summer simmer

Various functions related to the new job keep cropping up. When I'm not working or reading the summer reading list, I'm honestly putting time toward a few music-related projects--one a documentary that my friend is working on while I type this---the other a little less cohesive for the moment.

I love playing bass and I go to a weird place when I move from that and write music. Composing is not a natural activity for me and I'm generally goaded into it by some attainable project at hand.

That's it on the update for now--poems, summer reading and work, and bits of music.

Found Poem IV

(after Milton Babbit: Words about Music, p. 72)

The notion of a young composer
trying at any moment of his piece
to use any significant segment
both to recall and to predict,
to be retrospective and predictive,
to tell you where you’ve been
as well as where you’re going to be,
is, of course, to many composers,

crucial. And either you run the risk
of being too retrospective (which
means too obvious), or you run
the other risk of being too predictive
(and therefore being opaque or perhaps
losing a reasonable listener), I have to say
reasonable listener although you know
what kind of cop-out that has to be.

Stravinsky used the term the hypothetical other;
of course, the hypothetical other is Stravinsky.

Found Poem III

(after “Harry Potter’s Garden,” National Geographic, August 2007, p. 31)


( Y E W )

Voldemort’s wand

is crafted from

this evergreen,

a symbol of

D E A T H

in Renaissance literature

and a cancer fighter

in the medical world.

The drug

T A X O L

prescribed to treat

breastlungovariancancer,

was first synthesized

from a compound

in the tree’s

barkandneedles.

Found Poem II

(after Milton Babbit, Words About Music p. 122-3)

I’m given to making jokes,

but my gratitude to what has gone on in music theory is profound.
I was asked to write in a magazine called High Fidelity

(why do I ever do it?)

about the future of music. They asked, on their anniversary,
that various people suggest what was going to happen to music
in the next thousand years. I was the only composer asked
because I’m supposed to know about the future.

(I have a Ouija board!)

No, they asked me because
they thought I was going to talk about technology.

I refused to talk about technology.

I said whatever the new technology was, it wasn’t going to be
in the hands of the people anyhow; if we wouldn’t have access to it,
why talk about it? But I talked about the fact that what I most regretted
was that the people who demonstrated that they were concerned
to look at a piece of music and say intelligible things about it, from which

(if one wished to)

one could at least devolve reasonable and defensible evaluatives,
were never consulted. Instead you would still have the ubiquitous journalism
and still have the irresponsibles

(often performers)

determining what could be performed.
Asking a performer what should be performed is like
asking a printer what book should be published.

This is a serious question,

and I think that the trouble with music theorists at the moment
is they haven’t asserted their authority, which is also true
in so many other fields.

I mean that very seriously.

Found Poem

(after Milton Babbit in Words About Music, p. 181)

The other thing
that you must realize
is that out there
we’re Americans.

We’re American composers.

Now if the best thing
a composer can be
is dead, the next best
thing he can be is German.

The worst thing,
one of the worst things
he can possibly be, still,
is American.

5 or 6: Frank Sinatra : "Something Stupid"

A more likely Sinatra choice for perfect pop tune, though pure Nancy,would be "These Boots Are Made for Walkin.'" "Something Stupid" has one of my favorite melodies--at least that's why I assume it gets stuck in my head all the time. Also, if you don't play a wind instrument, you could do a lot worse than learn to play melodies how Sinatra sang them. Of course, horn players could go learn circular breathing and defeat the whole purpose of guitarists thinking they need to learn how to "breathe."

Don't know where I'm going with this one.

Lee Hazlewood, who wrote "These Boots...", also wrote some songs for Duane Eddy and Frank Sinatra. He died about a year ago, but made some very interesting albums of his own and was in amazingly great spirits during some of his last interviews before succumbing to cancer.

Try a little tenderness

If you get the chance to see Bill Frisell in any group, you should. His trio played here last night. Frisell plays masterfully and beautifully. The group was one of those "telepathic" units equally playing together and contrasting each other when necessary. A review I read of Frisell said something like he is a rare person nowadays in that he is willing to approach music with tenderness and he unashamedly does. A great night of music.

Highlights:

Frisell playing "Baba Drame" by Malian guitarist Boubacar Traore.

For an encore, they played two Hank, Sr. classics for the Alabama crowd: "Lovesick Blues" and "I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry."

6 or 5: Screamin' Jay Hawkins: "I Put a Spell on You"

Pretty soon I won't have to write anything ever. I'll just simply post a YouTube video that gets my point across. Ugh.

Anyway...

I'm breaking all kinds of my initial rules here, but it makes sense to me. And Screamin' Jay Hawkins strolls at chirp factor five (see previous posts about the "chirp"). "I Put a Spell on You" came out in 1956 and Screamin' Jay Hawkins already had a stage show in which he came to the stage by way of flaming coffin. Brilliant. In terms of genre, you could put this in blues or rock as well--it certainly influenced a lot of musicians and music. Two of my favorite versions are done by Nina Simone and Diamanda Galas. For me, I connect this to the showmanship, strangeness, and subversiveness of some pop music.

Some of the connections I'm making here, may be slight at best, but if you watch Hawkins's performance and then the Spears performance of "I'm a Slave 4 U," it may be a little clearer.


Shock Rock:
Black Sabbath, Alice Cooper (who used with West Side Story and has elements of it on many early albums), (The "Thriller" video?), GWAR, Marilyn Manson, Scandinavian death metal bands with corpse paint, etc.

"Strange" Rock/Pop: "I Am the Walrus"~Beatles, "Turning Japanese"~The Vapours, "Fish Heads"~Barnes and Barnes, "Mexican Radio"~Wall of Voodoo, "She Don't Use Jelly"~Flaming Lips, "Detachable Penis"~King Missile, etc. (Many of these were never Top 40, neither was "I Put a Spell on You").

Growing Pains: Madonna, Britney (particularly "I'm a Slave 4 U," Xtina (The "Dirty" side of Christina Aguilera), etc.

7 or 4: BACHARACH

Burt Bacharach not only wrote some of the greatest pop songs ever, he also put on one of the best live shows I have ever heard. It wasn't flashy, except for his tux and bow tie, and there was no dancing. He played piano and sang while conducting a solid eight or ten piece band through many of his classics. Beautiful music played beautifully. A lady older than my grandmother bought my friends and I cokes and popcorn.

There's no way to choose just one of his songs, although the "Do You Know the Way to San Jose?," the unchipper "Trains and Boats and Planes," and the Cissy Houston vocal version of "Mexican Divorce" all immediately come to mind as possibilities.

With "What's New, Pussycat?" I can also usher in Welsh singer Tom Jones (Sir Thomas Jones Woodward). Since he's Welsh and I wanted to stick with American tunes, I can sneak him in through the Bacharach door.

(That's awful and I know. Sorry. Can't control it sometimes.)

I had a set of computer speakers burst into flames while listening to a Tom Jones album. Seriously.

8 or 3: Motown

Like the previous posts on the perfect pop tune, I'm going more with an overall sound for the moment rather than particular tunes. So much great music came out of Motown that it would be impossible to choose a single song, so I give you some of my favorites. I've posted this Jackson 5 performance of "I Want You Back" elsewhere, and as far as the "perfect pop tune" goes, "ABC" would probably be a better choice. But, "I Want You Back" has one of my favorite bass tracks ever.

Bass Geek Talk: From the latest info that I've read, no one is sure who played the bass line on "I Want You Back." Carol Kaye and Bob Babbitt both take credit for it, while others swear it is James Jamerson, the Motown bass player. One problem with identifying it is that everyone was trying to play like Jamerson at the time. He lived in California where the tracks were made for this one. However, it evidently wasn't uncommon at the time to have different studio musicians come in, play some possible tracks, and then later pick the one that was "best." It's possible all three of these folks made passes at the tune.

Motown is where pop really got a groove that infected most music throughout the 60s and 70s. The 80s, in many ways, squelched the groove, but developed some interesting ideas for the time.

Since I posted the Jacksons before, I figured I'd post something else, as well. Tough decision considering Smokey Robinson, the Temptations, etc. are all responsible for some great music. But I'll go with a somewhat flawed video of Stevie Wonder. Supposedly, Mr. Wonder has perfect pitch and no sense of smell. Although I've also read that he's regained some of his sense of smell since losing it in 1973.

Enjoy.

Slight delay, but in a good way.

I know the suspense is killing folks out there. What will be Clurg's next perfect pop tune choice?

I'll get back to that soon.

We had some emergency out-of-town practices with the Necronomikids because an unexpected gig came up. Should be fun. Should be recorded.

I found out yesterday that I got the new job teaching dual enrollment English 101, 102, plus Honors 10th Grade English. Our new school, when finished, will be the most expensive in the state, plus I will be involved in developing a fine arts and communications academy. Awesome! I've got a lot of work to do this summer...

Also. I'll be seeing one of America's great guitarists, Bill Frisell, this Sunday.

(R.I.P. Stan Winston and George Carlin)

To keep with the pop music theme (not to mention the YouTube theme, yikes!), here's an example of what I consider brilliant early pop music (could be called jazz--whatever) and an example of contemporary pop music that I like (could be called hip hop--whatever). The first is the Raymond Scott Quintett. If you've ever watched cartoons you'll recognize this from the Carl Stalling arrangement for Looney Tunes (@ 1:25). Scott is amazing. Supposedly that's Johnny Williams playing drums, the father of Star Wars, etc. composer John Williams. Scott did some commercials with a very young Jim Henson.



So, that's the past for me. I see M.I.A as part of the future of pop music, for better or worse. This song "Bird Flu" is from her first album, which I find much better than the last one, even though it was produced by Timbaland (whose done some great work with Missy Elliot). This is a line of pop music I see as starting with the blues (and various African forms: drums and fife, etc.), moving through jazz, soul, (especially James Brown), rock/funk (Funkadelic, Parliament, etc.) and then rap groups like Public Enemy who sampled these earlier artists, to contemporary hip hop/rap groups (who are pop in my book).

Actually, I didn't intend to write so much on something I have only tenuous knowledge of--just enjoy the songs--or not.

9 or 2: Brian Wilson / Beach Boys / "Heroes and Villains"

Admittedly, songs like "Wouldn't It Be Nice" or "Good Vibrations" make more sense here, but it's my list and "Heroes and Villains" is the pop song to me. Infectious, chirpy, and brilliant. It does, in Kelly's words, "wander off the farm" so he may disqualify it. It definitely doesn't fit the three minute mark. However, I would say that has more chirp than Paul Simon's "American Tune." (Another great song, but there's no chirp there).

Anyway...

There's not much I can add to the massive output on Wilson and the Beach Boys. I would say listen to Pet Sounds and watch some documentaries (lawsuits, beatings, and that Manson family are just a small part of the history here) if you think you might be interested. Be careful, though, the music of Brian Wilson has an incredible power and may cause a years-long obsession.

I should also add that unlike many pop purveyors Brian Wilson has always been more than just a singer or just a producer. He's a composer and arranger and this is what makes him a stand out in pop music. He supposedly naturally hears six-part vocal harmonies (and is deaf in one ear from a beating his father gave him when Wilson was a youngster).

Spector has stated that he made "little symphonies for the kids." He never came close to what Brian Wilson does, particularly on "Heroes and Villains." Not much does, in my opinion.

10 or 1: Phil Spector / Ronettes / "Be My Baby"

You may want to start here and then go here.



Enough has been written about how absolutely brilliant (i.e. production techniques or the "Wall of Sound") and how utterly bonkers (i.e. assault, murder charges, wigs, etc.) Phil Spector is, so I don't need to say too much. But, for me, Spector is iconic, if not archetypal, in terms of pop music (Think of how important producers are in pop music today, like Timbaland, for example).

"Be My Baby" has that great drum beat in the intro also heard in the guitar intro here (bass-bassdrum--snare). I haven't quite figured out how or why this rhythm screams pop music to me. Is it that it's unquestionably danceable? That it's more primal, especially when it's generally played with all drums and no cymbals? Does it put focus on the "body" (three low bass beats) and less on the "mind" (one high, sharp snare crack) like pop music, in general, does? Pop music's catchiness and tendency to induce butt-shaking cause some people to revolt against it as a "lower" form of music, but it doesn't have to be and often isn't. I may just be digging a bigger hole for myself here...

The Ronettes are a great example of that pop music staple--a band created by producers: the girl group, aka the boy band, aka the Monkees, New Kids, Spice Girls, etc.

Check out how Brian Wilson, known to obsess about Phil Spector, takes "Be My Baby" and makes it "Don't Worry Baby." You get that same rhythm I mentioned earlier. The Boys look stiff and uncomfortable, but what an amazing song. Wilson used many of Spector's session musicians, as well. I'm pretty sure Glen Campbell plays guitar here (that staccato/ rhythm part?) and there's a possibility that Hal Blaine (drums) and Carol Kaye (bass and/or guitar) played on both of these songs, too.

I never have been and will never be a singer, but I remember attempting to learn each voice part of this song and listening to it over and over and over again.




Bass geek talk:

From what I've read, part of Spector's Wall of Sound came from how he recorded bass parts. He used three bass players! One played upright, one played the Fender bass (electric bass), and one musician picked on a "six-string bass guitar." I'm thinking this last one was something like a baritone guitar. Supposedly, Carol Kaye had been playing guitar, but then moved to bass and played it with a pick. By doing this, she kind of eliminated the need for that third player. Brian Wilson mostly used Kaye and an upright player, from what I know.

I listened to some bass parts on some Howlin' Wolf and Willie Dixon records and was just blown away by the sound of them. Willie Dixon wrote and played bass on many of these songs, but I couldn't figure out how he got certain sounds. What I remember finding out was that he would often play a line on upright and overdub an electric line on top of that. Anyway, it's a cool sound and even though the idea is the same as the Spector/Wilson approach, Dixon makes it his own. I've been meaning to experiment with this technique at home, but haven't yet.

Chirpin' Bird

For Kelly, the ideal pop song is three minutes of catchy aural narrative, inevitable ("the three minutes are so well constructed that they feel totally inevitable to me"), and "chirpy."

My initial parameters are set for thinking about the perfect pop song. Because I'm probably a little OCD (I used to put my money in order by serial number, and, yes, I stopped doing this many years ago), I had to add extra guidelines for myself so that I'm not throwing in a movement from a Bach cello suite or "In the Mood" because, hey, they were popular music at one time!

My additional guides are these:

--I'm going to focus on American artists. So none of the fabulous pop music from around the world fits here. No Gainsbourg, Burman, Bowie, Cure, etc. Absolutely no Beatles.

--Genres are tricky things: helpful one moment and meaningless the next. Regardless, I'm going to attempt to stick to "pop" music, so no Godfathers of Soul or Kings of Rock and Roll or Queens of Soul. No Public Enemy, Hank Williams, Sr, or Bob Wills, even though deep down, especially in terms of favorites, I think they go here. But that's another debate that I've opted out of for the moment. This will also eliminate bands like the Residents, who write pop songs about pop songs. So, yes, I'll do my best to eliminate "art" songs, which oddly also eliminates Weird Al and Ray Stevens.

--The Neil Peart Factor. This is not a "best of," so I'm going after songs that have worked their magic on me. A "best of" would be asking me to think about this in a very different way and to make stricter categorizations. I love and hate best of lists. Most of these kinds of lists are just favorites lists sprinkled with authority, but make no sense in the larger scheme of things.

I call this the "Neil Peart Factor" because of the continuous arguments I had in high school and college about this "best of" idea. Of course, everybody knows that Neil Peart is the best drummer in the world. Except he can't swing like Max Roach, Elvin Jones, or Tony Williams and certainly wouldn't ever play in bands like Cephalic Carnage or Slayer, which have great drummers in their own right. Also, I've never heard something from Peart as sublime as Joey Baron playing with brushes. I actually love Rush and I think Peart is the best drummer . . . in Rush.

Peart can be anybody's favorite drummer, but there really is no "best."

Enough already. One more rule.

--I can, and most likely will, violate any and all distinctions, rules, parameters, etc. I've set for myself. That's just the way it goes.

So, on with the show...

oh no upcoming...more on lists

Ok, ok, you'll have to blame Kelly for some of the upcoming posts on pop music and/or Neil Peart.

I'm working with his parameters on the perfect pop song and adding my own. I literally couldn't sleep thinking about this. Well, I didn't stay awake all night or anything, I was just trying to take a nap before picking up a friend at the airport.

So, upcoming: perfect pop songs--something I don't think about too often. Currently listening to one of the messiest and noisiest Velvet Underground albums and loving it. My comfortable idea of pop music is something like the Velvet Underground's "Sister Ray," which is hardly radio fare.

If anything, I'm putting way too much thought into this, but at least I've gotten over the anxiety and am just having fun.

Also, I realized that I wrote that top ten novel list quite awhile back. I still want Moby Dick on there. And since then, I've read two Nabokov novels, Lolita and Pnin, and was amazed by both. Chabon's Kavalier and Clay would have to go on that list now, as well. Flaubert's Madame Bovary was so good I had to copy sections of it by hand. Maybe I'll revise that sometime.

Lists and listin'. They don't mean nuthin'.

Cop-out of Sorts

Too much drama today. This involves job and bureaucratic matters that I won't be able to mention with any confidence until Monday. Said drama could unfold into roses or rot in the soil.

Any summer projects planned? I've got too many to actually get to, but I suppose that's good in a way. I've been good about writing, meditation, workouts, and not-so-good about practicing bass or guitar.

My plans for container gardening are still plans for now, and I may begin my crash course in Mexican cuisine tomorrow. If you've ever had fresh, authentic Mexican food then you know what I'm talking about.

I have too many other plans and mentioning them would make me even more embarrassed or disappointed about the things I never get done. Although I'll mention a chapbook that I'm working on that involves 10 poems and 10 collages. Well, I hope it becomes a chapbook anyway. I'm going to try and publish it or get a grant to publish it in the format that I think will be appropriate. Also, I've been promising to record some bass tracks for a "cannibalism" project that I haven't recorded yet. I may be adding some guitar and text for the actual finished project as well. This will probably be in line with some of the low-budget DIY projects I've done in the past.

Pop Culture Cop-Out:

One of my favorite guitarists is Nels Cline. I heard him playing with Wilco today in the grocery store. Very strange, but very nice, for me. The song even had an extended solo. I've never been, and still am not, a big fan of Wilco. Most music I listen to doesn't have words, but I've always thought they were ok for what they do. The first time I found out that Cline was playing with them was when I was playing a bluegrass festival in Baton Rouge and instead of jamming with everybody on Friday night, I had to stay in and work on graduate work. I saw Arcade Fire for the first time as well (They were they only decent band on some kind of MTV up-and-coming brouhaha). Anyway, as I was diligently working through some learning psychology I switched the TV over to Austin City Limits. Immediately I was excited because I saw Nels Cline and "some other dudes" who I realized were Wilco.

He's an exciting voice and Mike Watt's Contemplating the Engine Room is my favorite album with him on it. His Andrew Hill record is a close second. Besides, how can you not enjoy someone who even attempts a tune-for-tune cover album of Coltrane's Interstellar Space?

As a little postscript, for those of you thinking about seeing The Happening because it looks like a good idea: You're right. It's a good idea, just not a good movie.

Since high school I've kept journals. Every now and then I exhume one or two in hopes of finding a lost or rare gem, but mostly my journals are tombs for what should remain buried. Sometimes they are good for a laugh. I've written some unintentional howlers in my time and maybe I'll share a few at some point. Today I was going to the library and picked up a journal to write in while I was there. After looking through bookstacks for an hour, I sat down and looked in the journal. I had an entry in there from my first month of teaching. I liked it enough to share here, even though at points it's probably too dramatic. But if you can't revel in the drama of your own life in your own journal, where can you? Well, online, I guess...

9/3
What a month. Overwhelming is an understatement. Nothing is easy, but most of it, if not all feels right. This is the surrender, the practice, the giving back. To truly get the deepest feelings, there must be this giving and this going into the world. This is more difficult, but ultimately, more important work. Life is not about ease. True, the creative life is something that I long for, yet live everyday. Through my teaching--its rough beginning--I create everyday. I do see the difference, though, the feeling of reading an essay or novel versus writing a melody or beginning a poem. It is so difficult, but at the same time, it is this prison that frees me.

Obsessions Brewing

Lately I've been obsessing over some lines of William Blake, particularly the oft-quoted quartet:

To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower,
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour.

Even though Blake is associated with Christianity, I sense something akin to the Soto Zen I have been studying when given the time. It's something that I need to work on, and I see a collected, illuminated works of Blake in my future.

Also, I have to say what an amazing book Damned: An Illustrated History of the Devil is. I've just started reading it and it's touched on subjects like the creation of the devil in connection to the altered forms of the unholy one, right down to color scheme. It's only been recently that the color red was associated with Satan, since red had previously been associated with Christ's blood and holiness. The devil, which as a personage started out as a humpbacked dwarf hassling monks in the 12th Century, was initially blue or green and associated with the earth and decay.

Sometime around 1000, the German word Heinekin was a word for the devil.

I'm barely scratching the surface here and I need to finish the book.

Here's to new obsessions and the time (hopefully) to pursue them.

Oh meme, Oh mime

"List seven songs you are into right now. No matter what the genre, whether they have words, or even if they’re not any good, but they must be songs you’re really enjoying now, shaping your summer. Post these instructions in your blog along with your 7 songs. Then tag 7 other people to see what they’re listening to."

I won't tag anyone else to do this. If you want to, go ahead and then let me know. The last few days have been extremely busy so I am falling victim to the meme. Trust me, I'll try not to do this too often. They make me feel lazy as all hell.

Also, I'm mainly listing albums. I generally focus on albums more than songs unless I'm learning them, which is the case with the first two.

1. "Wildwood Flower"
I've had this melody stuck in my head for weeks now. I sit and play versions of it over and over again. I have several versions of it (Carter Family, Cash, etc.), but I'm not listening to it except in my head or when I am practicing. Haunting, beautiful song with odd lyrics.

2. "Straight, No Chaser"- Miles Davis: Milestones
Talk about great melodies. Thelonius Monk wrote more than a few. I've been practicing this one along with the Milestones version. I haven't quite perfected the timing the way it is on the album.

3. Minutemen: Post-Mersh, Vol.1
Post-Mersh, Vol. 1 contains two albums: The Punch Line and What Makes a Man Start Fires? Amazingly diverse band for being "punk rockers." Here's one of the few videos they made: This Ain't No Picinic.

4. Residents: "Moisture" and various albums
Right now I'm just soaking up everything I can find on YouTube or in my collection. I hadn't listened to the Residents in years and, well, you can read more about that in a previous post.

5. The Music of Bill Monroe from 1936 to 1994: Disc Three
If you've ever played in a bluegrass band, then you've got to love Bill Monroe. Great American songs. I've been focusing on uptempo instrumentals like "Big Mon" and "Soldier's Joy." Of course, I can't resist the ballads like "With Body and Soul" or "Dark as the Night, Blue as the Day." And "Darling Corey" just rocks.

6. Secret Chiefs 3: First Grand Constitution and Bylaws
Even though this is the first album by this "band," the last album, Book of Horizons, might be a better introduction. I put "band" in quotes because the Secret Chiefs is really Trey Spruance and a revolving group of talent. In fact, the band is now divided into seven bands each with a governing concept and style. Sound confusing? It is, but the music is amazing. Seriously. Really I should put all of their albums on this list because I'm constantly rotating between them. I just happen to be listening to the first album again this week. A live video of a newer song that will probably have a different title by the time it gets released: "Fast"

7. Eyvind Kang: Virginal Co-Ordinates and Theater of Mineral NADEs
Kang is another composer that I should might as well say I'm listening to everything by him all the time. I just happen to be listening to these two this week. He's an inspiring composer and performer. He's a difficult person to get info on or videos of, but here's Kang with the Bill Frisell Quartet.

Cheap Thrills Thursday

While discussing some possible video ideas for a band I'm playing in, a friend brought up the Residents One Minute Movies based on songs from the Commercial Album. I hadn't seen or listened to this stuff in a long time and now thanks to YouTube I can scour around for videos by them that I have missed.

The Residents, like other performers with boundary-pushing artistic vision and massive output, can just as easily amaze as annoy. (Frank Zappa, John Zorn, and Miles Davis fit that category in my mind as well.) The Commercial Album contains 40 one-minute tracks. The idea is that pop songs are generally three minutes long, but mainly alternate a verse and chorus three times. So, for the Residents, we only really get one minute of music in a pop song. Many ad jingles are also one minute long, so for the Residents, ad jingles are truly the music of America and they attempt to capture that on the Commercial Album. Of course, they capture that in their own intensely creepy way.

I love the Snakefinger guitar solo on "Moisture." I love the dramatization of that guitar solo. I'd love to look and play like the kickass Jughead/Derek Bailey-looking spacetronaut guitarist. Unfortunately, I'll have to settle on pudgy, mediocre bass player.

As far as intensely creepy goes, here's "Hello Skinny" just for kicks:

"If, for the future, he would choose a less frivolous subject and restrict himself a little, he would produce things beyond all conception." ~Goethe

One of my earliest memories is of an image I repeatedly sketched. About a quarter of the way down the page, I drew a line that represented the surface of the ocean. Below that was a figure whose head was like a shark's head in profile, but instead of a tail this character had another shark head. I remember drawing two dorsal fins on the character's head. I drew a scrawny body with arms and legs, but the double-shark face head was always about three or four times the size of the body. I never had a name for this thing; I've always been bad about titles.

I spent a lot of time until high school working on doodles and sketches. I wanted to be an artist, but I never focused on the craft as much as I should have. Papers were fun for me to write starting in late elementary school until high school because I illustrated my writing. Just recalling some of the subjects of those papers reminds me of specific phases I went through: sharks, Poe, serial killers, and the blues. I can still recall specific illustrations I did for those papers. I used to copy a lot of portraits of Poe and guitarists like Muddy Waters. My teacher never said anything about the full-color Pogo the Clown illustration I did for a paper on John Wayne Gacy. When I think about that now, I can't believe I turned it in.

Most of these interests, including the serial killer phase, came from the extensive collection of books at my grandparents' house. My grandfather was notorious. He'd go to bargain book bins and buy boxes of books on anything that seemed interesting. My grandmother read a lot as well, though she preferred the classics and items from the bestseller list. When I was about nine, I started staying with my grandparents during parts of the summer.

The range of subjects that my grandfather read about related to his careers. He was a minister and a human resources manager. He had tons of books on religion, psychology, business, and philosophy. At my age, Helter Skelter and Son of Sam made more sense than Joy of Sex or the Power of Myth, but I gave them all a chance. During those summers, between pages of my grandfather's nonfiction and my grandmother's fiction, I probably developed my multifarious reading interests.

Since college, one of my rituals during vacations has been to go to the library and grab a bunch of books on art. Yesterday, I made my first of what will most likely be many trips.

Here's what I pulled:

Chris Ware: Daniel Raeburn

Exploitation Poster Art: Ed. by Tony Nourmand and Graham Marsh

In the Studio: Visits with Contemporary Cartoonists: Todd Hignite

Damned: An Illustrated History of the Devil: Robert Muchembled



Happy summer reading and looking.

We must cultivate our garden.

Yesterday morning I read Candide by Voltaire. Seemingly he was sparked to write the book in response to Leibniz's optimism. (It's been a long time since I read Leibniz, but I think his optimism comes from his belief in a perfect God, which could not make an imperfect world--or something like that.) So, where Leibniz sees the world as perfect as it can be, Voltaire shows the other extreme, focusing on a world bloated with murder, rape, and slavery. Voltaire, though, is funny. Leibniz is not. I'm not sure what it says about me that I find a book filled with murder and rape funny, but think Swift here. If he can make eating babies funny...

My concern while reading the book was that nothing would be offered but the opposite extreme of a perfect world. Voltaire offers us something else, but I don't want to spoil it for those who want to read the book. However, because extremes play an important part in the book, I began thinking of the Aristotelian mean and the Middle Way in Buddhism. At some point, I should research these ideas in order to compare and contrast them, but for now, I'm just working with my impressions coming away from Candide. I'm sure there's great scholarly work out there on these subjects, but I'll have to save that for another time.

Anyway, the mean is balance and balance is something that I'm striving for this summer. In music, I've heard the phrase "practice to your weaknesses." In other words, no matter how much fun it is to play Black Sabbath riffs over and over again, the only way to improve is to practice that Charlie Parker melody you keep forgetting. I've always had to spend more time practicing scales descending rather than ascending. But I'm jumping ahead of myself here...

Remember when I said that I read that whole book yesterday? Granted, it's not long, but I also read a few other things including a short piece by Nietzsche, "Seventy-Five Aphorisms from Five Volumes." Obviously reading is something I like to do, like that guitarist who likes to sit and play Black Sabbath. Achieving balance for me has to include time away from the books and the intellectual parts of my life. In order to practice to my weaknesses, I'm paying special attention to physical pursuits this summer.

In order to be serious about balance, I gave up Netflix and joined the YMCA. I meditate daily (and have been for a year-and-a-half, but recently I have been won over by Soto Zen--maybe I'll write about it at some point). With music, I'm seriously practicing towards my weaknesses; I discover new ones every day. Ear training, or just focused, conscious playing (including memorization), is very important for me now.

I had more to write about in terms of finding balance within my artistic life, particularly as it pertains to music, but I should save that for some other time. Stepping back and "playing to my weaknesses" wasn't the easiest thing to do, in fact, I had to discuss it with several people that are closest to me in case I had blinded myself to my own faults or problems. I guess it's common to say "Know thyself," but for now, I'll go with "We must cultivate our garden." I like the notion of cultivation (process) and how the garden is owned by many, which for me ties the one to the many, the personal to the public or professional. For a teacher, it makes sense to view this cultivation from many angles, including how balance, or the striving for it, will hopefully benefit all those roles I play.

Crumb in the Machine

Working with one of the National Writing Project's sites was one of the highlights of my graduate work. The project has sites all over the U.S. focused on making educators better teachers of writing by getting them writing for themselves. One of the goals of the site I worked with was to put together a magazine/newsletter, but teacher schedules being what they are, the publication never materialized. I was going to contribute a column on writing, reading, and education.

I finished one piece and it is below. It's written in a voice that I felt would be appropriate for the audience of other teachers. For me, it felt like I was taking a chance writing in a way that I generally don't. Anyway, you can read it and judge whether or not it's successful.

Book lists fascinate me and so I wrote the first column in response to a Bradbury essay I had read and combined that with a book list exercise. Now, when I look at my list, I think about how uneventful that list is. I mean, I could add some Nabokov, Melville, Twain, Flaubert, or Wharton, or maybe exchange The Stranger with The Plague, but it would still be a dry, dusty list. What can I say? A fascination with book lists makes me read from those lists.






Do you remember the first book you ever read? I don't. Do you remember the first book you read twice? It was Robinson Crusoe for me. Now, could you outline, not simply, but in detail, that book? Not my book, but your first book, or even your favorite book? I couldn't. My detailed retelling of Robinson Crusoe might look something like this: Crusoe shipwrecks on an island. He journals. He meets a guy named Friday. Crusoe had a beard on the cover, but I'm not sure if he already had it or grew it on the island. Pretty shabby for a book I've actually read more than once, but this leads me to an interesting challenge posed by Ray Bradbury.

In 2004, Bradbury wrote an article published in the Wall Street Journal entitled "Remembrance of Books Past." If you've never judged Bradbury a skilled writer, consider the sentence that ends his article: "Go find your bliss, name your favorites, and see if your long umbilical memory has been cut or you are still wonderfully tied to the things you loved in libraries a long time ago." What Bradbury is referring to is a literary parlor game that we as writers, readers, or teachers can play or modify for our students.

It all started over dinner, when Bernard Berenson, a famed Renaissance art historian, suggested a sequel to Fahrenheit 451 in which the Wilderness People, who memorized books in order to not get caught with the outlawed items, would now, at a much later and freer time, reprint books from their collective memory.

Sounds like a great story, right? Bradbury thought so, but his outline of the novel never came to be. Fifty years later, though, having stumbled upon his notes about the novel and his conversation with Berenson at dinner, he wrote the article and suggested, as an exercise or parlor game, that we take up Berenson's challenge ourselves. Bradbury suggests "List your 10 favorite novels, and, in great detail, outline their plots, then renew your acquaintance with these to find out how you have scarred, beautified, or mutilated those incredible books."

What a challenge to us as readers, writers, and teachers! Even if you don't try to outline in detail your 10 favorite novels, you could still use this idea in class. For one, you could show students the difference between blurbs, outlines that retell sequences of events, and summaries. As a type of review, the class could reacquaint themselves with the events from Shakespeare plays or Twain novels.

What are your 10 favorite novels? Make a list of them and share the list with your students, maybe they'll make their own lists, too.
Here's mine:

1984--George Orwell

Pride and Prejudice--Jane Austen

Ulysses--James Joyce

The Metamorphosis--Franz Kafka

The Haunting of Hill House--Shirley Jackson

The Stranger--Albert Camus

Beloved--Toni Morrison

As I Lay Dying--William Faulkner

The Sound and the Fury--William Faulkner

A Journal of the Plague Year--Daniel Defoe

Music is why I still love music.

Every now and then, something blasts the patina off this old plate of a brain. At the time, that something just seems "right" or maybe it's just good old-fashioned inspiration. Recently, a friend dropped the Devil's Anvil in my lap and I've been screaming with pleasure ever since.

The band released one album, Hard Rock From the Middle East, and according to the All Music Guide, it dropped into record stores (and seemingly out of existence) the same day in 1967 that the Arab-Israeli War broke out. Supposedly, not a station in New York would touch the album even though the band was from the Village. Several members in the band were born in or had family from the Middle East, but the Devil's Anvil was an American band, granted one that sang mostly in Turkish (and Greek?) and played songs not only with a traditional psych rock setup including guitars, drums, and organ, but also with an array of untraditional rock instruments like accordion, tamboura, and bouzouki. The group was together a year before the album and only a year after. A few members went on to form the more successful group Mountain.

More than being an exotica album or simply a set of rock songs in harmonic minor with "guest" sitar or tabla, Hard Rock fuses rock and roll and Eastern musical elements beyond gimmickry. It's not perfect, but at its best fits nicely next to R.D. Burman and Ananda Shankar's work of the same period, although the production isn't as inspired. (Then again, how could it be?)

My favorite tracks tend to be the rockers in odd time signatures (although "hard rock" means "midtempo" on this album), but there are some nice ballads here including "Kley," which has a twisting melody and a vocal that sounds oddly like Henry's Dream-era Nick Cave. Also, the album has a slow version of "Misirlou" with English lyrics. Not my favorite track, but it's definitely unlike any version of that song I've ever heard.