Flat as a ...

In Rio de Janiero and New Orleans, they have giant street fiestas for Fat Tuesday. In Episcopal churches hereabouts, they eat pancakes for supper.

No, I'm not kidding.

I switched to a one-man ice cream party years ago, after I found out the hard way about the pecking order of pancakes on Maple Syrup Tuesday. I kept wondering why I'd show up on time but get one dried-out burned-up left-over pancake with a near-empty bottle of syrup -- "sorry, we're all out!" -- till finally one night I left and snuck back in through a side door and peeked through another door left slightly ajar. As the piles of fresh flapjacks and bottles of syrup passed by, I thought, "OK ... " and left quietly the way I came.

When I returned to my solitary apartment later that night, I decided to transmute my frustration to creative dissatisfaction. So I walked in the bedroom door, took off my coat, booted my PC and the following monolog emerged -- by what means I leave up to you.

I think it's supposed to be in the dialect of a Piedmont or Midlands Carolina (which one depends on whether said Carolinian is North or South) street character who has somehow ended up in the pulpit for Ash Wednesday.

(Judge for yourself ...)

“It's all about dust, y' know? It's what we get stuck in our noses and makes us sneeze. It's what we try to get rid of, if we're good at keepin' house. It's what lays around and makes everythin' look like a mess, if we're not. It's what we pull off dryer filters and what gets kicked up in a fight. It's what we come from and what we're to become one day, probably before we're ready.

“But back there in the rear pews, where we normally sit -- y'all r'member, don'tcha? 'We' is me, myself and I -- we have us a theory. It goes somethin' like this: dust is good. The universe is made of it -- it's full of it, in fact. Suns, planets, moons and pretty much everythin' else started out as dust. What didn't get made into balls of fire or mud is still out there. We call it 'interstellar dust'. It attracts and repels magnetic forces, begins to create heat and give off radiation, starts t' gravitate, and then gets hotter and hotter and hotter until - WHAM!

“This is not why we figure that dust is good, though. 'Cause it's still just dust. What we think is this: dust is good, because dust is God. Now that sounds pretty heretical, if not downright tactless. 'Cause God is supposed to be light, love and all that, not somethin' you want to wipe off, suck up or sweep out. Well, we don't disagree with that feelin', really. But the idea kinda clings, if you think about it some more.

“You see, dust is real. There's no denyin' that dust is dust. There's no escapin' it, either. There's no ignorin' it, without consequences, and there's no makin' light of it. It's dust, and it's common -- but that's because it's everywhere! Dust is the stuff of the universe, because that's what God became to make the universe be.

"Without dust, there would be no light. Without dust, there would be no darkness. Without dust, there would be no form. Without dust, there would be no formlessness. In fact, without dust, there would be no bein' at all. God needed to become dust, because dust has no qualities other than dustiness. It's tiny, but it can form galaxies. It seems to come from nowhere in no time (just try to keep some furniture dusted, if you don't believe me), but it's there in time and space just the same.

“Dust is God revealed in space and time. Dust is Truth revealin' itself. Dust is Love becomin' reality by makin' reality real. Dust is the Other emanated into the continuum, yet dust is us. Dust links the Creator and the created, and by comin' from it and returnin' to it, we rejoin the Creator.

“There's no life without dust. There's no love without dust. There is nothing at all, without dust. Though without dust, there would still be God. That statement is impossible to imagine, based on what we've just told you, which is why, in this case, it's true.

“Jus' somethin' for ya'll to think about while you're standin' in line, waitin' to get some dust rubbed on your foreheads.”

LJ orig.: Feb. 25, 2009

The Sacred Dead Can Help in More Ways Than One (Always)

You just have to let them.

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I hope nobody I care about bought the baloney* I've been putting in here lately. I'm not "chosen" (that I know of), I haven't been communing with the dead (that I'm aware of) and books haven't been talking to me (though I thought I explained that one).

It's been a few tough weeks for me, for a number of reasons. Part of the need I've had to blow off steam has been used in writing baloney in this particular post.

Some of what I've written may have been true, some of it possibly exaggerated, and some of it was certainly nonsense.

I wasn't having fun pulling anyone's leg, though. It was more my unconscious mind having fun pulling mine -- and if you feel it was done at your expense, please accept my apologies.

I really do feel the collective unconscious (a term "owned" by a Swiss psychiarist [or psychoanalyst, if you prefer] but conceptually known and written about for centuries prior to his time) holds resonance from many things -- people we've known and who will have known us when we're gone, events that have happened and that have not (yet, anyway) as well as the possibilities of people, places and things that will never find their way into The Real World (not the reality show, but the show of reality).

I guess my belief officially means I'm crazy. OK, if that's the case, I'll say "amen." But there are lots of crazy things I don't buy into -- reincarnation/past lives, Ouiji boards, palmistry, and all sorts of other stuff I think is nothing.

Lots of things get tossed into that vague category called "spirituality" that are pure bunk. Mainly, "spirituality" itself often is a term theologians use to describe religious experience they can't define (or even have in some cases, apparently).

But, on the other hand, the bunkum of "spirituality" doesn't mean that theology is the only valid religious science.

There's more to what people who are genuinely religious (without being sanctimonious -- no truly religious person I know is like that) genuinely feel than is commonly known, and which theology just doesn't describe.

I guess if there's been a point to all these "... (Always)" posts, that's been it.

And I still feel The Sacred Dead Can Help In More Ways Than One -- because they just did.

Whew! That took awhile!

___

*The first post I wrote in this position on the old LJ blog dealt (tongue in cheek) with some of my emotional experiences (that I thought of as "spiritual" when I had them), and the second, tongue still there, dealt with some of the books I read that gave them to me (they really "spoke" to me -- get it?). I overwrote the first with the second and then the second with this one.

LJ orig.: Feb. 25, 2009

The Sacred Dead Are Here To Help The Living (Always)

When we feel we are alone, we are not. We are with those who left us too soon, whatever time that was.

Actually, they are with us. And they will be with us forever. When we who are dead to the earthly living awaken to the life we have always known somewhere and somewhen, we will be solid as marble with those we have always loved, and will love forever.

We do not see here and now what we need to see to accomplish this miracle. It is not yet time and place to do that, and it cannot be done by us.

We must wait. And while we wait, we must watch. And while we watch, we must fight. And while we fight, we must pray. No one said this would be easy. If it was, it would not raise in us what must be raised, challenge in us what must be challenged, birth in us what must be born.

And what must be born is who we really are. Who we are meant to be.

From always.

Everywhere

At once

LJ orig.: Jan. 29, 2009

He was number one, for real.

Here's a note in memory of a man I posted on some time ago (that I left up -- yes, I checked! "We're Number One! We're Number One!"). Patrick McGoohan died this week in LA, apparently just a few miles from where a remake of The Prisoner had been screened in preview. I caught the scoop at Wired.com  ... so I'll refrain, except to note that McGoohan's participation apparently was solicited for the remake, but he was just too ill.

My old post may have inferred (from faulty memory) that his old TV series, Danger Man (aired here as Secret Agent -- with Johnny Rivers or whoever adding "man" to fit the theme song, I guess) was a standard "bullets and bedrooms" spy series. However, it seems McGoohan's show responsibly resisted the stereotypical formula.

I stand corrected.

BTW, I'm glad that McGoohan is getting some overdue recognition for his visionary work on "The Prisoner." I hope he was able to hear some of that appreciative feedback before he passed from our midst.

LJ orig.: Jan 16, 2009

"He got caught in the spot ... light!"

This band had almost the reverse fortunes of the band I (re)posted on a week ago*. Yet, they remain just as unforgettable.

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They were just known as The Band. I bought their LP called, yes, "The Band" right after reading about them in Time magazine. This band made the cover of the periodical, as I recall, and I just went back to the newsstand/record store in our little town and used my Christmas money to buy it.

I never used to do that. I'd always listen for a song or two on the radio first, then wait for the hallway buzz on the album at school. The kids with older brothers and sisters might have gotten a copy just to hear what it was like, while I could not afford to be that reckless. I had to add to my collection with care, both for my "rep" and my wallet.

But this was different. You never heard of a hippie rock band getting this kind of article in a national magazine, unless it was the Beatles or the Stones or someone like that.

What was different? I found out when I dropped the needle on this disc. My jaw fell open. I could not believe it!

Here was Our Music -- the South's own music, the real thing, in a musical amalgam never heard before -- and I'd been listening! I was not familiar then with The Band's first LP, Music From Big Pink. I recall now thinking of the earlier record as what we would today call an "indie" release, although I don't recall the label it was on. "The Band" was The Band's first major-label recording (as I thought of it then), and there was just nothing like it.

A song from the LP was already on the radio, but I disliked it so much at first I just never sought out the name of the group who recorded it. "Up on Cripple Creek" is a cold classic -- I can't find words to describe it, exactly. You just have to hear it for yourself.

In the context of the LP, "Cripple Creek" made sense, and I learned to love it. Getting a song like that on the charts at all was a landmark accomplishment, even then. But The Band failed to repeat the enormous success of its first major LP.

Oddly, I read an article regarding the 30th anniversary of the LP in one of those home-recording magazines that claimed the members of The Band pretty much recorded The Band on their own. They, as I recall reading, did not like the treatment the got at the studio at which they recorded "Big Pink," and just did the next one on their own.

The follow up to The Band was a record called Stage Fright. Full of catchy tunes (part of the title song is playing in my head now, as referenced by this post's title, and I gave away the LP ages ago!), none of the songs caught on publicly, and I was the only kid in school who even knew about it. In retrospect, it sounded like a major-label record. So probably did the third record in the major-label series. I don't even recall the title. All I remember is recommending The Band (the band) to a friend. He bought that third LP with the name I've since forgotten, and he basically never spoke to me again. Apparently that LP was really bad. Maybe not. No one else I ever spoke with about music ever mentioned that third major-label LP. I do recall reading that the label spent some money on it, though.

As I mentioned re: U2, that band's third major-label LP was the mega-hit cultural bombshell War. It has the same iconic status as the LP The Band, but the people who laid it to tape it pretty much inverted U2's recording history, at least as I recall it now.

What's really odd is that The Band as a group created a sound that really no one I can think of has ever successfully imitated, while I can think of many bands that have borrowed ideas from U2. Not being a musician, my view on it is probably off-base. But I just have never heard anything like The Band since.

Why am I mentioning this now, after Monday's rather intense post? There's a song that (to me) offers healing on The Band that I can recommend. It's called "Whispering Pines."

Yes, it's an iTunes Plus offering. I checked. ;)

P.S.: I'm posting this post script he day after I posted the above. I had an opportunity to re-hear The Band album since, and it occurred to me that some kinder, gentler among you readers might be offended by some of the songs (Joan Baez covered "The Night They Drove ... " so feminists of her era were not offended, apparently). The context I referred to was lyrical: The Band crafted most of the songs with words from their (and my) grandparents' or even great-grandparents' generations. I think that's partly what made The Band seem so funny, and so touching, when I first heard it.

___

*I began the re-posting project while still on LJ, intermittently. A few days later I posted this: "Yes, I -do- realize a legendary record producer also worked on The Band's The Band. That's not all. The song that delivered the real impact for me as a teen was "Unfaithful Servant." It, like the song I have referred to on Pet Sounds that hit me hard, did so while I was -- it seems in retrospect -- unbelievably young. I bought the album in the winter of 1970, when I would have just turned 15. BTW, if you listen to the "crying" vocal chorus on "Unfaithful Servant" you may hear familiar harmonies from that other iconic recording.
I am probably speaking out of turn here, but it occurred to me many years ago that some of Robbie Robertson's songs from that era have well-defined characters, even with names: Fanny from "The Weight" (on Music from Big Pink) Molly from "Across the Great Divide" and Bessie from "Up on Cripple Creek." I've often wondered if these songs may form part of a story or stories. Hmmm ... .

LJ orig.: Jan. 7, 2009

I also liked the one with Reverse Flash ... .

My cousin always had the best comics.

His dad (and grandad) owned the little gas station-cum-corner market in the tiny hamlet that (in its day) came as close to a South-of-Mason-Dixon Norman Rockwell magazine illustration (if you can think of such a thing -- Rockwell stayed close to home) as anyone could want.

And their market had a spinner rack, as most little-gas-station-corner-markets did back then.

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And on that spinner rack were DC comics. No Marvels. Just DC and Harvey.

Which was OK. I was only around ten or so when I got to look at ol' Cuz's comics, anyway. FF and Spidey wouldn't have interested me then.

Cuz loved Joe Kubert's Sgt. Rock. He had those Doom Patrol comics I posted on a good 16 months ago. And he had a few Batman and a good many Superman (early Brainiac and Bizarro and Mr. Mfsxvplk -- or whatever -- stories).

I could visit Cuz -- who was several years older and had no time for me -- and just let him allow me time to curl up in a corner with a stack of his old comics for the whole afternoon.

There was one I kept coming back to, a story whose cover I did not see until years later (you think Cuz would let his 10 year old Neph read new ones with covers still on?).

What attracted me was the color (wouldn't it be, at that age?) of the hero in his red-and-yellow suit, with another hero in his red-and-blue suit with a little silver helmet.

The story was called "Flash of Two Worlds" and it was about time travel. Flash could run at speeds approaching light, so he could traverse spacetime. And so, he met his Golden Age (1940's era) incarnation.

Read Buffy S8 lately? How about Fear Agent? I guess it's true -- there are no new stories. But I like to think the comics creators nowadays love to do homage to the greats like Kubert and Gardner Fox, as much as I like to recall those old stories.

Kubert is a legend, of course. Fox wrote a good 1,500 stories for DC. He is one of the all-time greats in the genre, as well. Overshadowed perhaps in his day by the creative geniuses at Marvel Comics, he nonetheless left an indelible legacy.

Kubert illustrated his own scripts (AFAIK), but Fox relied on the able pen and brush of Carmine Infantino*. It was said Infantino would somtimes draw a cover and let Fox write a story to it! I think they probably challenged each other.

Clearly, modern day writers and fans are in the debt of these Silver Age creators.

The memory of their creations, to this eternal 10-year-old, remains ever fresh.

___

*Infantino has since given an interview with a well-known US journal about comics and their creators. The article provides much more insight into the DC "method" than anything else I've seen.

LJ orig.: Nov. 17, 2008