Dreamtime: The man who would swim

August 20, 2015 //

In the dream, I wake from a dream of swimming thinking of the story as I walk down streets paved with large rocks. It’s one of those dreams in which I’m in wide canals as the water gets higher and the current and waves throw me in the air and I come back into the water and float or swim some more. In this revery, I’m walking through the boulders thinking of another story about swimming. Both the town in the dream and the town I wake in have old crooked buildings. But the town I wake into is hotter and arid. I look at a ceramic display on a street corner with words from prayers in Hebrew and English and possibly other languages, and continue walking towards my flat thinking of writing about swimming, about learning to swim, and about water.

A man, thin, wizened, about 55, stops me and asks if I have money. He wears shorts that are a little baggy on him and a faded t-shirt, though he doesn’t seem like a bum. I think of the small wallet in my pocket which contains maybe 40 euros. He speaks to me immediately in English, which is odd. Tells me I’m brave for admitting about the money, and ask if I mind talking with him. The small avenues are paved like something out of Gaudi or Hundertwasser. As I would in waking life, I do talk to him even though I’d rather be walking home and thinking about writing and thinking about swimming.

We sit on a bench for a bit and he tells me that he makes naambords (signs that go next to the front door of Dutch houses with the family name and house number) – that he makes them just with street names and post codes for the city. He shows me a catalogue printed in colour on cheap paper. In it there’s a picture of very young him – maybe 20 wearing big glasses with plastic frames. It looks like an early 1980s photo of a radio shack geek. His parents encouraged him to do woodwork, as he had a passion for it. I tell him we’ve only this year bought a naambord, and I think of the slate one we actually have. He tells me it doesn’t matter. His name is something like Garry Barr.

I walk back home, thinking I want to write this story down. About the swimming dream and learning to swim and about meeting Garry Barr. The place I arrive at has a cave-like entrance that reminds me now of Tim Dedopulos’ place up from Nerudova (near Prague Castle). There’s a shop just inside and I ask after some chocolates, half-distracted because I want to go inside and write. I’m thinking of a ream of paper I’ve recently bought and of my typewriter. The shop is tiny and I ask if he has chocolate – the proprietor takes down a shoebox from a high shelf – there are white kit-kat bars that come in double packs with eight sticks. I know I don’t want that many, but they’re only a euro so I buy one. Whatever I’m carrying is bulky and I pass Jeff Rubinoff (an American friend of mine from Prague) who asks after the chocolate and I point him to the shopkeeper, instead of giving him half of what I’ve just bought. Even in my dreams, I’m greedy.

I’m a little anxious to start writing – I don’t want to lose the content of the dream and the discussion with Garry Barr. I have images still of swimming down wide canals with waves that toss me in the air and make me fear just a little bit breaking my legs as I hit the bottom, but that never happens in these dreams – the water is never too cold, and I never fear drowning more than just a little – it’s too exhilarating.

Down a short low corridor that feels a little like a cave, I enter a very small apartment, ready to eat a little of my chocolate bar and start typing. The room I enter is small, crowded and dark. My wife is ironing, and points to a bed on top of which a skinny girl of indeterminate age sleeps, wearing only a pair of panties. I’m disappointed because the noise of getting out the typewriter and the paper, even though I know where they are, will wake the girl. At this moment, I wake myself, needing to write.

Tags dreams, Prague, swimming

Categories Health, Writing

Just a fool waiting on the wrong block…

August 12, 2015 //

Israeli cover of Led Zep’s In Through The Out Door.

In August, 1979, in the midst of the punk revolution in the UK and after two years off the road (four since they’d last played in the UK), Led Zeppelin staged two huge shows in at Knebworth over two weekends in August, performing for about 400,000 people. These shows included the first live performances of Hot Dog and In The Evening from the forthcoming album In Through The Out Door. The album should already have been released, but there were production issues and it wasn’t released until the week after the second show.
The following year, the band toured Europe, but on the eve of the American tour the following year, drink finally did in drummer John Bonham. Given that lead singer Robert Plant’s son had died during the American leg of the 1977 tour (thereby putting the kibosh on the European tour for Presence), this was pretty much the last straw for the band and they called it a day.
In Through The Out Door is a curious affair. In terms of production, it’s cleaner than 1977’s Presence, but as a whole, it’s a less focused affair. I may feel this way only because my sister and I bought it the week it was released and played the hell out of it. I don’t think I owned a copy of Presence until I bought one of those dreadful tinny CDs in the mid-90s. (The mastering of the whole catalogue for CD in the late 80s was horrible. The range was shrunk, the warmth pulled into some kind of musical black hole, and even to someone who listens to most music on relatively cheap earbuds, the overall sound was painful.)
Of ITTOD‘s seven tracks, one is a straight-up country tune (Hot Dog), one could be boogie-woogie without too much effort (South Bound Suarez) and others sprawl into disco territory (Carouselambra, In The Evening). But from the faded in digeridoo of In The Evening to the slow blues of I’m Gonna Crawl, I find it their most interesting album – at least the most interesting that was recorded in one go. (Physical Graffiti reaches farther and has greater heights, but pulls on music the band had created over the course of the three previous albums.)
After 36 years, the new reissue is as pleasing as any vinyl I’ve ever owned. It’s the only one of the new reissues I’ve purchased so far (tempted by Physical Graffiti, to be sure, primarily for Night Flight and to listen to Boogie With Stu sped up to 45 the way my sister and did way back when).

Tags in through the out door, led zeppelin, physical graffiti, presence

Categories 70s, rock and roll

The battle for hearts and minds

July 27, 2015 //

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/in-iraq-i-raided-insurgents-in-virginia-the-police-raided-me/2015/07/24/2e114e54-2b02-11e5-bd33-395c05608059_story.html

In this opinion column, Alex Horton, a gentleman who served two tours in Iraq at the height of the fighting recounts a raid on the apartment he was occupying in Virginia. Horton survived his encounter and was able to convince the officers there was nothing wrong. He then compares his training and the different strategies used in Iraq with those of the officers in Virginia. The long and short is that community engagement in both places saves lives, while an aggressive protect-the-badge-at-all-costs approach costs lives, generally those of civilians.

In a followup tweet, Horton notes ‘Some folks said being white helped. Probably true. Cuffs weren’t tight. They were cordial after I said I taught a college course.’

Indeed, whiteness probably saved Horton’s life, given his description of the home invasion he experienced.

I don’t have much to add to the current debate on police tactics and brutality. The world in which Sandra Bland was murdered a couple of weeks ago is the world I grew up in. The LAPD’s record on race relations was appalling and only started to become less so in the aftermath of the Rodney King beating. And even then, the changes started to occur only because of a recording. I look forward to the day when all police behave as though their actions were part of the public record, whether or not their actions are recorded.

The Son of Baldwin page on Facebook cross-posted what I saw as an excellent response to murders of black people in police custody. Actually, he posts them daily, but a couple of days after Bland’s death, he shared a post from Diallo Kenyatta who suggests the Black community do four things to combat these murders. My feeling is that, as with the Civil Rights movements of the 60s, we should all participate in these. Kenyatta’s posts are also well worth following as well.

Cancel the following Pro-Sport season, shut that shit completely down. We would not watch one game, hold one gathering or party, spend one red cent on any sports memorabilia, for an entire season for every single atrocity. Every single Black Ball-Chaster that played in a “Shut Down Season,” would permanently be Persona non grata in the Black community and culture; permanently. We could also develop the Pan-African Games, and Black Community Leagues the keep the talent and resources that emerges around sports within the Black community. We could do without even missing out on the athletics we love because there are countless opportunities to play and watch sports in our local communities.

We’d target the biggest corporation or industry for any particular product or service for permanent sanctions. We’d, as a Race stop buying Nike; we could wear any shoe but Nike; then Adidas, then Puma, and on down the line. As we start our “Trickle Down Sanctions,” we invest the millions in savings in Black owned manufacturing infrastructure in Africa and the African Diaspora. We’d do the same for computers, cell phones, essential services, clothing brands, furniture, food products, etc. If they keep committing atrocities we keep adding permanently sanctioned companies, while preparing to fully replace the products or services with one offered by a Pan-African, cooperatively owned enterprise.

We’d Implement a Holiday Divestment Program. We would shut down any holiday, refuse to observe or spend one fucking dime for every atrocity they commit, We don’t show up for the parades, we don’t buy presents, we don’t buy chocolate bunnies, or Valentine cards. We shut down and divest our time and money from any holiday that followed any atrocity. If that means we have to abstain from any Western Holiday, or Observance day, so be it; we take the funds we would have spent on that shit and roll it into building the Pan-African, cooperative manufacturing and service economy. We can also take that time to develop Pan-African Holidays, Rite-of-Passage Celebrations, Ancestral Feast and Festivals. We could strengthen our current cultural festivities and develop even more if we are not fucking around with European Whole-Lie-Daze anyway.

For every one Black atrocity we can vow to divest from and close 1-10 non-Black owned businesses within our communities and vow to replace them with a Pan-African, cooperative enterprise; such action would only cost a few dollars per household.

I’d be surprised if we had long to wait for the next such atrocity, but I’m absolutely willing to put my money elsewhere in concerted effort with such boycotts.

Part of what we hear in the debate over police on civilian brutality is that the police have the right to protect themselves. I absolutely agree with this to a point. Members of the police force used to sign up, ostensibly, ‘to protect and serve’ (the motto of the Los Angeles Police Department). Now it seems that departments far and wide (though probably not all – there are a *lot* of police departments in the US) offer live action video games to officers (and in one case I read of recently, though can’t seem to cite in the moment, donors to the department). As a nation we buy into it because we consume this steady diet of fear. Is there that much to be fearful of? Real crime is at per capita levels not seen since the 60s. Less than one half of 1% of Americans were victims of violent crime in 2011 and 2013 (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_the_United_States). On the other hand, in the first 204 days of 2015, there were 204 mass shootings – crimes in which more than four people were injured by guns. http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2015/07/24/there-have-been-204-mass-shootings-and-204-days-in-2015-so-far/

There is very little will at the top of the media food chain to lead a charge away from violence. The old editorial maxim, ‘If it bleeds, it leads,’ is truer today than it was when it was popularised in the late 80s. (I was sure the phrase had to date back to the 60s, though it was coined in ’82, the sentiment goes back at least to the days of Heart’s yellow journalism.) As with Kenyatta’s boycott, the only thing that will truly change the argument is our pocket books. Think of all that could be done with the hours we spend on line and in front of the TV.

Categories Uncategorized

Electioneering

July 20, 2015 //

In the last few weeks, Rachel Maddow has been hammering Fox news for the rules they’ve set for the first Republican presidential debate.

Fox is offering a podium at the first debate to the ten Republican candidates who place highest in an average of national polls in the month before the debate. The issue Maddow and others have is that with almost twenty declared, viable, candidates, this rule up-ends how presidential primary campaigns have been run for most of the last century or so. At the moment, name recognition matters more than political viability. From Maddow’s perspective, Rick Santorum (a man she’d see in hell before she’d see in the White House) should be more viable than Donald Trump. So should John Kasich, the Republican governor of Ohio, the state in which the debate will take place.

At one end of the scale, you have Trump, who has never held elective office, polling highest among declared candidates, on the basis of name recognition and sheer chutzpah. At the other end, you have several candidates who are statistically tied for three or four seats at that debate.

Historically, candidates prove their viability to voters, donors, and their parties by their competitiveness in the early primary/caucus states of New Hampshire, Iowa, and South Carolina. Possibly not anymore.

The primary system has several built in flaws. The first is that candidates swing far to the left or right in the primaries to appeal ‘to the base’ and then back to the centre once the nomination is secured. Voters therefore have a hard time separating the BS spewed by the candidate to secure the nomination from any actual policy position. (Of course, nowadays, policy positions are themselves BS, because what politicians vote for or sign once in office has more to do with donations secured to the party than with responding to their constituencies. But we’ll put that aside for the moment.)

The second is that nominations tend to be secured before the end of the primary cycle. If a candidate has locked up a sufficient number of delegates before, say, the California primary (usually in June), then voting in that primary is generally an exercise of the franchise for other reasons (such as determining candidates for Senate, House of Representatives, or the state legislature). The later primaries feel like having tickets to game six of the World Series when the winner wraps it up in five.

So, on the one hand, I love that something is shaking up the process. I can say, yay, the whack jobs are going to rise to the top and be voted down by people with a shred of sanity. Will Bernie or Hillary (or whoever else rises to the top of that milk jug) be able to smack down any of the top Republican contenders? I’m pretty certain the answer is yes. I know that the Republicans in the last half century have won their presidential elections through treason, treachery, and rigging the game. This state of affairs has only gotten worse in the last six years (Citizens United, gerrymandering, BS filibusters, and government shutdowns to name a few reasons). While I’m guardedly pleased at the job Obama’s done (especially under the circumstances of the hateful last three congresses), I also know that hope and change took a back on more than one occasion. That said, I don’t put it past any of the Republican possible contenders, no matter what tool is used to winnow the field, to sabotage another election, but there’s something to be said for changing up the system. I’m just disappointed that the rules of engagement are changing so quickly that several real contenders are left fighting the last war.

Rants on culture, politics, and music: joejots.wordpress.com

— They say a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, but it’s not one half so bad as a lot of ignorance. (Terry Pratchett)

Categories Uncategorized

Imaginary music

July 7, 2015 //

One of my favourite pieces of music is Terry Riley’s In C. While he’s considered one of the godfathers of so-called minimalist music, I’ve a feeling many critics feel Riley has a lot to answer for. I disagree.

On a certain level, it’s an astoundingly simple conceit: several dozen short phrases all in the same key. Any number of musicians can participate and the musicians play the phrases as many times as each one would like, until they all come together at the end. Historically, one musician keeps time by tapping middle C on a piano. In more recent versions, the pulse is often handled electronically, for reasons that aren’t hard to imagine.

I’d heard of it when I was young, but never heard it until the 25^th Anniversary concert version was released on CD in 1995. Some versions run as little as 20 minutes. This version, which features 128 musicians including all four members of Kronos Quartet, runs 76 minutes.

Here’s an interesting version that’s about 23 minutes, to give you an idea, though I like the versions that pull the piece in different directions. The recent Africa Express rendition is especially beautiful.

A couple of weeks ago, I thought of a version of In C I’d love to hear, or at least to know that it existed. Near my office is a building site on which there was a pile driver doing its work, gently echoing between nearby buildings. In my imaginary rendition, that pile driver is the pulse.

Other instruments would include angle grinders, jack hammers, chainsaws, hydraulic routers, lathes, and so forth. As these tend to be one- or two-note instruments, my idea would is that they’d be sampled and run through some kind of digital music software to finally formulate a (pardon me) riveting industrial rendition. In the article Lamb Stew, Will Mackin writes about marking of hazards whilst setting up a camp in Iraq and includes in their number, ‘a two-story-tall barbed-wire tangle in the shape of a swan, which buzzed in the wind like a kazoo.’ That swan of barbed wire is another instrument in my imaginary version of In C.

A more realistic dream of another piece of music I would like to hear is an extended version of XTC’s Senses Working Overtime (1982). In its first three minutes, it builds a crescendo that crashes over the bridge and, were they not a fairly tight quartet, it could have descended into chaos in the last two. On the mix tape of my absolute favourite songs of my adolescence, this might top side A. My dream version builds up more like Ravel’s Bolero, with just one or two instruments – a small drum and a finger-picked mandolin perhaps, building up and adding instruments over ten or twelve verses and five or six choruses before the bridge, and descending back to silence over the two final choruses. I’m undecided as to whether it would have vocals, though I’m tempted by the idea of a sweet alto like Unwoman trading couplets with a growling Scott Walkeresque tenor.

Tags In C, industrial, minimalism, pop music, Terry Riley, XTC

Categories Music