memoir note. "I never met a man I didn't like."

 When I was a boy we used to travel down the Will Rogers Turnpike from Joplin MO to Tulsa OK, where friends of my parents lived. About half way there was the Will Rogers Rest-stop. At the Rest-stop there was a statue of Will Rogers. At the foot of the statue there was an inscription. "I never met a man I didn't like." 

This inscription entered my mind as a a melody.

Ba bum                   Ba bum

              Ba bum                     Ba bum      Ba

                                                                         bum.  

At the end of the melody, for the period there was a Boop!

I nev                a man

          er met                 I did'nt

                                                    like   Boop!

I believe the reason this entered my brain as a melody was because my deeper mind instantly knew that these words were important and should be remembered. 

So... it stuck with me! And it has been a lifetime to goal to try to live up to Will's words. I have been severely challenged at times to like certain people. But it's a worthwhile goal, and these challenges are worthy. 

 

                                                                   

memoir note

 I had a vision when I was a kid that I saw a statue deep in the recesses of my own mind. There was no head on the statue. At the foot of the statue it said, "Thou wilt be what thou wilt be."  

I realized even then the incredible double nature of this inscription. On one hand it could mean "thou will it (Wil't) to be what thou will it (Wil't) to be", you will be what you will yourself to be, and that is about self determination. On the other hand it means "thou will be what thou will be", which is closer to something like fate. ("wilt" is an archaic word, used in second person singular. E.g. "I will", "Thou wilt") How can both things be true at once? But I knew that the balance was somewhere between the two, that I didn't have to strive, and neither did I NOT have to strive, that I could strive... striveless. 

This doubleness comes back to me with the Rilke poem that ends, "You must change your life." Does this mean you need to change your life, willfully? Or does it mean you must, as in, you don't have a choice?

I should mention, for fun, that this vision came to me in a meditation lead by the actor that played Starbuck in the hit TV show "Battlestar Galactica". My dad was at a conference selling his Moldevite, and there were workshops. This guy, Dirk Benedict. 

Starbuck lead me to my own future. 

Can't make this stuff up. 

Thou wilt be what thou wilt be.

Grace (sing along)

 I had the idea for the whole world to sing along for peace, hoping my invite would go viral. Instead NO ONE CAME. Not one person, not my friends, not my family. I wonder why?

But though it made me feel ineffectual, it didn't sting. And I can't help but wonder if it was because I let go of it that I was given a kind of grace that far exceeded my plans. When I got to Strawberry Fields there was already a performer there and he was singing "Imagine", the very song I was going to start my sing-along with. This amazed me. I had slipped into grace, which was SOOO much bigger than me, yet included me. 

Kachuk, from Argentina, was the name of the performer. He was very good, and had the crowd singing along. It was almost as if the whole world was ALREADY singing along. I didn't have to help it happen. It was already happening. Or maybe I did have to wish for it, or put myself out there, or something.

I sang along with Kachuk for a half hour as he went through the Beatles' catalog, watching the people, transported. Then I put the playlist on my headphones, got on my bike and sang along as I rode through the park. It was glorious.

At one point in the playlist I included John Cage's 4'33'', which, if you don't know, is just 4'33'' of silence. At first it was hard to stop listening to music and listen to the park. I felt a little bored, like I was in absentia or something.  But I kept listening, and I heard the sounds of voices. I followed them until I got to a protest, an Israeli protest, hundreds of blue flags. It was the Palestinians that I had been grieving for,  but here was the pain of the other side made manifest. And I felt tears welling up. These felt like holy tears, like I had been searching for them. That's what I heard in Cage's silence.

The thing that I needed was to sing with other people, and to cry, and the way it came to me felt like grace. 

Why can't this same kind of grace be given to those suffering in the Middle East? 

The rest of the bicycle sing-along I was in a rare state of spiritual euphoria, a heightened gem-like flame of being. 

Who does this help, but me? 

sing along for peace

 All Saints Day Sing-along for Peace

So old school hippy I am. And proud of it. I was surprised I got only a few likes and zero RSVPs responses for my invitation to come sing along to all time great peace songs from Beatles to Pink Floyd to Bob Marley to John Cage to Bob Dylan to New Order for Gaza and Israel. Is everyone too busy? Or does it just seem dumb? It's not dumb. It's fun. And it's healing. 

I know that to some people this may seem like an embarrassing old hippy notion. And I guess, sure. But it's fun and healing. I know of which I speak. 

Here's a poem made up of lines from the line-up. Sing along as your read along. 

Let me take you down

Cause I'm going to Strawberry Fields.

I hope someday you'll join us

And the world will be as one-

Imagine all the people-

How I wish, how I wish you were here-

Let them pass all their dirty remarks  (One love!)

There is one question I'd really love to ask (One heart!)

Is there a place for the hopeless sinner

Who has hurt all mankind just to save his own beliefs?

Have pity on those whose chances grow thinner-

One more thing!

Let's get together to fight this holy Armageddon (One love!)

So when the man comes there will be no, no doom (One song!)

Saying, "Let's get together and feel alright." Wo wo-wo wo-wo!

Have pity on those whose chances grow thinner-

People have the power-

I was dreaming in my dreaming-

Vengeful aspects became suspect

and bending low as if to hear

the armies ceased advancing

because the people had their ear

and the shepherds and the soldiers

lay beneath the stars

exchanging visions

and laying arms

to waste in the dust

in the form of shining valleys

where the pure air recognized

and my senses newly opened

I awakened to the cry-

People have the power-

They say every man needs protection

they say that every man must fall

Yet I swear I see my reflection

Somewhere so high above this wall

I see my light come shining

From the West down to the East

All you need is love (all together now)

All you need is love (everybody)

All you need is love, love

Love is all you need.

Everybody's talking 'bout

this-ism, that-ism, is-m, is-m, is-m

All we are saying is give peace a chance.

Bach's Chaconne into Faure's Requiem

 A day worth remembering. Wake up a little hungover from playing a killer practice set for the Next Waltz with the Flynndiggers in Schupback gardens. Playing with those guys under a full moon is campfire song bliss. They are so good. Witchita Lineman into Neil Young was transcendent. 

After some coffee I graded "new" Canterbury Tales from the sophomores, got through a half a dozen. Then cleaned and went to buy candy for the Halloween party at the park. (The kids have to bring  a bag of candy to be admitted to the party.) Then I played a couple hours of tennis with Gabriel. Super fun. 

After tennis went to the park's halloween party. The Ferriers won group costume. They went the extra mile and actually built a security fence like they have in the movie. Nice.

Afterwards I went home and did some more grading, and read a few Emily Dickinson poems. I'm up to 590 something. Just one banger after another. I spend some time on Prowlingbee's blog commenting on the poems I've just read. I also start Middlemarch, because it is Emily's favorite novel, as well as my favorite novelist's favorite novel (Proust, don't you know.) So how could I not. The first paragraph features these great lines,

"Her passionate, ideal nature demanded an epic life: what were many-volumed romances of chivalry and the social conquests of a brilliant girl to her? Her flame quickly burned up that light fuel; and, fed from within, soared after some illimitable satisfaction, some object which would never justify weariness, which would reconcile self-despair with the rapturous consciousness of life beyond self."

Finally the family went to eat at a Dominican restaurant in Brooklyn, Puerto Viejo. Good. Fun to see all the costumed Brooklynites out and about too 

From there we went to see a performance of Bach's Chaconne by Doori Na and Faure's Requiem at Co-cathedral of St. Joseph. Two of my favorite pieces of music. They did this incredible thing where the last note of the mind-blowing Chaconne was synced up with the first note of The Requiem, followed by singers walking down the aisles beside us toward the altar. I teared up from the pure beauty of it. 

Then home to watch an episode of "Only Murders In the Building", a show we are loving.

Full day of a full life. 

9/18/23

 Still alive...55! (to the tune of Van Hagar's "I can't drive 55!")

If I were to write this on FB it would be too public, but if I write it here, it's too invisible. What's the compromise? Write it here, edit it, and then put it up there? 

The students keep asking for a memoir. Really? But then I think why not. My life has been so full of stories, weird and wonderful stories. Why not write them down? Make a book?

But there is so little conflict in my life. Don't you need conflict for a good memoir? Can you have an interesting memoir if you just keep saying how great things are? Maybe the trick is to dive into the details and just never mention superlatives. Just describe them being great and let haters hate. (See, that's great, the way I just subconsciously rhymed hate with great, but if I SAY it's great, then I'm inviting hate, so therefore I'm doing it parenthetically in order to qualify it.)

Oh my Gertrude.

Okay, so let's start now. I'm 55. 

I feel like I'm living in the Matrix. I suppose I should take the red pill and see what's behind the curtain. But at heart I don't believe in that whole red pill / blue pill thing. At least not in the paranoid way the Wachowski sisters do. 

What's behind the matrix is not AI, as the movie suggests. I believe it's something else, something that can be found in the word itself. You take MA and then you combine that with the feminine ending TRIX to give it even more motherness. It's not just a MA, it's a MA TRIX. 

That woman who is the fortune teller in the movie "The Matrix"?  the one who gave Neo the cookie? That's closer to the real Matrix than any AI is. 

But here's why I think I'm living in it. Get this: last week my (impossibly?) beautiful wife was leaving a work party and had to go back in to get something she'd left behind. She gets into a conversation with a work friend, Angela, who then asks her if she wants 2 FREE tickets to see Willy Nelson and Bob Weir on Sunday IN QUEENS, at Forest Hills Stadium, a short train ride from my home. Sunday just so happened to be my birthday.  Now, if you asked me who the one living person I would most like to see in concert would be, I would say Willy Nelson. So, though I know it's a stretch, it feels as if the universe, the Matrix, God, Goddess, what have you, just handed Genevieve a pair of tickets for us to go see the show I would most like to see in a venue near our home. And to add a cherry on top of the cherry, who will be opening up for Willy and joining him on stage? Bob Weir. A note on Bob Weir. He was always my least favorite member of the Grateful Dead. But I've been coming around, largely due to his last solo album, The River. He's aging beautifully. My buddy Quinn says he'll take him over Jerry Garcia, just for his staying power. Anyway, he was the perfect opener.

It seems too good to be true right? It's a very specific kind of abundance. Unasked for. You may shrug it off. It seems almost everybody shrugs these kinds of things off. Am I over-excited by all this do you think? Or is everybody else under-excited? Sometimes I think we have an epidemic of apathy on our modern hands. As Louis CK says, everything is amazing and no one is happy. It's puzzling.

There is a lot I could say about the show itself. Willy Nelson is one of the greatest song writers alive, one of the greatest that's ever lived. He wrote "Crazy"! He wrote "Good Hearted Woman"! He wrote "I am the Forest"! But he's also got a voice that is in indelible, old as the hills, softly feminine, roughly masculine, unmistakable. And his guitar playing too is something else. There is no guitar sound like that, no picker quite so surprising and on point. 

One thing that helped make this show special was that Willy did a couple Hank Williams songs. When he started into Williams' "Move it on over" I about fell on over. Earlier that day Quinn and I were cleaning up QUIP, carting stuff from Sunnyside Gardens Park to Spaeth. Quinn turned on the radio to WKRC and "Move it on over" was playing. We both sang happily along. So when Willy layed into it later that night it was a head shaker. I often have uncanny coincidences involving my friend Quinn. Sofia has coined the word "Quinncidence" to mark those occasions.  She Quinned it you could say. This was my second crazy Quincidence in the last week. 

Let me add a quick digression here, because the last coincidence is worth quickly writing about too. It happened last Sunday, a week prior, at a gallery in the Lower East Side. My friend, the poet Greg Fuchs, was having a 20th wedding anniversary party. I met Greg in San Francisco. He also lived in New Orleans. As I was leaving the party Greg's wife Alison introduced me to a guy named Philip. I said, how d'ya do? We talked and somehow the conversation came around to the appropriate age to send kids on the subway. Philip said he had a friend that lived in Sunnyside Queens and she was 15 and now taking the subway to school. He said, she's kind of tall though, so she seems older. I looked at him funny. What's her name? I asked. Helen, he said. Helen...O'sullivan? Yes, he said. Helen is Quinn's daughter. So you know Quinn? I asked. Yep, he said, I work with him at Spaeth. But I thought you said you lived in New Orleans? I'm here on a short term job. So then, how do you know Greg? From New Orleans. 

So...I met a guy from New Orleans at a party in Manhattan that knows both the friend I met in San Francisco and my friend from Sunnyside? Quite a quinncidence. Matrix?

Anyway to get back to the Hank Williams songs. I was wondering why Willy was doing them. I had forgotten, until I saw it posted today, that yesterday was Hank Williams birthday. He would have been 100! That must be why they were playing it on the radio too.

Another digression. September 17 is also William Carlos Williams' birthday. The poet Elinor Nauen once told me that because my birthday was September 17th too, I was a Williams brother, somewhere between Hank Williams and William Carlos Williams. I'll take that. My aesthetic is in the middle space of that Venn Diagram.  

Imagine if Hank was still alive. 100 and playing Forest Hills

I think I might take Willy over Hank though. Equally great songwriters, but Willy is a Buddha. 

Okay, so that's Saturday. 

That doesn't even get into QUIP, which happened the day before, on Saturday. I guess I have to go into that now. But I'm so tired. Maybe tomorrow. 

Okay, so yeah. Matrix pulled out the stops for the birthday boy. Thanks Ma. 

Queen Oprah

I can barely write poetry anymore.

I just want to write to remember.

I'm happy to be on the side of women overcoming their limitations
and I'm happy to be on the side of African Americans overcoming their limitations.

I'm hoping it's all going toward no limitations based on differences.
Just being. Names and categories be damned.

But in the meantime, I'm going to vote for the black woman.

Even if it's Oprah. Maybe especially if it's Oprah.

Come on Mama, let's dance.