The Blog Is Open for Three Days

I opened the blog two days early. No reason.

Wait For Me

The lyrics don't really work, but the "wait for me," certainly does. One of my all-time favorites. I grew up with Conway Twitty but didn't hear this song until my adult years. I guess I just sorta missed it.

I can't imagine that I enjoyed Conway Twitty during high school; I would not have been able to relate to his love ballads. But since then, it's now clear to me why he outsold the Beatles (at least that's the urban legend).


Don't Cry Joni, Conway Twitty and Daughter

Look Homeward, Angel

I'm Mr Lonely, Bobby Vinton
Of all the reading I've done, I am most remiss in not reading more of Tom Wolfe, considered by William Faulkner to be the greatest author of his generation; Faulkner listed himself as second.

From Wikipedia: 

Wolfe saw less than half of his work published in his lifetime, due to the amount of the material he left at his death. He was the first American writer to leave two complete, unpublished novels at death. Two further Wolfe novels, The Web and the Rock and You Can't Go Home Again, were published posthumously by Perkins, who was the literary executor of Wolfe's estate. They were editorially mined out of his October Fair manuscript by Edward Aswell of Harper and Row. The novels were "two of the longest one-volume novels (some 700 pages apiece) ever written." In these novels, Wolfe switched his autobiographical character from Eugene Gant to George Webber.

I think of Catcher in the Rye.  

More from Wikipedia:

He sailed to Europe in October 1924 to continue writing. From England he traveled to France, Italy and Switzerland. On his return voyage in 1925, he met Aline Bernstein (1882–1955), a scene designer for the Theatre Guild. Bernstein, 18 years his senior, was married to a successful stock broker with whom she had two children. In October 1925, Wolfe and Bernstein became lovers and remained so for five years. Their affair was turbulent and sometimes combative, but she was a powerful influence encouraging and funding his writing. He returned to Europe in the summer of 1926 and began writing the first version of a novel, O Lost, which eventually evolved into Look Homeward, Angel ... When the novel was published 11 days before the stock market crash of 1929, Wolfe dedicated it to Bernstein.

Happy Birthday

(I originally this posted May 29, 2010 on my music site; I should have posted it here, at that time, also. But, better late than never. Happy birthday.)

Yorkshire and the Highwayman

I have no idea why this particular song happened to make me think of northern Yorkshire.


The Highwayman, The Highwaymen (Willie, Kristopherson, Waylon [2002], Cash [2003].

I am reminded of the Russian proverb: there is no such thing as happiness, only happy moments.

And some of the happiest moments I had was when I was picked up by a beautiful woman walking towards Summerbridge in Yorkshire. That now seems like an eternity ago. Maybe that's why this song connects: the images flow from the 18th century English highwayman to the 23rd century Milky Way hitchhiker.

And I still look for shooting stars.

Love.

Thinking of Scotland

Simply thinking of Scotland. Maybe, again, some day. Until then, the memories have to suffice.

You Have Loved Enough

I never get tired of three or four of Leonard Cohen’s works on his Ten New Songs album. I enjoyed this album the very first time I heard it, and it seems to grow on me every time I listen to it again. That seems impossible, considering how much I have enjoyed it in the past. But tonight, while reading George Eliot’s Daniel Deronda and sitting in a most comfortable easy chair, I found myself really listening to the album again, and being struck again, in a different way, how unbelievably good Leonard was/is. I had headphones on and maybe that’s why I heard things in Leonard Cohen’s voice I felt I had not heard before. It is absolutely amazing. It is not just the phrasing, and it certainly is not the words. I have listened to Ten New Songs a hundred times. But for some reason I was most sensitive to the music tonight and it sounded, especially on some songs, as if Leonard was actually singing privately to the woman he once loved, to a woman who was no longer there.

Listening to the album I find myself once again transported to an oversized bed on the second floor of a large house at the top of a hill overlooking the Nidd Valley. It’s 2:00 a.m. and I am marking the hours listening to the BBC 2 chimes. It is indescribably black, the middle of the night, but soon it will be dawn and it will be over.

I said I would be your lover. You laughed at what I said. I lost my job forever. I was counted with the dead. I swept the marble chambers, but you sent me down below. You kept me from believing until you let me know that I am not the one who loves, it’s love that seizes me. When hatred with his package comes, you forbid delivery. And when the hunger for your touch rises from the hunger, you whisper,  “You have loved enough. Now let me be the lover.” And when the hunger for your touch rises from the hunger, you whisper, “You have loved enough. Now let me be the lover.”

I swept the marble chamber but you sent me down below. You kept me from believing until you let me know that I am not the one who loves, no, it’s love that chooses me. When hatred with his package comes, you forbid delivery. And when the hunger for your touch rises from the hunger, you whisper, “You have loved enough. Now let me be the lover.” And when the hunger for your touch rises from the hunger, you whisper “You have loved enough. Now let me be the lover.”

And that’s the whole song. And I can listen to it a million times.

The blog is open for three days: July, 2010.

The blog is open for three days.

Last night I began my short session of listening to iTunes by listening to Bob Dylan.

Listening to Bob Dylan puts me in a great mood; I am transported to a different time and place.

I sat there listening to the meager assortment of iTunes on this laptop (not my primary computer for iTunes) and it seems one could pretty much “know” 20th century music by having only the following: the Beatles, Bob Dylan, Willie Nelson, Leonard Cohen, and Patsy Cline. If allowed one super-group, it would be the Traveling Wilburys. If allowed one more individual, it would be Roy Orbison.

Those five had an incredible influence on music after the 1950s. It is incredible how much influence a very small group can have.

The same can be said for the Bloomsbury Group. But instead of music, the Bloomsbury Group affected almost every other aspect of western culture. The economist Keynes was part of their group. Virginia Woolf is synonymous with literary modernism. Lytton Strachey completely changed the style of biographies with Eminent Victorians. In the background I am listening to Patsy Cline’s “True Love.”  “The whole of Freud’s work was translated into English by James Strachey (Lytton’s brother), and was published in conjunction with the Hogarth Press, owned and run by Leonard and Virginia Woolf; for this reason, among others, the Freudian revolution was felt early, and strongly, among London intelligentsia.” (British Literature: The Longman Anthology, Volume 2C, Third Edition, c. 2006, p. 2115.) Roger Fry introduced 20th century art to the same people.

I think it was Harold Bloom who said "reading is a very solitary affair."

When I mention that (that reading is a very solitary affair) I think of Linda Fisher, no longer with us, who taught me much but had so much more to teach had I been mature enough to accept all she had to offer. Much later in life, the tables were reversed when I wanted so much to share with another but who was unable to accept my terms. Those terms were never spelled out as such, but friendship is an interesting word. Linda would have understood.

Above I mentioned five candidates to represent 20th century music. Five candidates to represent 20th century British literature would have to include: Virginia Woolf, Joseph Conrad, James Joyce, Thomas Hardy, and Graham Greene.

Now, Patsy Cline is singing “Why Can’t He Be You?” It is the kind of song I can imagine Linda and I, in our sixth decade, listening to while sitting in the great room reading silently in some walk-up brownstone in Boston in a parallel universe. Every now and then she would look at me and the telepathic memories of those halcyon days in 1973 would pass.

The BBC thirty (30) years later was uncannily and eerily similar. It ended as abruptly.

And now I need to close, while listening to Patsy Cline’s “Faded Love.”

By the way, after several years of looking, I did find a copy of Eminent Victorians and thoroughly enjoyed it. I found it at one of the best community libraries in America, the Huntington Beach Community Library and Cultural Center. 

Until next month, love.