John Mayall and Shakespeare

When I get to work in the morning I usually set up my ibook to play my itunes library while the office workers come through the lobby on their way to work. Set on shuffle, any of about 3500 items may come up, including opera, Hank Williams, Bing Crosby, Bach's cello suite, Scotch bagpipe music, and even some Van Morrison and Chuck Berry. I still like the Beach Boys after all these years. In other words, just about anything, as long as it's good. Volumes and volumes of really good music have been recorded since Edison made his first grammophone cylinder and I haven't even scratched the surface.
While I wait for the staff to file in I usually stand by the door until it unlocks, so I get to listen to the music and observe people's reactions. Often they stop and ask me what I'm playing or what radio station it is. Most of it they've never heard before, but they like it.
Poetry and all art has this quality that it makes the biggest impression when it hits you while you're not looking. Your guard is down, your habits of mind have not been erected, the door is left open to that deeper stream of consciousness where it can be deflected for a moment from the relentless task of protecting your psychic space. In pagan times it was claimed that you were most likely to see a god out of the corner of your eye when you weren't looking. Poetry and music are like that, too. You can listen to something a hundred times without it making any particular impression, but that hundred and first time you might hear it as if for the first time and your eyes open to it's wonders. Jazz has been like that for me. I have heard jazz or jazz influenced music all my life without paying much attention and I think it was Sarah Vaughan who finally penetrated my inattention. I've always liked great singing and it was obvious she was a great singer. Then I started to notice the sidemen backing her up and I would say to myself, "Who are these guys? God, but they're good."
The conventional wisdom is that improvisation is what distinguishes jazz from classical but I think the difference is this: classical is all about the composer and jazz is all about the performer. A classical performer's main concern is to fulfill the composer's intentions. To that end scores are studied, historical information as to instrumentation is researched, and the interpreter, whether conductor, singer or instrumentalist devotes all his efforts to getting as close as possible to those intentions. The composer is looked upon as a demigod.
A jazz player by contrast takes a song apart and reassembles it, sort of how a hot rod enthusiast takes apart a '49 Ford or a computer modder transforms his logic board. To some extent this has to do with how music has been disseminated since the invention of recording devices. Previously, the only way to learn a piece of music written by someone who lived far away was through a written score. It was an incredible innovation in its own right. Good music readers do not have to play a score to know how it sounds. They can hear it in the inner ear where it is unaffected by deficiencies of performance. I wish I could do that, but to me when I was a boy music was something that came out of a radio.
Without detracting from the great jazz artists of the last century I think it's important to point out that they were blessed with a plethora of wonderful song writers who provided them with themes for their variations. I'm astonished at how many great songs were written in that period. These are still the songs that mean the most to me, the songs I grew up hearing on the radio, the songs I took for granted, never imagining that it was the end of an era.
Usually I think the fault of post modern popular music is a lack of intelligence. But this morning as I listened to the tunes that came on I realized it a decline in aliveness is also involved. This would be the kind of aliveness needed to percieve the god in the first place, and if there has been any poet who was alive to the presence of the god it was Shakespeare. I don't read his dramas very well, but his sonnets amaze me. It was the sonnet number two that came on as I waited by the door:

When forty winters shall besiege thy brow
And dig deep trenches in thy beauty's field

and I was almost thunderstruck at how alive he was to every nuance of existence. As you get older you get lots of opportunities to see spritely little girls change into sleek beauties who turn into buxom matrons, and at last become elderly. I can't help now looking for the young beaty in an old lady's eye or the serene elder in the ypung woman's prancing figure. This is love, not in the abstract as in 'love of humanity,' but love of one special, unique, never to be duplicated person.
A song by John Mayall came up next, "Thoughts on Roxanne,' and I was thunderstruck
by the contrast. John Mayall was one of the best of the British blues artists but he was fully infected with the post modern malaise which I identify as a failure to be alive to another person's being.

I think she's pretty as a rose
I take her out and buy her clothes
I'd like to take her home with me
But I must wait until she's free.

There is almost nothing in this lyric about Roxanne as a person, she is wholly reduced to being the object of the singer's needs.

Roxanne will always be my friend
And that's the way I'll keep her there

But what does Roxanne get out of it? And who exactly is Roxanne? What is she like, how have you changed by knowing her? The song doesn't say, but one senses the only thing of interest to the singer is that she lets him screw her. A saxophone bridge alternates between hopeless languor and manic furtiveness, and then:

I love to touch her when we walk
I love to listen to her talk
The way I feel I can't explain
But I will wait for her again.

There is a bit more to it but the singer hasn't the wit or aliveness to even wonder why this girl more than others makes him want to make his little sperm donation. He has no interest whatsoever in any consequences.
John Mayall is perhaps enough of an artist to be aware of the sub text of his song, unlike most of his contemporaries, but let's go back to the match up with Shakespeare's second sonnet which continues:

Thy youth's proud livery so gazed on now
Will be a tattered weed of small worth held.
Then when asked where all thy beauty lies...

We see a difference. Not only does this sonnet sing of her present beauty, it foresees the inevitable decline of her youth. And yet the singer loves her still, and offers his gift of immortality.

If thou could answer
This fair child of mine may sum my count

Because, of course, without her lover's gift she would not merely die but become extinct. Sex for the sake of pleasure alone leads to death, while love leads to life and more than life. These sonnets of Shakespeare explore all the permutations of love and the infinitely variable meanings of love in the same way that Bach in his Goldberg Variations explores all the permutations of key changes and chromaticism. In neither case are these mere technical exercises, the real intent being to show the gifts God has provided for his poor creatures, if only we can open our hearts. This is the aliveness I mean.
It may seem unfair to John Mayall to use Shakespeare as a touchstone. But I don't think an artist should mind. Shakespeare is the standard, like the North Star to navigators.

Elvis

The thirtieth anniversary of Elvis' death was marked by a predictable buzz on the net with the usual confident assertions of his greatness. He changed things forever, we are told. I don't give him that much credit myself. There were many factors at work that brought about the decline into absurdity and banality popular music has wallowed in since the fifties... but I don't think that's what is meant. In one article it was said that he rescued music from the likes of Hugo Winterhalter and elevator music. What the writer doesn't realize is that Elvis and his successors made elevator music for juvenile delinquents. Same thing, different audience.
Another article pointed to Patti Page's hit song, "How much is that doggy in the window?" as a sign of how low music had sunk in the fifties. He clearly has never listened to Sarah Vaughan, Ella Fitzgerald who were just reaching the peak of their careers. In fact the fifties was a golden era of singing and Patti Page was one of the best. The fact that he doesn't realize this doesn't say much for his knowledge of music. And what's wrong with a cute little song about puppy dogs? I wonder what is wrong with a musical culture that can no longer produce songs to smile at. Maybe it's because the fan base doesn't know how to smile anymore. Maybe humour is another one of the many unfortunate casualties of the political correctness disease.
Previous to the fifties novelty bands were quite popular, for instance Spike Jones and his City Slickers. Any popular song, any performer was fair game for these guys. And they were damn good musicians, too. Although they were funny they were never vicious. On one song they took a swipe at Liberace. Liberace (pronounced liberatchy) was an unctious and effeminate piano player who had a TV show that was very popular with middle aged ladies. Elvis copied his outfits. Out of curiosity I recently played a youtube segment of one of his appearances, and you know what? He was pretty good and he had a great sense of humour.
Elvis wasn't the beginning of an era, he was the end of one. He marked the end of a century or more of great American song writing. From Stephen Foster to Johnny Mercer there had been a seemingly inexhaustible fountain of wonderful songs, lyrical, witty, sentimental, patriotic, religious, emanating from both black and white Americans, German Americans, Irish Americans, Yankees and Confederates, country folk, cowboys, Jews in the ghetto, and share croppers in the Delta. For a glorious fifty years it all came together and gave rise to probably the best and most sophisticated popular music ever. Who would have guessed it would all come crashing down half way through the century.
Music split in two. The good musicians like Ornette Coleman and Charles Mingus turned their backs on popular audiences. Essentially, they played for each other. They made interesting music but not music to dance to or sing along with. I guess they thought they were too good to lower themselves to that level. The other fork of the musical tree was thus left empty and a species of charlatan occupied the premises. Elvis showed the way and Colonel Parker was quick to come up with a business plan. It had nothing to do with music.

Chapman's Homer

About once a year I read the Iliad and/or the Odyssey, and today I bought a Wordsworth edition of the Chapman translations of both works. George Chapman was a contemporary of Shakespeare and his is the first rendition into English of these seminal epics. It took a brave man to be the first to undertake this task, but England was full of brave men at the time. Like the Homeric Greeks Englishmen roamed the world, founding colonies and trading stations wherever they went. Brave, full of energy, indominatable, the flaws of Englishman and Greek alike became their strengths. Clear, direct, no mincing of words for these fellows, no sanctimonious twisting of meaning. They said what they thought.
We know who Shakespeare was. (Though his history is sufficiently nebulous to provide opportunities for all sorts of wild conjectures- all of which seem motivated by a kind of bigotry: how could this country bumpkin possibly be posessed of such genius?) But the identity of Homer is lost in the mists of time. Was he one person? Were his works the product of a guild of poets, possibly refined and put into final form by the blind Homer? I haven't the expertise to offer opinions here, except to say that oral tradition has over and over proved to be more accurate than modern scholars can credit. The Bible spoke about the Hittites long before their remains were rediscovered by archaeologists. The stories Herodotus told seemed so unbelievable he was called the father of lies, but almost every year some new corroboration of his reporting surfaces. Troy itself was considered a fabulous place that couldn't possibly have existed until Heinrich Schliemann made fools of all the skeptics. His discoveries led to the uncovering of a previously unknown phase of Greek civilization. The academic establishment has hated him ever since. Not only was there a Troy, there was an Argos, a Mycenae, an Agamemnon, and it even turns out that these protoGreeks were the scourge of the Mediterranean at the time. These are the Phillistines so well known from the Bible. They also invaded Egypt.
What puzzles me most is what happened to the Trojans. Modern scholars seem singularly uninterested in the Trojans, but not so the Ancients. Trojans are feature actors in the founding myth of the Romans. In the Middle Ages interest in the Trojans persisted. A number of British- not English- legends say that Trojans founded their country, too, and that Britain is named after Brutus, another refugee from the Trojan War. Naturally, these stories are believed by thescholars to be entirely fictitious. However, these same legends give an account of a British army attacking Rome and Delphi and it is historically verifiable fact that these places were attacked by Celtic invaders. The leader of the British raiding party was said to be Bran, a name that means crow. His head is supposed to be buried beneath the Tower of London, which has had a colony of crows roosting there since before there was a tower. Personally, I love these stories, and I like to think one of my ancestors came back with some loot from one or more of those expeditions. If only I knew where it was buried!

The Second Roman Empire

When America is accused of establishing a world empire, what is meant is that it has a hegemony of military, economic and political power in today's world. They are not the same thing, empires and hegemonies. An empire is a system whereby one country -as in Rome, or more recently the Soviet Union- controls all the power structures of another, alien country. Americans have never been interested in such a thing. If they were, Canada, Mexico, Cuba, at a minimum would now be ruled from Washington, with Senators sent out as governors. Castro wouldn't have lasted two days.
America has a strong undercurrent of isolationism on both the right and the left sides of the political spectrum. Outposts of American power obtained in previous conflicts have often been returned to the local political entity, as in the Philipines. Where overseas military bases exist, as in Japan or Germany, they have been for the purpose of protecting, not ruling the local populace.
The fact that American policy has always favoured elected institutions, rule of law, freedom of conscience and free enterprise in countries like the former USSR, Japan and Germany is not evidence of a desire for conquest but of a belief that the virtues of the American system will lead to increased peace, prosperity and well-being wherever they are tried. Perhaps this belief is naive, but it is not without nobility. The fact that American businesses may profit from the arrangement hardly adds up to hypocrisy when it is remembered that in America it has always been perfectly honorable to set up a business and earn a profit. It's a cultural characteristic that has helped to make America the most dynamic and prosperous society the world has ever seen. The key insight Americans have had is that as one business prospers, so do others. As President Kennedy put it once, "A rising tide floats all ships."
The rising tide of American prosperity has floated all ships willing to cut loose from their old moorings. Where socialism leads to impoverishment and totalitarianism, the American model leads to super abundance. Maybe, like David Suzuki, you object to that, thinking that it's a death sentence for the planet. But the evidence suggests otherwise. As countries become wealthier, they become cleaner and more concerned for the environment. In America, as farming has become more efficient, many areas are more heavily forested than they have been for centuries. London's air was lethal in my lifetime, but those poisonous fogs are now a thing of the past thanks to the replacement of big coal by big oil.
None of this should even be a matter of controversy. The information is readily available to anyone who wants to learn the truth and it shouldn't even be necessary to say it. But the relentless rewriting of history in recent decades by the media and in the schools has produced a generation with very little knowledge of the facts of history, but deeply imbued with a jaundiced interpretation of history.
The latest hysteria over American "imperialism" has to do with Iraq. If ever there was an example to refute that hysteria, Iraq is it. American dust ups with Islamic regimes are nothing new. In its infancy the Republic sent a force of marines to put a stop to the Barbary Pirates that had terrorized the Mediterranean from their bases in North Africa. For some reason, Europeans wouldn't do it themselves. In my time the trouble with Islam really began for Americans when their embassy in Iran was seized. Mr. Peanut was president then. For all that he was willing to do, American embassy staff would probably still be languishing in a Persian dungeon if they hadn't been rescued by Canadians. Since then there have been numerous other incidents, in which Americans have been reluctant to respond. Islamic militants have interpreted this lack of response as timidity and like dogs excited at the smell of blood have stepped up their attacks. They are making a big mistake. Americans did not want to go into the First World War, but when they did it was over in months. They did not want to go into the Second World War, and if Japan (a true imperial power) hadn't made the same mistake of thinking that Americans were just a bunch of fat softies, then the outcome of that war might have been vastly different.
The post war period seemed to signal the end of isolationist thinking in America, but during Viet Nam it cropped up again. Previously, isolationism was primarily favored by conservatives, but this time it was taken up by the left, and it is still mainly part of the left's ideology of peace through being nice. Pretty dumb, but that's the left for you. That's why the Islamic miltants were jubilant when the Democrats regained control of congress. They think the Pelosi crowd will turn America into a replica of socialist Spain, which is employing the puppy dog defense against terrorism. That's where you roll on your back and piss in the air. The Islamists hate Bush because he has led America in it's first assault on Muslim territory since the Barbary pirates days, and they think they will have free rein when he's gone.
Same mistake the the Japanese generals made. Bush comes from the conservative side of the spectrum which has a fairly well thought out military strategy. Much of that strategy was to minimize civilian casualties through the use of an arsenal that places a premium on precision placement. It tends to be minimalist, but effective. So when the decision was made to respond to 9/11 by deposing Saddam and trying to establish a democracy in Iraq, contingency plans were already in place. By contrast, the Pelosi crowd doesn't have a clue. They seem to think that the best thing to do is not to stir up the hornet's nest. The trouble with this non-plan is that hornets, when left alone, go on to establish more nests. If it turns out that a Democrat becomes president next time and the inevitable follow-up to 9/11 comes along he/she won't know what to do. Panic. Strike out blindly. One thing's sure: the American public is going to be really pissed. The worse they are hurt the more pissed they are going to be. I sure wouldn't want to get in their crosshairs if I was you, Mohammed. Goodbye, Mecca. And I wouldn't want to be the president who let it happen, Hilary. Remember what happened to Marie Antoinette? Probably not.
Getting back on topic, what does America do with its hegemony? Does it just hunker down and ignore the rest of the world? Does it become the policeman? That's what the real debate should really be about. Maybe it will become an empire some day, but it isn't one now.

Ogden Point

Had another little photo expedition after work last night, this time at the Ogden Point Cruise Ship Terminal. I was expecting five ships to come in, the number that normally docked on a Saturday evening last year when I was cab driving, but only three were scheduled. Never could just enjoy the sight before. Had a chat with the nice gal who was holding the reins of the horse trolley. I told her I didn't mind the horses (they kind of block the roads) as much as the pedicabs. She told me about an incident when a limo deliberately bumped one of her team. All the various conveyances waiting for the cruise ships go into a feeding frenzy during the few hours the ships are in.
It was a beautiful evening, I would say a perfect evening. Warm, not hot, with just a bit of a breeze. Rode my bike down there and afterward stopped at Spinnakers across the way from Ogden Point and enjoyed a pint of their IPA. Walked my bike the rest of the way home. Boy, does an IPA go down well after a bit of a bike ride.

The inner harbour

After work last night I walked down to the Songhees side of the harbour and attempted to get that perfect shot of a float plane just about to hit the water, but I didn't get it. The bright red Twin Otter that I really wanted to get was coming in before I had a chance to get my camera out. But lots of other good shots were on the menu. The Inner harbour on a summer day is always busy. Three different ferry services from the US service Victoria, two from Port Angeles and the Victoria Clipper from Seattle. Then there are the float planes. The one with the rooster tail was the third in a queue of five waiting for the Coast Guard cutter to get out of the way. Harbour ferries, whale watching boats, private yachts, kayaks, tug boats, barges, and just about everything else throngs the port and I'm not at all sure how they keep from running into each other. Sailing is not allowed until outside the entrance, but an exception was made a few years ago when a replica of Captain cook's ship paid a visit. That tall square rigger was a sight that gave me a bit of a thrill. I can imagine how it must have astonished the natives of this coast the first time they sighted one of these white sailed phantasms.
The upscale condo dwellers that live on this shore are wont to complain about the noise of the float planes, but personally I would rather hear the sound of a Beaver's rotary engine gunning before a takeoff than a decelerating diesel semi any day. And I would far rather watch all this harbour activity in a setting of shimmering water and everchanging sky than TV.

False gods

Why would any rational person be a 'truther'? When I saw a trio of them manning a sign by the bus stop on Douglas and Fort I suggested to them it would be a lot simpler if they just wrote 'idiot' on their foreheads with a magic marker. Actually, I was a little surprised they looked so normal...clean-cut young men, not dreadlocked, wild-eyed, drooling, drugged out refugees from a Hornby Island commune. I should have stopped and spoke when one of them replied to my sarcasm by asking me if I had 'proof.' "Proof," I thought, "is this some sort of metaphysical question?"
It would be as if he had asked me if I had proof that the world was round or if my thigh bone was really connected to my hip bone. The whole world (except for reprobates like me who don't care for TV) saw it happen over and over again. Airplanes truly flew into those buildings. The buildings truly did collapse as a result. Thousands of innocent people truly died in the conflagration. Another jetliner did fly into the Pentagon, and still another crashed into the ground which was aiming for the White House. Some courageous passengers sacrificed their lives to frustrate this last scheme. All four of the planes were hijacked by Islamic terrorists. The whole operation was planned and organized by Al Qaeda, an organization dedicated to conducting a war on all infidels. Anybody will do in a pinch but they especially hate Jews, who are called apes and pigs in the Koran. Jews are prominent in the financial world, so the World Trade Center was the target of their dreams, smack dab in the middle of the Great Satan, ie the USA. They did it with help from Saddam's Iraq.
That's the story. All that's left is to fill in the details. The evidence is available for all to see. So why were these young men trying to sell passersby a harebrained story about it being an "inside job,' a diabolical conspiracy by an assortment of villains-- Haliburton, Bush/Cheney, Big Oil, the Jews, the Pope and anybody else they can think of?
Now, it's perfectly legitimate to look behind any event to see if hidden factors might be involved, and that's an entirely honorable exercise, no matter how far fetched the theory becomes. Some people get carried away and become delusional about these theories. We've all known people like this, and sometimes they turn out to be right, but more often than not they become cranky old bores--and wrong. Some 'truthers' clearly belong in this last category.
But what about these young men on the corner of Fort and Douglas? I really don't know. They looked sane. In fact, they looked professional. They reminded me a little of the clean cut young men and women I met when I was a young sailor in San Diego. They were very friendly, and the girls were pretty. They asked me if I wanted to come to a party with them. There would be a live band and lots of people would be there. What young sailor can say no to an offer like that, especially when it's accompanied by a pretty smile? I got in the back of their car with a couple of other sailors and we drove through the streets for about a half hour. New to San Diego, I had no idea where we were and started to feel a little uneasy. However, eventually we arrived--at a church. We went into the basement. There was a band, all right, and they were playing church music. But this was not at all like Catholic church music. This was a rock n' roll band, and they were really rockin', rockin' for Jesus. The next few hours I spent trying to avoid being converted. I am a fairly religious kind of guy but I don't like being sold a bill of goods. Eventually I escaped and found my way back downtown, but I had learned a good lesson: beware of smiling faces. It's stood me in good stead as I've deftly avoided involvement in all sorts of movements since then. There've been a lot of 'em. Moonies, Scientologists, Jehovah Witnesses, Latter Day Saints, Vegans, and many others. And now 'truthers.'
I feel absolutely no obligation to refute any of these ideologies. Why should I make an exception for 'truthers'? It is a kind of religion, isn't it? Just not as interesting as most of the others I've mentioned. A type of faith in the unseen is involved that cannot be shaken by mere evidence. True faith is not like that. True faith seeks a dialogue with evidence. They are two ways of 'knowing,' and one helps the other, like the right hand and the left hand.
But is there more to the truthing phenomenon than just a few superheated imaginations gone awry? Maybe dastardly villains do lurk in the shadows, pulling strings, dimming the lights, building sets, teaching the actors their lines and footing the bill. But who might they be? Why are they doing it? This is a conspiracy theory that might be worth pursuing, and I think the trail starts with one name: George Soros.