Flying Burrito Monkees

Another little gem from youtube that I never knew the existence of: The Flying Burrito Brothers lip-spynching their way through "Older Guys" (mistitled on the video). It must have come from some variety show, because it's introduced by John Byner ( a bargain-basement Rich Little), who's cut off in this clip.

I know who most of these guys are, but from what particular point in the history of the band this comes I neither know nor care--this was before Gram Parsons got thrown out, and before they were filmed at Altamont in Gimme Shelter singing "Six Days on the Road." The history of the Burrito Brothers rivals that of a Byzantine ruling family in complexity. The group here includes two members of the original Byrds, Chris Hillman (I'm sure of) and Michael White (I think). Hillman, like so many bass players in other groups, was probably the finest musician in the Byrds. White was the drummer, although it's rumored Hal Blaine did all the drumming on the first album. Gram Parsons was a brief member of the post-Crosby Byrds, until he got kicked out.

The other two musicians are a pre-Eagles Bernie Leadon (who did a lot of fierce, choice work on the album) and Sneaky Pete Kleinow on pedal steel. Kleinow just died, which I only learned about because I read a blog about animation, Cartoon Brew by Jerry Beck. I never knew that besides being one of the best pedal steel players in the business, Kleinow was a stop-motion technician for Art Cloakey, and had worked on series like Gumby. Far out, as Arlo would say.

This video is blatant in the way it rips off the Richard Lester-via-the Monkees sensibility that seemed to rule so much video work then. Gram looks incredibly fey hanging in and out of the doors, and I wonder if anyone has shown Hillman and Leadon the shots of their popping out of the hatches. I bought the album this song appeared on because it featured "Wild Horses," a Jagger/Richards song that had not yet appeared on a Stones album; Gram got real buddy-buddy wiv Keef, and Gram's influence can be seen in that song and "Dead Flowers." So the Burrito Brothers were supposed to be cool, and I would have cringed to see this video then.

Now I just grin.

"Hazlitt in Lo..."

TLS tells me that a new book has been published on the circumstances behind critc and essayist's William Hazlitt's book Liber Amoris (Book of Love), which recounts his unsuccessful affair, or wooing, of the much younger daughter of his landlord. I'm interested in Hazlitt, one, because he was one of the three precursors to George Orwell I talked about in my dissertation, and I thankfully never got to the point where I never wanted to hear another thing about any of them again. Two--and I only began to realize this as I read the book--he was the great-grandfather of the blog, if you consider the well-written blog to be a form of the personal essay in which the writer creates a consistent persona, meant to be congruent with the writer if not entirely so, and writes about what he or she is thinking about or feeling or whatever the hell he or she likes. Hazlitt wrote wonderful essays on, among other subjects, meeting Wordsworth and Coleridge, the use of common language in formal writing, and even prizefighting.

So even though it's only been published in England, I order the book through an Amazon.com affiliate, and it arrives just as I finish up my mandatory reading for now. It's very nicely done: it gives the background to the affair, what probably happened (or didn't), how Hazlitt reconstructed it in his essays, in his letters, and then in Liber Amoris. I'm reaching the end as Liber Amoris is published--get to the last page, 208--and realize that it isn't the end of this book! Page 208 on the left-hand side ends in the middle of an indented quotation! I look on Amazon.com again and see the book is 288 pages long. Well, at least I know how the story ends...

Beware of Maya

I guess I got thinking about George a couple of weeks ago when I reheard the demo track for his haunting song, "Beware of Darkness," which not even Leon Russell's vocals could screw up at the Concert for Bangladesh. When I hear one of these densely produced Beatles tracks in its unadorned, pristine state, just vocals and guitar, the true strength of the song emerges--like when I heard John's demo track for "Strawberry Fields Forever" on The Beatles Anthology. It became a lament--dirge is too strong a word--for a lost childhood, a childhood that maybe even never was.

So, the familiar lyrics are passing by: "Beware of darkness...beware of Maya...beware of ABCKO." What the?!? I should watch out for the illusion of reality, and also keep an eye peeled for Allen Klein? Supposedly this was done as a joke for Phil Spector, but still, it made me think how many other songs by the supposedly most spiritual Beatle dealt with the quotidian details of the world: "Taxman," in which two British prime ministers are named; "Piggies," a song about greed and gluttony; "Living in the Material World," with its monetary pun on Ringo's real name ("we got Ritchie on the tour"--followed by a drum fill by Starr on his unmistakeably less-than-taut skins); "When We Was Fab," a look back at a period of fame that George probably hated more than all of them.

In the end, though, maybe it all makes sense. Only someone who was so aware of the world, its lures, its slights, its temptations, its human carnivores, would be so interested in learning how to detach himself from it, to become "free of birth."

I sat down and watched most of The Concert for George, the 2002 celebration of George's music and life by his friends at the Royal Albert Hall. Most of the time, such tributes are flawed to the point of being messes, and the number of musicians guarantees a kind of ball of sound, but this one was moving, and what's more, produced some excellent music. The sound was crisp and focused, particularly in DTS 5.1 sound, but I should have guessed who was responsible for that--the sound was produced by Jeff Lynne, who also did fine imitations of George on "Give Me Love" and Roy Orbison on "Handle with Care." Some of the musicians I was surprised were still alive (Traffic's drummer, Jim Capaldi, looks like Gerard Depardieu if he were ten years older and a prizefighter); some are, alas, dead now, such as Billy Preston (on whose first album "Harry Georgeson" plays, along with Ginger Baker, Eric Clapton, and Keith Richards). Even if some of the singers didn't know the lyrics (Gary Booker looked like he was ready to "skip the light fandango / and turn cartwheels cross the floor" at times), and there were more drumsticks flying than at a Salvation Army Thanksgiving dinner, the spirit of the evening was right. Not only in the monumental songs ("Isn't It a Pity?" "Wah Wah"), but also in the little songs that were often overlooked because of the Lennon/McCartney hits. When Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers sang "I Need You" from Help!, I found myself singing along softly--and crying.

As I did when I saw the picture of Clapton with George's son Dhani in the accompanying booklet. Clapton is explaining something, looking off to his left, and Dhani is smiling at him, and his eyes, nose, and mouth look just like his father's (well, with better teeth).

He was a seeker, and he left the world a better place because he had been in it.

Baby's in black, and I'm feelin' blue.

Harry Georgeson

To dispel the miasmatic pall I have spread over my own blog, I'd like to talk about a video I found on youtube by the most spiritual of the Beatles, George Harrison--or Harry Georgeson, as he was cutely called to hide his participation in friends' music-making. This video reminds me once again that while Harrison was the most spiritual Beatle, he was also the most likely to mention mundane matters such as money and lawsuits.

The video is for Harrison's song "This Song"--which I had totally forgotten about, even though I loved it when it was released, that is, as far as the music goes. I can understand the emotions behind the lyrics, which were inspired by Harrison's losing a plagiarism lawsuit over "My Sweet Lord" to the writers of "He's So Fine." I'm sure Harrison unconsciously adopted the melody (unlike, say the writers of [CENSORED] did when they stole the melody of [CENSORED]--references deleted upon advice of legal counsel).

"This Song" is the result, and the song is bubbly, happy, and Beatleish in the best sense, and the video is good-natured for all the bitterness that inspired it. I particularly like the expression on George's face as he mimes, "This song is in E." The other participants in the video are on the edge of being recognizable--the vampiric lawyer looks like Eric Idle, but isn't, I don't think: same with the second rock star in drag (Ronnie Wood?). Are the horn players supposed to be droogs? The court stenographer is an actual piano player, I think--she's in Pete Townshend's video for "Slit Skirts."

Silly stuff--but [CENSORED] 'em if they can't take a joke.

Pro Prozac

I realize that I might have given the impression in the last blog that I am against antidepressant drugs, and nothing could be further from the truth. No one should have to suffer an instant from clinical depression--the chronic, immoveable depression that has no immediate and identifiable cause--and I just wish people who do so suffer could be matched more quickly and more efficaciously with those drugs that might work for them.

Of course, then my mind wanders to analogies. My old friend George Orwell used to rant not only about how the beer in England was worse than in his youth, but that England had become a nation of aspirin chewers. He thought--I speculate, for he never clearly spells it out--that a headache or muscle ache should be suffered through, or perhaps that people were taking aspiring too frequently. (This from a man who was shot through the neck during the Spanish Civil War and did not refuse injections of experimental sulfa drugs as he was dying of tuberculosis.) But if all physical pain is bad--beyond that which tells us something is wrong with our bodies--then why not all psychic or emotional pain, whatever its source--depression, or the death of a loved one?

I was going to tie this up with Plato's banishment of artists in Book X of The Republic--which to me is more invidious than any of my philosophy profs ever let on: it's not just that they are liars--but I need a better translation--and at this moment, probably a better mind.

A Canticle for "A Canticle"

Whenever I teach science fiction, I try to include Walter M. Miller's A Canticle for Leibowitz. When I don't, I feel its absence, and every time I do teach it, such as this semester, I feel it works. But it shouldn't, because, like George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, history has caught up with it--even earlier in Miller's case. Orwell at least had to wait the 35-odd years until his prophetic date rolled around, but the rites of Miller's post-apocalyptic Catholic Church were gone by the beginning of the 1960's, when the Second Vatican Council changed the liturgy beyond recognition--among other reforms. Why, then, does A Canticle still work? (And the evidence is that it still does by its remaining constantly in print. Even a supposed "classic" sf novel like Arthur C. Clarke's Childhood's End goes out of print every once in a while.)

First, I think the monastic life that Miller describes in the first section, "Fiat Homo," just seems to fit naturally in a post-apocalyptic culture. The desert and interior portions of the U.S. are what remain relatively unscathed in Miller's future, so their harsh conditions would seem to be ideal for the establishment of monasteries, as happened in North Africa in the period around the time of the fall of Rome. That leads to the second reason: the historical parallels are logical and comfortable. After the fall of a literate society--in Miller's imagining, the "Simplification"--it also makes sense that the monks would once again preserve culture, but in this case, more science than literature and philosophy (one in-joke in the second part of the novel occurs when a scientist identifies a fragment of Karl Capek's R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots) as a historical document, not as a work of fiction). And the importance of Latin at such a time is not far-fetched, when the U.S. has broken into fiefdoms, each with its own language--much like happened in Medieval Europe.

The third reason is that in the final section, "Fiat Voluntas Tua," crucial decisions have to be made on the basis of moral theology. An atomic bomb strikes near the Abbey, and Green Star (a futuristic Red Cross) offers voluntary euthanasia for those with a fatal overdose of radiation. The last Abbot tries to convince a young mother to spurn the offers of a doctor that she and her painfully stricken young daughter avail themselves of the "Eucrem" facilities. Miller does not take sides here--or at least to me he doesn't. Perhaps some 50 years later the answer seems more obvious, but, in a sense, the slippery slope that mercy-killing opponents have posited has begun to occur. Now all suffering is deemed by some to be useless and avoidable; thus, if you are grieving for a reason, take a Prozac--don't feel the anguish.

And all I can answer is, I don't know what other people should do, but I know what I would do. Both my parents died long and painful deaths from cancer. My mother had lost mental control before her death--I prayed for her death, because there were no Eucrem facilities available. But I did not want to dull my pain. I once thought that I would begin drinking again when my parents died, but I didn't--I owed them at least that much. And I still feel the pain: I see some dead people, but in my dreams.

These are questions worth thinking about, and Miller's novel brings them up again, as well as the Big Question: will we, because of our nature, repeat this same endless cycle? Since I'm more an Augustinian than a Pelagian, I tend to agree with Miller's answer. Also, Miller throws in two wild cards that are scientifically unexplainable but symbolically effective: Benjamin, the seemingly deathless hermit who lives outside the abbey, and Rachel, Mrs. Grales's second head that becomes preternaturally aware at the end of the novel.

Miller, who like my father and some airmen described by Joseph Heller, flew American bombers in Italy during World War II, broke with the Catholic Church before his death; over what I don't know, but I have read a fierce essay he wrote on post-atomic-war fiction in general, and he was even less optimistic than in A Canticle. (His "sequel" to A Canticle, St. Leibowitz and the Wild-Horse Woman--actually more of a "midquel"--to me is unreadable, and I would like to know what Miller wrote and Terry Bisson added.) Our future perhaps is not coming as the Diluvium Ignis (Flame Deluge) that Miller foresaw, and Frank Herbert's Dune with its mahdis, jihads, and death squads, might be more what we can expect. But a lot of people have not waited for an apocalypse to begin a Simplification.

Writing

I can't figure this out, and I've been writing for as long as I've been alive, it seems. Why is it that the emotions that you have while you are writing bear little resemblance, at times, to the emotions you have when you read what you've written?

I'm writing a couple of pieces now for a deadline, and I feel at times like my brain is a wet rag that I'm twisting with all my strength to get a few drops of dirty dishwater from. I'm hitting the word count tab every minute to see how much more I have to do to finish. Then later I read what I have written, and it's decent. At other times, I sit down, and in an hour, I've got more than a thousand words. I read it later, and it's jumbled, disorganized, awkward, lacking in transitions, incomprehensible at times . . . well, maybe not quite that bad, but certainly not like beautiful icing squeezed out on to a cake, which is what it felt like when I was writing it.

Other physical activities have a correlation between ease of action and results. I remember from hitting a softball that if I could establish a rhythm, the flow of the swing and the sequence of muscles (left knee, right hip, hands pull back, wrists cock, unlock, arms drive, hip reverse, weight shifts, bat hits ball: undercut--deep fly; open stance--pull; close stance--right field), the results were what I envisioned. I was never good enough to be consistent, but when everything went right--the body, the muscles, the nerves remember.

And now I have only words to play with.