062710

The disease of modern character is specialization.

--Wendell Berry

*Hair*

My brother and I went to see Hair on Broadway. Wow! What a show. I have never actually seen a Broadway show of it; the closest I got was a production at my college. Having been raised on the music from Hair, to me it was like a soundtrack to my life. I've sung the songs so many times they're like old hat. There was a couple of things that changed for this production: Claude plays a guy from Queens who's fixated on England, and Claude does go to an induction center, and so he is in fact the one who dies. The show is that much more powerful because of it.

It was all there, a fellow discussing the very racy Sodomy, a woman discussing the state of the air, the group singing about 256 Viet Cong captured, etc.

"I'm a colored spade,

a nigger, a black nigger.

A jungle bunny, jigaboo, coon,

pickaninny, mau mau.

Uncle Tom, Aunt Jemima,

Little Black Sambo,

cotton pickin', swamp guinea,

Junk man, shoeshine boy.

Elevator operator, table cleaner at Horn & Hardart,

slave, voodoo zombie,

Ubangi lipped, flat nose,

tap dancin', resident of Harlem.

And president of

The United States of Love.

President of

The United States of Love."

"Ain't got no home. (So)

Ain't got no shoes. (Poor)

Ain't got no money. (Honey)

Ain't got no class. (Common)

Ain't got no scarf. (Hot)

Ain't got no gloves. (Cold)

Ain't got no bed. (Beat)

Ain't got no pot. (Busted)

Ain't got no faith. (Catholic)"

"I got crazy ways, daughter,

I got million-dollar charm, cousin,

I got headaches and toothaches

and bad times too like you.

I got my hair.

I got my head.

I got my brains.

I got my ears.

I got my eyes.

I got my nose.

I got my mouth.

I got my teeth.

I got my tongue.

I got my chin.

I got my neck.

I got my tits.

I got my heart.

I got my soul.

I got my back.

I got my ass.

I got my arms.

I got my hands.

I got my fingers.

Got my legs,

I got my feet,

I got my toes,

I got my liver,

Got my blood,

I got my guts (I got my guts),

I got my muscles (muscles),

I got life (life),

Life (life),

Life (life),

LIFE!"

"She asks me why

I'm just a hairy guy.

I'm hairy noon and night,

hair that's a fright.

I'm hairy high and low,

don't ask me why.

(Don't know.)

It's not for lack of bread

like the Grateful Dead, darling.

Gimme head with hair,

long beautiful hair,

shining, gleaming,

streaming, flaxen, waxen.

Give me down to there hair,

shoulder length or longer.

Here baby, there mama,

Everywhere, daddy daddy,

Hair, hair, hair, hair, hair, hair, hair,

flow it, show it,

long as God can grow it, my hair."

"Ripped open by metal explosion.

Caught in barbed wire,

fireball, bullet shock.

Bayonet electricity,

shrapnel, throbbing meat,

electronic data processing,

black uniforms, bare feet, carbines.

Mail-order rifles shoot the muscles.

256 Viet Cong captured. 256 Viet Cong captured."

*Quotations*

Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction.

--Blaise Pascal

We grew a hundred years older in a single hour.

--Anna Akhmatova

Nothing is permanent in this wicked world. Not even our troubles.

--Charles Chaplin

Cynicism is an unpleasant way of saying the truth.

--Lillian Hellman

In everything one thing is impossible: rationality.

--Nietzsche

The meaning of a myth resounds in its evoked associations, and if the scholar is to become aware of these, he must allow their counterparts to arise within himself from those regions of his nature he still shares with early man.

--Joseph Campbell

We are now confident that electric and magnetic phenomena are attributable to the ether, and we are perhaps justified in saying that the effects of static electricity are effects of ether in motion.

--Nikola Tesla

The trick is to enjoy life. Don't wish away your days, waiting for better ones ahead. The grand and the simple. They are equally wonderful.

--Marjorie Pay Hinckley

I think one of my early motivations for writing was that other people's versions of experience didn't gel with my own. It was a gesture toward sanity to try to get the world right for myself. I've since learned that if you get it right for yourself, it often has resonance for others.

--Stephen Dunn

The best newspapermen I know are those most thrilled by the daily pump of city room excitements; they long fondly for a 'good murder'; they pray that assassinations, wars, catastrophes, break on their editions.

--Pete Hamill

Peace love and ATOM jazz