Pulling Out the Savoy Truffle

2004-10-07T17:15:00.000-07:00

The Veep Debate

"You're not the boss of me now...."
They Might be Giants

My buddy Sam Smith has a pretty lucid analysis of the debate at The Lullaby Pit. Go read it.

As for me: bully CEO meets hot shot trial lawyer. Media calls it a draw.

2004-10-07T13:42:00.000-07:00

Humpty Dumpty....

"When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean -- neither more nor less."
"The question is," said Alice, "whether you can make words mean so many different things."
"The question is," said Humpty Dumpty, "which is to be master -- that's all."
Lewis Carroll

Vice-President Cheney seems to have determined that if HE says it, it must be true. Despite the report from the chief U.S. weapons inspector that Saddam had built NO WMD's after 1991, Cheney insists that this justifies Dubya's decision to go to war.

I'm not sure which troubles me more - Cheney's delusion that whatever he and this administration say and do is justified because they say and do it or his arrogance that he can simply lie in the face of overwhelming evidence and he'll be believed by about 50% of the American voting public.

JB

2004-10-01T12:04:00.000-07:00

You Are What You Read

"Man, you should have seen them kicking Edgar Allan Poe...."
John Lennon

ST WV correspondent Steve sent along this fun little piece from Cambridge University:

"I cdnuolt blveiee taht I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd waht I was rdgnieg. The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid. Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoatnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit a porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Amzanig huh? Yaeh and I awlyas thought slpeling was ipmorantt!"

Cool, huh?

As ST NY correspondent Sam points out, the phenomenon is called Gestalt - or as he would say, "Gstelat."

Next, go see Sam Smith's terrific new poem at The Lullaby Pit....

Now you're more educated....

JB

2004-10-01T12:03:00.000-07:00

Red and Blue

"You say yes/I say no...."
Sir Paul McCartney

The Seattle Times offers an editorial concerning last night's first presidential debate that contains a sentence that really set me thinking:

"Here is a radical idea: Suspend the rest of these expensive, bloated campaigns and have the candidates spending more time in front of Americans talking — together."

What a great idea. That could make this a real election based on honest differences over issues - not an advertising campaign for each candidate.

Don't look for it to happen. In this Age of Surfaces (I'm going to write about this concept extensively here shortly), this would allow us to decide between candidates based on our ability to decode them as men, as politicians, as leaders. Political parties and mass media have long since decided that we, the American people, can't be trusted to make those sorts of vitally important civic decisions without their manipulating candidates' images and messages as well as our ability to discover, analyze, and assess the truth behind those images and messages.

(For more deep thoughts on the debate, go see Sam Smith's excellent analysis at The Lullaby Pit....)

2004-09-29T16:44:00.000-07:00

Write Angle

"I won't quote you no Dickens, Shelley, or Keats...
Cause it's all been said before...."
Rod Stewart

I'm working on a new book Completeness of the Soul: The Life and Opinions of Jay Breeze, Rock Star. Some of the stories have already been published in literary journals (you may have even read some). Below is one that's been driving me crazy. Read and respond when you have time: (Warning: no adult content....)

WE ARE THE LOST GENERATION

August 21, 1991

Dear Angel,

You know, you have that thing you say to me whenever you call—you say,“Hey, whaddayadoin’?”

Here’s a bit about what I’ve been doing.

I was born and brought up in Reidsville, North Carolina. Reidsville’s a little town of about 20,000 people up close to the Va./N.C. border. It’s only about ten miles from Eden, where Teddy Hatter and Charlie Beagle grew up.

Teddy and Charlie were acquaintances of mine before we all went to UNC together. Actually, that’s not quite true. Teddy and I were acquaintances; Charlie and I were friends. We knew each other from literary competitions that were held for all the high schools in the county. It was through Charlie that I met Teddy.

Charlie (you insist on calling him Professor Beagle) used to get me to come over and listen to his and Teddy’s band rehearse. I always thought their band had a cool name—Nothing Sacred. Maybe I knew even then that it would be Teddy and me. I remember that each time I went to hear them (I always tried not to go too often even though they rehearsed three times a week—you know me, Angel, the soul of modesty) that Teddy would get me to sing a song with them. He kinda flipped out when I sang a song I’d written for them. He went right to work on it, embellishing it and changing it until it was half his own. I changed a couple of lines to fit the rhythm changes he’d made and we’d written our first song together. Took us maybe twenty minutes.

The song was “Her Smile, Winter 1970.” We kept changing the year until we finally recorded it in the fall of 1975. It was a top ten hit for us in the winter of 1976. The reason it’s called “Her Smile, Winter 1974” instead of “1975” is that somebody wrote down the song title for the record company (Teddy or Mick, I think—does it matter?) from an old song list and we hadn’t changed the year.

This isn’t telling you much, is it?
What would you like to know?
I’d tell you anything.
I love you, you know.

Well. We all graduated high school in 1970. Teddy went to N. C. State, Charlie and I to UNC. That’s not quite true. Teddy spent most of his time in Chapel Hill with us, so he was only nominally an N. C. State student.

He was really a rock musician. That was all Teddy ever wanted to be. He lived and breathed it. He still does. Oh. He transferred over to UNC after a semester. How the hell he got in I’ll never know. I can’t imagine he passed a single course he was taking at NCSU. I think, though he never has said, that he withdrew about midterm of that first semester and applied for some kind of special admission to UNC. Anyway, come January of ’71, he was with us.

Charlie was a different case. He went for the books. Big time. College was Charlie’s thing. He still hung around and all that, but he was mainly into his studies. He wanted to be a journalist. Actually, he wanted to be like Hunter Thompson “only with more self -control” he said.

And that’s where I came in. Charlie lost interest in the band. He and Teddy had found Mick right after arriving in Chapel Hill. They then went through a series of drummers.
I don’t know what it is about drummers, Angel. They’re probably the most vital part of any band—the heartbeat, you know? And yet, they’re always the least stable guys. The ones most likely to disappear without a trace. Anyway, there were at least half a dozen in quick succession. Then Sid showed up when the guys opening for somebody or other at Town Hall, the favorite college club. I was being their roadie and saw the whole thing.

Sid just walked up to the stage after their set and said, “You guys write great songs, but you need a drummer. I’m him.” Interestingly, their drummer at the time was packing up his kit and heard Sid. He came over and got in Sid’s face big time. Sid invited him outside to fight. The drummer backed off.

At that point Teddy looked at Charlie, Charlie looked at Teddy, and in the same breath they both told the drummer he was fired. Charlie told me later it was a no brainer. If Sid was crazy enough to fight somebody for the job, he was the man for them.

Boy, I do go on, don’t I?
Thanks for letting me tell all this.
I still haven’t told you much.
Sometime I think, what’s there to tell?

Sid joined up in mid October of 1970. That was really the last time Charlie and Teddy acted as a united front. I’d never felt like I could get past that—in terms of the band, I mean. We were all friends and all that, but there was this deeper connection between them that I always felt uneasy trying to breach. You know how it is—you sense two people know something that you can never know, and no matter how well you get to know them you’ll never have or know that thing they have.

Kind of like us, I guess.

Anyway, from that point in mid October when Sid joined, things just kind of went on the skids between Teddy and Charlie. Charlie took to hanging out with some j-school types and Teddy started spending all his time with Mick and me—and Sid.

Usually guys leave bands over women. You know, somebody gets a girlfriend and pays more attention to her than to the band and pretty soon he gets himself thrown out. So he consoles himself that he made the better choice—you know, love over music. But I doubt that anyone who ever left the music for a person was ever really satisfied. But Charlie left over wanting to write rather than play. I’ve often admired him for that. And I’ve always been completely puzzled by it.

The music is bigger than anyone, Angel.
That’s how it is.
And you can try to leave it, but it will never leave you.
Yeah, that’s a little scary.

So Charlie just drifted away. He came to rehearsal late, he left early, he wasn’t really there when he was rehearsing—that kind of stuff.

As Charlie absented himself more and more, I started filling in. At first I would just play with the guys to warm them up. Then gradually I began to play with the band as they rehearsed their set. Teddy and I wrote two new songs together: “Mary, Quite Contrary” and “River Kisses.”

Always, I got right out of the way when Charlie showed up. But it reached a point fairly quickly (we rehearsed four nights a week) where they didn’t get much done when Charlie showed up because he and Teddy would spend all their time at each other’s throats. Then came the time when Charlie stopped showing up at all. We just went ahead. We even played three shows in late November.

I didn’t know how to feel about it, Angel.
I don’t know how to feel now.
In a way, I think it must be like a second marriage.
You either know they love you as you or you wonder.
At some point, though, you have to stop wondering.
I stopped wondering—you should, too.

Then, just before exams, at our last rehearsal in Chapel Hill before the holidays, Charlie walked in as we were doing out last three numbers. He didn’t say anything, and to this day I don’t think anyone noticed him but me. Maybe it was because I was and am so sensitive about what he gave me by giving me the band. By this time, mid December, Teddy and the rest of us had even talked about a name change. I’d tossed out the name The Lost Generation one night after rehearsal when I’d had a few beers. Everyone had liked it; Mick and Sid were all set to rename the band. But Teddy seemed to be waiting for something; that night when Charlie showed up, he got it.

When we finished playing, Teddy looked over at Charlie. “So. What’d you think?” he asked.

Charlie just nodded his head in that way he does that says, “I’m way ahead of you.” Then he said, “This band is how it should be. This band can go all the way. Don’t you think so, Jay?”
I was standing there with my head down, feeling guilty, and I didn’t realize for a second that he’d addressed his question to me. Then I realized that they were all looking at me instead of at Teddy.

I looked at Charlie. He had that homespun look of wisdom he usually gets on his face when he knows he’s got you. Then, I looked at Teddy again. He had that” Go ahead “ look he’s so famous for.

I didn’t look at Mick or Sid. I guess I didn’t feel they were involved, even though they were right there and integral members of the band. It just seemed like it was about Charlie, Teddy, and me.

I nodded “yes” in answer to Charlie.

I saw this sad little light pass over Charlie’s eyes as he smiled at me.

Teddy looked surprised; he rarely does.

Then Charlie asked quietly, ‘What are you going to call it?” He meant the band.

“The Lost Generation.” Only after he’d answered did Teddy look at Charlie.

“Cool name.” Charlie smiled.

Then Teddy smiled. “Jay thought of it,” he said.

And they both smiled at me. And I smiled.

Then we all went out and had a bunch of beers to celebrate.

Neither Teddy nor Charlie ever spoke to me about it again.

Maybe they talked it over between themselves, but I never felt they did. That’s the thing at work between them that I was talking about earlier, I guess. They just knew it would be okay for it to be this way.

So Nothing Sacred ended and The Lost Generation began.
You know what I mean by all this.
You know what I’m trying to tell you.
That’s how things happen, Angel.
That’s how things happen.
Things end—things begin again.

Love,

Jay

2004-09-28T20:21:00.000-07:00

Participatory Democracy

"Something happening here/What it is ain't exactly clear...."
Stephen Stills

There's a big jump in voter registration. There are also a record number of overseas voters choosing to exercise their constitutional right.

What this means I have no clue.

We'll see Nov. 2nd....

JB

2004-09-28T17:21:00.000-07:00

LCD (Lowest Common Demographic) Politics

" I'm your yankee doodle dandy in a gold Rolls Royce/I wanna be elected...."
Alice Cooper

Friend Val offers the following RNC mailer currently in wide circulation in Arkansas in her blog Mental Kudzu.

Kudos to her for the tip....

JB

2004-09-27T16:17:00.000-07:00

Ugly is as Ugly Does....

"It's only words/And words are all I have...."
Barry, Robin, and Maurice Gibb

My friend Sam has a brilliant disquisition on the Aaron McGruder dustup over his satire of The Apprentice in his comic strip Boondocks last week. His blog in The Lullaby Pit analyzes the real and phony elements of the controversy. You owe it to yourself as a thinking American....

JB

2004-09-27T13:59:00.000-07:00

Nasty/Beautiful

"...put my fist through your steel-framed door...."
Mick Jagger

Saw a quote in a Washington Post column by Michael Kinsley that I found too good not to note:

"My favorite among the Republican mind readers is House Speaker Dennis Hastert, who said last week, 'I don't have data or intelligence to tell me one thing or another,' which is an assertion that no one will disagree with."

Sometimes it's possible to use language in a way that is, as ST's VW correspondent Steve put it, "beautifully vicious...."

JB

2004-09-24T20:50:00.000-07:00

The Reading Room....

"Dear Sir or Madam/Will you read my book...?"
Sir Paul McCartney

I'm working on a new book Completeness of the Soul: The Life and Opinions of Jay Breeze, Rock Star. Some of the stories have already been published in literary journals (you may have even read some). Below is one that's been driving me crazy. Read and respond when you have time: (Warning: some adult content....)

RECEIVED WISDOM

February 5, 1992
11:30 PM

Dear Angel,

The Albuquerque show was a mess. It started snowing the morning of the show and the trucks carrying our equipment couldn’t get into town. Paul, Scott, and Van spent the entire day desperately phoning every music store and sound professional in Albuquerque and Santa Fe—just in case—trying to round up the right equipment so that we could do the concert. The weather got progressively worse as the day wore on.

Teddy and I had flown up to Taos to ski three days before; we quit at lunch time and started for Albuquerque, but we could only get as far as Santa Fe in a rented Jeep and that took us about four hours. They were going to send a snowplow kind of vehicle or something for us, but someone with better sense than us nixed that. Besides, with the weather so bad, there wasn’t going to be a show that night anyway. So Teddy and I wound up checked into a hotel called the Inn of the Governors.

We tried to check into a place called the El Dorado, but it’s part of the Quality Inn Corporation and we’re banned from those places for life. When Teddy gave them his AE card to pay for the room, some ID system on their computer spit our names out as bad, bad boys. The manager, a guy about 35 with pretensions to cool, came to the desk and told us politely that we couldn’t stay with them but that he’d be delighted to find us comparable accommodations.

The El Dorado’s lobby was really busy, so it didn’t take Teddy long to gather a crowd once he stated raising hell at the desk clerks and the manager. He just bashed the poor guy about sending us out into a howling blizzard because of prejudice against poor, underprivileged rock stars like us. I stood by and smiled at the crowd. People like me when I smile. I guess because I don’t very often.

I should explain why we’re banned with a for example. During the 1978 tour of the Southwest—for example—we trashed two rooms of the Quality Inn South in Dallas. It started innocently enough. Mick and I had a room adjoining Teddy and Sid’s. We couldn’t get the door adjoining the rooms to unlock, even though hotel management assured us it would open. We had a big party going (surprise) and were all pretty drunk when the guy arrived to get the door open for us. When he couldn’t get the door unlocked, for some reason we all got pissed off. We threw some furniture at the door and Paul and Van, pretty big guys, tried bashing the door down. Even that didn’t work.

Finally Mick got a fire axe (from where I have no idea) and we chopped the door open, all the time laughing and yelling, “Here’s Johnny!” Sid and I got into the spirit of things and pulled the pieces of the door off its hinges and threw them off our balcony onto the deck by the swimming pool. Teddy got some lighter fluid from somewhere (you know, that stuff you use to light charcoal on a grill).

The next thing I remember is cops and fire trucks arriving and we’re down by the pool dancing naked with some girls (yeah, they’re naked, too), and then we all get led away and get sheets wrapped around us. That cost us some money and evidently raised questions in the minds of the Quality Inn Corporation’s management about the wisdom of allowing us to be guests in their hotels.

Now do you understand? Yes, Angel, we’ve been bad boys. Quite often, actually.

Meanwhile, the hotel manager lost his cool and announced to the lobby at large, “You see, Mr. Hatter, corporate records show that you and your friend Mr. Breeze are responsible, in concert with a Mr. (he checked a computer screen) Mick Norris and a Mr. Sid (screen again) Vegas for seriously damaging some (screen again) 14 rooms in Quality Inns scattered across the country from Boston to Dallas.”

I need to mention something here, Angel. This asshole knew who we were. Everybody his age and socio-economic background knows who we are. I bet he had two or three of our albums. I mean this guy was no country music or R & B fan. You could smell his Ralph Lauren Polo. He listened to us in college. Probably still listened to us. I could see him cranking up “Mary, Quite Contrary” in the car when we came on the radio as he drove home listening to his favorite classic rock station. I couldn’t figure out why he wanted to make a production out of throwing us out of his hotel.

Then I noticed the girl. She must’ve been about 20. His favorite night clerk, I was betting. Dark hair and eyes. Very pretty. Watching first him, then us. He could smell her indecision about who was more attractive, so he had to do something. He was playing the big man for her. Showing her that even famous rock stars couldn’t fuck with him.

Teddy looked at me. “Is that right?”

I shrugged. “I thought it was closer to 20. How about Denver? And San Diego? And Atlanta? And…”

Teddy shook his head. “No, those were Holiday Inns.”

People had been gathering as we wrangled with the hotel manager, and there had been two different waves of murmuring building like swells off the North Shore. One wave was the “Is it really them?” wave. The other was the “They’re not going to give them a room? In this blizzard? Don’t they know who those guys are?” wave.

Then it was suddenly quiet.

It was that weird quiet that sometimes comes over a crowd for maybe 20 seconds before the band comes on stage. It was that quiet that you know is going to explode into pandemonium. That hotel manager hadn’t grasped what was about to happen to him. That lobby full of thirty-something’s coming from or going to Taos was going to leap on him like a pack of coyotes on a lost lamb.

One of the marvels of the rock star profession, Angel, (I guess one can call it a profession) is that no matter what kinds of assholes we are, our fans will defend us tooth and nail.

About then the manager realized what deep shit he was in. He went pale and took a half step back from the desk as if readying himself to run.

I figured somebody better do something.

I leaned over the desk and motioned to the manager. He hesitated. I motioned again, this time more urgently. For some reason, as I did so I thought of the little tramp in Chaplin’s The Gold Rush motioning impatiently to his prospector pal to pull him out of the cabin that’s about to go over a cliff. He stepped over and leaned close.

“Look,” I said quietly, matter-of-factly, “give us somewhere to go right now, then come back here and find us a room in a hotel close by. Then see to it that we get there as quickly and comfortably as possible.”

The manager looked out across the crowd that was just starting to reach that Banzai Pipeline crest before crashing down on him. He drew himself up and said, “Mr. Hatter, Mr. Breeze, on behalf of the Quality Inn corporation, we’d like to give you a comfortable place to relax while we arrange for your alternate accommodations. I suggest”—

The cute desk clerk who’d sort of just stood there wide-eyed at first while the manager and Teddy wrangled, had gotten busy. She handed him a telephone receiver. “This is the Inn of the Governors, sir,” she whispered. “They’ve got a suite ready for these gentlemen, and they’re sending someone in a Jeep to pick them up. They’ll be here in about 30 minutes.”

Manager boy took the receiver and spoke briefly. “Everything is arranged,” he said theatrically. “Now if you’ll follow me”—he came from behind the desk and picked up my bag.

Teddy stopped him.

“Acknowledge the girl for what she did,” he said quietly.

“What do you mean?” asked the manager.

“She saved your ass,” I said, taking my bag away from him. “Tell this crowd she did.”

The expression on his face told me he wasn’t going to last much longer in the hospitality industry if many more clients like us came along.

“Thank you, Brooke, for arranging for Mr. Hatter’s and Mr. Breeze’s accommodations.” He smiled as if someone had just stuck a branding iron against his ass. He took my bag, picked up Teddy’s and started for the bar.

“Yes, Brooke, thank you. Look, we’re going to be over at the Inn of the Governors. When you finish your shift, come on over and we’ll hang out. I’ll tell you about some of the interesting things that have happened to me in hotels,” Teddy said loudly enough for everybody in the lobby to hear.

I just smiled at her and winked.

Yeah, Angel she came over. She hooked up with Teddy.

* * * * * * * * *

We followed the Pompous One toward the bar. The crowd parted for us like the Red Sea. Some of the same weird stuff that always used to happen when we walked through a crowd happened. A woman stepped out of the crowd and kissed Teddy on the cheek, then ducked back into the mob. She must’ve been about forty. As I passed her I noticed a guy looking at her—must’ve been her husband—like she’d just broken his heart. Another woman stepped out and touched my hair, just drew the back of her hand across it as I passed her. I looked back and she was holding her hand and looking at it as if she’d burned it or gotten something on it. Guys were saying stuff to us like “Hey, Teddy,” or “Cool hair, Jay.” It was such an old fashioned moment.

The kids just don’t react that way now. They just talk to you like you’re anybody else. That damned Cobain and Michael Stipe are ruining it for everybody.

* * * * * * * * * * *

It was after five by then and Teddy went immediately to the phone in the bar and called Albuquerque to tell them where we would be. The show was definitely cancelled. We heard the announcement on a radio playing in the bar. I ordered us a couple of beers and told the bartender to charge them to Manager Boy.

The bartender, a good-looking blonde with hair about the same length as mine, cocked her head at me. “He’s my boss,” she said. Then she raised her eyebrows in anticipation of the comeback.

“I’m his daddy,” I said, shaking my head so my earring would jingle. I had on the hoop with the guitar dangling in it. Women love that thing.

She drew the beer, put one in front of me, and slid the other down the bar to Teddy who was still on the phone. He caught it like a good shortstop and lifted it to his lips. She smiled at his grace, then turned to me. “So. You’re him and he’s him.” She reached laid a cd cover on the bar. One finger tapped a picture of me, then of Teddy.

I tapped the picture of me. As I did, my hand brushed hers. She looked up from the picture. So did I.

You know, Angel, you’d be easier to be faithful to if you weren’t fucking dead.

Yes, I know I’m using anger to ease my guilt. No, it’s not working.

Either you’re going to have to come back to life or I’m going to have to die. This “one on this side, the other on that side” shit isn’t working.

Yeah, she came over to our other hotel. No, she didn’t hook up with Teddy. She was with someone else….

“We’re gonna be at the Inn of the Governors later,” said Teddy from the end of the bar. That was for the benefit of the bartender, although if he’d looked around at us he’d have seen that he didn’t have to say it.

He kept looking out the door and across the lobby and I knew he was communicating with the girl Brooke somehow. I didn’t figure he could see her, so I guessed he was just standing there being famous. That’s pretty much all we ever have to do.

You know, Angel, fame is such bullshit. That girl was a perfectly lovely, intelligent person, someone who helped us, and in return she was being reduced to—what? A bird facing a snake? That’s what it feels like much of the time.

Why? Because I have some name and face recognition.

Why? Because I like to make up songs and sing them for people. And so now I’m famous and people pay $20 a pop to watch me do something I’d do for them for free.

Why? So a bunch of assholes can make a living marketing what I do, setting up places for me to do it, taking my picture, writing about my doing it (hell, even Charlie did that, although I think he saw through it after all), recording my singing and playing.

What’s that line from the Byrds’s song? “Sell your soul to the company/Who are waiting there to sell plastic ware….”

The bartender leaned over so that her face was close to mine. “Which is your favorite of your albums?”

We looked at each other for about a minute. “ANTHEMS FOR DOOMED YOUTH,” I said, telling the truth for once. That’s not the one most people, especially most women, want to hear.

“Oh.” She leaned back, hesitating, then said, "My favorite is—"

“HOW DO YOU LIKE YOUR BLUE-EYED BOYS?” we said together.

She cocked her head and almost smiled. “You know your audience.”

“After the fact, maybe,” I said. “We were young and looking for love when we wrote that album. We said the things we thought women would want to hear.”

“Sounds more like you were looking for sex,” she said.

I nodded slightly and looked down at my beer. Smart girl.

“Hey,” she said, a little brusquely, sounding so much like you I glanced up at her, startled. “Nothing wrong with that.”

We locked eyes then. She had these great hazel eyes. And in the middle of January in Santa Fe, a great tan.

Sometimes need is as strong as love, Angel. It happens. That’s why we have forgiveness.

Just then Brooke showed up at the door. “Your ride’s here, “she said to Teddy, oblivious to the other two people in the bar. The blonde and I broke our gazes and looked at them.

Teddy drained his beer and drew Brooke’s eyes to his. “You coming later?” he said.

Brooke didn’t say anything. She just kept looking at him. That whole bird and snake thing again.

“She can ride over with me,” said the bartender.

We locked eyes again. “Nothing wrong with”—we said together.

“Look,” I began—

She reached over and flicked my earring. “I know I like my blue-eyed boy. I just want to know how much.” She looked down at the bar then back at me.

I thought hard about you, Angel. I thought hard about me. I thought hard about love, hard about sex, and hard about the difference it makes if you get them together. I thought hard about being dead and being alive.

Then I just thought, “Fuck it.” I mean, sometimes you just have to.

“See you later tonight,” I said. I picked up the beer and took a long swig, then handed her the half full glass.

She took the glass from me and finished off the beer. “For sure.”

We nodded at each other in that way people do when something’s going to happen between them. I turned to follow Teddy out to the Jeep they had waiting to take us to the Inn of the Governors.

“Hey.”

I looked back at her.

“I’m Betsy.”

“Yeah. I’m Jay. Jay Breeze.”

She held up the cd cover. “I’ve heard of you.”

“Yeah. Right.”

Teddy called me and I went out into the snow and joined him in the Jeep for the ride to the hotel.

We ordered lots of food and wine sent up to our suite. The rest of the night went about as you’d expect. The snake got the bird and Betsy found out how much….

* * * * * * * * * * *

February 6, 1992

It’s four o’clock in the morning. Still snowing. I’ve got a great view out my hotel window of the mountains in the distance. They’re the Santa Fe Mountains, I guess, but you know me. Looking stuff like that up.... It’s not going to happen.

I keep looking out the window at the snow coming down with the mountains in the background. Mind if I quote some poetry? “Now more than ever seems it rich to die.” John Keats. “Ode to a Nightingale.”

Why did you have to die, Angel? Why do you have to be the one to be dead? I’m the one who’s lived dangerously all these years. I’m the one the shrink said had self-destructive tendencies.

Why do you have to be the one who left? I never would have left, Angel.

My mother would say (as she said at the time), “John Jay, it’s all part of God’s plan. We aren’t meant to understand. We must accept.”

Well, I don’t accept, Angel. I’m royally pissed. If God’s plan includes killing off 24 year girls, then God better get a clue.

Okay. You’re right. What do I know? Maybe I should do like the guy in the old song. You wouldn’t remember it, but maybe you heard it sometime on one of those oldies stations. It’s called “Last Kiss” and goes something like:

Oh where, oh where can my baby be?
The Lord took her away from me.
She’s gone to heaven, so I’ve got to be good,
So I can see my baby when I leave this world….

Doesn’t really sound like me, does it? What the hell, you know? I’d try being good if I thought it would make any difference.

I’ve been reading in a guidebook about the city. Santa Fe means “Holy Faith.” I guess it was like that letter I wrote about the dreams. A message. I look for messages from you all the time. In one of our last conversations, one you didn’t remember when I asked you because you were drunk when you called me, you told me that if we were never together again on earth that we’d be together in heaven because we were one and while God might let us be apart here he’d never make us be apart there. I believe that, Angel. I believed you when you told me that. I believe. I have to. It’s all I can do.

I’ve convinced Teddy to let me put that song you mentioned, “Will I See You in Heaven?” on the new album.

* * * * * * * * * *

It’s six in the morning now. Still snowing. I fell asleep for a bit. Dreams of you. They come and come. As always.

The girl? I sent her away. You knew I would. (to be continued)

2004-09-24T16:56:00.000-07:00

You Can't Do That....

"How do you sleep...?"
John Lennon

ST's Eden correspondent Gene filed this report:

Madison, NC. 9/24-04 - Bushites on rampage in NC

The sleepy little town of Madison in Rockingham County, NC, has been rocked by a series of incidents that are leaving people scratching their heads wondering if recent acts by Bush supporters qualify as domestic terrorism under The USA Patriot Act, or are at least intimidation in violation of First Amendment freedoms.

As reported in a full color above-the-fold front page article in The Messenger today, the local newspaper, several houses, including (some) on on the NC Register of Historic Places, were paint balled last week apparently because they had Kerry/Edwards signs in their yards. Houses in the same neighborhood that had no yard signs, or had Bush signs, were not hit by the gun propelled missiles.

On 9/16, the Eden Daily News carried a front page below-the-fold article datelined Madison which described how vandals were tearing down over 50 Kerry/Edwards signs almost as fast as they were put out. A local Democrat who had signs stolen said "Bush is the problem. He made this country divisive. We'll all have to pull together after the election is over. We've got to be bigger than tearing down signs."

In response to the article, Tommy Harrington, Chairman of the local Republican Party published a long "Second Opinion" article in the Eden News on Sept. 22nd, addressing the story. A bitter former Democrat who switched some years ago after serving as a State Highway Commissioner, Harrington launched into personal attacks on the reporter and the person quoted in her article. A practicing lawyer in Eden, Harrington made these comments about John Edwards and Congressional Democrats:

"They have divided this country, and the crime is they have done is deliberately. They are the ones who have turned other nations against us; they are the ones who have helped kill American military personnel by encouraging our enemies. It is undeniable that Mr. Kerry and his organization have given aid and comfort to enemies of this nation. Such actions as this can best be described as 'treasonous.'"

Before Harrington's article appeared, Dick Cartwright, Chairman of the local Democratic Party sent a letter to Harrington, notifying him of the sign vandalism and paint ball incident by his Republican supporters, and sent an abbreviated copy to local newspapers. Cartwright said, "I am asking you to enter into an informal agreement that you and I will do whatever we reasonably can to avoid this kind of vandalism and threat to private property for the duration of this election. I'm sure you are as embarrassed by the behavior of your supporters as we are upset by it. Hopefully, if you can speak forcefully to your people, we shall have no more of this".
Meanwhile, as the story of the paint balling incident spreads, questions begin to arise as to what can be done. Madison Police Chief Perry Webster was quoted as saying "It seem as though they were targets because of the Democratic signs in their yards. We're not going to tolerate it. We will find out who they are". He said a citizen has stepped up to offer a reward for information on the crime that leads to the arrest and conviction of whoever is responsible. "We've always had removal of signs, but I don't recall any damage being done."

At the time, the area was under a tornado warning from Hurricane Ivan, and one owner was trying to relax from a busy day at school when suddenly she heard a loud noise. "I thought it was another tornado or an electric generator going out," said Sybil Landreth. But she soon discovered someone had shot her house with green paint balls. Her historic house had been recently painted, and will likely have to be repainted. Several days later green streaks ran across the light colored paint where the family was unable to clean the stains.

Mary Louise Cardwell was in her front room with her 13-year old granddaughter, staying there because her home had been damaged by a tornado. Waiting for pizza, "all of a sudden we heard something that sounded like rocks. My house was hit 14 times. I couldn't believe anyone would do that!" Another of the houses was owned by County Democratic Chairman Dick Cartwright. At least three houses were hit, all with recently installed Kerry/Edwards signs on a street where Bush signs had reigned supreme.

The question remains whether these incidents are isolated events, or part of a conspiracy organized between some who may be guilty of domestic terrorism under The USA Patriot Act, and/or violations of civil and Constitutional rights, as well as other minor misdemeanor charges of vandalism. Is this any different from selecting houses along a street to attack because of the race of the people who live there? Or does this significantly differ from burning a cross in someone's yard? It seems to be of the category of things we have learned in American to call "hate crimes."

As Cartwright said in his letter to Harrington, "We are most concerned about avoiding future incidents of this nature, since we still have six weeks to Election Day. It's clear that these incidents were politically motivated, by your supporters of George W. Bush. Needless to say, again in this case, "W" stands for "Wrong."

I don't care what your political persuasion is, this behavior has to be disturbing to upright, sensible Americans.

God help us if this is what it's come to.....

JB

2004-09-21T09:58:00.000-07:00

The Evil That Men Do....

"All along the watchtower, princes kept the view...."
Bob Dylan

Today's column by E.J. Dionne in the Washington Post (thanks to ST's WV correspondent Steve for the tip) looks at the CBS "fake memos" debacle with a reasonable eye - at least to reasonable readers (I'm guessing my conservative friends stopped reading at either the words "E.J. Dionne" or "Washington Post," depending upon their perspicacity). Near the end, one passage in particular caught my eye:

"I'm as weary as you are that our politics veer away from what matters — Iraq, terrorism, health care, jobs — and get sidetracked into personal issues manufactured by political consultants and ideological zealots. But the Bush campaign has made clear it wants this election to focus primarily on character and leadership. If character is the issue, the president's life, past and present, matters just as much as John Kerry's."

See that first sentence? Any candidate who isn't honestly and specifically trying to speak to those issues shouldn't be elected.

Since neither of the major party candidates is doing so....

We should accept no excuses from either group.

If Karl Rove, Republican super hack, is responsible for the fake documents about Bush's service, he should be placed aboard a series of ships and never allowed to set foot in the US again, as happened to the main character in Edward Everett Hale's "The Man Without a Country."

Same for James Carville, Democratic super hack....

Occasionally CNN, Fox, and all the other "news" channels could show footage of him/her/them being transferred to a ship going out of port from a ship coming in...as an object lesson to all political hacks....

I would remind those same lowlife political weasels that Lee Atwater who engineered the same kind of "LCD" political advertisements in the '88 campaign that got Bush the Elder elected died shortly thereafter of a brain tumor.

That might have been a message...or a warning....

JB

2004-09-20T14:42:00.000-07:00

Strange Days, Indeed....

"Nobody told me there'd be days like these...."
John Lennon

Yesterday afternoon I went out and played music with a bunch of guys for the first time.

I was terrified.

Even though I play music with my sons and in my home studio all the time, I hadn't gone out and played without at least one of the guys I'd played in bands with along in about 30 years.

It was a weird feeling.

The group was a bunch of physicians. I happened into the bunch because the drummer is the father of the drummer of my sons' band DoCo. We had three guitar players who sounded at war with other at times, the drummer bashing away, and me plonking along on bass.

It was fun, it was loud, it was pretty chaotic - it wasn't anything that anyone but the guys playing would have enjoyed.

We're supposed to begin doing it on a regular basis. We'll see about that - but it was enjoyable just to play with guys who wanted to play.

Hail, hail, rock and roll, as the man said....

JB

2004-09-17T14:26:00.000-07:00

Circuses and Bread...

"...I think I need a Lear Jet...."
Roger Waters

My friend, rock critic Kandia Crazy Horse, passed along some info on the Rolling Stones' release (finally) of Rock and Roll Circus and a reunion of the Black Crowes. As usual, I had something smartassed to say:

Have seen R&R CIRCUS a number of times (I taped it off VH-1 back when they seemed to have an interest in rock programming beyond being the recycle bin for old MTV programming).

I understand the Stones' reluctance at the time. They come off poorly compared to the Who....

The Dirty Mac, the ad hoc band with Lennon, Clapton, Richards, and Mitch Mitchell (an underappreciated drummer) was interesting (nice cover of "Yer Blues"), but then John insisted they had to do a number with Yoko and you can see in Eric's and Keith's faces, "God, get me through this...."

Mostly, it's a nice historical document. Now if Paul would allow the release of Let It Be, we'd be getting somewhere.

As for the Crowes, the moment has passed. They'll do good work, but no one will care (except us snobs). Nor will anyone care until the revolution comes and Rolling Stone crapazine, MTV (all 78 channels), and each and every media conglomerate is no more.(Insert my [and quite likely your] hysterical laughter, tinged with some genuine pain here....)

JB

2004-09-17T13:34:00.000-07:00

The Ghost of Agnew....

"I wanna be sedated...."
Joey Ramone

I can't get Spiro Agnew out of my mind right now.

See the following column by Maureen Dowd in yesterday's New York Times. I fully expect Kerry and Edwards to come marching up Pennsylvania Avenue anytime now waving a white flag and conceding an election that hasn't been held.

I read this stuff, the mewling and puking of Broder (see previous entry), this nonsense by Dowd - and Agnew's old quote comes back to haunt me, in a context far different from the one in which he used the term: "nattering nabobs of negativity."

Now, I freely admit that I'm a card carrying member of another of his targets - I'm a poster boy for the "effete intellectual snobs." But at least I'm willing to continue the fight, lost cause though it might be.

"Oh, hell, what have we here..." as the Prince of Morocco once said - I wonder how much of this is nothing but the elegiac Southerner in me coming out....

JB

2004-09-17T13:06:00.000-07:00

And the Good of This is...?

"Well, c'mon, all you big strong men...."
Country Joe McDonald

David Broder's column in The Washington Post yesterday about how vets see Iraq was certainly touching and thought provoking. But right now there's a political fight going on...my response to that column below:

What does this translate into concerning the election? I appreciate these folks speaking up, however softly, but the groundswell against this mess won't happen until midway through Bush's second term. Our economy, environment, and civil liberties will be even more damaged by then....

I'm not interested in sentimental stuff like this - I'm interested in ideas that might win this election for Kerry to see if he can somehow extricate us from the Iraq debacle, address the budget deficit before it plunges us into financial ruin and makes it necessary for everyone to work until he/she drops dead, and stop the undoing of environmental protections that are increasing pollution and environmental degradation at a rate unprecedented since the '60's - before there was environmental legislation.

JB

2004-09-15T13:15:00.000-07:00

Whatever happened to...?

"Everyone knew that as time went on he'd get a little bit older and a little bit slower...."
John Lennon

I suppose a few words of explanation are needed.

As most of you know who might read this blog, I spent the last two years of my life as director of the writing program with the University of Maryland University College, splitting my time between the College Park area and my home in NC.

That's all over.

Well, sort of.

As of August 12, I'm now professor of writing and writing consultant for the university. I now telecommute for my job all but two days a month when I visit the campus for meetings, etc.

Yes, it's a sweet deal. I spend almost all my time in NC. This costs me lots less money and allows me to look after my wife who won't look after herself. After a bout with cancer a few years ago (lymphoma) her health gets dicey at times and she exacerbates matters because she has a demanding job and she doesn't set boundaries between work and life very well. So now that I'm back here in NC I can look after her better.

Needless to say, such a big change in career direction takes a lot of time and energy.

So I've been ignoring my blog. But that's all over now.

Look for daily postings (well, close) from here on....

JB

2004-09-15T10:02:00.000-07:00

I've Been Busy

"Too Much Monkey Business/For Me to be Involved in...."
Chuck Berry

I've been away far too long, and now I'm back. Get ready because I don't like a lot of what I'm seeing these days and I'm gonna say so.

JB

2004-04-28T17:02:00.000-07:00

Name Calling

"You know my name/Look up the number..."
John Lennon/Paul McCartney

Like everyone else I get spam all the time. One of the things spam mail programs do is generate phony sender names.

My buddy Sam, who's a poet, has begun making lists of the more interesting spam names he's received. You can see some of his at The Lullaby Pit.

For some reason, the most interesting names come from the spammers who send out ads for stuff like Viagra and push up bras. (probably something profound there, but I'm not sure I want to know what it is.)

Here are the latest I've received:

Dishwasher Friedrich Osiris
Incoherent Mrs. Finance
Ashore Brainwash Luftwaffe

Draw your own conclusions.

JB

2004-04-28T16:14:00.000-07:00

All I Want

"Problems, problems, problems all day long..."
Felice and Boudleaux Bryant
(for the Everly Brothers)

I'm currently in a place I don't want to be.

Right now, I'm a teacher who writes.

I want to be a writer who teaches.

JB

2004-04-21T05:13:00.000-07:00

Social Distortion and the TV Generation

"I am the slime in your video...."

Frank Zappa

Check out this Brian Fairrington cartoon a friend sent me. (Click on the Fairrington cartoon for 4/7.)

True enough cartoon in its simplistic Republican way, but I think far too many parents are ill equipped to cope these days. The information/consumer/demagogue culture we live in is beyond the navigating capabilities of too many of its painfully ill-educated and poorly informed voyagers.

A media saturated culture overwhelms everything in its path. We're experiencing the Johnstown flood of information - and like with that disaster, with this one there's little time to do anything other than try to keep from drowning in trivia. When one has to struggle to discern news from entertainment or political scheming, passing along the best information to one's offspring becomes an exercise in frustration....

Makes explaining/modeling/fomenting societal change almost impossible....

Perhaps this explains the lack of a coherent protest movement against Dubya and the Iraq debacle or, as I and many others with the Hollywood lingo like to call it, "Vietnam II: The Sequel.... "

Or maybe if we as a society spent less time worrying about when kids should be allowed to become pro athletes (affecting less than .5% of the population) and more time worrying about the competency of our citizenry to handle basic social responsibilities such as parenting (affecting about 80% of the population), we wouldn't be faced with any more baleful celebrations like that 5th anniversary of Columbine we had yesterday....

To return you to consideration of the cartoon for a few moments, anybody out there who doesn't think TV rots the mind?

If you do find redeeming value in television, let me persuade you otherwise - American Idol comes on tonight, I think. Try 10 minutes of that, then tell me TV isn't the opium of the masses....

Haven't you noticed that Discovery, TLC, and the other "learning channels" have all gone to programming that consists of interior "decorating," true crime "reporting," and celebrations of war of one kind or another?

It says a good deal about us as a society, a culture, and a country when some of the most socially responsive and insightful programming we can access in our 200 channel TV universe is on Comedy Central....

We are a nation of sheep being tended by wolves and jackals, and if we get slaughtered it's our own damned fault....

JB

2004-04-14T14:01:00.000-07:00

Trout Fishing in America I

"Is that a real poncho, or a Sears poncho...?"
Frank Zappa

Been really busy lately doing the professor thing. It has its moments, but overall, Dylan was right: "Twenty years of schoolin'/And they put you on the day shift...."

I'm currently reading my pal Bob's novel in manuscript,. It's named House Calls. I'm taking a long time to get through it, but I'm putting a lot of time into feedback. Bob's the kind of guy who appreciates that sort of stuff.

I'm also reading poetry my friend Sam is sending me. He's going through a creative period right now, and I'm doing what I can to offer him sensible, useful feedback. You should read his Lullaby Pit blog if you don't already do.

There's a lot I could write about today - I have some strong words about President Bush and his administration's refusal to accept responsibility for the Iraq debacle, but too many pundits, would be pundits, and blowhards from the left and right are blathering about that already, so let's let it lie.

Let's talk fishing.

I had a really good day fly fishing on a trout stream in NW North Carolina a couple of weeks ago. It was one of those days where everything comes together.

One of the reasons I like fly fishing is because it's metaphorical. It's philosophical. It's artistic. It encourages thinking without requiring it. Not much in life does all that satisfactorily.

When a trout takes your fly, it's the beginning of a relationship. As the guy said, there's a line with a life at either end.

I'd driven two hours to get there from my home in the suburbs of an NC city. The stream was fairly crowded, but I knew it well and decided to fish "in between" water - on stretches of water that most anglers would ignore because they seem less promising (and less obvious) than many others along that creek.

I put on the waders, strung up the rod and made a couple of casts to get the kinks out.

On the third I hooked a nice Brookie, about ten inches long. A few more casts, a few more trout, a mix of Rainbows, Brooks, and Browns, ranging in size from 5-15 inches. All from a section of the stream that 90% of the folks fishing would pass by because it's a little inconvenient to approach, a little difficult to cast along.

I caught 8 along that little appreciated stretch of the creek in all.

I moved up stream to another spot I know about. Again, this was a stretch of water a little inconvenient to get to with fishing a little harder than average.

I caught 9 more, this time with a couple of Browns well over 15 inches mixed into a lot of Brookies and Rainbows ranging from 7-11 inches.

Of course, I released all the trout I caught unharmed. You should, too.

I thought about fishing some more but the fishing I'd done had been a bit difficult and I was kind of tired and very satisfied, so I quit, packed up the gear and made my way back down the mountain.

All this in less than 3 hours. From two stretches of a stream most anglers would go right by.

There's a lesson here about the way we should live, I think.

It's like knowing the difference between a real poncho and a Sears poncho.

JB

2004-04-07T10:10:00.000-07:00

Reading, Not Writing

"I have my books/And my poetry to protect me...."
Paul Simon

I've been quiet lately. I'm not sure why. Maybe all writers do this. I know this one does.

Instead of writing (I find the term blogging too silly/sad/supernal for my comfort) I've been doing a lot of reading . I've been reading stories out of Richard Ford's edition of The Granta Book of the American Short Story, a novel by the Canadian author Alistair MacLeod, and my pal Bob Greene's new novel in manuscript.

I've also given my friend Sam Smith some feedback on a couple of poems and have been reading and answering emails from friends and colleagues.

This isn't counting the student papers I've read and commented upon.

Last night I read a bunch of anecdotes about the great American musician Frank Zappa. Here's a great quote from him:

"There is no hell. There is only France."

I don't believe FZ's assertion. I've been to France a couple of times and the food's great, the wine's better, and the women are ooh la la , especially in Paris.

This happens to me a lot. Maybe it happens to you, too. You read or hear something that at heart you don't believe, but you see the humor and truth in what's said, too. Almost all of us have had this experience.

Here's an example: "I love you."

See what I mean? You might not believe at heart what the person's saying, but you see the humor and truth in it....

I've wandered from my topic. I can hear Holden Caulfield's speech class yelling "Digression!" even now....

So I've been reading a lot lately and not writing (except for that necessary stuff to get through the professional day of a college professor).

That's not writing, folks. That's more akin to a quarterback calling signals....

Something else.

I haven't been entirely happy with this blog. It hasn't met my needs as a person or my urges as a writer.

So I'm changing it.

Sorry if you were hoping I'd stop. No such luck.

I'm feeling ready to write again. So I'm going to write and write somewhat differently than I've written here before.

It's going to be less distaff publc commenting and more writerly sharing.

I think we'll all like that better.

2004-03-17T10:20:00.000-08:00

March Madness

"...And so be true to your school...."
Brian Wilson

I have a couple of good friends with whom I talk hoops. One is a UNC fan. The other is a Wake Forest fan. I'm a Duke fan.

Yes, we're talking ACC hoops. I'm from North Carolina. There's a state law. Like for smoking....

Anyway, about this time of year, my Carolina friend goes berserk. (For those of you not in the linguistic know, "berserk" is an old Norse term meaning "I've lost all sense of perspective.")

Anyway, he just sent me a picture of a boy about 10 years old watching the MD-Duke ACC tournament final Sunday. He's a Duke fan and he's upset because Maryland has won the game. He's hanging on to his dad for comfort.

He evidently thought this was an amusing practical joke aimed at his otherwise sane friend who's a Blue Devil fan. I know he meant it in good fun. He's a dear friend.

I, on the other hand, was taken back to early 1963. I watched Duke lose in the national semi finals of the NCAA's to Loyola of Chicago.

Though we were watching on TV, like the kid in the picture, tears came and I stood by my dad's chair. He's the guy who made me a Duke fan. Like the dad in the picture, he comforted me as best he could even through his own pain.

The experience made me love my dad and Duke even more.

Even through the difficulties of adolescence in the late sixties and early seventies when we were far apart on every other issue of importance for parent and child, our love of the Blue Devils united us.

It does to this day.

Thanks for the picture, bro. And for the memory.

JB

2004-03-12T08:19:00.000-08:00

For What It's Worth

"Nobody's right, if everybody's wrong...."
Stephen Stills

I'm disenchanted with the academy these days.

I'm reminded of a story my first boss, a high school principal we'll call Mr. C for our purposes (a wise and thoughtful man whose guidance I miss), used to tell about a student who took a shotgun and blew a hole in his French book before he turned it in to his teacher at the end of the academic year.

"George grew disenchanted with French," Mr. C said in explanation of the student's action.

That's the sort of disenchanted I am with the academy right now. If the academy were a French book, I'd lean it against a tree, load up the old 20 gauge, and....

Let me tell you a bit about a friend of mine. He's in his 40's now. He got his undergrad degree from a prestigious institution in our home state, then did his master's degree at one the most prestigious universities in the country, then traversed this great nation and did his doctoral work at yet another of our country's most prestigious seats of higher learning. During this time he taught at the second of those schools, then at another highly prestigious school in the same state. He wrote his dissertation and received his advanced degree. He wrote and published articles. His students won awards for their writing and research.

He seemed primed for a distinguished career as a scholar and professor at one of our great universities.

Only one problem: he can't get a real professor's job. Despite his numerous merits as a person and as a scholar, he keeps coming up short in job interviews for tenure track positions - for real, salary paying, benefits providing, retirement building posts. He continues to subsist on post-doc fellowships and short term teaching assignments where he's treated like little better than a serf by already posted professors who couldn't hold his jock, to cite the old sports insult....

He is philosophical about this. As he explains, "'Lesser' schools see me as 'too qualified' and I'm not sufficiently, ah, 'diverse' for the top schools."

But he's also in pain: "But this wearies me. I should like some permanence, as well as retirement benefits and a real salary--that sort of small thing. Growing older without these things makes me feel older. Is it too much to hope, that one should grow rich in one's work, that one should enjoy something of the unhurried leisure of others in which to work?"

Here's part of my ranting reply:

"Something is badly, badly wrong when a man and scholar of your merits and achievements is left outside looking in by a system that seeks to pat itself on the back for being 'liberal' and 'diverse.' If they cut you, do you not bleed? If they lock you out of benefits and retirement, do you not end up homeless or managing a $#@#@ Denny's? (No, of course not, they feed you scraps like 1 or 2 year fellowships to keep you swimming in the wake of their great ship Academia in hopes you'll be brought aboard at some point.)

"Rare sons (and daughters) of bitches, indeed.

"It has to do with a generation of swine doing some of its members wrong so that it can feel that its pseudo liberal politically correct ego has 'coverage' with the other simpering tweedy Marxists at conferences.

"'To each according to need,' my ass. To each according to some preset notion of what a 'diverse' group should be as long as one's own bailiwick is well protected.

"And don't get me started on diversity in the academy. Forgive me, but I believe political correctness has done as much or more harm than all the right wing plotting and finagling and frothing at the mouth has done. If it's evil of Mel Gibson to blame the Jews in his film, The Passion..., why isn't it evil to blame you or me for the unfair treatment of people of color? Being a white male shouldn't be any more of a liability than being a woman of color. Isn't the idea and ideal fair and equitable treatment of everyone based on individual merits, not ethnic or cultural background? No, it isn't. The idea is to force 'diversity' (as patronizing as any other idea the 'radical chic' have had) down our throats, even at the cost of intellectual quality. And that is as unpalatable, at least to me, as forcing creationism down our throats in the name of religious freedom."

My friend remains philosophical, if disenchanted: "My own sense of 'diversity' is that its premise, 'multiculturalism,' vitiates its political content. If schools were serious about diversity then they would actually hire people whose political anger makes real diversity something more than a
comfortable affirmation of 'difference.'"

Hear, hear. A little righteous political anger from the academy over something besides pay raises for themselves might be a very good thing these days. We wouldn't seem quite so intellectually and spiritually bankrupt.

My feeling is that if schools were looking to be the best schools they could be, they'd be clamoring to hire my friend to help themselves achieve that goal....

None of this ranting of mine fixes the problem. None of it helps my friend.

But at least it lets the academy know that I'm disenchanted.

Disenchanted like old George referenced above...and I'm oiling up the verbal 20 gauge.....

2004-03-05T13:26:00.000-08:00

Bad English

"It's only words/And words are all I have...."
Barry, Robin, and Maurice Gibb

See the following article from the New York Times.

(Many thanks to my buddy Sam from The Lullaby Pit for this item.)

I make my living with words.

I've written this novel and this novel, I'm at work on two more, and have yet another in notes and a few sketches....

I direct the writing program at a large state university. I do workshops (including one that starts Monday) to teach faculty members how to use writing in their classes both to help students learn more and learn how to write more effectively in their professions. I even advise faculty occasionally and offer them assistance with their writing.

I write this blog just so I can write with regularity and keep my own writing sharp.

Now in all this writing that I do and that I talk with others about doing, I emphasize one thing: revision. That means looking again at what one has written and making any revisions (additions, deletions, changes, or reorganization) and edits (grammar, spelling, punctuation, or format) to the text to make sure that what one has written communicates clearly and correctly what one means.

Now we all know about the law.

The law is complex and is based on precedent and deals in, far too often for the general welfare, the obtuse, the ambiguous, the purposely obfuscated.

Granted.

But when the law seeks to move beyond these already enigmatic, problematic, phlegmatic areas into the illiterate, I think we've got to draw a line.

I think lawyers should have to pay fines for bad writing.

Why? Lawyers live by words, just as I do. But unlike me, the words lawyers create can cause all kinds of mischief if not properly policed.

My suggestion is that the Department of Justice begin looking at lawyers' bad writing. I think they'd be protecting us all more if they did so.

2004-03-05T12:19:00.000-08:00

Weird Science

"Science!"
Thomas Dolby's old professor....

See the following article from the Washington Post.

Hope I get this right. If I don't, my friend Steve will set me straight.

He's a scientist.

He's the real thing. He has a lab and everything. He works for our government. He does this phenomenal, brilliant cancer research that is helping and will help save lives.

Steve thinks that the kind of research that could be done using, say, stem cells from embryos could speed up cures for cancer and other horrible diseases that rob us of friends and loved ones would be well worth the use of those cells from embryos which couldn't survive anyway.

Steve also thinks that the stuff they taught him when he got all those letters after his name that helped him get his own lab and be the terrific scientist he is today, doing research that saves lives, etc., is correct. That's the stuff like, oh, evolution....

Steve doesn't think people should play politics with science. He thinks playing politics with the careful, reasoned methods of studying and understanding how the world, organisms, and diseases work that scientists have been struggling to develop in the last 500 years (facing menaces to their work like the Inquisition, witch burnings, alchemists, the Scopes Monkey Trial, Nazi pseudo-science as murder rationale, the co-opting of pure science by the American pharmeceutical business of the last 25 years) or so is unethical.

He thinks the Bush administration's decision to use politics to prevent stem cell research which could save lives even faster than the research he does is unethical.

I think he's right.

2004-02-26T05:30:00.000-08:00

Literary Minutiae at the Present Time

"I won't quote you no Dickens, Shelley, or Keats/Cos it's all been said before...."
Rod Stewart

Maybe it goes back to Mozart.

There’s a famous anecdote about Mozart and a musical patron. Mozart was working on, I think, an opera, and the patron, who’d come in to listen to rehearsals, made a comment to the effect that he thought one musical passage had “too many notes.” Mozart, not one to suffer fools or critics easily, replied tartly, “It has exactly as many notes as it needs.”

Of course he lost the patron and continued his descent into poverty, despair, and early death. All we got in return was the Requiem.

The image of the tortured artist coughing life away while writing (or composing or painting or whatever) is one we cherish. It comes to us directly from the Romantic period and it certainly is romantic both in style and substance. A good number of relatively sane people (one must qualify when talking about artists, mustn’t one?) have destroyed themselves (and often their talent) trying to live up to that image. In our post-postmodern world rock stars have appropriated it successfully. The reverence shown to Jim Morrison or Kurt Cobain shows that the model still works.

Suffering produces great art, right?

Yeah…. Well….

Support and encouragement do their share, too. Some of our great artists worked under patronage and lived to ripe old ages and produced their own pretty well esteemed stuff. To return to music examples, one can easily point to Haydn or Bach, both of whom enjoyed long, comfortable patronage relationships and gave us stuff like, well, The Brandenburg Concertos or The “Surprise” symphony. And I seem to remember that Shakespeare turned out a few decent lines while enjoying the patronage of the Earl of Southampton or King James I.

But we’re a long way from the world of noble patrons, and besides, our democratic impulses wouldn’t allow us to consider having a wealthy patron to support our writing (or composing or painting). We’re free, independent artists acting out that Shelley-an Romantic ideal of writers as “unacknowledged legislators of the world.” We answer to no one but our muses.

Yeah…. Right….

Most of the writers who pop up in literary magazines come out of university based creative writing programs. Not only do such writers receive training and advice from those programs, often they are sheltered and nurtured by them and allowed to “work” through fellowships and assistantships that leave ample time for writing – if the writers are disciplined enough to write. The fellowships and assistantships also often provide MFA (or doctoral students) with valuable teaching or research experience that helps them find other posts in the academy where they continue to enjoy the patronage of the university system.

I came out of one of these programs myself. And I wonder what good it’s done me.

Jason Sanford’s essay on minutiae in literature in a recent issue of storySouth pushed some buttons for me. It was a wide-ranging essay, one that covered everything from major scientific discoveries to workshop admonitions for budding writers. In good postmodern fashion it mimicked hyper-mediated discourse in that it leapt from topic to topic, everything connected by a Shandy-esque thread related to that idea of the misheard remark that triggered the essay in the first place, the notion that libraries were being filled by minutiae. Jason even went so far as to suggest that perhaps, like Shandy, it was all just a “cock and a bull.”

Not quite.

Minutiae pervade the literary world. They grow out of two sources. One source is creative writing programs. The other is the university environment itself - particularly English departments.

Creative writing programs are dominated, despite some attempts at reform at the undergraduate level, by the workshop format. The idea is to create a community of writers, a support group that will foster good writing and offer technical, professional, and emotional support.

That’s not necessarily what writers get.

Almost anyone who’s been through a CW program will tell war stories about workshops that became like shark tanks at feeding time. When it is one’s turn to present a piece to the group, one sits horrified waiting for one of the workshop members to lead the attack, to get the blood into the water so that the group rending to pieces of one’s work can begin. Usually comments fall into one of three categories: useful, not useful, and patently destructive. What can happen with too many workshops is that the third category of comment becomes dominant. With writers gifted enough to get admitted to MFA or doctoral CW programs, often the writing problems are minor, more related to taste than technique. And workshop sharks attack these taste differences viciously. Instead of writers supporting each other, the focus seems to be on succeeding by shredding the work of colleagues.

One result of this? Students tend to write pieces that “please the workshop.”

Stuff that pleases the workshop tends to be about as minutely focused as writing can get.

I got your minutiae right here, pal.

The other result of all this - lots of promising writers quit writing fiction or poetry because they buy into the idea that if the workshop doesn’t like it, it must not be any good. Other writers continue, but do so trying to write within the narrow parameters of workshop expectations. If the workshop favors “Iowa” form short stories, they try to write those. If the workshop favors “language” poetry, they try to write that. Later they write strangled work.

Minutiae.

Those writers who quit often stay in the academy and become English professors. They focus on writing criticism that, these days especially, has little or nothing to do with literature - and less to do with readers. They write articles read by few and books read by fewer. And occasionally they long for the days when they wrote for the joy of discovering life through language.

They become slaves to a different sort of minutiae.

And when one asks them why they’ve quit writing in the right circumstance (over a glass of wine at an academic conference, say), one almost always gets the same answer: “What’s the difference? So few read the stuff….”

And because these talented people have given up, the world of literature is smaller.

And that’s the worst minutiae in literature of all.

2004-02-26T04:30:00.000-08:00

Stuck Inside a Cloud
George Harrison

"You say it's your birthday?"
(Lennon/McCartney)

I don't feel like writing this.

I don't feel like doing a lot of stuff these days.

It's not a good time in America.

We have a cocky, spoiled, Napoleonic President who cares about war more than people, about money more than people, about some narrowly defined racist, sexist, Puritanical version of God more than people.

We have corporate bastards who rob their companies blind and leave the people who helped make those companies successful holding worthless stock that they were counting on to help educate kids, live in dignity in retirement, care for aging parents. And these crooks seem to get little or no punishment for their behavior.

We have a culture that elevates image over substance, personal ambition over statesmanship, cliques over communities, posturing over art, and celebrity over every damned thing.

It's hard to believe in anything or anyone.

I have things I believe in. Here are a few of the most important in no particular order:

1.I believe that love can save the world.

2.I believe that the Beatles were the band – no use trying to argue with me over whether they were the best band, or the greatest band, or any other bullshit. I believe they were the band. If you don't see it that way, go your way in peace and love.

3.I believe that fly fishing is a balm to the human soul and proof that God wants me to be happy.

This piece is not supposed to be about any of this. It's about a birthday. It's about
George's birthday.

Yeah, it's February. And George's birthday is this month.

I'm thinking of February 25.

Wait a minute, you're saying. Washington's birthday is February 22. Or was until Federal bureaucrats conned us into thinking that some indeterminate date between the 12th (Lincoln's b'day) and the 22nd would serve us all better. President's Day, my ass.

President's Day only serves all the jerks who ski. Yes, I ski.

The 25th of February 2004 would be George Harrison's birthday.

He'd be 61 years old.

George Harrison was a man of peace. George believed love could save the world.

George is gone. He's been gone since November 2001. I miss him.

No, I don't know if the better half of the Beatles is gone. I go back and forth on that kind of
stuff. It's past arguing, really.

And in these times, these bad, confused, angry, sad times, George's messages of love, hope, solace, courage, tolerance, and acceptance offer a comfort and reassurance that I, for one, sorely need.

I Dig Love.

Isn't it a Pity?

What is Life?

Beware of Darkness.

Hear Me, Lord.

Awaiting on You All.

All Things Must Pass.

Within You, Without You

Give Me Love (Give Me Peace on Earth)

Those are song titles, boys and girls. Song titles as messages. Song titles as truth.

You know, I was wrong earlier.

George isn't gone

And you know this, if you know his work.

"Life goes on within you and without you...."

Let's celebrate George.

(revised post from lullabypit.com's Rocklog - thanks, Sam)

2004-02-18T07:59:00.001-08:00

"Nothing but the dead and dying back in my little town..."
Paul Simon

Here's an important article my good buddy Steve, who's from my home town, sent me.

I look at what's happened to my home town of Eden, NC, and I want to cry. Sure, it was a hick town when I grew up there, but it was a nice place with local businesses run by people your parents knew and in whom you could trust. You could go to Eggleston Tires to retread your car, to the Town Squire if you needed a nice suit, to Chandler's Drugs to get your prescription filled, to Edwards' Grocery Store for food...and the folks there knew you - and your parents - and your grandparents....

It was, for all intents and purposes, a kind of Mayberry.

Now it's owned by Wal-Mart and whatever other chains choose to stick up cookie cutter boxes on Hwy. 14, the main road OUT of town. Downtown's dead, the textile manufacturing that supported the town has all fled offshore for $1 a week labor.

The only kids who stuck around after high school graduation (or returned after college) have a look of either resignation or desperation in their eyes that makes one back away from them during the occasional chat one has at the "mall" (I use the term advisedly - as I'm not sure where the demarcation line between 'mall' and 'failed business venture' lies - but I'm pretty sure that when as many stores stand empty as occupied that the endeavor stands at the brink of the latter) during visits home....

What bothers me most is that in buying into the nonsense our federal government broadcasts about "dangers" to us that the citizenry of Eden, NC, and the rest of our country's declining small towns worry about terrorists bombing them/gassing them /flying planes into local landmarks (what, they're gonna attack the DeMoLay building or St. Luke's church?) they're allowing themselves to be connived about their real enemies.

Corporate interests catered to by politicians they keep in their pockets through lobbyists and contributions effectively impoverish them and will eventually kill them (and their home towns) for the enrichment of - the Waltons of Bentonville AR? So I go home to Eden and watch McDonald's employees serve meals to Wal-Mart employees who sell groceries and clothes to McDonald's employees...and I grieve for a town where people had dignity and jobs they took some pride in and stability and a sense of purpose beyond surviving week to week.

This isn't just happening in Eden, of course, though like any good Southern boy from a small town in crisis I feel the most pain for those folks. This is happening all over America, as the writer of the article I suggested above points out.

Too bad I'm not a real religious guy. Maybe I could find some comfort in that. Or in the irony a writer like Tolstoy proffers in "How Much Land Does a Man Need?". Those who grab for too much will suffer the wages of their sin of greed....

But it doesn't seem to be playing out that way. The rich get richer and poor get - Wal-Mart....

2004-02-10T07:30:00.000-08:00

"Gimme Some Truth...."
- John Lennon

See the following article from yesterday's Washington Post.

If Bush were honest enough to admit that he joined the Guard to avoid the Vietnam war, as the Post writer did, I'd be willing to let it go. If he were brave enough to admit he hated the Vietnam War as most of our generation did, I'd let it go. But he claims to have been then and to be now a hawk. And if I hear one more neocon apologist say "9/11 changed everything" to excuse Bush and all the other chicken hawks who dodged Vietnam through one means or another and now feel smug and self-righteous about sending poor kids off to die for "democracy" (read world's second largest supply of oil reserves), I'm gonna spew chunks in his general direction.

9/11 made the US part of the global debate on what kind of world we want - one run by fanatics driven by religious mania and closed minded, murderous hatred of anyone unlike them or one of rational, thoughtful acceptance or rejection of differences in others based on principles like fairness and freedom to pursue personal happiness if not at the expense of others. It should not be an excuse to pursue personal or financial interests as the Iraq war seems to be.

I protested the bogus Vietnam war and avoided the draft. I have encouraged my college aged sons to do the same with this bogus war. If they need help to get to Canada, I'll help. I'm damned if I'll let them be sent to war by a liar who used the Guard to avoid military duty in Vietnam but wants every mother's son to go die for him in Iraq to enrich Halliburton and other energy companies. See the above "not at the expense of others" thing....

Not everything should be about money.

Most especially war....

Okay, you can stop laughing now....

If politicians want to tell the truth, I'll listen to them. If they lie, as Bush has about his real reasons for joining the Guard then and for invading Iraq now, they can kiss my liberal, latte drinking, Utne Reader subscribing, XM radio listening ass if they think I'll excuse their duplicity....

2004-02-09T12:19:00.000-08:00

"I Can't Explain..."
- Pete Townshend

It's February 9, 2004.

Everyone from Rolling Stone Magazine (excuse me while I spit on the ground) to NPR (God save us all from intellectuals) has proclaimed this a sacred day.

On this date in 1964, the Beatles appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show. And changed the world, etc.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

I can't explain what that night, and the subsequent appearances the Fabs made the next two weeks, and listening to "I Want to Hold Your Hand/I Saw Her Standing There" 37 times in a row (each side of the 45, my children, each side) and then getting "She Loves You/I'll Get You" on the Swan label and doing what I did with the first record, then getting "Twist and Shout/There's a Place" on Tollie and hearing the lads soar off into the infinite at the end of the "There's a Place" EVERY SINGLE TIME mean to me....

I just can't.

As Sebastian said, "It's like trying to tell a stranger 'bout rock & roll...."

But I want to thank them.

And what I want to know is, how do you like your moptops, Mr. History...?

2004-02-06T10:04:00.001-08:00

"Oh Captain, My Captain..."

Captain Kangaroo was everybody's favorite show.

Mostly True Story:

The Captain used to have characters on his show including one called the
Watermelon Man. This character came out in a big coat and began by
taking out of his coat and handing Mr Green Jeans and whomever else was
a guest apples, peaches, pears, etc. This led to other, larger fruit
and ultimately to watermelons being pulled out of his coat. Eventually
all the fruit was loaded into a wagon that also came out of his coat.
All this was accompanied by the WM calling out "Woooooow" in a kind of
yodel/ hog call.

Back in the misty days of middle earth rock, our rhythm guitarist,
Mike, used to occasionally wear onstage one of those infantry trenchcoats. One night as we started onto the stage for a show he loaded it with beer and stuff and, when he got out on stage, began handing out the beer and goodies to audience members, all the time imitating the WM's "woooow" as he did so.

It got to be such a part of the act at one point that people would yell for the Watermelon Man. We kept talking about writing to the Captain to tell him about Mike, but we never did.

I haven't felt sorry that we didn't for a long time, but I do today.

We loved you, Captain.