Sneath Seething Bay, rapping in foglines, clutching its pieces before the shallow tempest.
Emerald breakfast. Tripping on tripe, and sniping at the memory, long in the tooth, of car salesmen in gabardine reciting the company code as gospel on their way to another after-work alcohol tasting ceremony.
The bird in the Ballet Mechanique:
There is a single sequence of a few frames in Fernand Leger’s Ballet Mecanique that seem to sum up both the intention of the film and its mystery. At exactly two minutes and fifteen seconds into the film a bird appears. It is a parrot (perroquet, a cockatoo) turning to face the camera and then turning away. It disappears in a flash of light and is not repeated.
From a recent column in the SF Chronicle by John Flinn, Culture shock still souvenir of Japan, comes the following excellent examples of Japanese T-shirt English, which I have made bold:
About the only place I saw English used consistently was on T-shirts worn by young people, and (as Japanophiles here are well aware) this was a weird, jabberwocky form of English. “Don’t mess with juicy,” read one shirt. “Hurry up the cakes,” read another.
After a while, I began to collect these slogans in my journal. They were, I thought, a peculiarly addictive form of poetry:
“Why waste lucky?”
“Oh my goodness. Don’t scully me.”
“Mischievous blue rabbit skunk.”
“Oranges now!”
(My guess is that if a Japanese speaker saw the kanji characters tattooed on ankles and shoulder blades all over America, he’d find them equally nonsensical.)
Beautiful visualizations by Benjamin Fry: “There is a space of highly complex systems for which we lack deep understanding because few techniques exist for visualization of data whose structure and content are continually changing. My research focuses on developing approaches to such data, in particular, the human genome.”
Leo Kottke’s liner notes on the back of his 1979 album, Balance:
We live on the edge of town with a big front yard. I get up in the morning about noon and make my way through the dogshit to the mailbox to get the mail.
I often pause to think at this point, but then, the dog is emblematic of civilization and, without civilization, we could be riding on horses without umbrellas and spending our lives waiting to skewer badgers on sticks.
With civilization we bring actual animals with voices like saxophones right into our homes where they defecate at will. And then we blame the animal for being so dumb.
At Christmastime, trees, as well as living animals, are brought into the house. Little silver balls are hung from the tree. And food. Popcorn, cranberries and candy canes rotting in the forced-air heat.
But what can compare to seeing that first sled under your tree in Oklahoma, where it hasn’t snowed for the last eight years.
Actually, my sled was not under the rotting Christmas tree but, for some odd reason, hidden in the kitchen stove with its rear end protruding from the oven door. “Go in and get it, Leo!” my parents said, delighted with that wide-eyed look their kids always got at Christmastime.
But often times, standing at the mailbox, none of these musings will soothe, and, in a bathrobe at noon, with my right hand deep in a mailbox and left foot buried in turd, I succumb to despair.
Watch out for the smelly pile of despair; most of us seem to have one foot in anyway.
From Jon Carroll’s column in yesterday’s San Francisco Chronicle, wherein Jon describes a recent road trip he took with his wife and what they listened to:
Listening: We took our iPod along for the ride. We loaded it with 700 of our favorite songs, we selected the “random” option, and we let fate choose our music, Diana Krall followed by Mavis Staples followed by Waylon Jennings. We also downloaded some non-music: Adam Gopnik at the Commonwealth Club, David Sedaris at Carnegie Hall and, because we knew we’d never read it any other way, “The Brothers Karamazov.”
“The B.K.” is a very long book — Dostoevsky never uses one adverb when three will do — and is interspersed with long speeches about the existence of God and the meaning of consciousness. My mind tended to wander in the soft hum of the highway, so sometimes I was confused as to who was speaking to whom. The book is about the activities of about 10 people in the same Russian town, so there aren’t a lot of signposts for the inattentive listener. Still, I was liking it.
“Isn’t it interesting,” I said to Tracy, “how experimental this seems for a 19th century novel? Notice how everyone talks about Dimitri, but we never actually see him.”
It was not until Pennsylvania that we realized that we had neglected to turn off the “random” feature of the iPod, so we were getting chapters in arbitrary order, the plot entirely in the mischievous hands of fate.
We loved the part at the beginning, where everybody died.
Groucho Marx, as Captain Jeffrey Spaulding, in Animal Crackers (1930):
Spalding (speaks): Well I’m certainly grateful for this magnificent washout, eh, turnout, and, eh,
now I’d like to say a few words…
(sings) Hello, I must be going.
I cannot stay, I came to say I must be going.
I’m glad I came, but just the same I must be going.
Mrs. Rittenhous: For my sake you must stay.
If you should go away, you’ll spoil this party I am throwing.
Spalding: I’ll stay a week or two.
I’ll stay the summer through.
But I am telling you that I must be going.
Mrs. Rittenhous: Before you go will you oblige us
and tell us of your deeds so glowing?
Spalding: I’ll do anything you say.
In fact, I’ll even stay!
All: Good!
Spalding: But I must be going.
My brother Jack just emailed me this:
A Native American elder was asked to sing the old hunting songs for a documentary. But he doesn’t remember the words and instead sings about not remembering the words and about being filmed.
He says he got it from an LA Times about ten years ago. I couldn’t find any references to this online, but it might be a Laurie Anderson story. Sounds like one.
Anyway, I like it a lot. Seems to capture quite well our media mad culture. And even though I can’t remember the source, I’ll sing about it.
A funny bit from a Croatian tourist leaflet in a Jon Carroll column from 1999:
IN OTHER NEWS: Reader Bill Coffin shared with me a lovely advertising leaflet from Croatia. It began with a quote from Alain Dover, a person known neither to Coffin nor me:
“During the day, into an incomparable marine scenery, which is a live and genuine ‘pastime’. When the stars come closer by, a sweet fragrance is gently touched by the saltish of the surrounding seawaters: ‘lovers do vibrate’ while the mermaids lull a song into this marvelous ancient sea.”
Almost Prufrockian, isn’t it? But there’s more:
“As the Alain Dover’s rhyme says (the artists wanted to stop at the legendary ‘Capri’ restaurant). An ambiance genuine plus full of life. Among the joyful people’s whispers, large and equipped rooms, verandah by the sea within restaurant, fragrances and flavours made of an enchanting cuisine and pizzeria . . . (Not to be forgotten, prices are contained toward rigorous quality, thanks to a smart management) . . .
“At the evening, a slender smooth music discreetly is played when the moonlight beams out. Saturday night ‘dance.’ Trustfully recognized under every profile.”
Slender music! Fragrant stars! I’m so there.
One can only imagine the ambiance of the joyful people’s whispers at the Saturday night “dance.”
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