I Punctuate Myself

 I am, in large measure, the selfsame prose I write. I unroll myself in sentences and paragraphs. I punctuate myself. In my arranging and rearranging of images I'm like a child using newspaper to dress up as a king, and in the way I create rhythm with a sense of words I'm like a lunatic adorning my hair with dried flowers that are still alive in my dreams.

Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet, ch. 193

I think this passage jumped out at me because I've begun to write again. Now that I've made it to the other side of two student trips and Ramadan and the semester is coming to a close I can envision longer stretches of time when I can lose myself in writing. I've made myself a promise that I'm going to finish the epics book this summer, inshallah. Of course, I've made myself this promise before and failed (as I do in most things). Just thinking about it brings up all the insecurities that have plagued my writing for years. If I had half the confidence I seem to exude on a daily basis I would have finished four books by now. Instead, I faff around and never seem to  accomplish much of anything. I blame being busy (and it's not as if I'm not busy), but mainly I think it's a lack of confidence; and finishing the book, and its inevitable rejection, would simply justify and re-enforce all my profound self-loathing. To a certain degree I suppose Pessoa may have faced the same demons, with the obvious difference that he produced thousands and thousands of pages, both prose and poetry, the core of which was eventually turned into The Book of Disquiet a few decades after this death. The key to that statement being "a few decades after his death," of course. A few decades - if not years - after my death my memory and legacy will be as cold as two day old ashes in the wood stove.

Oddly, after saying that, one of the things I'm struggling with right now is another writing project. I've been kicking around this project that I've been calling "Ramadan in Winter," which I've discussed previously, and lately it's starting to come into view. I think in the end it's going to be more of a personal memoir of faith and converting at an older death and ruminations on aging - as compared to my original idea of a book solely on what Islam means as you age. I've started writing a few notes, but I need to keep at at arm's length until next fall.

Fridays

 The weather here in the #yankeehellhole is finally starting to break, which means the front porch has come back to life. I snapped this picture last Friday as we eased into the weekend.

I'm very happy and very blessed. Life is incredibly unpredictable.

Sheikh

 On the last two trips to Jordan, November 2022 and March 2023, we were fortunate to meet with a tribal sheikh in Petra. He hosted us in his house and fed us some delicious mansef (the national dish of Jordan). He's a wise, humble, and very gracious man, who sat and patiently answered questions from students on both trips. 

I look at death's door here, but I still love this picture. At the end of the session he said he wanted our picture together and proposed that I sleep over at his house on my next visit. That would be an extraordinary honor.

Post Ramadan Mischief

 Which my great friend Erik says would be a great name for a band. Yes, I've survived another Ramadan, and my dear friends Kevin and Marcelle took me out to El Gato for dinner to mark the occasion. As always I fasted, although I was a little more gentle on myself than in previous years (see previous blog post on general health); sometimes I started my fast a little later or ended it a little earlier; and I didn't fast on Easter Sunday - we were heading down to visit Janet's family and I thought passing on dinner at her mom's place would have been more performative than spiritual. 

And as my son noted, "Don't you and Marcelle have the same hair?"

It's hard to put into words what extraordinary friend Marcelle and Kevin have been to me over the years. I'm very blessed.

Some Ancient Djinn

 One of my students snapped this picture on the recent trip to Jordan. It was a bittersweet trip because it's the last student trip that I'll ever lead overseas. There are several reasons for this decision: I want to spend more time with Janet; the college simply makes it so hard to run the trips; and I simply can't do it anymore with my declining health. On this last trip I had to ride through the Istanbul airport on the return leg in a wheelchair, an event that I found even more humiliating than it probably was.

It was strange, although I suppose appropriate, that I spent so much time sitting there alone. It's one of my all-time favorite places on earth, perched above Suleyman's Rainbow Camp in the Wadi Rum. I'm sure I'll be back there again someday, inshallah in November, but one never knows. If that was it, well, the Wadi Rum owes me nothing else.

Huge News

 I guess it wasn't a total surprise - or even much of a surprise - but my son recently asked his girlfriend Ali to marry him. Naturally, I couldn't be happier or prouder. I shared the news with a friend of mine recently and she said, "Oh, is that the singer whose info you're always sharing on Facebook?" Yep, that's her. He seems happier and more contented than I've ever seen him, and that's all I could ever ask for.

I don't know if he's going to carry out his long-time threat to never have children or not. If he doesn't it's probably for the best because their children would simply be too beautiful. Of course, my experience has been that he'll be the last to know on that front. One day he'll come home and there will be a note on the counter, "Hey, G, you should probably drive to the hospital, I'm in labor."

GB Discography - Mid-Winter 2023

Someday, inshallah, we will return to a more regular rotation of the Gary Beatrice Discography (it will give Alice something to focus other than her beautiful wife and insane, snow-loving dog), but in the meantime we occasionally pop in for a One Off Discography. As you know, with these there is always a theme, and the theme for this one is, per the directives of the above-referenced Alice, is anti-depressant songs; that is, songs that always make you happy, whether you queue them up because you have the blues or they pop un unbidden and immediately put you in a better mood. I was initially going to suggest songs that you can't help singing along to, which somehow merged as we discussed it. 

Sheila Liming

Tacocat, “Meet Me at La Palma” (2019)

Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQpmT220M-0

Topping the category of “antidepressant” songs that require one to sing along, for me, is “Meet Me at La Palma,” by the Seattle-based pop-punk band Tacocat. It comes from their 2019 album This Mess is a Place, the entirety of which fuses Go-Go’s-style pop shenanigans with some of the earthier punk vibes (and guitar feedback) that characterized the band’s earlier albums. But what I especially love about this song are the island vibes, which are a credit to the subject matter. The song is about a beloved Seattle institution: La Palma. It’s a shitty Mexican restaurant that commands, as the song’s lyrics put it, a “breathtaking view of the freeway.” It’s also a great place to day-drink, forget your troubles, and drown your winter blues in “seven-dollar margaritas / that are bigger than your head,” all amidst a hodgepodge of confusingly antidepressant imagery: palm tree murals, mariachi figurines, golden lizards climbing the walls, fake floral arrangements, wagon wheel chandeliers, and framed photos of Mount Rainier. On “Meet Me at La Palma,” Tacocat opts for overt nods to some of their feminist-inspired influences, including Blondie; the song’s island-kitch aesthetic will remind listeners of “The Tide is High.” But for me, the song mostly serves as a reminder of what Seattle, the city of my birth, was like back before it got all Amazon-ed to hell. Much like its namesake restaurant, “Meet Me at La Palma” is a monument to lassitude, indulgence, and questionable taste—just the combination one requires to endure a gray winter’s day in Seattle (or Vermont, for that matter). And if the song strikes the right note for you, check out the music video for Tacocat’s other number, “Bridge to Hawaii,” which stays on permanent rotation (literally, as in vinyl) during Tiki February, as it's called in my house.   

 

Lynette Vought

Billy a Dick

For the Boys

Bette Midler

 

    I really like this prompt because it made me realize how many songs make me happy. It’s quite a list.

    Bette Midler’s bouncy version of  Billy a Dick  was one of the first I thought of.  Everything about it makes me smile. I love how both the score and the lyrics are precisely percussive, how they are expressed with the tightly arranged vocals, and I’m a sucker for stories about soldiers. I even like saying Billy a Dick.  This is a bit of the film version from For the Boys. The film is damaged, but it is fun to see the singers perform.

Pedro Carmolli

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=chFE3kZTMec

 The song:  You Make Me Feel So Free by Van Morrison.  He probably feels so free because of his lack of faith in science and disbelief in the severity of Covid.  Who knows?  I chose this over the scientifically chosen September by Earth Wind and Fire(https://www.npr.org/2014/09/19/349621429/the-song-that-never-ends-why-earth-wind-fires-september-sustains) because it is rarely heard on the radio so when it does come up it is an instant joy for me.

So endeth my submission

Alice Neiley

Well, just to prove my point to Scudder about sad songs bringing happiness (not that he even argued with me about it, more that I solid evidence is necessary in most conversations with him), I had a list all set from which to choose a song for my own post: Renee Fleming singing Puccini’s "O Mio Babbino Caro," Prine/Raitt singing "Angels from Montgomery", James Taylor’s version of "Wichita Lineman", just to name 3 out of the 10…in any case, it was going to be a very difficult choice. Then, just today, Burt Bacharach died, my heart broke, and the whole plan to give Scudder something to puzzle over for a while disappeared. The thing is, I know Bacharach was old, and probably a jerk, but when someone like him (or Aretha, or Sondheim, or Bill Withers) dies, you can almost feel a thread of sparkly genius slipping from the world, air moving against your elbow through the hole in the fabric. Yeah, his music will still be around, but the potential that he might wake up one more and write another ‘Raindrops are Fallin’ on My Head’ is gone. I’ll feel this even more acutely when Joni Mitchell passes, and Stevie Wonder, but Bacharach is bad enough. I made a whole Bacharach themed playlist on Spotify this afternoon, but in keeping with the theme for this one-off, the track that always makes my stomach flip with joy at the very first chord after the drum roll intro is the Naked Eyes version of “Always Something There to Remind Me.” Funnily enough, I heard the tune first when the Dartmouth Dodecaphonics acapella group covered it on their 1993 album Carpe Dodecs that our family listened to on road trips until the disc broke. A woman sang it, alto voice, and it was spectacular. I only got around to hearing the Naked Eyes version in college, and only found out about 10 years ago that Burt Bacharach wrote it. Dion Warwick recorded the demo back in the 60s, then 20 years later, BOOM, Naked Eyes takes it to the US top 10 in 1983 because…well…it turns out even 80s synth is at its best in a Bacharach song, clanging like bells that way, and those DRUMS, driving the song forward in almost a desperate search for something. Not to mention the lyrics “shadows fall/I pass the small café where we used to dance at night” then calling back to it later with “If you find you miss the sweet and tender love we used to share/Just go back to the places where we used to go and I’ll be there.” Swoon. In general, it’s upbeat, intense, and jolts me out of any funk I might be in. Interestingly…it’s also about breakups and loneliness and regret…quite a sad song. Looks like I proved my point after all . 

 

Bob Craigmile

 

https://youtu.be/Ti6qhk3tX2s

The Numbers. (2/5ths of Radiohead).

 

I can't sing along with it because I don't know the words. I don't even listen to the words. The only words I hear or remember are: "and you may pour us away like soup". I don't know what that (or the song) is about. Class warfare? Interpersonal conflict? 

It holds us like a phantom

 

But my god what a vibe. Such a moody, broody song. Why does it make me happy?  It sure sounds like a sad song. 

The touch is like a breeze

 

Instead, maybe it makes me less sad.

What is a sad song? Is it the key? The lyrics? The aforementioned "vibe"? 

It shines its understanding
See the moon smiling

 

As Alice points out, sad songs can make us happy. Is that what "the blues" are about? *shrugs*.

We call upon the people
People have this power

 

My son sent me this song two or three years ago. I've listened to it dozens of times. Sometimes it makes me happy; sometimes sadder than I was.

We'll take back what is ours
Take back what is ours

 

Maybe the lyrics have crept into my brain without me noticing. Maybe it gives me hope, this sad little interplay of guitars. 

 

Thom Yorke is an underrated player. His guitar here is in a nonstandard tuning; the counterpoint delivered by Jonny's Telecaster is, sonically, simply amazing to me. Their dance, winding in and out of each other while the drum machine pitters indifferently to their magic, completely enlivens my mood.

The river running dry
The wings of a butterfly

 

So, is this white guy blues? I don't know. It can't be known. It is beyond blues. It is an angelic supernova.

We are of the earth
To her we do return

Whoa.

 

DO NOT LISTEN TO THE ALBUM VERSION OF THIS SONG. You have been warned.

The numbers don't decide
Your system is a lie

 

Philip Seiler

Because I live in a world that seems determined to pretend the ongoing pandemic has ended, I decided to add the additional restriction that my song choice needed to be something discovered during COVID that otherwise fits the bill. And as luck would have it, I found two.

 

IDER "Bored"

John Craigie "Laurie Rolled Me a J"

 

Worlds apart for many reasons and yet thematically, both fill the bill for the prompt. IDER is a duo out of London who explore many genres in their songwriting: electronic pop, alternative, synth pop. Lily Somerville and Megan Markwick layer vocals together in their tracks with subtle yet engaging harmonies. Thoroughly modern in their sensibilities and unapologetic in their views, their lyrics capture the age of COVID on the psyche of the young generations to perfection as they rifle through a litany of things that bore them: the trainers you wear on your feet, your day job, the way you speak, the gaslighting, my phone, the music, and on and on. But it reaches beautiful insights in that stream of apathetic rage. "Bored of pretending not to be weak/ I'm bored of no one admitting defeat/ Won't you fail with me? Won't you fail with me" What a gorgeous sentiment for a pop song chorus in this age of hopelessness and despair.

 

John Craigie, on the other hand, is a singer songwriter from CA firmly rooted in the troubadour tradition and left coast politics. I've only briefly explored his other music and get the impression that my featured track is less representative of his body of work but it is too good not to share here. An opening, catchy blues riff and you have a good idea what you are in for. Then the first vocals drop: "I got my wings clipped/ I got my Trump check/ Supposed to last me through the apocalypse/ I spent it all on some leftist shit/ as a fuck you to him and Mike Pence" Amen, brother. Sometimes you just need a solid blues riff and some straight ahead lyrics to get you out of that funk. That organ kicking in doesn't hurt, either. If you can listen to this and not bop your head along involuntarily, I am not sure we can be friends. "Track me on my couch, track me in my bed/ Track me texting you, track me left on read/ Track me in the yard puffing my life away/ Gone like smoke Laurie rolled me a J" 

 

Gary Scudder

As I stated above, when Alice and I started bouncing around ideas for another One Off of the GBD I was considering songs that you could not NOT sing along to on the radio. On first blush I thought that this stood in opposition to Alice's suggestions, but she convinced me that they could happily live together, and she won me over. I guess I was initially skeptical because so many of the songs I find myself singing along to (keeping in mind that I have a terrible voice and hate to sing - and thus I only sing along when I'm alone in the car, and there aren't any cars within five miles) are, at least on the surface, pretty grim songs. For example: Uncle Tupelo's Moonshiner or Lucinda Williams's Jackson or Neil Young's Cowgirl in the Sand or the Drive-By Truckers' Two Daughters and a Beautiful Wife or Kathleen Edwards's Pink Emerson Radio or Rose Cousins's One New York Ago or . . . well, you get the point. That said, maybe they are actually, in the end, redemptive because they are all songs about journeys (although, I suppose, all songs are songs about journeys). Plus, I can't think of a truly bubbly happy song that I sing along to or even like. Maybe I just don't trust them because they are misleading; as we are reminded, April is the cruelest month.

Now, having said all that, maybe all of this is actually not that complicated. Haruki Murakami (and all my friends have suffered through my man crush on Murakami), when talking about how music impacted his writing, talked about the songs he puts in his novels and short stories (he did have a novel called Norwegian Wood) - sometimes the songs are foregrounded and sometimes they're simply playing in the background (or sometimes the protagonist is just running a jazz club). However, he said the single biggest thing that music taught him about writing was the importance of rhythm and pacing, which helped bring about the appropriate feel of a novel. On a side note, maybe this is why it's easy to feel let down at the end of a Murakami novel; we're waiting for something magical to tie everything together, and that wasn't the point anyway. Anyway, maybe we're drawn to certain songs less because of the lyrics - the happiness or sadness - and instead just the feel. I remember our dearly departed friend GB who said that he loved Bob Dylan songs as much for their feel as anything.