Rainy Day in Charleston 2

Checking out Charleston and Lowcountry art

Rainy Day in Charleston

Cold gusts and heavy rains--perfect for doing something indoors. Keely and I visited the Gibbes Musuem of Art and then had an excellent lunch at 82 Queen. Normally we want to be out and about but the weather was bad enough that indoor action felt perfect.

What you'll see above--in separate posts--are just a few pictures. For the life of me I couldn't put all the pics in one post and make it look really good. I still have a long way in becoming adept at this blogging thing.

A fine performance

Goodbye

Well a literary giant has passed. J.D. Salinger died at the ripe old age of 91. Although much of those years were lived in seclusion and no publishing output (but plenty of writing it is believed), his impact was enormous. Love or hate them, The Catcher in the Rye and "Nine Stories," were influential and Catcher still resonates. Read about him here.

Canoe!

Song Obsessed

A lot of us become song obsessed from time to time. I've been obsessed with Let Down by Radiohead for over a month now. I became conscious of my obsession and started thinking of previous song obsessions, which led to me making a playlist that went on and on. There are currently 64 songs in the list and more may be added as my memory keeps bringing old obsessions to the fore.

Obsession comes from the Latin obsessus, meaning "besiege, occupy." Occupied by an idea, besieged by a persistent influence. That's cool. Music does it to me all the time.

I'm talking about playing a song all the time and singing it, and when you do those things you occupy a different reality. I'm not talking about song sung when very young, but music you hear from the radio or album and you are very conscious of it. Right now, my first memory of playing a song all the time involves the Help Me Rhonda. (Maybe I was in 5th or 6th grade).

I've chosen a few of my songs from past until now--less, I think, to share with you and more to just work out my memories. A life examined!

Help Me Rhonda: although important because of its primacy in my memory, it's more the fact that I liked and understood the lyrics. Understanding rock lyrics shows you ain't such a little kid anymore.

L.A. Woman (The Doors) and Going to California (Zepp) and Can't Stand Losing You (The Police) and The Message by Grandmaster Flash: all from 8th grade. See sentiment above about rock lyrics and intensify it.

Heroes by Bowie: first listened to in the eighties--Junior and Senior years in high school--and definitely tied to a great girlfriend and all those teen feelings of angst and romance.

Resposta by Skank: when I hear this song everything turns gold and I'm still living in Brasil. This is a great song from my favorite Brasilian rock band. It's a live version from an epic concert in Ouro Preto. I'm seen them live twice and the shows rank as top ten.

Bolero by Ravel: One of the songs to make me feel epic. I used to listen to this song quite a bit when running around Lagoa in Rio. It took my pace up so naturally and then I would cruise.

What I Got (Reprise) by Sublime: boy this one typifies the 90's for me. Lots of road tripping around Colorado with this on. 90's + Colorado = A Golden Age

Of course Loving Cup by the Rolling Stones: just see a previous post of mine.

Well, that’s it for now. Maybe more from the list later. Write in about a song you’ve become obsessed with, from whatever time of your life.

#MusicMonday: 50 Music Sites That Matter

#MusicMonday: 50 Music Sites That Matter

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Work in Progress

Hey Everybody,
while I can use a computer and do some stuff, I am not that technically savvy, especially with regard to certain specifics of blog tech 101. I know some of you have had issues becoming followers, subscribers, posting comments, etc. hang with me! I'm learning as I go along and hopefully all will be right. Just keep reading, spread the word, and keep posting comments.

Thanks, I do appreciate you letting me bug you with my attempt at restarting the creativity and just observing life.

Paul

I wanted to share an article with you from The Economist called "The Others". Although the article takes liberties with some facts (philosophers abroad), sketches too broadly at times, and does not address much about the expat experience, I feel it at least tries to address the issues of being/feeling foreign. Having lived and traveled out of the U.S. for ten of the last twenty years it is something I know. Read the article and tell me what you think. Some comments I have to make:

The writer states, "It has long been true in America that nobody can be foreign because everyone is foreign." Well, we know this writer isn't American, since there has been and still is a clear fear of the foreigner here. Hell, natives down here in South Carolina consider other Americans to be foreigners sometimes. What he was really saying was that one doesn't feel like a foreigner in America (this was a compliment I think), because of immigration's affect on the country (historical and current). Of course the reference point must be NYC, because I guarantee you there are parts of this country that would make any urbane Brit from London feel downright foreign (once again, the state I now live in).

The writer also states, " To get a strong sense of what it means to be foreign, you have to go to Africa, the Middle East, or parts of Asia." No you don't. His perspective here is terribly limiting, yet I know what he means. He means the areas that are rough, isolated, or culturally resilient in the face of globalization. Obviously if you go to Cape Town or Jo-burg, Beirut or Istanbul you are in cosmopolitan cities, regardless of the fact that you are in Africa or the Middle East. Again, to pick on South Carolina, if you ended up in the most rural areas of this very rural state you would get a strong sense of what it means to be foreign, much more so than, say, a Japanese tourist visiting Cape Town.

With a topic like this broad strokes don't always do it.

Better than the Original?

Today I’m going for something light. Recently I was discussing music with a colleague of mine and we got into 80’s music. Luckily we were on the same wavelength about that decade: for a lot of reasons it sucked musically; and, if you listen to all the same old stuff people keep playing on 80’s Hits stations you keep hearing the worst of the decade. Anyway, I brought up New Order’s Love Vigilantes as a great song from a great band that was unfairly typecast. From there I told my friend about Iron & Wine’s new cover version and how I couldn’t decide which was better.

We all know great examples of cover versions that have been deemed better than, or at least equal to, the original song. I’ll jump in to this old argument, hoping that you comment with your picks.

I’m going to say that I vote a tie between New Order’s Love Vigilante and Iron & Wine’s very recent version. They are so different and both work. Laura Cantrell does a great version and others who cover the tune are Oysterband, Poi Dog Pondering, Hungry Lucy, and Jimmy Ryan. Give them a listen and tell me which you like and why.

All Along the Watchtower by Hendrix is a better version than Dylan’s original. Now wait, I wasn’t comparing Hendrix to Dylan, it’s about the song itself. As a rock song, Hendrix’s version is better.

Eva Cassidy’s version of Song Bird exceeds the impact of the Fleetwood original, but only for subtle reasons and in small degrees. And some might give me grief but I’m going with the Fugee’s Killing Me Softly over Roberta Flack’s original. I know “old school” style seems to be always better but I’ve had a wicked crush on Lauryn Hill and part of it is her earnest, smooth and sexy voice.

If you google any variation of “cover version better than original” tons of hits pop up. For example, The Website hearya has a list of 33 (http://www.hearya.com), where I think they hit some right and missed others. Example: No way is The Rolling Stones’ version of Just My Imagination better than the Temptations’ original. Mick and the boys can pull off all sorts of American styles and intonations but I don’t think they can match the smoothness of the Temptations.

But I do agree with hearya that the Foo Fighters version of Baker Street by Jerry Rafferty is much better. The energy is there, simple as that. And The Pogues And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda wins!

Your thoughts? Any song, any genre.

Andy Goldsworthy and the “Loving Cup”

I receive most of my inspiration from three sources: nature, books, and music. One usually takes center stage; for example, a novel that invades my thoughts for weeks and makes me see myself differently. This past summer saw a confluence of two sources: music and nature, although nature was mediated through the eyes of the artist Andy Goldsworthy. I could say it was a confluence of art and music, yet Goldsworthy’s art is so “true” to, and not abstracted from, nature that I’m going to go ahead and chalk up one for nature’s power to inspire.

In July, just weeks back from Tanzania, still weak from malaria, and settling into my new home in South Carolina, I found comfort from two sources that seem to fit perfectly: the documentary on Andy Goldsworthy, Rivers and Tides, and the song “Loving Cup” by the Rolling Stones.

Goldsworthy first.

I think my wife Keely found the documentary on Netflix when she was browsing for something to stream instantly. We put it on and I was hooked, and I would replay all or parts of the documentary all through the summer (and still to this day when I need a boost). The film follows the artist as he works in a variety of locations and with different materials. As well, Goldsworthy likes to talk of his work and the natural world in a way I will describe as rustic Scottish Zen (I know he’s English but he’s been living in Scotland for a while and the description just fits).

I don’t recall when I first became aware of Andy Goldsworthy and his art. It wasn’t long ago. I have a vague memory of seeing one of his coffee table books in Argumento bookstore in the neighborhood of Leblon in Rio de Janeiro—probably around 2004. Until that point I didn’t know he existed nor did I know that his type of art even existed. Goldsworthy’s art is brilliant, and detailed and textured. Most importantly, it looks right to me. It is the intersection of human craft and the natural world without pretense.

I have always loved human elements, found in the outdoors, that have been taken over by the cycles of nature—the New England stonewall that once bounded a colonial farm but now lays wrapped by a vibrant forest. I like to see the edges of control worn down. In the grounds of the Schönbrunn Palace in Vienna, Austria there lies the artesian well that gives the palace its name. In a place that is highly manicured, the original well—alcoved and bricked round—still maintains some small feel of flow. In the shaded area the trees and bushes are allowed a little more freedom and Greek statues are mossy and weathered.

Finding a wall or statue changed by nature seems to me to evoke a natural association between human art and nature. After all the materials did come from the earth, no matter how manipulated. And I see what Goldsworthy does as akin to nature’s working upon art. He recognizes the flow of time and the connection to nature as the canvas itself, and so his art emerges as simultaneously natural and crafted.

In the documentary he talks of time and of getting to know a place, and he truly evokes a pastoral feel. And this pastoralism, as I sense it, is Romantic even when acknowledging the dark, brutal aspects of the natural world.

Perhaps this pastoral feel is where I made an association with “Loving Cup.”

As for this song by the Stones, I’ve known it for some time; not decades, but I think I’ve owned Exile on Main Street for at least ten years or more. I did watch Scorsese’s Shine a Light last year or the year before and do remember Jack White joining the Stones for a rendition of the song. Maybe that stuck with me. Last year in Tanzania I had a colleague whose presence provoked me to revisit my listening to the Stones. Maybe that was the clincher.

I can’t put my finger on the reasons I started listening to “Loving Cup” as a single and why it stuck with me all summer. A year ago, Eddie Vedder’s “Hard Sun” dominated my thoughts—for valid reasons, but many of those reasons were hard also, full of self-doubt, midlife angst, and dangerous nostalgia about my twenties and paths I chose not to pursue. Vedder’s song has reflected many aspects of the way I’ve lived my life, but “Loving Cup” celebrates the way I can live my life.

Somewhere along my journey last summer, the Stones and Goldsworthy merged.

The footage of Goldsworthy, spending days and days outside toiling to produce art, matches the opening lines to the song: “I’m the man on the mountain, come on up/I’m the plowman in the valley with his face full of mud.”

Take a close look at the artist’s hands in the documentary and you see the hands that any stonemason would admire. He is a workingman. You see him in the fields collecting sheep’s wool that lies scattered and stuck to walls and bushes. Soon after, he will work hard to transform the raw material to art. He walks through his village picking tiny yellow flowers by the side of the road to then turn into a striking piece.

And Jagger sings, “I’m the man who walks the hillside in the sweet summer sun/I’m the man who brings you roses when you ain’t got none.”

The two together inspired me the way art is said to inspire—it lifted my spirits, it made me think, it made me look at the world differently, and it made me imagine.

And I need imagination, and I’m glad the dominant song this past year was “Loving Cup.”

“Oh what a beautiful buzz, what a beautiful buzz.” (Jagger and Richards)