An Apocalypse Now, Blue Velvet, Pulp Fiction Type of Guy

March 16, 2016March 16, 2016 / wlm3 / 1 Comment

5+ Iconic Movies this so called cultural anthropologist has never seen:

Star Wars – When I saw the trailers in the mid-70’s, I knew I’d be bored stiff. The only sci-fi I ever watched was the old Buster Crabbe serials on TV when I was a kid and only because I was breastfed.

Dale Arden was hot, Princess Leia not so much.

Plus, I hated the robot on Lost in Space, never took to Hal, ain’t got the hots for Siri, so I suspect Artoo Detoo ain’t gonna elicit any chuckles. In fact, the most disappointing film I’ve ever seen, given expectations, is Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

ET – see above.

(By the way, special effects never fail to Hindenburg my suspension of disbelief)

Love Story, The Brian Piccolo Story.

(I did, though, make it all the way through the Garbo/Gable Camille)

Frankly, I prefer the more abstract unhappiness I get by reading the life stories of young, attractive people whose pictures appear on obituary pages.

Forest Gump – This nation is stupid enough (cf. Trump’s political success). We don’t need to be glamorizing the virtues of low IQs.

The Titanic – No way it could be better than the Thomas Hardy poem “The Convergence of the Twain” By the way, I did go see but hated Avatar. You can read the review here.

No Pixar film ever. What can I say? I’m allergic to wholesomeness.

Nope, I reckon I’m just an Apocalypse Now, Blue Velvet, Pulp Fiction type of guy.

Trigger Warning: Smack shooting, needles, i.e., drug use.

My-My-My Generation

March 2, 2016March 2, 2016 / wlm3 / 2 Comments

Poobah Savoring by Toni-Lee Sangastiano

In this piece from 15 March 2013, I mock my generation for its greed and the younger generation for its political passivity. Perhaps I was wrong.

I’ve never really been a fan of my generation, not even back in the so-called day. The turbulence of those times makes us seem somewhat interesting in retrospect because people tend to remember Abby Hoffman instead of Debby Boone. And sure, some of us were cool and contentious, took unpopular stands, let our freak flags fly, etc., but then, again, lots of hippies were assholes, self-righteously slinging blood on Viet Nam vets while ripping one another off in petty drug deals while mooching off parents.

Sing it, Mr. Lennon:

Keep you doped with religion and sex and TV
And you think you’re so clever and classless and free
But you’re still fucking peasants as far as I can see

John Lennon, “Working Class Hero”

Also, the so-called Silent Majority tended not to be all that silent, chanting “Nixon’s the One” or singing along to “Joy to World” while vociferously supporting bombing Cambodian villages. Not to mention South Carolina’s Early Seventies bumper crop of rednecks, never a taciturn group. Oh yeah, and the angry vibe of surly brothers on sidewalks sharing with you and your beloved what they’d love to do with her.

Hey, but back then, I, too, was an angry young man, a walking middle finger, a narcissistic nincomshit, not the serene old fellow you know and love, the human equivalent of an extended teacup pinky, the selfless sage, the kindly gentle man who shares his wisdom here free of charge.

then

now

To wit, with no legacy of saving the world for democracy to our credit, we baby boomers will increasingly seem like an encumbrance to younger workers slaving away to pay off college loans while we direct deposit our Social Security checks and enjoy the peace of mind of Medicare. There are many more of us than there are of them, so we can out-vote them; however, who wants to spend his final years as a detested vampire sucking the life blood of the economy at the expense of his grandchildren?

The word entitlement comes to mind.

Any rational person should realize that Democrats and Republicans need to compromise, that revenues have to rise, probably in a more robust manner than merely closing tax loopholes for the super rich, but even that commonsensical, relatively painless option is in the current Congress a no-go.

Furthermore, Social Security and Medicare must be reformed, and that means need-testing and curbing benefits, raising the retirement age – you know, slaughtering a sacred Democratic cow or two.

Obama has signaled he’s willing to do so, but he’s so detested and mistrusted by the Right that the two parties coming together to enact meaningful legislation seems about as likely as Menachem Begin’s and Yasser Arafat’s great grandchildren falling in love, marrying, and serving pork barbecue at their wedding reception.

World temperatures plummet as hell freezes over

So what you gonna do, younger generation, sit back, tabulate your likes on Facebook while your standard of living erodes like the sands of Folly Beach? Maybe you could take a page out of Jonathan Swift and cook up some plan to cannibalize grandma. Or how about starting your own revolution?

Naw, that’ll never happen. Click away, O my brothers and sisters, click away.

In the Wind Somewhere

February 28, 2016February 28, 2016 / wlm3 / Leave a comment

photo red: Hamlet Cloud website

The phrase “ashes to ashes, dust to dust” is a not so subtle suggestion that human beings don’t ultimately amount to much as far as corporeal matters go.

Just ask Hamlet. Here he is next to Ophelia’s freshly dug grave ruminating on what base uses we may return:

Alexander[1] died, Alexander was buried,

Alexander returneth into dust; the dust is earth; of

earth we make loam; and why of that loam, whereto he

was converted, might they not stop a beer-barrel?

Imperious Caesar, dead and turn’d to clay,

Might stop a hole to keep the wind away:

O, that that earth, which kept the world in awe,

Should patch a wall to expel the winter flaw!

Yesterday, we disposed of Aunt Virginia’s cremains,[2] which, and I’m not making this up, smelled like cigarettes. My brother Fleming kept them in his car, and as soon as he opened the door, I could smell that distinctive Virginia smell.

Nothing dealing with Virginia was ever easy. We had planned to scatter the ashes in the Folly River via kayak from our dock, but when Fleming arrived, it was dead low tide, so we decided to try the dock at the Folly River Park instead, hoping on such a chilly day that at 5 o’clock it might be deserted.

The park is across from a Catholic church, which was celebrating mass, so parking was a problem. Nor was the dock deserted. Three young men, National Guardsmen as it turned out, were fishing. It occurred to me that dumping human remains in water where people were fishing would be a gross violation of the Golden Rule, but as luck would have it, they started packing up their gear to leave. As I glanced down the long dock, another man was approaching in the far distance with his dog.

“Look, fellows,” I said. “I want to give you a head’s up. We’re getting ready to scatter my aunt’s ashes, that is, if y’all don’t object.”

“Not at all,” the tallest one said. “Sorry about your loss.”

So Fleming opened the velvet bag, brother David cut open the plastic bag inside, and Fleming poured the contents over the rail and into the water. I had never seen human ashes before, and I was quite shocked how beautiful they were as they drifted down into the water, creating a cloud as they dispersed, as if matter cannot really be created nor destroyed, as if Virginia were getting a second chance via recycling.

As we made our way down the dock to Fleming’s car, as if on cue, the church bells began to chime as mass let out, a beautiful sound, and I thought of this poem by Richard Eberhart:

For a Lamb

I saw on the slant hill a putrid lamb

Propped with daisies. The sleep looked deep

The face nudged in the green pillow

But the guts were out for crows to eat.

Where’s the lamb? whose tender plaint

Said all for the mute breezes.

Say he’s in the wind somewhere,

Say, there’s a lamb in the daisies.

[1] I.e., Alexander the Great

[2] A word I learned from the presiding priest at her funeral.

Poor Dead Aunt Virginia, Missing Fingers, Kendrick Lamar’s Hero Journey, and I-and-I

February 24, 2016February 24, 2016 / wlm3 / 2 Comments

Backdrop

Sunday, I had the melancholy chore of driving from Folly Beach to Summerville to sign papers granting unsmiling folks at a funeral home permission to cremate my Aunt Virginia’s remains. It had been a strange weekend. Friday night, at the Jack of Cups Saloon, I ran into a woman just back from the emergency room after her husband had sacrificed his thumb and portions of two fingers to a buzz saw.

Jack of Cups 19 Feb 2016

He was now home zonked out on painkillers, and she was downright giddy, maybe slightly hysterical, as she showed me images of his mangled hand on her phone. Under the influence of high gravity beer, I had found the spectacle somewhat amusing in a macabre Flannery O’Connor sort of way. At the time, the incongruence of her manic good mood and the awful image of the thumb stump on the screen of her iPhone struck me as paradoxically life affirming, but 36 hours later, on this overcast Sabbath morning, the incident seemed merely strange and sad.

Adding to my melancholia is the mournful state of our body politic. The Republican Party primary in my home state and the Democratic caucuses in Nevada had just gone down. Last week, the Hoodoo household suffered a relentless barrage of robo calls that could have driven even Stewart Smiley to suicide. A recorded message from the Cruz campaign, for example, featured one of the Duck Dynasty stars shilling for Ted, quoting none other than Thomas Jefferson himself. I could hear it blaring from our landline’s speaker as I worked on Saturday’s crossword puzzle.

Because we’re smack dab in the middle of the Roman spectacle of this campaign cycle, I doubt if we can fully appreciate just how surreal it actually is. The leading Republican candidate, who has won two of the first three contests, resembles Don Rickles more than John McCain or Mitt Romney. The Republican debates seem more like Hollywood Roasts than they do serious discussions of the profound problems facing our aging Republic – the threat of ISIS, grotesque economic inequality, an epidemic of mass murders, an aging population being supported by tax dollars siphoned from the paychecks of young people with massive student loans, the increasing unrest of a black population sick and tired of the status quo – of seeing their children murdered by suspicious white neighbors or gun downed/strangled by overzealous police officers. Then there’s the matter of Flint’s water supply being poisoned by misfeasance or worse.

Speaking of race, before I left for Summerville, I had downloaded Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp a Butterfly, a rather melancholy piece of business itself.

Because of Butterfly’ s almost universal critical acclaim[1], I had listened to snippets via iTunes but decided to not purchase the album. However, a student I’d turned onto Dr. John told me he thought I’d like the new rap music he was listening to, and the next day handed me a long handwritten list of songs, several of which were from the Lamar album.

So I decided to devote the two-hour round trip to checking out the record, listening to it once on the way to the funeral home, and once on the way back. That way I could avoid thinking about Virginia, who unlike Lamar, never made it our of her cocoon.

To Pimp a Butterfly

Okay, what we’re dealing with here is essentially narrative collage, a sonic novella akin to a not-all-that-positive LSD trip. Unlike most male-produced hip-hop, Butterfly doesn’t traffic in braggadocio; i.e., it is not an exercise in self-exaltation where a DJ catalogues his sexual conquests/treasure trove of top end cultural artifacts.[2] Instead, Butterfly explores Lamar’s guilt over what he sometimes perceives as the abandonment of his friends and family back in the ghetto of Compton after his entrance into the gilded realm of the rich and famous.

In a sense, it’s a classic Jungian battle between persona and self. Actually, it’s not so much like an LSD trip but more like a guided tour of someone’s unconscious with memory motifs periodically rising to the surface amid a dense swirl of background noises, bass riffs, horns, pianos, etc. Of course, the central theme is race – the difficulties urban African Americans face, shit, as Lamar would say, like teen pregnancy and gang warfare. Ultimately, the record can be seen as a parallel to the hero’s journey, a mannish boy leaves the circle of his home in the ghetto, endures a series of trials, and returns a Man with knowledge to share with his countrymen and women – in this case, his homies.

The record begins with “Wesley’s [as in Snipes] Theory,” what Greg Tate of Rolling Stone describes as “a disarming goof that’s also a lament for the starry-eyed innocence[3] lost to all winners of the game show known as Hip-Hop Idol.”

Unlike most instances of the hero’s journey, we begin in medias res, already outside the ghetto homeland and in the realm of celebrity. The track features both Dr. Dre and the great George Clinton.

Lamar describes his behavior after first getting signed to a record deal and the disillusionment that soon follows. He loses his “first girlfriend” and finds “[b]ridges burned, all across the board/Destroyed, but what for?”

He “hit[s] the dance floor,” goes predatory “snatch[ing] your little secretary bitch,” and then embarks on a spending spree with “platinum on everything.”

When I get signed homie I’mma buy a strap

Straight from the CIA, set it on my lap

Take a few M-16s to the hood

Pass ’em all out on the block, what’s good?

I’mma put the Compton swap meet by the White House

Republican, run up, get socked out

Hit the press with a Cuban link on my neck

Uneducated but I got a million dollar check, like that

Both Dr. Dre and George Clinton offer warnings. Dre’s practical:

But remember, anybody can get it

The hard part is keeping it, motherfucker

Clinton’s metaphysical:

Lookin’ down is quite a drop (It’s quite a drop, drop)

Lookin’ good when you’re on top (When you’re on top you got it)

A lot of metaphors, leavin’ miracles metaphysically in a state of euphoria

Look both ways before you cross my mind

Bad news for uneducated moguls:

Tax man comin’

Tax man comin’

Tax man comin’

Tax man comin’

Tax man comin’

George Clinton

Musically, the next two cuts, “For Free” and “King Kunta” are my favorites, the former some serious bitchin’ rapped over a discordant, jazzy blend of drums, piano, bass, and horns. It reminds me of toned down version of Tom Waits’ “Minute,” which, in turn, reminds me of the soundtrack of a manic car chase from a ’50’s TV crime drama.

“Kin Kunta,” killer funk, owes an awful lot to James Brown’s “Payback.”

He’s mad:

Got a bone to pick

I don’t want you monkey mouth motherfuckers sittin’ in my throne again

(Aye aye nigga whats happenin’ nigga, K Dot back in the hood nigga)

I’m mad (He mad), but I ain’t stressin’

True friends, one question

Kendrick’s Mr. Big Shot:

I was contemplatin’ gettin’ on stage

Just to go back to the hood see my enemies and say

Bitch where you when I was walkin’?

Now I run the game got the whole world talkin’, King Kunta

Everybody wanna cut the legs off him, Kunta

Black man taking no losses

Bitch where you when I was walkin’?

Now I run the game, got the whole world talkin’, King Kunta

Everybody wanna cut the legs off him

This inauthenticity can’t last. Repeated throughout the narrative is a memory of a breakdown:

I remember you was conflicted

Misusing your influence

Sometimes I did the same

Abusing my power full of resentment

Resentment that turned into a deep depression

Found myself screaming in a hotel room

The 6^th track corresponds to the “belly of the whale” stage of the hero’s journey, deep depression, Odysseus in the Underworld. It’s a powerful, raw, authentic confession of self-contempt.

Jonah/Kendrick

And you the reason why mama and them leavin’

No you ain’t shit, you say you love them, I know you don’t mean it

I know you’re irresponsible, selfish, in denial, can’t help it

Your trials and tribulations a burden, everyone felt it

Everyone heard it, multiple shots, corners cryin’ out

You was deserted, where was your antennas again?

Where was your presence, where was your support that you pretend?

You ain’t no brother, you ain’t no disciple, you ain’t no friend

A friend never leave Compton for profit, or leave his best friend

Little brother, you promised you’d watch him before they shot him

Where was your antennas, on the road, bottles and bitches

You faced time the one time, that’s unforgiven

You even faced time instead of a hospital visit

You should thought he would recover, well

The surgery couldn’t stop the bleeding for real

Then he died, God himself will say “you fuckin’ failed”

You ain’t try.

In the ten tracks that follow, the hero begins his ascent. God provides the Supernatural Aid universally present in the hero’s journey. The protagonist’s focus becomes less egocentric and more visionary.

On the track “i” we get apotheosis:

I done been through a whole lot

Trial, tribulations, but I know God

Satan wanna put me in a bow-tie

Praying that the holy water don’t go dry, yeah yeah

As I look around me

So many motherfuckers wanna down me

But ain’t no nigga never drown me

In front of a dirty double-mirror they found me

And I love myself

(The world is a ghetto with guns and picket signs)

I love myself

(But it can do what it want whenever it wants and I don’t mind)

I love myself

(He said I gotta get up, life is more than suicide)

I love myself

(One day at the time, sun gone shine)

Some of these latter cuts bring to mind Gil Scott Heron. The record ends with Lamar interviewing poor old dead Tupac (thanks to an old radio interview) and an oral SparkNotes-like explanation of the caterpillar/butterfly motif.

I’m, of course, not doing the record justice. I can’t come even remotely close to conveying the magical meld of sound and sense and image that is the record. Plus, I’ve left out Lucy (Lucifer) and all kinds of political subtexts, but, just leave it at this: I give it an A+++++ going on masterpiece.

Conclusion

On the morning after the Charleston massacre, I had to go to the cleaners to pick up a tux for my son’s wedding and go buy some black shoes. I reckoned I’d encounter anger among African Americans given that I was angry myself. The first black man I saw was sitting in a lawn chair drinking a beer on the edge of the parking lot of the laundry. I waved, and he waved back. A black woman rang me up at the shoe store, and when she asked me how it was going, I said that all this hatred had me feeling really low, and she said things would get better. I don’t know if she had made the connection to the shootings that had taken place about five miles away. Probably she thought it was just some kind of personal trauma, even though I was sporting all my fingers and both thumbs as I handed her the credit card.

[1] E.g., this from Rolling Stones’ Greg Tate: “To Pimp a Butterfly” is a densely packed, dizzying rush of unfiltered rage and unapologetic romanticism, true-crime confessionals, come-to-Jesus sidebars, blunted-swing sophistication, scathing self-critique and rap-quotable riot acts. Roll over Beethoven, tell Thomas Jefferson and his overseer Bull Connor the news: Kendrick Lamar and his jazzy guerrilla hands just mob-deeped the new Jim Crow, then stomped a mud hole out that ass.”

[2] He does, however, by my count twice boast of the size of his dick, claiming nine inches at one point.

[3] “Starry-eyed innocence in Compton?

The Curable Romantic

February 15, 2016November 10, 2021 / wlm3 / 1 Comment

Dark blues make me frantic

Black jazz brings me down.

Once I was romantic.

Now I stay uptown.

“Harlem Madness” – Fletcher Henderson, Ned Williams, and Irving Mills

I was eaten up with Romanticism when I was a boy growing up in Summerville, SC. On any number of bright, sunny spring days, perfect for playing outside, you could find me in the cave of my bottom bunk reading The Count of Monte Cristo or The Complete Stories of Edgar Allan Poe.

I was especially a sucker for doomed protagonists who suffered the perpetual ache of unrequited love, sardonic swashbucklers like Cyrano de Bergerac or Poe’s gloom-devoured intellectuals forever grieving for their lost Lenores. Of course, I didn’t share these somewhat pathological predilections with my friends or family. Maybe if I had, some kind soul might have pointed out that celebrating heartache is unhealthy and Darwinianly ineffective when competing for mates.

A consequence of this peculiar focus is that I developed an anachronistic, almost Victorian, appreciation of females as icons worthy of worship, practicing what Yeats describes in his poem “Adam’s Curse” as “the old high way of love.”*

There have been lovers who thought love should be

So much compounded of high courtesy

That they would sigh and quote with learned looks

Precedents out of beautiful old books;

Yet now it seems an idle trade enough.

“Idle” as in non-productive. In those days, snagging a touchdown pass or smacking a double was a more reliable pathway to a young girl’s heart than penning cliché-ridden verse that doesn’t scan — still is, as a matter of fact.

So I had a string of crushes I worshipped from afar, for example, the beautiful Joanne Elder, whom I would escort around the circumference of Dogwood Circle never daring to clasp her hand and confess my adoration. I had cultivated an ideal medieval maiden in my psyche and projected her onto this not intellectually curious but practical girl. Meanwhile, in any number of carport utility rooms and out in the still abundant woods around the subdivision of Twin Oaks, other less literary 7^th graders were learning how to French kiss. I still can clearly remember one day on an overcrowded school bus Joanne’s writing in the dust on the back door’s window the name of Steve Hoates.

[cue funereal violins]

Puberty itself was a great help in overcoming the blight of romanticism. I began reading less and listening to music more, Mick Jagger replacing Edmond Dantès as a role model, and despite singles like “As Tears Go By,” many Stones songs like “Under My Thumb” and “Stupid Girl” were openly dismissive of “the fair sex,” if not downright misogynistic.

My attitude coarsened a bit.

A couple of real live heartbreaks made me realize that the Marvelettes were right about the vast number of fish teeming in the sea of love. I came to realize that when you “got a heartache,” you’re much better off using your fingers to punch in jukebox selections rather than manipulating typewriter keys.

I figured out that the old Yeats was wiser than younger Yeats. Take it away, Crazy Jane:

A woman can be proud and stiff

When on love intent;

But Love has pitched his mansion in

The place of excrement;

For nothing can be sole or whole

That has not been rent.

Cyrano and Me

*Of course, over a half-a-century later, I realize this attitude of placing females on pedestals is sexist, a byproduct of the patriarchy, etc, but look up at that less-than-ninety- pound weakling right above this note. He didn’t know any better.

Quaint, Twitter-Ready Insults

February 12, 2016February 12, 2016 / wlm3 / 2 Comments

Michael J O’Donoghue

In the ‘70’s, the late great Michael O’Donoghue published a hilarious piece in the National Lampoon entitled “The Churchill Wit” in which he replaced those time-honored, oft-quoted Churchillian zingers with-

Well, I don’t want to step on his punchline. Here’s the original anecdote.

“I am enclosing two tickets to the first night of my new play; bring a friend … if you have one.”

— George Bernard Shaw, playwright (to Winston Churchill)

“Cannot possibly attend first night; will attend second, if there is one.”

— Churchill’s response”

And O’Donoghue’s version

When the noted playwright George Bernard Shaw sent [Churchill] two tickets to the opening night of his new play with a note that read: “Bring a friend, if you have one,” Churchill, not to be outdone, promptly wired back: “You and your play can go fuck yourselves.”

Alas, it seems, as least when it comes to social media, O’Donoghue was prescient in that vulgarity is now to the go-to response in verbal battle, especially on Twitter.

Of course, exhibiting wit in 140 characters – much less waging an argument – is challenging, so it makes sense that the un-clever resort to shit-slinging.

Obviously, trying to out-Andrew-Dice-Clay Andrew Dice Clay makes you look like a psychopath yourself, so, of course, the judicious adult response to scatological insults is no response.

Andrew Dice Clay

Unfortunately, judiciousness and I-and-I don’t even have a passing acquaintance. I’ll admit my skin is lens-cleaner thin. For the world of me, I cannot stand to let some cretin tripping on the Kool Aid reduce me to some emblematic body part. Being compelled to respond, I’ve come up with a system to counter foul-fingered trolls who call me “a pussy” or invite me to “suck their dicks.”

Rather than going Medieval on them in the Pulp Fiction sense, I go what you might call “quaint,” wielding minced, old-fashioned oaths inspired by (but not lifted from) those Shakespearean Insult Kits you can find on-line.

For example, let’s say I tweet something like “Does America really want a 79-year-old President in the situation room during a massive cyber attack?” and some Oscar Wilde wannabe responds with “Fuck you, pussy. Hillary’s a liar. It’s proven.”

Instead, of tooth-for-tooth vulgarity, I might respond with “Clever use of synecdoche, you ear-wax-witted nincompoop.”

The key is to throw the assailant off guard. Chances he doesn’t know what synecdoche is, which should give him pause, and even if he does, whatever he responds is going to make him seem ridiculous.

Here’s a quick list of quaint pejoratives: pettifogging, rapscallion, miscreant, bobolyne, scullion, lubberwort, jackanapes, scapegrace, ninnyhammer, poltroon, blatherskite, fopdoodle

Hey, I’m a school teacher, look them up, you lubberwort-eating jackanapes. It’s Friday, going on happy hour, so I’m off to Chico Feo to banter with the wits and all that jazz.

Art v. Life

January 26, 2016 / wlm3 / Leave a comment

When aesthetes like Oscar Wilde or critics like Harold Bloom proclaim that “life imitates art” or “Shakespeare invented the human,” I imagine people rolling their eyes and thinking, “Puh-leez!”

Of course, their adopting these mannerisms confirms Wilde’s and Bloom’s claims. No doubt cinema popularized eye-rolling as a fetching way to express exasperated contempt, and “puh-leez” as in “give me a break,” probably can trace its origins from somewhere in Sitcomland.

What Wilde meant is that artists’ rendering of what they perceive provides the inartistic with images they project onto world, and in the case of characters from literature, models for imitation:

Consider [Wilde writes] the matter from a scientific or a metaphysical point of view, and you will find that I am right. For what is Nature? Nature is no great mother who has borne us. She is our creation. It is our brain that she quickens to life. Things are because we see them, and what we see, and how we see it, depends on the Arts that have influenced us. To look at a thing is very different from seeing a thing. One does not see anything until one sees its beauty. Then, and only then, does it come into existence. At present people see fogs, not because there are fogs, but because poets and painters have taught them the mysterious loveliness of such effects. There may have been fogs for centuries in London. I dare say there were. But no one saw them, and so we do not know anything about them. They did not exist until Art invented them. Now, it must be admitted, fogs are carried to excess. They have become the mere mannerism of a clique, and the exaggerated realism of their method give dull people bronchitis. Where the cultured catch an effect, the uncultured catch a cold.
“The Influence of the Impressionists on Climate”

Claude Monet: Le Parlement, effet de brouillard

To follow up on the second point, from the Renaissance on, literature has provided models for imitation for playgoers and readers eager to customize their personas. For example, males for 4+ centuries have channeled Hamlet, donned black and parroted his depressive wit; clever girls, in turn, have modeled their personalities on Elizabeth Bennet, that arch, articulate social critic. Perhaps the most copied “type” for males of my generation is the Hemingway code hero. Nick Adams and Jake Barnes wannabes around the world have embraced wounded, stoic, epicureanism for going on a century. On a less grandiose scale, Bogart as Sam Spade, John Wayne as, well, John Wayne, and Aubrey Hepburn as Holly Golightly have also offered archetypes for imitation.

Come to think of it, perhaps exotic Papa Hemingway deserves some praise/blame for our current culinary obsessions.

“As I ate the oysters with their strong taste of the sea and their faint metallic taste that the cold white wine washed away, leaving only the sea taste and the succulent texture, and as I drank their cold liquid from each shell and washed it down with the crisp taste of the wine, I lost the empty feeling and began to be happy, and to make plans.”
A Moveable Feast

In the late Victorian era, the aestheticism of Pater and Wilde reeked of decadence. Who could take Pater’s advice “[t]o burn always with this hard gemlike flame, to maintain this ecstasy” if employed as a grocery boy, seamstress, coal miner, or pedagogue?

No, you had to loll your days away reading the “Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam” in exquisitely decorated gardenia-scented rooms (while across town some tailor pricked his finger hand crafting the smoking jacket you had commissioned).

Hidden by the Sleeve of Night and Morn by Edmund Dulac

Nowadays, few folk perceive decoration as decadent, though decorators have been conspicuously gay, as have been hair-dressers, fashion designers, and at least nowadays on King Street, male salesclerks in clothing stores. The effeminacy of caring about what flowers to place where perhaps only occurs in Late Empire cultures. (I don’t see Dan Boone fussing over container of black-eyed susans). And, yes, many grandsons of D-Day GIs are now uncloseted metrosexuals, and I say this is a good thing.

Certainly, I’d prefer to imbibe my afternoon ~~Colt 45 Malt Liquor~~ pinot in James T Crow’s pleasant arts-and-craft cottage overlooking the Folly River than seated upon motel-like furnishings in a condo overlooking the Mount Pleasant Bypass.

So, excuse me as I slip down to to snip some begonias from the garden. We might disagree about what is beautiful, but we can all agree that beauty beats its alternatives.

Hoodoo Living Quarters

Why I’m Voting for Hillary in the SC Primary

January 21, 2016 / wlm3 / 2 Comments

My dear departed high school English teacher, Mrs. Clarice Foster, taught us to make concessions early if inconvenient facts got in the way of our arguments. Say, for example, I chose pragmatism over ideology in determining whom to support for the Democratic nomination. In that case, Mrs. Foster would have me admit right away that Hillary and Bill Clinton have accumulated “some baggage” in their quarter century of public life, though she would probably frown if I quantified that baggage as “a boxcar full.”

[Sigh]

There’s “Clinton fatigue,” for example, the “been-there-done-that factor,” a definite negative in an ADHD nation brought up on quick cut editing.

Fire-breathing lefties also wag chiding fingers at Mrs. Clinton for having forged positive relationships with some denizens of Wall Street and for getting rich (god forbid).

More problematic, for me personally, is her tendency on occasion to reverse stances on issues for expediency’s sake.

Need we add that “vaulting ambition,” the phrase Milton uses in to describe Satan in Paradise Lost, might also apply to Hillary?

Not to mention her occasionally awkward public presentation, her unease on the stump, what some have called her “unlikability.” Indeed, some have depicted her as the female equivalent of the Prince of Darkness.

Enter that septuagenarian Galahad, Bernie Sanders, who unlike Hillary, was for gay marriage before she, Bill, and Barack Obama, and except for his recent flip flop on gun control, has been remarkably consistent over the years with his insistent socialist message.

More than any other candidate, Bernie cares about the widening discrepancy in the distribution of our country’s wealth and understands how oligarchy rends the fabric of national cohesion.

Nor has he spent his years in office accumulating riches – his net worth is reported to be a paltry (by politicians’ standards) 700K.[1]

Given these choices, why would I choose to support the seemingly more flawed Hillary over the seemingly purer Bernie?

Here’s why:

If in the unlikely event he were to defeat the Republican nominee, Sanders would have absolutely no chance of getting his agenda passed in Congress.[2]
More troubling, he seems clueless when it comes to foreign affairs. Just today he suggested we immediately normalize relations with Iran, a leading sponsor of terrorism.[3]
He’ll be pushing 80 at the end of his first term (cf. your aged relatives).
But most of all, I don’t want Ted Cruz (or John Kasich, for that matter) nominating the next three Supreme Court Justices. No matter what unreliable nationwide polls say about hypothetical match-ups, Bernie Sanders’ nationwide appeal is limited essentially to white liberals. Trust me, people who aren’t paying attention yet – in other words, a majority of the electorate – aren’t going to fall in love with, much less vote for, an irascible ideologue with unruly hair who is branded as a socialist ad nauseum in negative Republican ads, especially if fear of terrorism is a major campaign issue.[4]

I’ve seen this movie before. It starred Edmund Muskie, George McGovern, and ended very badly.[5]

Anyone who claims that there’s no difference between Hillary and the Republicans needs to take a remedial reading course. As a matter of fact, Hillary and Bernie share strikingly similar positions on issues. Unlike every single Republican candidate, they both believe in human acerbated climate change, higher taxes for the wealthy, abortion rights, free community college, diplomatic engagement as opposed to war, etc.

In addition, they both see government as a positive force rather than an anathema. The disheartening news is that neither is going to be able to get legislation through a Congress in which Republicans control both houses. So the contest between them boils down to a choice between someone less liberal and Machiavellian but deeply schooled in international relations to one who is more liberal and principled but seemingly clueless when it comes to foreign affairs.

Unfortunately, I sense a sort of bandwagon effect going on with Bernie among younger voters who are starting to vilify Hillary in Facebook posts. I witnessed the same sort of vibe with McGovern back in the day, i.e., being for McGovern was cool, and that if you weren’t, you would be banished to Squaresville by your hippie peers.

Immune to Bernie’s charisma, I opt for pragmatism over cult of personality when the bottom line tells me that a Sanders presidency means no meaningful implementation of his agenda. His purview is narrow, almost exclusively domestic, so I don’t trust him as a vigorous analytical surveyor of the incredibly complicated issues of international diplomacy. But most importantly, his chances of actually garnering 270 electoral votes are nil.

Even if he were elected, Bernie Sanders was born before the attack on Pearl Harbor — imagine the equivalent of a Pearl-Harbor cyber attack, some North Korean master sabotage of our collective computer systems.

Whom would you rather see in charge, Bernie or Hillary?

The stakes are Himalayan in this election: No matter what happens in the presidential contest, Republicans will continue to control both houses of Congress, and with a Republican president and a conservative majority on the Supreme Court, no telling what might be in store – gigantic tax cuts for the very richest, the privatization of Medicare, an escalation of everything Bernie Sanders detests.

Cast a colder eye, millennials.

[1] Which, by the way, is 600k more than his Marco Rubio’s. Hmmm.

[2] Although Sanders promises to break up the “big banks” via executive action, this claim has been met with doubt from both the right and left. Here’s Matthew’s Yglesias’s take.

[3] Imagine the negative Republican commercials.

[4] By the way, I nailed the electoral vote counts in a prediction on September 14th before the last election, so I do possess a smidgen of credibility here.

[5] Though nowadays, the Republican Party has moved so far rightward that “mainstream’ Jeb Bush makes Nixon look like Leon Trotsky in comparison.

A Taste of Folly

January 16, 2016August 22, 2016 / wlm3 / Leave a comment

Outside of Hoodoo Headquarters

11: 10 a.m. Saturday 16 January 2016

As the sun arcs across the bluest of skies on this glorious Saturday of a three-day weekend, why squander my benevolent mood by overturning the rock of US politics and commenting on the spectacle of the scurrying vermin underneath?

Let’s not go into Trump and Cruz bouncing off the ropes of Thursday’s debate delivering forearms and leg kicks like Jessie Ventura and Nikolai Volkkoff.

Let’s not revisit the pairing of Lindsey Graham and Jeb! standing awkwardly abreast at yesterday’s endorsement like Muff and Jeff .

photoshopped cartoon by WLM3

And what about this century’s remake of the 1972 Democratic contest with Hillary Clinton in the role of Edward Muskie and Bernie Sanders playing George McGovern?[1]

Enough! Already I feel dyspepsia roiling the previously pacific pools of my stomach acid.

No, I’m headed to the closet to don my pith helmet for another episode of “Hoodoo Anthropology.” Today, my adopted hometown Folly Beach celebrates its annual culinary extravaganza a “Taste of Folly, which I’ve never checked out, so I’m curious to see what type of crowd the festival attracts. You would think attendees might be a bit more subdued than the roisterers who descend for Folly Gras and Follypalloza, but frankly, I dunno.

What I do know is that the streets have been cordoned off, draught beer is flowing from sidewalk taps, and, of course, the chefs of Folly have taken extra care to present their signature dishes.

1:30 pm

Your intrepid reporter/anthropologist (IRA) and his spouse/assistant (SA) park their bikes at Chico Feo. Charlie, bartender extraordinaire, informs them that a bluegrass trio will be performing at 5, and that the owner/proprietor/chef (OPC) Hank Weed has set up a station offering a taste of Chico on the main drag that bisects this seaside community.

We cover the block to Center Street on foot.

Over time, your IRA has developed mild anxiety when enmeshed in the amoeba-like pulsations of a crowd. SA Birdsong is hungry, a happy coincidence, but the lines for food are long along the bustling thoroughfare. As luck would have it, the queue for the Jack of Cup’s (JOC) curry is manageable, so the two split up; SA Birdsong procures two bowls while IRA goes inside the saloon to obtain a beer.

As sometimes happens in small villages, sitting right outside of the JOC are two friends, Larry and Jed, who offer an area of the table where SA and IRA can stand and enjoy the absolutely delicious combination of rice, potatoes, curry, peppers, etc.

Jack of Cups Curry

Since Larry has been on site since “the crack of eleven,” he has procured a wristband that allows him to transport beers as a pedestrian.

wrist band

“Since when do you need a wristband to drink at a Folly festival?” IRA asks.

“It’s new this year,” Larry says. “It’s not too bad. Costs a buck. They make it efficient.”

“Maybe so, “ IRA thinks, “but here’s another instance of government complicating the lives of citizens.” He wonders where Cruz, Trump, and Bush might stand on the issue. No doubt nanny staters Bernie and Hillary are all for it.

As IRA enjoys his beer, someone approaches him from the back and begins to tenderly massage his shoulders. Out loud IRA wonders who it might be — Emmylou Harris? Chrissie Hynde? Margo Timmins? Ambrosia Parsley?

No, it’s Vinnie Folly Beach’s most prolific songwriter.

Vinnie

“You know what,” Vinnie says, “I’m going to get drunk today.”

IRA: “You are?”

Vinnie [emphatically]: “Yes I am. You know why?”

IRA: “Nope.”

Vinnie: “Because I got drunk last night, and I can’t get over it.”

Two beers are long enough for IRA to determine that the visitors for a Taste of Folly are very much like the visitors to the other festivals. Bands play, like at any other festival. There’s a Jump Castle (JC) for the kiddies, like at any other festival.

Bottom line: the festival goers seem to be having a fairly good time.

3:41

SA and IRA arrive home safely via bikes. Decompression time before Chico Feo 5pm bluegrass trio.

[1] Dream tickets: Sanders and Sharpton vs. Cruz and Cotton in a “the-center-cannot-hold” contest.

The Mother of Beauty

December 29, 2015December 12, 2021 / wlm3 / 5 Comments

I saw with my own eyes the Sibyl at Cumae hanging in a cage, and when the boys said to her: “Sibyl, what do you want?” she answered: “I want to die.”

Petronius, The Satyricon.

From man’s blood-sodden heart are sprung
Those branches of the night and day
Where the gaudy moon is hung.
What’s the meaning of all song?
“Let all things pass away.”

Yeats “Vacillation”

Death is the mother of beauty, mystical,
Within whose burning bosom we devise
Our earthly mothers waiting, sleeplessly.

Wallace Stevens, “Sunday Morning”

In the catalogue of alienations we Late Empire citizens suffer – estrangement from nature, God, our neighbors, ourselves – our estrangement from death is often omitted. We no longer encounter death on a daily basis. Most of us don’t raise chickens to wring their necks, pluck their feathers, excise their entrails. When our loved ones die, we no longer remove their clothes, wash their corpses, and dress them for one last family photo in the parlor.

Of course, our lack of exposure to death makes it much easier to lock it away deep in the cellar of our consciousness, which might not be such a bad thing given that nothing’s more life negating than death obsession. On the other hand, our isolation from the cold hard facts our ancestors dealt with – butchering animals, infant mortality, etc. – might have contributed to a delusion many seem to suffer, i.e death is unnatural.

A few years ago, an acquaintance’s father, a man approaching ninety, was lying comatose in a hospital. Each day, on Facebook this acquaintance updated his father’s situation, which, not surprisingly, was rather uneventful – the opening and closing of an eye, a sense from a nurse that the old man experienced discomfort when bathed. My acquaintance and visitors read the Bible to him aloud as they sat and prayed for a miracle. This acquaintance battled his father’s physicians who wanted to transfer him to hospice care while the son perceived opening an eye as a harbinger of “the complete recovery” for which he so ardently prayed.

Most of the Facebook commentators were essentially enablers writing messages like “Sounds very encouraging!!! The doctors could be totally wrong……the body can heal in ways that only God knows” or “That’s great. God is in controll” (sic) or “God is the ultimate physician:-).”

A contempt for science and doctors ran through those Facebook posts, and the commentary that followed. No wonder people don’t believe in evolution or global warming if they believe a comatose man dying of an infection brought on my the removal of a cancerous lung tumor could very well attain a complete recovery and enter robustly into his ninth decade.

On the other hand, when my wife Judy Birdsong was dying, some well-meaning soul told her that she was praying for a miracle, and Judy replied, “I’m sixty-three, don’t waste a miracle on me, pray for a child instead.”

This attitude, I submit, is a healthier attitude on dying.

dead doe in a frozen pond in North Carolina

To my mind, an ever aging husk of a body doomed to live for an eternity is a much more horrible fate than passing away in one’s sixth decade. Not only did the Sibyl at Cumae consider it a drag (see above), but we also have corroborating evidence from Chaucer’s “The Pardoner’s Tale.” When a trio of churls accost an ancient man and ask him why he still has the gall to remain alive, he replies,

Not even Death, alas! my life will take;
Thus restless I my wretched way must make,
And on the ground, which is my mother’s gate,
I knock with my staff early, aye, and late,
And cry: ‘O my dear mother, let me in!
Lo, how I’m wasted, flesh and blood and skin!
Alas! When shall my bones come to their rest?

Why, I wonder, would such devout Christians as my acquaintance want to forestall the eternity of bliss that awaited that good man? And his father was a good man, a great provider devoted to his family and his God.

The answer, of course, is love. Most of us love our parents. We don’t want them to go. I miss my own father’s sardonic witticisms, my mother’s hoarse cackle of a laugh, Judy Birdsong’s gentle movements. My acquaintance devotedly loved his father and didn’t want to think of living life without him.

Is that so wrong?

[cue Evangelical voice]: Let us turn to Ecclesiastes 3:1-4.

To everything there is a season
And a time to every purpose under heaven.

A time to be born and a time to die;
a time to plant and a time to pluck up what is planted . . .

Like I said, our aged loved ones’ passing is melancholy, and we miss them when they’re gone. I dream of Judy occasionally, and I awake missing her. Nevertheless, her time had come, and she was rather fortunate given that she didn’t have to suffer for long nor endure the feebleness that Larkin descries in “The Old Fools.”

What do they think has happened, the old fools,
To make them like this? Do they somehow suppose
It’s more grown up when your mouth hangs open and drools,
And you keep on pissing yourself, and can’t remember
Who called this morning? Or that, if they only chose,
They could alter things back to when they danced all night,
Or went to their wedding, or sloped arms some September?
Or do they fancy there’s really been no change,
And they’ve always behaved as if they were crippled or tight,
Or sat through days of thin continuous dreaming
Watching light move? If they don’t (and they can’t) it’s
strange: Why aren’t they screaming?

Yep, there are worse things than death.

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