This blog is a collection of letters and surveys. The letters are written to family and friends, authors and politicians, those living and those long dead. Others, anyone really, may answer or comment.
I must apologize for my absence. I have been busy and not writing too much, although, I hope to be writing to Doris Lessing and Langston Hughes real soon. Plus, I may have another note for Zora Neale Hurston, too. Oh, more good news! I hope to have a ghost writer do a piece for you all soon. I might write a postscript because it is such an exciting subject. I won't say that it has anything to do with Netts Country Store and Deli, but it does!!!! Then there is a letter that simply must be written to Mary Lee Bendolph that relates to the quilts of Gee's Bend. Oh, and I have so much to tell Barack in prep for the convention.
So, you see that the postal pack of the carrier from Loudon, TN will be filled during the late summer. But for now, I thought I would post a link to the results of my busyness, just to let you know I haven't wasted all of this hot summer on horseback.
This is the first draft of a web site I have been working on for ACSI Europe. It was a little tricky since it is a redundant site serving 8 language groups. And I, unfortunately, only know one of them. I was working on issues of navigation and encoding. Oh dear, you just cannot know. The nav choice was an exciting one for me though. The flash file is driven by an XML file, making it very versatile. You code warriors will understand my thrill. Oh, and yes, let me know if you find any broken links.
"The walls between old allies on either side of the Atlantic cannot stand. The walls between the countries with the most and those with the least cannot stand. The walls between races and tribes, natives and immigrants, Christian and Muslim and Jew cannot stand. These now are the walls we must tear down." SENATOR BARACK OBAMA, speaking in Berlin.
Presidents are great ones for making speeches in Berlin. You probably don't remember John F. Kennedy, do you? He had such a smart wife. She knew languages and people. But she was on the quiet side. Upper crust. Back then, if a woman used a family name as a middle name they were upper crust. Later on, they were feminists. But JFK made a great speech in Berlin one time. "Ich bin ein Berliner," he said.
Kennedy is remembered for this line. It was actually a gaff of sorts. "All free men, wherever they may live, are citizens of Berlin, and, therefore, as a free man, I take pride in the words "Ich bin ein Berliner!" Apparently after the show, Jacqueline corrected Jack's grammar, telling him that he had actually told the crowd, "I am a jelly donut." The crowd was forgiving and the speech went off famously.
Then there was the speech that Ronald Reagan made. That was significant.
When I was a little girl, the great communist horror was symbolized by a great wall in Berlin that symbolized oppression and lack of free speech, movement, and commerce.
"Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate. Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall," said Reagan in 1987. And within a short while really, gates were opened and the wall came down. People took pieces of that wall and gave them as souvenirs.
Even Bill Clinton made a speech in Berlin, where he tried his hand at simple German. "Berlin ist frei" ("Berlin is free"), he said, in July of 1994.
So you have added your voice to a great crowd of witnesses to the importance of . . . what? Our relationship to Germany? Maybe. Or maybe to just to the power of language and the fine way words can go together. I'm glad your voice resonates so well.
I was listening to a song by Alison Krauss yesterday. I do enjoy her music. Is it bluegrass, folk, some kind of country? Whatever it is, I like it. She sang a ballad entitled Simple Love. Click that link to see the full lyrics.
But here is the gist of it, she describes her grandfather and his love for his family and wishes:
I want a simple love like that,
Always giving never asking back.
When I'm in my final hour looking back
I hope I had a simple love like that.
That is a great lyric.
But, as I think about it, is that what I believe about love? Yes and no. I believe that lyric describes the beauty of a wonderful friendship. Friendship can and should be pretty openhanded, not asking too much. A nice friendship can operate uncommittedly, without demands. In a friendship, you can love, and give, and never ask back. In a friendship, if one person gives and the other does not, well, that's ok. The giving friend can either continue giving or stop. And that's ok. The definitions are loose. The love described in this song, is lovely. I envision a hand reaching out unclasped and another hand lying on top, supported but ungrasped. And if those two hands stay together for a long time. That is beautiful. And when I reach my final hour, I do hope that I can say, I've had some simple loves like that.
But let's talk about love in family and marriage. Does this lyric describe that kind of love in a healthy way? I have to say no. Marriage to me is a commitment to more than a simple love.
It is a promise of an extremely complicated and growing kind of love, not always asking, but sometimes asking, not always giving back, but as much as possible, giving back. The picture I have in my mind is of two hands grasping, clutching, holding on for dear life. Not a light touch, or a quick high five, but a desperate measure that withstands the wrenches and pulls of a mighty difficult tempest of a world.
When I was deciding to marry, one of the things that I considered was whether I could fight with that person, knock down, drag out, and come out the other side still holding on for dear life. Plus I wanted a person to whom I could go and say, "I need," with the confidence that he would say, "I care." And, I wanted to become a person to whom my spouse could come at the worst of times and say, "Help!" and I would be there to help. It isn't completely selfless, like Krauss would have us believe her grandfather was, but, I think it makes for a marriage that is a partnership.
My husband, (Dad to you) and I have endured some difficult times--illness, stress, financial crisis, junk--and at those times, a simple love did not get us through, but a complicated one did, one that was codependent and exhaustive, a love that asked and gave back, that gave and asked back.
I wish you that kind of love and a long life of giving, and taking.
I have discovered your work (imagine) after all these years. "Why," I thought, "had I never heard of you?" Then, I realized, that it was a matter of timing.
Alice Walker rediscovered you in 1975, the very year I left educational institutions behind and cloistered myself in a world of non-fiction and children's books, laundry and camping trips, churches and crock pots, Chinese culture (a blog topic for another day) and an occasional opera.
So Zora Hurston, author of Mules and Men, Their Eyes Were Watching God and, Seraph of the Suwanee was for me unknown until the renowned scholar Brannon Costello, author of Plantation Airs, pointed you out to me. At first, your work seemed a curiosity, for I started with Mules and Men. Almost quaint. I think I was surprised. As I read about your research I was reminded of some work I had done once in a small library operated in the basement of the Smoky Mountains tourist center. There, I sat sifting through old documents looking for curiosities of the region to supplement a project I was doing for a technology company.
I found stories written by "oldtimers," as they were called; I met people who had lived in the park area before they were forced to move out by FDR; I joined in some shaped note sings and generally fell in love with a very distinct cultural experience.
Your work carries that same beautiful colloquial feel, but it is different too. It liberally brandishes dialects and expressions, stories and myths, but I say the work is almost quaint because of my own quaint ignorance. It is not quaint, I think. It is instead, not written for me, not contingent upon me as a reader at all. It is not trying to charm me with its vernacular approach, but is simply exposing me to it. Me, an outsider, me, the stranger, me, odd man out.
Is that the power of your books resurrected in 1975 to a new life beyond the grave of the 50's and 60's? Is the immensity of your influence as a writer to been seen not in the remarkable anthropological assiduity of your work, but in the acceptance of the full human dialogue represented in the architecture of this language form. And you, Zora, refused to allow that dialogue to go unrecorded.
You said in your autobiography, "Research is formalized curiousity. It is poking and prying with a purpose. It is a seeking that he who wishes may know the cosmic secrets of the world and they that dwell therein."
Woman 1: "Ooh! Let me show you. Let me show you our picture. This was me and my husband when we were first married." Woman 2: "I always slept on one side, left room for my husband." Woman 1: "And that's me when we were sixteen" Woman 2: "But this, this, this, this is not the case. I still do it. I still lay on the half of the bed. (pause) We used to sneak in. . . "
Dear Barack Obama,
I've laid on my side of the bed almost longer than you have lived, so I want to tell you a little about loving and about growing up and what is important. And what it takes to get beyond 16. Too many people keep going back to 16, back to when we didn't know up from down or yes from no. But we do so need more real adults around here.
Back a ways, when I was 16, life and sex and marriage had a little different taste. Not that the sex drive has changed all that much. (Did you know that even old women can still pant long after their children think that our sexual pleasures should be relegated to long term memory?) But the flavor of sex back then was tinged with a certain reality. The reality was that sex often led to procreation. That procreation was good and anticipated by married couples. When my husband moved over into my side of the bed, we had fun and we had children.
But there was a dark side. Most of culture, religious and non-religious, painted that darkness upon couples, and, particularly, women who tasted sex and then pregnancy before they tasted a wedding cake. One of my first jobs was at a home for girls, "predelinquent girls" they were called. They carried with them a tang of the outcast, each wearing some style of scarlet letter affixed to their lives. People helped them, but not without attaching to these beautiful, young Eves a stigma, a curse.
The best thing that resulted from the 1973 Supreme Court decision, Roe v. Wade, was that some people finally were forced to reassess their view of women who carried children to birth, married or not. These women, we came to see, were neither delinquent nor cursed, but were indeed responsibly mature and blessed. That has been the shining beauty of Roe v. Wade. People think of Roe v. Wade as the decision that opened the doors to abortion. It did that. But I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about a cultural shift that has changed life for those women and girls who are not married but are pregnant and choose to give their babies birth.
I've raised three girls to womanhood. Any mother thinks, at some point, what words would I say, were my daughter (or son) to come to me and say, "I'm not married, but I'm going to have a child"? I decided what my response would be, were I ever to need one. My answer is, "A child is always good. Let us rejoice in this life. How wonderful!"
Last March, in answer to a question about this subject, you said, "Look, I got two daughters — 9 years old and 6 years old, I am going to teach them first about values and morals, but if they make a mistake, I don’t want them punished with a baby." Of course I don't agree with everything you say politically. But this isn't politics, so I'm going to give you some grandma type advice. If your daughters ever come to you and talk about a baby that is their own, DON'T call it a mistake. Don't curse that child. A life, young and new, whether mother or baby, is not delinquent because of a pregnancy. Call it beautiful. Call it blessed. Call it theirs. Call it yours. Call it love.
And punished? I think that there is a lie being told to a whole generation of potential parents. They are being told by everyone from Jerry Seinfeld to you, Barack Obama, that children are a punishment. This is a lie. I have never experienced any joy in life that even remotely compares to the joy of holding my babies. You know that I'm speaking the truth, because you have Malia and Sasha. Ooh, I'm not trying to be slobbery. I'm just reminding you, and a whole generation, that life and meaning is not found in self-indulgence and purposeless pleasuring. It is, however, found in the kind of responsible decisions and sacrifice that result in strong families and healthy children, like mine and like yours. It's no mistake and it is not punishment.
Sure, not everyone will become a parent, but the truth of the matter is, no one is ready to do it until they do it, and it is in this type of mature embracing of responsible living that brings an individual to adulthood. Fully responsible adults arise from the ranks of those who embrace their lives, their own and their children, not because they are picture perfect but because they are theirs, and because they savor the goodness that comes with it all.
I have been thinking about our conversation regarding opera. I understand that on the first listen an opera can be disconcerting and sometimes less than viscerally enjoyable. However, I wanted to explain why I love it so, and even if you don't become a fan, I know you will understand the basics of the attraction.
Opera, for me is more than a music genre. It doesn't exist, in my mind, as a contrast to Rock, Blues, Jazz, or Country (some of which I like). It exists, instead, as a higher form of art, and one that stands on a special plane because it combines so many things. Opera incorporates poetry and literature in the libretto, the highest form of vocal music, orchestral music, drama, as well as all the artistic accoutrements of extensive stage production with lighting, costuming, sets, even special effects.
As I listen to opera, I experience the same kind of heart-pounding awefilled response that one gets when reading a climactic line in a poem. The thing is, you get that, over and over, first through the libretto, then through a musical motif, then through fine acting, then through the profundity of the set design. And as with all good art, the more you see a particular opera, the better it gets. You begin to anticipate moments, saying in your mind, "How will this soprano treat the mad aria in I Puritani," or "Will they use the full dramatic effect of the orchestral interlude in the scene where Tosca murders Scarpia?"
Opera does take work to be able to enjoy it fully. Before I listen to an opera for the first time, I study a synopsis of the plot line. If I can, I find one with the musical motifs so I can play them on my piano and begin to familiarize myself with the sounds. After I have heard an opera several times, sometimes I get hold of a libretto to read the lyrics.
I have to say, our culture and educational system has done too little to train the ears of the general public for the appreciation of the higher forms of music in general and opera in particular. When I attend the opera here in Knoxville, I am always stunned that it is an event for the white hairs. I look around the still-crowded audience and see that it is composed of people my age or older, with a scattering of students. "My," I say to myself, "what they are missing." The Metropolitan Opera from NYC, in the last couple of years has been doing a great thing broadcasting a limited (and very fine) venue to high definition theaters. I think, actually, it may be rescuing opera for the next generation.
I was just a little younger than you when I first began listening to, and then, enjoying opera. What did I see first? Hm.m.m, I can't recall. I suppose I don't remember the early ones so much because it was work, and not so enjoyable. I do remember a Tosca (by Giaccomo Puccini) at the Met after I was first married, probably in 1976. The soprano wasn't vocally at the top of her career. But I remember the drama as she placed candles, first at Scarpia's left shoulder, then at his right shoulder, rose, turned to face the audience with a confessional stare, and then fled the stage. The enormous audience was silent, speechless, and then erupted with applause, and bravos, hoots, and flowers. A strange man a few seats from us, waved his beret and shouted, "She's the only Tosca, she's the only Tosca." Those moments become unforgettable.
And I remember my first Peter Grimes. That's an opera by Benjamin Britten. The set was stark. The thing I remember most was a fishing boat in the the center of the stage.
That set was designed to communicate the existential loneliness of Grimes. More recently I saw a Grimes setting that was designed to emphasize a totally different aspect of the opera. The main feature of the set was a wall of buildings symbolizing the town and the barriers it had built in relation to Grimes, who could never gain access to the heart of the community.
My family used to watch Met Broadcasts on television. We would listen for the credits at the end to hear the regular reference to the man who handled the lighting for years, Gil Wechsler. I don't know what made us diehard Gil Wechsler fans, but we were. Excellence in the details of such things as lighting, is the kind of thing that takes a fine opera performance and turns it into a work of art.
So, that is a little bit of "Why Opera?" I could go on and on. But I will leave it at that for now, hoping, a little bit, that you will give it another try. (I think I'd recommend Puccini---Tosca, La Boheme, or Turandot.)
In the comments section I will add some links to good examples of some of the other things I like about opera.
When I was young, gasoline cost $.27. We got into motor cars and toured. We thought that a super highway was four lanes wide (Wow!) and really was "Super!" The turnpike was made of concrete and when you drove along it, the lullabye of the tires went ka-thunk, ka-thunk. Now, it seems that gasoline prices are so high, that anytime I want to go somewhere, with Lou or with anyone, I think, I should walk, that's all. But I don't need to go anywhere, because I have the internet. And, it takes me everywhere, with not so much as a ka-thunk. . . just the gentle click of the keys. See?
The click of the keys to go somewhere is my point, not the price of gas. For the internet is our super highway. And it is faster, wider, longer, and more critical than the Dwight D. Eisenhower National System of Interstate and Defense Highways. When I was younger, and this sweet young girl was helping me learn how to use a computer, she said, "Look, Mrs. D., it's like a system of highways, and the url is the address you are headed for." She was a nice young girl with red hair. She told me she didn't want to have children. But finally she did. And isn't she happy now! I told her, but she didn't believe me. But she told me about computers, and I am so happy.
Today, the internet is as important as highways, do you see? So that is why you are going to have to make the way the country handles the internet one of the things to add to the list of things you have to change. Even Vint Cerf says so, and he helped Al Gore make the internet, they say.
Anyhow, you need to look into this, because highways are important, and keeping them running right has always been something the government does. There isn't any doubt, in my mind that our newest system of transportation needs to run smoothly, and without too many ka-thunk ka-thunks.
So far I’ve snagged a few good ones, Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls, a nice volume of The Ya-Ya Sisterhood to send to one of my best friends of all time, Camus’ The Stranger, and even a copy of Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God. But today, I smiled broadly when, on the Religious Books shelf I saw your book, slanted and gleaming between, Gigi, a bio about Billy Graham’s daughter, Gigi Graham Tchividjian (Say it three times fast!), and a pock-marked copy of something by Harold Kushner about overcoming disappointments.
It was Jujitsu for Christ. Though it, no doubt, has 200,000 leafs to its credit, this ’86 Penguin paperback was waxed and polished and in near mint condition, with the license plate, ISBN 0 14 01.0374 0.
At any rate, I, as a person born in January with snow boots on, was drawn to the cover of this particular model of Jujitsu that boasted a review from the revered New York Times that promised,
“Anyone who does not like this novel is probably a Brie-chewing Yankee sapsucker who wouldn’t know a lynch mob from a hootenanny.”
But Jack, I love Brie! And hootenanny? By the way another NY Times review, not featured on the cover has said:
"JUJITSU FOR CHRIST, by Jack Butler. This first novel is named after a fictitious studio opened in 1961 by a white martial arts instructor to teach physical and spiritual discipline to blacks in Jackson, Miss. In 1986, Martin Kirby said here that the book is 'an antiracist satire, served up with a lot of sex and some Swiftian scatology.'"
What does Swiftian scatology mean, really?
But, I do have to say, that your book adds to my understanding of the Southern landscape of a time when I was growing up in the Northern landscape and saw certain action only on newsreels, not believing, quite, that what I saw, was happening. I guess everyone back then was off kilter. The times, they, were a changing, and no one likes that.
Well, at any rate, you told me you were working on a new novel, set in other parts of the globe. I'll look forward to going there when it's ready for visitors.
"Two eggs over easy, with bacon and home fries," Dad said. And you delivered, probably for fifty years. Fifty years of eggs is a lot of eggs. Plus, if you broke an egg, you served that one free along with a new perfect one, for you knew my father's passion for the yolk and albumin of a chicken. Hear tell, your cooking was just right, heavy on the portions and served with humor that was always in good taste.
And the ambiance! I love the picture on your website of the Altoona, PA, political machine perched at your counter. Vaul Rouzer, police chief. I like saying that name and imagining him. "All right, you dirty rats, it's time to face the music." But. . . in real life, if he was related to Johnny Rouzer from Fairview Elementary school, who now lives with his wife, mother-in-law, and cats, up off the road to Gallitzen, he was probably a pretty tame dude. Johnny was always nice and if, due to roundness, didn't set records at playground "4 square," he was a major player when it came time for "Spelling Bee."
But enough about the Rouzers.
I didn't personally sit, very often, on the spinning stools in front of the counter at Tom and Joes. It would have been wrong for me to invade that territory. It was, kind of, a private lair for my father who demanded and continues to demand little in this world. Just a few eggs and the peace to eat each bite, dipping white toast with butter in the succulent yellow slop on the plate. But I'm sure it was more than the eggs and the portions that drew him to your place and stools.
Each town has one. These are not the ones that are written about in the fashionable slick glossies. But the patrons are loyal and the community is hubafied by them.
My dad spent many a breakfast or lunch hour at Tom and Joes. I'm sure he will continue to show up every Tuesday morning for the
SPECIAL SPECIAL Two Eggs, Bacon, Homefries, and Toast......$4.85 (Ham or Sausage instead of Bacon...No Charge)
(Over easy on the eggs and try to break one.) But he will miss you, George Batrus, and the spice your presence added to his life.
Thanks for the recommendation regarding this amazing bit of street art, described as: an ambiguous animation painted on public walls. Made in Buenos Aires and in Baden (Fantoche--International Film Festival).
"I would give honestly and without regret, one hundred dollars for that picture." —Simon and Garfunkel 101.
I was leafing through old pictures the other day. From World War II. That wasn't the war to end all wars. We knew better by then. But, a few years ago, we got the idea that we ought to give war a go once more. Maybe this time, we could use war to “get ‘er done.”
I did a little anti-war protesting, before Congress took it's vote, but in the end, off the troops went. I remember saying to a friend of mine, another old peacenik, “I hope they are right, because I hate to demonstrate against a war, when our troops are risking their lives.” My Congressman, Jimmy Duncan, voted against going to war in Iraq. He's a Republican. I wrote a letter to him and told him I thought he was a wise American.
The picture I was looking for the other day was captured at Anzio. I found was this one, taken from inside a tent. You can see the flap of the tent. Perhaps this photo was an accident. It is grusome, but it tells the truth about war.
Does it matter, when you see a pile that is bodies? Does it matter if they are Americans or Germans, French or Iraqi, Japanese or Afghan? I don’t think it does. Not 64 years later, it doesn’t matter. They aren’t Americans, they are a tragic memory. And today what matters is trying for peace and trying for a different picture, a different memory.
I would give, honestly, and without regret, one hundred dollars for that picture.
I don't know what has taken me so long to write again. I've been wanting to show you these works of street art ever since I got back from Budapest, but, you know, one thing and another.
At any rate, on the way to the opera one night after parking on a little off-street near Andrássy utsa, we stumbled upon this art work. I was extremely pleased.
This one is a little terrifying, but very interesting I think. I love the brow. I'm glad he isn't looking at me.
And this one was situated near a trash bin. Is that thought bubble Spanish, and is that a dog or a pig?
But my favorite piece was found not on the streets of Europe but Knoxville, and, for that matter, in front the building where I work, day in, day out. "Outside your own back door," so to speak.
She is lovely, isn't she? She has all the glamor of Greta Garbo and the reserve. Beautiful. I was told that this piece was done by a student at the University of Tennessee, but I won't tell.
It has been 75 years hasn't it? Did you really think that you would stop the spread of ideas by burning books? Some people will always continue to think, you see. Some people will be undaunted and brave. You will run up against the Dietrich Bonhoeffers and Elisabeth von Thaddens of the world and be undone in the end. (Not to mention the Churchills and Roosevelts.)
But, perhaps you did succeed in slowing things down. Shame. What was it you were trying to do? Remove that which is "un-German" and immoral?
Your words at the bonfire at Opernplatz in Berlin are interesting ones, actually.
My fellow students . . . The triumph of the German revolution has cleared a path for the German way; and the future German man will not just be a man of books, but also a man of character and it is to this end we want to educate you. To have at an early age the courage to peer directly into the pitiless eyes of life. To repudiate the fear of death in order to gain again the respect for death. That is the mission of the young and therefore you do well at this late hour to entrust to the flames the intellectual garbage of the past. It is a strong, great and symbolic undertaking, an undertaking, which shall prove to all the world that the intellectual basis of the November Republic is here overturned; but that from its ruins will arise victorious the lord of a new spirit.
Some of your words could be attached to almost any heroic human endeavor of note, except for the part about entrusting "to the flames the intellectual garbage of the past." I was reading Hemingway the other day, The Old Man and the Sea. I haven't read it since high school. But it is an old person's book. I love the way the old man repudiates the fear of death in order to gain again the respect for death. But he gains again the respect for life too. Did you forget that? But then you didn't read Hemingway. You had your "little list", didn't you? (I wonder why you didn't ban Gilbert and Sullivan?) Banned Authors do have a way of biting you in the end, with the teeth of time and truth.
I got thinking about this subject after I got an email from a book seller, not Amazon, but AbeBooks. Their little newsletter spoke of your infamous event, now 75 years out and falling from memory. They provide online lists too. But from their lists, we buy books and they do create flames, yes, indeed, but they inflame our minds and set us afire with ideas. From John Dos Passos to Hemingway and Sigrid Undset, from Karl Marx to Friedrich Engels, from Lion Feuchtwanger to Marc Chagall and Paul Klee, from Thomas Mann to and Helen Keller we kindle and burn and are grateful.
You once said, perhaps shortly before you killed your family and committed suicide, "If the day should ever come when the nazis must go, if some day we are compelled to leave the scene of history, we will slam the door so hard that the universe will shake and mankind will stand back in stupification." But you have not shaken the universe. You, in fact, left the door ajar, for us to look back and see the error of your ways and your inability to look at life at all, only death, and with that knowledge and that which we gain in the study of great books, move forward enlightened.
Seventy-five years later, we look at you and pity.
I was at Nett's the other day and saw a poster advertising your upcoming concert in Leiper's Fork. Annette told me, and I should have listened, that 4,000 of the 5,000 seats (in the grass) had already been sold in just a couple of days. If I wanted to go to the concert, I should have turned over my $35 that night. Fie. According to the media that has swarmed around this event, I am now too late, for each sod-seat up at Aubrey Preston's farm is claimed.
But, hey, I don't go to Nett's for ticket information. That night, I had gone for their grilled chicken-topped salad, as had my daughter and a burger for her husband. It was Tuesday and the menu was tame, but we did catch up on the news. As Mrs. Rachel Lynde would say, "There is so much going on in Avonlea." That is how it is at the crossroads of Santa Fe, just a little north of Columbia, TN. The door post of Nett's was plastered with the pictures of the community's high school seniors. Debonair boys and beautiful girls are hanging about the porch in proxy while in reality they are off to the prom and finishing their finals.
But I'm sure they will be at Nett's for Thursday's Karaoke night. Handwritten signs on the wall next to the cooler and beside the cash register assure us that even if we can't carry a tune in a bucket, we are welcome to come and just have a good time.
So Willie, while you are in the region, just 22.39 miles up the road, via Natchez Trace Parkway, at Leiper's Creek Farm, you really need to plan a stop at Nett's Country Store and Deli. And make sure you meet Annette. She won't be offputting, but may give you some tips on how to make that concert of yours just a wee bit better.
I first saw your work at the Philadelphia Museum of Art and though I guess it wasn't the most comfortable of work, it was, for me, impressive and it expanded my thinking about art and such.
I saw this piece, "Bed," on the New York Times site today. It is just right.
On the Times site it was described this way. “For his high school graduation present, Mr. Rauschenberg wanted a ready-made shirt, his first. A decade or so later he made history with his own assemblages of scraps and ready-mades: sculptures and music boxes made of packing crates, rocks and rope; and paintings like 'Yoicks' sewn from fabric strips.”
I finally read your book. And I was surprised, for though I had read a number of reviews, articles, etc., I was not prepared for your emotion, your love. I suppose that F. Scott Fitzgerald would lead us to believe that your love was more obsession than love. Poor Gatsby, yes, there was obsession, but obsession is also the dark way of unrequited love.
And your love led me to thinking about a question. "Is it better to love or to be loved?" Of course, one always hopes to have the beautiful combo, to both love and be loved in return, in equal measure. But that is a distant dream, and one that does not always come to pass. And often, even in great loves and wonderful relationships, the scales of love tip one way, and sometimes back and forth, but rarely do they balance steadily over time.
To be loved is like receiving a beautiful gift. It is like an equity, an account that can be drawn upon. How terrific is that? To be truly loved is to know that at any moment you have someone to lean on emotionally, financially, spiritually, socially, in sickness and in health. That is amazing capital. To be loved is, in some ways, to be free of loneliness. It is to have some center where you know your heart will always be welcome, like a home. To be loved is to have available the resources of some other heart, to have access to some other set of perspectives, to have someone whose eyes will never turn away, as yours, Gatsby, never strayed from the green light on the dock across the water. To be loved is to have in this world, two cubic cubits of space (Exodus 30) upon which there is a continual incense burning, raising you to God, seeking your good. (Now, two cubic cubits is not everything, but it is something.) And to continue this analogy, to be loved, is to have someone who would, if need be, once a year, provide the blood for your atonement, or as Jesus put it, would "lay down his life" for you. (John 15) That is what it is like to be loved.
And there is only one thing that is better. That is to love. For to love is to live on the very edge of the precipice of life. Loving another is very risky business. It is betting the entire wad on one horse. To love is to give full rein to another being, come what may. To love is not to gain access, but to give access. It is an extremely involved state of being. Loving is making provision, giving, praying, enjoying, grieving, and accepting. Loving is remaining open in the face of both the open and the closed of another. Loving is patience and kindness and seeing no evil. Loving precludes selfishness and anger and making the other person see your point of view. Loving sometimes has to be pretty invisible to actually be, truly, love. And loving remains even when being loved is gone, hoping and believing. In a way, loving carries a vital eternality that exists no where else, even in being loved.
Why, you may ask, Gatsby, is this better than being loved? I'm not sure why, but it is. It is. Perhaps your love might have been a more successful venture, if you had not demanded the return. If you had accepted the lot of the loving, without the lot of loved. Still, I did appreciate the love that you nurtured, and it was, perhaps, your only true thing.
Well, I'm touring the seas of Moby Dick. I feel like I'm reading two books at once. One is that one we remember from school, the one they refer to as The Great American Novel. Even the big name scholars say that. I'm sorry that folks didn't react as well when it was first published. But now, the say it's "Great" as in this article about Lawrence Buell from Harvard who is quoted, putting Moby Dick at the top of his 19th Century list:
But I'm thinking about that other book you wrote and titled--the book within the book, the book called, The Whale. That one is like a National Geographic documentary, and I find it somewhat fascinating. I've read that your later books took on a "tortuous and obscure style". Did they become documentaries too? I must admit it gets a little dry at times and I feel like I wish I had a tub oarsman behind me, like Strubbs did, who could "Wet the line, wet the line." But the descriptions are fascinating in a way and reflect a scholarship of your own that would rival, I bet, even Buell's.
Avast matey. That part of the book had me scuttling through the internet looking at pictures of sperm whales and right whales and looking for the ancient images of whales that you "dis" in chapter LV, Monstrous Pictures of Whales. It had me watching movies to see if I could haul in a visual picture of what it might be like to peel the blubber off a whale and boil it down for the oil prized by the whalers. I think you will enjoy this pictorially annotated version of Chapter 55, put together so well by IATH (Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities).
One of my favorite artists Gustav Dore provided this woodcut that you may have found grating.
We moderns have done our own thing with whales, in serious art, and not so serious. At any rate, I've found both parts of your book fairly interesting. And the tour of art has been fun.
Zero, son of Zorro, visited this morning and I had a chance to do some filming. He didn't like it too much, but I guess he was hungry enough to stick around for a few minutes of film attention.
I am glad that Zero is visiting. I miss his father. We kind of became friends and it is always hard to lose a friend. It's nice to make a new friend though.
Thank you for the wonderful Christmas gift. It is Anna Netrebko in perfect form. I have been enamoured with her voice for about a year now, ever since I heard her sing I Puritani. She is the perfect diva!
But this recording is perfectly perfect with the Russian singer singing Russian songs. It feels like she is at home in the living room back in Krasnodar wearing slippers and performing not for an audience of critics but for Aunt Tanya, or her father (who, she says she chats with everyday), or Erwin.
Perhaps this is so good, so удобный, because she is working with Valery Gergiev, the conductor she looks upon as a godfather. I'm not sure why, but this album really works. Thank you for discovering it for me.
My favorite on the album (The Russian Album) is the Rachmaninov setting of Pushkin's "Don't Sing to Me." It is moving.
Ne poy, krasavica op. 4, no. 4
My beauty, do not sing for me The songs of Georgia, of grievance: My thoughts immediately flee To another life and shores in distance.
They bring to me -- your cruel tunes -- Alas, the sad and clear vision: The steppe, the night -- under the moon, The poor and very distant virgin.
While seeing you, I could forget The image so sad and fair, But, look, you sing -- and it is set Again before my eyes in air.
My beauty, do not sing for me The songs of Georgia, of grievance: My thoughts immediately flee To another life and shores in distance.
-A. Pushkin
By the way, did you know that Anna's been cancelling shows lately? She's pregnant. You know I like that.
There are some human characteristics that seem to be falling away in this modern world . It's not so much that we don't need them any more, but that we have been insulated from the practice of the real stuff, the rehearsal of the scales and triads, so much that when time comes for the center stage performance we find ourselves shuffling through our sheets.
Musing over a cup of Starbucks, est. just 1971, I've been thinking about courage. And, as I think, it seems like it's about 50% opaque. It's fading and I'm not sure what to do about it.
Now, foolhardy, we've got that, with skateboarders jumping and sliding down railings, with universities investing, not so much in the education of philosophers, but in the pummeling of orange and white clad gents against blue and silver ones. Foolhardy we've got. But courageous? Sipping my cupajo, I'm not sure.
I like the description of the first mate in Moby Dick. Now that is about courage. "I will have no man in my boat who is not afraid of a whale," he says, with Ishmael noting that "The most reliable and useful courage arises from a fair estimate of the encountered peril." But we here in 2008 have so been insulated from certain kinds of perils, that we haven't played our scales in the practice of building our repetoire of courage. We haven't even sailed a skiff in anything but virtual waters, so how could we ever properly turn our faces into the typhoon if encountering a whale of a perilous moment. We wouldn't know what to fear and what to courageously stand against.
An "utterly fearless man is a far more dangerous comrade than a coward," you say during your description of life with the first mate of the Pequod, who considered courage to be one of the great staple outfits, hauled on board with salt pork and tobacco for a long, hazardous voyage; a staple to be used with discretion so that the barrel containing it will not be found sparse when it is most needed. When I think of a coffee urn run dry, I find myself a bit nervous. Avast, what would I do on shipboard?
"The chief mate of the Pequod was Starbuck, a native of Nantucket, and a Quaker by descent. He was a long, earnest man, and though born on an icy coast, seemed well adapted to endure hot latitudes, his flesh being hard as twice-baked biscuit." The "welded iron of his soul" addressed the "wild, watery, loneliness" of his life with a conscientious courage, and one that we might well model ourselves after, (I with cup in hand rather than harpoon.)
To Starbuck, "courage was not a sentiment; but a thing simply useful to him, and always at hand upon all mortally practical occasions." But, it was a thing that he had refined through practice over the years. Perhaps, we moderns need to spend a little more time on whalers to get ourselves practiced up in courage.
It's like any other Thursday, really, except for this, and these songs we sing, and the story we remember, and the sacred act we commemorate by stripping the altars of our lives and draping them with black.
O sacred head, sore wounded, defiled and put to scorn; O kingly head surrounded with mocking crown of thorn: What sorrow mars thy grandeur? Can death thy bloom deflower? O countenance whose splendor the hosts of heaven adore!
Thy beauty, long-desirèd, hath vanished from our sight; thy power is all expirèd, and quenched the light of light. Ah me! for whom thou diest, hide not so far thy grace: show me, O Love most highest, the brightness of thy face.
I pray thee, Jesus, own me, me, Shepherd good, for thine; who to thy fold hast won me, and fed with truth divine. Me guilty, me refuse not, incline thy face to me, this comfort that I lose not, on earth to comfort thee.
In thy most bitter passion my heart to share doth cry, with thee for my salvation upon the cross to die. Ah, keep my heart thus moved to stand thy cross beneath, to mourn thee, well-beloved, yet thank thee for thy death.
My days are few, O fail not, with thine immortal power, to hold me that I quail not in death's most fearful hour; that I may fight befriended, and see in my last strife to me thine arms extended upon the cross of life.
Text: Robert Bridges, 1899 Music: Passion Chorale (Herzlich thut mich verlangen), St. Christopher
Ah, holy Jesus, how hast thou offended, that we to judge thee have in hate pretended? By foes derided, by thine own rejected, O most afflicted!
Who was the guilty? Who brought this upon thee? Alas, my treason, Jesus, hath undone thee! 'Twas I, Lord Jesus, I it was denied thee; I crucified thee.
Lo, the Good Shepherd for the sheep is offered; the slave hath sinned, and the Son hath suffered. For our atonement, while we nothing heeded, God interceded.
For me, kind Jesus, was thy incarnation, thy mortal sorrow, and thy life's oblation; thy death of anguish and thy bitter passion, for my salvation.
Therefore, kind Jesus, since I cannot pay thee, I do adore thee, and will ever pray thee, think on thy pity and thy love unswerving, not my deserving.
Text: Johann Heermann, 1585-1647; trans. by Robert S. Bridges, 1844-1930 Music: Johann Cruger, 1598-1662 Tune: HERZLIEBSTER JESU
I see that you and I are both fans of the same eating establishments in the hinterlands of Nashville. You have just got to love this place, don't you? Sunday noon's "meat plus three" can't be beat, except by the Saturday night menu, but that later. I walked into Netts and there you were, right on the counter next to the cash register that really goes ca-ching, with a personal Sharpie message written with high regards to Annette.
When I stop by Netts Country Store and Deli, I have to wait in line like everyone, rubbing shoulders with locals who are dressed in either Sunday best or hunting gear, or last week, bicycle helmets. But I suppose you are ushered straight to the head of the cafeteria serving cart, aren't you? And that is how it should be, because the folks in Santa Fe and Netts Store love the Judds. Over fried chicken and catfish, they talk about the weekend entertainment, a concert to benefit the victims of the tornadoes that ripped through the area several weeks previously. "Wynonna sang, Hagraaaydoware. Oh, honey, that was good!" It took some cogitation on my part before I could conjure the excitement she must have felt, to hear dear Wynonna Judd sing those sweet words, "Then sings my soul, my Savior God to thee. How great thou art. How great thou art."
These are good people here along the stretch of country from Leiper's Fork, through Santa Fe, and down to Columbia. Cyclists geared up in Lazer cockscombs and Pearl Izumi Attack shorts descended on the store while we sat eating. And as these bikers, pedaling through from Franklin, complain that the store doesn't carry the right Red Bull concoction, the locals are planning the next community center event, or figuring out how to pay the church electric bill since everyone decided it was important to send that check for $180.00 to tornado relief.
Meanwhile, I'm enjoying the home-cooked green beans and cole slaw, served by a young and friendly girl from up Skelly Hollow. When I asked if, as I suspected, the trophy deer, sporting the St. Patrick's Day get-up, did indeed speak, a momentary shadow passed almost imperceptibly across her face. Yes, he does speak. I judged from the stretch of her neck that it would be impertinent to ask for a demonstration, so I fell silent. Yet my waitress, ever a member of this kind community, could not forget my curiosity, and before my plate was empty, Buck spoke, remotely animated, by my hesitantly accommodating waitress from behind the deli cooler.
There is no smoking here at Netts any longer. I know, for there is a no smoking sign next to the Newport clock. But you can still get all the supplies you need for a day in the field. It wasn't until I paid my check at the front counter, there where you smile at all the customers, that I considered the breadth of the variety of products available from Netts. Behind the coolers is a smaller refrigerator, dorm-sized. On it's door is a hand written sign offering Nightcrawlers—$3.99 and 100% Doe in Estrus—$11.99. Of course, I know nightcrawlers, big, juicy, and easy to slip onto a fishing hook, but the Doe in Estrus was a new concept for me. What? It wasn't until I consulted with my friends at Arkansas Duck Hunter that I understood the import of this product. Rather than having to hunt for a buck in the wilderness, the product known as "100% Doe in Estrus" promises that Buck will be hunting for you!
I have been wondering about myself and my musical passion for the Requiem form. I could be wondering whether I am obsessed with death and why in the world I'm fascinated with music that celebrates passings, but no, nothing so psychologically mature as that. I was wondering if I like just Requiem masses, you know, the full-blown form based on Latin texts and lux aeterna, or whether my interest extends beyond that to, well, all things requiemesque. I tested my ponderings by listening to a few things including your Requiem for Adam and Toru Takemitsu's Requiem for Strings. My first listen of your work was captivated by the initial movement Ascending the Heavenly Ladder and the note pattern that rungs its way in different harmonic arrangements right up to heaven. But after that I started thinking just about your title reference to Adam and that took me on a detour of the mind. If someone uses the name Adam, people automatically assume universality. Requiem for Adam. "Oh," we say, "it is a requiem for humankind." But suppose one tipsy afternoon you decided to do a Requiem for Eve. That would be a different matter. Since she is mother to the race, we could assume the universal, but we don't, unless our minds stray to the universality of evil. Is not that the worst of the curse of Eve? She bears that universal ignominy of inescapable symbollic association with universal evil.
What burden would a requiem for Eve be forced to bear? Could it begin with ascending scales of a heavenly ladder or would it dive with Mozartian immediacy into the wrath of God. Fool Eve, perhaps she would be well characterized by something like Takemitsu's Requiem with hardly a glance at eternal delight and just the one recurring convulsive motif. Three steps up the dreamy Jacobian ladder before convulsive precipitation and a fall far beyond the degree of ascent.
I remember one New Year's Eve long, long ago. (Where could we, my husband and me, have been going? Home after a Christmas visit?) The radio station of our choice must have rewarded its station crew with a party and us with a repetition, over and over and over again, of the Zeppelin classic, Stairway to Heaven. Now there, is a requiem for Eve, isn't it? Our lady grabbing the golden apple, not totally without hope, but "Oh, it makes me wonder." Want to hear a midi of this?
Oh well, my mind travels don't really have anything to do at all with your requiem for young Adam Harrington, do they? And isn't that the way, death is universal, but I'll be switched if we pay much attention until it touches the son of our violinist friend, or our mother, or our seat mate, and then the specter before us is more than we can bear, without a requiem. And that, I think is why I listen, to the formal ones and the informal ones, listen, listen, listen, listen. Listen.
be pretty openhanded, not asking too much. A nice friendship can operate uncommittedly, without demands. In a friendship, you can love, and give, and never ask back. In a friendship, if one person gives and the other does not, well, that's ok. The giving friend can either continue giving or stop. And that's ok. The definitions are loose. The love described in this song, is lovely. I envision a hand reaching out unclasped and another hand lying on top, supported but ungrasped. And if those two hands stay together for a long time. That is beautiful. And when I reach my final hour, I do hope that I can say, I've had some simple loves like that.
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