Election Day Reading

I sat down this evening to read Thomas Paine's Common Sense, but instead, read Paine's Rights of Man (1791, 92).

Paine's arguments for the right to choose one's government, 215 years later, seem self-evident, so obvious as to make one wonder how society did not universally accept the natural rights of man. Yet, it wasn't universally accepted in Paine's time. The purpose of Paine's work was a defense of the necessity of the French Revolution as an assertion of those natural rights. In his work he called for the establishment of a British constitution, an act that lead to his being tried, in absentia, for treason.

From Paine's Rights of Man:

When I contemplate the natural dignity of man, when I feel (for Nature has not been kind enough to me to blunt my feelings) for the honour and happiness of its character, I become irritated at the attempt to govern mankind by force and fraud, as if they were all knaves and fools, and can scarcely avoid disgust at those who are thus imposed upon.

We have not to review the governments which arise out of society, in contradistinction to those which arose out of superstition and conquest.

It has been thought a considerable advance towards establishing the principles of Freedom to say that Government is a compact between those who govern and those who are governed; but this cannot be true, because it is putting the effect before the cause; for as man must have existed before governments existed, there necessarily was a time when governments did not exist, and consequently there could originally exist no governors to form such a compact with.

The fact therefore must be that the individuals themselves, each in his own personal and sovereign right, entered into a compact with each other to produce a government: and this is the only mode in which governments have a right to arise, and the only principle on which they have a right to exist.

The news tonight claimed an 'surprise upset' and a 'landslide' in local election. I didn't vote for the victor, and I don't understand his campaign which was more 'against' a specific situation than 'for' anything. But, how I feel is irrelevant now that the election is over.

I arrived at my precinct polling place 50 minutes before the polls closed. The electronic voting machine indicated that I was the 288th voter today. I don't know how many people are in my precinct, but I suspect it is far more than 288. Aren't those who abdicate their right by not voting allowing themselves to be 'knaves and fools'? Aren't they truly the fools, rather than those only thought to be by those who usurp power? By putting your trust in the voting process, you are part of the process of constituting a government, a process that people were willing to die for, a right that people elsewhere are denied.

From my notebook....Ear Worms

Scanning the channels for something I can actually listen to on the radio during the early morning drive to the airport. Metal is too noxious, news too chatty, and the station that passes for jazz just took the last train to the coast. Somewhere on the dial, during a brief airing, I hear church music. Bad organ music. Reminds me of the quasi-Mexican place in my college's town that piped in hymns into the dining room. Onward Christian soldiers, marching towards the taco bar.... I hit the scan button not eager to hear what other audible atrocities awaited.

90 minutes later, I'm on the plane, starting to dose as the flight attendant goes through the security speech. What exactly is a cross-check? Whatever, I'm glad that it is done and we can pull away from the gates. I doze uneasily during take-off. Somewhere in my brain an ear worm has planted itself. Damn it! Of all the songs to have running through my mind, Amazing Grace is definitely not what I want to be humming during flight. Nor, did I hope the pilot might be singing:

Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound/that saved a wretch like me
I once was lost, but now I'm found/was blind but now I see

Now, understand, I don't have anything against church music, per se. I belong to a denomination with a rich tradition of great church music. I think back to when I was 20, studying in London: I would drag my then-agnostic self occasionally to Westminster Abbey to hear evensong. I didn't care about the words spoken in prayer. I didn't listen to them. I didn't realize, at least not on any sort of surface level of consciousness, that the music was sung prayer. I only cared about how the music rose to the vaulted ceiling, bouncing off of the damp stones; how it seemed as if the notes blended with the filtered sunlight streaming in the narrow windows to transport one's spirit to some sort of ethereal place. More than once I thought how it'd be cool to do yoga in the middle of the Abbey, or maybe in the cloisters, while listening to the chanting and singing inside. I would have laughed if anyone had told me that 20 years later I'd make an effort to go to evensong when I could, in places far different acoustically and culturally than Westminster.

But there are some hymns that I can't stand. I don't like the melody; I don't like the words; I don't like the pithy, saccharine distillations of faith. And Amazing Grace, with all of its well-intentioned meaning and historical reference, is one of them.

And it was going through my mind unceasingly. On a plane. At 6:30 in the morning. Bleeechhhh!

At dinner that evening, I joked with Catherine about the annoying ear worm. If anyone could give me another song to displace the current loop, it would be her. Most Annoying Songs or Show Tunes is her category. She did not disappoint.

Crackling Rosie you're a store-bought woman. You make me feel like a gee-tar hummin. Come on now girl, our song keeps running on. Play it now. Play it now my baby....

I asked for this? Neil Diamond in an endless loop is worse than Amazing Grace. I've always distinguished myself from other baby boomers a few years older than me by their like/dislike of Mr. Diamond. Few, I'd say, under 50 would count him as a favorite. Only a few years younger than those boomers, my age-mates in school detested him. Two, three years older and one could claim to really remember the Kennedy assassination -- and attending a Neil Diamond concert was on the calendar every August at the State Fair. I hadn't thought of a Neil Diamond song in a decade. That night, those few bars replayed at least 10 years worth of music in my head. Still, it did displace the lamenting church song.

Throughout the next day, I cursed Catherine for making me think of this song. I would be concentrating at work; it would crawl in. I would be looking out my office window at the sail boats on the river; it would wiggle in to share my thoughts. I'd hear someone's obnoxious ringtone, and my brain would transcribe the guitar chords into a MIDI file. Arghhhh!!!

That evening, returning uptown, I thought it was almost gone. The steady rhythmic sounds of the subway washed away all of my thoughts of the day. Work worries, what to have for dinner, silly pop tunes: all were gone.

I smiled as I switched trains at 42nd St. I had read something a few days earlier about observing where you walk. I paid writerly attention to my quick journey up the stairs and through the corridors. I made note of the people I passed -- what they were wearing, how they looked, snippets of conversation. I paid attention to the smells and how the squalid air in the stairwell felt as the train pulled away. So many images: there would be much to write about in my notebook that evening. I was surprised when I got to the wide open mezzanine area that there weren't musicians playing, just police officers with fierce-looking, but muzzled Alsatians.

I headed down the stairs to the 1. As I walked down the platform, I heard the lonesome sounds of a saxophone. An old Korean man, seated on a milk crate, was playing slowly. As I neared, I realized, too late, what he was playing.

Amazing Grace continued in endless loop in my brain for another three days until I boarded a plane to come home.

Blogging Discussion

I wrote a few days ago about an idea I had for a roundtable discussion on blogging and books. Smithereens, LitLove, Imani and Emily have volunteered. Yeah!

This may be a crazy idea, but we'll see how it works. I will post their comments in a few weeks. I think that their comments will be interesting as they all have interesting blogs.

If you're interested in joining us, please email me no later than Monday Nov 5.

Baby Don't It Feel Like Heaven Right Now?

While watching Peter Bogdanovich's Running Down a Dream about Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers the first time I think, 'Where on earth was I all those years and how could it be that I didn't realize what a great band they were?'. But, then after watching this four hour(!) documentary about the Heartbreakers' 30 years in Rock and Roll, I realized that I knew nearly every song featured in the film, could identify in what phase of my life I was, where I lived, how I made a living, who my friends were. Not once did I think 'oh yeah, I remember that song'. I didn't have to recall the songs; I knew them. Maybe they weren't a soundtrack to many years of my life, but they certainly were there in the background.

Running Down a Dream played one time in several theatres in mid-October. It played where I lived, but I didn't know about it. I probably wouldn't have thought much about it and would have questioned who in their right mind except a fanatic would sit through a four hour documentary about a rock band? I never would have gone to see it.

But the other night we were flipping channels and found this film starting on The Sundance Channel. We intended to watch it for only a few minutes. Who would have thought four hours later we were still there at the closing credits. The pacing of this film is such that you don't notice that four hours have slipped away.

The film has plenty of concert footage, and tells the story of the band from when the struggled, through legal battles with record companies, and band changes. It highlights Petty's solo career -- which was never separated much from The Heartbreakers -- and his collaborations with other music greats like the always cool George Harrison, the magnificent Roy Orbison, the iconic Bob Dylan and the one and only Man in Black Johnny Cash. It also is about how the songs were written and what the band was striving to create. If you are a big Tom Petty fan, this might feel like heaven. But, this is not a movie just for Petty fans; it is a film for anyone interested in music, songwriting and artistry.

I hardly ever watch a movie twice, and usually repeat viewings are separated by months or years. This afternoon was the third time this week I've watched all or part of this film. It is that good. This afternoon's viewing is the last that I know is scheduled at this time, but the DVD is for sale at Best Buys. It's worth seeing. At the time I'm posting this, it's not too late to catch the last hour of this terrific film.

Oh baby don't it feel like heaven right now
Don't it feel like somethin from a dream
Yeah I've never known nothing quite like this
Don't it feel like tonight might never be again
We know better than to try and pretend
Baby no one could have ever told me 'bout this
~The Waiting Tom Petty

Edit: Here is a link to an interview with Bogdanovich (with IFC.com) on the making of this movie. I find it interesting that he didn't know much about Petty and was not a fan when he agreed to make the movie.

What I've been reading...

I didn't have the time to finish reading the book selection for my discussion group this month, but with writing like this, how can I not finish reading this?

...What had happened was that the twins had been playing in the basement the whole morning with cast-off clothes and worn-out shoes. Then they came running upstairs laughing, and stumbling into the corridor through the basement door, and there they saw the hares hanging on the peg and the gun leaning against the wall. It was Jon's gun, that they knew, and their big brother Jon was their hero, and if they had the same role models as I did at that age, he was their Davy Crockett and Hartsfoot and Huckleberry Finn in one person. Everything Jon did could be mimicked and turned into a game.

Lars got there first, he grabbed the gun and swung it around and shouted:

"Look at me now!" And then he pulled the trigger. The report and the shock from the butt sent him to the floor with a shriek, and he did not aim at anything, he just wanted to hold the wonderful gun and be Jon, and he might have hit the woodbox, or the small window over the steps, or the photograph of grandfather with his long beard that hung just above the peg in a frame painted the colour of gold, or the light bulb that hung there without a shade and was never switched off so that anyone out in the dark would see its light in the window and never get lost. But he did not hit any of those things, he hit Odd straight in the heart at close range. And if this had been something that happened in a Western, those porous pages would claim that the very name of Odd had been written on that cartridge, or it was written in the stars or on one of the pages in the fat book of Destiny. That nothing anyone could have done or said would have made the lines that met in that burning moment point any other way. That powers other than those controlled by man had made the mouth of that gun point in precisely that direction. But that was not how it was, and Jon knew it where he lay huddled up on the grass of the meadow and saw his father come out of the house with his brother in his arms, and the only book where the name of Odd was written and could not be crossed out was the church registry book.

--Out Stealing Horses by Per Petterson, translated by Anne Born

This is a book that has captured my attention in the first few pages. Doesn't this passage tell you so much about this family, in addition to the tragedy described?

A bit on poetry

I received an ARC of Adrienne Rich's new book of poetry, Telephone Ringing in the Labyrinth in the mail yesterday. (ARC courtesy of LibraryThing). At the end of a long day, it was a welcomed delivery sitting amongst mailings for local elections and housewares sales. I immediately ripped open the package so I could hold the book in my hands.

It is a slim volume, containing only 30 poems. I flipped through the book quickly, not intending to read it before dinner, picking up scattered images here and there. Later in the evening, I returned to read more concentratedly. It struck me how odd it is that 30 poems sparsely covering a mere 100-odd pages can be so dense. How reading poetry can bend your mind at sharp right angles that sometimes poke, sometimes tingle your synapses.

I have to sample poems slowly. I'll revisit this book several times over the next few weeks. Gradually, more and more of the images will settle in my thoughts and I'll begin to make sense of these poems. I'll read most of them a few times, some of them many times. There may be one or two that I won't be able to put out of my mind for days. Eventually, through reading, the poems will reveal themselves to me. Or will force me to recognize something about the world and myself that I didn't perceive previously.

That's how I've thought about reading poetry for years. So I had to smile when I read this quote in the preface to Rich's book:

Poetry isn't easy to come by. You have to write it like you owe a debt to the world. In that way poetry is how the world comes to be in you. -- Alan Davies

It's like that for the poetry reader as well. Reading poetry is how the world comes to be in you.

I'll likely write more about this volume later. Or maybe I'll post something about my favorite poem by Adrienne Rich: Storm Warnings, which I first read in college many years ago. But, for now I'll leave you with two snippets from Rich's work:

From Storm Warnings

Weather abroad
And weather in the heart alike come on
Regardless of prediction.

and these lines from the poem Calibrations contained in Telephone Ringing in the Labyrinth,

A poem with calipers to hold a heart
so it will want to go on beating

A poem with calipers to hold a heart. Isn't that a beautiful image?