A CALL FROM THE PAST

 

     ai weiwei

I look at how things are going in this world, the ongoing breakdown of all traditions; even though I feel I have an understanding that the traditions from the Age of Fire need to be eliminated to clear the field for new ways of thinking in the Age of Electricity, I still agonize somewhat seeing the more meaningful traditions go away with the irrelevant ones. Much of the old ways were good, though largely calcified by repetition over centuries unto beliefs that simply don't work anymore. Among my more interesting learnings along the way has been to see how fluid this life is, fluid even more than liquid, fluid like air can be called fluid in the way it flows around objects without apparent resistance, the way it flows through the grid of a screen and flows back together on the other side like nothing happened. Thought is even more fluid than that. Thought is fluid without molecules, or matter. Thought flows like old man river, just keeps on rolling. What is this world we live in but massive interweavings of human thought, an infinite and constantly changing Persian carpet. Thoughts that occurred thousands of years ago, hundreds of years ago, continue to have effect on us today.

Socrates comes to mind first for his thought a few thousand years ago (I paraphrase), "The only thing I know is that I know nothing." The thought is with us today. Not many pay attention to it, but it resonates with me plenty. It will resonate into the Age of Electricity too. Our whole civilization is a conglomeration of thinking that collectively agrees upon certain thoughts as valid and certain ones not. In the time we're in now, the NEW is often a thought regarded invalid until suddenly it is seen valid. "Get you a copper kettle, get you a copper coil," the old-time song had fallen into invalid, from another culture, another time, another way of thinking. Then around 1960 Joan Baez recorded it in a Pete Seegerish way and it became new, continues to resonate as valid. A lot of old songs have been brought into the new mind by singing them a bit differently. Stephen Foster's song, Angelina Baker, a making fun of the darkies kind of song that starts, "Way down on de old plantation, dah's where I was born, I used to beat de whole creation hoein in de corn. Den I work and den I sing, happy all de day." It gets kind of Uncle Remus as a cute romance of a slave boy with his eye on the slave girl, Angelina Baker. It's hardly politically correct in our time. Almost everything about it rings invalid now. Except the tune. The tune is used all over the country at contests of picking traditional acoustic instruments. Angelina Baker has become as hot a fiddle tune as Katy Hill and Sally Gooden. Hardly anyone knows it has words anymore.

A little over thirty years ago someone from Europe asked me how long it will be before homosexuals are acceptable in America. I ventured fifty years, give or take ten. He thought that way too soon. Here it is. All of a sudden this year it is PC to be all for gay everything, marriage, baby adoption, the whole works. BAM. Just like that. It took awhile getting here. Considering that we've had civil rights laws over half a century, yet one of our two political parties is the up front racist party. Those sorts of social changes take a long time, but in this time we're in, these social changes are happening in almost the snap of a finger. It is even looking like Rush Limbaugh mind is fading fast. He doesn't have the power of intimidation he had two years ago. I don't mean to imply we're changing to where everything is sweet and happy devoid of anything we don't like. We are taking a giant step toward allowing the flow. When thought patterns become calcified from habits until they become reality is when they need changing. Thinking, like water, stagnates when it stops flowing.

A phone call last night form a cousin I'd not talked with in several years. We're about the same age, grew up together as friends and then I went my way and he went his way and that was that. I don't encourage him in this time of my life, because he has taken the way of the calcified mind of the American man. At the beginning of our phone conversation last night it was like talking with one of the old men of my grandfather's generation, men that were down on everything, especially niggers and dumb women. Cousin has watched a lifetime of television, so he is not of that old man mind of grandfather's time. But it hasn't changed much from then to now. He started in on me aggressive-like, taking charge, letting me know he's the bigdog in this exchange, bumping me the way dogs do each other, showing me his weight. I bumped him back to say, I'm just as big as you. He let me have it for talking on the telephone all the time. He's been trying to call and my phone is always busy. I knew that was horseshit from the start. My phone is nowhere near always busy. I asked if he called in the mornings. No. I said, I talk with my friend Carole in the mornings anywhere between 9 and 11. Other than that I hardly use the phone at all and it seldom rings. He said, Oh. And he came down off his high horse.

The conversation functioned for me as a measure of how far I have come from where I started out. Cousin Tommy is still there. He hasn't changed at all, except to lock down in that aggressive testosterone stance that has only one purpose, to say, I'm in charge here. It works for him largely. Then he comes up on somebody like me, bumping like a dog, and he has to back down. I didn't get aggressive with him, just stood my ground on firm feet and let him know if he called me to play bigdog, he needs to call somebody else. I'm happy to talk with him, but I'm not going through the dog games just because he needs to see himself in charge. Turns out he was listening challenged as well. Doesn't listen well. While he was telling me about his "dumb" wife, I was thinking, Yeah, sure. He never did tell me why he called. It was a brief reminder that I spent my early years in a world of that kind of mind, the calcified white man mind that Limbaugh parodies so well. I ran from it with all my heart, mind and strength. Tommy starting off that conversation with the bigdog challenge was a reminder of where I came from, and how glad I am to be a long ways from. I had enough of that when I had no recourse. I don't have to take it now. I've heard I get called arrogant for not taking that white man bigdog shit, but that's ok.


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FREEMAN & GAYHEART @ THE FIDDLE & PLOW

scott freeman, mike gayheart, willard gayheart

Last Friday night Scott Freeman and Willard Gayheart played again at the Fiddle and Plow Show with Mike Gayheart playing bass. Scott and Willard open every week's show with two songs, then turn it over to the guest musicians. This night it was Scott and Willard the whole show with Mike playing bass. I had a kinda feeling the show might be Scott and Willard. They play a whole show every few months. For my listening pleasure, the best shows are when it is Scott and Willard. They have made so much music together, they play as one. Willard likes old songs from the 1920s, 1930s and older. One of my very favorite songs he sings is Coney Island Washboard, which he says came from around the turn of the 19th to 20th century. He sings a pop song from the 20s, Drifting and Dreaming, which he makes into a beautiful folk song. He started the show with Won't You Ride In My Little Red Wagon, the Bob Wills Texas swing song that Willard turned into another beautiful folk song. Scott sings a Bob Wills and Hank Williams song, Roly Poly, which he makes his own, like he does every song he arranges to his own style. Scott played his instrumental, Dori's Waltz, on the mandolin exquisitely like every time he plays it.


I like it that Scott and Willard are not known outside their region, the Central Blue Ridge, and they're not big stars. They're known among musicians of the Central Blue Ridge as very respectable musicians, but they've never sought fame and fortune. They like living at home. They don't like to play anyplace so far from home they can't be back to sleep in their own beds. It's on the borderline of unbelievable to me that in someplace like the coffee shop I can mention Scott or Willard's name and I get, "Who?" Then I explain. Response: "Oh." Though if I were to say "Wayne Henderson," it's suddenly animated, "Yeah, I've heard of Wayne Henderson. He's the BEST!" He is awfully good and he does tend to win Galax almost every other year, telling me he has a few unknown equals lurking about, Scott Fore one of them. Leaving off such exaggerations as best and worst, Scott and Willard are in Wayne's league when it comes to making music, and I'd put Wayne next to Doc Watson as a picker. Wayne has played at the Fiddle and Plow Show three or four times. A few weeks ago he was in the audience when Dori Freeman was the guest performer, accompanied by Scott and Willard. Willard invited him to pick a couple tunes with them. Scott, Willard and Dori were all playing Henderson instruments. Musicians love to play his guitars; owning one is more important to a picker than a Martin.

helen white & wayne henderson at fiddle and plow

 

 

Scott has been recording a new project that should be available on cd in a month or so. Its title will be BLUE RIDGE FAR AWAY. It will have some of his musical allies with him, like Willard on guitar, Edwin Lacy old-time banjo, Steve Lewis bluegrass banjo and guitar forward motion, and I think he said Scott Manring will pick some guitar, and Dori will sing one. Scott always puts together a fine album, cd, project.  Very fine. He's a master on a mandolin and close to the same degree on the fiddle. He picks a guitar too. Then there's the part I tend to overlook, Scott's vocals. Scott is a good singer. No two ways about it. He doesn't sing with flash or bellering; he tells the words to the song as articulately as he picks his mandolin. In line with mountain tradition, Scott's voice and singing style do not call attention to himself. They call attention to the meaning in the song, only. Scott's performance style is something of an anti-performance style. He goes on stage, wherever he is playing, in the clothes he has worn all day, talks to the audience in a friendly, intimate way as one person to another, and never points a finger at himself. Willard praises him from time to time, and rightly so. Willard points out Scott's abilities as a songwriter, composer, singer, musician with several instruments, knows an unknown number of songs. Five or more years ago I made a cd of all Scott's compositions that he has recorded. I think there were 16. I played from it on one of the Saturday morning radio shows. It made an hour of some good music.

 

I feel like Scott is in a highly creative time of his life. I suspect Dori now singing, writing songs and putting on stage performances has inspired the artist in Scott, a new burst of creative energy. He plays on her projects and she plays on his. A few people doubt her for having it made, her daddy and grandpa with their places in the regions music world, knowing everybody. Scott's musician friends watched Dori grow up from a baby. They love her. They love that she turned out to be a good singer, an equally good song writer and can join them making music. They love supporting her musically. They love to see her successes. They're her friends she's known all her life. Sure, that is a little bit of privilege, but the issue is whether she is up to their support. The musicians around her know she is up to their level of musicianship. If she were not, they would be encouraging her to practice, not playing gigs with her. I'd be more inclined to call Dori's situation karma, not privilege. Her soul is obviously connected intimately with Scott and Willard. The three of them are about the same as soul mates. Sure, they have their differences, they're different people, but what I see is three people very much in tune with each other, from knowing each one of them individually. They're souls who found each other and love to make music together. It tickles the fire out of Willard to accompany his grand-baby on her albums and to sing with her on stage. It lights Willard up that Dori has become such a good singer and musician. Dori is invited to play for gigs because she is an excellent musician in her own self.

 

   

 

 dori freeman at the wayne henderson festival 2012

           with edwin lacy, mike gayheart, scott freeman, steve lewis

 

 

 

I arrived at the show Friday night a little sooner than anticipated. There were no cars ahead of me all the way. I made good time without going fast; just nobody to follow for ten miles who speeds up in passing zones and goes 35 to 40 in between. Scott and Willard were practicing when I walked in the door. They were working on songs I'd not heard them do before. My feeling by the end of the show when they had not played any of those songs I heard them practicing is that these are songs Scott has on his new project and they are learning their parts to play them together the night of the show after the cd's release. They sounded good. I liked what I heard. Scott is making some powerful music. His musical partnership with Willard over the last quarter century has created several cds together, Skeeter and the Skidmarks in the early 90s, then Alternate Roots in the 00s, two bands of what I can only call art. Skeeter and the Skidmarks are back together as a band and Alternate Roots in the past, alas. These are art bands. They are about musicianship and their own interpretations of the songs they play. It appears to me that Scott and Willard's bands are the projects of artists. Audiences appreciate their art, but as artists, Scott and Willard don't play down to the audience or get the audience charged up and hollering. They're like the Carter Family in that they present the songs beautifully, make no production of themselves, just play some really good music.

 

 

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MANIPULATING ILLUSION

It feels good to have the temperature up in the 50s for a change from in the 20s. Some people are talking like this is the end of winter, but I'm not going to count on that. Though global warming is ending winters sooner than before, still this is early March. Our blizzards come in late March. However, as we change toward warmer weather, when the blizzards happen will change too. I would like to see early March be the end of winter, but don't think I'll count on it this year. Maybe in a few more years winter will end this early. Winter is already ending a month before it used to. I'm grateful winters don't get as cold as they used to, start later and end earlier. As the people who study weather conditions are saying, the heat is set to go way up real fast in the near future. Is this why the rich are moving underground? Through Faux Noose the 1% keep the 99% fooled, at odds with each other and completely unprepared to save ourselves from the condition created by the 1% in process of draining resources from the 99%. We the American people have been plundered unto peasantry in my lifetime. It's weird to see, considering what I was taught in school about American government is every bit as irrelevant as evangelist Pat Robertson. In the time of Reagan I saw him making us into a Third World country. We are there. It has happened.

In this new century I see Latin America passing us by. Asia already has passed us. Europe is way out there beyond us. Africa will be passing us too. The wheel of fortune is turning, "What goes up, must come down, spinning wheel, spinning round." The Reaganista strategy of funnelling the money of the working people up to Cayman's Island bank accounts that are tax free, has pulled the rug out from We The People. Our whole nation is on the downward run. I can't help recalling CIA director with the Reagan Junta, William Casey's quote, "We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American people believe is false." So far, the Republican half of the population has fallen for the disinformation. With Faux Noose the Republican tv network, they ought to keep their idiocy to themselves. It looks really bad from outside the fold. They have become the "party of stupid" by believing their own disinformation. That's the funny part. I'm not going to tell them they have become self-defeating. They wouldn't listen anyway. I like seeing the party itself destroyed from within. The Republican party has become a cancer in American life. I'm glad to see the cancer they created is consuming them first. I'd like to see McConnell and Boner both put out in the next election. Of course, they'll be replaced by even worse than they are, but I won't have to see their ugly faces anymore and their deer-in-the-headlights eyes.

The party of stupid is holding back the rest of the country like the dumbest kids in class hold the class back for everybody else. The Republican party has become a ball and chain around the ankles of our country. If we have that many really dumb people, we don't have a chance. They want us uneducated so we'll be easier to manipulte. Plus, the uneducated tend not to vote. Working against education is Republican strategy to further block voting. They know as well as I know that voting doesn't matter, but it keeps the population believing in Santa Claus. Whoever wins an election is ruled by the 1%. All allegiance to the voters is over the moment the ballot count is announced. Running for election was playing pretend, and upon winning, the game continues to be pretend. Manipulating illusion. I question myself paying attention to them, and answer that I need to know that they are working against me, not for me. They hype that they're for me, but their actions show quite a different purpose. Again, white man's belief that he is superior to black man, Asian man, Latin man and all women is what is behind the Fall of America. The Reagan Junta was the puff of wind that started the fall of the tower of cards.

Herman Melville was writing in the 1850s that white man racism will bring down the ship of state. No one paid attention. The Civil War happened. Moby Dick wasn't read at all in this country. It was read and appreciated a little bit in London. It applies again today, again in a population that hasn't read Moby Dick and doesn't intend to. A century and a half later we're at the same place again, a nation divided unto civil war, the racists creating the problems and blaming the non-racist half of the white population called liberals. We, as a nation, do these things over and over because we, collectively, have no regard for history or education. To paraphrase Gore Vidal again, when the American people can't recognize stupid, we're done for. I've come to see it that alas, we do recognize stupid. It's what the majority wants. It's the Land of Oz, color tv round the clock, a hundred channels, only misinformation coming through the corporate media "news." Everything on television is saying: Stupid is beautiful. They say it's a big dumbing down of America, but I see dumb is what the population wants. It's American culture. White man is in crisis. White man has shown himself with no bottom to how low he will go to keep power over all other races and women. This is what I'm seeing happening in Congress and Senate, white man hysterical in crisis, so hysterical that they let their stupid hang out, like when you get so mad you start blubbering. Going by the pictures I see of Teabaggers, white man is very angry unto freaking out.


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A POEM BY GUILLAUME APOLLINAIRE

family of saltimbanques by pablo picasso

           SALTIMBANQUES
                   to Louis Dumur


          Across the plain the troop of clowns

          Moves by along the garden walls

          Before the doors of greying inns

          Through churchless villages and towns


          And children scamper out in front

          While others follow dreamily

          Each fruit tree submits readily

         When from afar they give the sign


          The weights they bear are round and square

          And tambourines and guilded hoops

          Wise animals the ape and bear

          Beg for their keep along the way.


                           ---Guillaume Apollinaire

                                     tr: Roger Shattuck


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