year-old, and the joyful hard-living blues of a mortal 65-year-old rocker (how can a man be so ugly and so suave at the same time, he’s like a musical Bukowski); notice the misty moondance rain frame the painted yellow sun in the background; notice the black dapper suits and the gold microphone on a gold stand emblazoned with a gold “VM;” and oh yea, notice the damn good musicianship, the likes of which spanned jazz, blues, rock, reggae, Latin, Irish folk, and more. What you won’t notice is the wide weird range of fans, including the two toddlers next to me that ran around in circles and let it all seep in.

The Gospel Tent

by the way, it happend, beyond my wildest expectations. I heard Aaron Neville's voice sweetening the air from afar and I pushed in close to the Gospel tent until I witnessed him overseeing our festing congregation. The song was Amazing Grace but I've heard that song before and this was something else, this was a communal uplifting in harmony...this was Mr. Neville handing out wings to all of us, so that we can forever fly in a flock above the pain.

The echo of his last note lingered like a lover's tear that refuses to let go of the eye and slowly drips away.

"Whooooow...ahhhh...whoooow!!!" Just as a flock of birds turn in knowing unison, our shared silence turned into a primal uproar as five hundred pairs of hands reached out to whatever Aaron was giving. And yes, Aaron was reaching back.

When it was over, Two middle aged woman in front of me turned around with tears in their eyes, and I think we almost hugged. But instead we stared at each other. And as I write this now, I can still see their wet joyful eyes; a shared stare so strong that it goes on.

Plagiarism R us

The following is my response to this program:
http://www.radioopensource.org/david-shields-reality-hunger-kicking-ass-and-dropping-names/


A man named Robert Ross was speaking with Oscar Wilde one day and Wilde was complaining that a well-known novel had been borrowed from an idea of his, Ross countered that Wilde was himself a ‘fearless literary thief.’ ‘My dear Robbie,” Wilde drawled in answer, ‘when I see a monstrous tulip with four petals in someone else’s garden, I am impelled to grow a monstrous tulip with five wonderful petals, but that is no reason why someone should grow a tulip with only three petals.’

A similar sentiment was voiced by Mark Twain in a letter to Helen Keller after she had been accused of plagiarism as a child (I have a feeling I will appropriate these words myself someday if accused):

“It takes a thousand men to invent a telegraph, or a steam engine, or a phonograph, or a photograph, or a telephone, or any other important thing—and the last man gets the credit and we forget the others. He added his little mite—that is all he did.”

“To think of these solemn donkeys breaking a little child’s heart with their ignorant damned rubbish about plagiarism! I couldn’t sleep for blaspheming about it last night. Why, their whole histories, their whole lives, all their learning, all their thoughts, all their opinions were one solid rock of plagiarism, and they don’t know it and never suspected it. A gang of dull and hoary pirates piously setting themselves the task of disciplining and purifying a kitten that they think they’ve caught filching a chop! Oh, dam—

But you finish it dear, I am running short of vocabulary today.”

GO TWAIN!

Aristotle begins his “Poetics:”

“Epic poetry and Tragedy, Comedy also and Dithyrambic poetry, and the music of the flute and of the lyre in most of their forms, are all in their general conception modes of imitation.”

So, I think we can all agree that imitation is good. I push back however in another respect. I fear that in Mr. Shield’s zeal to “dissolve genres” he’s gonna throw the baby out with the bathwater. And by baby I mean, Plot.

I imagine that Aristotle might respond to Mr. Shield with a passage from Poetics:

“Again, if you string together a set of speeches expressive of character, and well finished in point of diction and thought, you will not produce the essential tragic effect nearly so well as with a play which, however deficient in these respects, yet has a plot and artistically constructed incidents.”

“The Plot, then, is the first principle, and, as it were, the soul of a tragedy: Character holds the second place. A similar fact is seen in painting. The most beautiful colours, laid on confusedly, will not give as much pleasure as the chalk outline of a portrait. Thus Tragedy is the imitation of an action, and of agents mainly with a view to the action.”

Grandmaster Flash collected samples of catchy hooks from multiple songs and made it into one song, and Hip Hop was born. I applaud Mr. Shields for embracing that essence. At the end of this interview when talking about the future of writing he even says, “Bring the Pain” – which is the title to a song by Method Man.

Methinks Aristotle would gently remind Mr. Shields to bring the plot first.

Principles r us

THE FOLLOWING IS IN RESPONSE TO THIS PROGRAM
http://www.radioopensource.org/nell-painters-history-of-white-people-its-coming-to-an-end/

A sparkling conversation. It strikes me that most of the conversations Ms. Painter will have on her book tour will be to describe her book, but it might be said that in the big picture she wrote the book so as to stimulate the kind of conversation that happened here.

Ah yes, in the billion words that Mr. Emerson wrote through his life, some fallibility can be culled, I have no doubt. But RWE was about principles, and his principles are the letters I subscribe to, not the parsing of random speeches.

“We live in succession, in division, in parts, in particles. Meantime within man is the soul of the whole; the wise silence; the universal beauty, to which every part and particle is equally related; the eternal ONE”
-Emerson “The Oversoul”

Mr. Painter describes RWE as the “embodiment of the American Renaissance,” but I feel that puts him in a box. My Emerson is an embodiment of the American identity born through a specific principle. The principle that W.E.B. Du Bois quotes in chapter III of The Souls of Black Folk.

“By Every civilized and peaceful method we must strive for the rights which the world accords to men, clinging unwaveringly to those great words which the sons of the Fathers would fain forget: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident: That all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.’”

The same identity-through-principle that Ellison’s Invisible Man grasps on to at the end of the book: “and knowing now who I was and where I was and knowing too that I no longer had to run for or from the Jacks and the Emersons and the Bledsoes and the Nortons, but only from their confusion, impatience, and refusal to recognize the beautiful absurdity of their American identity and mine.”

The same identity that James Baldwin’s African American protagonist comes to embrace at the end of his trip to Europe and his story What it Means to Be an American. “It is the day he realized that there are no untroubled countries in this fearfully troubled world; that if he has been preparing himself—for anything in Europe, he has been preparing himself—for America. In short, the freedom that the American writer finds in Europe brings him, full circle, back to himself, with the responsibility for his development where it always was: in his own hands.”

It’s same identity and principle that even the fallible Booker T. Washington pinned his hopes on in Up From Slavery: “This country demands that every race shall measure itself by the American standard.”

But here is my revelation even in writing this blog, Mr. Washington isn’t just talking about the black race rising up to the “American standard,” he’s also talking about the white race coming down off it’s perch to the “American standard” – and thus to the American principle; American identity; equality. But hold your horses! We’re not come’n down quietly!

“Well, the black man has functioned in the white man's world as a fixed star, as an unmovable pillar: and as he moves out of his place, heaven and earth are shaken to their foundations.”
- James Baldwin

Ms Painter tells us “anybody can be racialized,” and thats a vital message, although it only tells half the story. Where do we go from there? We know what to avoid, but what to embrace? PRINCIPLES! Anybody can also be principlized! How do I know? Ralph Waldo Emerson told me so!

On Transience

A short essay by that dude of all dude's, Sigmund Frued

http://www.freuds-requiem.com/transience.html

"But did I dispute the pessimistic poet's view that the transience of what is beautiful involves any loss in its worth. Transience value is scarcity value in time. Limitation in the possibility of an enjoyment raises the value of enjoyment."

Is there a God

Yesterday in my first visit to the MET, I experienced for the first time, the works of El Greco. In his painting View of Toledo I found more truth about the nature of the universe than a scientific photograph of that city could give me. The gallery label read: “it seeks to portray the essence of the city rather than to document its actual appearance. In Aristotelean terms, it substitutes poetic for historic truth.”

What’s the endgame of the truth you seek? What are your principles and do you strive to wear them or embody them? Mrs. Goldstein trusts her own rapture when it comes to Love because the endgame of her marriage has turned out well. Helen Keller was religious and her endgame was to change countless lives. Bill gates is an atheist and his endgame has been to change countless lives.

It’s like the Beatles song says, “Whatever gets you through the night.” Whatever it takes to get you through that darkness, just be ready for the Rosy-fingered Dawn of Homer – and of the good.

So that is the proposition I bring to the betting parlor of Pascal. I will strive to live up to dawn of my principles, and if it turns out – even though I passed on worshiping the big guy – there is a man upstairs, my wager is he will nice enough to let me duck under the velvet rope.

http://www.radioopensource.org/erica-hirshlers-biography-of-a-masterpiece/

I see the burgeoning independence of femininity in the face of futility…just as I see here:

http://www.allpaintings.org/d/54618-1/Edgar+Degas+-+The+Duchess+di+Montajesi+with+Her+Daughters.jpg

I also notice that the vases are much bigger than the girls…I sense those vases taking precedence in this household…these ornaments so priceless are give license to say more than the adolescents in the room, I suspect.

And the dresses of these prim and proper white girls all match a whiteness that bonds them in blandness. Ironically the head of this household could surely go on for hours about the vibrant colors of their rug, but the style of their offsping will most assuredly stay beneath the rug…emotions in this painting are kept as close to the vest as the motionless hands of the girls.

Now that I’ve looked at the painting, I will listen to the interview and post later on. Thank you, Christopher Lydon, as always. Lots of Love. We especially need the arts as an antidote of beauty during this oppression of carnage.

Pops

“Mayann told me that the night I was born there was a great big shooting scrape in the Alley and the two guys killed each other. It was the Fourth of July, a big holiday in New Orleans, when almost anything can happen.”

Personally, I see Mr. Monk through the prism of race relations, and I see Mr. Armstrong through the prism of The Big Easy…New Orleans.

Of course Louis had his own genius but it was the meshing of his with the genius of that adolescent city by the bayou that forged his icon. In the same way the genius of Helen Keller needed the genius of Anne Sullivan to create an alchemy of transcendence.

In Jamaica I made a nine mile pilgrimage up a mountain to view the vista from Bob Marley’s birthplace, then to his home in the mercurial streets of Kingston, and finally I stood in the waveless serene shores of the island’s sea…only then did I sense the roots of the Mr. Marley’s genius.

Satchmo’s genius percolated in the Petri dish of Storyville, a red-light district whose motto was “Order of the Garter: Honi Soit Qui Mal Y Pense (Shame to Him Who Evil Thinks.)”

“There were all kinds of thrills for me in Storyville. On every corner I could hear music. And such good music! The music I wanted to hear. It was worth my salary – the little I did get [delivering hard coal] – just to go into Storyville. It seemed as though the bands were shooting at each other with those riffs.”

Besides Storyville from what I can tell, there are at least two other important influences in his life, one is the Second Line, and the other is strong women. The Second Line developed his chops, the women his empathy and fortitude.

After one particular Second Line funeral: “They patted us on the back and just wouldn’t let us alone. They hired us several times afterward. After all, we proved to them that any learned musician can read music, but they can’t all swing.”

The strong women were his wife, sister, grandmother, greatgrandmother, and his mother Mayann: “She was glad to say hello to everybody and she always held her head up. She never envied anybody. I guess I must have inherited this trait from Mayann.”

You mentioned in this hour that Armstrong’s mother was a prostitute. I don’t think that can be understated. And for a time, Louie was a reluctant pimp. Louis was from such a poor part of town, Liberty and Perdido, that he was looked down on at the Colored Waifs’ Home for Boys. Later on when he was sent as a boy – to be the man – and take care of his sick mother, he rode his first bus and found out he had to sit in the back because he was black. Only years later when he arrived in Chicago did he know that as a musician he had finally arrived…and that’s only because King Oliver told him he would have a room with “a private bath.”

This is the man who took nothing for granted in life, not a meal, not a bath, not a breath…It’s all a blessing to Pops. And that makes Pops a blessing to all of us. The lesson of Louie Armstrong that I take with me through life is to take nothing for granted, not even joy.

A response to A Woman

“A woman”…I have a memory I cherish of a waterfall in Jamaica. It’s not a waterfall someone busses you in to look at, it’s one that zig zags flat down the mountain, enough so that you can walk the whole way through the water. It takes a few hours.

My cousin and my best friend and I began our decent at the top of this mountain in Negril…a wild sanctuary of green lush grass and welcoming trees. In the middle lies a wooden makeshift bar with a whole lotta rum at the ready. Mostly I recall the sound of perpetual thunder… which was actually the forever roaring water flowing down the mountain right close. The contrast of that rumble of rapids with the moneyless serenity of wild green vegetation at the summit was spiritual I tell you!

At the top is where we met our guide, a dreadlocked soulful Rasta named…I can’t remember his damn name but he was soulful. On the way down the falls, another random Rasta pops out to offer some ganja which you smoke thank you, and thus the decent becomes uplifting…the glare of the river-froth dances with darting sun rays that hover and bounce off edges of rocks on all sides. Thousands of tons of water gush down and rage alive in your ear. Shared knowing smiles from your loved ones and new ones – the Rasta – steal the show. To boot we’re talking cold crisp invigorating rapids lapping at your hips, up your bare skin…egging you on and holding you down. I honestly don’t have any memories of us reaching the bottom of this mountain.

“A woman,” I tell you my story to get to that line – your passion eggs you on and holds you down. That journey for us down that waterfall was of course not about getting to the bottom. The only moments I remember my heart racing in those rapids were with shared stares from afar…connections amidst the chaos.

I hear your story and I sense you and the object of your affection pushing on, the way we all must. But I also feel your heat as you report to us the gushing water around your hips and the hot rays wetting your eyes.

So please don’t fret about where your going. In time you will only recall the rapids. Of course, I do understand you have to get to the bottom of the mountain before nightfall…which looms. Yet it is not dark yet.

Orhan Pamuk and his Museum

I dated a woman recently whose job it was to design museums, which of course struck me as a very cool job. Along with her exquisite taste (helps with the job) she was witty, insightful, and attractive, and my only thought was – how am I not gonna screw this up.

After a few dates though, I was looking for a way out, my romantic notions were deflated – of both her and her vocation. First of all, it turns out that not every museum is like the MET, there is a huge mass of niche museums large and small that are put together for reasons other than the greater good; reasons such as propaganda, politics, and conceit, much of it put together by people in expensive suits with a price in mind throughout.

Then there was her exquisite taste I spoke of earlier, it had quickly become oppressive. She was sending every glass of wine back if it didn’t meet her standards, and she would have major dialogues with the waiter about the particular ingredients of a dish – yet she was pleasant with the server mind you. Food, music, theater, all of it had to pass muster with the curating in her mind’s museum.

I realized this woman was my Gilbert Osmond, from “A Portrait of a Lady,” who is described in the book as “thinking that life was a matter of connoisseurship.”

Speaking to Madame Merle about the collection of art in his home: “I don’t object to showing my things – when people are not idiots.” Merle responds: “you do it delightfully. As cicerone [tour guide] of your museum you appear to particular advantage.”

Isabel stayed enchanted with her cicerone longer than I…she married hers. Only later does she realize her error: “Osmonds’ beautiful mind indeed seemed to peep down from a small high window and mock at her.” “Under all his culture, his cleverness, his amenity, under his good-nature, his facility, his knowledge of life, his egotism lay hidden like a serpent in the bank of flowers.”

Yes, novels can be like a museum, but what kind of museum and what is the ultimate ideal that drives it’s content and curation? Are they Osmond museums and novels or are they Isabel?

“He had his ideal, just as she had tried to have hers; only it was strange that people should seek for justice in such different quarters.” ———– “Her notion of the aristocratic life was simply the union of great knowledge with great liberty; the knowledge would give one a sense of duty and the liberty a sense of enjoyment. But for Osmond it was altogether a thing of forms, a conscious, calculated attitude.”

Monk and Jazz

“So a lot of critics didn’t like me back then—still don’t today—because they saw me as an arrogant little nigger. Maybe I was, I don’t know, but I do know that I wasn’t going to have to write about them. Anyway, Max and Monk felt like that, and J.J. and Bud Powell, too. So that’s what brought us close together, this attitude about ourselves and our music.” – Miles

When I think of my favorite Jazz – and especially when I think of Monk – it’s through the prism of race relations. Emasculating bigotry and the consequential “double consciousness,” permeated both the playing of, and listening to, this American art.

For Monk, there was even a third consciousness, that of a man possessed. “he was a great put-on artist, too, and that’s the way he kept people off him, by acting crazy like he did.” – Miles

“Whoso would be a man, must be a nonconformist.”

Monk takes Emerson’s words to heart. So much so that he refuses to conform to even his African American contemporaries. One can imagine Monk quoting Shakespeare:

“I am too high-born to be propertied,
To be a secondary at control
Or useful serving-man and instrument”

Miles gushes over Monk in his autobiography, but he also recounts the legendary controversy over his asking Monk to lay out and not play behind him on the album they did together. Because “Monk never did know how to play behind a horn player.”

What I read into the controversy is that Monk did not want to be secondary to Miles…nor should he be…nor will he be.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TBP9tYncw8E

Great interview, and I love the insight about Monk influencing the sounds of the album “Money Jungle.”

Heart vs. Head

I’ve seen the following quote attributed to Abigail Adams:

“I’ve always felt that a person’s intelligence is directly reflected by the number of conflicting points of view he can entertain simultaneously on the same topic.”

If she indeed said it, I’m sure it was inspired by her husband’s rival/friend, Thomas Jefferson.

Maybe the best critique of Jefferson’s contradictory nature came from Thomas Jefferson himself, in his “Head vs. Heart” love letter to Maria Cosway.

http://www.pbs.org/jefferson/archives/documents/frame_ih198172.htm

At one point his heart tells his head:

“When nature assigned us the same habitation, she gave us over it a divided empire. To you she allotted the field of science; to me that of morals. When the circle is to be squared, or the orbit of a comet to be traced; when the arch of greatest strength, or the solid of least resistance is to be investigated, take up the problem; it is yours; nature has given me no cognizance of it. In like manner, in denying to you the feelings of sympathy, of benevolence, of gratitude, of justice, of love, of friendship, she has excluded you from their controul. To these she has adapted the mechanism of the heart. Morals were too essential to the happiness of man to be risked on the incertain combinations of the head. She laid their foundation therefore in sentiment, not in science.”

Could it be that in the cohabitation of our new country, Hamilton was the head and Jefferson the heart? And could it be that Jefferson’s rationalization for keeping slaves came from his head, and writing the words, “all men are created equal,” came from his heart?

And could it be that 2009 will go down as the year the world waited out a Battle Royale between the Head and Heart in the “divided empire” of Barack Obama’s mind?

head