Happy Monday, Baboons!
I had a nice, artful post prepared for today, all based on the idea that a Deficit Ceiling Deal would still be nothing more than an elusive fantasy. Oh well. My loss is everyone’s gain!
Fortunately, faithful regulars are standing in the wings with prepared entries.
Today’s guest post is from Plainjane from the West Side.
I don’t know how often these two artists have appeared in the same sentence, but I find it striking that one, Bill Morrissey, who I’ve enjoyed for years, should pass at the same time as one, Amy Winehouse, who I was mostly aware of because of her notoriety. Clearly both were tremendous talents and very troubled souls. Bill’s autopsy blames a heart ailment, but it is widely known that his health was damaged through years of alcohol abuse. In Amy’s case, she struggled publicly with addiction. I think of her as the English Janis Joplin.
I’ve read the comments on Facebook about both of those deaths, and I’m truly saddened by the lack of compassion expressed by some of my younger “friends” at Amy’s passing. I’m guessing that the more compassionate remarks about Bill’s death has to do with the age of the commentators.
I’ve been pondering the connection between creative genius, talent, mental illness and addiction. We have so many examples of people with extraordinary talents that have led, by most ordinary definitions, miserable lives.
Depression seems rampant among many of the creative people I admire the most, and I’m wondering whether there’s a connection between the sensibility that allows you to immerse yourself into the pain of others and the creative urge. Although I’ve never counted, I’m guessing that there are far more love songs written about love gone wrong or betrayal than falling in love.
And unless you’re a fan of “True Romance” I’m guessing that most of us think of conflict and pain as a very real part of life and great novels.
I love happy endings, but at the ripe old age of 68, I’ve come to the conclusion that truly happy endings are uncommon. One of the most idealistic love songs that I can think of is Bill McCutcheon’s “Last First Kiss, written as an anniversary gift to his wife. It’s lovely, but you have to ask yourself if many real relationships actually fit this description:
Sunday morning, coffee’s on
The kids are gone
I’m thinking of that moment when
All you had to do was speak
My knees went weak
Yeah, I’m twenty-two years old againYou were my last first kiss
I never imagined love could be like this
You are the woman I still can’t resist
You were my last first kissThat Friday night at your front gate
It was getting late
A long, slow walk home from the dance
You said you had a real nice time
Slipped your hand in mine
I closed my eyes and took a chanceBeen to heaven
Been through hell
Since I gave you that ring
Now heaven knows
I wouldn’t change a thingSunday morning, coffee’s on
The kids are gone
I’m thinking what a ride it’s been
Still all you have to do is speak
My knees go weak
I’m twenty-two years old again©2001 John McCutcheon/Appalsongs (ASCAP) & Steve Seskin/ Larga Vista Music/ Scarlet Rain Music ( ASCAP)
Swannanoa, NC July 2001
Compare that to the distance and lack of communication that mark the relationship described in this Bill Morrissey song – “Birches”.
Which seems more “real” to you? And does “reality” matter, when it comes to art?
Trail Baboon 
Happy August, Baboons! Pant, pant, pant!
Thanks, PJ, for the lovely post. It seems to me you are asking an almost religious question, namely whether we have “faith” in the existence of truly positive loving relationships. Ever the romantic, I’ll argue that I have seen many such relationships, starting with the union of my own parents. I passionately believe that it is possible for two people to live together in a condition of imperfect bliss, although that is hardly guaranteed.
In PJ’s two songs, “Birches” sounds more “real” to us (I think) because it uses more concrete detail than the McCutcheon song. It works better as a poem. The man cannot get past thinking of fires in practical terms; the woman cannot (this night) get past thinking of fires as metaphors for hope and joy. Obviously, these two are on separate paths in life, though they walk side by side. Morrissey paints a vivid picture by using concrete detail.
With your indulgence, I’ll offer a poem that works well as a poem and expresses the case for believing in love. I think this poem by Bill Holm could (should?) be read at every wedding:
Wedding Poem For Schele and Phil
A marriage is risky business these days
Says some old and prudent voice inside.
We don’t need twenty children anymore
To keep the family line alive,
Or gather up the hay before the rain.
No law demands respectability.
Love can arrive without certificate or cash.
History and experience both make clear
That men and women do not hear
The music of the world in the same key,
Rather rolling dissonances doomed to clash.
So what is left to justify a marriage?
Maybe only the hunch that half the world
Will ever be present in any room
With just a single pair of eyes to see it.
Whatever is invisible to one
Is to the other an enormous golden lion
Calm and sleeping in the easy chair.
After many years, if things go right
Both lion and emptiness are always there;
The one never true without the other.
But the dark secret of the ones long married,
A pleasure never mentioned to the young,
Is the sweet heat made from two bodies in a bed
Curled together on a winter night,
The smell of the other always in the quilt,
The hand set quietly on the other’s flank
That carries news from another world
Light-years away from the one inside
That you always thought you inhabited alone.
The heat in that hand could melt a stone.
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bill holm is my favorite . thanks steve. good insertion
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Nice poem Steve; thanks for posting it.
I’ve been re-reading some Bill Holm lately.
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have you got boxelder bug varations? i have it buried deep in a box somewhere and have been thinkng about what an interesting introduction to bill that was all those years ago. he thought it an odd collection when i talked with him after his reading at the ublic library the last time i saw him, he didn;t say in what way but i really liked it
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I don’t have Box Elder… saw the play version at the Jon Hassler Theater way back when. And worked on a brief remount after he died.
I’m reading ‘The Heart Can Be Filled Anywhere on Earth’.
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havnt read that on but i suspect i have it in my stash. i bought most of them when he was speaking at the library up here. let me kow how you like it
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It’s typical Bill Holm style– and I mean that in a good way.
Part of is autobiographical with sides into food and music and people.
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Good morning to all,
Very interesting, PJ. I admire the skill of John McCutcheon at writing and playing music, but he is not one of my favorites because his rosey view of life doesn’t seem real to me. I haven’t listen a lot to Bill Morrissey, but he sounds more real to me. I think Bill could do a song with a happy ending and it still would sound more real than John for me because he has a way of singing that seems more real to me.
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Jim, Do you feel different about John McCutcheon knowing that he left his last first kiss partner of many years and is now with another last first kiss? Life can get complicated for and with rosey song writers.
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john denver comes to mind
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Greg Brown-I’m still not over it (and I will stretch out my neck and say here and now that I really do not like his latest wife’s voice-feel free to hurl mangos, Baboons, I know she is popular here, just not with me).
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I am sorry to hear that John’s first marrage broke up and I hope his second marriage is a good one, Beth-Ann. As I said, I think McCutcheon is a very good musican. I don’t know exactly why I think his music is too rosey for my taste, but that is the way it seems to me. I am especially drawn to blues, Jazz, and funky or soulful sounding folk music for some reason, and I don’t hear that approach in McCutcheon’s music.
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i always felt gregs pain in hes first marrage, his music spoke to it sadly and reporseflly as for iris, her voice is easy to critique but i wish them well,,his is a liittle out there too
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When I was most despondent about my own divorce, I heard a Greg Brown song expressing love for his partner. I remember feeling crummy, berating myself for not being able to keep things together like Greg Brown. Ten I came to learn that when I had my divorce, Greg was in transition from Wife Three to Wife Four! I guess the music business is tough on marriages.
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life is tough on marriages.
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tim-I’m neither criticizing nor critiquing the sounds Ms. Demente makes, just saying I don’t like them. Yes, Mr. Brown also has a distinctive voice, his I like. (ditto Neil Young).
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There are a number of singers, like Iris, that I like who have a sound that took me a little time to learn to like. For example, I don’t why I thought Willie Nelson was not a very good singer when I first heard him because now I think he is one of the best.
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The worst divorces, I think, are like yours time, Steve. All that time is hard to look past. As a pastor I took a woman and a man through their two painful divorces after long marriages.
Almost all my friends who are about my age have had one marriage. Not sure all were happy and fully faithful, but all those I know well seem to have found a balance point.
Years ago a very young and unknown Iris Dement did 20 minutes on Austin City Limits. She sat with an acoustic guitar and just sang without any comments at all. I admit I am the least qualified to evaluate anything to do with music. However, that is one thing I wish I had on a DVD.
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for clyde
http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=18949157993
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Very nice, tim, thanks. That’s not the one, but thanks.
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I had a very strong response the first time I heard Iris sing – I cracked up laughing. I’m sorry now that I did because her songs are really good folk songs and what I originally took for an act is actually a very genuine style. She’s as folksy as they get and not afraid to be herself.
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I strive for the ideal image Bill laid out in his song, but in a world of internet dating and career singles, I’d settle for the reality Morrissey sang about at this point. Pain and problems are a part of any healthy relationship, but even in relationships of birch there’s an intense fire there. Some of the most magical moments I’ve experienced came attached to a few of the worst relationships I’ve ever had. Now it’s like a drunken night…only the best parts are colored in. Maybe it was because we didn’t have that nervous first kiss at the gate to remember; that big hunk of oak to get us through the rough patches. In the end, it doesn’t matter.
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well said scott, that flame from the birch on tat drunken night is a kick at the moment but wouldn’t it be loverly to find that oak somewhere along the line?
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Yes. Wouldn’t it, though?
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In just a handful of days, my wife and I will have been married 46 years. Allowing for a few rough moments here and there, I have since I first heard it felt that Bill McCutcheon’s song fits our marriage in a lot of ways.
my wife and I both worked at the U of M hospital. Our relationship started as a shared ride to Chicago. Somewhere around Tomah we both admitted to ulterior motives. A week and a half after that over lunch at Stubb and Herb’s we decided to get married in a year. Two days later, again at Stubb and Herb’s, we made it six and a half weeks. The hard hurdle to jump was that she was 25 and I was 20, which seemed like a huge gap. Now 66 and 71 is nothing. But those old enough to remember will know that it was a big gap then, that graduating from HS in 58 was a very different life frame than graduating in 63.
We somehow managed a church wedding with formal invitations and such in that short period of time. Almost everyone was upset with us. We have been famous for making all of our major decisions very quickly. Oh, and contrary to what all her friends and relatives thought, we did not have a child fro 5 years.
We worked our way through my 3 years of my college living on pancakes for a few string of days and then onto teaching, my years as a part-time pastor, her years in the library, 27 years on the North Shore, my new career, and now our shared health problems and retirement.
As with most folks I think I regret many decisions, but never that.
I had forgotten about the coming anniversary until I read this post. We have three times both forgotten it. Obviously it is not a large issue to us, the date and all that. But with my wife’s 7 major health problems, including lupus and her body being a stroke making machine, it is very doubtful we will make it to 50.
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I should add we have always been each other’s best friend and best confidant, allowing for the fact that we trust each other some private space. We live parts of our lives in two separate worlds.
And speaking of health, I took a very bad fall last night, across the toilet, not sure how since I am a bit out of it by mercy of drugs, or I would not sleep. So we will see now if the thigh that hit the toilet so hard will allow me to bike ride and the hand that caught the edge of the tub.
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That “best friend and best confidant” part; I believe that is the core of all of this.
And I think while I always believed that I had a little semantic issue at first: my friend Keith was my ‘Best Friend’; Kelly was my ‘Wife’ and I thought ‘wife’ should mean more than ‘best friend’.
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Totally agree, Ben – my “bestie” is not my husband, but my husband is my closest confidant and dearest friend. And I’m pretty sure both relationships, and certainly daily life, are richer because of this balance between my best friend and my husband. Does that make sense?
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Yep. Good for you!
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That’s a part of how Sandy and I trust each other private space. Our friend relationships are on a different plane, in a different place, into which we do not intrude unless invited.
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congrats on the coming anniversary clyde, my best to sandy. i hope the new move will serve you well for the time left to you both. your story is one we all strive for. to find loves true calling and to be able to go for it even at the less than accepting response from the masses. i am happy for you that it has worked so well.
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sorry to hear about the fall, let us know if you are seriously messed up. you have to ride over to vikings training camp and see donavan later this week.
for those who were looking for camping at rock bend clyde pointed me at a mankato city campsight where there are 5 tent sites (all open but the one i reserves at this point) and a bunch of sites with plug ins for civilized campers
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Clearly only soft tissue damage; managed 11 miles, which is only a couple less than the norm for my morning ride, sad to say. Three, four more pains just mixed in with the others.
I used to live 1.5 miles from the Vikings camp and now live three. Never been there.
Despite having coached football for 11-12 years, I have come to dislike the high-level versions of the sport, major college and pro. Children, repeat after me, STEROIDS.
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Thank you Clyde, Ben and Anna, for giving me reason to believe that true love and reality don’t have to be mutually exclusive.
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Good morning all, Can I just make a quick correction? Don’t have a clue how this happened, but “The Last First Kiss” is by JOHN McCutcheon not Bill McCutcheon. Sorry about that.
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hadnt noticed, we all knew it was john, that happy little elf
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i hadnt heard bill morrisay had died and i do feel amy winehose is sad but i have met the moth to the flame mentality that was shared by amy janis limi and jim. the fame the realization that thats all there is can be huge to an artsy soul who has put themselves on the line and been embraced to the level these people were all received. all the above were 27 when they died. a togh age to realize the greatness you have been awarded is all a matter of perspective. the bill morrissey slow death sirial reminds me of the miles davis, chet baker john coltrane,charlie parker heroine choice to numb yourself slowly into a fog that lets you escape the confrontations and enjoy the pseudo comfort induced, mumbling folkies and nodding jazz musicians have always held a sad but understood place in my heart. whats illing them is also what got them to where they are. as for love… good luck oak or birch, first kiss or second time around i would love to find a place like clyde has here the partner you have is the right one. congrats on upcoming anniversary and here is to the future whatever it may hold (tea cup raised)
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hey dale insert the offering you had anyway. its done and i for one would love to see it. i am not surprised that you didn’t believe it would happen but lets see where you where with it. the newsies who are beating this story to death have got such a nothing perspective on it i would like to hear where you were going to take it
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second the request!
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Yes, Dale, I think you could put up your comments that would have gone with a failure to raise the debt ceiling, and add a note that indicates it was intended to go with a bad ending to the attempts to solve that problem. After all, the way things have been going, it sure looked like our “wonderful” leaders would fail and we would have another absurd situation like our government shut down here in Minnesota.
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um, hate to be this way (my day to be contrary, I guess), but until that thing is signed, I won’t believe we are done. NPR had an interesting piece about TP in-fighting this morning-seems that for some, any sort of compromise makes one fall short of being a true believer-uff da.
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Thanks for the request, guys, but I agree with MiG.
It ain’t over, even when it seems to be over. That’s politics.
Somehow I think my budget default post will come in handy someday!
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Today’s Vignette
I ride by a circle of five elementary age children many mornings sitting on the sidewalk waiting for their summer school bus, depending on when I head out. It’s at the end of a dead end. They have now become accustomed enough to me to greet me, and now even warmly. They are beautiful to behold, must be related in some way. Perfect ebony African skin, rounded forehead, chubby cheeks, small nose, small pretty red mouth around the exclamatory whites of their eyes. Lithe, almost poetic limbs.
One is clearly the ring leader, for she sits close to the middle of their ring. As I rode by today she stood up, her body ready to express some point. She asked, “Do you ride EVERY morning?” I said, “Every single morning.” Her eyes rolled back to one side, her shoulders and head were thrown back and to the side, one knee dipped the opposite side of her her body down a bit, and her arms on hips came forward as she expressed verbal disgust.
Because of this morning’s topic, I wanted to shout back to her “Oh, I pity your husband.”
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Well described, Clyde!
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I just spent a week with my parents-ages 90 and 88- who have been married for 69 years. They are both dealing with some health problems but live very independently and are having a very happy ending, They are realistic and plan for how they will live alone if the other passes first, but they still have so much fun with life and keep themselves interested in the world around them, always looking for new things and people. Their memories of the other are all funny and silly and loving, and the rough spots just don’t matter anymore. Nice topic, PJ.
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That’s pretty cool Renee. Give them my best wishes.
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Sandy and I have been married 46 years but your parents are one whole generation longer than us. As a pastor I help celebrate about a dozen couples anniversaries of 60 or longer. 69 was the longest. A diamond anniversary would be nice if they are still as capable.
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Morning all!
I missed all your “voices” while I was out of the country the past several days. Haven’t had a chance to read all the days that I missed yet, but I’m looking forward to it.
I had to think about this question all the way to work this morning because I’m torn. I think of myself as a very practical person, down-to-earth, realistic. But I am definitely a McCutcheon person, as opposed to a Morissey person. I tend toward upbeat songs, movies. And despite not having found a lasting love for myself (besides the teenager, of course), I do think it’s out there.
Because of this, there are a few movies, that I know in my heart are excellent, but I just have never been able to bring myself to see. (And when JK Rowling started hinting that people would die in the Harry Potter books, after each book came out, I immediately got online and searched the spoilers to find out who died in each book – didn’t want to get too attached if they were just going to die on me!)
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Morning–
They’re both “real” and sometimes in art you have to give the public what they ‘percieve’ as real vs. what is “real”.
An example would be the sound of a gun-shot. People ‘know’ what a gun sounds like, but that’s not necessarily what they really sound like. And if you use the sound effect of a real gunshot people won’t believe it; you have to use one that SOUNDS like they think it should sound like.
Reality does matter— i think you still have to have plausible characters that you can believe in and relate too. Even the crazy ones.
Personally Kelly and I have that relationship John describes. We’ve been married 21 years and knew each other for 4 years before that. It seems like just yesterday we stood outside her apartment door and kissed goodnight.
One of Kelly’s favorite roles was playing a poet with schizophrenia in a show called ‘Standing On My Knees’. The character is beginning a relationship with a young man but her medication blocks her creativity. It was a role Kelly enjoyed sinking her teeth into.
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Are talented and gifted people more prone to psychological problems?
30 years ago I worked in T & G. I went to a conference in which a keynote speaker spoke to that issue. Studies then, not necessarily the best, indicated not much more, except perhaps schizophrenia.He suggested that it is a cliche that T & G people do have such problems, so people tend to notice it. And perhaps T & G people express their emotions more and are more likely to seek help.
I have a son who is very talented with language; he read fluently at 3. He is different from the norm, by choice and by the fact that his interests and vocabulary made him odd on the playground. Also, he feels everything very intently, which is common for T & G, which made people treat him differently, to which he thus responded. So he came out as having psych issues. Maybe, maybe not. However, at age 41, he still depends on me to talk him through things, such as his feelings about many things. It is exhausting frankly.
My 6 year-old grandson who is about to start first grade, has some advanced language skills, like but not as much as his uncle. Yesterday he decided that “Combination” did not fit his thought but maybe “comingling” was a better word. He too feels everything very intently. He has to work everything out. I called “Star Wars,” his current favorite, “futuristic,” and he was having some issue with what I said. So after three days of hedging at the topic with me, he finally said that it could not be futuristic since it starts with “a long long time ago in a galaxy far away.” But he could see why I thought it was futuristic so he had to work that all out. He used to hit himself when he got anything wrong and he is afraid to try things in case he may do it wrong. The perfectionist impulse is common with them. My daughter is having him do some counseling this summer just to maybe prevent some issues developing, and it is helping.
So, I think T & G people are different in ways that make us see them as psychologically abnormal, which spins off into ways they are treated and thus label themselves. And T & G are fond of labeling themselves.
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i wonder about t&g as the measure is often left brained right handed stuff. i tend to thnk of the artisits pained addicted folk who feel are left handed. no study just an assumption i have never questioned. i believe the arts have about 500% more creative folk than the norn therefore the deathspiral menality is more prone to surface. i would like to do that study sometime. i am gald to hear the little one is going to get some counseling, not becase hes whacked but because it would be elpful for him to realize he has a choice other than to be so intense. i am not sure he does have a choce but it will be good for him to realize not everyone thinks and feels the same way he does. it took me until i was 20 to realize i was coning at the world from a uniqe position. i was always like … where else would you come a the world from. then i realied i am off in y own very distant corner of the perspective spectrum and it allowed me to celebrate the individualism i call my stuff. not everyone else does but i can live with that.
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Left-handedness is more common in T & G. Way above the norm in great artists. Never helped me much.
My son was perfectly ambidextrous until about a month before he started K. Then he suddenly became 100% right-handed. My grandson, who really just started reading a couple months ago, does not see why it matters if you hold the book upside down or right side up. Lots of the gifted kids I worked with thought that way, that orientation makes little difference, or they could play tricks and games with brain and thinking orientation. Which reminds me again of the the book “Enders Game,” which has a trick in it about giftedness and thinking orientation.
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someone told me once that if you do some things left and soe right you are left if you do everything right you are right. a good way to check it is to give someone a camera with the viewfinder in a position that it is possible to look through either eye (many don’t offer left eye option) many folks will use the left eye. the eye is the best determination of whether you are left or right handed. it gets lost as with your son along the way for many.
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Sometimes you can determine lateral dominance by seeing what foot a person kicks with
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Having dodged the bullet of marrying the man that I loved like a birch fire, and likely would have divorced…I am glad of my solid oak fire. One thing I learned from my parents, and as Clyde observed, friendship is more important than fire and flame. I have seen marriages that I thought would last disintegrate into nothing and marriages that I was unsure of continue to thrive – the difference between the two being a core friendship that allows for give and take in a way that mere romance cannot. When I met my husband there was spark and birch fire, but that, like all bright fires, dimmed. The decision to marry was less about the fire than it was about not being able to imagine not having him in my world – it was unfathomable. Ours is not always an easy marriage – and I envy those who have them, though I suspect they are rarer than we think – but it is a solid one. A marriage much like a old, worn, comfortable sweater – it has a few holes, some of them stitched and patched, but warm and cozy and just what you need when the world is cold or life is unsure.
Thinking on artists and addictions, early deaths, etc., I am reminded of two people in my life, both artists. One is no longer living, the other is in the long haul of recovery from addictions. For both of these fabulous men, the highs are/were higher, the lows lower – it is as if they way the experience the world is more intense than the average soul. That intensity, I think, feeds their creativity in ways that I cannot fathom, but also caused them both, in different ways, to dull or blunt the intensity (and on occasion, sometimes reached for more intensity). The friend who is longer walking with me is one who I think could no longer take the extremes of his world, the brilliance and the heat – I miss him.
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What a great and well-written post, Anna. About two years ago there was a long article (taken from a book) by a woman who had decided to fix the imperfect parts of her marriage. Her thinking was that she shouldn’t be sloppy with her marriage but should do anything she could to improve it. As it was, she had a great marriage that had a few messy issues that she and her husband had learned to avoid.
Surprisingly enough, after a year or so of hard work on those issues, this woman concluded she had been foolish to try. Her marriage was like a lovely garden that has a few little spots in it where things are ugly . . . and you just don’t go there. I don’t know how true that would be for all of us, but I found the article fascinating.
A friend knew a woman who was dating two men. One offered a wildfire, passionate love. He just knocked her off her feet and filled her with joy. The other was the perfect husband, the kind of steady guy who would be everything she could imagine wanting in a husband. What did she do? Married the perfect husband, and ended up loving him as much as she had the exciting guy. And never looked back. Again . . . I don’t know how well this experience would transfer.
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In the interest of full disclosure, today’s questions are Dale’s, not mine. He also added the very lovely “Birches” song which adds a lot to the blog. Thanks Dale.
Personally, I’m very ambivalent about the first of these two questions. One the one hand, I’d like to believe that true love is as described in this William Shakespeare sonnet:
SONNET 116
Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken.
Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle’s compass come:
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.
On the other hand, I have lived through a very painful divorce, not to mention I don’t know how many other failed love relationships, that these days my beliefs have been tempered by those experiences. More like this: http://youtu.be/bcrEqIpi6sg
My current marriage has lasted almost 32 years at this point, and while we too have had our trials and tribulations, I know we’re committed to each other. I suppose there’s a reason why traditional wedding vows say for better or worse, in sickness and in health!
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Does reality matter in art?
“All art is either hyperbole or litotes.”
Clyde Birkholz
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I think you are right, Clyde. Art tends to stretch reality. I am not much of an artist nor do I know much about it. However, I think art also has to have some basis in reality or we can’t relate to it. That is how it seems to me from my limited perspective.
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i think you can leave out the word art
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So, tim, all of life is either hyperbole or litotes? I had to look up litotes. I think it mean something like “understated”. Well, I like to stay away from too much hyperbole or litotes, but I guess that is hard to do.
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I love the word litotes and used to to teach it to my AP students because it is an unrecognized literary device. Twain, surprisingly, uses it often and very well. It means the opposite of hyperbole, a deliberate understatement. One of the joys of the word is its unexpected pronunciation. Not “litots” but rather “litutees.” A few students told me they impressed college instructors with their knowledge of the word and the concept.
My quote above I used to tell kids and try to show it is pretty much true. I mean if it is not hyperbole or litotes, it’s life and then not very interesting in art, by which I mean all art forms.
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Thanks for the explanation, Clyde. I learned a new word today.
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Nicely done, PJ! I did not know Bill Morrissey, but I love “Birches” – thanks for including it. I do like songs that give that kind of detail, I agree that detail makes the words seem more realistic (andbreminds me of the old Joni Mitchell albums). But I think there are plenty of wonderful songs, poems, all kinds of art where “reality” is not necessary, in fact might hamper the piece. Will try to think of some concrete examples as the day wears on.
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I love “Birches” too – it’s poetry, but also works as a piece of short fiction. You could see it as a story in the New Yorker. But stories tend to fall flat if there are no flaws in the lives they describe, which is why “Last First Kiss” would never make my list of favorites.
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Did all you Cities folks survive the afternoon storms?
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We mostly seemed to get the showy thunder & lightning in my neck of the woods, nothing damaging (unless you count the, ahem, present left in the dining room by my dog in who does not like thunderstorms…)
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It just sprinkled down in Rochester and there was some thunder so our oldest dog was following me around as I cut grass. She doesn’t like the lawn mower either but she likes it better than thunder.
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Comfy, dry, and a little cooler than earlier today.
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I was digging through stuff from my wedding again today (totally separate from today’s discussion – digging around to find info for a co-worker planning her wedding), and came across one of the poems I selected to be read – it’s by Joel Oppenheimer, titled “A Prayer for a Wedding.”
A Prayer
For a Wedding
because everyone knows exactly what’s good for another
because very few see
because a man and a woman may just possibly look at each other
because in the insanity of human relationships there still
may come a time when we say: yes, yes
because a man or a woman can do anything he or she pleases
because you can reach any point in your life saying: now, I want this
because eventually it occurs we want each other, we want
to know each other, even stupidly, even ugligly
because there is at best a simple need in two people to try
and reach some simple ground
because that simple ground is not so simple
because we are human beings gathered together whether
we like it or not
because we are human being reaching out to touch
because sometimes we grow
we ask a blessing on this marriage
we ask that some simplicity be allowed
we ask their happiness
(it’s especially the “now, I want this” that spoke to me…and the overall tone, which seems less about traditional “romantic love” and more about the connections we make that bind us)
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Like.
Two favorite poems that mine that same vein:
The spider, dropping down from twig,
Unfolds a plan of her devising,
A thin premeditated rig
To use in rising.
And all that journey down through space,
In cool descent and loyal hearted,
She spins a ladder to the place
From where she started.
Thus I, gone forth as spiders do
In spider’s web a truth discerning,
Attach one silken thread to you
For my returning.
– E.B White
Sometimes hidden from me
in daily custom and in trust,
so that I live by you unaware
as by the beating of my heart.
Suddenly you flare in my sight,
a wild rose blooming at the edge
of thicket, grace and light
where yesterday was only shade,
and once again I am blessed,
choosing again what I chose before.
– Wendell Berry
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HI Baboons:
I am coming up for air after a weekend of completing office expansion decor and company.
Lovely post PJ. Thanks
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Nice stuff today everyone. A great day of reading and learning and growing.
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I guess “Birches” seems more real to me because it’s all I’ve ever known. I’ve never found that steady, lasting oak fire. I’ve avoided writing about this because it will sound like I’m feeling sorry for myself. But I’m really okay with my solitude. I would have liked it to be different – used to be desperate for it to be different – but I’m okay with it now. The memories of those birch fires and glasses of wine are better than nothing.
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I didn’t know Bill Morrissey died. I heard endlessly about Amy Winehouse but I didn’t hear about Bill Morrissey. If Dale had been on TMS, I would have heard.
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