6.25 Summer's Day

25 June 2020. Summer's Day.

It really is summer--not the intense sun you get when it's hot, but an evenly filtered warmth all through the air--quiet, too, just like last spring. Doesn't seem it's over, this year--the seasons are continuous, gauged against that date in March when the quarantine began. No one called it that then--"shelter in place" was the official phrase, a pretended kindness--you try to imagine who came up with it, wanting to avoid something more technical or technically threatening. But after a while, even the die-hards tired of its smarm, and we all reverted to something more medieval and appropriate. Not quite Luís Buñuel (Exterminating Angel) but neither so prosaic as General Hospital. So quarantine it was...

And then it stopped, and we reopened. Words, really--and a few clumsy and confusing civic directives. But businesses truly were suffering--still are, of course--the new Lebanese place on Solano, Chez Monsour, with the facade of the old Britt-Marie repainted so carefully. I walked by late yesterday and a couple of the tables had been moved out into the street--a small quadrangle of two parking spaces roped off with barrels at the corners. So well-intentioned and hopeful. But no one present, just the forlorn refuse container with poly liner there in the corner by the sidewalk.

What do the deer make of all this? Noor yesterday told of how she's noted their renewed patience. And described a flock of wild turkeys who'd commandeered an entire lane on San P{ablo Avenue, cars diverting to give them clearance. The turkeys knew what was up--moved in when the time was right. No automatic weapons, though...

6.21 Ynot as Tu Fu

21 June 2020. Ynot as Tu Fu.

Only in the sense of the journey, which is at night, a sparse moon set hours ago, and still we can't rest. I meet him there, after a road tipped askew down cliffs, he's become a friend, and I wonder after his well being. What that might mean, really, in this time since we both left the Palace Ministries. The precincts of the capital overrun, he made his way north, the family by some miracle surviving there. A friend took him in, the children were given food. But now we're in  the west--frontiers and borderlands, where strange armies roam wide, and the banners of war fly over every valley. Crossing mountains to the south, in flight--roads carved into the sides of cliffs. And now the moon has set, our thousand fears at that ferry...

Yes, it's always a boat--elegant and fragile--the long boards pegged together, following the curve of the wood. The boatman sang-out, laughing at seething waves. An outrigger sailing canoe, just half completed, and then the letter arrived announcing another journey, also far to the south...

A theater stage by the ocean. Set up with chairs looking back towards the bluffs. Friends and family in attendance, listening. Gene Price, afterwards, his encouragement for a vision of hope. 

A waterfall of light, yes, light poured out of his eyes...

____

After reading Tu Fu's River-Swarm Crossing, translated by David Hinton.

Notes: The outrigger--a boat--building project I'd undertaken when I was fifteen. The letter--announcing an American Field Service scholarship to spend a year in Argentina. A theater stage--the band shell at the beach side stadium in Oceanside, California, where I gave the valedictorian address to the Class of1963. Gene Price--a close friend of my parents, he'd studied to be a concert pianist. I valued his articulate presence...
  

6.19 Fisk Jubilee Singers

19 June 2020. Fisk Jubilee Singers.

Fisk School, one of a handful of Southern colleges founded soon after the Civil War, took on the challenge of providing an educational setting for  Black Americans who'd never had never had that possibility in times of slavery. ("The first stuydents ranged in age from seven to seventy, but shared common experiences of slavery and poverty...") A private missionary effort, finances for the endeavor were constantly a problem--but perhaps a choral group could be organized to perform and raise funds? The idea took off, and the Fisk Jubilee Singers have been with us ever since.

Their repertory included spirituals and other songs from the South--but for the first time the performers were Black Americans themselves, rather than their blackface caricatures (generally white performers) in minstrel shows. In other words, they sang the songs as they knew them--as they'd lived them. This made their versions distinct--and proved invaluable to the story of American popular music.

They Fisk Jubilee Singers also made some of the first recordings of this material. Take Swing Low Sweet Chariot, for example--a song we all grew up with and might think of as timeless. But in fact we have it in the form we do because the Fisk Jubilee Singers put it on a record in 1909.

There was no doubt some idealizing along the way (the group even performed a number of Stephen Foster tunes) and since audiences for their touring shows were drawn from the population as a whole, the songs were no doubt rounded off a bit--generalized, made appealing (think of Harry Belafonte's calypso for listeners who knew nothing of life in Jamaica.) But that always happens with popular music--that's why  it's popular! And in any case, what the Fisk Jubilee Singers brought us--that they made these songs a part of American life--remains a gift, ongoing.

______

The name Jubilee was chosen to reflect the Jubilee Year in the Hebrew Bible--a time of release--including the forgiveness of debt and the liberation of servants and slaves--along with a general increase of righteousness in the world...

___

Note: Fisk's "The first students ranged in age from seven to seventy, but shared the common expewriences of slavery and poverty--and an extraordinaery thirst for learniung."


Note on the rounding off process. Listen to a song like Oh Mary Don't You Weep, first recorded by the Fisk Singers in 1915 in an engaging uptempo version--one which no doubt inspired later recordings such as the Swan Silvertones in 1958,  and soon enough, in a more-generalized-for-everyone treatment, became a standard in the folk revival (Pete Seeger taught whole auditoriums to sing along, often in harmony.) But at the same time there was a parallel church gospel version--incantatoryy, almost a different song--Aretha Franklin's in 1962 is a compelling example--or a more recent recording by the gospel group Trinitry 5:7. To my ear, at least, it's in  these "church" versions that we get hints of what the song originally sounded like--and what it meant in the world it came from. But more on this in another post...)

6.15 At Jack's

15 June 2020. At Jack's.

That's what we always said, regardless of who might be there. Always an old-school (old country) kind of welcome--something about the paintings, the worn furrniture, the casual seriousness--anticipation--of ideas and conversation, camaraderie. And music, of course, Jack and Klara sitting together on the couch late one evening--probably midnight--maybe even holding hands. The song was something Russian--or maybe Goodnight Irene. He'd balked at the way I did it, years ago--Jack could be a stickler for getting things right--but by now we'd grown used to these varieties and variations together--and what was important (always) was a place for a certain quality of feeling.

I connected this with the Russians, of course--having grown up with a measure of it as a boy. The evenings with my father's friends (Uncle Howard, Uncle Jimmy) gathered around the low rattan couch table in the living room, glasses of scotch, a tray of rye bread hors d'oeuvres prepared with his special avocado and anchovy... All of them people I loved so very much without even knowing why...

I'm saying that a lot lately. "Without even knowing why..." As in the drawing here--Zoya and Klara, with me alongside. There's someone to the right--just the hands--and we're listening, attentively. That's the point--we're listening...

My love for all of them as well...
_____

Note: It's a pretty accurate drawing, which makes me happy. Missing Zoya's ancient hands--maybe that's okay. She'd have preferred it this way. But it has Klara's smile. And somehow I look like they've pulled me out off one of those early Renoir's, there on the balcony over the river...

6.15 Concertina on Miramar ++

13 June 2020. Concertina on Miramar.

It’s soon after we've done our three songs--the pattern, since mid-March. Always a surprise to my more impulsive self—hey, three songs is just getting going--but music is shared, and my cohort is strangely rigorous on this point. It's a neuekoronafest, after all. We gather at the other end of the block--near Capistrano, sunny at 6pm, the appointed time. Csilla and John sometimes come out with little Andros--barely a year old, but his tiny man-like stance still comes as a surprise. The way he looks on, too--a part of the circle…

Right after, everyone's headed back to their respective lairs, so I turn towards my own end of the block. No longer bound by melodies borrowed from Beatles (Let It Be has turned into Dr. Fauci), which I've actually enjoyed, being what, say half a century behind the times? And Tanya and Dave (our principles) are quite good melodists, so they keep my on my toes. "A new challenge" would be the operative phrase--they say it's good for you.

The fact is, Burt Bacharach (What the World Needs Now) is something I'm delighted to have learned. Always associated it (much too easily) with its mood music versions. And Bill Withers' Lean on Me (thank you, Tanya)—it just doesn't get better...

So, I walk along, continuing to play, but as I get closer to home, it's the Russian songs that re-emerge. Left them too long ago, maybe eternally. Always forget the way they're a part of me. Like the snow-flurry arpeggios at the beginning of Stary Klën (in the Soviet film, Devchata)--played on a garmon, the Russian accordion--and then the voices of tiny Nadezhda Rumiantzeva and her beau, Nikolai Rybnikov, walking together in the snow. We're somewhere in the Russian hinterland--a Soviet logging camp--and the set is a total concoction, but that's part of the charm--also essentially Russian... I don't know what this means, really—that is, I could never explain it. But it all goes straight to my heart…
_____

I think of Klara, and her mother, dear Zoya--both from Moscow. Those evenings together, at Jack's--they made these songs possible. (I’d walk in, see dear Klara's beaming face, then make my way across the hall to Zoya's room--tiny, ancient--but her smile, when we see each other--so beautiful.)

I've been an imperfect friend. How is this possible? How is this now not possible? Reach out while we can...

6.12 Peter and Chuck Berry (2)

11 June 2020. Peter and Chuck Berry.

It's not really a question of top billing, but I did like being able to put Peter's name first. And in any case, the lead act at the time was Joan Jet and the Blackhearts. The concert took place at San Diego's Jack Murphy Stadium, in May 1982. By the look of the photographs, it was a full house. Chuck Berry at that point was touring with pick-up bands, and for some reason the keyboard player had bowed out--so they tapped Peter to replace him. I always wondered how he did it--not through any lack of musicianship, certainly--and everyone knew Chuck Berry's songs, the audience included--but still, looking out over that sea of faces, you've got to feel the weight of moment...

Now why wasn't I there? In retrospect, it seems impossible--but life's concatenations had taken me on other paths, and Maybelline was very far from the center of my being. Probably pretty far from Peter's, too, by then--he was writing and playing his own songs--but Chuck Berry was the fount--ground zero--he'd set them all in motion.

The whole thing came together at the last minute--no sound check, no rehersal--and as Peter waited to come onto stage, he asked the bass player what key they'd start in. "Don't worry man, they're all in C..." That was Chuck Berry's way--make it do-able. Keep it easy. And no matter what, he knew that from the first notes, the crowd would be right there with him.

I always liked the scene here--we used the photo for the liner of Raining in the Heartland, the commemorative CD Peter's musician pals recorded after he was gone. Chuck Berry, leaning over the piano with every bit of that taut ambiguity that made him so electric. And Peter? Well, beautifully himself--solid, composed, the hat just right (Thelonious Monk in the wings, too...) Makes me realize that there's an element of zen here--if that's what we want to call it. Inwardness, even with all the crowd. And a strange devotion to tradition, too. A raucous tradition...

I saw this again on the night of the memorial at the Belly Up. The way his musician friends reached for the maximum intensity in each song. Like a wake--no holding back. Make 'em loud--that's what we do. It's Rock 'n' roll...

____

Story from my mother about the two of us (Peter and me) still in the play pen. Apparently when I was ready to get out, I just climbed over the bars. Peter, however, continued sitting--in concentration, it seemed--until finally, when his turn came,  he reached forward with both hands, pried the bars apart, and crawled to freedom...

test

6.8 Monk Plays Oceanside

8 June 2020. Monk Plays Oceanside.

The first time around with this--maybe 1997—much more playful. The sly thrill of just being able to conjoin the two—Monk and the Beachside Stadium, or thereabouts. Which never happened, of course—that corrosion of salt air. Concrete bleachers and rusting metal. But I remembered it again today, needing something much less distinct, something full of wandering, if only in the line.

I should never have let it go—the painting, that is—like letting go a part of myself. Maybe because it was connected with Peter—the loss, regret. But also a kind of honesty, which increases over time. Vision of him standing by the barbecue, when C’s family visited, looking up and smiling—that Peter smile. She has it in a special frame, needs a little repair. He was tending steaks—a venerable task—you could see he enjoyed it. Not just the cooking, but the being part of things…

Monk’s face as he plays, eyes rolled upwards into his head—drunken but not from alcohol. That inner state he taught us, but with flat thumbs and a defiant smash. Hard to understand, from such a distance, what that meant—that absolutely full-bodied intensity, foot pumping the pedals, on and off the floor, almost leaping…

Set here against the Buena Vista lagoon, blurring towards the ocean. Late afternoon, sometime in the fall. That smokey light, with whatever’s left of the sun half-disappearing into mist. Very still. Tells you you’re home.

6.7 3rd shot +57

6.7 Taking the Knee (2nd shot)

7 June 2020. Taking the Knee.

I resist the phrase--the way the culture so easily recapitulates itself for commercial purpose (in this case the media)--but the act itself is too important--and shows in the image, no matter what we call it. And in any case, major league football is big-time business, so who could expect otherwise? However, everyone in this line-up is doubly valent--each player a part of the group--that's implicit--and at the same time an individual. That is, you see the meaning of this moment expressed on their faces--in their postures as well. For each one of them...

Can we read this? What's seen on each face? And how does someone like me (a white boy) show it? I think of Winslow Homer--his indelible painting, Gulf Stream--with the figure of the Black Man lying stretched across the deck of a de-masted sailboat--the sea roiled with sharks (there's even some red in the water) and far in the distance, a sailing ship that will almost certainly never spot him. Doomed. But still, Homer treats the man's face with dignity--even if there's a great deal of anger in his resolve. A lost sailor? A shipwreck? An escaped slave? The date of the painting is 1899, so we're 30 years after the Civil War--and who knows how literally we should take this thought--but viewed as "unrecognized guilt" (thank you, Charles)--at least on Homer's part-- we have a point of entry...

How different with the faces of the football players. Their resolve shows not so much anger as hope--in the same way The Star Spangled Banner can almost inevitably bring out something of this feeling--the way the heart lifts at its first strains, even when we know better...

And why not-- they should  have hope--they've been taught to win... Will teach us how to win, too...

6.7 Taking the Knee

7 June 2020. Taking the Knee.

I resist the phrase--the way the culture so easily recapitulates itself for commercial purpose (in this case the media)--but the act itself is too important--and shows in the image, no matter what we call it. And in any case, major league football is big-time business, so who could expect otherwise? However, everyone in this line-up is doubly valent--each player a part of the group--that's implicit--and at the same time an individual. That is, you see the meaning of this moment expressed on their faces--in their postures as well. For each one of them...

Can we read this? What's seen on each face? And how does someone like me (a white boy) show it? I think of Winslow Homer--his indelible painting, Gulf Stream--with the figure of the Black Man lying stretched across the deck of a de-masted sailboat--the sea roiled with sharks (there's even some red in the water) and far in the distance, a sailing ship that will almost certainly never spot him. Doomed. But still, Homer treats the man's face with dignity--even if there's a great deal of anger in his resolve. A lost sailor? A shipwreck? An escaped slave? The date of the painting is 1899, so we're 30 years after the Civil War--and who knows how literally we should take this thought--but viewed as "unrecognized guilt" (thank you, Charles)--at least on Homer's part-- we have a point of entry...

How different with the faces of the football players. Their resolve shows not so much anger as hope--in the same way The Star Spangled Banner can almost inevitably bring out something of this feeling--the way the heart lifts at its first strains, even when we know better...

And why not-- they should  have hope--they've been taught to win... Will teach us how to win, too...

3.30 Out of Africa (from March)

30 March 2020. Out of Africa.

Isak Dinesen—but it’s also B, of course, and Cinde as well. I see them all here. Or maybe that each of them appear as I make the drawing--each line its own kind of remembering. We know the shapes from what we’ve touched—or from what’s touched us. It works both ways. So that the first caress (too extreme a word, but it has face a root. Cara. We wonder at the sound…) To touch someone’s cheek, very lightly, hand in a palm, turned so that it’s with just the back of the fingers. Who would try to describe this, when?

Alongside is Lulu—out at the edge of the grass. On a farm in central Africa, below the Ngong Hills. Magical name. A coffee farm, high up on a plateau. She describes this beautifully, locates us, as she must have felt, looking out into the distance, the African air…

Lulu, a forest antelope (bushbuck in the book.) A small deer-like creature, so delicate and graceful that she’s accorded the rights of a princess. But somewhere all girls have this. A total grace…
____

Africa. The Rastafari love the word—gives meaning to all…

_____

We’re reading the book together. That is, C reads it to me, each evening now. Beautifully. It’s maybe her very favorite, from years ago. I know she feels close to Isak Dinesen—it’s a pleasure to see her this way, makes me wonder (marvel) at the connection…

Rebecca at the well…

6.5 Cinde's Prairie

5 June 2020. Cinde's Prairie.

And pretty close to what she requested, after my suggestion that we make her a place on the prairie..."With some sheep," she said, smiling, adding with delight, "...and some small ponies... And maybe some rabbits..." These wishes being so genuine, who could not grant them? And quite in line with the tenor of the times--her view that animals could be kinder than  people. Not always, of course--for there's Jimmy the contrarian, right alongside. Would he prove a good shepherd? Well, that remains to be seen--he may well have something else on his mind today...

Nevertheless, it all fits in with stories past, even when we barely know them. The first and second bottomland, there near the Sappa. Beaver City, with Uncle Dale half-way up the ladder of a windmill, still fixing them at 80. And Aunt Twyla, with a hand so steady that when a letter arrives it looks as if she could still be sitting at a sloping wooden desk in the one-room school...

Dorothy got out quick--not the she didn't carry the memories along inside. Put on her good dress and jumped over the creek--but she still knew from chickens, and when she'd say to me, "You're just a city boy..." I was quick to acknowledge her expertise in the matter. Usually having to do with common sense more than prejudice--although she did like a good steak...

Even Janet retains some of the diction. "We just did the warsh," with that Nebraska "r" tucked in--or  the disappearing "l" in a glass of  miwlk... But these are small matters, odds and ends, you can leave them on a hook in the mudroom when you take off your boots...

_____

I flew over once, it was one of those New York to San Francisco flights, with that endless and ever-extended evening light as you gradually make your way west. Looking out the window onto a golden-gray-brown expanse--you could almost see the curvature of the earth--through five miles of mist-filled late-summer air, and somewhere down there, judging from the map, a place I felt I almost knew...

6.4 Nymph and Shepherd

4 June 2020. Nymph and Shepherd.

Precisely in that interval between art and life, and just yesterday--I could hardly believe I was witness--a young deer, over by the back fence, up on her hind legs, reaching for new leaves on the ivy. An image I'd seen so many times over the years--but always in a painting, Titian's Nymph and Shepherd. A very late work--one of those rough, open-ended canvasses--among my very favorites--I'd found it in a catalogue picked up at one of the used bookstores in downtown Oakland, nearby the old studio--so that would have been in the early 1980's. Reproduced in black and white, from an obscure picture gallery somewhere in Hungary. At least that's how I remember it.

Which is how it was then--knowledge of such things being hard to come by. Inadvertent. Happenstance.  Even the museum obscure. Whereas today images of paintings are so readily available--there's even a Wikipedia article on this one, listed as being in the Archduke Leopold Wilhelm Collection, now in the Vienna Kunsthistorisches Museum, with an accurate color reproduction showing all of Titian's subtle warm-cool tonalities.

When I first found the painting, even in black and white, I already sensed it was crucial. Came at the time I was looking at a lot of Titian--as a kind of guide-- the way he let the painting itself precede the drawing--the massing of form rather than the Florentine outline. That Venitian sensibility--color over linear edge. (Which may seem funny, today, since I've allowed myself to return so much to line in these drawings--but the malerische is in there too--hidden away in all the erasures and pauses...you can see this especially when they're enlarged, becoming a kind of autobiography.)

The meaning of Titian's painting became apparent as well--or at least the way I understood it. Two young figures, shepherd and nymph, reclining in the foreground, music, love--while close behind,  buttressed on a slope, a broken tree. Just one living branch--and reaching up to seize it, the figure of a deer. (I'd say young stag from the look of his male appurtenances.) I would have been in my mid-thirties then, but I knew Titian was speaking to me--clearly he'd painted himself here, reaching up for that last branch. (He'd have been in his eighties at the time--this was painted a year or two before he died.)  I found the arc of time in  the painting astounding--and Titian's vigor--how he saw himself as a painter, even at the end...

_____

Yesterday's deer was astounding, too--I'd seen them reach of for plumb branches before, of course, deer will do this--but yesterday's pose was exactly the same as in  the painting. And just after I'd been talking with a friend about the meaning of ultimate things--and the phrase choose life. The story of the midwives again, the vigor of the young Israelite mothers. It's a matter of what one choses to focus on, always, in the balance--an image of opening...

6.2S Soldiers and Police

2 June 2020. Soldiers and Police.

And where are the images now? Two days, and the time of quiet has vanished. Was it real to begin with? That is, founded? An artificial respite, occasioned by the virus--for the first two months, everyone seemed to agree. But then a modern impatience set in. "They're all sitting together, on blankets, no one has masks," C told me, describing the park at the top of Orpheus on a recent evening. "I left..."

I agreed, of course--but then we can't leave the entire century. Even as we carry all centuries past, each one with its retelling. Goya's Third of May still holds. The animation comes through even in a sketch--the diagonals, of course--but they're the result, not the cause. Of a time lived, rather. On the side opposite, Giorgione--the watchman figure in The Tempest--replacing a woman's figure prior. That the origin of a militia could be maternal? No urgency in the pose, though. A watchman of dreams...

The middle section? Well, maybe they haven't told me their story yet. Whose doing? Who knows the story, that is? Thinking about the Mary Frank on the cover of a recent NYRB--saw it again this morning. An African figure leaping across the gap between two rocks. She's drawn him in silhouette--evocative, always--and the rocks are real, that is, they're fragments of photographs. She made this just last year--at 87...

Hope still...


_____

Note: Found the Mary Frank image on DC Moore Gallery site. It's a detail from a collage painting, As You Can See,  made in 2018-19. And the rocks are actual rock--not fragments of photographs. Oil, acrylic, graphite, paper and stone on board, 49-1/4 x  96 inches.

5.31 Young Racoon

31 May 2020. Young Racoon.

A visitor just now, and I'm so used to seeing Goose, the neighbor cat--that this came as a surprise. The same coloring, yes, but then the lift to the shoulders as he made his way through the high grass--not domestic. You know right away. A certain roughness--Chris Alexander's phrase for one of the necessary elements in a good design--a good anything, really--the roughness corresponding to something alive, something not completely controlled. Yes, we give in to the gods--whatever they may demand...

Evenings here of old--when a string of them would parade into the kitchen--the first alert little head peering over the top of the stairs coming up from the back door--two dark eyes set in a black mask, The lady of the house would welcome them, after a fashion, of course. I once had to scoot out a whole family of who were aiming to occupying the downstairs room. Babies included...

But most memorable of all were the visits by Rashi and Tosfos. Talmudic scholars, both--even if they were also in the possum family. Their favorite place being underneath the back side of the couch. That took some doing on my part--a long bamboo pole--just enough to prod them gently into action. I don't know who was most startled--after all they could hear me coming--but a wild living creature like that--in the living room--what can you say?

_____

Gary Snyder--in his excellent book, The Practice of the Wild, describes how his family would open their Yuba River cabin for one month of the year to all creatures who wished to visit. Indoor deer, for example--or a stream of fire ants making their diagonal across the wooden floor. However, even the Snyders hedged their bets--flour and staples were secured in a strong trunk--and I'm not sure what they did about bear...

_____

That's the shelf-like bracket mushroom there behind--growing out from the trunk of the mimosa tree. It's gotten quite large now--just the right size for a raccoon umbrella...

5.30 Rastaman (small image test)

30 May 2020. Rastaman.

People would say elders, but that's sentimentalizing, and when you look at these faces, there's something more essential going on. Yes, some are old enough to remember even Leonard Howell--the Rasta founder--maybe not quite to the beginning, in the '1930's, but from the late 1950's, say, when Pinnacle (the Rastafari redoubt in the hills above Spanish Town) was intact--and lived through it's destruction, with the exodus to the slums of Kingston (Back O'Wall, the Dungle, Trenchtown).  Materially, a time of great privation--and the lives of most of the Rastas then were extremely poor--but also characterized by elements of real hope--the mission to Africa in 1961, the dream of repatriation, then Jamaican Independence in 1962--and the indelible experience of Haile Selassie's visit to the island on April 21, 1966.--thereafter known as Grounation Day. And the music emerging in parallel--Ska, Rock Steady, Reggae, and the way it reached an audience far beyond Jamaica... The world of Roots Reggae--the Skatalites, Burning Spear, the Ethiopians, and of course Bob Marley--the spirit of that music reflects this great opening...

But Jamaica's political situation turned increasingly corrosive, with nonstop gang violence egged on by both of the primary political parties (the Rastafari were neutral, but everyone was drawn in, regardless.) And then the emergence of Jamaica's drug culture, extremely violent--the trade soon enough exported to the United States--so that the world of Roots Reggae was replaced by that of Dancehall--also reflective of its time. Louche, flashy, dangerous.To the degree (as described by writer Colin Grant) that when Bunny Wailer appeared on a Kingston festival stage in 1990, he was met with a hail of bottles and stones. The crowd didn't want what him. Hard to fathom, less than ten years after Bob Marley's death--but not if one follows all the changes...

So, these faces, still from the time before--as was much of Rastas culture, I'm guessing. And then their age as well--so that the natural arc of life can be seen there too. Giving them (at least to my eye) not so much an antiquarian feel as the mein of dignified survivors. The world that nurtured them has disappeared (including the death of Haile Selassie--Jah Rastafari--however one interprets it.)
_____

A parallel: remembering my father's face on the 26th of December, 1991--sitting on the living room couch in Oceanside. He would have been 87. The television  was on, and as we watched, the Soviet flag was being lowered, in Moscow, for the very last time. The symbolic end to another era--the one he himself had lived through (having fought on the Bolshevik side in the Russian Civil War). I wondered mightily at the time what it meant for him to see this--his feelings, after those many years of commitment and hope. But as carefully as I looked at his profile, and as much as I wanted to know, I couldn't tell...

5.30 Rastaman

30 May 2020. Rastaman.

People would say elders, but that's sentimentalizing, and when you look at these faces, there's something more essential going on. Yes, some are old enough to remember even Leonard Howell--the Rasta founder--maybe not quite to the beginning, in the '1930's, but from the late 1950's, say, when Pinnacle (the Rastafari redoubt in the hills above Spanish Town) was intact--and lived through it's destruction, with the exodus to the slums of Kingston (Back O'Wall, the Dungle, Trenchtown).  Materially, a time of great privation--and the lives of most of the Rastas then were extremely poor--but also characterized by elements of real hope--the mission to Africa in 1961, the dream of repatriation, then Jamaican Independence in 1962--and the indelible experience of Haile Selassie's visit to the island on April 21, 1966.--thereafter known as Grounation Day. And the music emerging in parallel--Ska, Rock Steady, Reggae, and the way it reached an audience far beyond Jamaica... The world of Roots Reggae--the Skatalites, Burning Spear, the Ethiopians, and of course Bob Marley--the spirit of that music reflects this great opening...

But Jamaica's political situation turned increasingly corrosive, with nonstop gang violence egged on by both of the primary political parties (the Rastafari were neutral, but everyone was drawn in, regardless.) And then the emergence of Jamaica's drug culture, extremely violent--the trade soon enough exported to the United States--so that the world of Roots Reggae was replaced by that of Dancehall--also reflective of its time. Louche, flashy, dangerous.To the degree (as described by writer Colin Grant) that when Bunny Wailer appeared on a Kingston festival stage in 1990, he was met with a hail of bottles and stones. The crowd didn't want what him. Hard to fathom, less than ten years after Bob Marley's death--but not if one follows all the changes...

So, these faces, still from the time before--as was much of Rasta culture, I'm guessing. And then their age as well--so that the natural arc of life can be seen there too. Giving them (at least to my eye) not so much an antiquarian feel as the mein of dignified survivors. The world that nurtured them has disappeared (including the death of Haile Selassie--Jah Rastafari--however one interprets it.)
_____

A parallel: remembering my father's face on the 26th of December, 1991--sitting on the living room couch in Oceanside. He would have been 87. The television  was on, and as we watched, the Soviet flag was being lowered, in Moscow, for the very last time. The symbolic end to another era--the one he himself had lived through (having fought on the Bolshevik side in the Russian Civil War). I wondered mightily at the time what it meant for him to see this--his feelings, after those many years of commitment and hope. But as carefully as I looked at his profile, and as much as I wanted to know, I couldn't tell...

5.29 Met Robert

29 May 2020. Met Robert.

A painting from Robert arrived this morning. Landscape above, with trees reflected in water--a slow river, late fall, or maybe the very end of winter, with snow in patches—the colors ochre and sienna, merging into darkness on either side--blasted almost, as of the image were appearing in a flash of light, the feelings contradictory. Below, a long row of windows and doorways, in Warsaw--or maybe one of the very old neighborhoods in Amsterdam--many of them boarded up. War traces visible on the walls, stone work and exposed brick. He's run  them all together, side by side, so that their continuity also expresses time. And from one dark opening, painted en grisaille, a woman's face. Robert's note above tells me the street is Ul. Grzybowska 29--still standing then, in the Ghetto, from a photo he made in 1968--but that the figure is the sister of his father, Webster-von Parera. Between the two a band of black with a phrase painted in Yiddish script: gedenk in zey un frey zich mitn lebn. To think of you and free you with life...

Did I ever know her name before? The van Parera is Portuguese. Jewish, in all probability--like one of the family names inscribed on the wall of the wintershul in the 'Snoga, Amsterdam’s old Portuguese synagogue.  Robert would sometimes tell me that his father had Portuguese roots, but the name itself now illuminates this connection.

My dear friend. We first knew each other in Warsaw, and all these traces fit together, for both of us-- lived and understood. Which of course he knows, too, even if it's now another 30 years we haven't seen each other.

I first drew his more dramatic self, with deep set eyes, looking out from the side. But the melodrama wasn't right, so I reworked it to show him in a more pensive mode, spectacles on his nose, thinning hair, thoughtful, a little askew. Or is it just the drawing? I like to think of him this way, regardless--like one of the beautiful characters in a Wim Wenders film, always close, almost reachable...

_____

Note: Quite fortuitous (more than that, really) that I'd done the Ulica Glogera drawing just yesterday--and then Robert's painting arrives this morning. Together with what he writes. Our circles have always been joined this way...

5.28 Ulica Glogera

28 May 2020. Ulica Glogera.

Urgent need to begin again. Desperate even, after two days solid dealing with outside matters (contractors, the city, the beautiful oak tree in back--all vis a vis my very decent neighbors, but still, but still..). All resolved this morning--quite amazing, really--and I sat down to begin a drawing. But the pull of the everyday kept interceding...

So, there I am (above) reaching out again--is it for a place to start (as in today) or for all time? Always the sense that somehow I intend both. You can't hold your arms like this without invoking duration. Maybe it's because a friend queried me recently about final things, and of course I turned once more to the story of Jewish midwives in Egypt, the word hayot, which I always think of as meaning alive. (It's a one-time occurrence--hapax legomenon--so meaning depends on context.) Vigorous, perhaps. Full of vitality. A matter of focus--where one wants to look...

Then the figure with suitcase appeared. From Poland, inevitably, which means it's also me. Ulica Glogera, one of the streets I lived on in Warsaw--in Ochota, an old neighborhood--and a quick look shows that there are views even today that appear much the same...

I wasn't really thinking about this--the point being to get a drawing going, the flow of association matching the movement of the lines, the erasures, which are what tell me, finally, what the drawing means, (towhee, always)--but it's a beautiful early summer day here-- the warm air,  light breeze--same feeling as when I'd walk out of the apartment in Warsaw fifty years ago--an old structure, pre-War--onto the leafy street, set in an arc, with paving stones, beautifully detailed facades--playing Supraphone Corelli on my Czech phonograph (I still have the album) which felt so appropriate and true...

And now all these times have merged, layered together--but each detail remains distinct, distinct...
_____

Reading late last night--one of David Hinton's new versions of Tu Fu. He's eliminated all the rhetoric, it seems--just the images from the poems, juxtaposed, set in a world of ancient China. His world, I should say, in the way he repeatedly reaches for that connection. But I'll go with him in this. The vision is too valuable---the  cosmos enjoined...even if in part his own...

5.25 Towhees on Tacoma B

25 May 2020. Towhees on Tacoma.

But that is one place I notice them in particular--maybe because I'm just getting started with the walk, setting out up towards the hills, and everything's fresh. Towhees go with fresh, I think--or is it just my association? In the morning, for example--I'll see movement outside the window, and sure enough, it's a towhee hopping about at the edge of the pine needles, where the ground opens up towards the terracotta bowl. Some water there from when I filled it this morning--and some luxuriant gray=green moss growing nicely between the bricks.

Started Tu Fu last night, after David Hinton's introduction the night before. Gazing Up at Sacred Peak, "For all this, what is the mountain god like?" How much I'd forgotten--this world he's created. What a pleasure to enter it again. Anticipation...

But can we ever know, really? What's in the mind? The skein of thoughts and connections so elaborate and vast--even when they're at their simplest--so that we trudge along, lightly, on the path...


_____

This world he's created. Three meanings, I see now--first, the mountain god, then the poet, Tu Fu --and then David Hinton, in his translations. I was thinking of Hinton, but the ambiguity serves a purpose...

5.24 Son de la Bahía (2)

24 May 2020, Son de la Bahía.

Approaching the little park at the corner of Peralta, I hear the music first--from Mexico, of course--and almost in the same moment see the two figures on the plaza below, positioned perfectly against the trees. I recognise them, of course---the harp playyer is Nidiaz a neighborhood friend. It's Cinco de Mayo (the balloons around the entryway to Talavera a reminder) and the line of people outside, well-spaced, waiting for pick-up... Some of the women (and their daughters) can't resist dancing...
_____

 And then on Friday evening, again. Nidia seated with with family and friends--all of them her brood, in a way, for she's a mother hen. La reina de las gallinas. With her jarana player alongside, and sitting nearby, on the railing ledge, someone who looks almost familiar --she lowers her bandana a little, and I see that it’s Estefania, from the México class years ago. She's decided that the corporate life as an investment house gopher in NYC isn't what she wanted after all--and now she's back, five years later, playing sones. Nidia gathers people like this--part of her gift.

I used to see her with the ensemble  in full mariachi attire, near the Albany pool. climbing into a van, about to head for a quinceañera. The Mariachi Femenil Orgullo Mexicano. But now it seems that these sones-indigenous folk songs--have taken hold of Nidia's musical imagination. Plus she's learned to play the harp ("My teacher gave me no choice, but now I'm very glad I did...") They come up to the little Peralta park sometimes to hold forth. Such a delight to approach on an evening, after a good walk--the sound first, then always the red flower in Nidia's hair, her forthright smile...and the music, unfailing.

She told me once she's actually from Argentina--with Guarani roots. The Guarani, who survived the strictures of the Spanish Jesuits by applying their musical gifts. How one survives in the Bay Area these days, too, perhaps. She went to Cal in  anthropology (I learned only recently) and it seems she does community arts with the Albany schools--but it's clearly this musica mexicana that she loves best...
_____

Another connection, which became apparent in reworking the drawing. (The left side went though several changes.) One of Titian's big paintings from Ovid--the story of Acteon, the huntsman, who surprises Diana and her maidens in their bower. (Titian shows Acteon pulling back a curtain--a touch of  domestic theater set in the Veneto woods. ) Angered at the surprise, Diana dashes water into the intruder's face--Acteon will soon be turned into a stag...


Maybe a little of a carry-over from C today, tending the koi pond, tired but happyy. The fish like the new streams of bubbles...



5.23 Tending the Fishes B

23 May 2020. Tending the Fishes.

The call of a single crow—which takes us to a garden far away. Perhaps not quite so far as that of the the Queen of Sheba, on her royal divan, in Yemen it's said, but to the edge of a quiet pool in the great Southland, nonetheless. We’re all gathered, of course, with implements set out for the rescue—the blue pan, just as Melinda would have it, towel and wash, and Jimmy alongside, mildly curious, whereas in the background, la curiosa alongsid one of the chickens, looking on, while perched on the green urn, a raven. A friendly raven. And not so far off, on the edge of the planting bed, we see the hoopoe, who's flown in from afar, a letter in hand--from the King no doubt, standing there in the cool of his studio in the North. Is he wearing clothes today? There was a time when not, just his royal nakedness, all exposed, with the visage (even then) of Oscar, his father, and Oscar's smile as well...

We celebrate these happenings. The koi will be cured--ojalá--Jimmy will enjoy a new Petco ball, sweet Odette her long rest there on the slope next to the flowers. Gen is somewhere nearby--the physician's assistant  for today--and Adam as well--but the scene here must needs belong to Cinde Lou, the Queen alone...

5.23 Tending the Fishes

23 May 2020. Tending the Fishes.

The call of a single crow—which takes us to a garden far away. Perhaps not quite so far as that of the the Queen of Sheba, on her royal divan, in Yemen it's said, but to the edge of a quiet pool in the great Southland, nonetheless. We’re all gathered, of course, with implements set out for the rescue—the blue pan, just as Melinda would have it, towel and wash, and Jimmy alongside, mildly curious, whereas in the background, la curiosa alongsid one of the chickens, looking on, while perched on the green urn, a raven. A friendly raven. And not so far off, on the edge of the planting bed, we see the hoopoe, who's flown in from afar, a letter in hand--from the King no doubt, standing there in the cool of his studio in the North. Is he wearing clothes today? There was a time when not, just his royal nakedness, all exposed, with the visage (even then) of Oscar, his father, and Oscar's smile as well...

We celebrate these happenings. The koi will be cured--ojalá--Jimmy will enjoy a new Petco ball, sweet Odette her long rest there on the slope next to the flowers. Gen is somewhere nearby--the physician's assistant  for today--and Adam as well--but the scene here must needs belong to Cinde Lou, the Queen alone...

5.23 Solano Angel

23 May 2020. Solano Angel.

Looking at the Cimabue last week, the garments he fashioned for his angels—the most prominent element being the haloes of gold—emphasized no doubt in the reproduction, but still central to his meaning. Where in the Giotto, all significance has been transferred to the human plane—the weight of their bodies, clothing. At first you don’t notice the shift—both paintings are magnificent—but it’s here we encounter the beginning of our own era.

I’m not really sure what that means today. We learned in college to see it as an arc towards some kind of deliverance, understanding—where truth and language would see us through. Never mind the history of the last century—two grotesque wars, deemed impossible, but there they were—and now, given the choice between humanity and money, it becomes the same choice again. (“I’d rather die than kill the country.”) Call it the socialism of death—or the tenth crusade, whatever. But reason is not the point here…



So why dwell on it. Better the garments of angels, like this figure, wandering Solano after the rain.  I’d seen the white tarp pulled up over his head, and glimpses of his narrow form—like someone from the Maasai reserve—and then our lives were joined for a moment when he requested a dollar.

Should I have shared my entire kingdom?
_____


C yesterday evening, remembering the story of Dorothy Day—her co-workers at the Catholic Worker house in New York, doubting the true neediness of some of their clients. She gestures to one such man, “He is Christ, you know…”

I wouldn’t have seen it this way—although Rabbi Citron always taught that if asked, one gives. And in Yerushalayim, at the  shul in Mea She’arim, the alms-seekers were always so honored—even if this could be done with only the smallest coins…

____

My grandfather, Chaim Dubowsky, in the desert backcountry east of San Diego. He was working a gold mine—this was in the 1920’s—but fell ill. My father went to care for him, managed to carry him to El Centro, where he lay with pneumonia in a rented room. “I made a garment for him,” my father’s words—how they registered. A piece of canvas folded in  half, sewn along one long seam. A garment, he said…

A garment for an angel…

5.22 Begin Again

22 May 2020. Begin Again.

Yes, always a good idea--and things can change. A truism, but still important to remember. The patterns we so much enjoy--they're also our confinement. Return to find something new, maybe that's a better approach. For instance, the sound of Andrew's voice just now, from over the fence. An attorney, teaching law at Cal--you hear it in the timbre, and the articulation of his phrases. And yet he's young, so the bounce is there, too--lifting at unexpected moments with each utterance. I don't really hear the words, just the sound of his confidence. At ease with making sense. Can't quite decide whether it's a distraction--but why not notice?

Like the muslim man yesterday outside Rivoli on Solano. Sliding himself into a sedan, the door ajar. I see his cap first--that characteristic short cylinder, unadorned--a funny way to describe it, I admit--and then follow to his garment--a dun-colored kurta--which confirms his faith. Maybe Afghani, though? Should I not recognize the difference?

I try not to make assumptions, that's what the young Palestinian woman said, at a time when I very much needed to be reminded. Assumptions that close us into a form, even as it recapitulates the world.

Better the young couple on the right. They cross the Alameda together, hand in hand.  I wondered at that--clearly a case of youthful infatuation, way too young to be permanent, and yet the way she offered him her hand--and the casual assurance with which he took it, spoke of forever.

At one point she reached around and moved her phone to the other pocket of her shorts, Felt for the pocket on the right, tucked it in with assurance. Make sure not to slip. I felt that I should know why she'd done this--shifted the phone--but it became clear I had no idea--no idea at all...

_____

She played a song on the speaker as they walked. Sounded like his music, too. And just now, the dove, calling out somewhere nearby...

5.21 Tre Madonne

21 May 2020. Tre Madonne.

Thinking about it later, the first image that came to mind was Susan herself, sitting there against the patterned wall, holding little Genevieve in her lap, a little to her left. I saw both their faces, the calm on Susan's, her smile--and all felt right in the world. Calm and majestic, even--I'm not sure why--the formality of their pose, or maybe how it was framed...

The occasion being brother Geoffrey, his role in Starving Artists, a film from 1997, which Susan was showing to a group of freinds, gathered together on Zoom this way, peering into each other's lives for a moment as we watched, as if side by side. The view into the rooms, some people eating dinner, others turning tend to this or that, some of us simply sitting comfortably, hand on cheek...

Geoff, still young ("the sexiest man alive," a comment that flashed by) along with so much else, the story looping in and out of itself, playfully convoluted, filled with references to previous scenes--songs, laughter, murders and kisses, all jumbled together in an improbable Buster Keaton sort of way--with doors opening into hallways like clown cars, nothing ever quite resolving--but then somewhere that was the point, a celebration of ongoingness, where the neighbors are killing people, and the heavies arrive vis singing telegrams--along with the touching impossibility of love...

They're all 23 years older now, ourselves included, and Geoffrey has departed from this plane--but to peer back this way into a life-being-lived, even in play--well-lived, with friends and companions, inventing a future, re-making a now...
_____

Susan's pose, with Genevieve, was it the Cimabue madonna--or the slightly later one by Giotto.  Bill Midgette showed them to us, side by side, in one of those evening gatherings for the handful of art students at Reed. That would have been sometime in1963, he was fresh back from a Fulbright year painting in Italy, new etching press in hand, now in Portland. (He was later at St. Anne's.) We were blessed to have such a teacher--even if we didn't quite know it at the time.  The conversation seemed so natural--his questions so real. And he genuinely wanted to know what we thought...

5.21 Toy Store Window

21 May 2020. Toy Store Window.

It was after a day of rain last week, at the end of the afternoon, and the sun had come out, with that beautiful late afternoon light. This figure, tall and narrow, making his way up Solano, now paused in front of the toy store window. Still covered in a white tarp, even though the rain had stopped. He called out to me, just after we'd passed, "Do you have a dollar?" The opening unexpected, and so immediately direct.

The tarp was pulled up over his head, formless, which I knew would be hard to convey. And his face--I only caught a glimpse--narrow just like his figure, reminding me later of what C had read from Out of Africa--the young Maasai warrior, standing on one leg, his other foot propped at the knee. Stark and elegant. But this man was an American, destitute, wandering the streets. If he shared any such lineage the connection was ghostly...
_____

Started the drawing yesterday afternoon, on new paper, which felt so different--even though I'd used it on the Analects for many years. Maybe the tooth--the way it holds the pencil marks, or maybe that the plain 20 lb. bond is nicely slippery in a way I've grown to like.

Reworked many times--the Strathmore rag is resistant, holding all the changes, so that a skein of lines from all the previous drawings remains--and I lose my way. But this is where it stands for now, so let me accept it, even when the results are so impossibly ambiguous.Which is what I want, in a way--that loss of intention, but still it's a challenge in the moment, as I try to hold on...

Maybe because I'd read about Susan Rothenburg this morning--she died in Galisteo, New Mexico. I'd imagined her life there many times, having always admired her paintings--and the parallel way she spoke about them. As direct as asking for a dollar--and just as accepting... As in the story...



____

Original introduction, with first version of the drawing (Prophet of the Toys):

My last angel--if I can be the one to refer to him that way. My last friend, better said. Standing in front of the window of the toy shop on Solano. Five Monkeys, always bright inside, with track lights aimed down at the color-filled array, shelves brimming--so that each grown-up who enters shares in the return--the delight in possibility. An untrammeled sense of play, where the biggest challenge is being ready to have fun...

Trying to remember my father's toy store, for that year or two, in San Diego--right downtown. Long before the days of malls and shopping centers--on a regular city block, alongside the office supply and sewing machine repair. I was about five, and desperately wanted a model train set--there they were, right on the shelf--but was told that I 'd have to earn the allowance money to buy it. Which I did. A kind of lesson, I knew, but which seemed very much in contradiction to my father's urge to have the store in the first place--two great wishes pulling in opposite directions...

5.21 Toy Store Window (original shot)

21 May 2020. Toy Store Window.

It was after a day of rain last week, at the end of the afternoon, and the sun had come out, with that beautiful late afternoon light. This figure, tall and narrow, making his way up Solano, now paused in front of the toy store window. Still covered in a white tarp, even though the rain had stopped. He called out to me, just after we'd passed, "Do you have a dollar?" The opening unexpected, and so immediately direct.

The tarp was pulled up over his head, formless, which I knew would be hard to convey. And his face--I only caught a glimpse--narrow just like his figure, reminding me later of what C had read from Out of Africa--the young Maasai warrior, standing on one leg, his other foot propped at the knee. Stark and elegant. But this man was an American, destitute, wandering the streets. If he shared any such lineage the connection was ghostly...
_____

Started the drawing yesterday afternoon, on new paper, which felt so different--even though I'd used it on the Analects for many years. Maybe the tooth--the way it holds the pencil marks, or maybe that the plain 20 lb. bond is nicely slippery in a way I've grown to like.

Reworked many times--the Strathmore rag is resistant, holding all the changes, so that a skein of lines from all the previous drawings remains--and I lose my way. But this is where it stands for now, so let me accept it, even when the results are so impossibly ambiguous.Which is what I want, in a way--that loss of intention, but still it's a challenge in the moment, as I try to hold on...

Maybe because I'd read about Susan Rothenburg this morning--she died in Galisteo, New Mexico. I'd imagined her life there many times, having always admired her paintings--and the parallel way she spoke about them. As direct as asking for a dollar--and just as accepting... As in the story...



____

Original introduction, with first version of the drawing (Prophet of the Toys):

My last angel--if I can be the one to refer to him that way. My last friend, better said. Standing in front of the window of the toy shop on Solano. Five Monkeys, always bright inside, with track lights aimed down at the color-filled array, shelves brimming--so that each grown-up who enters shares in the return--the delight in possibility. An untrammeled sense of play, where the biggest challenge is being ready to have fun...

Trying to remember my father's toy store, for that year or two, in San Diego--right downtown. Long before the days of malls and shopping centers--on a regular city block, alongside the office supply and sewing machine repair. I was about five, and desperately wanted a model train set--there they were, right on the shelf--but was told that I 'd have to earn the allowance money to buy it. Which I did. A kind of lesson, I knew, but which seemed very much in contradiction to my father's urge to have the store in the first place--two great wishes pulling in opposite directions...

5.12 Children's Game

12 May 2020. Children's Game.

Just visible from under the fence, a perfect sphere, just the bottom part, that is--caught in the narrow space behind neighbor's house--behind the row of pittosporum--it probably rolled in there with no one seeing, now overlooked, maybe forgotten. Somehow I like the idea--this remnant of a children's game--like hearing the neighbor family's voices on the weekend, so unusual to have everyone home, gathered together. Diana's in particular--she must be about four now, her questions quite alert. Not surprising, given two highly alert parents--but it's more than that. You sense the surround they provide, the enclosure, opening to possibility.

The ball is cerise--but everyone on this side takes it in stride--another facet to the blooming spring. For the jay it's a complement to his own finery--that dusky blue--and for the titmouse--well, she has more important bathing chores. And besides, Goose may be lurking about, so one small eye must be kept open...

I made a photograph as well--for if seen just right, the ball could also be a slice of moon. Brought low now, as in the Sappho poem that C read to me on Friday evening. From Out of Africa. A parable, really--the old Chinese woman with the parrot, words repeated over many years, but only now understood...

The moon and the Pleiads...

5.11 Substation Encounter

11 May 2020. Substation Encounter.

Right there, in front of Kim's Cafe, on the most nondescript block in the whole run, I heard my name being called. Well, a touch farther up, actually--in front of the gate of the PG&E substation--pale green wood, with those unusual metal embellishments along the top, I've walked by hundreds of times, often wondering what went on inside...

The perfect setting, of course--and yes, it had to be Noor--we were fated to re-meet this way, after almost two months of lock-down--hidden away in our respective lairs (I'm trying to picture her's from the one time we talked on FaceTime and she walked me up the back stairs, past the inventions and the plants...

She's waving, animated, and I head across the street, brought up as if by a magic wand at that 6-foot limit--like some kind of naval patrol at the outer edge of the established coastal waters--or otherwise we'd have given each other a giant hug.

This seclusion thing pulls you in--at least for me--not just the physical distancing, but everything else put on a kind of hold--waiting to see what will emerge. I'd like to say what kind of clarity, but you become less and less sure--the original extension was until May 15 (C's birthday, of course!) but it's become quite apparent that there will be fits and starts, recurrences, ongoing unknowns--without the most basic guidance, other than  open up, which reads as code for boost my numbers. You inevitably imagine how someone else might speak to this--the compassion and dignity required--a demonstration of caring, that is--caring about the entire fabric of what it means to live together.

Easy to turn to cynicism--the failures of capitalism and a market economy (e.g., where are the masks on Amazon?) but it's not really about that so much as a vision of who we are. The same question Alicia posed when we were sitting together in the kitchen here at the very end of February. What did people feel in the 1930's that brought them together...?

____

However, there are moments... Re-meeting a friend is a very good thing--a delight, those first few words, like water in a dry canyon, after the first rains. And today we do have some rain--here in May, even--as if the wadi were flowering...

_____

Note: Image of Noor in Sarajevo--that was my start, but her gaze there contained a question, where yesterday's was all open-hearted. So, many erasures and restarts--it's problematic to draw a 26-year old! Maybe we ended up with a smallish Samarrian goddess...?

5.10 Goodnight Irene

10 May 2020. Goodnight Irene.

Could be a devotional painting from the French Renaissance--a troubador figure recast as St. John the Baptist, but no, we're at the Catalyst in Santa Cruz, tbe year is 1987, and it's Ry Cooder and his Moula Band. The button-box is Flaco Jimenez, of course--I'd forgotten--adding his norteño harmonies after each verse. The song--Goodnight, Irene, and they're in it for the long haul--including back up singers (the appealing guy with widely-spaced front teeth), a tinkly keyboard (well, the song was originally tin-pan alley) and even a horn section (okay, saxophone and trombone) but the effect is perfect--and their extended rendition (something like 8:27) filmed and edited by Les Blank, is a classic. Maybe most of all because of how Ry Cooder sings it--reinventing the phrases we've all heard a million times, and giving them his own beautiful immediacy...

Down to the scraggly white tee-shirt, an East Hollywood touch--and he looks like a child, but he's been at this for more than 20 years. The solos flow from one player to the next--Ry Cooder's orchestrating--and the audience is there at each turn--each note even, knowing that the evening is drawing to a close--more than  that, really, an entire epoch, and you have to celebrate--be grateful, that is--for each moment as it comes...

There was debate about this when I suggested the song for the 6 o'clock get togethers on Miramar. In fact I already knew what was coming. How did Tanya put it in her email, "I picked the least depressing..." which is, I suppose, one way to look at the matter--but the beautiful thing about folksongs--and about Goodnight Irene in particular--is how they don't edit out. Everything's there--drugs, alcohol, threats and murder--along with love, dream kisses and longing. How not? There were no psycho-therapists in Mooringsport, Louisiana--Leadbelly's hometown--just poverty and black folks--until the discovery of East Texas oil suddenly opened everything up. Exploded. Probably brought the minstrel shows where Leadbelly (or another Ledbetter brother) first heard it--Irene Goodnight, written by Gussie Lord Davis, a black songster on Tin Pan Alley in 1886...

You can follow all these traces--always fascinating, the idea that everything has a point of origin--but in fact it's the music that counts--each time you pick up the guitar and gather everyone in a circle at the end of the evening--something magical in how each person present realizes that we're all there together again, voices lifted, even if it may be for the very last time...

"Please sing me one more song..."