Michelle Tea's 'Against Memoir: Complaints, Confessions & Criticisms' (2018)

Michelle Tea, Against Memoir: Complaints, Confessions & Criticisms. New York: Feminist Press at the City University of New York, 2018. 

An eclectic collection of essays and memoir, or anti-memoir. The CONTENTS may give some idea of its scope.

"ART & MUSIC
On Valerie Solanas; Andy Warhol's Self-Portrait; Times Square; On Erin Markey; On Chelsea Girls; Gene Loves Jezebel; Purple Rain; Minor Threat; Sonic Youth's Magic.

LOVE & QUEERNESS
Transmissions from Camp Trans [and the Michigan Womyn's Music Fest]; How Not to Be a Queer Douchebag; Polishness; Hard Times; HAGS in Your Face; How to Refer to My Husband-Wife.

WRITING & LIFE
The City to a Young Girl; Pigeon Manifesto; Summer of Lost Jobs; Telling Your Friends You're Sober; Sister Spit Feminism; I Had a Miscarriage; Baba; Dire Straits; Against Memoir."

In the first section, Tea, though she's younger than I am, covers music, movies and books with which I'm mostly familiar. At some point in my early twenties I even picked up a copy of the soundtrack to Times Square, from a cutout bin for maybe a dollar or two, though to this day I haven't seen the movie yet. 

From "Times Square:" "We queers, artists, activists, intellectuals, misfits, know with the instinct of any migrating animal that we must go to the city to find ourselves, our lives, and our people. Times Square shows beautifully what is lost to us when we lose our cities, our scruffy, scuzzy, cheap, and accessible cities; our inspiring, cultured, miraculous, dangerous, spontaneous, surprising cities."  (pages 37-38).

In the second section, I found two pieces particularly interesting, "Transmissions" and "HAGS in Your Face." 

From "HAGS in Your Face:" "'We always wanted to be next to each other.'" (page 180). A nice turn of phrase.

In the final section, all are absorbing to varying degrees. "Pigeon Manifesto" is just plain sweet. 

From "The City to a Young Girl:" "I'm feeling it, the purpose and point of our political writings, our personal struggles. It's not to change the world that can't or won't be changed. It's to leave traces of ourselves for others to hold on to, a lifeline of solidarity that spans time, that passes on strength like a baton from person to person, generation to generation." (page 234). Amen to that. 

From "Sister Spit Feminism:" "The thing about being a poet, a writer, an artist, is, you can't be good. You shouldn't have to be good. You should, for the sake of your art, your soul, and your life, go through significant periods of time where you are defying many notions of goodness. As female artists, we required the same opportunities to fuck up and get fucked up as dudes have always had and been forgiven for; we needed access to the same hard road of trial and error our male peers and literary inspirations stumbled down . . ." (page 268). 

Can you dig? 

Today's Rune: Partnership. 

Isabel Allende: 'El amante japonés: Una novela' / 'The Japanese Lover: A Novel' (2015)

Isabel Allende: El amante japonés: Una novela / The Japanese Lover: A Novel (2015). A quick, easy read. It's strange to see allusions to very recent events in a novel, connected with the upheavals of the 1930s and 1940s. 

I particularly enjoyed the various points of view, ranging from the much older Alma to one of her caregivers and mentees, Irina. Both have immigrant backgrounds -- Alma, a refugee sent to California by concerned family during the encroachment of the Nazi menace, Irina rescued from the poverty of Moldova (though out of the frying pan into the fire). There's a Japanese family whose patriarch had moved to California to become a gardener well before the Second World War, breaking the family tradition of militarism, and numerous other characters. Ichimei Fukuda, son of the gardener and a gardener himself, is "the Japanese lover" -- Alma's.

The Japanese angle adds historical flourishes. There's a religious component with Ōmoto, a modern offshoot of Shinto that publishes tracts in the international language Esperanto. There's the holistic aspect of landscape gardening; internment during World War II preceded by the burial of the family war sword; and note of the highly decorated Japanese American combat unit, the 442nd Regimental Combat Team (whose history is worth a book of its own -- including those they fought in Europe, ranging from Germans to various detachments surprisingly fighting alongside them -- the Germans --  originating from Somalia, Poland, India and other unexpected places). 

A pretty cool, undemanding novel that deals with age and life changes, varied circumstances, refugees, immigrants, love and history, all laced together nicely.

Today's Rune: Wholeness. 

"The Italian:" The Life and Times of Tina Modotti (1896-1942)

Time is a trickster, compadres!  It's been two years since I last posted about Tina Modotti (1896-1942), but she sticks with me. Haunts me with her distant look and life's arc. 

After finishing Patricia Albers' Shadows, Fire, Snow: The Life of Tina Modotti (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002, 1999), I came across Margaret Hooks' Tina Modotti: Photographer and Revolutionary (London and San Francisco: Pandora, 1995, 1993). Both are absorbing, as befits their subject. By now I've gotten to catch some of her photographs during my travels and will keep those eyes open for more.

The quick version. Tina Modotti emigrated from Italy as a teenager, joining a small family foothold in San Francisco. Others would come later. Immigrants! Tina's arrival was nicely timed between the great earthquake of 1906 and the outbreak of the First World War in 1914. 

Tina did various and sundry to make ends meet, and then became an actress! She also engaged with artist-photographer Bohemian types. She became involved with "Robo" de l'Abrie Richey, dandy poet, and Edward Weston, photographer. She was also friends with Ricardo Gómez Robelo (1884-1924), who would later help her when she lived in Mexico. Richey died in Mexico and Modotti broke off her romance with Weston (more or less). She became closely engaged with the Mexican cultural scene and increasingly aware of the erupting global socio-political situation.   

Diego Rivera, En el Arsenal, 1928, Secretaría de Educación Pública, Mexico City.

Also in Mexico, Tina became jumbled in with Diego Rivera (1886-1957), Guadalupe "Lupe" Marín (1895-1981), Gómez Robelo (her friend from California days), and Comrade Concha Michel. By the time Rivera painted En el Arsenal (above), others were on the scene, too: Xavier Guerrero (1896-1974), the Cuban Julio Antonio Mella (1903-1929) -- the Che Guevera of his day -- Frida Kahlo (1907-1954),  and Vittorio Vidali (1900-1983). 

They all or most became (at least nominally) Communists -- when not enjoying various Bohemian distractions. Some, like Modotti, Vidali and Mella (all three pictured in the right foreground of Rivera's painting) became hardcore communists. Mella was gunned down right before Tina's eyes while they were walking down the street. Her life's story to date was plastered over the newspapers as scandal, with Modotti referred to as "The Italian."

In 1930, she made it to Berlin with the help of International Red Aid (MOPR), just barely escaping the clutches of Italian fascists, who would have killed her. After several harrowing cloak and dagger years, Modotti and Vidali headed into the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939),  Modotti as "Maria" and Vidali as "Comandante Carlos." After Spain fell, they returned to Mexico. After Pearl Harbor and the German Declaration of War, the US became coalition partners with the Soviet Union, strangely enough -- such is the bizarre kaleidoscope of history. 

Poor Tina died of heart failure at age 45. Her life had been anything but bland, though. She'd shifted in her immediate relationships from namby-pamby men to the ruthless Vittorio, from Bohemian actress to grim operative. She had mixed with wildly creative artists and became for a time an excellent photographer of the Mexican proletariat. 

What an arc, from Italy to Mexico and stations in between! I would love to have met her!

Today's Rune: Wholeness. 

Amy J. Berg's 'Janis: Little Girl Blue' (2015)

Amy J. Berg's Janis: Little Girl Blue (2015), a state of the art documentary biography of Janis Joplin (1943-1970), presents her life in a most compelling, sensitive and soulful manner. My first serious foray into this field was Howard Alk's Janis (1974), which I saw at the Melkweg in Amsterdam when I was twenty-two -- and I loved it, not to mention the audience's raucous response. Now I'd consider Alk's documentary as a complement or supplement to Berg's. There have been other films, and there have been excellent books on Janis, too. As anyone who knows her music can testify, Janis Joplin was intense. Amy J. Berg has done her justice here. 

Today's Rune: Signals. 

France and Spain in New Orleans: Part II

La Nouvelle-Orléans, founded in 1718, formally remained part of the Empire of France until near the end of the Seven Years War, in 1762; from 1762 until 1803, it became Nueva Orleans of the Empire of Spain. New Orleans was briefly ceded back to France under Napoleon I, at which point it was sold to the USA.

Whether under French, Spanish or American control, New Orleans never fell to the British Empire. 

Cathédrale Saint-Louis, Roi-de-France / Cathedral-Basilica of Saint Louis, King of France / Basílica de San Luis. Pictured here circa 1838 in the Spanish Colonial style (flanked by turrets). Since the beginning, there has been a Catholic Church on this site.

Same cathedral in October 2015, with accentuated spires, significantly modified. (Photo courtesy of SAB).  

In the Cabildo: portrait of Antoine Jacques Philippe de Marigny de Mandeville.

Butterscotch house in the Quarter.

Portrait of Napoleon I (1769-1821) at the New Orleans Museum of Art (NOMA).

Mosaic in front of the Napoleon House, 500 Chartres Street -- in the Quarter.

To me, after traveling between Madrid, San Francisco and New Orleans, the Spanish, French and Catholic flourishes became very evident and interconnected. All of these cities are tributes to architecture and design, and all (in their centers) are quite walkable.

Today's Rune: Fertility.  

Nella Fontaine Binckley (1860-1951) Strikes Again, 1904-1909

Early in the 20th century, Nella Fontaine Binckley (1860-"1877"-1951) illustrated "clever books for clever people." The text to two of these books was credited to John William Sargent.

Pictured here: 

"To Womankind. 

Here's to all the women in all the earth . . . 
Bless their dear hearts, I love them all!" 

A glimpse of diversity well ahead of its time. Judging from the US Republican presidential debate on Wednesday night, still ahead of its time. Kalamazoo, Michigan is referenced, along with "Tokio." 

This homage to San Francisco reflects Nella's time spent in California. We see a representative of Chinatown, streetcars, a sailing boat and flowers. The Great Earthquake struck there in 1906. Nella was living on the East Coast by then. 

Nella's books advertised in a 1906 edition of Publisher's Weekly: Toasts for the Times in Pictures and Rhymes and Smoke and Bubbles. 

I received examples of Nella's illustrations from New Zealand, via this jaunty envelope. Even now, life imitates art and vice versa!

Here's a rather desirous little ditty: 

"A Toast to a Brunette."

I'll drain this cup

of brown delight

To lips of dawn

and eyes of night,

And dream those lips

may speak some day

All that the eyes

have seemed to say.

Today's Rune: Partnership. 

Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo in Detroit

Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo in Detroit (Detroit Institute of Arts, 2015) is packed with good stuff. I love it! The Detroit Industry murals, check, along with other Detroit works by both artists, plus from during their San Francisco stay -- (their place of work there was located at 716 Montgomery Street); New York City; and, first and last, Mexico. Their Detroit stay ran from April 1932 to March 1933, though in September of 1932, Frida hurried off to Coyoacán, Mexico, to be with her dying mother; she returned late in October. While in Detroit, Diego focused on his large-scale murals; Frida completed several important smaller-scale works of her own.   

One of the stellar works created by Frida Kahlo while in Detroit in 1932 is shown here: Autorretrato en la frontera entre México y los Estados Unidos / Self-Portrait on the Border of Mexico and The United States. Between pages 93 and 96 of Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo in Detroit, there is an almost full-size repro (the actual dimensions are given as 12.5" x 13.75" / 31.8 x 34.9  cm.). 

 
Also included in Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo are several telegrams and letters from the period. One from Frida to Guillermo Kahlo, her father (who was German-born) in Mexico, is dated November 21, 1930, when she was living in San Francisco. In it she describes how happy she is to have received a letter from him. "The only thing I didn't like is that you told me that you're just as quick-tempered as always, but since I'm the same way, I understand you very well and I know that it's very hard to control yourself; anyway, try your best at least for mama, who is so good to you . . ."  (page 124). What a character. And what a treasure, their art, for Mexico, Detroit, San Francisco and the world. 

Happy Labor Day in the USA! 

Today's Rune: Breakthrough. 

Surrealism and Nella Fontaine Binckley (1860-1877-1951)

Nella Fontaine Binckley (1860-1877-1951), "The Last Analysis. Woman's Rights -- the total sum -- Right man and right income" (1906). Is this satire?  Is this social commentary? Either way, it's in the year 1906.

"A Tongue of Good Report. Tell not your wife of others' sins / Or of yours she'll get a notion; / For you should know that 'Ignorance / Is the mother of Devotion.'"

"Verily. No man, poor slave, can ever save Enough to pay the rent, Howe'er he strive, howe'er he thrive, Without his wife's consent."

"A wife not too clever / Is a joy forever" ~ Nella Fontaine Binckley (1906).

"All is Vanity. . . Of the wise men of Greece and of Gotham we hear, / Bur we know, if we're older than ten, / that since the first woman arrived on the sphere / There haven't been any wise men."

Today's Rune: Strength. 

History and San Francisco: The Artist Nella Fontaine Binckley (1860-1951)

Late in 2014, I started coming across references in biographies to various people living in San Francisco, which got me to thinking about the place after a hiatus of many years. Then, earlier this year (late in June), I was lucky enough to travel there to attend a library conference in the city, which is how I found a beautiful, historic place to stay: the Hotel Majestic, built in 1902 and survivor of the 1906 earthquake and subsequent fires. My gratefulness for all of this is boundless.

On the astral plane (as it were), two people in particular led me back to San Francisco: Tina Modotti and Howard Thurman. I've posted about them elsewhere.*

Since my return, I came across a third person specifically connected to the place: the artist Nella (sometimes Ellie, Nellie or Ellen) Fontaine Binckley (1860-1951).  I came across her while researching her grandfather, Harvey Mitchell (1799-1866), who was also an artist.

Even from what little I've discovered about her so far, Nella was quite a character. Born in Washington, D.C., where her father (John Milton Binckley) worked for the U.S. Government, she studied art and eventually moved to San Francisco in the late 1800s, where she sketched and painted in Chinatown, among other places. She worked at a studio at 932 Sutter Street, which is right next to the "Hotel Vertigo" of Alfred Hitchcock fame. The Hotel Majestic is at 1500 Sutter Street, just six hilly blocks away. At the turn of the century, Nella went back to the East Coast and lived in Washington City, Philadelphia and Manhattan. She died at about age ninety-one in a fire in Washington, where she is buried (in Oak Hill Cemetery).

One of the great things about Nella is that, after 1900 or so, she somehow managed to convince people that she was born in 1877 rather than 1860. How fun is that?

Check out her California State Library authority card from 1911. 
Name in full: Nella Fontaine Binckley. 
Present address: "Caramella[?]," 525 Locust Ave., Germantown, Philadelphia, Pa.
Place of birth: Washington, D.C.
Date: Too remote to mention.
If married, to whom? No -- spinster.
Years spent in California: From 1898 to 1900. . . San Francisco, Santa Rosa, Santa Barbara.

The illustration at top by Nella Fontaine Binckley is from Smoke and Bubbles (1906). She was 46 at the time -- or was she 29? I love it!

Today's Rune: Wholeness.  
*Tina Modotti and Howard Thurman  links.  

Of "Tipping Points" and "Black Swan Events"

Started in on Nassim Nicholas Taleb's The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable (2007, 2010+) and am thinking how it seems to dovetail in some ways with Malcolm Gladwell's The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference (2000) and Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking (2005). Love this stuff. I'm not the only one by a long shot. In San Francisco, for example, had a fun discussion with a shrewd Filipino taxi driver about his favorite book -- Blink.

Initial response. A couple of recent watershed moments seem like the culmination of long slogging culminating in sudden shifts: LGBT marriage rights (in the USA and globally) and the removal of the Confederate battleflag from government buildings in the USA. These are the result of tipping points -- not complete shocks, but still surprising after seeing only incremental change  over many years.

Black Swan Events seem more "out of the blue." Two examples: one, the sudden plunge in gasoline/petrol prices in late 2014 from which such prices still have yet to "recover;" two, the sudden end to a depressing five year drought in Texas just this past May (2015). 

The drop in gas prices was wild. The follow-up question is, how did various people and groups respond to this change? 

The wild spike in rain in Texas was an even bigger surprise. True, climate change models have long suggested wild fluctuations in historical climate patterns, locally and regionally. However, no one to my knowledge could or did predict with any exactness what happened in the large area in and around Texas. Indeed, it was called a "one in two thousand year event" (when in fact, due to climate change, it may become a one in two year event -- maybe). 

Late spring flooding in Texas was a disaster for many, but overall, such heavy rains suddenly providing a dramatic reprieve to drought conditions is worth noting and remembering in the future. Here, it's generally better to have too much "fresh" water than not enough. There is some general prediction that California might also be rained out because of the formation of El Niño, which if it materializes would provide a tipping point against the current drought, if not (because of fairly detailed models) exactly a Black Swan Event. 

Cool to ponder. What other kinds of tipping points and Black Swan Events have people noticed lately?

Today's Rune: The Self. 

Visions of a Better World: Howard Thurman's Pilgrimage to India

Quinton Dixie and Peter Eisenstadt's Visions of a Better World: Howard Thurman's Pilgrimage to India and the Origins of African American Nonviolence (Boston: Beacon Press, 2011) works nicely in tandem with Thurman's wondrous autobiography. Some of the same ground is covered, often from a different angle, with the core of this book built around Thurman and the four-person delegation from the United States that extensively and intensely criss-crossed India in the mid-1930s. The parallels between Jim Crow in the USA, British imperial administration in greater India, the caste system and various other forms of socio-economic power interactions were clear, as were emerging methods utilized to change things up. Howard Thurman and his companions did their part in seeding the ground for change, embracing "interculture" and ahimsa, or "nonviolence" (a word Mahatma Gandhi is credited with having "coined" in 1920), a pragmatic and also transcendent long-term approach that begins with consciousness raising.   

"The delegation visited more than fifty cities during their tour . . . There were at least 265 speaking engagements in the 140 days the tour was in Asia, with Thurman speaking at 135 of the engagements" plus "interviews with [Rabindranath] Tagore and Gandhi." (Visions of a Better World: Howard Thurman's Pilgrimage to India, pages 86-87).  The latter was the first meeting of Gandhi with an African American delegation, and it was a resounding success. 

During the Second World War (in 1944), Howard Thurman and his family moved to San Francisco and worked to build up the Church for the Fellowship of All People, an integrated, intercultural organization. Until then, there had been very few integrated religious bodies in the USA -- besides small groups in San Francisco, Oberlin, Philadelphia and Detroit, little success had yet been realized in breaking down race-perception barriers. "The need for whites and blacks [and others] to work together was precisely to overcome the abstractness of race relations lived in separate segregated worlds" (page 157). This was a new beginning at changing the status quo.

Reaching beyond the status quo is one of the many aspects of Howard Thurman's action-worldview that resonates with me. I am in accord with his thinking and his hopes, seeking to live, inspire and seed the opposite of what he called "The Tragedy of Dull-Mindedness."

Today's Rune: Flow. 

Howard Thurman (1899-1981): With Head and Heart ~ Take I

Just about finished reading With Head and Heart: The Autobiography of Howard Thurman (originally published in 1981). What a life! What an arc!  

He's looking up and seeing Halley's Comet in the year 1910. Around the same time, a traveling salesman is peddling "comet pills" to save you from comet-crashing-infernos. . .

Hungry, resourceful and often on the move, Howard makes friends with librarians wherever he goes -- and reads as many books as he can at all times when not writing his own. Like Frederick Douglass, he is propelled by the initial ability to read, and thereby to ponder, and thereby to kick out the jams, and thereby to bust another move way on down the line. . .

He outflanks segregation time and again, raising consciousness -- his own and that of those he encounters -- along the way.

Thanks to one act of kindness by a good Samaritan, he's able to take a train with luggage and some food . . . on to Morehouse College in Atlanta; later to Rochester, New York and Roanoke, Virginia; King's Mountain, North Carolina; Oberlin, Ohio; Howard University, District of Columbia; to India and meetings with poets, writers and Gandhi (in 1936, mind you); to San Francisco and the Church for the Fellowship of All Peoples in the very midst of the Second World War; to Boston University; to the Middle East and Africa; and back to San Francisco . . . almost all this time during the segregated/American Apartheid/Jim Crow years . . .

Thurman's thinking-journeying is advanced and inspiring for any age or time -- including the 21st century. 

"In my mind, religion had become so identified with sectarianism, and its essence so distorted by it, that I felt a need to bring to bear all the resources of mind and spirit on the oneness of the human quest. . . the human situation, the human predicament, the human plight" (1st edition, pages 199-200).

You read this, you want to do things, and communicate them.

Today's Rune: Fertility. 

Behold a Pale Horse: Take I

Now that fifty years have passed since it was first lost in the shuffle of the Cold War, let's consider Fred Zinnemann's Behold a Pale Horse (1964).

It's in black and white.

It's based on a novel that is in turn based on historical events.

Zinnemann (1907-1997) is better known by the arc of his entire movie career, with films such as High Noon (1952), From Here to Eternity (1953), A Man for All Seasons (1966) and The Day of the Jackal (1973).  

Anthony Quinn plays Captain Viñolas -- "the villain" -- but with Zorba the Greek (1964) in the pipeline, he seems to enjoy the part with his usual gusto. Gregory Peck, fresh off his role as the strong, saintly Atticus Finch in To Kill A Mockingbird (1962), here plays a much more ambiguous "anti-hero," a Spanish anarchist named Artíguez. Omar Sharif plays the youngest of the trio, Padre Francisco-- sandwiched between his epic roles in Lawrence of Arabia (1962) and Dr. Zhivago (1965).   

Behold a Pale Horse is even-handed and raises several questions about morality and ethics on all sides, but was banned outright in Spain by the regime of Generalissimo Francisco Franco (1892-1975), el Caudillo de la Guerra de Liberación contra el Comunismo y sus Cómplices. Since the governments of Spain and the USA had signed the Pact of Madrid in 1953, Franco had enough leverage to throw cultural roadblocks against Behold a Pale Horse, even in North America. And so it has largely been forgotten. Fifty years later -- no longer! Lest we forget, the First Amendment is #1 for a reason.

Today's Rune: Separation (Reversed). 

Woody Allen: Blue Jasmine (Take II)

The thoughts keep bubbling, heated up lately by Woody Allen's Blue Jasmine (2013). For today, another aspect or way of seeing Cate Blanchett's title character. 

Note: I'll place quotation marks around phrases that float around in common cultural consciousness, "if you know what I mean." 

"At one level," you could say, Jasmine presents us with an allegory of the Great Recession, 2008 before and after. She and her Ponzi-scheming husband Hal (Alec Baldwin). "Living the high life," they were, until it abruptly collapsed. Yet, as the movie begins, Jasmine's "sense of entitlement" let's her feel disconnected from her changed (crumpled) situation -- actually she is "split," in shock, suspended or going back and forth between the self that "treats herself because she deserves it" and the bedraggled self that must "reinvent" or "pivot" -- "going forward" while also looking backward. The split is represented by a "geographic" -- New York City (up to the crash), San Francisco (after the crash). And the contrast is depicted in the changes time has wrought, contrasted against her sister Ginger (Sally Hawkins) and their different socio-economic realities.  The allegory part is this: there are millions of people in Jasmine's predicament, pre-collapse and post-collapse.  

That's enough for one post!

Today's Rune: Possessions.   

Woody Allen: Blue Jasmine (Take I)

I really dig Blue Jasmine (2013), Woody Allen's latest flick, and plan to see it again. This is essentially a drama, not a comedy, though there are plenty of eclectic elements like satire and touches of dark humor included. Lots to muse about with Blue Jasmine. You might compare it generally to Husbands and Wives (1992) or Hannah and Her Sisters (1986) -- in this case, the spotlight is on Jasmine/Jeanette (Cate Blanchett) and her sister Ginger (Sally Hawkins), both adopted, in changed circumstances.

Blue Jasmine has: an excellent ensemble cast; class consciousness; a superb soundtrack; fish out of water (role reversal) elements; satire; social commentary; San Francisco and New York City.

Today's Rune: Joy.  

Ramblin' Jack Elliott Comes to Town (Part II)

Jack Elliott and friends at Live Oak Music Hall & Lounge (1311 Lipscomb Street, just off Magnolia) in Fort Worth, Texas (continued).

Ramblin' Jack sort of complimented Larry Mahan's black hat look with his own white hat and red suspenders, cowboy clothes, boots and acoustic guitar. He did "Old Shep" after a story abut his dog Caesar who would occasionally take the wheel of an old pickup truck and drive very slowly. He tuned up, said this was the final stop on his latest five week or so tour, that this was the first time he really tuned his guitar right. "It's an honor to break in a new edifice," he said.

Of his moniker, he noted "there’s no 'g' in his name except in England," where they say "Rambling Jack." Put his shades on after a while. Told about Jesse Fuller, the "Lone Cat," and did Fuller's "San Francisco Bay Blues," explained how the Lone Cat created his own multi-faceted instruments.

At some point, Ramblin' Jack got tired of his voice cracking due to touring and "weather changes," and asked for a medicinal drink from the bar. Live Oak owner Bill Smith brought him a glass of whiskey or its equivalent on ice.  Jack: "There’s too much ice . . ." He explained that too much ice is bad for one's humors (or humours, if you prefer), especially while singing and talking.

He told tales about busking around Europe for years in the 1950s, right into the early 1960s, with his wife at the time, June (Hammerstein/Elliott, now Shelley).  They eventually parted ways and later she became a special assistant to The Rolling Stones during their great Exile On Main St. (1972) period in France. He mentioned her memoir, Even When It Was Bad... It Was Good (Xlibris, 2000) -- more to tell about the whole episode, maybe in another post.   

After a particular breakup (with June?), Ramblin' Jack found himself in the middle of a snowstorm in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, a local appearance cancelled on account of the weather, so he made his way to a DJ friend's radio station and did some stuff on air until the DJ decided to close down the station. Before he did, Jack climbed a hundred rungs up the radio tower into the storm, head thrust into snow swirling all around, before coming back down, feeling bleak and cold. The DJ took him to a mountaintop hunting lodge, made a fire and they settled down to venison, Wild Turkey and a Bob Dylan album. This was when he learned (despite being a slow learner, he said) Dylan's "Don't Think Twice, It's All Right" (and later recorded it, in the late 1960s).  When he first played it with Bob Dylan in the audience, Dylan said, "I relinquish it to you, Jack." And then, after this storied introduction, Ramblin' Jack played the song and it was a truly groovy moment!   

At various times, Ramblin' Jack's live singing style reminds me of Willie Nelson, Woody Guthrie, Nick Cave, Neil Young and Bob Dylan.  Here he did "Diamond Joe" and a mix of folk, blues, country and country rock.

 

He also did one version of  Jelly Roll Morton's "Windin' Boy," which has the line "I’m the Windin’ Boy, don’t deny my name." (He referenced Alan Lomax here -- and there are two versions, both ribald but one version more so than the other -- as in NC-17 rating).

Ramblin' Jack Elliott is a living reminder that recorded music really only goes back about a century. What's incredible is that he (like Chuck Berry and B. B. King, dudes I've also turned out to see in the near past) has been playing and singing for more than half of its entire arc. How humbling and cool is that? My motto: any artist 65 or over, get out and see 'em before they retire or otherwise stop performing -- if possible.

Today's Rune: Journey.  

 

 

Run Like a Villain to the Sugar Bowl!

Given the Super Bowl and its New Orleans setting, here are a few photos snapped during a not-too-distant voltigeur sortie into the Vieux Carré, the French and Spanish old city with its most excellent architecture and landscape design.
























For the record, the Baltimore Ravens defeated the San Francisco 49ers 34-31, barely, after a strange power outage in the third quarter.  

From a cherished courtyard at the Place d'Armes.

Today's Rune: Joy.