My Year With Proust - Day 241

But alas, when, a moment later, I bent over to kiss that beloved forehead which had been so harshly treated, she looked up at me with a puzzled, distrustful, shocked expression: she had not recognised me.

   According to our doctor, this was a symptom that the congestion of her brain was increasing.  It must be relieved in some way.  Cottard was in two minds.  Franceoise hoped at first that they were going to apply "clarified cups."  She looked up the effect of this treatment in my dictionary, but could find no reference to it.  Even if she had said "scarified" instead of "clarified" she still would not have found any reference to this adjective, since she did not look for it under "C" any more than under "S" - she did indeed say "clarified" but she wrote (and consequently assumed that the printed word was) "esclarified."  Cottard, to her disappointment, gave the preference, though without much hope, to leeches.  When a few hours later, I went into my grandmother's room, fasted to her neck, her temples, her ears, the tiny black reptiles were writhing among her bloodstained locks, as on the head of Medusa.  But in her pale and peaceful, entirely motionless face I saw her beautiful eyes, wide open, luminous and calm as of old (perhaps even more charged with the light of intelligence than they had been before her illness, since, as she could not speak and must not move, it was to her eyes alone that she entrusted her thought, that thought which can be reborn, as though by spontaneous generation, thanks to the withdrawal of a few drops of blood), her eyes, soft and liquid as oil, in which the rekindled fire that was now burning lit up for the sick woman the recaptured universe.  Her calm was no longer the wisdom of despair but of hope.  She realised that she was better, wish, to be careful, not to move, and made me the present only, of a beautiful smile so that I should know that she was feeling better, as she gently pressed my hand.

   I knew the disgust that my grandmother felt at the sight of certain animals, let alone at being touched by them.  I knew that it was in consideration of a higher utility that she was enduring the leeches.  And so it infuriated me to hear Francoise repeating to her with the little chuckle one gives to a baby once is trying to amuse: "Oh, look at the little beasties running all over Madame."  This was moreover to treat our patient with a lack of respect, as though she had lapsed into second childhood.  But my grandmother, whose face had assumed the calm fortitude of a stoic, did not even seem to hear her.

   Alas! no sooner had the leeches been removed than the congestion returned and grew steadily worse.  I was surprised to find that at this stage, when my grandmother was so ill, Francoise was constantly disappearing.  The fact was that she had ordered herself a mourning dress, and did not wish to keep the dressmaker waiting.  In the lives of most women, everything, even the greatest sorrow, resolves itself into a question of "trying-on."

Marcel Proust, The Guermantes Way, pp. 346-347

I included this odd little section mainly because it is odd, an odd, jumbled collection of events which somehow seems to capture the tragedy and comedy of life.  It starts with the horrible moment when Marcel realizes that his grandmother's condition has so deteriorated that she doesn't recognize him, but then it passes through a treatment of leeches.  On the one hand it seems stunning that doctors were still prescribing leeches as a treatment a century ago, although my friend Craig Pepin paid for a cupping (also mentioned above) when we were in Beijing a few years ago, and both cuppings and leeches were fairly common among my students in the United Arab Emirates when I taught there.  Anyway, I think life is maddening mix of tragedy and comedy, and maybe the key is just to know how to understand that and to create a balance; revel in the comedy and weather the tragedy.

I also love the practicality of Francoise in this section.  She is devoted to Marcel's grandmother but also is gone a lot of the time because she is meeting a seamstress for a series of fittings for a mourning dress that she hopes to never wear. "In the lives of most women, everything, even the greatest sorrow, resolves itself into a question of "trying-on."  One of the great misconceptions of life is that women are the romantic sex.  Rather, it is women who are the hard-headed, practical ones, which is why my excellent friend Heidi Steiner-Burkhardt dominates the Twin Peaks Football League (our fantasy football league).  The rest of us are drafting players because they went to our university or they play for our favorite NFL team or they're Muslims or we have a fond memory of one game they played three years ago that helped a previous incarnation of our wretched fantasy team.  Heidi, our league's evil T 1000 Terminator, just runs the numbers and dominates.

My Year With Proust - Day 240

   People of taste tell us nowadays that Renoir is a great eighteenth-century painter.  But in so saying they forget the element of Time, and that it took a great deal of time, even at the height of the nineteenth century, for Renoir to be hailed as a great artist.  To succeed thus in gaining recognition, the original painter or the original writer proceeds on the lines of the oculist.  The course of treatment they give us by their painting or by their prose is not always pleasant.  When it is at an end the practitioner says to us: "Now look!" And, lo and behold, the world around us (which was not created once and for all, but is created afresh as often as an original artist, is born) appears to us entirely different from the old world, but perfectly clear.  Women pass in the street, different from those we formerly saw, because they are Renoirs, those Renoirs we persistently refused to see as women.  The carriages, too, are Renoirs, and the water, and the sky; we feel tempted to go for a walk in the forest which is identical with the one which when we first saw it looked like anything in the world except a forest, like for instance a tapestry of innumerable hues but lacking precisely the hues peculiar to forest.  Such is the new and perishable universe which has just been created.  It will last until the next geological catastrophe is precipitated by a new painter or writer or original talent.

Marcel Proust, The Guermantes Way, pp. 338-339

"Such is the new and perishable universe which has just been created."

In my Aesthetic Expressions class we often find ourselves discussing why artists do what they do.  Essentially, do people make a conscious decision to become artists or is it a case where they cannot not be artists?  As we've discussed, they see the world in a different way and in the end they change the rules, not because they necessarily want to change the world but because they cannot not change the rules.  Now, in changing the rules they have then changed the world, which is what I think Proust is getting at in this section.  At one time people actively detested Renoir (as well as the other Impressionists) and it was because they were viewing the world in a certain more traditional way.  They began to appreciate Renoir when they began to look at his art in a different way, and in the process they began to look at all art and, for that matter, the entire world in a different way.  You could never un-see Renoir (although we've discussed Cezanne's desire to paint as if no one had ever painted before). Now, what's also interesting about all this is that although there were many art critics who rejected the Impressionists, there were a few who "got" it and helped the rest of us to understand it.  Similarly, although obviously less importantly, I think of the music critics who understood Young's Tonight's the Night and supported of it in the face of a lot of abuse from casual fans.  Essentially the critics saw a changing world and helped others get to that point.  I think it speaks to the role of the public intellectual.  One of the reasons why I'm so active on Twitter is to play that role, even if it's a public pseudo-intellectual.

Renoir's Two Sisters on the Terrace.

Renoir's Woman Reading.

Renoir's Dance at Le Mousin de la Galette.

My Year With Proust - Day 239

   "No, no, Mamma dear, we won't let you suffer like that, we'll find something to take it away, have patience just for a moment; let me give you a kiss, darling - no, you're not to move."

   And stooping over the bed, with her knees bent, almost kneeling on the ground, as though by an exercise of humility she would have a better chance of making acceptable the impassioned gift of herself, she lowered towards my grandmother her whole life contained her face as in a ciborium which she was holding out to her, adorned with dimples and folds so passionate, so sorrowful, so sweet that one could not have said whether they had been engraved on it by a kiss, a sob or a smile.  My grandmother too tried to lift up her face to Mamma's.  It was so altered that probably, had she been strong enough to go out, she would have been recognised only by the feather in her hat.  Her features, as though during a modeling session, seemed to be straining with an effort which distracted her from everything else, to conform to some particular model which we failed to identify.  The work of the sculptor was nearing its end, and if my grandmother's face had shrunk in the process, it had at the same time hardened.  The veins that traversed it seemed those not of marble, but of some more rugged stone.  Permanently thrust forward by the difficulty that she found in breathing, and as permanently withdrawn into itself by exhaustion, her face, worn, diminished, terrifyingly expressive, seemed like the rude, flushed, purplish, desperate face of some wild guardian of a tomb in a primitive, almost prehistoric sculpture.  But the work was not yet complete.  Next, the mould must be broken, and then, into that tomb which had been so painfully guarded, with that tense exertion the finished effigy lowered.

Marcel Proust, The Guermantes Way, pp. 334-335

Marcel's grandmother's health continues to fail.  The section takes me back to the moment very early in Swann's Way where his mother held her face close for him to kiss in a fashion that almost felt like a believer taking communion.  "And stooping over the bed, with her knees bent, almost kneeling on the ground, as though by an exercise of humility she would have a better chance of making acceptable the impassioned gift of herself, she lowered towards my grandmother her whole life contained her face as in a ciborium which she was holding out to her, adorned with dimples and folds so passionate, so sorrowful, so sweet that one could not have said whether they had been engraved on it by a kiss, a sob or a smile."

Proust's description of his grandmother's features shrinking in the hands of the sculptor reminds me of the grandmother (if I remember correctly) Gabriel Garcia-Marquez's brilliant One Hundred Years of Solitude who keeps shrinking (in classic magical realism fashion) until she is held as a baby.

My Year With Proust - Day 238

   And if Legrandin had looked back at us with that air of astonishment, it was because to him, as to the other people who passed us then, in the cab in which my grandmother was apparently sitting on the back seat, she had seemed to be foundering, slithering into the abyss, clinging desperately to the cushions which could scarcely hold back the headlong plunge of her body, her hair dishevelled, her eyes wild, no longer capable of facing the assault of the images which their pupils no longer had the strength to bear.  She had appeared, although I was beside her, to be plunged in that unknown world in the heart of which she had already received the blows of which she bore the marks when I had looked up at her in the Champs-Elysees, her hat, her face, her coat deranged by the hand of the invisible angel with whom she had wrestled.

   I have thought, since, that this moment of her stroke cannot have altogether surprised my grandmother, that indeed she had perhaps foreseen it a long time back, had lived in expectation of it.  She had not known, naturally, when this fatal moment would come, had never been certain, any more than those lovers whom a similar doubt leads alternately to found unreasonable hope and unjustified suspicions on the fidelity of their mistresses.  But it is rare for these graves illnesses, such as that which now at last had struck her full in the face, not to take up residence in a sick person a long time before killing him, during which period they hasten, like a "sociable" neighbour or tenant, to make themselves known to him.  A terrible acquaintance, not so much for the sufferings that it causes as for the strange novelty of the terminal restrictions which it imposes upon life.  We see ourselves dying, in these cases, not at the actual moment of death but months, sometimes years before, when death has hideously come to dwell in us.  We make the acquaintance of the Stranger whom we hear coming and going in our brain.  True, we do not know him by sight, but from the sounds we hear him regularly make we can form an idea of his habits.  Is he a malefactor?  One morning, we can no longer hear him.  He has gone.  Ah! if only it were for ever!  In the evening has has returned.  What are his plans?  The consultant, put to the question, like an adored mistress, replies with avowals that one day are believed, another day questioned.  Or rather it is not the mistress's role but that of interrogated servants that the doctors plays.  They are not only third parties.  The person whom we press for an answer, whom we suspect of being about to play us false, is Life itself, and although we feel her to be no longer the same, we believe in her still, or at least remained undecided until the day on which she finally abandons us.

Marcel Proust, The Guermantes Way, pp. 326-327

As I've discussed doubtlessly all too often, a few years ago I had the chance to move to Hong Kong.  The job offer at the university was really amazing, but mainly I was considering it because I was very much in love with a lovely young British woman and was prepared to toss away my career here at Champlain to follow a new path with her.  Not surprisingly all of my friends jumped in with their thoughts on the decision I had to make.  Many said I definitely had to take the position.  My excellent friend Steve Wehmeyer, knowing that I would appreciate the baseball reference, told me that I had to say yes because, to quote him, "dude, you just got called up to the Show."  Others told me not to go because I have an amazing life here in Vermont (which is definitely true).  My best friend, who I will not identify here to protect the innocent, advised, "Follow the job because in the end women will never do what they say."  While I'm not as cynical as my friend, in the end he was proven correct because the said lovely young British woman broke things off.  In fact, in the last five years I've dated exactly two women, both of whom I fell in love with and asked to marry me, both of whom said yes, and then both of whom changed their mind.  The woman I'm with now has come up with lots of reasons why we can't get married, but in the end she just doesn't want to, and it's because she doesn't love me enough to follow through.  Hey, life goes on.  In every relationship one person always loves the other more, just as in every relationship one side always leaves first (even if it is only to die).  Why am I bringing this all up?  For some reason this passage dredged up all these memories and all these emotions.  In the end these two relationships are a microcosm of the bigger macrocosm: life also makes many promises, but very seldom follows through.

We desperately pursue a lover, just as we pursue life itself. We may have the lover we desperately wanted, but there is always someone else flirting with us.  Even if we have the life we desperately wanted, there is always another life flirting with us; and when we have life itself, eventually death begins to flirt with us.  We've talked about our tendency to personify death, and Proust is doing it beautifully here by equating it with a potentially unfaithful mistress.  He shares with us that his grandmother had to know that she was dying, that "She had not known, naturally, when this fatal moment would come, had never been certain, any more than those lovers whom a similar doubt leads alternately to found unreasonable hope and unjustified suspicions on the fidelity of their mistresses."  I keep hearkening back to Sherwood Anderson's story "Death" from Winesburg, Ohio.  At the end his mother was drawn to her only two lovers, Death and Dr. Reefy.  For the age she was a very experienced woman, so why had she only have two lovers?  I would argue that Death and Dr. Reefy were her only true lovers because they were the only ones who had never let her down.  Elizabeth never actually had sex with Dr. Reefy, so their love was not contaminated, and Death was her most faithful, devoted lover who waited patiently for her.  To me Proust is hinting at the same thing when we suggests, "The person whom we press for an answer, whom we suspect of being about to play us false, is Life itself, and although we feel her to be no longer the same, we believe in her still, or at least remained undecided until the day on which she finally abandons us."

My Year With Proust - Day 237

   We may, indeed, say that the hour of death is uncertain, but when we say this we think of that hour as situated in a vague and remote expanse of time; it does not occur to us that it can have any connexion with the day that has already dawned and can mean that death - or its first assault and partial possession of us, after which it will never leave hold of us again - may occur this very afternoon, so far from uncertain, this afternoon whose time-table, hour by hour, has been settled in advance.  One insists on one's daily outing so that in a month's time one will have had the necessary ration of fresh air; one has hesitated over which coat to take, which cabman to call; one must be back home early, as a friend is coming to see one; one hopes that it will be as fine again to-morrow; and one has no suspicion that death, which has been advancing within one on another plane, shrouded in an impenetrable darkness, has chosen precisely this particular day to make its appearance, in a few minutes' time, more or less at the moment when the carriage reaches the Champs-Elysees.  Perhaps those who are habitually haunted by the fear of the utter strangeness of death will find something reassuring in this kind of death - in this kind of first contact with death - because death thus assumes a known, familiar, everyday guise.  A good lunch has preceded it, and the same outing that people take who are in perfect health.  A drive home in an open carriage comes on top of its first onslaught; ill as my grandmother was, there were, after all, several people who could testify that at six c'clock, as we came home from the Champs-Elysees, they had bowed to her as she drove past in an open carriage, in perfect weather.  Legrandin, making his way towards the Place de la Concorde, raised his hat to us, stopping to look after us with an air of surprise.  I, who was not yet detached from life, asked my grandmother if she had acknowledged his greeting, reminding her of his touchiness.  My grandmother, thinking me no doubt very frivolous, raised her hand in the air as though to say: "What does it matter?  It's of no importance."

Marcel Proust, The Guermantes Way, pp. 324-325

Not surprisingly, Marcel becomes fixated on death enters the final stretch of her life.  As humans we've always personified death (and I'll avoid incorporating the section from Sherwood Anderson's brilliant story "Death," where George's dying grandmother personifies envisions death as a young lover, mainly because I'm sure I've included it before).  Certainly it's been a staple of mythology, but it has always played an active role in popular culture as well, whether it's Max von Sydow playing chess with death in The Seventh Seal or Woody Allen being led away by a dancing death in Love and Death or even Archer being educated by a "cut rate James Mason."  I suppose it isn't all that surprising because as scary as those anthropomorphic figures are they are probably still less terrifying than the blackness of the unknowable.  Proust writes, "We may, indeed, say that the hour of death is uncertain, but when we say this we think of that hour as situated in a vague and remote expanse of time; it does not occur to us that it can have any connexion with the day that has already dawned and can mean that death - or its first assault and partial possession of us, after which it will never leave hold of us again - may occur this very afternoon, so far from uncertain, this afternoon whose time-table, hour by hour, has been settled in advance."  Death, again personified, makes a "first assault" and will "never leave hold of us again."  At the same time Proust touches upon the unpredictability of death (and I can't help flashing back to the opening scene of American Beauty).  It's always, naturally, far off in the future.  My father always joked that middle age always began at your present age plus eleven years, and maybe in the end that's how we view death.  And maybe somehow the thought of a personified death is a more calming alternative than the randomness of death interrupting a perfectly lovely day.

Discography - Week 19

The summer draws to a close and the school year begins, which to a goodly number of us is our de facto New Year.  I've often thought that one of the reasons why the actual New Year's Eve has meant so little to me is that I've never been out of a school environment, so that end of the year elegiac reflection period always falls in late August.  There are some wonderful songs and compelling commentaries this week, and all I'm going to say is that I think Miranda is in the wrong line of work.  I think our unofficial theme this week is pain.

Gary Beatrice

James Brown, Sex Machine

Any serious music fan recognizes James Brown's brilliance and his influence. I can't imagine what soul or R&B would sound like without Brown, and his influence on rap and hip hop is obvious by the frequency in which his music is sampled. People my age who were young adults when Prince and Michael Jackson were dominating the air waves, surely recognized that JB not only influenced the two of them musically but visually as well.

James Brown is not underrated by any means. But I find it odd that people don't play his music today.

To my ears the best of his studio recordings aren't dated in the least and still sound phenomenal. Songs like Sex Machine would fit right into urban, classic rock, and even roots/NPR formats. I suspect that Brown is remembered as such a visual musician that his studio recordings are roundly ignored or forgotten, which is why I intentionally included a non-video You Tube clip of this song. You can't possibly listen to this without seriously elevating your mood. And you only need your ears although I suspect your entire body will react.

Dave Wallace

Van Morrison, St. Dominic's Preview

Has anyone ever had a better run than Van Morrison in the late 60s/early 70s?  Astral Weeks, Moondance, His Band and the Street Choir, Tupelo Honey, and St. Dominic's Preview.  Wow!  Just one great album after another.  I'm not sure that the title track for that last album is his best song from that run, but it's my favorite.  And I'm not sure that I can even say why.  The lyrics are vague, but there's something about the searching, questing nature of the song that has always spoken to me.  I find the thought of gazing out on St. Dominic's Preview to be incredibly soothing.  Plus the song wears its gospel influences proudly, and I'm always a sucker for that.  

Miranda Tavares

500 Miles to Memphis, Cows to the Slaughter

So, not for the first, and I'm sure not for the last, time on this blog, I had a post all written in my head and then real life had to go and intervene. Cincinnati has made the national news for its heroin problem. In a 48 hour period, we had 70 heroin overdoses. Most of them were able to be brought back via Narcan. For some, all hope is lost. Literally. I am a child of the '80's, who came of age in the '90's, and I am no stranger to the idea and effects of heroin. I lost many an idol to heroin. But most of my musical interests created songs influenced by heroin as users. Nirvana is a screaming example, but there have been so many on this blog who have posted songs representative of the struggle of addiction, and the initial hopelessness that drives a person to experiment with such a drug in the first place. And all of that is poignant, and heartbreaking...and also makes for some amazing music. But there is a whole group of people who is underrepresented in the heroin-influenced group of music: those left behind. 

I am fortunate to have never lost a loved one to heroin. I have lost acquaintances, and, although I feel terrible for them, the reality is that they are gone. I feel most for the family, the friends, the ones who are left wondering what happened, what went wrong, what they could have fixed. They are the ones who continue to feel the pain the heroins users escaped. I cannot imagine the guilt, the anger, and above all, the utter confusion and disbelief that must haunt them throughout even the happiest moments of their lives following such a tragedy. 

I had in mind that I would use this blog to learn about new musicians, and in turn introduce people to musicians that they would not have otherwise heard, and therefore I had a personal covenant that I would not post about a band that someone else has already posted about. Nate has already introduced everyone to 500 Miles to  Memphis, and they are a great band, and I hope everyone listens to literally every song available online. However, today, right now, this song deserves special mention. And I have no indication that this song that I have selected is about heroin. However, I saw them live tonight, following the recent events that have plagued the news, and I was moved to tears when they played this song.

" What did this world do, to you that made you, turn out the way you did? You and the others, like cows to the slaughter, lined up and marched away." 

Show me a parent, a spouse, a relative, a friend, of an overdose who hasn't felt this exact sentiment, and I will show you a person with no soul. 

"You were like a picture, of everything that life could be." 

Isn't this all of us? We are all born with such potential. Even if we don't realize it to its full extent, none of us here have thrown it all away. My heart aches for those who have, and aches even more for those left behind to make sense of the senselessness. 

Nate Bell

Well. I'm intimidated by my wife's post for this week, but I'm going to try anyway:

The Young Dubliners, Follow me up to Carlow.

It's unusual that a song primarily featuring a whistle and a violin can get my blood up the same way the Rage Against the Machine's "Bulls on Parade" can.

Follow me up to Carlow memorializes the Battle of Glemalure, where the poorly armed and outnumbered Irish soldiers handed a superior force of English soldiers their own asses.  The cause was eventually lost, as one can surmise, but the sentiment still has stirred the blood of Irish for centuries hence.

The setting for the battle was 1580 during the second Desmond Rebellion.  Names and dates aside, this conflict was between the conquering English Tudor dynasty and native Irish...which later broiled into the rebellions of the O'Neils of Ulster and continued at a slow boil for remaining centuries all the way into the late 1990s as "The Troubles".

The conflict is often simplified into Catholics vs. Protestants.  That is technically true, but what started in the late 1500s was much more sinister and dire for my ancestors.  Ireland had been invaded since the early 700s by vikings, later by Normans.  Earlier invaders were absorbed and enculturated.  Nothing prior was like the invasion by the Tudors.  Henry the VIII, and his daughter Elizabeth, HATED the native Irish and Scots.  It wasn't simply a matter of religion.  During the late 1500s, the Tudors instigated a concentrated campaign to wipe out the entire culture of the Irish and Scots.  They outlawed the language--yes Irish used to be a separate language--they outlawed the clothing typical of the Irish, they even went so far as to outlaw hairstyles typical of native Irish.  They forbid schooling of the Irish and outlawed their entire brand of Catholicism.  The aim was to crush the identity and lives of a people.

So, it's no surprise that a good fighting song can fire the blood of an exiled son, even on a different continent, and centuries later.  The whistle and fiddle set a lively air that belies the anger underneath a rising wrath against a true oppression with an explicit aim to exterminate an entire people and way of life

"See the swords of Glen Imayle, they're flashing o'er the English Pale
See all the children of the Gael, beneath O'Byrne's banners
Rooster of a fighting stock, would you let a Saxon cock
Crow out upon an Irish rock? Fly up and teach him manners!"

From Saggart to Clonmore, there flows a stream of Saxon gore
O, great is Rory Óg O'More, at sending the loons to Hades.
White is sick and Grey (The English commanders--note Nate's) is fled, now for black Fitzwilliam's head
We'll send it over dripping red, to Queen Liza and her ladies.

I can rarely listen to this song without the desire to raise my sword and fling myself at the encroaching forces, no matter how desperate the cause.  " Up with halberd out with sword
On we'll go for by the Lord
Fiach MacHugh has given the word,
Follow me up to Carlow'

One could do far worse for a battle hymn.  Kern tested and approved.

Mike Kelly

Sturgill Simpson, Time After All 

The academic set amongst us is back to work this week and everyone is a combination of excited and pissy.  We’re reminded of the colleagues who are a McSweeney’s caricature, the annoying shadow work that’s endemic to white-collar working life in 2016 America and the abrupt change in life’s pace.  We’re all complicit with the swinging pendulums of existence in ways that are so obvious that we barely see much less talk about them in ways that go beyond hallway small talk.    

Fortunately, this is where Sturgill comes in.  This song is Percocet for the soul.   He reminds us to “roll off the tempo, lay back…” because there’s not a lot we can do about a whole lot of stuff that happens in our small little corner of the cosmos.  

Here’s the catch though.  The song is not making an argument to resign ourselves to this fact and doesn’t ask us to completely give away our agency. 

“They say that life can decide in the blink of eye
if our silly little dreams will ever come true
But the dreams in my mind all go by so slow
What the hell else can I do”   

Consistent with the spirit and excitement that comes from another year and another round of changes, instead we’re asked to savor the agency and the dreams that we have and linger in quest to see them through.  All we’re asked to do is be a little more patient than we often allow ourselves to be.  

Happy New Year, everyone.  

Dave Kelly

So once again I am somewhat cheating and listing more than one song.  At least my three selections this week are linked together thematically.  Think of it as damaged women producing great art.

Amy Winehouse, Tears Dry On Their Own

I agree with Gary B. that Winehouse was on her way to becoming an iconic artist before she died at such a young age.  Of all of the great songs on "Back in Black", this is the one that has always been my favorite.  Her horrible self esteem results in lines like "I'll be some next man's other woman soon."

Written soon after her lover and future husband (and all around piece of shit) left her to return to his wife, the song is not exactly a positive look at relationships.  The opening lines will never grace a Hallmark card.

"All I can ever be to you

Is a darkness that we knew

and this regret I had to get accustomed to"

Later on she sings:

"I shouldn't play myself again

I should just be my own best friend

not fuck myself in the head with stupid men."

Backed by the awesomely tight Dap Kings and powered by Amy's tremendous voice, I find this song to be a modern classic. 

Amy Winehouse has always reminded me of another amazing but tragic singer from long ago.  Billie Holiday

"Strange Fruit"  Billie Holiday, Strange Fruit

Alcoholic, a heroin and cocaine addict, a working prostitute by the age of 12.  Holiday's life makes Winehouse's look like an episode of the Muppets.  Throw in the racism with which she had to struggle, and you have the making of a gothic horror novel.

There really isn't much to add to "Strange Fruit" besides listening to it.  Written in the thirties when lynching was still relatively common in the South and inspired by a photograph of two black men hanging from a tree, the song is just devastating.

"Southern trees bear a strange fruit

Blood on the leaves and blood at the root

Black bodies swinging in the Southern breeze

Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees."

My third choice is Bettye LaVette, Talking Old Soldiers

While not near the tragic figure of Holiday or Winehouse, LaVette has lived a hard life and for some reason never achieved the popularity of many of her R&B contemporaries.  Several years ago she did a record backed by of all people The Drive By Truckers.  The music gives no indication that they are playing behind her.  "Talking Old Soldiers" is a cover of an Elton John song from the early seventies.  Some of the lyrics are changed to account for the fact that it is a woman and not a man singing it.  The singer is basically sitting in a bar drinking and pouring her pain and regrets out to a younger man kind enough to talk to her.  "How the hell do they know what it is like to have a graveyard for a friend" is representational of the lyrics.  I find her vocal performance beyond amazing.  You almost feel like you are at the bar right next to her.

I promise to limit myself to one song next week.

Gary Scudder

Patty Griffin, Sweet Lorraine

I wish I could say that I'm a long-time fan of Patty Griffin, but, sadly, my knowledge of her only goes back as far as Dave Kelley and then Bob Craigmile sending around the fifty best alt-country albums link a few weeks ago.  I downloaded several of the albums that I didn't already own, but the one that I've been playing non-stop is Griffin's Living With Ghosts.  I think she's passed through Burlington a couple times the last few years and I'm now kicking myself for not seeing her.  I have no doubt that I'll be posting a couple of her songs before our year has run its course, but the one that I'm fixated on at the moment is Sweet Lorraine.

It's one of those songs where the artist introduces you to an entire world by focusing on one character.  Like most things, I guess, sometimes this works and sometimes it fails (I keep coming back to Young's Greendale album which is such a mess).  In this case I think it comes together brilliantly.

"Sweet Lorraine the fiery haired brown eyed schemer
Who came from a long line of drinkers and dreamers
Who knew that sunshine don't hold back the dark
Whose businesses fail, who sleep in the park."

And Lorraine is one of the characters who gets caught up in the shrapnel of a life like that, but who "spoke of paintings in Paris and outlandish things to her family just to scare us."

The passage that really gets me is this one:

"Her daddy called her a slut and a whore
On the night before her wedding day
Very next morning at the church
Her daddy gave Lorraine away . . ."

Not only is the opening line heartbreaking, but the way that she delivers it makes the hair stand up on the back of my neck.  She may be a little waif of a girl but she can wail.

For some reason I keep coming back to Miranda and Dave's great posts from above, and I think it's all related.  Somewhere along the way Jason Isbell's Relatively Easy becomes the Drive-By Truckers Puttin' People on the Moon.

"In the battle of time, in the battle of will
It's only hope and your heart that gets killed
And it gets harder and harder, Lorraine, to believe in magic
When what came before you is so very tragic."

My Year With Proust - Day 236

   "I heard the whole of the 'Marquise's' conversation with the keeper," she told me.  "Could anything have been more typical of the Guermantes, or the Verdurins and their little clan? 'Ah! in what courtly terms those things were put!;' And she added, with deliberate application, this from her own special Marquise, Mme de Sevigne: "As I listened to them I thought that they were preparing for me the delights of a farewell."

   Such were the remarks that she addressed to me, remarks into which she had put all her critical delicacy, her love of quotation, her memory of the classics, more thoroughly even than she would normally have done, and as though to prove that she retained possession of all these faculties.  But I guessed rather than heard what she said, so inaudible was the voice in which she mumbled her sentences, clenching her teeth more than could be accounted for the fear of vomiting.

   "Come!" I said lightly enough not to seem to be taking her illness too seriously, "since you're feeling a little sick I suggest we go home.  I don't want to trundle a grandmother with indigestion about the Champs-Elysees."

   "I didn't like to suggest it because of your friends," she replied.  "Poor pet!  But if you don't mind, I think it would be wiser."

   I was afraid of her noticing the strange way in which she uttered these words.

   "Come," I said to her brusquely, "you mustn't tire yourself talking when you're feeling sick - it's silly; wait till we get home."

   She smiled at me sorrowfully and gripped my hand.  She had realised that there was no need to hide from me what I had at once guessed, that she had had a slight stroke.

   We made our way back along the Avenue Gabriel through the strolling crowds.  I left my grandmother to rest on a bench and went in search of a cab.  She, in whose heart I always placed myself in order to form an opinion of the most insignificant person, she was now closed to me, had become part of the external world, and, more than from any casual passer-by, I was obliged to keep from her what I thought of her condition, to betray on sign of my anxiety.  I could not have spoken of it to her with any more confidence than to a stranger.  She had suddenly returned to me the thoughts, the griefs which, from my earliest childhood, I had entrusted to her for all time.  She was not yet dead.  But I was already alone."

Marcel Proust, The Guermantes Way, p. 323

This passage is pretty heartbreaking.  Marcel is out on a walk with his ailing grandmother and at a certain point he realizes that she's had a "slight" stroke.  The situation is made more poignant by the fact that she clearly understands as well, but is more concerned with his feelings than her own condition.  He finds himself trying to hide the fact from her, but in the larger sense he's already starting to isolate her.  "She, in whose heart I always placed myself in order to form an opinion of the most insignificant person, she was now closed to me, had become part of the external world . . ."  When a child is getting ready to leave for college you'll often see an escalation of petty argument, especially with her mother, as both sides subconsciously begin the process of severing the bonds.  I wonder if the same thing happens with the terminally ill?  On the one hand we cling to them more desperately, but on the other they unintentionally start to "become part of the external world."  Proust writes, "She was not yet dead.  But I was already alone."  I'm reflecting on whether or not this happened to me, but truthfully I don't know if I can answer the question.  Partially this is true because when the health of my grandparents began to fail I had already been living in Atlanta for years and thus didn't see them that much anymore, which prevented me from witnessing their decline, and the alteration of my feelings towards them, on a daily basis.  In a sense the same thing happened with my mother's passing; I was up in Vermont and she was living down in Savannah with my sister. However, I think it's more complicated than that.  Truthfully I was never as close to my parents as my siblings were.  Doubtless part of this related to me being a very headstrong and self-possessed (and I guess self-absorbed) oldest child, but part of it related to how they viewed me; in short, it was mutual.  I was utterly devoted to my grandparents.  It seems to me that the real reason why grandparents dote on their grandchildren is that they're not trying to turn them into anything in particular.  Grandparents know that they have a very finite amount of time and so they focus on the wonder of their grandchildren and not their legacy.

Summer 2016 Visitors

It's been a funny summer, and one that has madly rushed by.  One of the reasons why is that it has been a very hectic summer, although pleasantly so.  Even though I live in a vacation destination state I've had precious few visitors over the years, which I attribute to my lacks of attractive personal attributes.  Happily, that changed late this summer as a few of my oldest friends drove up here for a visit within a week of each other.  I'll get to Bill and Kathy soon, but in the meantime I'll post a few pictures of my dear friends Debi and Ben.  Debi and I taught together back at Georgia Perimeter (nee DeKalb) College when the world was young and have remained in close contact even though I left GPC sixteen years ago and Debi is now a Dean in Washington, DC.  She claims that she lost me to her great (and long-suffering) husband Ben, and that I put up with her mainly so that Ben and I can talk baseball.  Sadly, the Lake Monsters were out of town while they were here - and even the Montreal Alouettes were on the road.  Still, because Ben had never visited Canada we crossed the border for a few hours.  I am blessed to have such amazing friends.

The Queen is pensive as she tries her first smoked meat sandwich at Chez Pepe.

Ben, on the other hand, loved his smoked meat sandwich and poutine.

And what trip north of the border would be complete without a visit to Tim Horton's?

Debi, who has a profound sweet teeth, discovered true happiness with the Tim Bits.

And back in VT we had to go to the Four Corners deli, the best restaurant in the state.

My Year With Proust - Day 235

"Neurosis has an absolute genius for malingering.  There is no illness which it cannot counterfeit perfectly.  It will produce lifelike imitations of the dilatations of dyspepsia, the nausea of pregnancy, the arythmia of the cardiac, the feverishness of the consumptive.  If it is capable of deceiving the doctor, how should it fail to deceive the patient?  Ah, do not think that I am mocking your sufferings.  I should not undertake to cure them unless I understood them thoroughly.  And, may I say, there i no good confession that is not reciprocal.  I have told you that without nervous disorder there can be no great artist.  What is more," he added, raising a solemn forefinger, "there can be no great scientist either.  I will go further, and say that, unless he himself is subject to nervous trouble, he is not, I won't say a good doctor, but I do say the right doctor to treat nervous troubles.  In the pathology of nervous diseases, a doctor who doesn't talk too much nonsense is a half-cured patient, just as a critic is a poet who has stopped writing verse and a policeman a burglar who has retired from practice.  I, Madame, I do not, like you, fancy myself to be suffering from albuminuria, I have not your neurotic fear of good, or of fresh air, but I can never to to sleep without getting out of bed at least twenty times to see if my door is shut.  And yesterday I went to that nursing-home, where I came across the poet who wouldn't move his neck, for the purpose of booking a room, for, between ourselves, I spend my holidays there looking after myself when I have aggravated my own troubles by wearing myself out in the attempt to cure those of others."

   "But, Doctor, ought I to take a similar cure?" asked my grandmother, aghast.

   "It is not necessary, Madame.  The symptoms you betray here will vanish at my bidding.  Besides, you have a very efficient person whom I appoint as your doctor from now onwards.  That is your malady itself, your nervous hyperactivity.  Even if I knew how to cure you of it, I should take good care not to.  All I need do is to control it.  I see on your table there one of Bergette's books.  Cured of your nervous diathesis, you would not longer care for it.  Now, how could I take it upon myself to substitute for the joys that it procures you a nervous stability which would be quite incapable of giving you those joys?  But those joys themselves are a powerful remedy, the more powerful of all perhaps."

Marcel Proust, The Guermantes Way, pp. 316-317

Dr. du Boulbon continues his treatment of Marcel's grandmother, and somewhere along the way a Marx Brothers routine breaks out.  Normally if the doctor tells you that he isn't going to cure you because your condition will keep tabs on you - and also discusses the fact that he'll be checking himself into the institution soon - you should probably begin to back toward the door and not break eye contact.  Sadly, as I read this all I could think of is the increasing proliferation of accommodation forms that we are inundated with at school.  I'm not appalled by the students having them - or their parents sincerely trying to do what they think is best for their kids - but the system which generally fails them so dramatically.  They are bedeviled by irresponsible doctors hoping to get more perks from rapacious pharmaceutical companies by over-prescribing the latest soma and generally under-qualified support systems that produce increasingly vague accommodation forms that give the students many seemingly legitimate reasons to not try or take responsibility for their own actions.  In this case the doctors don't want to "cure" the problem, not because, as in Proust's case, de Boulbon believed that it would monitor the patient, but because it's just too profitable.

My Year With Proust - Day 234

   "Why, naturally, Madame, one cannot have - if you'll forgive the expression - every form of mental derangement.  You have others, but not that particular one.  Yesterday I visited a home for neurasthenics.  In the garden, I saw a man standing on a bench, motionless as a fakir, his neck bent in a position which must have been highly uncomfortable.  On my asking him what he was doing there, he replied without turning his head or moving a muscle: 'You see, Doctor, I am extremely rheumatic and catch cold very easily.  I have just been taking a lot of exercise, and while I was foolishly getting too hot, my neck was touch my flannels.  If I move it away from my flannels now before letting myself cool down, I'm sure to get a stiff neck and possibility bronchitis.' Which he would, in fact, have done. 'You're a real neurotic, that's what you are,' I told him.  And do you know what argument he advanced to prove that I was mistaken?  It was this: that while all the other patients in the establishment had a man for testing their weight, so much so that the weighing machine had to be padlocked so that they shouldn't spend the whole day on it, he had to be lifted on to it bodily, so little did he care to be weighed.  He prided himself on not sharing the mania of the others, oblivious of the fact that he had one of his own, and that it was this that saved him from another.  You must not be offended by the comparison, Madame, for that man who dared no turn his neck for fear of catching a chill is the greatest poet of our day.  That poor lunatic is the most lofty intellect that I know.  Submit to being called a neurotic.  You belong to that splendid and pitiable family which is the salt of the earth.  Everything we think of as great has come to us from neurotics.  It is they and they alone who found religions and create great works of art.  The world will never realise how much it owes them, and what they have suffered in order to bestow their gifts on it.  We enjoy fine music, beautiful pictures, a thousand exquisite things, but we do not know what they cost those who wrought them in insomnia, tears, spasmodic laughter, urticaria, asthma, a terror of death which is worse than any of these, and which perhaps have experienced, Madame," he added with a smile at my grandmother, "for confess now, when I came, you were not feeling very confident.  You thought you were ill, dangerously ill, perhaps.  Heaven only knows what disease you thought you had detected the symptoms of in yourself.  And you were not mistaken,; they were there.  Neurosis has an absolute genius for malingering.  There is no illness which it cannot counterfeit perfectly. . . "

Marcel Proust, The Guermantes Way, pp. 315-316

Proust's grandmother's health begins to fail, so they send for Dr. du Boulbon, a noted doctor.  This is part of his lengthy (this is Remembrance of Things Past after all) comments to her.  We'll have more tomorrow.  I have to admit that I was amused by his comment, "confess now, when I came, you were not feeling very confident."  I don't know how that discussion would have inspired much confidence (especially after we complete the dialogue tomorrow) although it is a pep talk in a way.

Once again we are reminded that artists are just wired, constructed, made differently than the average person.  So if Marcel's mother is "different," is in fact a neurotic (a pretty malleable term that, like the disease, mutates to fill a need), then she should take pride in it.  "Submit to being called a neurotic.  You belong to that splendid and pitiable family which is the salt of the earth.  Everything we think of as great has come to us from neurotics.  It is they and they alone who found religions and create great works of art."  It is interesting here that the doctor includes the founders of religion in this category, which, following this logic, makes sense, but which wouldn't make most true believers very happy.  For a long time in the non-Islamic world it was fairly common for people to promote the idea that Muhammad was an epileptic, and this explained his visions, but it would have been inconceivable to say the same thing about the Jewish or Christian prophets.  Essentially, we played fast and loose with the facts to justify a belief system and to denigrate another.  However, as the doctor reminds her, there is a price to be paid:  "The world will never realise how much it owes them, and what they have suffered in order to bestow their gifts on it.  We enjoy fine music, beautiful pictures, a thousand exquisite things, but we do not know what they cost those who wrought them in insomnia, tears, spasmodic laughter, urticaria, asthma, epilepsy, a terror of death which is worse than any of these . . ."  

My Year With Proust - Day 233

   "At present," M. de Charlus went on, "by going into society you will only damage your position, warp your intellect and character.  Moreover, you must be particularly careful in choosing your friends. Keep mistresses if your family have no objection - that doesn't concern me, and indeed I can only encourage it, you young rascal - a young rascal who will soon have to start shaving," he added, touching my chin.  "But your choice of men friends is more important.  Either out of ten young men are little bounders, little wretches capable of doing you an injury which you will never be able to repair.  My nephew Saint-Loup, now, he might be a suitable companion for you at a pinch.  As far as your future is concerned, he can be of no possible use to you, but for that I will suffice.  And really, when all's said and done, as a person to go about with, at times when you have had enough of me, he does not seem to present any serious drawback that I know of.  At least he's a man, not one of those effeminate creatures one sees so many of nowadays, who look like little renters and at any moment may bring their innocent victims to the gallows." (I did not know the meaning of his slang word "renter"; anyone who had known it would have been greatly surprised by his use of it as myself.  Society people always like talking slang, and people who may be suspected of certain things like to show that they are not afraid to mention them.  A proof of innocence in their eyes.  But they have lost their sense of proportion, they are no longer capable of realising the point beyond which a certain pleasantry will become too technical, too flagrant, will be a proof rather of corruption than of ingenuousness.) "He's not like the rest of them: he's very nice, very serious. . . .

   . . . Well, think over my proposal," said M. de Charlus, preparing to leave me.  "I will give you a few days to consider it.  Write to me, I repeat, I shall need to see you every day, and to receive from you guarantees of loyalty of discretion which, I must admit, you do seem to offer.  But in the course of my life I have been so often deceived by appearances that I never wish to trust them again.  Damn it, it's the least I can expect that before you up a treasure I should know into what hands it is going to pass.  Anyway, bear in mind what I'm offering you.  You are like Hercules (though, unfortunately for yourself, you do not appear to me to have quite his muscular development) at the parting of the ways.  Remember that you may regret for the rest of your life not having chosen the way that leads to virtue. . . ."

Marcel Proust, The Guermantes Way, pp. 305-306

M. de Charlus shares a few last words of advise to Proust before taking his leave.  When talking about Robert Saint-Loup, M. de Charlus says, "At least he's a man, not one of those effeminate creatures one sees so many of nowadays, who look like little renters and at any moment may bring their innocent victims to the gallows."  Proust reflects that at the time he didn't know the meaning of the word "renter" (which can only be the same as the English slang "rent boy," that is, a male prostitute) and was surprised to hear M. de Charlus use a slang word.  At this point Proust reminds us that "Society people always like talking slang," but then adds, "and people who may be suspected of certain things like to show that they are not afraid to mention them."  This, obviously, is a key addition.  Even if the young Proust had never heard the term "renter", it would be difficult to imagine that he would be surprised that M. de Charlus knew what one was; and Proust is, I think relatively gently, hinting at his understanding of M. de Charlus.  I'm reminded of the Salvatore Romano character (played by Bryan Batt) from Mad Men who everyone, or at least Don Draper, knew was gay, but as long as he maintained the charade of keeping a wife and throwing out an abundance of "macho" comments on cue then he could exist in an early version of a don't ask/don't tell nether world.  The dismissive comments about "effeminate creatures" from M. de Charlus seem to be part of this game, either as conscious effort to play his part or a pretty textbook example of cognitive dissonance.  Finally, his comment about how these effeminate creatures who "at any moment may bring their innocent victims to the gallows" is interesting.  As late as the mid-18th century homosexuals were occasionally burned alive by way of punishment, but the sodomy laws were eliminated during the early heady stages of the French Revolution.  In this case M. de Charlus is talking metaphorically, in that your career in society would be ruined if everyone found out officially, although everyone already was aware unofficially.  Going back to the Salvatore Romano character, he is fired when a couple people find out about his homosexuality.  He doesn't complain because he understands the rules of the two worlds he's trying to balance.

Discography - Week 18

After another successful thematic effort (with well over a hundred page views) we're back to our more "traditional" anarchic approach this week.

Dave Mills

Library Voices, Oh Donna

Honestly, I chose this song because of the opening lines:

all of your heroes
they're all assholes
but that don't mean
you should piss on your dreams

Something about those lines rang true, and induced me to listen to the rest of the song, and indeed, the rest of the album. I had a bit of difficulty picking up some of the rest of the lyrics in the song, and it's new enough that there are no lyrics posted anywhere I could find. There's a line about the funeral of youth in there somewhere, and then some stuff about Donna, whoever that is. But, it's got a good indie rock meets classic rock sensibility, so it's worth a listen. And just those little lyrical scraps are good sentiments. In my youth, I did kind of think that I would always have people "ahead of me" in life, people to look up to, to follow in the footsteps of, etc. But, yeh, turns out they're mostly assholes (like me). So perhaps that is the funeral of youth, the realization that life isn't really an idealized hero's journey, and that it's rare to find people truly worthy of emulation in the idealized sense we picture when we're young. But perhaps growing up is, in part, a process of learning how not to piss on our dreams when we encounter the flaws in those we've admired. And perhaps it also involves reconciling ourselves to our own assholish ways, even while occasionally trying to curb such tendencies or even trying to be more like other people who aren't assholes in exactly the same ways we are.

Incidentally, in case you're curious, the band hails from Regina, Saskatchewan, an area not really known for producing world-class bands. The only other Saskatchewan-based band I know of is the Sheepdogs, from Saskatoon. If you're into the 70's guitar rock sound, as produced by a current band, check 'em out for a Saskatchewan twofer this week.

Cyndi Brandenburg

The National and St. Vincent, Sleep All Summer

As summer draws to a close for the academics among us, this song is well worth listening to:

Curtains fall, fashions fade, an endless summer over

Another tide to launch an autumn moon over the dunes

There must be a better way to pull a whole apart

To keep a world from caving in

The first time I heard it was summer 2014, performed live in concert by Neko Case and Eric Bachmann.   The song was originally written and performed by Eric Bachmann and his band Crooked Fingers,   but I like this cover version better.  (I so enjoyed the concert version with Neko and Eric, but I can’t seem find a recording of that anywhere.)

Anyhow, it’s sad and beautiful, and it’s one of those songs that kind of makes me want to smile and cry at the same time.  I like it so much partly because I can’t quite figure out for sure what the lyrics mean, even though I am certain that they work as a great summer season finale. Ambiguity and uncertainty suit me. On the one hand, it sounds like a cautionary tale about what happens when we take too much for granted, and then pretend that we are okay when we are anything but--when we waste too much time comfortably expecting things to just fix themselves, while at the same time feeling haunted by the promise of something better and new.  Unfulfilled dreams are hard to let go of, and ruts are easy to get stuck in. But then again, unfulfilled dreams propel us forward.  If “every time we turn away it surges like a tidal wave,” then maybe it’s worth it to keep on trying.  There is always room for hope, and the inexplicable things that urge us to keep at it are probably worth paying closer attention to. 

Of course, I’m probably reading way too much into it.  And apparently, Neko herself tweeted, “Saddest ballads? "Sleep all Summer" by Crooked Fingers. I tell Eric he's an A-hole for writing that one whenever I see him.”  So there you have it.

Dave Wallace

Richard and Linda Thompson, Wall of Death

Richard Thompson may be the most underrated rock artist ever.  A fantastic songwriter, a very good singer, and a world-class guitar player, he's made innumerable great songs and albums.  One of my favorite concert memories is Gary Beatrice, my Dad, and me seeing him with a crack band back in the 80s. This song by Thompson and his ex-wife is one of his best, in which he brilliantly uses a carnival ride as a metaphor for living life to its fullest.  

Gary Beatrice

Muddy Waters, Mannish Boy


Like a whole slew of Caucasian men in their mid-fifties I found and fell in love with the great Chicago blues men and their music through the Rolling Stones. I was, and remain, a huge fan of the Stones in their prime, and I even enjoy some of their post Some Girls music. I specifically remember being mesmerized by side three of their fine "Love You Live" album, in which they did solid covers of three blues and a Chuck Berry classic live in a small bar.  It was my first exposure to Mannish Boy and I was blown away. Blown away enough to trace it back. And, damn, was that worthwhile.

Mannish Boy has shown up in enough generic settings that there are probably generations of folks that don't recognize the incredible power behind the Muddy Waters version. That is a shame. Seventy years after its recording it remains the most outrageous sexually braggadocio recording I've ever heard. There probably weren't a ton of white Americans exposed to Muddy or Howling Wolf when their best tunes were recorded, but those who heard them sure as hell understood that these men were no b-o-y-s, and that had to be terrifying.

And yes, as Gary Scudder knows well, Margie and I were able to get our oldest child to eat his strained vegetables by convincing him that Muddy Waters ate his carrots.

Dave Kelley

      I have started to adopt a Scudderian approach to the weekly posts and am making my weekly selections based upon what is hitting me at the moment.   For myself, I am finding that approach more interesting than pulling out certain classics like "Gimme Shelter" or "What's Going On" and giving my take on why I love them.  (Both of which may well show up later this year because I mean, fuck, they are great songs.)  For myself, I believe that the blog has turned into an ongoing conversation of sorts between people who love music and give it an important place in their life.  I think this development is wonderful and has turned our group from a number of individuals, many of whom will never meet one another, into a real online community of sorts.  Checking out the posts every Saturday morning while sipping coffee and cuddling on the sofa with my dogs, has made it my favorite time of the week.

So now I am thinking about rivers, and time, and seeing great live music with friends.  Going down to the river, sailing away on a river, being baptized or washed clean in a river are all familiar images in song and other art forms.  One of my favorite lines in the Bible is "The sea refuses no river."  Pete Townshend used that for the title of a song on one of his solo records.   A flowing river as a metaphor for the passage of time is also so effective that artists continue to use it.  Catching a great live show with a friend or friends just takes music to a higher level.  God knows how many great shows I have seen with Gary B. and Dave W over the last thirty plus years.  More recently, Nate and Miranda have been at my side for some memorable performances.  Jack and G were with me for an historically awesome Alejandro Escovedo show at The Southgate House.

So I will finally get down to my selections for this week.  I am choosing two songs that go together in multiple ways and tie in with the first two paragraphs.

Darrell Scott, Down To The River

"Down To The River" is a song by Darrell Scott off of his new album.  To me it is about the joy of music and community, the ridiculousness of trying to pigeonhole music and musicians into one rigid genre or another, and the fact that much of the stuff on commercial radio "ain't got no soul."

"Let's all go down to the river at midnight 

We'll swim muddy waters and pick us a tune

And we won't give a damn if it's rock, folk, country or blues."

Scott crosses many genres and clearly has never given a damn about attempts to define him.  In the song, he is arrested at the river, apparently for the crime of resisting categorization and being faithful to his muse.

"They read me my rights and sensed my conviction

and said you shall be released when we know what you are

The kangaroo court was now in session, Exhibit A was a blaring radio

They said son is it clear what is to be expected?

I said sir, you music ain't got no soul."

And in my favorite most joyous verse:

"Now Woody fed Ramblin' some old hobo chili

And Ramblin' fed Dylan under a banana tree

And Guy and Townes made a stew down in Texas

And brought the whole hog to Tennessee"

Scott was a longtime friend and frequent collaborator with Guy Clark who has previously had his praises song by GB on this blog.  Guy died earlier this year after a long illness.  At the end of "Down to The River", there is a spoken story by Guy Clark.  Miranda and I recently saw Darrell Scott at a tiny venue in Cincinnati, and the show was freaking awesome.  At the end of "Down to The River", Scott quietly strummed his guitar while Guy Clark's story played over the sound system.  He had visited Guy during his illness, and this was his way to include his great friend on his new album.  As the spoken story ended, Scott immediately began his version of a Guy Clark classic "Desperadoes Waiting on a Train."  That is my second selection of the week.

Guy Clark, Desperadoes Waiting on a Train

"Desperadoes Waiting For a Train" is a song written by Guy Clark when he was a relatively young man about his grandmother's boyfriend who basically served as his grandfather from the time he was a child.  I find it beautiful and haunting.  Guy apparently continued to go and visit this man as he got old, got sick, and eventually died.  I hope you enjoy the attached live version of the song.  Even out of context it is amazing.  What really gets me though is how the Guy Clark monologue at the end of "Down to The River" and the way Scott performed "Desperadoes Waiting For a Train" immediately afterward showed the passage of time.  When he wrote the song, Guy Clark was the young man visiting an old sick man who had been important to his life.  After taking a long ride down that river of time, he is now the old sick man being visited by someone he had mentored.  Both great songs, but now cemented together in my brain because of a live performance.  I am glad that Miranda was there to share that with me.  I only wish the rest of you had been as well.

By the way, Miranda purchased a download of the Darrell Scott show and was kind enough to burn it for me.  I would be happy to do that for anyone interested.

Now off to do interpretive dance to the live version of "Wildfire."

Gary Scudder

Erma Franklin, Piece of My Heart

I think this week's post will take two interrelated directions.  The first is, once again, confirmation of my profound musical illiteracy.  Seemingly all of my friends have a vast, if not encyclopedic, knowledge of music, so I'm used to being the dunce in the room.  Nevertheless, sometimes I'm stunned by how little I know.  I was watching a documentary on Netflix the other night on Janis Joplin (it's OK, don't rush out/in to watch it; it's that lazy surface level documentary that is so prevalent today, featuring a retelling of events with no attempt to delve deeper) and it got me thinking about my favorite Joplin song, Pierce of My Heart.   I guess I assumed that it was probably a cover of a Motown song, but it had never occurred to me to check it out.  And this is where you can begin the collective mocking at my ignorance.  I didn't know that it was a cover of the Erma Franklin version from only a year earlier, but also that Erma Franklin was the older sister of Aretha Franklin.  I know, I know, and yet they continue to allow me to teach the youth of America.  I've decided I may actually like the Franklin version better.

Secondly, I asked myself why I didn't know that the Joplin song was a cover of another song.  Partially, I guess, I have a conflicted appreciation of Janis Joplin, who I do like.  I think I have a natural/unnatural prejudice against artists who don't write their own songs (although I will relax that rule if you have an extraordinary VOICE, in which case I don't care whether or not Sinatra or Winehouse wrote anything).  Somewhere in the back of my mind I had some idea that maybe she was just another white singer who popularized the songs of underpaid and under-appreciated African-American singers, which seems to be true in this specific instance but may not be true in the larger sense.  Like I said, I've found that I just haven't thought that much about it, which brings me to my second point.  I was tinkering with my iPod the other day and "discovered" that beyond dozens of Neil Young albums I have exactly one "classic rock" album, the live Allman Brothers at the Fillmore East.  I have a goodly number of REM, the Cure, the Smiths, Lucinda Williams, Uncle Tupelo, the Drive-By Truckers, Kathleen Edwards, Gillian Welch, Ryan Adams etc.  I'm sure I was never on the cutting edge with any of them (as with my revelation a few years ago that Uncle Tupelo is the greatest band I never knew about until after they had broken up); rather, I probably discovered them several years down the road after I received a memo (or a burned copy) from Dave Kelley or Gary Beatrice or Dave Wallace or Mike Kelly.  But why no classic rock?  Back in the late 80s I was back at Franklin College, where I went as an undergraduate, teaching as an adjunct and finishing my dissertation.  A couple of my students hosted a popular show on the college radio station and they invited me in every week (and apparently the college forgot that I had been kicked off the same station during my undergraduate career for crimes against polite society).  We would just gab and they allowed me to play one Neil Young song every time.  One time an unknown band (I wish I could remember who they were) was passing through the area and somehow they ended up on the show, which led to a music discussion and who we liked.  I remember them saying that they really loved Led Zeppelin and the Who and the Stones, but that they wished they would move aside and let others have a chance.  I don't think that they were opposed to artists who were still actively producing meaningful albums, but instead were frustrated by the tyranny of classic rock stations.  I don't know why I even remember that event, but I've often wondered if it somehow colored my perception of classic rock and might explain why I so seldom listen to it.

My Year With Proust - Day 232

   "Let us return to yourself," he said, "and my plans for you.  There exists among certain men a freemasonry of which I cannot now say more than that it numbers in its ranks four of the reigning sovereigns of Europe.  Now, the entourage of one of these, who is the Emperor of Germany, is trying to cure him of his fancy.  That is a very serious matter, and may lead us to war.  Yes, my dear sir, that is a fact.  You remember the story of the man who believed that he had the Princess of China shut up in a bottle.  It was a form of insanity.  He was cured of it.  But as soon as he ceased to be mad he became merely stupid.  There are maladies which we must not seek to cure because they alone protect us from others that are more serious.  A cousin of mine had a stomach ailment: he could digest nothing.  The most learned stomach specialists treated him, to no avail.  I took him to a certain doctor (another highly interesting man, by the way, of whom I could tell you a great deal).  He guessed at once that the malady was nervous, persuaded his patient of this, advised him to eat whatever he liked unhesitatingly, and assured him that his digestion would stand it.  But my cousin also had nephritis.  What the stomach digested perfectly well the kidneys ceased after a time to be able to eliminate, and my cousin, instead of living to a find old age with an imaginary disease of the stomach which obliged him to keep to a diet, diet at forty with his stomach cured but his kidneys ruined.  Given a very considerable lead over your contemporaries, who knows whether you may not perhaps become what some eminent man of the past might have been in a beneficent spirit had revealed to him, among a generation that knew nothing of them, the secrets of steam and electricity.  Do not be foolish, do not refuse for reasons of tact and discretion.  Try to understand that, if I do you a great service, I do not expect my reward from you to be any less great.  It is many years now since people in society ceased to interest me.  I have but one passion left, to seek to redeem the mistakes of my life by conferring the benefit of my knowledge on a soul that is still virgin and capable of being fired by virtue.  I have had great sorrows, of which I may tell you perhaps some day; I have lost my wife, who was the loveliest, the noblest, and most perfect creature that one could dream of.  I have young relatives who are not - I do not say worthy, but capable of accepting the intellectual heritage of which I have been speaking.  Who knows but that you may be the person into whose hands it is to pass, the person whose life I shall be able to guide and to raise to so lofty a plane.  My own would gain in return.  Perhaps in teaching you the great secrets of diplomacy I might recover a taste for them myself, and begin at last to do things of real interest in which you would have an equal share.  But before I can discount this I must see you often, very often, every day."

Marcel Proust, The Guermantes Way, pp. 300-301

The conversation continues between M. de Charlus and Proust.  At this point I had trouble figuring out whether M. de Charlus was actually just insane or merely one of his century's great chickenhawks - or both.  Yesterday's M. de Charlus rant about the Jews could, I suppose, be attributed to that age's rampant anti-Semitism, and not just general lunacy on his part.  However, following up today with his theories on his nephew's stomach ailment, the freemasonry of European leaders, and the bottle that contained the Princess of China, he may be winning me over.  The other day in one of my predictably anti-Trump rants on Twitter I proposed that one of the reasons why he says such stupid things is that people who have grown up with that much privilege simply don't understand the relationship between cause and effect.  You saw this with George W. Bush and I fear it would be much worse with Trump (although, thankfully, the death spiral of his campaign has begun and now we're just waiting around to see how magnificent his failure is in the general election).  There's always someone to bail you out, so there is not way to learn the connection between a bad decision and its implications.  Here's the thing, I wonder if there is actually a biological side to this as well, that is, nature as well as nurture.  We know from the Accident Mind that environment can impact the chemistry of the brain, essentially the wiring.  So, if you grew up in such a implication-free environment your brain wiring would end up being different, so not only would you not fall back on experience to decide the problem but your brain would less effectively process the possibility of a terrible consequence.

Now, in regards to him being a world class chickenhawk.  I might just be reading too much into his statements, "I have but one passion left, to seek to redeem the mistakes of my life by conferring the benefit of my knowledge on a soul that is still virgin and capable of being fired by virtue." and "Try to understand that, if I do you a great service, I do not expect my reward from you to be any less great." and "But before I can discount this I must see you often, very often, every day." Of course, to be fair, he shares, "I have had great sorrows, of which I may tell you perhaps some day; I have lost my wife, who was the loveliest, the noblest, and most perfect creature that one could dream of." Somehow I don't think he would have said the same thing about her when she was alive.  As the Joe Pantoliano character Lenny tells Leonard (Guy Pearce) in Memento, "You're living a dream, kid.  A dread wife to pine for . . ."  Or maybe I'm just overly cynical in my old age.

Now, having said all that, I think the Proustian observation that, "But as soon as he ceased to be mad he became merely stupid" is going to find a place on my Champlain College business cards.