080209

Short and sweet this week; I've been away from my computer.

_____

I had an utterly horrific time in the hospital. I still have bruises up and down my arms from the inept nurse trying to stick me with needles. The only place I've ever been more uncomfortable was jail, and that wasn't all that much worse. I eloped (left against medical advice) after one night. There were so many terrible, unprofessional, and downright insulting aspects about my less-than-24-hour stay I will save it for next installment.

I didn't sleep a wink, got up and left in a serious steroid funk (again, entirely the nurse's fault), and was certain of one thing: I had to get up to Connecticut to be with my brother whose wife died Saturday after a 3-year struggle with cancer. Nothing and no one was going to stop me. On the trip to CT, I saw a number of people I haven't seen in 20 years. It felt wholesome to be there with my brother.

*Teachers*

I've been thinking a lot about all the music teachers I've had in my life. This partial list, to the best of my memory, will come in installments:

1. My first teacher, when I was a young teen in grammar school, was a guy named Steve Bentzel, who taught guitar from his brownstone apartment. He would transcribe (using tablature) any piece of music you brought to him. He was okay at that, not superb. The best part was that he had live shows in his apartment for all his students every few months. Thus I had my first performance experiences.

2. I quickly became an avid finger picker. I took a number of classes at the New School which has/had a really good guitar program. I studied with a jazz-fingerstyle guru named Howard Morgen; the second class with him, he took me to task for playing the written music (I could read music by then) straight, "What are you thinking?! I specifically told you to make the eighth notes swing! You will never play straight eighth notes in my class again." My first real jazz lesson.

3. I've always been a singer and my first vocals teacher was an opera singer named Linda Sharman. My god did that woman have an instrument! Here she was sining at the Met, and she was perfectly happy to help me singing my Van Morrisson songs. Singing is especially complex and she engrained in me concepts and knowledge that are both vitally important and also wholly indescribable. These took many months to learn and so a couple of sentences couldn't really cover it.

Linda is also the first artist who told me that the worst insult she had ever received came in the form of a compliment: a fan came to her after a show and said, "Oh you are so _lucky_ to have a voice like that." She had to bite her tongue and smile but what she really wanted to say was, "If you had been with me through the years of toil and and ascendance, if you could see all the hours I've spent slowly honing my craft, if you knew of the endless self-coubt and struggle and trying and failing and trying again, I guarantee you wouldn't call me lucky!"

There are many others and I will write about them in future Teachers installments.

*Quotations*

Getting out of the hospital is a lot like resigning from a book club. You're not out of it until the computer says you're out of it.

--Emma Bombeck

A church is a hospital for sinners, not a museum for saints.

--Abigail Van Buren

It may seem a strange principle to enunciate as the very first requirement in a hospital that it should do the sick no harm.

--Florence Nightingale

There's a crack in everything--that's how the light gets in.

--Leonard Cohen

It is impossible to speak in such a way that you cannot be misunderstood.

--Karl Popper

The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public's money.

--Alexis de Tocqueville

The outcome of any serious research can only be to make two questions grow where only one grew before.

--Thorstein Veblen

We want to live in the present, and the only history that is worth a tinker's damn is the history we make today.

--Henry Ford

At the worst a house unkept cannot be so distressing as a life unlived.

--Rose Macaulay

For every minute you remain angry you give up 60 seconds of peace of mind.

--Emerson

*OPP*

I find this piece enjoyable. Bear in mind it's backwards, the whole poem. I tend to play a lot with chronology in my writing, especially plays, so this appeals to me a great deal. It's inspired by the recent deaths of the final two remaining English WWI veterans.

By Carol Ann Duffy

Last Post

If poetry could tell it backwards, true, begin

that moment shrapnel scythed you to the stinking mud...

but you get up, amazed, watch bled bad blood

run upwards from the slime into its wounds;

see lines and lines of British boys rewind

back to their trenches, kiss the photographs from home--

mothers, sweethearts, sisters, younger brothers

not entering the story now

to die and die and die.

Dulce- No- Decorum- No- Pro patria mori.

You walk away.

You walk away; drop your gun (fixed bayonet)

like all your mates do too--

Harry, Tommy, Wilfred, Edward, Bert--

and light a cigarette.

There's coffee in the square,

warm French bread

and all those thousands dead

are shaking dried mud from their hair

and queuing up for home. Freshly alive,

a lad plays Tipperary to the crowd, released

from History; the glistening, healthy horses fit for heroes, kings.

You lean against a wall,

your several million lives still possible

and crammed with love, work, children, talent, English beer, good food.

You see the poet tuck away his pocket-book and smile.

If poetry could truly tell it backwards,

then it would.

*Mixes*

In 2004 I was still listening to records. I put a mix together which I listen to to this day:

Citizen Mix, Vinyl Retrospeculation

1. What a Wonderful World (Adler/Alpert/Cooke), David Bromberg with Bonnie Raitt and others

2. Clean-up Woman, Betty Wright

3. Black Cow, Steely Dan

4. Heroes (live), David Bowie (far and away better than the original studio track)

5. Mother of Pearl, Roxy Music

6. Child's Song, David Bromberg

7. In My Life, The Beatles

8. Rikki's Shuffle (live), Michael Hedges with Michael Manring

9. Highway Patrolman, Bruce Springsteen (the only music from Springsteen I've ever liked, from the record Nebraska, this album has been influential on folks in a wide array of arts)

10. Circle Game (live), Joni Mitchell (when I hear Ms Mitchell I am putty in her hands)

11. All the Young Dudes (live), David Bowie

12. Walking in Space (live), from an English performance of Hair

13. Compared to What (Gene McDaniels) (live), Roberta Flack

14. Warm Love (live), Van Morrisson

15. Patches, Clarence Carter

16. Demon in Disguise, David Bromberg

17. Rickover's Dream (live), Michael Hedges

In 2007 I compiled Digital Retrospeculation. The first few tracks mimic a mix I made in high school.

1. Nobody Loves Me but My Mother, BB King

2. Think, James Brown

3. Baba O'Reilly, The Who

4. The Way Young Lovers Do, Van Morrisson

5. Sunshine, Jonathan Edwards

6. Summer Breeze, Seals & Crofts

7. Ain't Nobody's Business (American traditional), James Cotton (the best rendition of this song, bar none)

8. Mr Jones, Counting Crows

9. Day Dreaming, Aretha Franklin

10. Ballerina, Van Morrisson

11. The Real Me, The Who

12. Ask Me No Questions, BB King

13. Jack and Diane, John Mellencamp

14. Rich Girl, Hall & Oates

15. Madame George, Van Morrisson

16. Love Reign O'er Me, The Who

17. Bag of Bones, Guy Clark (I heard this one day in a coffee shop and thought, "Isn't this my life?")

18. Shanty, Jonathan Edwards

19. Mohawk, Bird and Diz

_____

Bag of Bones, Guy Clarke

"He said his hip talks to him when it's ready to rain.

He had a little nip and he's feeling no pain.

When he gets like this

he feels like talkin'.

He said he took some shrapnel at the Bay of Pigs.

lost two fingers on a gulf oil rig.

Oh, you gotta watch him--

he'll take off walkin'.

Some folks say he's lost his mind

but he's just running out of time.

He said, 'This old bag of bones ain't really me.

There's a lot more standing here than what you see.

My back is bending low but my spirit's flying free.

Oh, this old bag of bones ain't really me.'"

Peace, love, and ATOM jazz