dual personalities

Tag: music

March 29, 2013

The heart in thee

by chuckofish

ralph-waldo-emerson-448

“Ineffable is the union of man and God in every act of the soul. The simplest person who in his integrity worships God, becomes God; yet for ever and ever the influx of this better and universal self is new and unsearchable. It inspires awe and astonishment. How dear, how soothing to man, arises the idea of God, peopling the lonely place, effacing the scars of our mistakes and disappointments! When we have broken our god of tradition and ceased from our god of rhetoric, then may God fire the heart with his presence. It is the doubling of the heart itself, nay, the infinite enlargement of the heart with a power of growth to a new infinity on every side. It inspires in man an infallible trust. He has not the conviction, but the sight, that the best is the true, and may in that thought easily dismiss all particular uncertainties and fears, and adjourn to the sure revelation of time the solution of his private riddles. He is sure that his welfare is dear to the heart of being. In the presence of law to his mind he is overflowed with a reliance so universal that it sweeps away all cherished hopes and the most stable projects of mortal condition in its flood. He believes that he cannot escape from his good. The things that are really for thee gravitate to thee. You are running to seek your friend. Let your feet run, but your mind need not. If you do not find him, will you not acquiesce that it is best you should not find him? for there is a power, which, as it is in you, is in him also, and could therefore very well bring you together, if it were for the best. You are preparing with eagerness to go and render a service to which your talent and your taste invite you, the love of men and the hope of fame. Has it not occurred to you that you have no right to go, unless you are equally willing to be prevented from going? O, believe, as thou livest, that every sound that is spoken over the round world, which thou oughtest to hear, will vibrate on thine ear! Every proverb, every book, every byword that belongs to thee for aid or comfort, shall surely come home through open or winding passages. Every friend whom not thy fantastic will but the great and tender heart in thee craveth, shall lock thee in his embrace. And this because the heart in thee is the heart of all; not a valve, not a wall, not an intersection is there anywhere in nature, but one blood rolls uninterruptedly an endless circulation through all men, as the water of the globe is all one sea, and, truly seen, its tide is one.”

–Ralph Waldo Emerson, “The Over-Soul”

This is a long quote, but I hope you read the whole thing and did not skim. Dear daughter #2 shared this quote with me yesterday with the suggestion that “it’s nice to fall back on the Transcendentalist ideas if the institution of the church is failing you.” I guess my recent posts had her a little worried. But fear not, my relationship with the Episcopal Church, though a love/hate one, is a long-term one. From time to time I threaten to leave, but I probably won’t. I just continue to lower my expectations!

Thanks also to daughter #2 for sending her old mama some new music!

CDs

Josh Ritter and Trampled by Turtles! Great choices for me, especially the TBT–nothing gets me going in the morning like 21st century bluegrass! Here is my favorite song, titled appropriately “Walt Whitman”:

This song gets my Barbara Stanwyck alter ego all charged up and ready to go. Sometimes I think my driving may suffer, but so far so good.

Happy Easter and have a great weekend!

2 Comments
March 19, 2013

Here’s to the hearts an’ the hands of the men, that come with the dust and are gone with the wind*

by chuckofish

Today in 1962 Bob Dylan’s self-titled debut album was released by Columbia Records.

Bob_Dylan_-_Bob_Dylan

That was 51 years ago.

US sales totaled about 2500 copies. Bob Dylan remains Dylan’s only release not to chart at all in the US, though it eventually reached #13 in the UK charts in 1965. Despite the album’s poor performance, financially it was not disastrous because the album was very cheap to record.

Since then he has released something like 35 albums. He has won many awards throughout his career including 11 Grammy Awards, one Academy Award and one Golden Globe Award. He has been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame, and Songwriters Hall of Fame. Last year he received the Presidential Medal of Freedom. And still he is the same old Bob Dylan driving reporters crazy, refusing to tow the line and give them the answers they want to hear.

Your fans know you and love you, Bob. We know that the Holy Spirit did not tap you on the shoulder. He kicked you in the ass. And you have been praising the Lord ever since.

* Song to Woody

3 Comments
March 13, 2013

Lost Highway

by chuckofish

The original rolling stone, you know, was not Bob Dylan or Mick Jagger. It was Hank Williams.

hankw

I’m a rolling stone, all alone and lost
For a life of sin, I have paid the cost
When I pass by, all the people say
“Just another guy on the lost highway”

Most people think old Hank Sr. wrote that song, since he wrote so many famous songs during his sad, short life, but he did not. Written by Leon Payne, “Lost Highway” was recorded by Hank Williams in 1949 at age 26 and he came to personify that “just another guy on the lost highway”.

I was listening to an old burned mix the other day and I heard Beck’s version of Williams’ poignant “Your Cheatin’ Heart” and that got me thinking about one of America’s greatest singer-songwriters.

What a great song! (I like Beck’s version.)

Widely considered country music’s first superstar, Hiram “Hank” Williams was born September 17, 1923, in Mount Olive, Alabama. Never much of a singer (in my opinion) he wrote many American classics, such as “Cold, Cold Heart,” “Your Cheatin’ Heart,” “Hey, Good Lookin'” and “Move It on Over,” as well as Christian classics like “I Saw the Light.” He died of a heart attack at the age of 29 in 1953 in the backseat of his Cadillac on the way to a show. It was really no surprise, since he had been abusing his poor, frail body for years with drugs and alcohol, trying to dull his constant back pain due to spinal bifida.

He packed a lot in to his short life span though, didn’t he? His mysterious talent has always interested me. How can the same man who wrote “Honky Tonkin'” and “You’re Gonna Change (Or I’m Gonna Leave)” –jarring, jangling chart-toppers–also have written the contemplative “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry” and “Lost on the River”? Human beings are amazing.

Hear the lonesome whiperwill
He sounds too blue to fly
The midnight train is whining low
I’m so lonesome I could cry

I’ve never seen a night so long
When time goes crawling by
The moon just went behind a cloud
To hide its face and cry

Did you ever see a robin weep
When leaves begin to die
That means he’s lost the will to live
I’m so lonesome I could cry

The silence of a falling star
Lights up a purple sky
And as I wonder where you are
I’m so lonesome I could cry

Beautiful. I think John Keats would agree. He died at 25. Hopefully they are talking shop in heaven. I like to think so.

P.S. Hollywood made a movie of Williams’ made-to-order drama-filled life in 1964. It starred George Hamilton and was called Your Cheatin’ Heart. It was pretty homogenized and I think they could do a whole lot better. I’m surprised they haven’t tried again. James Franco? Ryan Gosling? It could be Academy Awardsville for you.

7 Comments
March 5, 2013

Things and the reason of things

by chuckofish

Whoever you are! motion and reflection are especially for you,
The divine ship sails the divine sea for you.

Whoever you are! you are he or she for whom the earth is solid and liquid,
You are he or she for whom the sun and moon hang in the sky,
For none more than you are the present and the past,
For none more than you is immortality.

Each man to himself and each woman to herself, is the word of the past and present, and the true word of immortality,
No one can acquire for another–not one,
Not one can grow for another–not one.

The song is to the singer, and comes back most to him,
The teaching is to the teacher, and comes back most to him,
The murder is to the murderer, and comes back most to him,
The theft is to the thief, and comes back most to him,
The love is to the lover, and comes back most to him,
The gift is to the giver, and comes back most to him–it cannot fail,
The oration is to the orator, the acting is to the actor and actress not to the audience,
And no man understands any greatness or goodness but his own, or the indication of his own.

–Walt Whitman, A Song of the Rolling Earth

And in other news: my friend Gary’s band Sun Volt was featured in the Wall Street Journal the other day. You can read the article here.

via Wall Street Journal

via Wall Street Journal

Gary is the cool dude on the far left.

3 Comments
March 1, 2013

I love you, baby, can I have some more

by chuckofish

I think I’ve mentioned that I listen to CDs in my car. I know. Quelle old-fashioned. I don’t have an iPod. I haven’t downloaded much music to my laptop. Sorry. This old dog can only learn so many new tricks at a time.

So I have been wearing out The Lumineers and need something new. Or something old. I rifled through my box of “burns”–i.e. burned CDs, which my children have made for me over the years.

mwc cd

Daughters #1 and #2 obliged me many, many times, burning mixes of my favorites as well as mixes with songs “I might like”.

susie

The boy made some “themed” classics, especially the famous “Kleenex” mixes which included songs and music guaranteed to make his mother weep. These ranged from selections by Patrick Park to Boyz II Men and lots of other stuff in between.

wrc cd

I know that mixes take a lot of effort. But let it never be said that I do not appreciate that effort. I do. Deeply. Thanks, guys. Now, how about burning me a new mix?

4 Comments
February 21, 2013

Hot dog, I feel lucky today

by chuckofish

Mary Chapin Carpenter (born February 21, 1958), an American folk and country music singer, songwriter and musician, turns 55 today.

mcc1

Born in Princeton, NJ, she went to Princeton Day School and The Taft School and Brown, so she grew up in a world similar to the one I did, but she also has that bad-ass cowgirl alter ego with which I readily identify. Who else could have written:

Dwight Yoakam’s in the corner, trying to catch my eye
Lyle Lovett’s right beside me with his hand upon my thigh.

And her monogram is the same as my mother’s.

Anyway, I have been a fan of hers for many years. One of my favorite Mary Chapin Carpenter memories is of the time I (once again) was having a Girl Scout earning-a-patch event at our house. The plan was for Daughter #1 and her small troop to learn to line dance. Not that I was an expert. Uh huh. Priceless.

We moved the dining room table against the wall so we could practice in a large space, which coincidentally had one wall that was a giant mirror, sort of like in a dance studio. The girls lined up and we played “Shut Up and Kiss Me” over and over and (yes) over again, carefully counting one, two, three, four before trying again. And remember, this was in the days of cassette tapes! So there was a lot of rewinding involved. Good lord, how I wish I had a videotape of this coolness.

Here she is singing this great song. In the original, Leroy Parnell was in her band, but oh well.

So happy birthday, Mary Chapin Carpenter! Salut!

6 Comments
February 18, 2013

Music from the New World

by chuckofish

I am reading The Song of the Lark by Willa Cather. It is very good. Here is a quote about going to see a concert in Chicago, which reminded me of my dual personality and how, when she was a very small child–3 or 4–she got a record of the “New World Symphony” for Christmas.

sarah

She loved it and insisted on listening to it over and over. She would walk around the house singing Dum dum dum dum de dum, dum dum dum dum duuuuuum.

She had been to so few concerts that the great house, the crowd of people, and the lights, all had a stimulating effect…During the first number Thea was so much interested in the orchestra itself, in the men, the instruments, the volume of sound, that she paid little attention to what they were playing. Her excitement impaired her power of listening. She kept saying to herself, “Now I must stop this foolishness and listen; I may never hear this again”; but her mind was like a glass that is hard to focus. She was not ready to listen until the second number, Dvorak’s Symphony in E minor, called on the programme, “From the New World.” The first theme had scarcely been given out when her mind became clear; instant composure fell upon her, and with it came the power of concentration. This was music she could understand, music from the New World indeed! Strange how, as the first movement went on, it brought back to her that high tableland above Laramie; the grass-grown wagon trails the far-away peaks of the snowy range, the wind and the eagles, that old man and the first telegraph message.

When the first movement ended, Thea’s hands and feet were cold as ice. She was too much excited to know anything except that she wanted something desperately, and when the English horns gave out the theme of the Largo, she knew that what she wanted was exactly that. Here were the sand hills, the grasshoppers and locusts, all the things that wakened and chirped in the early morning; the reaching and reaching of high plains, the immeasurable yearning of all flat lands. There was home in it, too; first memories, first mornings long ago; the amazement of a new soul in a new world; a soul new and yet old, that had dreamed something despairing, something glorious, in the dark before it was born; a soul obsessed by what it did not know, under the cloud of a past it could not recall.

Makes me want to listen to the “New World” symphony, how about you? Well, here you go!

4 Comments
February 14, 2013

It’s about time

by chuckofish

cashstamp

Johnny Cash gets his own stamp! Coming to a post office near you in 2013.

(As you know, I have been a big fan of Johnny since I was a small child with absurdly good instincts. I blogged about him here last year.)

Here he is singing one of my personal favorites, “Ring of Fire”:

Didn’t that make your Thursday a whole lot better?

Well, here’s something else to perk up your day. My friend Gary Hunt’s band Son Volt has a CD coming out soon. Here’s the teaser:

(Gary’s playing the fiddle and is visible in the first 2 seconds.) Word is that the band is scheduled to perform on David Letterman! We might have to actually tune in.

7 Comments
February 13, 2013

Praising my savior all the day long

by chuckofish

Frances Jane Crosby was the most prolific writer of hymn texts and gospel songs in the American evangelical tradition of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. She wrote more than eight thousand sacred texts in addition to other poetry.

crosby

Born in Putnam County, New York, on March 24, 1820, she lost her sight as an infant as a result of complications from a childhood illness. At the age of fifteen, she entered the New York Institute for the Blind where she would later teach for a number of years. In 1858, she married Alexander van Alstyne, a musician in New York who was also blind. Crosby was a lifelong Methodist.

Fanny Crosby is honored with a feast day on the liturgical calendar of the Episcopal Church in the United States of America on February 11, even though none of her hymns are included in either the 1940 or 1982 Hymnal. Go figure.

Here is an excellent rendition of one of her most famous hymns, Blessed Assurance, performed by Third Day. Listen to the whole thing and start your Lent on a positive note.

5 Comments
January 10, 2013

And that’s my opinion from the blue, blue sky

by chuckofish

I am obsessed with this song: “Stubborn Love”. And, yes, I am 15 again. No apologies.

And by the way:

“Movement and change are the essence of our being; rigidity is death; conformity is death: let us say what comes into our heads, repeat ourselves, contradict ourselves, fling out the wildest nonsense, and follow the most fantastic fancies without caring what the world does or thinks or says. For nothing matters except life.”

Virginia Woolf, Montaigne

9 Comments