Yeah, it's another blog in the Audi parked across the street from the house.This time Tori's on the CD player – "Past the Mission" – one of my favorites from the life-saving album Under the Pink.The oceanic chorus roiling from minor to major like an anthem of eternal galaxies in a universe of a whole different flavor . . .
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ TORI FLAVOR ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Being blessed with Tori in my life counter-balances the daily injections of crap, the toxins of which are cousin to the invisible slow damage of radiation coming from all our beloved Devices – and if, in my family, we could just even agree on THAT, we wouldn't be creating our own brand of poison.At least 2 of my family members think I'm poison for expressing a little worry about laptops spending long periods of time on the laps of those who haven't had the chance to reproduce yet.
Ha ha!This song –
I think it's perfectly clear
We're in the wrong band –
Ah, ah.
Tori's so funny – and so spot on.I mean, I think it's perfectly clear I'm in the wrong world!Pretty piano work in ¾ time like an old-fashioned waltz.End of song.Oh, here's a good one.
So I want to kill
This wai-ai-aitress .
in a slow drag.Then suddenly a frantic
But I believe in peace!
I believe in peace, Bitch!
So damn funny!Tori gives satisfaction in and of every possible emotion.Now "Cornflake Girl."She's got a lot of Piscean whimsy in there with her Leo balls.J
Insanity is an interesting subject – aberration in families – insanities hitting up against each other.Interesting that we're all part of a big fat experiment.But, you know, keep putting order in, the man says.Ignore the confusion.The order will stay.OK.So glad I know that!
Tori's had some formidable craziness in her life, and she pounds it out in the most beautiful twistings of piano phrases and heavenly vocal screechings and nursery-voice serenades.Here's "Icicle" –
I could have ~
I should have ~
in tortured Kate Bush fantasy whinings.
Oh god – "Cloud on My Tongue" – I'm mesmerized.I've stopped writing.
I'm in this little room – my car – with the light on – it's probably almost 3AM.Boiling – can't open the windows & wake the neighbors with Tori, but I can't leave the car on for the AC with gas prices what they are.OK, I turned Tori off & opened the windows.The sound of the wind & the crickets is magical.It's so beautiful ~ a perfect night.
Steve's sleeping, of course.Laneis on the couch with the TV on and may have fallen asleep.I hope Danny's sleeping in his apartment 4 towns away, 'cause he has to get up early.
It's a wild child Saturday night with blackberries turning to blackbirds and flying from endless pies.
A sentimental person gets beaten up badly in this kind of existence.But – it's so fucking beautiful on my suburban street tonight.It's a paradise of greenery.The trees are huge and it smells so good!There's rain in the air from somewhere, and the breezes are intoxicating.House lights here and there create storybook scenes.Cozy brick houses and the sound of a nearby train.And the most infinitely perfect half moon straight overhead, glinting authoritatively through leafy maple branches.The cricket symphony with random single birds & bugs percussing with style.
There are lights on in our house, as usual.The other houses are dark.The neighborhood sleeps, because life goes on.But then there's the odd little elf eating sprouted Celtic sea salt almonds in her car.Not alone.Oh no.I'm out here creating the neighborhood, conducting the orchestra, freshening the magic.I belong in a tree, you see, or under a bush or surfing air currents.All the life out here knows me.I dance with the citizens of the Play Time World.It looks like night but there's Otherworld light . . .
For lifetimes, it seems, I've been trying to do the grown up human thing.But I always end up in some little nook with my senses ablaze, a huge smile on my face, while all good citizens sleep.
. . . and so we walked to the epicenter of the albacore and threw our razors in the brine . . . just for giggles, you know, just for Mrs. Piggle Wiggle.Remember her?I met her when I was a wee thing, flopped on the floor with my very own dachshund, who was my best friend.So after lunch, when I was 15, Darcy and I walked to the deli at Lincoln Village, and I had the world's best corned beef on rye with the world's best kosher dill pickle, and then some cute guys came in, so Darcy made me turn my Beatles sweatshirt inside out.
The sun came out, and we flew in our ziplocked pantyhose to the corner of the moon, where we hid for seven hours waiting for the crewcut boys to go home and sleep in their creepy bunkbeds with the plaid blankets.
Mick Jagger scared the hell out of my mom.She was scared for her innocent girls.I'll never forget, some years later, when I announced to my family over dinner that I was no longer a virgin.Something my father said prompted me to do that, but I can't remember what it was.I was so crazy!
a tiny mousie and I stared at each other for the longest time tonight.I think it was a baby mousie.All I saw was its little face peaking out from under a pot lid that was propped up on its side.I told the mousie that it should come out and I would put it outside so that it didn't have to eat the poison and die.I don't think it understood me.I have now taken the poison away.I plan to buy the kind of trap that's big enough for a few mice to run around in, and then I can take them outside.there's a mouse in the back of Steve's side of our closet and one in Lane's room and one in the kitchen.We must put an end to this.Our home is not a zoo.
I'm swimming in the Beatles.
Socks.
my goddaughter Rachel is no longer on MySpace, and I'm sad about it.Is there something wrong with that?. . . . . . THE DARK KNIGHT is beyond beyond, and I'm going to be making a super healthy super delicious squash pie this week from scratch – grinding the grains and everything.
speaking of FOOOOOD, the best milk in the world is raw organic sheep milk. MMMMMMMM!!!and the reason I exist is to randomly adjust stodgy viewpoints so that people's underwear don't get too tight and scratchy
and I'd better get back to the Sandwich League – they're out of liver sausage
why didn't our parents ever tell us that most of what we need to know is not taught in school?like the fact that no one ever really dies?
I love libraries and purple skies and the freedom of our vast future (she said dancing sideways like a scuttlefish)
blog as I am awakening blog as I repair my soul awareness, my infinity sense, my eternal program, my damaged immortal heart and I say to you, to one and all, that God is a Poet without Poetry, we are damned without Poetry, this is Hell
the Poet in you is the Soul in you and you are your Soul, so you are a Poet
and now for a word from our sponsor: na na naa na na na naa na hey hey-ey goodbye (let's hear it for the music of the '60's!)
sing, peepholes! dance, brothers and sisters! for I am reborn you there witness my epiphany here and now as I sip my rooibos tea and my "husband" sleeps and my "daughter" sleeps and my "son" sleeps in another "town" as my body sits in its black swivel desk chair and my "mother" and "sister" are in Ecuador practicing their Spanish as my "father" continues as the spirit he has always been, doing his thing as someone else's "offspring" as my teachers prevail as our dear ones struggle as life is a bitch when we succumb
and I say unto you: find the Great Truths and study them and keep on creating your own special poetry because the greatest truth of all is that We are Creators and if we don't Create there will be hell or worse, there will be nothing at all
SO, I blog for you today as the sun comes up I blog for me because I have finally grown up and cannot be contained
smile for me because I'm back there is infinity in poetic art and free playfulness children are masters at happiness I am growing up to my childhood my untarnished vision the beauty I have always been able to create around me I feel so much LIFE my Poet hat is back on I'm going to work!
How the Best of One Person Brings Out the Worst in Everyone Else
Category: Movies, TV, Celebrities
I've been watching I'm Not There, the Todd Haynes film about Bob Dylan.It is brilliant, poetic, and very Dylanesque.Six different actors play six different identities that Dylan seems to have worn.He often purposely reinvented himself, at least partly out of frustration at trying to be pinned down, examined, and labeled.
I've always been so amazed at how people generally "look a gift horse in the mouth" in relation to great artists.They have been bestowed with astounding creations that become the stuff of the culture itself, and instead of being simply thankful, they launch into examinations of the artist as a person, inappropriately evaluating for him, stalking him, making demands, and even insulting him.Why do people dare to try to take genius apart and control it?
When you finally come to understand Bob Dylan as a person, you should arrive at the conclusion that that is not what you were after, after all, which is what he was trying to tell us all along.If you had met him somewhere before he was famous, you may have liked him or you may have not.But making his acquaintance would not have shaped your life in the way that his art has.We have to remember that the magic of an artist is in his art.It's so simple, really.
Yes, of course, the art, being so powerful, draws us to the artist, and we want more and more of his art, which remains somewhat of a mystery to us, because, after all, it is magic.Mystery sticks us to things, and we want to solve it, and so we begin to try to look inside the artist as the source of the magic, in order to solve the mystery.But inevitably, what you find is that he's just a guy who's a great communicator, and he himself may not even know why.Artists have often expressed that they don't know where their ideas come from.
But still, we try to probe the person, who is, after all, a spirit.A spirit is invisible.You can't see him – only his body, clothes, actions.And so we stare.And we want a piece of his physicality.But that will never lead us to the answer of the riddle we're trying to solve, which is: Where does this amazing music come from?This poetry?
As I said, the artist may not know.He often feels it's a gift.
The truth is that this kind of creation IS CREATION – the way anything anywhere is a creation.If it has beauty or truth, if it stirs you, it is godlike, and you know it.Sometimes you may find you LIVE to experience someone's music, poetry, painting.It takes you to a higher level, and you wonder how you could have existed without it.It may take you to yourself.This is a divine thing!
It may then inspire YOU to create, for you have been touched by something so much higher or outside of this earthly grind.Well, you have to remember that it was someone's ART that lifted or transported you or awakened your own ability to arouse souls.The art is the magic.Poems or even just rhymes can act like spells or incantations.Combinations of words or colors or sounds or images produce effects on people that are just as real as the science and math we studied in school.
But the artist is just the purveyor of these effects.When you love the design of a car, do you seek out the designer in order to study him or know him?
People have always wanted Bob Dylan to be a hero.He could have been, but he didn't desire that role.He was moved to create music, and he did, thank God.He gave us so much music, and he's still giving.We need to thank him and leave him alone, because he does not wish to be a spokesperson for anything.
Emily Dickinson would love that she is so loved by the world.And she would have welcomed questions about life.But still, her art is her art.It isn't Emily.She's been examined to death, and she's been found to have some interesting qualities.But none of that examination explains where the amazing wordage came from.Not really.It just came.And there it is.We should just be very glad, because she wanted us to have her poems.
Dylan wants us to have his music.We do.
I've lived with artists all my life.They are no mystery to me, although their art may be.Their ability to create amazing art is, I believe, the best thing about them.They are operating from a higher level.And some people make living itself an art.They can be amazing to watch.But some do not.Some are alcoholics in their regular lives or insane or rude or slovenly.Some beat their wives or are terrible parents.
Jaco Pastorius, probably the greatest bass player of all time, who created music of such great beauty, sensitivity, style, and taste, and was like a wizard on stage, drove his friends so crazy and was so bad at keeping his life together, that it ultimately resulted in an annoyed bouncer accidentally killing him.
My husband is the bass player of a well-known Midwest rock band.I'll never forget the day that a friend of his through his day job brought his wife to a gig.We were in the backstage area; while the band was packing up.The woman, whom I was talking to, kept drifting out of the conversation, because she was watching every move my husband made – watching how he put his bass in the case, how he walked to the car, as if he was a god.She finally apologized and said, "You get to see him all the time, but this is really new to me."She didn't have a crush on him; she just had never been so close to "fame."It was pretty weird from my perspective.
I always remember Julia Roberts's line in Notting Hill.She played a superstar, and she says to Hugh Grant, "It's not real, you know – the fame."And I remember a magazine interview with Robert Redford years ago, where he tried to explain how strange it is to be famous – that the person everyone is talking and writing about is not you, but a fabrication that comes about from the various bits of information and supposition gathered about you.He explained that there are all these things said about "Robert Redford" but that they aren't really talking about HIM.The public simply doesn't know him.
One of the most ridiculous examples of audience stupidity is the screaming Beatles fans of the 1960's.I don't want to be too hard on them, as they were mostly highly hormonal and emotionally repressed 12-15-year-old girls who simply didn't know what hit them.But they screamed so loudly and continuously during the concerts, that no one could hear the music!Beatle George Harrison, in particular, became increasingly perturbed about this, until they were having to persuade him not to quit.
Bob Dylan took great pains through the years to keep the public from knowing him.Naturally, though, this just created more mystique and more supposition.It's human nature to fill in the blanks with whatever.On top of that, you have journalists and paparazzi constantly twisting and inventing just to boost magazine sales and TV ratings.
I think we should simply thank him for his music and let him go home.
The other day, I found three baby birds stranded in the garden next to our garage.Some men were putting new gutters and drainpipes on our house and apparently destroyed a nest under the eaves of the garage.I got the family over to look at them, and we were all awwwing and very concerned.Ultimately, I put stuff from the fallen nest in a basket and put the birds in there, and we hung it in a nearby tree.
My husband said that while the birds were still on the ground and I was in the house, the mother came and flew around where the nest had been and then found the babies on the ground and was fluttering over them.But, of course, what could she do?
So what we did was the right thing, according to the Internet and Debbie the Bird Lady. I found out that they were robins, and I kept seeing a male robin hanging around the area, and we were expecting the mother to find the little guys and feed them.And I was really hoping that that happened, because it would be much nicer than having to kill them or let them starve to death.
I got very emotionally involved with this, and I could describe for you all the intimate birdy moments and feelings – the powerful struggles for survival by the little creatures, what happened when I held them, etc., but I'm too lazy.Suffice it to say that I cried more than once during this period, which embarrassed me in front of myself!
Now, we could have adopted the robinlings, but I read that you have to feed them every 19 minutes from sunrise to sunset.So, like, yeah, right!And I am DONE with devoting my life to small animals, after the traumatic ongoing gerbil drama years ago.
Well, this all happened at dusk, and so we left the basket and did what Debbie suggested and "let nature take its course," which meant that either the mom would find them or some other animal would eat them.Either way, they wouldn't have to starve to death.
Next day, I had no time to deal with this.I was out the door and gone for hours, hoping that nature would be taking its course.None of my other family members did anything, either, because they were away from home, too, and heavily involved with their lives.And anyway, they know I'm a sucker for this kind of thing and so left me in charge.But when I got home late at night, I checked the basket with a flashlight, and although it was too high to see into, there were flies on it, and that was a bad sign.One of the birds, however, was cheeping.So I got my son Danny to check it out for me.He's tall, so he looked inside.He reported that one was dead, but the other two were alive and that their eyes had started to open.Well, I wasn't surprised that one was dead, because when we found them, one was barely making it.And then, I reasoned that if they were supposed to be fed every 19 minutes (the mother, I read, makes about 400 trips to the nest each day,) and they were still alive, and their eyes were now opened, they must be getting fed.In fact, we took the basket down and looked at them, and they didn't seem to look any worse.So I had Danny bury the dead one, and we hung the basket back up and got the hell out of there, knowing that the mother won't come near if we're anywhere around.I was rooting for nature.Go, nature, go!Take your course, PLEASE!
The next day was yesterday.The male robin was standing by, but there was no sign of Mommy.But there was a pleasant cheeping coming from the basket.I stayed away and let, well, you know.But I really had my doubts, because if ol' lady Robin was dropping in 400 times a day, you'd think I would have at least caught sight of her flying away!I did see a female robin hunting for food a couple yards away at one point.I decided to think that she was the one.
Anyway, we're at today.There are no sounds coming from the basket.There are flies.I am not hopeful.I'm sure my special basket is ruined by all kinds of healthy and unhealthy birdities, but I don't even care, 'cause the birdies I so delicately connected with are dead, and furthermore, they suffered!And in case you were thinking that the mother bird didn't touch the babies because I picked them up, you're wrong.Look it up.It's other species of animals that will abandon their babies if they pick up the human scent – not birds.And anyway, I had gloves on, 'cause I didn't know that yet.
No.The simple fact is that nature was on a god damn vacation.Nature did not take its course, because Mother Nature is negligent!How dare she call herself a mother!Geez, Louise!Where are all the raccoons when you need them, huh?We've paid hundreds of dollars to get giant raccoons out of the space above my daughter's bedroom ceiling and seal up the holes TWICE.We had three little delicacies all set out in a basket for them.Wait . . . are raccoons carnivores?Whatever.Some neighborhood creature should have found them!
Hmmm.Now that I think about it, if that always happened, no birds would ever grow up.I think the Bird Lady is wrong.Anyway, she was wrong about nature, except the part about nature that has to do with death.Things die, and it just sucks.
Was there a lesson for me in this?I don't know, but I'm glad I didn't have to see Danny shoot the little guys in the heads with his pellet gun.That was how he was going to put them out of their misery.
Hey, I'm a city girl.I don't know from this stuff.
It's happened.Yusuf Islam has come full circle.I knew he would.
Born Steven Demetre Georgiou, his stage name was Cat Stevens, and he had become a superstar in the 1970's.It's a well-known and interesting story, which you can look up, but one day in 1978, having switched from the religion of music to the religion of Islam, he gave up music completely.He would not even own a guitar for almost three decades.He started a beautiful Muslim school.He went on to become a leader of about 60 Muslim organizations.He taught peace, faith, and wisdom to children and adults.
I respected him as a beautiful soul, but I always understood the tremendous spiritual power of music and the other arts.I knew that eventually, he would realize that there was no reason to deny his genius – call it his enormous gift.He is essentially an extraordinary musicmaker.And his songs have always awakened the higher sensibilities in people.
It took 28 years, but he finally realized.His son had brought home a guitar.When everyone was sleeping, Yusuf picked it up and was amazed to find that he remembered the chords of his old songs.Soon after, he discovered that the history of the guitar had been traced back to Spanish Arabs!
And so, he reunited with the guitar and music and went back into the studio a much older man.He now has a new album out, and I heard bits of it on PBS this night.The magic is still there!I heard him explain that he finally realized he could help the world in a bigger, more effective way through his music.Aaaaaah, what relief to hear him say that!And then he said,
"You can argue with a philosopher, but you can't argue with a good song.And I think I've got some good songs."
