Category Archives: Music

Maestro

Maestro is a supercharged film. It needs to be for it is a story of life that was huge. It is the story of Leonard Bernstein (Bradley Cooper)  the legendary Maestro and his prickly but loving relationship with his wife Felicia Montealegre (Carey Mulligan).  From the opening scene where Leonard Bernstein, an assistant conductor of the New York Philharmonic, is called to the big stage as the conductor, his career was explosive. He was called up on very short notice to replace the conductor who was sick. Needless to say, Bernstein was up to the challenge. A new star was born. Immediately.  For Leonard Bernstein was an absolute star. He conducted with astonishing exuberance. The audience seemed to enter a state of rapture with the performance. When I watched Bradley Cooper play the star I was as mesmerized as I think I would be seeing a supernova’s birth. Compelling is not a strong enough word.

Bernstein said this about art: “A work of art does not answer questions it provokes them, and the essential meaning is in the tension between the contradictory answers.” That is what Leonard  Bernstein did and this film is true to that fact and those tensions.

In the film Bernstein was interviewed on television by the famous Edward Murrow who wanted to know what was his primary occupation. After all Bernstein was a world famous conductor and  composer of music. Added to that he was a teacher of music. So what was his main occupation? He had a good answer that neatly ducked the question—he was a “musician” he said.  “Anything that has to do with music is my province. Whether it’s composing it, or conducting it, or studying it, or playing it. As long as its music I like it and I do it.”  That was the central point of the film No one occupation could contain him. And no one person could contain his love. It overflowed. Like many great artists he needed many lives to live. And that can be very hard on those he loves.

The first part of the film is shot in black and white and the latter in color. Ultimately, as his wife Felicia eventually realized, Bernstein could not be constrained by 2 choices. They could not contain him. He loved his wife. And he loved having sex with men. Such a man must be experienced in color. Black and white alone is not enough.

Murrow then asked him what is the difference between the life of a composer and the life of a performer. Bernstein replied:

“It’s a personality difference between which occurs between any composer or creator versus any performer.  Any performer whether its Toscanini    or…whoever it is, leads a kind of public life. An extrovert life if you will. It’s an oversimplified word, but something like that. Whereas as a creative person who sits alone in his great studio that you see here and writes all by himself and communicates with the world in a very private way and has a rather grand inner life rather than a grand outer life. And if you carry around both personalities. I suppose that means you become a schizophrenic and that’s the end of it.”

 

Bernstein has more than 1 life. He lives with his wife whom he loves, but he has another life where he has affairs with men. One life is not enough. His wife Felicia thought she could survive on what Bernstein had left for her. But she wanted more. It was not enough.

These lives were still not enough for Leonard. As he told Murrow, “Music was the greatest thing I could do and when you add it all up, I haven’t done much.”

As a result of not being able to give Felicia all that she needed, Bernstein said “she has a deep sense of futility.” Therefore, he felt he was not creative enough. “I feel like the world is on the verge of collapse. I’m quite serious. The grinding of creativity which is coming to a grinding halt.”

Bernstein knew that he needed time alone, but because of his performing personality it was hard for him to be alone. That was part of his struggle as a composer. “Can one ever believe that man is just this trapped animal. He is a victim of his own greed and folly. And either one believes in the divine element in this or one doesn’t. As long as I believe it, which is I assume I love people so much, that I have to believe in a remote corner of my soul, there is a way out.”

After one stirring concert of a work, he had created he is sitting in a box seat with his wife Felicia and his lover Tommy. She sees Leonard holding hands with Tommy and not with her, right beside her. They did not even try to hide it. They had always agreed that he would be discreet with his dalliances.  It upsets her terribly. But Leonard is the great artist. Everyone has to bend to his desires.

When Leonard and Felicia have a terrible fight and she denies what he said about all the love in his heart. She says, he has “hate and anger” in his heart. Not love.  “Your truth is a fucking lie,” she yells at him.

Leonard’s sister Shirley tells Felicia, “He is a horribly aging old man who just can’t be one thing.”  She understands him well. He can’t be contained by one thing.

Yet perhaps Leonard’s best person came out when Felicia was dying of cancer. He was relentlessly there for her. Felicia has a change of heart and tells Leonard lovingly, “There is no hate in your heart.” He becomes a devoted husband until she dies. And he learns a valuable lesson: “All you need is to be sensitive to others. Kindness.”

That is all that anyone needs.

 

Leonard also shows the same feelings to his music students.  He tells the orchestra: “I think the whole point of the piece is becoming one.” All the instruments and all the players become one. Then when he meets a student at the bar, and quotes Edna Vincent Millay to her:  “If summer doesn’t sing in you, nothing will sing in you. If it didn’t I would have jumped in the lake a long time ago.” There was no doubt that summer sang in Bernstein for a while. A considerable while in fact. But not forever. Eventually his life of great music, great wealth, fame, sex, alcohol and drugs took its toll. The summer song could no longer be heard in him. But of course, summer is just a season. It is not a life.

 

But this film sings. For a season. And that really is enough.

Elvis

 

 

This film magnificently captures the electric sexual energy of a poor white boy from the American south.  This was the exciting and hence dangerous energy that the establishment whites closely associated with African Americans and it frightened them.  They called Elvis “a white boy with black hips.” And they did not like it. Particularly, they hated to see good white girls lavishly enthralled by this energy. One white man called his music “voodoo devil music.”  That’s how dangerous it was. To them it harboured the irrational revolution of the youth against the old, and black against white.

Those like me who mainly remember only the late Elvis of the Las Vegas years and mild smarmy Hollywood movies forget what a revolutionary force he was in his youth. There was nothing like it and this film, and in particular the actor who plays Elvis, Austin Butler, brings it directly to us without filters or banisters. And it is excitingly thrilling. Butler must be considered a serious contender for best Actor and the film  for Best Picture. This film is a marvel of cinematic art that brought this young Elvis to us. I loved this film. I was surprised by this film. I don’t know what I was expecting, probably because, I like so many, remember most clearly the vapid Las Vegas Elvis who was by then a pale afterthought of the kinetic youthful Elvis.

A major character in the film is Colonel Tom Parker (played exceedingly well by Tom Hanks). Frankly, I knew nothing about the Colonel’s role in Elvis’s life, but that just shows you how little I knew about Elvis. As the Colonel said himself, “without me there be no Elvis, yet there are some who make me out the villain of this story.”  This film is brought to us through the eyes of that low class but powerful salesman who liked nothing better than to snow people, or worse. “Elvis was the showman; Parker the snowman.”  The Colonel snowed the public into buying the Elvis he created.

The Colonel deserved credit for seeing the potential of Elvis right from the start. He knew it by looking into the faces of swooning young women lost in the rapture of Elvis. It was like religious rapture and was saturated with sexual power. As the Colonel said about one of those  young women staring at Elvis, “She was having feelings she wasn’t sure she should be having.” These carnal delights however filled the white men of the south with deep fear. They did all they could to stop him and almost succeeded.  But Elvis’ energy could not be denied. Even his very religious mother came to see the light. As she said, “the way you move is God-given, so it can’t be bad.”

Elvis knew that he was “ready to fly.” He acknowledged that “if I can’t move, I can’t sing.”  The Colonel tried to rein in Elvis to make him presentable to stiff necked southern white men and that was a massive mistake, but who knows what would have happened if he had let Elvis loose. As a result, the Colonel allowed Elvis to serve his 2 years of mandatory Army service and come out of the war a clean-cut American kid. By then Elvis was ready for an array of  sun-cleaned and bloodless Hollywood films that made him a lot of money, but in my opinion, at the cost of his soul. Elvis strafed at the restrictions imposed on him by the Colonel including an NBC special where the Colonel contractually bound Elvis to sing a vapid Christmas song and Elvis revolted.

Fortunately, the film does not resolve these tensions on Elvis just as they were not resolved in his life. Elvis lived those tensions and they contributed to his early demise. Like so many rock and rollers, he died too young.

But he sure could rock and roll.

Tár

 

Lydia Tár (played brilliantly by Cate Blanchett) is a Prussian musical conductor. And a music teacher. A Professor. It is essential to realize that in Germany music is sacred and the conductor is the high priest or, in some cases, God. Everything the conductor (or music teacher) does is by definition intra vires. Nothing is ultra vires. Everything in other words is authorized. Not in the cards. As a result there is no such thing as sexual assault or sexual harassment by the conductor or teacher.

Yet, on the other hand, this is a film about power. Specifically, about the power of the conductor, but actually the power that any powerful person wields over a young student. That makes any sexual relationship between conductor and student as unacceptable as sex between a teacher and student, or physician and patient. Ipso facto the powerful person is guilty of sexual harassment.  In such circumstances consent is impossible. There is no point in looking for it. It cannot be there. This is the more modern view

These opposing facts are the background to this film. The film bounces between these polar opposites.

A few days with a Prussian authoritarian can be a very unpleasant thing. You have to be able to shoehorn yourself into the job. Why would we do it? I submit, we would only do it if the suffering endured would present us with a spiritual or artistic epiphany.  The purpose of suffering is to burn the fire within you so that you can achieve enlightenment. Then, and only then, is the suffering worth the trip. Every religion has recognized this fact. Those without religion must learn it. I think that is what Tár is all about. The epiphany learned must be sharp to be worth the price. I think this film qualifies.

Tar is smart, and a musical genius, and a great conductor, but she is impossible to like. It is only possible to submit. But submission is dangerous as at least one young music student learns.

We meet Tár early in the film being interviewed by Adam Gopnik of The New Yorker. [Gopnik plays himself in the film] I always liked his articles for that magazine, but here he and she both seem unbearably pretentious. Either that or we are stupid. Or both.

Tar first interrogates a young female music student, Olive and points out to her, “Good music can be as ornate as a cathedral or as bare as a potting shed.” It must help you to learn powerful lessons.

Then Tár quickly turns to Max, another student, and puts him on the spot in front of all his peers.  “What do you think Max?” she asks. Clearly, she wants to humiliate him. I remember I had a grade 9 mathematics teacher like that.  He liked to call us up to the front blackboard and demonstrate how stupid we were. It wasn’t hard. Teachers like that would not be allowed today, I. hope. And then people say they would like to have the good old days of education. Not me.

Max on the stage is “as nervous as his bouncing feet” according to the screenplay. After all he is being asked by the Great Tár. Tár is conducting a master class in bullying. First the young female student, then Max. Max is properly humiliated. Tár  asks him what he thinks of Johann Sebastian Bach. Max is “not into him.” He explains, “Honestly, as a BIPOC pangender- person, I would say Bach’s misogynistic life makes it kind of impossible for me to take his music seriously.”

Then Max’s knee “goes into overdrive” according to the Screenplay and Tár cannot resist. Like a wolf cannot stop from pursuing that prey that runs away, Tár attacks. She asks the class, and Max in particular, “Can classical music written by a bunch of straight, Austro-German, church-going white guys, exalt us individually.” She says she is a “U-Haul Lesbian” and might not be “into Beethoven” but must confront the music. No one wants to confront the Maestro, who is of course, the Master.

She tells the class this about Bach’s music:

“When you get inside that you see what it really is. A question, and an answer. (plays second change) That begs another question. There’s a humility in Bach. He’s not pretending he’s certain of anything. He knows it’s the question that involves the listener. Never the answer.”

 

The she confronts Max again, what do you think?  “He sheepishly responds, “nowadays? White, male, cis composers? Just not my thing.” Tár sees his knee bouncing with nerves again and dismisses him with this remark:

“Don’t be so eager to be offended. The narcissism of small differences leads to the most boring conformity… as an ultrasonic epistemic dissident is, if Bach’s talent can be reduced to his gender, birth country, religion, sexuality, and so on — then so can yours”

The poor humiliated student has his dignity shredded by the older, wiser teacher. All he can do is blurt out, “You’re a fucking bitch!”  And she turns it all on him, the hapless student:

And you are a robot! Unfortunately, the architect of your soul appears to be social media. If you want to dance the mask, you must service the composer. Sublimate yourself, your ego, and yes, your identity! …You must in fact stand in front of the public and God and obliterate yourself. The problem with enrolling yourself as an ultrasonic epistemic dissident is, if Bach’s talent can be reduced to his gender, birth, country, religion, sexuality, and so on–then so can yours.”

She might be right, but that is not the point. The point is the teacher should be the civilized one in the class. That is what respect is all about. Tár has a problem with that. But if the weak  must lay down before the powerful  we don’t have learning, we don’t have music, we just have pugilism. And there is no art and no honour in that. This is the lesson that Tár must confront in the film.

Tár is smart and says smart things about music. Like this from her book which she reads to a group while protesters gather outside and while she watches her latest prey flirting with a boy in the back and she receives snide text messages:

“The link between music and language is what makes music unique to human beings—Indeed, the common metaphors used to explain music are based on the idea that music is a language… albeit a secret one, and in this way, holy and unknowable. These joyful noises we make being the closest thing any of us might ever experience to the divine... yet something born by the mere act of moving air…”

 

Can someone who speaks so well be a brute? Can such a person be a bully? Can such a person approach the divine?

 

Nebraska to Kansas: Christiane sure is lucky to be travelling with me

When we drove from Nebraska to Kansas Chris was very lucky to be driving with me! She was not feeling well so did not want to talk. As a result, I played for her the best music playlist in the world—mine. That was why she got to hear some outstanding music for a couple of hours as we drove through the great plains of North America. Here are some of the great songs we listened to:

 

Beatles—Eleanor Rigby

Jimmy Buffet—Margaritaville

Leonard Cohen—Hallelujah

Linda Ronstadt—Blue Bayou

The Byrds—You Ain’t Going Nowhere

Bob Dylan—Lay Lady Lay

Bruce Cockburn—Wondering where the Lions are

Bruce Springsteen Born in the USA

Cat Stevens—Peace Train

Don Maclean—American Pie

Eagles—The Last Resort

Beatles—Let it Be

Hank Williams—I’m so Lonesome I could Cry

Townes Van Zandt—Colorado Girl

Van Morrison—Brown Eyed Girl

Leadbelly—Rock Island Line

Roy Orbison—Only the Lonely

Sarah Harmer—Blue Moon of Kentucky

The Rolling Stones—Honky Tonk Women

The Weavers—Wimoweh

Woody Guthrie—This Land is Your land

Stan Rogers—Make and Break Harbour

 

These were random selections from my Best of the Best Playlist. This was sweet. Chris sure is lucky!

Listening to this great music, I felt so good I felt like driving all the way to Panama.

Blue Note

 

 

I don’t really know much about music, but I do know Cornel West loves the blues. And part of that love is the love for the Blue notes. Jeff Sharlet described what a colleague theirs  at Princeton University,  Eddie S. Glaude Jr, the chair of the department of African American studies, and author of Begin Again: James Baldwin’s America and Its Urgent Lessons for Our Own, said about West:

“There’s a way in which you could think about Cornel as a kind of sick soul,” says Glaude. “In the sense that he begins with the dead, with darkness. He begins with suffering. The blue note. And all too often people want to move too quickly beyond that.”

 

According to Jeff Sharlet:

“That’s the American way,” says West when I raise the question of the blue note and it’s dismissal, the common conviction that looking forward means forgetting the past. “ ‘No problem we cannot solve,’” he says, paraphrasing conventional wisdom. Well, that’s a lie. I don’t know why Americans tell that lie all the time.” He laughs, shaking in his chair, mimicking a voice that sounds like a suburban golfer in pants a size too small. “‘No problem we can’t get beyond.’ That’s a lie! But—it generates a strenuous mood.”

 

What is a blue note in music?  I know very little about music. What a shame. I am told that in the musical realm, these notes “between the cracks” of conventional pitches are called blue notes”. For example, a melody in C major might be sung with a note that is halfway between E and E-flat. As the term suggests, blue notes are thought to be particularly characteristic of the blues.

 

The blue note finds its roots in African-American music at the time of slavery and ended up being widely used within blues, receiving the name “C major blues scale,” or just “blues scale”. The term “blue note” is usually translated as “outside note”, due to the fact that this note does not belong to the natural scale. Like the blues it is rebellious. An outlier. It dissents from the conventional wisdom, like Cornel West. This is like the line he liked so much from the poet Leopardi: “I refuse even hope.”  That is the blue note in prose. Quoting Leopardi again, “Everything is hidden except our pain.” That is what the bluesman sees and hears. But it takes what amounts to a religious quest to see it or hear it.

A Jazzman in the World of Ideas & a Bluesman in the Life of the Mind (Part II)

According to the American philosopher Jeff Sharlet:

“(Cornel) West came to his sense of self by way of a peculiarly American convergence of influences. His is not an “only in America” story but an “especially in America” one, part Emersonian self-reliance, part Motown funk. He’s an intellectual mutt in the best sense, a “freestyle, California spirit,” as he puts it, “rooted in gutbucket blues and jazz dispositions.

 

West sees himself as utilizing jazz-like improvisations in this philosophy. As Sharlet said, in West “the radical hope he tempers with the tragic sensibility he takes from the blues. “I’m a bluesman in the life of the mind,” he says, “a jazzman in the world of the ideas.” West often makes that statement. I heard him say that when we heard him speak at Arizona State University. He obviously thinks it describes him well. I tend to agree.

Jeff Sharlet told the story of interviewing West when he wanted to find a quote to explain what he meant by a comment he had made. He got down on his hands and knees in his office looking for a book on the bottom shelf. Finally he found a volume of poetry by Giacomo Leopardi, a 19th century Italian poet-philosopher. When he founded he yelled joyously, “This is the Leopardi, brother.” He flips through the pages of a green book. Sharlet described it this way:

“Oh, man! See this one? ‘I refuse even hope.’” He repeats the line, his body suddenly slack, staring at me as if to ask, “Do you follow?” I do, or, at least, I’ll try. West begins to read, rocking forwards and backwards at his hips like a metronome. “‘Everything is hidden,’” he reads, “‘Except our pain.’” He looks up. “Deep blues, man.” He returns to the green book in his hand. “We come, a forsaken race, / Crying into the world, and the gods / Keep their own counsel…’” I bend close, following the rhythm of his handwritten annotations down the margins: “blues,” “jazz,” “blues,” “blues,” “jazz.”

 

The bluesman gets no advice from God. He doesn’t even get to have hope. Sharlet described West as the philosopher of the blues this way:

“The blues, West says, is the suffering that’s at the heart of the American story, both tragic and comic, darkly grandiose and absurdly mundane. Jazz is democracy, or “deep dem-oc-racy,” as West likes to say, emphasis on the first word and the second syllable, the sound of a system we have yet to achieve. “Y’see, you take a military band, it’s like”—West bangs out a martial beat. But jazz? He drums a complicated rhythm. “Under. Below. On the side of the note. Not just the note itself, y’see. It’s a powerful critique.” Jazz—improvisation—is his answer to things as they are, the negation of the status quo and thus the affirmation of another possibility.”

 

And all of this is connected in West with the tissue of religion. When West said that Sharlet said he stood very still and closed the book. He shook his head back and forth with admiration of the poetry. He said it was like relief and gratitude for what he had learned West summed up what he had read to Sharlet this way:

To know the wretchedness of who we are,” he says. “Yet the fact that we know it, is itself a noble thing, because that kind of knowledge means we can know a whole lot of other things.

 

West unlike modern Americans who don’t’ want to know the truth or allow their children to know the truth, West was willing to carry his torch to the back of the cave and see what was there. West believes that is what the blues are all about. Learning from the pain. Not hiding from it. Sharlet described a passage in West’s book Democracy Matters this way:

In a chapter that ranges from the Stoic philosopher Zeno to Emmett Till’s mother standing over her murdered son’s coffin, West quotes Ralph Ellison writing on the blues. I’d copied it into my notebook on the train to Princeton.

“‘The blues is an impulse to keep the painful details and episodes of a brutal experience alive in one’s aching consciousness,’” I read aloud, “’to finger its jagged grain, and to transcend it, not by consolation of philosophy but by squeezing from it a near-tragic, near-comic lyricism.’”

 

When Sharlet caught on the teacher in West came out. He felt like a triumphant teacher.

 

 “That’s right!” he says. “It’s knowledge the way Adam knew Eve. Adam knows Eve. It’s embracing. Some think it’s just sexual, but it’s not just sexual. To know is to be engaged. The blues knows because the song is an action.” It’s recognition of the death shudder, a naming of the pain. “That’s the way in which a song of despair is not despair.” He points to the craggy features of the Irish playwright, Samuel Beckett, staring out from a book cover eye level with West’s desk chair. Beckett, in West’s reckoning, is like Chekov what he calls a literary bluesman. “Brother Beckett. He doesn’t allow despair to have the last word. The last word is what?” He paraphrases Waiting for Godot: “ ‘I can’t go on. I will go on. I can’t go on. I will go on.’ Y’see?”

 

From time immemorial religion has found  sustenance from the deep well of suffering.  I think for West the blues does the same thing.  Not that anyone seeks out suffering. But when it appears at least we can take that from it. West despises what he considers shallow American religiosity that is afraid to look at what is painful. American blues was not afraid to know. That to West is deep religion.

Jazzman in the world of ideas & a Bluesman in the life of the mind (Part I)

Music is very important to Cornel West. Every time I have heard him speak he brings music into the conversation. Music and religion is where his religious quest leads him.

He always comes back to music as being the root of his philosophy. While he says he likes classical music, Jazz and the Blues  are both deeply embedded in the black tradition in America and that is where his heart and soul lies.  West identified with Ella Fitzgerald, Mohammed Ali, and John Coltrane among others.  West called himself, “A Jazzman in the world of ideas and a bluesman in the life of the mind.”

The black musical tradition had to deal with the catastrophe of slavery and the catastrophe of Jim Crowe. That was the cradle of that musical tradition giving birth to both jazz and the blues.   That is what West identifies with. Out of that was also born his prophetic rebellion. The response to being hated and haunted, he said,  was the love supreme of John Coltrane, clearly one of West’s heroes. I like him too.

When West spoke a the University of Winnipeg he was asked by a student at the U of W why he was not more actively engaged in practical politics of rebellion.  West, said his calling was to be a “Jazzman in the world of ideas, which means that I have to sing my song.”  He had to raise his voice there he said.  If he does that  he said he believed he can “put pressure on the status quo that could generate concessions and reforms.” He wants to have impact on the ground but thinks he can do that both from the inside and the outside. Running for office is not what his calling is. “Asking him to run for office is like asking a jazzman to join the military band,” he suggested Though he likes classical music, he would rather play body and soul. “You have to be true to who you are,” says West.

How to we respond to catastrophe, that is the fundamental question,” says West. Do you respond with critical reflection? Compassion or courageous action?  Those are all important and valuable. Or do you respond with callous indifference, dogmatic thinking, and a very tribalistic orientation? Those are not productive. Your reaction to the catastrophe is what counts.

 

He also identified with the love ethic of a James Baldwin or Marvin Gaye or Nina Samone or MaryLou Williams.  According to West, “that is precisely what is needed because the whole planet has the blues.” He wants to be a small part of that grand tradition that leads to critical reflection, love, compassion and courage.  But that is not a black thing. Anyone can join that tradition! We can join it too.  He mentioned a long list of names of people that inspired him. Many also inspired me. West said, You get that from Rabbi Joshua Heschel, George Gershwin, Steven Sondheim, and Margaret Atwater.  I could many to that list: Gandhi, Bertrand Russell, Christopher Hedges, Slavoj Zizek,  Arthur Schafer, Woody Guthrie, and Cornel West himself. Among many others. There are many who sing in that choir.

All of them deal with catastrophic consciousness and how do you deal with such catastrophes. You generate some kind of love, some kind of connection with others, mediated with kindness, sweetness and gentleness. Fellow feeling I call that. You have got make such a response a matter of heart and souls says West. That is what the blues are all about.

It’s a human thing. The black musical tradition brings it together in such a powerful way. “It is not just cerebral it is visceral,” says West.

 

Rockin’ Chair and a beautiful young girl

 

 

I love listening to music on long car trips. On our drive from Kamloops to Salmon Arm, looking out at the mountains, often beside the railway tracks,  brought me back–right back–to the days of my youth. Specifically the memories of the summer of 1970. Those memories flooded over me.  With amazing luck I got a job as a porter in 1970 and made a number of trips to British Columbia. Invariably on the trip back to Manitoba I got lonely. I missed my friends and in particular this new girl I had just met that spring Christiane Calvez. She was beautiful and fun and I wanted to see her as soon as possible. But I needed to work to put my way through University. Somehow, I don’t know why or how, the lyrics of a song filled my mind on one of those long train rides back to Manitoba. It was a song I was not even conscious I knew until the lyrics and tune came to me as I sat alone on a seat  on the sleeping car. Those lyrics resonated with my loneliness being so far from home.  The song was “Rockin’ Chair” by The Band.

Rockin’ Chair”

Hang around, Willie boy,
Don’t you raise the sails anymore
It’s for sure, I’ve spent my whole life at sea
And I’m pushin’ age seventy-three
Now there’s only one place that was meant for me:

Oh, to be home again,
Down in old Virginny,
With my very best friend,
They call him Ragtime Willie
We’re gonna soothe away the rest of our years,
We’re gonna put away all of our tears,
That big rockin’ chair won’t go nowhere

Slow down, Willie boy,
Your heart’s gonna give right out on you
It’s true, and I believe I know what we should do
Turn to stern and point to shore,
The seven seas won’t carry us no more

Oh, to be home again,
Down in old Virginny,
With my very best friend,
They call him Ragtime Willie
I can’t wait to sniff that air,
Dip that snuff, I won’t have no care,
That big rockin’ chair won’t go nowhere

Hear the sound, Willie boy,
The Flyin’ Dutchman’s on the reef
It’s my belief
We’ve used up all our time,
This hill’s to steep to climb,
And the days that remain ain’t worth a dime

Oh, to be home again,
Down in old Virginny,
With my very best friend,
They call him Ragtime Willie
Would’a been nice just to see the folks,
Listen once again to them stale old jokes,
That big rockin’ chair won’t go nowhere

I can hear something callin’ on me
(And you know where I wanna be)
Oh Willie, can’t you hear that sound?
(Down in old Virginny)
I just wanna get my feet back on the ground
(Down in old Virginny)
And I’d love to see my very best friend
They call him Ragtime Willie
(Oh, to be home again)
I believe old rockin’ chair’s got me again!

 

I wanted to be home “with my very best friend” so badly it ached. “Oh to be home again.” Today that “I’m pushin’ age seventy-three,” the lyrics came back this time enhanced with the modern technology of an iPod played through my car radio speakers. Memories are good. Life is good. “I just wanna get my feet back on the ground.” It is still one of my favourite songs. And I have lived with that sweet young girl for nearly 50 years. “Oh to be home again with my very best friend.”

Bohemian Rhapsody

Thanks to Stef’s surely legal (?) manipulation of downloadable movies off the Internet we watched Bohemian Rhapsody a new bio-pic about Freddie Mercury and his band Queen. I begin, by admitting I am not very familiar with Queen. Many of their songs were familiar, but I never listened to them closely or followed their fame in the day. I just was not interested. So I did not know their story. All I have learned is from watching this film and listening to some of their songs. I like what Freddie said, “we are 4 misfits playing to other misfits, none of whom belong together.” Aren’t we all like that?

First of all, I was struck by the song, “Keep Yourself Alive.” I repeated to myself the lyric, “keep yourself alive.”  I actually think that is important. Not in the ordinary sense so much, though we all want to keep alive so that does not need reminding, but rather keep alive in the sense of don’t allow your life to become what D.H. Lawrence referred to as  “death in life”. If that what we  have, as Lawrence was true for many of us, we are in bad shape. We should instead, keep ourselves alive.

I think that is what the film is about–i.e. avoiding death in life. Roger, one of the band members said, “there’s no musical ghetto that can contain us.” Later Freddie said, “My father would rather see me dead then be whom I am.”  Hasn’t every son thought that about his father? Yet, I hope mine never did. I also liked the line, “We’ll punch a hole in the sky.” That would surely  keep oneself alive.

The movie celebrated the song after which the film is named, namely, “Bohemian Rhapsody”, with its lyrics that are far from clear, in part because of its length. The record company wanted a shorter song, so the band packed up and left that company. Of course it became a big hit.

If you say the lyrics are not obscure tell me what these signify?

 

I see a little silhouetto of a man,
Scaramouche, Scaramouche, will you do the Fandango?
Thunderbolt and lightning,
Very, very frightening me.
(Galileo) Galileo.
(Galileo) Galileo,
Galileo Figaro
Magnifico-o-o-o-o.

I think they fit in some how with the them. Life is thunderbolt and lightning. Magnifico. Though I like the line “I see a little silhouetto of a man.”  I just don’t know what it means. Do you? Give me your theory.

I also  liked their idea of including the audience in the song “We Will Rock You,” where they said they wanted to include the audience as part of the song. And, of course that song has been sung in sports stadiums and arena’s ever since. I remember hearing it many times at the Winnipeg Arena. I just did not know it was a Queen song. I wonder if my lads remember it as well. With its driving beat I always liked this verse:

“Buddy you’re a boy make a big noise
Playin’ in the street gonna be a big man some day
You got mud on yo’ face
You big disgrace
Kickin’ your can all over the place
Singin’

We Will We will Rock You

We Will We will Rock You.”

 

At the end of the film, when Freddie was dying of AIDS he didn’t’ want sympathy or long faces around him. I remember a good friend of mine who was dying, told me the same thing.  He wanted life until he died. He did not want life in death. “Don’t bore me with your sympathy,” Freddy said,  “It takes too much life away.”

I must admit this movie captured me.  This surprised me. I like it when  movies surprise me. I now think Queen are, “the champions.” In the end, harboring a terminal illness, Freddie struts across and around the stage and briefly, he is the champion, he is alive. I hope we can all be that.

 

Best Covers Ever

 

One day on our drive from Steinbach to Arizona, we listened to National Public Radio in the mornings and my own personal Play list of my own recordings some afternoons.  Listening to interesting conversations or great music makes the miles melt away on a long trip. With all modesty I claim that my play list is the best play list in the world! Chris’ only complaint was that I did not have enough Bob Dylan tunes on it. OK that was fake news.

I noticed that in addition to original recordings I also had some great covers. My personal favorite cover was “Fields of Gold” originally written and recorded by Sting and covered by Eve Cassidy. I recommend it highly. In fact, I challenge my Facebook and blogging friends to come up with their favorite covers. By cover I mean a new recording of a hit by another artist.  It must have been a hit the first time around. I have a few other favorites, and promise to give an incredible prize to anyone who names one of my 3 other favorites. I hope people will participate. Don’t be shy. Live boldly.