KESELOWSKI FINDS CLEAN AIR

jr peels out from a pit stop 

The race this Sunday at Chicago satisfied what I like in a race. No wrecks. Two fenders were crunched from a run-in with the wall, both easily repairable on pit row. A motor or two blew. I saw Joey Logana cross the finish line with a blown motor. He was around fifth heading for the line and the cloud of smoke appeared behind him that says engine blew up. He crossed the finish line dragging his smoke behind. No better place to lose your engine. Nobody was close enough behind him to have advantage from  his sudden loss off momentum. Brad Keselowski took the win. I've been watching both these drivers coming on with some solid racing this year. Logano is a good driver with a passionate drive to win. When he has the car to do it with, he can run out front, in clean air, as they call it. The air at a race track during a race is not anything near clean. The pollution is worse than London or Beijing, much worse. The aroma of exhaust rich with raw gas and the molecule clusters leaving all the tires at all times gives the air it's scent particular to a good race. An upside down bowl of intense air pollution hovers above the track, over the seating area. It's part of the thrill of the race. The volume is like at a good rock concert so you cannot be heard screaming into the ear of the one standing next to you. It is, indeed, that loud. The thrill is much the same as a good concert. I saw the Cars in the early 80s and did not need ears to hear it. The surface of my body vibrated like it was all eardrum. Great concert. A band I never had the opportunity to see, Rage Against The Machine, but have all their cds. The audience at a race I felt when I was in one, was ecstatic as a Jane's Addiction concert. I make these comparisons, because it's how I felt at my one live race in Charlotte. The ecstatic part is remarkably similar. 

joey logano quik tire change

I love the rush of a race so loud you're deaf to anything else and the intense pollution, the scent in the air we've known since birth. Before oil, it was the scent of horse manure in air. The aroma is the familiar scent we are so accustomed to we don't smell it, intensified ten thousand times. Or more. I'd rather watch the race on tv. None of those ecstatic aspects of the race come across on tv, but I can see the race better on tv. And it's a lot less expensive to watch. I can see the cars working for position, passing somebody difficult to pass. Brad Keselowski started the race fairly far back in the pack. I don't remember what kept him back there. All the while he was laying back, I was thinking I'd like to see him pass everybody and win. I knew he could do it. The crew might have been adjusting the car until they found the key. When it came time, he passed car after car, drove up to the front, passed everybody in the lead and left them behind. Clean air. I've been paying attention to Keselowski this year, simply because his driving demands attention. He does not mess around. With the car that will do it for him, he'll win the race. His team has put together some good cars for him this year. Kurt Busch was tapped by his brother Kyle just enough to lose traction. Kurt started into the sideways slide, caught traction and brought it back. Didn't even lose much momentum. His ability to catch traction has impressed me about Kurt Busch's driving for a few years. I've been watching the race enough for the last three or four years to associate drivers with their numbers in some cases. 

keselowski in clean air

Early on, I was just watching the cars. I figured all the drivers were about the same ability, and they are, but there is so much else involved. The psychology of the driver. The skills of the mechanics who build the engines, the suspension, the wheels, their abilities are also about equal. If any one of the mechanics involved in a race happened to be somebody I knew, like a neighbor, I'd be in awe of his skill, his talent, the same as an artist, Jasper Johns, an example. I'm guessing at least a thousand mechanics are involved in the crews of all the cars in a race, most often 43. Not including the pit crews, which are an entity unto themselves, like ants. I am told they practice all week long and work out flexing and strengthening themselves, keeping in tune. All the crews of mechanics and pit have their lead man whose mind directs the process that brings the whole together. The studio musicians and electrical engineers involved in pop music in Nashville, LA and NY, I see artists in the same way I see the mechanics involved with the race cars. The driver races the machine the mechanics put together, a precision machine made of computer engineering, You can see it when a driver has a car that is running just right. Kevin Harvick had a good car. He was a serious contender until Keselowski's momentum took the lead by outrunning everybody else and the one nobody could catch, until #2 turned up in his rear view mirror. Keselowski made some good passes. The race in the last hundred laps was a visible race. Half a dozen cars were taking turns in the lead. It was looking like Harvick might have it when nobody could catch him, before Brad K put his pedal to the metal. 

kyle larson blew his motor

All the drivers were giving it the best they had. Their cars were as good as they could be that day. So many of the cars were equal that it made a good race of one car dominating for awhile, then something changes and another car dominates in its turn. This race satisfied my idea of a good race. It was a race from the green flag on to checker. So many good drivers and cars, it looked like the win was up for grabs between half a dozen, depending on who was in front on the last lap. Then along came #2 and left the others in his air turbulence. In attendance at the track, I would not have been able to see the subtle strategies the drivers use for passing and for blocking while they're driving as fast as the track and the car allow, holding it there in intense heat and intense noise. I watch artistry in the driving the same as I watch artistry in a dancer. I call it artistry when it is a skill that has reached the place of using intuition, feeling, emotion in the delivery. Melvin switched the tv to football when commercials came on. It was so much better to watch football than ads for artery blockage stuff to eat, beautiful cars I can't afford and erectile dysfunction. Viagra commercials bring an association in my head of Lou Reed in his song Heroin, cause it makes me feel like I'm a man, when I put a spike into my vein. On one of the Viagra commercials I hear John Lee Hooker's guitar to the melody, I like the way you walk, I like the way you talk, I like the way you walk, you my babe, I got my eyes on you. The song is just right for the commercial and at once as racist as The Little Rascals. I laugh every time I hear it, but would rather watch football. Saw some good plays. Saw some good catches, some good drives for touchdowns. Good games today. Peyton Manning, quarterback with Denver, has artistry in his skill. I see him the artist as quarterback. The referee calls were good too.  

pit row

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LOU REED HAS LEFT THIS WORLD

john cale and lou reed

We'll have no more musical inventions by rocker Lou Reed. He has left us so much to listen to, so much that is fresh and new every time, his body of work extensive. To celebrate Lou, I went to cds and picked up a 3-cd set called The Quine Tapes, cassette tapes recorded in three different cities in 1969 by Bob Quine. I think they were released in a box set of three in 2001. On facebook appeared a question to name your favorite Lou Reed song. That one just stopped my mind. I couldn't think of anything. So many titles it makes a log jam to try to think of them all at once. Even reading a list of his songs I couldn't pick one and say this one above all others. I've been listening to Velvet Underground since the album with the banana peel by Andy Warhol. I wasn't ready for them first time I heard the album. It was a period of time when the Rolling Stones were filling football stadiums all over the world, the Allman Brothers with Duane Allman, Eric Clapton with Cream, and the two got together as Derek and the Dominoes. I was into Blind Faith, Cream + Steve Winwood. This was the direction my rock n roll ear was going at the time. Then I hear I'm Waiting For The Man, Heroin, Black Angel Death Song, European Son, a sound my ear wasn't used to listening to. Didn't play it much, but each time I heard it, it became a bit more interesting. Then I discovered Lou Reed and John Cale as musicians and it was on.

 

john cale, lou reed, sterling morrison, mo tucker

velvet underground

 

 

I think of Lou Reed an American poet who gives poetry readings as rock concerts. It's the same for me with Bob Dylan and Steve Earle. It was hopeless to have a chance to see Lou Reed give a concert outside New York. They were a particularly New York band, the art world part of New York that does not translate well to the rest of the country. The Velvet Underground sound seemed to my ear to turn its back to the flower child phenomenon, taking on a rough edge instead of the guitar solo smooth edge. They seemed to reach back into the Fifties sound that the rest of the bands were leaving. The psychedelia bands drew their inspiration from Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Jerry Lee, while the Velvets drew their inspiration from Bo Diddley and Buddy Holly. I'm speaking only from my own ear. I've never read any books about the history of rock & roll. I don't even look at Rolling Stone. The few times I've looked at a Rolling Stone it seems like an oxymoron to intellectualize rock. I don't want to read anything intellectualizing the Murderdolls or Mazzy Star. Rock is what it is. That is all it is. It has never seemed right to me to write about rock. I see book after book on the subject, even picked up a history of rock years ago and never opened it. I looked at the pictures. Not much can be said about rock. At this very moment am hearing the Velvets playing an eleven minute version of Ride Into The Sun. Dazzlingly beautiful. Now is starting a 28 minute Sister Ray / Foggy Notion. Thank you, Lou Reed.

 

lou reed

 

 

I can't even think about evaluating Lou Reed critically. I can only write of my own experience with his music over way more than half my life ago. My own Lou Reed experience is that every time I hear anything he made, from Velvets to his last as Lou Reed, I appreciate it more than before. It has been stair-step up the appreciation scale all the years I've listened to his music. Especially now that I've been listening to acoustic music played by masters of their instruments for so many years. Hearing Lou assault his electric guitar strings wringing out Sister Ray. Sterling Morrison is playing rhythm and lead with Lou, Doug Yule is playing bass and Mo Tucker beating the drums. These are people whose musicianship I appreciate more as what my ear can hear expands over years of listening to music. I've never liked boring music. Lou Reed's music is never boring. He doesn't like boring music either. His band was something of a war on boring music. Years of hearing African urban dance hall music from all over the continent, old-time fiddle and banjo music, bluegrass, country, and punk threading through all of it. I need to have my punk moment from time to time, put on Nina Hagen, Jim Carroll Band, The Damned, Hole, L7, Rage Against The Machine. When I want to rock, I want to rock. At this moment I'm asking myself why I don't listen to more. I'm enjoying this madly. I like the sharp assault they hit the strings with. I'm turning the volume up and up as it goes along. I like Lou's verbal assaults. He doesn't scream. He hits with words. He does his screaming through his guitar.

 

velvet underground

 

 

He published a book of his songs without the music, Between Thought And Expression: Selected Lyrics of Lou Reed. It makes a good book of poetry. When it comes to poetry written by rock stars, it is out there in a league of its own. Lou Reed rates a place among contemporary American poets. He has influenced many an American poet of his generation and younger. Bob Dylan is another one whose lyrics make good reading independent of the music. Both Reed and Dylan tend to talk their songs more than sing them. In the time Lou Reed was making new albums, each one was a work of art. It wasn't just a bunch of songs thrown together to make an album. It was, but he was reaching for art in his writing and in his music. He caught it. I don't hesitate to call Lou Reed an artist in the same meaning I'd use for Larry Rivers and Jasper Johns. When psychedelia faded into Bon Jovi, a wave of punk hit the world's big cities. It seemed like it happened all at once. The Sixties bands that featured virtuoso guitar solos could not be topped by the next generation. Punk happened and you didn't have to know how to play a guitar. Sid Vicious never learned. He was so bad the Sex Pistols only used him on stage for the outrageous audience appeal. They had another bassist for recording. Paul Simenon of the Clash didn't know how to play a bass when they started the band. He was a friend the others wanted in the band. Punk was all-out whatever noise you could make. A revolution. The Velvet Underground was the band from the Sixties whose influence went on into the next generation of rock. Lou Reed lived long enough to see himself become a legend. Though he probably never reached his own ideal, he could certainly look back over his lifetime and see that he made a difference.   

 

lou reed

 

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WHITE SMOKE OVER THE VATICAN

 

 

 

 

I don't know what it is about the papacy that holds my interest, albeit a disinterested interest. I have dim affection for the Roman Catholic religion as far as I know. The Church appears to me to do the reverse of the spiritual intent behind the symbolism. Gold representing whatever, white representing whatever, red representing whatever, lace representing whatever. Outfits from Roman times that are made of incredibly expensive cloth with personal tailors. Recalling a Lou Reed song that had the line, Pontif, pretty Pontif, spoken in Reed's sassy suburban teenage sneer tone of voice. I think it was somewhere on his New York album. When I hear it, I feel a twinge of empathy for il papa without knowing why. I tend to see the Roman Catholic Church the original bureaucracy, the original hierarchy, the original monopoly, the original dictatorship, the original international corporation, straight-jacket bound in a couple thousand years of tradition plus all the way back to goddess, tax-free wealth beyond the Cayman Islands, outrageously expensive (sacred) objects of gold. I left out the original conqueror of the New World sponsoring the slaughter of New World residents as too heathen to exist. For the gold. For the gold only. The Inca and Aztec civilizations were plundered to extinction for their gold taken back to the Crown and the Church. The North American people were slaughtered by Protestants to get them out of the way. Then it might be said, the Catholic approach was to kill them and take their gold, while the Protestant approach was to kill them for the thrill in the killing.  

 

In a paragraph, that's a summary of how I see organized religion. The more organized, the worse. The most organized, the worst. I have the Protestant perspective from the start of seeing the pope as just a man. As just a man, I can appreciate il papa. That's it. That's where I appreciate the pontif. When I saw pictures of old Pope John bent over, unable to hold his head up, looking like a case of dementia, I felt empathy for him. He's just a man, but he's pope for life. If it takes all he can do to raise his hand and give the papal wave, he's pope for life. As long as he's living, he's pope. When old Benedict went in, looking way too much like the actor who played the Emperor in the Star Wars series, I felt sorry for him right off. He looked small and frail. Saying so soon he was unable to keep up with the papacy's regimen, the doctor having told him not to travel anymore, I could see he was in the early phases of frailty. He recognized it and saw that the Church needed a fresh mind to walk it through this next span of papal time, not somebody fading into frailty and dementia. It looks like the Church is going to be walking on hot coals for some time to come.

 

 Lawsuits over child abuse from everywhere in the world have the potential to put the Church's outlandish wealth in jeopardy, perhaps into sales at international auction houses of wardrobes of popes past and infinite amounts of gold. When Wall Street starts sniffing at the leavings, look out. This period of time could put the Holy Roman Church out of existence, turn the Vatican into a museum of itself maintained by Friends of the Vatican. It could take a long time to liquidate the assets. I want to see the Vatican art collection I've heard is kept away from public view for various reasons for multiple centuries. It's said to have dollar value through the roof. When the buzzards are picking at the carcass, the dollar values told on evening news, in news magazines, money magazines, tv talk shows, will shock the world, make the Church look as materialist as the Americans. And this is where I have the problem with the Church. All their symbolism is about a Romanesque display of wealth and an Egyptian belief in the physical body. Big gold rings for the faithful to kiss on the bishop's hand. Phew. Give me a break. This is the few controlling the many.

 

 

 

 

I see the display of wealth and imagine a million times beyond what I can imagine, and there we have more symbolism. Wealth as infinite as the universe, therefore sacred. Give it unto Jesus. Jesus doesn't want that detritus. That's the stuff of the human mind, the stuff he took a human shape to help us get control of in ourselves, individually, to see that aint it. Then I see swarms of cardinals dressed in red billowing gowns like from Gone With The Wind, buzzing around il papa in multiple thousands of dollars worth of outfits apiece. And this is about Jesus? Jesus attired himself in his culture's equivalent of bluejeans and a tshirt. He didn't need scepters nor necklaces nor silk underwear nor million dollar mafia rings nor thousand dollar shoes. I can't help but doubt a "faith" that believes a man who gets up like Elizabeth Taylor in all her jewelry out of all her safe-deposit boxes represents the Jesus I read about in the Gospels, the Jesus the Holy Roman Church stands for. I don't get it, never got it, and probably never will get it. I don't see anything to get except the Church as another institution of the few controlling the many. It was a smooth transition from the Caesar to the Pope. In the name of Jesus, send us your money. Jesus said render unto Caesar in reference to taxes. Now he would say render unto the Pope. I'd venture that if Jesus were on foot somewhere on earth now, he would not be interested in seeing the Pope and the Pope would not be interested in seeing him unless he had a substantial amount of money to be giving over.

 

The pictures I've seen of the new Pope Francis tell me Woody Allen could play him in a movie. Wouldn't that be a riot, Woody Allen playing Pope. Being a director and experienced at New York dinner parties, Allen has the experience necessary to assume a papal role. I've heard a brief BBC radio profile of the new Pope and he seems like an interesting man. Again, I see him as a man who drew the losing straw and became Pope. He is evidently known for living with a monk's simplicity, called austerity by reporters, and won't be needing thousand dollar shoes. He is known for taking public transportation when bishops are privileged with big car and driver. He evidently was not one to take advantage of privilege, rather has no need for it. That's his style. Pope Benedict's style was scholar monk. Pope Francis looks like a social monk who gets out among the people as one of them. The reporters speak in awe of how he walks anywhere in the city, Buenos Aires, alone, without body guards. He didn't just walk around and people look at him with suspicion and say, What you doin in this neighborhood? Everybody he saw knew him. They talked with him. They respected him. And he respected them. They knew him as the one who was not afraid of them. They're not going to hurt him. He knows it and they know it, but seen from the outside it's like he's taking his life in his hands. Considering that from my point of view he's just a man, I see him needing waders, big yellow New England waders, maybe the whole outfit. He will be a good example to the world of a man who really means it when it gets reported how simply he lives in his papal privilege. One thing I believe I can say without fear of contradiction is the only thing this pope needs is prayed for. He's going to need the prayers of the world to hold him up through what looks to be a rocky road ahead like something you'd see in a disaster movie.

 



 

 

 

 

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DEATH AND KARMA

        willem dekooning, pirate, 1981

Had a call this morning from my friend Judy who lives near Atlanta. She's back from a few days in NY seeing her sister. She went to Museum of Modern Art and saw the present show of deKoonings. She said he painted like a master in all the styles he painted through his lifetime. I would love it. MoMA is a reason almost good enough to live in New York. I don't think I was ever aggressive enough to live in New York and didn't want to become New York aggressive. I'd need a lot of money to live there. I'd want to be going to some sort of concert or art show every evening. There is so much that is wonderful in New York. The only problem, as I can see it, is it costs a fortune to live there. I'm too sensitive to other people's psychic energy to live in a honeycomb with people in every cell. It seems creepy to me. Times I've been in the city, I'd look at apartment buildings with all the windows; people above, below, to the sides, out the windows. It seems unnatural to me to live where just about the only part of the natural world is people. Above, you have clouds. I need the world of tree frogs, flying and chirping birds, trees, bugs too.

I like it that hunters hunt all around where I live. It's a good place to stay indoors during hunting season. This hunter and that hunter might be good and never take chances. Not all of them are like that. Some hear something and take what they call a "sound shot." It only takes one. It was somewhere between 10 and 20 years ago, a news story from down in the flat part of North Carolina. Father and son hunting. Good hunters. Dad takes a sound shot. Finds his son with a hole in the head, blows his own head off. Happy Thanksgiving mama. Stories like this happen every year in every county up and down the mountains from Maine to Alabama. I like living in a place where people hunt, because that's where the wild things are. When my dad was visiting here many years ago, he stepped out of the car, looked around and said, "This is where I need to live," so he could hunt all the time. I thought: that's the reason the mountain called me to it and not you.

My first month in the mountains, associated with the farm, some rangers from forestry came to tell us about something to do with Christmas trees. They were talking with Ted Stern and I was tagging along behind. I was the one they were to give the information too, but he was the important one. I heard one of the rangers telling him about what the Bible says, that the Lord gave man dominion over all the animals. He took it to mean the right to kill them. My jaw dropped. I took dominion for the responsibility to take care of. Dictionary says dominion is supreme authority. That still doesn't say the right to kill. Say I'm the admiral of an aircraft carrier with dominion over the entire crew. Does that mean right to kill? I don't think so. But that is a puny way of looking at it. Killing is the major factor in life on earth. Everything that eats has to eat something that's alive, and it sometimes needs killing first. Sometimes, like grass, it is killed as it's eaten. I suppose what makes killing something reprehensible among humans is killing without intent to eat. Like killing all the buffalo and leaving them to rot was not responsible dominion. The Plains Indians were in awe of what manner of man could do such as that. It wasn't believable, but there it was.

Like the ranger was talking about hunting deer to eat, God and dominion, it makes more sense to me now, many years later, after I've come to see that death is nothing in God's eye. Intent to end somebody else's life for revenge or rage or money or whatever, is an egoic act all the way. When it's egoic like that, then it's an issue. When a man has to eat, he brings home a deer, cuts it up, puts the parts in the freezer and his woman feeds the family with it through the year. I have a hard time with shooting crows for target practice. Every hunting season thins our crow population considerably. But, as long as I'm not the one doing it, it's not an issue for me. The crows are advanced to their next lifetime. I don't know what kind of karmic debt would go with killing crows, incredibly intelligent birds that live in families, for target practice. It doesn't compute for me, but killing is a rush for a lot of people, an ego rush. Crows will stay out of your garden if you throw them the daily garbage. The garbage will go a whole lot further making friends with the crow family that shares your territory than it will in a plastic bag in a landfill. 

I don't know about anything having to do with death, what's on the other side, anything. Only that when it happens, like Lou Reed said, "it's the final thing to do." More Lou Reed: "Why don't you take your old lady by the feet and drag out in the darkened street and by morning she'll be just another hit and run." One of his many New York stories. It's like his heart is with the down and out people, and for all the comfortable people he seethes with contempt. His album called New York is one of my favorites.  I've been a Lou Reed and Velvet Underground fan for a very long time. The songs are portraits of New York street people. They bring to my mind the American poet Edgar Lee Masters, who also wrote portraits of people. In the New York street scene, death is common; OD, murder, suicide, every kind of way. In the country a rabbit runs under your tire, a deer jumps out in front of you, a dog runs under the wheel, so many unavoidable moments of killing without intent. I say a prayer for their souls and write it off to the modern world. I don't like it, but got used to it. 

I don't know if I'll ever understand the subtle world of intent. Some time in the 1980s I was called to jury duty on a local murder. It came down to we had to decide whether it was intent or accident. She swore it was an accident. The sheriff swore it was intent. The jury decided it was accident. When I handled the shotgun passed around the jury, I realized everything she said was true. The stock was made so when the thumb pushed the lever to open the shotgun, it automatically moved the forefinger to touch the trigger, which in this case was a hair trigger. She said she pushed the lever to open it and it went off. Sure enough. When I saw she was telling the truth, I saw how much the sheriff was making the story what he wanted it to be, and was not being the least bit objective about it, wasn't from the start. He wanted her put away. It was going around the county among the men that it won't be safe for a man to take a shower. After the trial, a man said that to me, and I asked him if he had reason to worry. It was a hot trial. I saw with my own eyes the sheriff lie to the prosecutor. She was drilling somebody on the witness stand, turned to the sheriff and with a look asked if he'd done what was said he did and he shook his head no. I was glad to see the defendant go free. I heard later the judge agreed with the jury's decision. That was good to hear.

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