STILL NO SUBSTITUTE

(2 of #100)

8:45 a.m.

Much to my surprise, the tortoise shell kitty is still around. Her folks or nearby folks built a shed in the corner of their backyard so there she crouches, closer to the birds than my kitties are. The window near the desk is open a crack. Nina is digging through the pile of papers in the hopes that she can get far enough to get out. Guess I should just get to cleaning the desk.

My first Itoh peony. Not like the peonies back home but still ...

8:18 p.m.

HELP

Imagine help

as a syllable

awkward but utterable.

How would it work

and in which distress?

How would one gauge

the level of duress

at which to pitch

the plea? How bad

would something

have to be?

It's hard

coming from a planet

where if we needed something

we had it.

— Kay Ryan, The Best of It: New and Selected Poems, Grove Press, New York 2010

I found my Kay Ryan volume, so looks as if things are moving more into place. I never did get my desk all that organized today, but I did get some gardening done, so I feel as if progress were made. Those weeds and gophers do not quit, damn it. And then there is my problem of getting high on the pretty colors of flowers and end up overbuying plants, particularly bulbs, which I don't get around to planting in a timely way.

McCoy and Fox are taking up valuable surface area as they hunt the moths pounding against the window. McCoy is the more serious hunter, Fox just never wants to be left out of the action. 

McCoy, beaming with apparent normalness.

I woke up this morning with Heart's Barracuda slamming an earworm. Not the most pleasant wake-up music in your head. 

11:33 p.m.

Had to take a bath and then answer some emails. I know many of you will find that rare of late, but now that I have "a room of my own" or at least a place to sit and think, keeping up in a timely matter should be an easier matter. Who knows? Perhaps I will even send cards and greetings on time as well. 

I returned to Off the Record: An Oral History of Popular Music for part of my bathtime reading. Although I am nearing the end, it is due tomorrow with no more renewals, so I will just have to go through the dance again. The Brooklyn Public Library would let you check out books and renew up to 99 times unless someone requested it. I miss walking the stacks, but I could just as well walk the stacks in my house. 

Anywho, Ry Cooder (Yahweh) was interviewed for this book and, no surprise, is as insightful and amusing as his guitar work. 

"I mean, if anybody at Santa Monica High School even thought about music, they probably thought about surf music and the Beach Boys because that was the music that was happening then. We were the Pepsi Generation. We had surfing and records and dances and a certain style of clothes. Kids were acknowledging that music existed, but I could see it was a low grade experience for them.

I really knew something about music. I could play it, I had seen other people play it. It was very real for me. To them, it was accompaniment, something you listened to while you ate lunch."

I second that. Sometimes I feel like a dog, just picking up on frequencies that must folks either don't hear nor care to listen for. 

He snores, too.

My mind has always remained on the music and on the development of music. It's like Dizzy Gillespie said, "You don't learn your instrument. You advance on it, but you never finish." Great players develop, they're not hatched. The idea that I'm some guitar hero who looks a certain way, plays a certain way, and is a certain way has very little to do with the people who seriously pursue music and their instruments.

I think we've come around now to a point where the reaction to what I call "haircut music" has to take place. I mean, how much of it can you stand? Teenagers will virtually anything you throw at them. If you promote it right, they'll go for it.

There are very few of us dinosaurs that can get up on stage and, by God, "play" it. These "haircut" guys just can't play it. They need their cartridges and programs and tape to make their shit work.

So, there's still no substitute for a guy who can get up and really play. That's the one thing people will always respond to.

— Ry Cooder, Off the Record: An Oral History of Popular Music

Interesting, for the likes of me to think about. I have never really responded to electronica much (like Elastica though and Stereolab?), but will walk across hot coals and spend my last dollar for music that is real. 

I need to sleep. I got so wired last night that I was up until 2 and then work up before 8. I did get in an awesome and rare 3-hour nap today. Thank you for your encouraging comments. I will get my groove back. I leave you with McCoy's soft, spotted belly.