OK
– late 70s, Great Performances on PBS. My b&w portable TV (a
graduation gift) sitting on some second-hand furniture. I think that was
the scene, anyway. Could have been early 70s, living room b&w
(living color was downstairs – a split-level thing, readers). She was
beautiful, sweet, nice, and had haunting eyes that drooped at just the
right curve to elicit melancholic sympathy from the audience. I wish I
could remember her name right now.
She
had many powerful roles on stage, film and screen. She was the lead in
“I Am a Camera” – the play before the movie before the musical that was
by then called “Cabaret.” She did a lot of other stuff that was great.
She didn’t have this “I am a stage actor doing this for money” air –
rare back then. Just everything she did had this quiet edge to it. This
was her biggest role: Emily Dickenson* in “The Belle of Amherst.” She was
magnificent in that play.
Which was completely wrong.
I don’t know who’s reading this, so just to keep it PG, I used the word “wrong.” I meant to write something else.
She
had red hair. By some accounts, it was curly. After she was 24 (I
think), she only wore white. She was not a recluse, not a hermit, not
agoraphobic. She was the town’s unofficial florist. Everybody in town
knew Emily had this incredible “green thumb.” Contemporary descriptions
run to ecstasy over her floral exhibitions. She did stay close to home.
Unmarried women of her era pretty much had to.
That
the picture we all have of Emily Dickenson in our heads comes from that
photo of her we all know – or maybe a drawing based on that picture
from a book jacket. She was a teenager when it was taken. Like the one
of Rimbaud taken in a later era, it is striking. As if there is some
latent grandeur held closely inside that diminutive body.
But,
look closely at an archival quality repro of Emily’s photo. Her lips
and eyebrows are very light-colored, but her hair – straight, pulled
back – is the color of India ink. A form of heavy shoe polish called
“bootblack” would have done the trick. I think she is wearing a dress
from her mother’s – maybe even her grandmother’s – era.
You
see, her father was a big-shot lawyer in town. Their house was the
first brick home ever built in Amherst. And he was a strict Puritan: to
them, red hair was a bad sign. But his brilliant daughter Emily’s scalp
was abloom with it. Having your photograph made back then was expensive,
a very big deal. You couldn’t very well put her in a maidenly dress
with all that red hair sticking out, could you? What would the neighbors
think when they come to call and see the devil’s daughter grinning back
from inside a flowery dress right there above the mantel? Egad!
Years
later, Emily wanted to marry a certain guy she’d known for years. He
wasn’t good enough for Daddy Dickenson, though. And this guy’s health
got worse when he found that out. Emily’s would-have-been beau died a
year or two later, and that’s when Miss Em put on a white dress. The
only color she would ever wear again.
She
apparently confined herself afterward to the Amherst home and its
grounds, growing flowers in the back yard (I guess) in season, and
later, growing exotic plants in a “conservatory” – a kind of 19th
Century hothouse the family had built for her to use as such.
She
wrote thousands of poems – yes, thousands – all in draft form with
little notes and alternate words to the side. She was a careful writer
who broke all the rules of 19th Century poetics. Nobody wrote in common
meter – “Harrumph! That’s for hymnals!” Nobody bent language or invented
words (all usable linguistically) – “Humph! We only use the Queen’s
English here!” And nobody, but nobody, wrote without punctuating
anything. “Ho! What would the British say if they read this? We’d be a
laughingstock!”
Even
critics writing nearly a hundred years after Emily died thought of her
as some spinster Grandma Moses who wrote verse as a hobby, like knitting
sweaters. It was really good, they said, in spite of all the
“primitive” irregularities.
They
weren’t “primitive” – they were innovative. They weren’t a hobby – they
were a serious endeavor intellectually. They weren’t an accident – they
were spiritual meditations on ultimate questions. This tiny redhead in
white nobody took seriously had the heart of a lion. And it roared, very
quietly, in verse. The quiet was not from timidity; it was from control
(as in “self-control”).
Even
her sister, who had (with an editor friend) to collect her writings
after Emily’s death and put them in a publishable form (for that era),
called her sister a “scintillating spirit.” The introduction to that
edition (available on gutenberg.org) also denies that Emily was a
recluse.
All
three editions Emily’s sister brought out do not contain all of her
sister’s poems. They were originally stitch-bound in a certain order
(Emily died of kidney failure and was unable to communicate toward the
end of her time). That order has since been published as a scholar has
reconstructed it. And the poems appear (according to at least one
researcher) to imply some kind of story – a strange facet that scholars
are still debating.
They
did not understand this scintillating spirit. And we don’t, either. We
just thought we did. She was not the “belle” of Amherst. She was its
sage.
___
*Emily Dickinson's last name is left misspelled, as in the original, though other typos have been fixed. “They” in the last paragraph refers to her
contemporaries. The actress's name was Julie Harris.
LJ orig.: 09/08/07
Wednesday, February 29, 2012
Tuesday, February 28, 2012
My Dream Machine
It's black. I like black.
It has a screen you can pick up with one hand easily (like Shuttle's) -- and it goes from portrait to landscape mode like an iPhone. The screen is like that SONY electronic book reader, but better. No flicker rate, no refresh, no blinky-blink at all. Text on the display looks exactly like it does on a piece of paper. Paintings look like an archival quality photo of the canvas. Photos look like they do in a gallery, except without the glare.
It comes with a little box that looks like one of those mini-itx computers: it's about the size of a mass-market paperback, but it's a little wider, for a CD or DVD (data -- you'll see why in a minute) slot.
The keyboard is nice and full-featured. Typing on it is like tapping a touch screen. It might even be a touch screen. No mouse -- I prefer a trackball (easier on the wrist.). Classy look, but practical. Pressing down on the ball changes its responsive capability. Squeezing the side of the base a certain way resets the tracking action to "glassy." It never slows the more you use it, like trackballs I've used (and quit). Both are wireless. And both are computers.
The screen is a computer, too. They're all networked. The mini-itx thing is the server. You can use it as the home-system server, or as a hub in a larger one, or as a virtualizer, or database host, or whatever else servers do now. You'd just have one of your own. That you could turn off and stick in your coat pocket.
You'd type in a simple code and your machine would access everything you need. The security would be the machine's responsibility, not yours. You'd just know how to use your machine responsibly and safely, like driving a car (all my readers are safe drivers, naturally!)
There would be one basic program on your computer -- hypertext. Think about it: no Internet as we know it, no browsers, no search engines, no fiddling around hoping you find something. All that (and much more) is already in the hypertext spec. Your operating system would be like the inside of your TV -- no user-serviceable parts. A book or article? Let hypertext find it. A painting or photo? Switch to hypermedia mode, and then do the same.
What, no movies? No music? Those are add-ons. The players could be the same size as your server, even stackable on it. You could disconnect them (with a command -- everything's wireless), stick one in your coat pocket or a pouch with a miniature display, and watch a movie on the bus. Slide it into a bay in your car's dashboard and listen to recorded music or broadcast programming. Phone call? Pull out the itty-bitty earbud thingy or talk to the dashboard, and you're communicating. GPS? You've got it already. Use it with your widescreen TV? No problem.
Hey, iPods, Zunes, TiVOs -- we're almost there now, right?
Wrong! Take hypertext. We don't use it. It was invented in the 1960s, and we still don't use it. What's "http" ...? Hypertext Transfer Protocol. But we use it to transfer marked-up rich text, not hypertext. Rich text is what I'm using now: plain text that's networkable, with some extra word-processing features -- in other words, when it was invented it was considered (I suppose) feature-"rich." There are efforts now to upgrade that standard, but they don't involve anything significant like hypertext -- at least how hypertext has been described to me.
Hypertext would BE the graphic user interface. Your OS would be like the BIOS now on your computer's main chip. Embedded. Maybe you'd access a few settings now and then, after consulting a manual. But not something you'd mess with ordinarily. Software would be something you'd add yourself -- I don't want to put the software companies out of business. I just don't want them hosting my computer, and limiting me as to what I can and can't do with it. That's what laws are for. (And I don't mean liberty-limiting or freedom-denying laws. I mean, like driving on the right side of the road, knowing what a stop sign is for, etc.)
I can hear the screaming from Redmond and Cupertino already. Hey, Bill and Steve -- don't get mad at me! We're all about the same age, and I do like your stuff! I just want my home computer to be what I want -- a convenient and compact electronic library for my home. It would have my stuff in it (like a filing cabinet or a bookshelf), and it would "go to the (public) library" for me. The machine could still do spreadsheets and word processing and graphic design, and it would let me play music or movies or 3-D games on it. Software companies could make a lot of money selling me stuff to put on my computer that would extend its capabilities in responsible directions I choose. They could sell me the media players or gameboxes, even the hardware with their OS built in as "firmware." But it would do what (within the "driving-on-the-right-hand-side-of-the-road" law) I want.
What I've got now is a fixed-screen spreadsheet reader with an expensive OS that has "accessories," solitare games but fewer features than the business version has. I have to buy or go to considerable time and trouble to download software just to get it to attempt to do what I need. The machine is heavy, clunky, and I have to buy furniture just for it -- wires hang everywhere to connect to "peripherals" that do only what the manufacturer of each peripheral device wants me to do with it. They're not real computer "dispositives" designed to do, within their design limits, what I need them to do.
I'm no disciple of Richard Stallman, whose vision I feel largely benefits academe. I'm no rabid fan of Linus Torvalds, whose work mainly represents the interests of computer engineers. Henry Ford gave my great-grandfather's generation a car they could, with hard work and vision, afford to buy. It was rugged and could take them places where they could not easily ride a horse-driven coach. And you could set the transmission (with an attachment) to churn butter! My grandfather learned to drive it as a teen, and he stayed out of the WWI trenches as a Marine by using that driving skill to steer generals around in a Jeep. I'm not some off-the-left-wall wacko! My family taught me their values as bedrock Republicans -- both sides! It's been nearly a hundred years since the A Model!* Where's the Computer Age's A Model? Where?
But what I want takes software called "hypertext." And, as far as I know, no machine currently manufactured for the consumer can run it. Why?
___
*I may have been thinking about the T-model Ford. I'm not sure if the original A Model (the one with the turning lever instead of a wheel) had a butter churn accessory. Jeeps also did not exist as such in WWI, but I think my grandfather may have driven some type of “General Purpose” or GP vehicle then. Trackballs must be cleaned regularly. I left "solitaire" misspelled, as it was in the original.
LJ orig.: 09/06/07
It has a screen you can pick up with one hand easily (like Shuttle's) -- and it goes from portrait to landscape mode like an iPhone. The screen is like that SONY electronic book reader, but better. No flicker rate, no refresh, no blinky-blink at all. Text on the display looks exactly like it does on a piece of paper. Paintings look like an archival quality photo of the canvas. Photos look like they do in a gallery, except without the glare.
It comes with a little box that looks like one of those mini-itx computers: it's about the size of a mass-market paperback, but it's a little wider, for a CD or DVD (data -- you'll see why in a minute) slot.
The keyboard is nice and full-featured. Typing on it is like tapping a touch screen. It might even be a touch screen. No mouse -- I prefer a trackball (easier on the wrist.). Classy look, but practical. Pressing down on the ball changes its responsive capability. Squeezing the side of the base a certain way resets the tracking action to "glassy." It never slows the more you use it, like trackballs I've used (and quit). Both are wireless. And both are computers.
The screen is a computer, too. They're all networked. The mini-itx thing is the server. You can use it as the home-system server, or as a hub in a larger one, or as a virtualizer, or database host, or whatever else servers do now. You'd just have one of your own. That you could turn off and stick in your coat pocket.
You'd type in a simple code and your machine would access everything you need. The security would be the machine's responsibility, not yours. You'd just know how to use your machine responsibly and safely, like driving a car (all my readers are safe drivers, naturally!)
There would be one basic program on your computer -- hypertext. Think about it: no Internet as we know it, no browsers, no search engines, no fiddling around hoping you find something. All that (and much more) is already in the hypertext spec. Your operating system would be like the inside of your TV -- no user-serviceable parts. A book or article? Let hypertext find it. A painting or photo? Switch to hypermedia mode, and then do the same.
What, no movies? No music? Those are add-ons. The players could be the same size as your server, even stackable on it. You could disconnect them (with a command -- everything's wireless), stick one in your coat pocket or a pouch with a miniature display, and watch a movie on the bus. Slide it into a bay in your car's dashboard and listen to recorded music or broadcast programming. Phone call? Pull out the itty-bitty earbud thingy or talk to the dashboard, and you're communicating. GPS? You've got it already. Use it with your widescreen TV? No problem.
Hey, iPods, Zunes, TiVOs -- we're almost there now, right?
Wrong! Take hypertext. We don't use it. It was invented in the 1960s, and we still don't use it. What's "http" ...? Hypertext Transfer Protocol. But we use it to transfer marked-up rich text, not hypertext. Rich text is what I'm using now: plain text that's networkable, with some extra word-processing features -- in other words, when it was invented it was considered (I suppose) feature-"rich." There are efforts now to upgrade that standard, but they don't involve anything significant like hypertext -- at least how hypertext has been described to me.
Hypertext would BE the graphic user interface. Your OS would be like the BIOS now on your computer's main chip. Embedded. Maybe you'd access a few settings now and then, after consulting a manual. But not something you'd mess with ordinarily. Software would be something you'd add yourself -- I don't want to put the software companies out of business. I just don't want them hosting my computer, and limiting me as to what I can and can't do with it. That's what laws are for. (And I don't mean liberty-limiting or freedom-denying laws. I mean, like driving on the right side of the road, knowing what a stop sign is for, etc.)
I can hear the screaming from Redmond and Cupertino already. Hey, Bill and Steve -- don't get mad at me! We're all about the same age, and I do like your stuff! I just want my home computer to be what I want -- a convenient and compact electronic library for my home. It would have my stuff in it (like a filing cabinet or a bookshelf), and it would "go to the (public) library" for me. The machine could still do spreadsheets and word processing and graphic design, and it would let me play music or movies or 3-D games on it. Software companies could make a lot of money selling me stuff to put on my computer that would extend its capabilities in responsible directions I choose. They could sell me the media players or gameboxes, even the hardware with their OS built in as "firmware." But it would do what (within the "driving-on-the-right-hand-side-of-the-road" law) I want.
What I've got now is a fixed-screen spreadsheet reader with an expensive OS that has "accessories," solitare games but fewer features than the business version has. I have to buy or go to considerable time and trouble to download software just to get it to attempt to do what I need. The machine is heavy, clunky, and I have to buy furniture just for it -- wires hang everywhere to connect to "peripherals" that do only what the manufacturer of each peripheral device wants me to do with it. They're not real computer "dispositives" designed to do, within their design limits, what I need them to do.
I'm no disciple of Richard Stallman, whose vision I feel largely benefits academe. I'm no rabid fan of Linus Torvalds, whose work mainly represents the interests of computer engineers. Henry Ford gave my great-grandfather's generation a car they could, with hard work and vision, afford to buy. It was rugged and could take them places where they could not easily ride a horse-driven coach. And you could set the transmission (with an attachment) to churn butter! My grandfather learned to drive it as a teen, and he stayed out of the WWI trenches as a Marine by using that driving skill to steer generals around in a Jeep. I'm not some off-the-left-wall wacko! My family taught me their values as bedrock Republicans -- both sides! It's been nearly a hundred years since the A Model!* Where's the Computer Age's A Model? Where?
But what I want takes software called "hypertext." And, as far as I know, no machine currently manufactured for the consumer can run it. Why?
___
*I may have been thinking about the T-model Ford. I'm not sure if the original A Model (the one with the turning lever instead of a wheel) had a butter churn accessory. Jeeps also did not exist as such in WWI, but I think my grandfather may have driven some type of “General Purpose” or GP vehicle then. Trackballs must be cleaned regularly. I left "solitaire" misspelled, as it was in the original.
LJ orig.: 09/06/07
Monday, February 27, 2012
Mercurius Ah, um ... .
A few mistakes I've caught over the last three days of posts ...
The full title of the Clapton album is Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs. Duane Allman was invited to join the recording sessions after Clapton basically tracked him down at a concert. Derek and the Dominoes were already gigging in clubs by that time. Clapton got his rhythm section (Carl Radle and Jim Gordon) from Joe Cocker's Mad Dogs and Englishman (a live recording that is a classic). The keyboard man (Bobby Whitlock) came from Claptons' gigs with Delaney & Bonnie and Friends (another super live recording worth seeking out).
The album does not begin with "Bell Bottom Blues." The lead track is called "I Looked Away." The chords I was hearing in my head when I wrote that sentence a few days ago were the chords from D&D's version of Hendrix's "Little Wing." Hendrix himself died about two weeks after D&D recorded it. (The original is found Hendrix's best studio album: Axis: Bold as Love.)
The Sufi who wrote the narrative poem known as Conference of the Birds was named Fariduddin Attar, not Ghazali. El-Ghazali wrote many Sufi masterpieces, just not that one.
The last post also had a lot of "fonky" writing in it I may clear up one day. It was mostly written off the top of my head, but I did have Shah's The Sufis in my lap for reference. If I'd just thumbed back two chapters or so, I would have caught the above mistake before posting.*
In a post last month, I wrote that Phoebe Zeitgeist was drawn by Wally Wood. It was actually drawn by Frank Springer. The writer was Michael O'Donoghue. I'm sure interested parties have already trained their Googly eyes on screenshots of the strip at flickr. I have.
Also, let me drop a few more names ...
If you're interested in finding a more or less authoritative Rumi translator, you might want to look up Kabir Helminski. He's actually a leader of the Mevlevi Sufis in Turkey. The Mevlevis are the famous "whirling dervishes" -- the group Rumi founded. Helminski also has edited a collection of Rumi verse published by Shambhala. Some Coleman Barks translations are in it. I see it at the mega bookstores all the time.
Ibn 'Arabi was far from the first Sufi to write extensive theosophical works. One of his 11th Century forebears was Ibn Sina -- known as Avicenna in the west. Avicenna was a writer on a huge variety of subjects, and he (I think) influenced Aquinas.
It's probably worth reminding readers again of a caveat made earlier: This is a personal journal written by a guy with a bachelor's degree in English lit, and that's all. It presupposes no more than that. Nothing in this journal should be taken seriously or literally by anybody. It is for entertainment purposes only. Any "serious" writing in it is done to stimulate thinking and exchange, and to get off whatever chip mercurius_21 has on his shoulder at the time. The user info contains the theme of the journal. Writing in italics is my direct communication to you. Writing in regular font is from my persona, at least for the purposes of this journal. mercurius_21 usually writes directly into the livejournal rich text editor, reads it over once or twice and then posts it. Corrections, apologies, explanations, emendations and the like usually come later.
___
*The rationale I used was that if I stopped long enough to think about what I was writing, I probably wouldn't write it. So, an adapted "stream-of-consciousness" style stuck pretty much throughout the life of the livejournal account usernamed "mercurius_21". If I had a resource at hand, it was usually just there to jog my memory or help me phrase things.
LJ orig.: 09/04/07
Saturday, February 25, 2012
The Power of Love
The year was 1202, in the Christian calendar. A highly controversial Muslim scholar was making the Hajj -- the trip to Mecca required of all believers (if possible) at least once in their lives. Traveling all the way from Damascus, this teacher of religious law was almost assassinated in Egypt by a type of fundamentalist of the day. This scholar was viewed by some authorities as a heretic, even dangerously so. But tradition allowed safety to pilgrims, so Muhiyuddin Ibn el-Arabi was OK once he approached the Holy City. One story says that, while circumnavigating the Ka'aba, el-Arabi spotted a beautiful teenage girl -- a Persian -- doing the same. She stopped his spiritual progress cold.
Her name was Nizam. She was said to be devout and well-versed in Islamic law -- unusual for a female, especially a teenager, of the era. She was traveling with a Persian community led by her father. If, as I suspect, she dressed much as traditional women in Iran do now, her face was unveiled. So, at least at some point, the middle-aged Ibn-el-Arabi could have seen her facial beauty. Another story (this one from Idries Shah's The Sufis -- my primary source for this post) says that el-Arabi was welcomed into this Persian community for the time of its stay.
El Arabi (in another source) apparently had no position at the time and probably little money. Said to possess a quiet dignity, he nonetheless taught his particular interpretation of Islamic law to ordinary citizens -- once reportedly having said the Day of Calamity (Judgment Day, basically) would surely be a whole lot closer when persons of eminence were interested in what he had to say.
But seeing Nizam in Mecca basically blew el-Arabi's mind. He began writing poems about her and his experience of loving her from afar, while in some kind of waking trance -- one in which he was basically "there, but not there." Shah reports el-Arabi confessing that he did not know what some of his poems even meant until years after writing them.
There is a translation online of one poem, in which he apparently watches Nizam and her family's caravan headed back home after the Hajj, saying how much he wants to scream curses at them for taking her away (my interpretation of this translation), but he just comes so unglued that he can't.
The poems are collected in a book called Tarjuman al Aswaq: The Interpreter of Desires. Apparently the experience of loving young Nizam chastely became a kind of prism for el-Arabi to break down the light of his own soul and know himself better. British scholar R.A. Nicholson translated some of these poems back in 1911, and there have been more recent ones published as well.
The most famous lines (translated by Nicholson) are as follows:
My heart is capable of every form:
A cloister for the monk, a fane for idols,
A pasture for gazelles, the votary's Ka'aba,
The tables of the Torah, the Koran.
Love is the creed I hold: wherever turn
His camels, Love is still my creed and faith.
If el-Arabi wasn't in the soup with the religious authorities when he got to Mecca, he sure was by the time those words hit the street. The rest of these love odes shocked the entire Muslim world. It got so bad that el-Arabi was called back to Syria to face what Shah calls an inquisition. He defended himself so eloquently that the inquisitors let him go. He also wrote an extensive commentary to the Tarjuman that Shah says remains a Sufi classic.
The story doesn't end there: el-Arabi stayed in Mecca for three years (I presume the inquisition came after that), writing or dictating to a secretary a commentary on the Koran. I look forward to reading some of the translation someday. I say "some of it" for good reason. The Meccan Revelations is 37 volumes in length. Yes, that's volumes, not chapters. Volumes, as in "separate books."
So, we have a little book of red-hot love allegories, plus a super-long Koranic commentary (said to be highly nonlinear, even theosophical, in nature). That's the deal on el-Arabi, right? Nope. He kept writing books, so many the Arabic originals are said to fill several shelves* in libraries. He died in Damascus about the time the young Rumi was probably getting going as a Shar'iah teacher in the mountains of Turkey. El-Arabi (you more commonly see "Ibn Arabi" these days, the "el" apparently being a glottalized resonant really hard for English speakers to pronounce). One of his courtesy titles is "Sheikh of Sheikhs" -- rendered "master of masters." He was from Spain, originally.
There is an entire English-language organization devoted to his teachings. You'll find the appropriate links in the Wikipedia. To this day, his work remains highly controversial among Muslims.
While we're looking for help in understanding this part of the world, we need to get the proper take on its seminal figures in history. Ironically, we're all attracted to the hardest ones for us to understand, like Rumi and el-Arabi. And, get this: Idries Shah claims Dante basically plagiarized el-Arabi's cosmology for his Divine Comedy. He also claims Carl Jung took the idea of the collective unconscious from el-Arabi's writings, but did not give him due credit. It doesn't stop there: a Sufi named Al-Ghazali wrote a book about a 'Conference of Birds' many years before Chaucer did the same. And some say ol' Geoff's Troilus and Criseyde takes whole chunks from that other thing that got me started on this subject a few days ago: Nizami's Layla and Majnun.
___
*Many of ibn el-Arabi's books are pamphlet-length works. Some of the inaccuracies in this and the previous post I corrected in the next one.
LJ orig.: 09/03/07
Her name was Nizam. She was said to be devout and well-versed in Islamic law -- unusual for a female, especially a teenager, of the era. She was traveling with a Persian community led by her father. If, as I suspect, she dressed much as traditional women in Iran do now, her face was unveiled. So, at least at some point, the middle-aged Ibn-el-Arabi could have seen her facial beauty. Another story (this one from Idries Shah's The Sufis -- my primary source for this post) says that el-Arabi was welcomed into this Persian community for the time of its stay.
El Arabi (in another source) apparently had no position at the time and probably little money. Said to possess a quiet dignity, he nonetheless taught his particular interpretation of Islamic law to ordinary citizens -- once reportedly having said the Day of Calamity (Judgment Day, basically) would surely be a whole lot closer when persons of eminence were interested in what he had to say.
But seeing Nizam in Mecca basically blew el-Arabi's mind. He began writing poems about her and his experience of loving her from afar, while in some kind of waking trance -- one in which he was basically "there, but not there." Shah reports el-Arabi confessing that he did not know what some of his poems even meant until years after writing them.
There is a translation online of one poem, in which he apparently watches Nizam and her family's caravan headed back home after the Hajj, saying how much he wants to scream curses at them for taking her away (my interpretation of this translation), but he just comes so unglued that he can't.
The poems are collected in a book called Tarjuman al Aswaq: The Interpreter of Desires. Apparently the experience of loving young Nizam chastely became a kind of prism for el-Arabi to break down the light of his own soul and know himself better. British scholar R.A. Nicholson translated some of these poems back in 1911, and there have been more recent ones published as well.
The most famous lines (translated by Nicholson) are as follows:
My heart is capable of every form:
A cloister for the monk, a fane for idols,
A pasture for gazelles, the votary's Ka'aba,
The tables of the Torah, the Koran.
Love is the creed I hold: wherever turn
His camels, Love is still my creed and faith.
If el-Arabi wasn't in the soup with the religious authorities when he got to Mecca, he sure was by the time those words hit the street. The rest of these love odes shocked the entire Muslim world. It got so bad that el-Arabi was called back to Syria to face what Shah calls an inquisition. He defended himself so eloquently that the inquisitors let him go. He also wrote an extensive commentary to the Tarjuman that Shah says remains a Sufi classic.
The story doesn't end there: el-Arabi stayed in Mecca for three years (I presume the inquisition came after that), writing or dictating to a secretary a commentary on the Koran. I look forward to reading some of the translation someday. I say "some of it" for good reason. The Meccan Revelations is 37 volumes in length. Yes, that's volumes, not chapters. Volumes, as in "separate books."
So, we have a little book of red-hot love allegories, plus a super-long Koranic commentary (said to be highly nonlinear, even theosophical, in nature). That's the deal on el-Arabi, right? Nope. He kept writing books, so many the Arabic originals are said to fill several shelves* in libraries. He died in Damascus about the time the young Rumi was probably getting going as a Shar'iah teacher in the mountains of Turkey. El-Arabi (you more commonly see "Ibn Arabi" these days, the "el" apparently being a glottalized resonant really hard for English speakers to pronounce). One of his courtesy titles is "Sheikh of Sheikhs" -- rendered "master of masters." He was from Spain, originally.
There is an entire English-language organization devoted to his teachings. You'll find the appropriate links in the Wikipedia. To this day, his work remains highly controversial among Muslims.
While we're looking for help in understanding this part of the world, we need to get the proper take on its seminal figures in history. Ironically, we're all attracted to the hardest ones for us to understand, like Rumi and el-Arabi. And, get this: Idries Shah claims Dante basically plagiarized el-Arabi's cosmology for his Divine Comedy. He also claims Carl Jung took the idea of the collective unconscious from el-Arabi's writings, but did not give him due credit. It doesn't stop there: a Sufi named Al-Ghazali wrote a book about a 'Conference of Birds' many years before Chaucer did the same. And some say ol' Geoff's Troilus and Criseyde takes whole chunks from that other thing that got me started on this subject a few days ago: Nizami's Layla and Majnun.
___
*Many of ibn el-Arabi's books are pamphlet-length works. Some of the inaccuracies in this and the previous post I corrected in the next one.
LJ orig.: 09/03/07
Friday, February 24, 2012
This Divan is Not Furniture
The
local poetry scene is buzzing with the news that an internationally
known poet and translator is coming to town for Rumi's 800th birthday
celebration next month. This American writer is best known for his
translations of the 13th Century Persian mystic, all taken from a book
called the Divan-I Shams. Sounds like some kind of sofa with a frilly
strip of fabric around the bottom, doesn't it? In Persian (sometimes
called 'Farsi' -- another misnomer, according to some sources), the
title means The Work of Shams -- with the word "Shams" being an Arabic
(I think) word for "light." The man in question was more fully known as
"The Light of Tabriz" -- being a reference to his renown as a mystic
from that city. The title refers to the profound effect knowing this man
had on Rumi's life. The poetry as translated by Coleman Barks comes off
as delicate and romantic, almost erotic in nature. It was madly popular
in the 90s. And that's part of the problem.
Barks reportedly took the "word-for-word" Rumi translations made by a British colonel -- H. Wilberforce Clarke, who had converted to Islam in the 19th Century -- and "transcreated" them in a modern English idiom. Barks reportedly beheld a vision of Rumi that had the Moslem holy man offering his approval for the method. I won't argue with that, or with "transcreating," either -- as long as you know the language of the original, so you don't fall off course. Unfortunately, Barks reportedly (at the time, anyway) did not know any Persian. Uh-oh.
This has happened before. Back in the early 70s (I think), a charismatic Christian decided the King James translation of The Bible was too stilted and remote from modern English. So he just decided on his own to "rewrite" the King James Version -- without knowing any Greek or Hebrew. The book, known as The Living Bible, was a huge best-seller at the time. Unfortunately, this 'translator' got a lot of stuff wrong, making incorrect guesses as to what the King James translators had intended, and he unintentionally put words and phrases in his version that were never in the Bible at all.
This is not as far-off a comparison as you might think, at least in terms of comparative religion. In much of the Persian-speaking world, Rumi's work is held as near-canonical Islam. While certainly no one (that I know of) considers Rumi's poetry a replacement for the Koran or the Hadith, many Persians esteem his work as an important medium for understanding the inner nature of Islamic sacred text. You have to be really careful in translating it, in other words.
What has happened since, to both Barks and the Living Bible guy, is that they teamed up later with knowledgeable linguists and scholars to revise or redo their "transcreations." I hope if Barks comes to our area as scheduled, he'll bring some important insights into this process. The upcoming conference should be well worth attending for that alone (and there's a lot more going on at this event, by the way. People I know are really looking forward to it.).
Rumi's Divan-i Shams-i Tabriz is held as a masterpiece -- poetically, ethically, spiritually. The intimate terms it contains are said to be metaphors, even allegories, for the spiritual states he and Shams experienced together (in what we might call "contemplative prayer.")
An online reference says (and I didn't know this beforehand) the Divan contains some 40-thousand "verses." While I don't know if that number refers to lines, quatrains, or whole poems -- even if it were 40-thousand words, it would be astonishing. FORTY THOUSAND! And it's only one of Rumi's many works!
Shams himself is said to have written excellent mystical verses -- but I know nothing about them. He comes off as kind of mysterious in sources I have consulted. Whatever the case may be, the point I'm trying to make is that we in the West know next to nothing about this mystical culture. I think we must not presume that we do. It is sacred, or at least near-sacred, to those who are knowledgeable about it.
The irony is that there are many poets in English who have written spiritually-rich material -- a body of work that has been largely (at least when I was in school) overlooked. Check out any edition of Emily Dickenson* (I'll have more to say about her in an upcoming post) or George Herbert, or Auden's war sonnets, or Eliot's Four Quartets -- just for starters. If you read them with an open mind, I think you'll be astonished.
The bottom line? I don't think there is a conventional love story behind the relationship between Rumi and Shams. But there is a beautiful (and true) love story that involved a contemporary of Rumi's that you might want to know about.
More, next time.
___
*Again, left Emily Dickinson's name misspelled, as in the original, though other typos I spotted have been corrected. In subsequent posts, I softened considerably my harsh judgment against "transcreation".
LJ orig.: 09/02/07
Barks reportedly took the "word-for-word" Rumi translations made by a British colonel -- H. Wilberforce Clarke, who had converted to Islam in the 19th Century -- and "transcreated" them in a modern English idiom. Barks reportedly beheld a vision of Rumi that had the Moslem holy man offering his approval for the method. I won't argue with that, or with "transcreating," either -- as long as you know the language of the original, so you don't fall off course. Unfortunately, Barks reportedly (at the time, anyway) did not know any Persian. Uh-oh.
This has happened before. Back in the early 70s (I think), a charismatic Christian decided the King James translation of The Bible was too stilted and remote from modern English. So he just decided on his own to "rewrite" the King James Version -- without knowing any Greek or Hebrew. The book, known as The Living Bible, was a huge best-seller at the time. Unfortunately, this 'translator' got a lot of stuff wrong, making incorrect guesses as to what the King James translators had intended, and he unintentionally put words and phrases in his version that were never in the Bible at all.
This is not as far-off a comparison as you might think, at least in terms of comparative religion. In much of the Persian-speaking world, Rumi's work is held as near-canonical Islam. While certainly no one (that I know of) considers Rumi's poetry a replacement for the Koran or the Hadith, many Persians esteem his work as an important medium for understanding the inner nature of Islamic sacred text. You have to be really careful in translating it, in other words.
What has happened since, to both Barks and the Living Bible guy, is that they teamed up later with knowledgeable linguists and scholars to revise or redo their "transcreations." I hope if Barks comes to our area as scheduled, he'll bring some important insights into this process. The upcoming conference should be well worth attending for that alone (and there's a lot more going on at this event, by the way. People I know are really looking forward to it.).
Rumi's Divan-i Shams-i Tabriz is held as a masterpiece -- poetically, ethically, spiritually. The intimate terms it contains are said to be metaphors, even allegories, for the spiritual states he and Shams experienced together (in what we might call "contemplative prayer.")
An online reference says (and I didn't know this beforehand) the Divan contains some 40-thousand "verses." While I don't know if that number refers to lines, quatrains, or whole poems -- even if it were 40-thousand words, it would be astonishing. FORTY THOUSAND! And it's only one of Rumi's many works!
Shams himself is said to have written excellent mystical verses -- but I know nothing about them. He comes off as kind of mysterious in sources I have consulted. Whatever the case may be, the point I'm trying to make is that we in the West know next to nothing about this mystical culture. I think we must not presume that we do. It is sacred, or at least near-sacred, to those who are knowledgeable about it.
The irony is that there are many poets in English who have written spiritually-rich material -- a body of work that has been largely (at least when I was in school) overlooked. Check out any edition of Emily Dickenson* (I'll have more to say about her in an upcoming post) or George Herbert, or Auden's war sonnets, or Eliot's Four Quartets -- just for starters. If you read them with an open mind, I think you'll be astonished.
The bottom line? I don't think there is a conventional love story behind the relationship between Rumi and Shams. But there is a beautiful (and true) love story that involved a contemporary of Rumi's that you might want to know about.
More, next time.
___
*Again, left Emily Dickinson's name misspelled, as in the original, though other typos I spotted have been corrected. In subsequent posts, I softened considerably my harsh judgment against "transcreation".
LJ orig.: 09/02/07
Thursday, February 23, 2012
Ch ... Ch ... Ch .. Changes
Told you things might be different, didn't I?*
This journal style may not hold, but, frankly, LJ's other options were just not 'me' -- these days, anyway. If I could just move some of these blocks around to a less kooky arrangement, I think I'd stick with it, but ... .
An off-shore system has brought rain and much cooler temps to our little bit of heaven (?) -- it almost feels like winter, compared to the high 90s of a fortnight ago. Current conditions kept me indoors all day, hacking away at a volunteer project that I actually got to work (to this point -- so far, so good). I've written before about how I like to use free software (open, free, whatever -- I just want to save money on things I can mess around with). Roughly two years ago, I spent like a whole day downloading OpenOffice -- I really didn't know what for, I just wanted to try it. I mainly messed with the word processor and the drawing program, the latter with little success. But today I got Draw to work good at what it's good for -- logos. The jury's still out on how well I managed managing databases. We'll see (gulp!).
Saw good friends at the local books-a-bazillion -- always nice. Also saw where 'Layla' has written a book! Cool. I'm talking about the lady who married George Harrison in, like, the 60s, and then became the inspiration for Eric Clapton's Layla and Other Love Songs two-platter collaboration with Duane Allman and some friends. You don't need me to describe this LP to you, do you? It's on everyone's "all-time rock fave album" list. From the first chords of "Bell Bottom Blues" to the chirping effect fading the album out at "Thorn Tree in the Garden," this LP spoke immediately to its time so clearly that no one who heard it when it came out could ever forget it. They may have hated it, but they could not forget it.
It seems ol' Clap had fallen head over whatever for his best friend's super-cutey wife, and couldn't quite bring himself (at least at first -- so goes the story, as I recall) to take it further. He found this coffee-table book sitting around at a friend's house while so emotionally distraught he was nearly suicidal, and it inspired him to write (or at least get started on) the famous songs that were eventually featured on the LP. Evidently, the book's text was some English translation of the Persian story known as Layla and Majnun.
The original Persian adaptation of this very old Arabic tale was written (as a poem, I think) by the Sufi mystic Nizami. Some warlord had just conquered Nizami's hometown, and he wrote the story in hopes of winning the new khan over. I don't know if it worked or not. But it is considered a classic of Persian literature, and it's supposedly laced with mystical overtones. It's also just a really strange, but strangely affecting, story about a boy (Majnun) who falls hopelessly in love at first sight with a girl (Layla) at the local Koran school on the first day of class in what would have been, like, the first grade. He never touches the girl (who loves him, too) or anything, but her big shot dad eventually gets so ticked at Majnun mooning over his daughter that he puts her into seclusion -- for life. Majnun eventually grows up a bit, enough to wander off into the desert to live as a hermit -- also for life. Sounds like the end of the story, right? Not by a long shot. Get a good translation. If you like to be told a classic tale, you won't put it down.
I'm mentioning all this for a reason. Translating these things into a foreign culture, not to mention the culture's language, is no mean feat. And it should not be taken lightly. Another very famous classic of this same genre has not been able to bridge the cultural divide -- to its complete misunderstanding.
Next time -- Rumi, and the Divan-i-Shams.
___
*What was different was the LJ theme. I went from a default format with some "I'm No Eisenstaedt" userpic liftouts as thumbnail art to LJ's "Flexible Squares" theme with a "denim" color format. I also added a title -- Still Alive and Well, which I explained in a later post. I also used a few tourist-type photos I made then with a "pencil-sketch" effect added for the art. Also, see Pattie Boyd's memoir Wonderful Tonight (referenced in the post) for a fuller account of their mutual discovery of the Layla and Majnun story. It's a good 'read'.
LJ orig.: 09/01/07
This journal style may not hold, but, frankly, LJ's other options were just not 'me' -- these days, anyway. If I could just move some of these blocks around to a less kooky arrangement, I think I'd stick with it, but ... .
An off-shore system has brought rain and much cooler temps to our little bit of heaven (?) -- it almost feels like winter, compared to the high 90s of a fortnight ago. Current conditions kept me indoors all day, hacking away at a volunteer project that I actually got to work (to this point -- so far, so good). I've written before about how I like to use free software (open, free, whatever -- I just want to save money on things I can mess around with). Roughly two years ago, I spent like a whole day downloading OpenOffice -- I really didn't know what for, I just wanted to try it. I mainly messed with the word processor and the drawing program, the latter with little success. But today I got Draw to work good at what it's good for -- logos. The jury's still out on how well I managed managing databases. We'll see (gulp!).
Saw good friends at the local books-a-bazillion -- always nice. Also saw where 'Layla' has written a book! Cool. I'm talking about the lady who married George Harrison in, like, the 60s, and then became the inspiration for Eric Clapton's Layla and Other Love Songs two-platter collaboration with Duane Allman and some friends. You don't need me to describe this LP to you, do you? It's on everyone's "all-time rock fave album" list. From the first chords of "Bell Bottom Blues" to the chirping effect fading the album out at "Thorn Tree in the Garden," this LP spoke immediately to its time so clearly that no one who heard it when it came out could ever forget it. They may have hated it, but they could not forget it.
It seems ol' Clap had fallen head over whatever for his best friend's super-cutey wife, and couldn't quite bring himself (at least at first -- so goes the story, as I recall) to take it further. He found this coffee-table book sitting around at a friend's house while so emotionally distraught he was nearly suicidal, and it inspired him to write (or at least get started on) the famous songs that were eventually featured on the LP. Evidently, the book's text was some English translation of the Persian story known as Layla and Majnun.
The original Persian adaptation of this very old Arabic tale was written (as a poem, I think) by the Sufi mystic Nizami. Some warlord had just conquered Nizami's hometown, and he wrote the story in hopes of winning the new khan over. I don't know if it worked or not. But it is considered a classic of Persian literature, and it's supposedly laced with mystical overtones. It's also just a really strange, but strangely affecting, story about a boy (Majnun) who falls hopelessly in love at first sight with a girl (Layla) at the local Koran school on the first day of class in what would have been, like, the first grade. He never touches the girl (who loves him, too) or anything, but her big shot dad eventually gets so ticked at Majnun mooning over his daughter that he puts her into seclusion -- for life. Majnun eventually grows up a bit, enough to wander off into the desert to live as a hermit -- also for life. Sounds like the end of the story, right? Not by a long shot. Get a good translation. If you like to be told a classic tale, you won't put it down.
I'm mentioning all this for a reason. Translating these things into a foreign culture, not to mention the culture's language, is no mean feat. And it should not be taken lightly. Another very famous classic of this same genre has not been able to bridge the cultural divide -- to its complete misunderstanding.
Next time -- Rumi, and the Divan-i-Shams.
___
*What was different was the LJ theme. I went from a default format with some "I'm No Eisenstaedt" userpic liftouts as thumbnail art to LJ's "Flexible Squares" theme with a "denim" color format. I also added a title -- Still Alive and Well, which I explained in a later post. I also used a few tourist-type photos I made then with a "pencil-sketch" effect added for the art. Also, see Pattie Boyd's memoir Wonderful Tonight (referenced in the post) for a fuller account of their mutual discovery of the Layla and Majnun story. It's a good 'read'.
LJ orig.: 09/01/07
Friday, February 10, 2012
Utterly Utter
Same weather -- change may be on the way, though. Kind of iffy.
In rereading the last few posts (and several others), the mistakes don't bother me as much as they used to. One thing does stick out like a zit on the nose -- repetitively repeating myself.
It's one of those things I never catch the first time, hardly ever the second time, and by the time the third time it comes around, it's past time to move on. It's often called "redundancy" -- which (OK, hang on a minute -- yeah, there it is! Thank you, COED.) actually means "superfluous," but is often used to indicate repetitive expressions, like the word "time" in the previous sentence. The word "time" isn't something you can just cut out and still have the above sentence make sense, but it's a word you should replace with a synonym for the second occurrence in a sentence. Using the same word or phrase over and over again is a problem I've always had as a writer, and editors have complained about it to me ever since I handed in my first paper in high school English class.
However, there is one type of so-called "redundancy" that is interesting, though a little subtle. It's called "recursion" -- the actual name of the writing anomaly I'm writing (there I go again) about tonight. But actual recursion can have a symmetry to it that can suggest some underlying (even unconscious) intent. In the Koran, Mohammad recites what I'm calling symmetrical recursion a lot, "Allah calls (God's people) with a call," "(Allah) will help you with a help," "believe as the people believe," etc. It's actually been suggested that this is a part of the inner structure of the Koran: the Arabic words for "In the name of Allah, the Beneficent, the Merciful" have an element of symmetrical recursion in their syllables.
This recursion is not limited to Islam: think of a Hebrew name for God. Christianity? What's a parable?
A type of recursion also occurs (sorry) in science and mathematics. Recursive algebra is supposed to be the basis for modern computers (a book I've had for years but only recently had the courage to try and dig into is Rosa Peter's Playing with Infinity. She was a pioneer in recursive math. The book is not about that, though. Yet.) Part of the GNU/Linux operating-system platform is also recursive in name: "GNU" is an acronym for "GNU, Not Unix." The Debian Live CD I bought a couple of years back that I've previously mentioned has a neat slide show about fractal geometry -- also recursive (as far as my pathetic math mind can discern, anyway).
In short, repeating words repetitively the way I do is bad. But get a rhythm going, and you might just have something else.
BTW -- The Spoleto Festival I mentioned a few weeks back is now going strong. I try and find the free stuff -- and I've already gotten one event confused. I'm probably not alone in this -- but it still ticks me off! I worked my 'tude down by walking and "judging" more theme windows. More of them now, and some really good ones, too! My new fave uses big portraits "painted" with hundreds of different colored bottle caps (plus lots of classic snapshots of Cohen in the mix). Another one nearby themes Cohen's Book of Longing nicely with the official poster. Yet another superimposes a big red thumbprint over the poster (on glass, get it?). I was wrong about the poster, though. Turns out the artist also used his forefinger's print to make Glass's image. (You think Glass may use recursion? I'm thinkin' it!)
LJ orig.: 05/31/07
In rereading the last few posts (and several others), the mistakes don't bother me as much as they used to. One thing does stick out like a zit on the nose -- repetitively repeating myself.
It's one of those things I never catch the first time, hardly ever the second time, and by the time the third time it comes around, it's past time to move on. It's often called "redundancy" -- which (OK, hang on a minute -- yeah, there it is! Thank you, COED.) actually means "superfluous," but is often used to indicate repetitive expressions, like the word "time" in the previous sentence. The word "time" isn't something you can just cut out and still have the above sentence make sense, but it's a word you should replace with a synonym for the second occurrence in a sentence. Using the same word or phrase over and over again is a problem I've always had as a writer, and editors have complained about it to me ever since I handed in my first paper in high school English class.
However, there is one type of so-called "redundancy" that is interesting, though a little subtle. It's called "recursion" -- the actual name of the writing anomaly I'm writing (there I go again) about tonight. But actual recursion can have a symmetry to it that can suggest some underlying (even unconscious) intent. In the Koran, Mohammad recites what I'm calling symmetrical recursion a lot, "Allah calls (God's people) with a call," "(Allah) will help you with a help," "believe as the people believe," etc. It's actually been suggested that this is a part of the inner structure of the Koran: the Arabic words for "In the name of Allah, the Beneficent, the Merciful" have an element of symmetrical recursion in their syllables.
This recursion is not limited to Islam: think of a Hebrew name for God. Christianity? What's a parable?
A type of recursion also occurs (sorry) in science and mathematics. Recursive algebra is supposed to be the basis for modern computers (a book I've had for years but only recently had the courage to try and dig into is Rosa Peter's Playing with Infinity. She was a pioneer in recursive math. The book is not about that, though. Yet.) Part of the GNU/Linux operating-system platform is also recursive in name: "GNU" is an acronym for "GNU, Not Unix." The Debian Live CD I bought a couple of years back that I've previously mentioned has a neat slide show about fractal geometry -- also recursive (as far as my pathetic math mind can discern, anyway).
In short, repeating words repetitively the way I do is bad. But get a rhythm going, and you might just have something else.
BTW -- The Spoleto Festival I mentioned a few weeks back is now going strong. I try and find the free stuff -- and I've already gotten one event confused. I'm probably not alone in this -- but it still ticks me off! I worked my 'tude down by walking and "judging" more theme windows. More of them now, and some really good ones, too! My new fave uses big portraits "painted" with hundreds of different colored bottle caps (plus lots of classic snapshots of Cohen in the mix). Another one nearby themes Cohen's Book of Longing nicely with the official poster. Yet another superimposes a big red thumbprint over the poster (on glass, get it?). I was wrong about the poster, though. Turns out the artist also used his forefinger's print to make Glass's image. (You think Glass may use recursion? I'm thinkin' it!)
LJ orig.: 05/31/07
Thursday, February 9, 2012
Judy and Suzanne
Weather the same -- drought becoming an official
possibility here.
A few days ago I spotted a Judy Collins CD for five dollars. Easy decision. I'm not a buyer of female folksingers that much, but Judy Collins is different. And the CD includes one very unique song.
Judy Collins had a voice (it has dimmed a bit with age) that just cut through the AM radio waves like a sacred sword of utterly pellucid beauty. I bought her 'greatest hits' LP at Bankertown's only classical record store downtown (the only record store downtown then) in something like 1971. The guys who ran it liked Judy's voice so much, they stocked her records with their otherwise "longhair" collection. Her voice was clear, clean, bright, soft, bluesy but with spot-on tone. The CD I now have reveals to these more mature ears that Judy could also modulate in and out of keys like a classical vocalist must, but maintain an easily digestible folk style. ("Cook With Honey" is playing now.)
Judy had successful hits in the 60s, 70s, and 80s. Not a lot of them, but always well-chosen songs that became instant radio classics. One song on the CD (probably on the LP, too) is the greatest folk song ever written: "Suzanne" by Leonard Cohen. The song is a near-perfect lyrical portrait that sounded cryptic to people like me, and even a little heretical, then. But its haunting melody just won't turn you loose, and the mysterious lyrics are an instant grabber, but, like the melody, are so thought-provoking, they won't let you go, either. Music-writing pro's work for years to get a smooth style full of hidden "hooks" (discussed in a much earlier post), but here was a young Canadian poet who builds songs that hook you with no "hooks" at all! The power of the music is in its very simple structure: chord progressions that invite the listener into an intimate mystery the poet is sharing with you, with words so intimate you feel he is speaking directly to you personally -- even if you're listening with a batch of other people in the room! This strange gift of Cohen's was the subject of another song, one said to have been written about him: "Killing Me Softly." It was a hit when I was in high school (or maybe college) for an all-time fave for me: Roberta Flack. Her version of "Suzanne" I clearly recall in my head, even now, while I'm writing this listening to Judy Collins sing "Send in the Clowns."
I did a little homework this time before writing on Cohen and his song. It seems the subject of "Suzanne" is well known, and she was even the subject of a story on the CBC last year. She was at the time living homeless in a camper (really funky looking thing) in Venice, California. Her picture in the internet version of the story I found shows her to be a still-beautiful, but eccentric, free spirit. I imagine someone stepped forward quietly to help her out after that story ran, so here's hoping Suzanne's still doing OK.
Anyway, the story or something else I read led me to unwind one of the song's more trivial mysteries: "She feeds you tea and oranges that come all the way from China." Why this struck me as odd as a teen was hardly anyone served tea hot to me then, and on those rare occasions, it was a spice tea without milk. I couldn't imagine having any with oranges -- lip-pucker city! Cohen told an interviewer that she took him up to her and her husband's boho place in Montreal (tone-y spot now) and made him some tea as a gesture of hospitality. Cohen called it "constant tea." He obviously meant Bigelow's Constant Comment tea, widely available now and (I'm sure) then. Its recipe includes tiny bits of dried orange zest mixed in with the pekoe.
Anyone who's been to Montreal (I have! It was the only big trip I've ever been able to make with my own money -- September 1980.) At that time, more so in Cohen's salad days, Rue de Bonsecours was very historic and quiet, a good ways down the hill from the clubby Latin Quarter (where Cohen probably stayed). I recall the Chapel of Our Lady of the Harbor in that old town neighborhood, which (as I recall) features a statue of Jesus holding out his arms to the harbor itself. A statue of The Virgin also sits outside. Very beautiful, but only readily accessible (as I recall -- at least at that time) from the St Laurence river or its shoreline. The street entry is actually the back of the chapel! (I think that's right, anyway.)
Leonard Cohen's song today still haunts and even teases the mind with its utter accuracy, its tender edge, its sincere simplicity, its mesmerizing power. The best folk song ever written. Cohen may be here for the American premier of the Philip Glass work I wrote about a couple of weeks ago. Glass composed music to Cohen's latest book of verses: The Book of Longing -- which he wrote while a monastic on Mt Baldy. The world premiere either has been or soon will be in Cohen's native country.
LJ orig.: 05/28/07
___
Note (11/23/16): I just saw a portion of a German-language documentary on Suzanne Verdal made in 2011. In it, she says the late poet and songwriter never helped her financially. She also said it was not Constant Comment tea but a special ceremonial blend with lychee nuts added.
A few days ago I spotted a Judy Collins CD for five dollars. Easy decision. I'm not a buyer of female folksingers that much, but Judy Collins is different. And the CD includes one very unique song.
Judy Collins had a voice (it has dimmed a bit with age) that just cut through the AM radio waves like a sacred sword of utterly pellucid beauty. I bought her 'greatest hits' LP at Bankertown's only classical record store downtown (the only record store downtown then) in something like 1971. The guys who ran it liked Judy's voice so much, they stocked her records with their otherwise "longhair" collection. Her voice was clear, clean, bright, soft, bluesy but with spot-on tone. The CD I now have reveals to these more mature ears that Judy could also modulate in and out of keys like a classical vocalist must, but maintain an easily digestible folk style. ("Cook With Honey" is playing now.)
Judy had successful hits in the 60s, 70s, and 80s. Not a lot of them, but always well-chosen songs that became instant radio classics. One song on the CD (probably on the LP, too) is the greatest folk song ever written: "Suzanne" by Leonard Cohen. The song is a near-perfect lyrical portrait that sounded cryptic to people like me, and even a little heretical, then. But its haunting melody just won't turn you loose, and the mysterious lyrics are an instant grabber, but, like the melody, are so thought-provoking, they won't let you go, either. Music-writing pro's work for years to get a smooth style full of hidden "hooks" (discussed in a much earlier post), but here was a young Canadian poet who builds songs that hook you with no "hooks" at all! The power of the music is in its very simple structure: chord progressions that invite the listener into an intimate mystery the poet is sharing with you, with words so intimate you feel he is speaking directly to you personally -- even if you're listening with a batch of other people in the room! This strange gift of Cohen's was the subject of another song, one said to have been written about him: "Killing Me Softly." It was a hit when I was in high school (or maybe college) for an all-time fave for me: Roberta Flack. Her version of "Suzanne" I clearly recall in my head, even now, while I'm writing this listening to Judy Collins sing "Send in the Clowns."
I did a little homework this time before writing on Cohen and his song. It seems the subject of "Suzanne" is well known, and she was even the subject of a story on the CBC last year. She was at the time living homeless in a camper (really funky looking thing) in Venice, California. Her picture in the internet version of the story I found shows her to be a still-beautiful, but eccentric, free spirit. I imagine someone stepped forward quietly to help her out after that story ran, so here's hoping Suzanne's still doing OK.
Anyway, the story or something else I read led me to unwind one of the song's more trivial mysteries: "She feeds you tea and oranges that come all the way from China." Why this struck me as odd as a teen was hardly anyone served tea hot to me then, and on those rare occasions, it was a spice tea without milk. I couldn't imagine having any with oranges -- lip-pucker city! Cohen told an interviewer that she took him up to her and her husband's boho place in Montreal (tone-y spot now) and made him some tea as a gesture of hospitality. Cohen called it "constant tea." He obviously meant Bigelow's Constant Comment tea, widely available now and (I'm sure) then. Its recipe includes tiny bits of dried orange zest mixed in with the pekoe.
Anyone who's been to Montreal (I have! It was the only big trip I've ever been able to make with my own money -- September 1980.) At that time, more so in Cohen's salad days, Rue de Bonsecours was very historic and quiet, a good ways down the hill from the clubby Latin Quarter (where Cohen probably stayed). I recall the Chapel of Our Lady of the Harbor in that old town neighborhood, which (as I recall) features a statue of Jesus holding out his arms to the harbor itself. A statue of The Virgin also sits outside. Very beautiful, but only readily accessible (as I recall -- at least at that time) from the St Laurence river or its shoreline. The street entry is actually the back of the chapel! (I think that's right, anyway.)
Leonard Cohen's song today still haunts and even teases the mind with its utter accuracy, its tender edge, its sincere simplicity, its mesmerizing power. The best folk song ever written. Cohen may be here for the American premier of the Philip Glass work I wrote about a couple of weeks ago. Glass composed music to Cohen's latest book of verses: The Book of Longing -- which he wrote while a monastic on Mt Baldy. The world premiere either has been or soon will be in Cohen's native country.
LJ orig.: 05/28/07
___
Note (11/23/16): I just saw a portion of a German-language documentary on Suzanne Verdal made in 2011. In it, she says the late poet and songwriter never helped her financially. She also said it was not Constant Comment tea but a special ceremonial blend with lychee nuts added.
Tuesday, February 7, 2012
Zoom Zoom
Still cool for May. Got a little rain yesterday (?) clouds today ...
Indy's coming up -- and it's making me look at cars again ("as Dreamland's comin' on -- Dreamland, Dre-ee-ee-eamland!").
Down heah in the Southlan' we used to see impo'ted sports cars about as often as we felt earthquakes. Anything "imported" had the label "Made in Japan" -- which then was not a good thing. The oil embargo hit when I was in college ... the first Honda Civics (these things would fit inside a modern Civic -- and leave room for the driver!) with their spare tires sticking out the back hatch lid were almost always yellow. I think I remember seeing an orange one while I was at the Hill. They would go 100,000 miles easily on nothing but regular oil changes -- utterly unheard of in domestic vehicles.
Not too long after that, the Reagan recovery started -- ending the Carter inflationary "malaise" (he had low budget deficits, though, as I recall). People who had some money down South got more as economic development began picking up steam for the first time since the textile boom in the 1920s. And in the tiny mill towns I lived in -- some doctors and lawyers began driving 921's around town -- once and a while, you'd even see a red 911 parked next to a 20's era three-story brick house renovated into offices. One lawyer had a Saab -- a new black one, not a rust bucket belching gas from the 70s with tye-dye cloth covering the holes in the upholstery and flower decals in the back windows. One of my editors was on his second 100,000 miles in his original Civic.
Muscle cars did not return to the scene, at least where I lived, until the 1990s. State capitol reporting brought hourly sightings of Boxters, 6-series Beemers, and two-seat Kompressors. I salivated in anguish at these sculptured beauties. But it actually all began right in my backyard. I was reporting in a town (man, 15 years ago!) when BMW decided to build a plant there to make roadsters. The subsequent sports car was all the rage as soon as the cars started coming off the production lines in the mid-90s. I got a bad neck crick yanking my head at all the custom-colored ... s zipping past my usual walk routes in those days.
Like all American boys of my time, I was fascinated with cars early. My dad didn't buy a 'stang, he had a pal selling Chevvies those days, so he opted for a blue Camaro -- the first one, a kind of compact of the day. A big green monster followed two years later -- eight cylinders of raw Camaro power tore down the new interstates being built in our area. I didn't wreck it -- no one let me drive this low slung behemoth unsupervised!
For some reason, though I was born and raised at the nativity of stock-car racing with what was then called a Grand National track fifteen minutes away, I never cottoned much to Junior'n'em's sport. I listened to races rabidly on radio on Saturdays (that's when they were run then) but I was just as rabid for the hourly updates in (I think) '64, when Phil Hill and his team drove the first Ford to race at LeMans in the prototype category. This GT car was a beauty! (I still have the Matchbox version I bought back then.) The racing mags I bought at the coin shop up the street from the store my dad ran raved about all the new American cars entering the European sports scene -- as well as the Lotus team that came to Indy that year (or maybe it was '63 -- I'll have to check.) The mags drooled the following year over two new entries in the Grand Touring scene -- the Shelby Cobra and Jim Hall's Chapparral -- gorgeous and powerful, the pair of them! Bruce McLaren introduced the Lola not long after, another dream machine to watch.
There were no videos of these races back then -- just a few film clips on the Wide World of Sports. No in-car cameras, no color pictures, even! But the crude entertainment technology of the day only served to enhance a boy's imagination. WWoS occasionally did a Grand Prix or GT race -- but with cameras the size of small refrigerators mounted on tripods that had to be hand-swiveled by two people, it didn't look like much after the starting flag fell. Frustrating, but imagination-firing. Oh, the wait for the stills of the races in Road and Track three months later!
But as time went on, the racers I rooted for began dying. McLaren, Jim Clark, and others, died in crashes. The new cars -- regardless of marque or formula -- had outstripped the tracks they were running on, and did not have the reliability on a par with their performance -- both of the technology and of the drivers. Other drivers began quitting, or going into smaller race cars, or maybe not racing as much. Jackie Stewart, Dan Gurney, Graham Hill, etc. just didn't seem to appear as often as they had in the heydey. (Though Gurney made an F1 run with the American Eagle.)
Now, races are overall much safer. Though some drivers still tragically die in races, the accidents are much more survivable. They are safer for fans, too. The second year (again I need to check) Jim Clark drove his Lotus at Indy -- a horrible starting lap crash killed two drivers and some fans as flaming car parts flew into the stands. There were calls for huge safety revisions (I recall a Jackie Stewart article in SI when I was in high school had recommendations that many thought could kill the sport -- but they were eventually implemented for the most part, I think), but not until a crash a few years later that sent a huge wheel into the stands that killed or injured several people, did things get serious at Indy, at least as I recall. Oddly, F1 racing got much safer after a champion driver (Nicky Lauda) actually survived a burning crash. However, he was disfigured for life. He did many interviews as he recovered, and F1 racing got safer -- again, as best I recall.
I fell away as a fan of motor sports as I got older, and as other things began to take my interest (those miniskirts made the girls look a lot sleeker than a BRM!), but every time I even see a Honda 2000, some engine in the back of my memory roars to life, if only for a second.
LJ orig.: 05/27/07
Indy's coming up -- and it's making me look at cars again ("as Dreamland's comin' on -- Dreamland, Dre-ee-ee-eamland!").
Down heah in the Southlan' we used to see impo'ted sports cars about as often as we felt earthquakes. Anything "imported" had the label "Made in Japan" -- which then was not a good thing. The oil embargo hit when I was in college ... the first Honda Civics (these things would fit inside a modern Civic -- and leave room for the driver!) with their spare tires sticking out the back hatch lid were almost always yellow. I think I remember seeing an orange one while I was at the Hill. They would go 100,000 miles easily on nothing but regular oil changes -- utterly unheard of in domestic vehicles.
Not too long after that, the Reagan recovery started -- ending the Carter inflationary "malaise" (he had low budget deficits, though, as I recall). People who had some money down South got more as economic development began picking up steam for the first time since the textile boom in the 1920s. And in the tiny mill towns I lived in -- some doctors and lawyers began driving 921's around town -- once and a while, you'd even see a red 911 parked next to a 20's era three-story brick house renovated into offices. One lawyer had a Saab -- a new black one, not a rust bucket belching gas from the 70s with tye-dye cloth covering the holes in the upholstery and flower decals in the back windows. One of my editors was on his second 100,000 miles in his original Civic.
Muscle cars did not return to the scene, at least where I lived, until the 1990s. State capitol reporting brought hourly sightings of Boxters, 6-series Beemers, and two-seat Kompressors. I salivated in anguish at these sculptured beauties. But it actually all began right in my backyard. I was reporting in a town (man, 15 years ago!) when BMW decided to build a plant there to make roadsters. The subsequent sports car was all the rage as soon as the cars started coming off the production lines in the mid-90s. I got a bad neck crick yanking my head at all the custom-colored ... s zipping past my usual walk routes in those days.
Like all American boys of my time, I was fascinated with cars early. My dad didn't buy a 'stang, he had a pal selling Chevvies those days, so he opted for a blue Camaro -- the first one, a kind of compact of the day. A big green monster followed two years later -- eight cylinders of raw Camaro power tore down the new interstates being built in our area. I didn't wreck it -- no one let me drive this low slung behemoth unsupervised!
For some reason, though I was born and raised at the nativity of stock-car racing with what was then called a Grand National track fifteen minutes away, I never cottoned much to Junior'n'em's sport. I listened to races rabidly on radio on Saturdays (that's when they were run then) but I was just as rabid for the hourly updates in (I think) '64, when Phil Hill and his team drove the first Ford to race at LeMans in the prototype category. This GT car was a beauty! (I still have the Matchbox version I bought back then.) The racing mags I bought at the coin shop up the street from the store my dad ran raved about all the new American cars entering the European sports scene -- as well as the Lotus team that came to Indy that year (or maybe it was '63 -- I'll have to check.) The mags drooled the following year over two new entries in the Grand Touring scene -- the Shelby Cobra and Jim Hall's Chapparral -- gorgeous and powerful, the pair of them! Bruce McLaren introduced the Lola not long after, another dream machine to watch.
There were no videos of these races back then -- just a few film clips on the Wide World of Sports. No in-car cameras, no color pictures, even! But the crude entertainment technology of the day only served to enhance a boy's imagination. WWoS occasionally did a Grand Prix or GT race -- but with cameras the size of small refrigerators mounted on tripods that had to be hand-swiveled by two people, it didn't look like much after the starting flag fell. Frustrating, but imagination-firing. Oh, the wait for the stills of the races in Road and Track three months later!
But as time went on, the racers I rooted for began dying. McLaren, Jim Clark, and others, died in crashes. The new cars -- regardless of marque or formula -- had outstripped the tracks they were running on, and did not have the reliability on a par with their performance -- both of the technology and of the drivers. Other drivers began quitting, or going into smaller race cars, or maybe not racing as much. Jackie Stewart, Dan Gurney, Graham Hill, etc. just didn't seem to appear as often as they had in the heydey. (Though Gurney made an F1 run with the American Eagle.)
Now, races are overall much safer. Though some drivers still tragically die in races, the accidents are much more survivable. They are safer for fans, too. The second year (again I need to check) Jim Clark drove his Lotus at Indy -- a horrible starting lap crash killed two drivers and some fans as flaming car parts flew into the stands. There were calls for huge safety revisions (I recall a Jackie Stewart article in SI when I was in high school had recommendations that many thought could kill the sport -- but they were eventually implemented for the most part, I think), but not until a crash a few years later that sent a huge wheel into the stands that killed or injured several people, did things get serious at Indy, at least as I recall. Oddly, F1 racing got much safer after a champion driver (Nicky Lauda) actually survived a burning crash. However, he was disfigured for life. He did many interviews as he recovered, and F1 racing got safer -- again, as best I recall.
I fell away as a fan of motor sports as I got older, and as other things began to take my interest (those miniskirts made the girls look a lot sleeker than a BRM!), but every time I even see a Honda 2000, some engine in the back of my memory roars to life, if only for a second.
LJ orig.: 05/27/07
Monday, February 6, 2012
Graphic Entertainment
Near perfect weather, less sneezy (or better
medicated).
I posted sometime last year (back in the November archive, I think) about my experiences running a specialty comic book store during the worst winter in modern history for that part of the country. And I think I may have made a disparaging remark or two about "fanboys" -- adult males who act worse than 12-year-olds when it comes to comic books (at least). Now, they all have their revenge. I am a fanboy. I'm proud of it. The world can't take that away from me, either. *sniffs a falsely cocky sniff* Two stories have sucked me in and made me an addict.
I can now admit I only pretended to be looking at the Classics section of the bookstore, because from there I could just work my eye over to the comic book section, if I sort of bent my head backward just a little (a little more, a little more, ow! that crick hurt!, oops! almost fell on my ... ). I guess I was pretty obvious, so it's such a relief to now confess that I really wasn't interested in books I was made to read in high school. I wanted to see that mad wild cover on the new X-men limited series! (Cyclops is back! Wow!)
Now of course, harrumph, I can't be seen buying those things. No, I just look at them (trying hard not to bend the cover any around the staples -- lookin' out for muh fanboy crew!) with pain only a permanent 12-year-old can muster. I can allow myself the more respectable "graphic novels" or "limited series" that bookstores are now putting on the regular mag shelves. I can march to the stand, after a few minutes of pretending to be reading the latest edition of the Atlantic Monthly or The New Republic, while I'm really aiming at that last copy (hiding behind a muscle-car mag) of The Dark Tower.
The Dark Tower is Marvel's take on a series of books written by Stephen King on a hero he calls "The Gunslinger." Set in a future dystopia, the young gunslinger Roland Deschains begins to learn the hazards of his father's craft, where the only weapons left are six-shooters from the Wild West. It's written by someone who's spent a lot of time cataloging the details of the novels in a book of her own, and this limited series contains some of her writing about the "Dark Tower-verse" or whatever it's called (My copies are in the other room and I'm posting past my downstairs neighbor's bedtime, so I can't get up to check unless it's, like, to heed the call. No, I'm just drinking water. For now).
(mercurius_21 won't review* this series, or the other one he's eating peanut butter to afford this year, because I'm sure there are other, and better, places for that. He's just so enthusiastic about actually living like a kid he can't contain himself.)
The other one I'm carrying to the register with my head held high is the long-awaited Season Eight of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I pore over each one of these again and again, savoring every panel -- just like those guys I thought were such poor wretches so many years ago when I was running that shop in Tobac Town. Now that I'm a poor wretch myself, I must say it's a liberating experience. Plus, it's great to see Joss Whedon (a confessed fanboy himself -- though I'm sure he has a better term for it) put in all kinds of trivia only people like us really enjoy. The first issue in the series features characters who look exactly like Tony Stark (Iron Man) and Foggy Nelson (Matt Murdock's law partner in Daredevil). A character who strongly resembles the general that chased The Hulk around in those early issues is also carefully rendered so a true fanboy would not fail to notice. Nobody cares about this stuff but us fanboys, and it's what we live for, truly.
After the stories of Roland Deschains and Buffy Summers are told, what next? There are many others I'm salivating to read. So where will this juvenilia end? I don't know. After all, Peter Pan is more than just peanut butter.
___
*Review it I did, only to remove the whole thing later. Here it is:
'"Maybe I'm a fan."
LJ orig.: 05/20/07
I posted sometime last year (back in the November archive, I think) about my experiences running a specialty comic book store during the worst winter in modern history for that part of the country. And I think I may have made a disparaging remark or two about "fanboys" -- adult males who act worse than 12-year-olds when it comes to comic books (at least). Now, they all have their revenge. I am a fanboy. I'm proud of it. The world can't take that away from me, either. *sniffs a falsely cocky sniff* Two stories have sucked me in and made me an addict.
I can now admit I only pretended to be looking at the Classics section of the bookstore, because from there I could just work my eye over to the comic book section, if I sort of bent my head backward just a little (a little more, a little more, ow! that crick hurt!, oops! almost fell on my ... ). I guess I was pretty obvious, so it's such a relief to now confess that I really wasn't interested in books I was made to read in high school. I wanted to see that mad wild cover on the new X-men limited series! (Cyclops is back! Wow!)
Now of course, harrumph, I can't be seen buying those things. No, I just look at them (trying hard not to bend the cover any around the staples -- lookin' out for muh fanboy crew!) with pain only a permanent 12-year-old can muster. I can allow myself the more respectable "graphic novels" or "limited series" that bookstores are now putting on the regular mag shelves. I can march to the stand, after a few minutes of pretending to be reading the latest edition of the Atlantic Monthly or The New Republic, while I'm really aiming at that last copy (hiding behind a muscle-car mag) of The Dark Tower.
The Dark Tower is Marvel's take on a series of books written by Stephen King on a hero he calls "The Gunslinger." Set in a future dystopia, the young gunslinger Roland Deschains begins to learn the hazards of his father's craft, where the only weapons left are six-shooters from the Wild West. It's written by someone who's spent a lot of time cataloging the details of the novels in a book of her own, and this limited series contains some of her writing about the "Dark Tower-verse" or whatever it's called (My copies are in the other room and I'm posting past my downstairs neighbor's bedtime, so I can't get up to check unless it's, like, to heed the call. No, I'm just drinking water. For now).
(mercurius_21 won't review* this series, or the other one he's eating peanut butter to afford this year, because I'm sure there are other, and better, places for that. He's just so enthusiastic about actually living like a kid he can't contain himself.)
The other one I'm carrying to the register with my head held high is the long-awaited Season Eight of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I pore over each one of these again and again, savoring every panel -- just like those guys I thought were such poor wretches so many years ago when I was running that shop in Tobac Town. Now that I'm a poor wretch myself, I must say it's a liberating experience. Plus, it's great to see Joss Whedon (a confessed fanboy himself -- though I'm sure he has a better term for it) put in all kinds of trivia only people like us really enjoy. The first issue in the series features characters who look exactly like Tony Stark (Iron Man) and Foggy Nelson (Matt Murdock's law partner in Daredevil). A character who strongly resembles the general that chased The Hulk around in those early issues is also carefully rendered so a true fanboy would not fail to notice. Nobody cares about this stuff but us fanboys, and it's what we live for, truly.
After the stories of Roland Deschains and Buffy Summers are told, what next? There are many others I'm salivating to read. So where will this juvenilia end? I don't know. After all, Peter Pan is more than just peanut butter.
___
*Review it I did, only to remove the whole thing later. Here it is:
'"Maybe I'm a fan."
"I'm just
glad this damn thing is finally over!"
The first
statement is Buffy creator Joss Whedon's closing sentence in his letter to
readers that concludes Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season Eight -- a fan-fiction
project if ever I've seen one (and I have!). The second statement is mine to
the comic store's clerk as I was leaving, the final issue of S8 in hand.
Now that I've
read the comic, I will say this: those who "waited for the trade" did
the right thing. I don't regret buying the stapled version for four years,
though I do feel a little jerked around by Dark Horse during that time. The
company could have done a much better job of communicating honestly with fans
like me about this series, and from the beginning.
Back when I
was the clerk (and manager and floor-sweeper) of a comic shop in that very same
town 26 years ago, Dark Horse was the third party in the color-comic world.
When the comic boom began going bust in the late 80s, DH bought up many of its
smaller competitors (and their properties). The company was very businesslike,
in that way and in many others. It still is, IMO.
Those of you
thinking about buying trade-paperback collections ("the trades") of
this (almost) monthly comic may use that background for your purchasing
decisions, because Buffy S8 was a very businesslike product: the first 19
issues were aimed at the general bookstore ("graphic novel") buyer,
the last 19 were for the specialty store ("comic book") customer. The
issue in the middle (see above) was a nod at the group I learned a
quarter-century ago is the envy of both types of customer -- the collector of
animation celluloids ("cels").
Would I have
expected any publisher to spell that out for its customers? Of course
not. But DH at least could have indicated the series would likely last four
years, averaging ten issues a year. (If DH had done as it had in the years
prior, there would have been no Buffy issue shipped in December. That would
have put issue 40 shipping to stores in February. The first issue of S8 shipped
in March 2007. DH put out Buffy in December 2010 so it could get a publicity
bump from the Jan. 19 "birthday" of the title character.)
I mean that
analysis as pragmatic, rather than cynical. Still, I will not likely be on
board for S9. I feel it's time for me to move forward from here, on this and
many other things in life. However, I am looking forward to the Buffy
movie. Without Joss.
He has bigger
things to do. And so do I.'
LJ orig.: 05/20/07
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