https://youtu.be/9FUAw6vT7lM

This is the closest i came to breaking into the "music industry", a song i wrote that appeared on an album by the Cache Valley Drifters from Santa Barbara back in the early 80s.   Lately, in Covid isolation, i have been dredging up old recordings, making lip sync videos with my current visage, and posting them on YouTube.  Check out this one. If I get any reactions I'll post some more.

Against the Tides of Cruelty

 

Well, look, I still have a blog. I haven't been here in over three years.  Do people still look at blogs?  

I self-published my novel, The Ballad of Johnny Arcane. It didn't exactly take off, but a few people read it.  You can get a copy through most online book sellers.

I am retired now.  I am picking away at a new novel but it's  hard to get up the momentum to finish it or even imagine publishing it.  In Covid-19 isolation I have been spending a lot of time making videos of my songs and posting them on YouTube.  Here's one now.  If I get any response to this, I'll share some more.  I'll try to look at and comment on some of your blogs if there are any out there.  There really is a lot to discuss.

I remember now it was 1968. I was a young 20 years old, getting on a plane for the first time alone, flying from San Francisco to New York to spend the summer working at a camp in Putman Valley. A man got on the plane and I recognized him from posters in college. Allen Ginsberg. He sat next to me. Very shy, I said, “Are you Allen Ginsberg?” He said yes and I shook his hand, then retreated into whatever book I was reading, too insecure and self-conscious to say another word for the rest of the flight, even though a couple of times he asked me questions about something he was reading in the newspaper, about which I knew nothing. How I regret that day! I was so wrapped up in myself and how I appeared. It never occurred to me to say, “Wow. I know who you are but I don’t know anything about you. What’s your thing, man? What are you all about?” I think he would have dug that, and I would have learned a lot. This is what I want to tell young people today: don’t surround yourself with yourself. Don’t be afraid to admit what you don’t know. Pay attention to others. Ask them questions. Your life will be immeasurably enriched. 

But concerning the book, in this case The Essential Ginsberg, edited by Michael Schumacher- well, it was quite a trip, and I’m thinking if I had had the courage to ask Ginsberg those questions on the airplane, it might have been a pretty wild ride.  The book is well structured- it begins with selected poems and presents them chronologically from 1947 through 1997, then does the same thing with his songs (II) essays (III) Journals (IV) Interviews (V), Letters (VI) and Photographs (VII). This gives us a good overview of his development as a poet, public figure, mystic, and human being, from the follies of youth to the (relative) wisdom of (relative) old age (he lived to be 71, a lot longer than Kerouac or Cassady who shared his impulsive, self-destructive lifestyle). His interviewers ask him academic questions about the scansion of his poems and he gives them mystical flights of fancy about the natural rhythms of the cosmos that are the source of the rules of haiku and the iambic pentameter of Shakespeare.  In his essays, journals and letters he holds nothing back regarding his use of substances, his sexuality, his politics. It’s all just OK, it’s part of being human.  Placed in the public spotlight, he uses his notoriety as grist for the mill of spiritual enlightenment.  It’s not something all of us can do, but it’s something all of us can learn from.  And it gives us a good record of an era that has shaped the thinking of the age in which we live, an era that is receding into the past. All the holy fools should be recognized beside the wise old sages as we find our way through these strange and troubled times.

Hanging out with Ginsberg

I remember now it was 1968. I was a young 20 years old, getting on a plane for the first time alone, flying from San Francisco to New York to spend the summer working at a camp in Putman Valley. A man got on the plane and I recognized him from posters in college. Allen Ginsberg. He sat next to me. Very shy, I said, “Are you Allen Ginsberg?” He said yes and I shook his hand, then retreated into whatever book I was reading, too insecure and self-conscious to say another word for the rest of the flight, even though a couple of times he asked me questions about something he was reading in the newspaper, about which I knew nothing. How I regret that day! I was so wrapped up in myself and how I appeared. It never occurred to me to say, “Wow. I know who you are but I don’t know anything about you. What’s your thing, man? What are you all about?” I think he would have dug that, and I would have learned a lot. This is what I want to tell young people today: don’t surround yourself with yourself. Don’t be afraid to admit what you don’t know. Pay attention to others. Ask them questions. Your life will be immeasurably enriched. 

But concerning the book, in this case The Essential Ginsberg, edited by Michael Schumacher- well, it was quite a trip, and I’m thinking if I had had the courage to ask Ginsberg those questions on the airplane, it might have been a pretty wild ride.  The book is well structured- it begins with selected poems and presents them chronologically from 1947 through 1997, then does the same thing with his songs (II) essays (III) Journals (IV) Interviews (V), Letters (VI) and Photographs (VII). This gives us a good overview of his development as a poet, public figure, mystic, and human being, from the follies of youth to the (relative) wisdom of (relative) old age (he lived to be 71, a lot longer than Kerouac or Cassady who shared his impulsive, self-destructive lifestyle). His interviewers ask him academic questions about the scansion of his poems and he gives them mystical flights of fancy about the natural rhythms of the cosmos that are the source of the rules of haiku and the iambic pentameter of Shakespeare.  In his essays, journals and letters he holds nothing back regarding his use of substances, his sexuality, his politics. It’s all just OK, it’s part of being human.  Placed in the public spotlight, he uses his notoriety as grist for the mill of spiritual enlightenment.  It’s not something all of us can do, but it’s something all of us can learn from.  And it gives us a good record of an era that has shaped the thinking of the age in which we live, an era that is receding into the past. All the holy fools should be recognized beside the wise old sages as we find our way through these strange and troubled times.

I know a young man who makes beautiful music alone in his apartment, layering his voice over looped sound samples embellished with his fingers on guitars and keyboards. He will not exploit his work for personal gain. He shares it freely with close friends and select social media. Once I asked him, why do you do this? He said, hey, don’t you remember when we were little kids, we just wanted to make up worlds? It’s like that.

When I was a little kid, I wanted to make up worlds, but soon my teachers noticed. They told me I was an artist, and I could use my art to become rich and famous. It wasn’t long before my daydreams were as much about becoming rich and famous as they were about the art I was creating.

In my early twenties I lived for a time in a cabin in the mountains with three friends and a typewriter. I said to my friends, “I’ll think I’ll write a novel.” Every evening I sat at the typewriter with a bowl of candy, transforming the sweetness into literature, furiously pecking out the first (and only) draft of Jimmy Shuffle, a novel by Jim Nail. My friends stood around waiting to rip the pages from the carriage and read them, warm from my fecund mind. It was a very sweet time. I still keep that original manuscript in a drawer, the faded words barely legible on the brittle onionskin. It’s probably not good writing, but I can’t bring myself to throw it away.

And I didn’t become rich and famous, and little by little I gave up writing novels. The expectations of the ego had grown too strong. The initial creative urge was quashed by the lack of resonance from the canyon walls. 

Then around the time I turned 50, something happened. Stories started coming to me, insisting they be told. It was no longer about fame and fortune. It was like being a child, making up worlds. It was a state of bliss. It still is. The time I feel most connected and alive is the time when a story is streaming through me. I can’t make it happen. I can only remain open to it. I have found the best way to channel a story is to walk with an open mind and a portable voice recorder, speaking the words as they come. The entire first draft of The Ballad of Johnny Arcane was created this way.

I had the basic themes, but the real transmission began when I took my friend Fred to Pickathon in the summer of 2011. Fred was dying of ALS and there was a deep sweet sadness in being there with him, totally engulfed in the music while his body and mind were fading. So many of the songs were about the sorrows and struggles of life, yet it was all lifted above by the power of the music, and this kept resonating inside me: sweetness is just sorrow that has been transformed.

Fred had to leave early due to a family commitment and I spent the second half of the festival alone, feeling desolate and isolated in the crowd. Sunday morning I went down to the communal showers and washed myself clean, and at that moment a major passage of the book was revealed, Johnny Arcane, losing his voice, stumbling through the forest alienated from human contact, until he comes upon the bath house where Lucy washes him clean…

Sometimes it just works like that.

I had no specific agenda when writing Johnny Arcane. I had a lot of concerns that filtered into the book, the way that specific concerns filter into your dreams. I was (and still am) concerned about the fate of the human experiment- we seem to be taking so many wrong turns! I was reading a lot of post-apocalyptic fiction, but at one point I decided I didn’t want my book to be another piece of post-apocalyptic fiction. I wanted to keep it mysterious, open to interpretation. If you solve all the mysteries, what you have left is a dead, flat world. Some mysteries are meant to remain mysterious.

After all the fun stuff was done I got some incredible help from my sweetheart Claire who had already been through this when she self-published her magnificent debut novel, Saint Sullivan’s Daughter. Together we ferreted out the typos, misprints, bloopers and boing-boings until I had something I liked enough to want to share, maybe not for fame and fortune, maybe just the joy of the outpouring of the heart. 

You can get a copy of The Ballad of Johnny Arcane from me directly. You can purchase it from Amazon Books https://www.amazon.com/Ballad-Johnny-Arcane-Novel/dp/1629013099, or just about any other online bookseller. Or you can go to your favorite independent bookstore and ask them to get you a copy.
And if you want to hear the song that became the story, click here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c09hFr0lalY

I abandoned this blog back in 2011. Surprised to find it still sitting there, like the abandoned house in W.B. Yeats' poem:

 Before their eyes a house
That from childhood stood
Ruinous, uninhabited
Suddenly lit up from within
From the door to the top
All things remain in God

 Can I light up this house? What is the motivation for a blog? To pour your heart out to strangers in cyberspace? To promote a product?

Since I last posted, I abandoned my intention to resurrect a half-finished novel and wrote and (yes) self-published another one. It's called The Ballad of Johnny Arcane and you can find it on Amazon or most any other online bookseller. I used a pretty good local press here in Portland, just around the corner from my house (Inkwater Press). Press is not exactly an accurate word to describe the process; I don't think anything is actually pressed, like an apple or a pair of pants. Electronic technology has made it possible for just about anybody to put their creative work in front of the public, but in doing so, all the rules have changed. When I sit down with other writers and musicians and this subject comes up, we talk and talk about it and pretty much always say the same thing. No more words about this. Except that last night i was talking with a self-published poet and he said you have to refresh your blog, make it seductive, then join Twitter and start posting little seductive tweets with links to your blog. God, what a weird world I have grown old into.

 But anyhow, step 1: I revive the blog. Will I tweet? Only time will tell. Our American president is older than me and uses the medium to get himself into all kinds of trouble. OK cyber-trouble, bring it on. My day-to-day labors have little to do with whatever trouble I might be getting into in the Cloud. Go ahead, Jim. Just post it. Drop it into the Void and see what comes back at you...

THE SPIDER'S TALE

Today I completed the current rewrite of a novel called The Spider’s Tale. This took about six months. The original version of the novel was written in the mid-eighties and took about six years. By the time I reached the last page I was completely done with it and did not have the energy or inspiration to undertake the formidable task of wrestling it down into something accessible and manageable. I let it go.

Twenty years later I started thinking about it again, and on a whim, I picked up the old typewritten copy and started entering it into a Word document, shortening the sentences when necessary, throwing out whole sections that didn’t work, and creating new ones that did. The experience was stunning. It was like meeting myself as a stranger for the first time, and feeling a strong, curious attraction. I couldn’t put it down. I worked on it every day during my lunch breaks at work, and I thought about it compulsively as I walked to work every morning from the bus stop.

This has been a remarkable experience but also an entirely private one. For awhile I was posting the unfolding chapters on the blog, but I couldn’t keep up on myself, and I would often go back and make changes to the chapters I had already posted. So I stopped posting, and now I have removed all the archives from the blog.

Do we write entirely for ourselves, or are we supposed to share our work with others? Frankly, when I see how hard it is to get anyone to read your blog, let alone to attract the attention of the “publishing industry” I begin to think that the desire to be read is merely the selfish desire for attention, and nothing else. But is that really true? The work wells up in me like a spring of cold pure water. It is quickly contaminated by the ego who wants to use it to call attention, to garner me some gratifying positive feedback. But I am convinced that the initial impulse is pure. The question is, for what?

Here’s my intention. I am going to make one more pass through the work I have created, to shorten, tighten, and “pith it up” as best as I can. I anticipate this will take about one to two months. Then I’m going to take it down to Kinkos and get 2-3 copies nicely bound to make it look and feel like a book. These I will offer on loan to anyone who wants to read them, on the agreement that if you lose or destroy your copy you will promise to reimburse me the money to print a new one (probably $10-20).

I guess I should tell you a little what the book is about.

The setting is the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta of California’s Central Valley. There are many large, cultivated islands, but in between, the natural untamed watercourse of the river has created numerous small “wild” islands, constantly changing by the whim of the tides and the instability of the man-made levees. During the 1970’s refugees from the collapse of the flower-child movement escaped to this wild islands to live lives outside the confines of society, surviving primitively for awhile without the amenities of electricity or running water. I knew some of these people. It really did happen, although the phenomenon is considerably exaggerated in the book.

My protagonist, Hunter Brown, is an amnesiac who can only remember the present, not the past. He works a routine job at the paper mill and practices Zen meditation in the evenings. At first it might appear his amnesia is intentional, brought on by his spiritual practice, but as the story unfolds we see that it is much more complicated. The plot line follows Hunter’s immersion into the wilderness of the Delta and how it restores his relationship with the flow of time. The title of the book is from an African folk tale of Anansi the Spider, and how he wrestles the stories down from the Sky Kingdom:

Before that there were no stories on the earth. Nyame, the Sky God, hoarded them beneath his throne, and the earth creatures walked around in a kind of memory haze, no two events ever connecting, one with the other.

Posting a blog on the internet is such a weird thing. It could be likened to opening up your handwritten journal to a certain page and then leaving it on a bench at the Greyhound Bus Station, hoping that someone might pick it up and read it.

I release all expectations from this action. I will just post this and see what happens. When the book is ready for printing I will announce it via Facebook (If Facebook is still the relevant vehicle by then).

In the meantime, whoever reads this, I hope your life is deep and fruitful. These times are strange indeed.

just pondering

I've been having some thoughts that are decidedly not politically correct and I'm not sure how to deal with them. Maybe I'll use this old blog that nobody has gone to in many months to air them. Perhaps somebody will give me an argument, or an agreement, or an earnest discussion. Let's just see if anything happens.

Let's face it. Everybody dies. Some die young, some die old. Suffering is a part of life. We should be compassionate with one another as fellow sufferers and mourners of the dead. Is it really the government's responsibility to try to put an end to these normal facts of life? Wouldn't it be better for the government to concern itself with the distribution of resources and wealth, and especially to stop directing resources and wealth into destructive activities such as war and the corporate destruction of the ecosystem? Wouldn't it be better for the government to direct its energies into helping each person discover his/her capacities/aptitudes, and then empowering each person to do meaningful, constructive work according to his/her capacities/aptitudes, channeling the resources and wealth so that each person can make a sustainable living doing meaningful, constructive work? Then each person could afford his/her own preventive, basic health care. Government-funded health care could be reserved for emergencies, and for those massive, life-threatening conditions and diseases which are by-and-large caused by the destruction of the ecosystem due to government-funded corporate greed.

Well, huh? What?

THE LIMITED POWER OF ETERNITY

I'm selling my latest batch of home-recorded songs on CD for $8. It's called "The Limited Power of Eternity." Let me know if you want one. Rather than use ink and paper I am posting all the lyrics here. If you buy the CD and want the lyrics just check this posting and read 'em. Thanks for listening!

MONEY IN THE MAIL

Getting out of Gotham was the best thing we could do;
That town ain’t seen no sunshine since the spring of 62.
It’s hard to step on the rats once they get bigger than your shoe
And really, once they get that big they’re much too tough to chew
So we set out for the country just like Henry David T.
A flat bed Ford, a can of paint and a yearning to be free.
Mama she sat up in the front with the baby on her knee
And every time we’d hit a bump that baby’d shout with glee

CHORUS: Coming home across the fields with catfish in the creel
You call the dog and kiss the wife and make the baby squeal
And once a week without fail there’s money in the mail
That’s how it’ll be once we get daddy out of jail.

Daddy never lied to us unless it was in fun
We’d sit around the fire when the supper things was done
And he’d pull out his bag of tales and tell them one by one
Then send us laughing off to bed when all the yarn was spun.
I guess that’s how it happened on that rainy summer night
When daddy sat us down and said, I’ve had an awful fright.
Sheriff Brown is on my trail, his net is drawing tight.
We said, Daddy, tell another one, you’re really hot tonight.

Now the grown-ups say there comes a time in the life of every kid
When he starts to question everything the grown-ups ever said
But daddy, don’t you get those crazy ideas in your head
We’re with you till the bitter end, we don’t care what you did.
Now the night is warm and moonless and the old coyote’s still
And spikes of summer lightning strike the ridge behind the hill.
We’ve got our movements all worked out, we learned our signals well
Tonight’s the night we’re gonna spring old daddy from his cell.


THESE TREES

These trees were planted by my father
Before I was even a seed
Yet through the roots of memory he brings me
Everything I will ever need
So now is it you I see before me
Approaching through the orchards in the night
The branches of your arms reaching to hold me tight.

These trees have lived such a long time
That now it’s time to cut them down
For like all else they’re locked toward the winter
And there’s no way to turn around
So sweetheart let us keep the fires glowing
Though the book of love was written long ago
With every page we turn she sings I love you so

O come and look out on the water
As she casts the reflection of the moon
The renegade who came to steal your lovelight
Is now lying on the haystack in a swoon
For to fathom the secret of the seasons
Would bring the proud man to his knees
So take my hand and let us freely wander through these trees.

A WHEELED WORLD WILL ROLL AWAY

See the silver highway rolling on, see the golden fields of Avalon
The green hills hiding in a veil of grey
Many colors fading into one, a radiant union like the sun
To reach before your life is over.
Look again the wheel is losing spin
Look again the ring is wearing thin
The sunset colors splash and fade away
Many kindred souls have come and gone
They plucked the highway with their song
And now they sleep beneath the clover

A wheeled world will roll away (X 8)

In the sky the swans are winging home, see the chevron shifting like a poem
The birches blazing in their autumn clothes
Every son of thunder knows his end, the place where home and highway blend
The bend that draws the homesick sinner
In the time it takes to tell the time little birds compose their closing lines
The last song fades into the afterglow
A screen door slams and a barn door swings
And a hound dog barks and a woman sings
The bell is ringing, time for dinner.

A wheeled world will roll away (X8)
I told the road to take me down the road
But the road refused to take me down the road (X2)

On the road the cars keep rolling on
In the night they wake you with their song
The life they call to mind seems far away
So you turn and seek the shadows deep
And travel lightly into sleep
And make the changes without knowing

(Chorus)

MORNINGSTAR

This world is a big place and the people all gather In buildings and cities where the big rivers flow
But there’s a road that leads out into wide open spaces And it’s there that I’m fixing to go.
So I found me an acre in the Anderson Valley On a high wooded ridge with a view of the sea
And I met me this woman named Emily Carson And I asked her to live there with me.

Sweet was that summer, 1967, languid the days in the warmth of the sun
And the wind in the pines like a whisper from heaven brought no portent of the trouble to come.

Winter was hard but we met some good people,
Refugees from a commune they called the Morningstar Farm
Deep were the nights by the old Danish woodstove Burning thoughts as a way to stay warm.

Emily had a brother, he came up from El Cerrito,
He was broken and homeless and ravaged by cocaine
And he wrestled with demons seven weeks on the back porch
Until the winter finally gave in to the spring.

One morning in April we found him sitting by the woodstove,
clean shaven and lucid and squirelly-eyed
He said I’ve had a vision of a pathway untraveled, and a call that will not be denied

You see the answer is simple, it’s like a wheel in a wheel
It’s like a night in the day, like a day inside the night
It’s a gift to be given, it’s a secret to reveal, it’s a love to bring into the night.

That summer was a scorcher and the wind burned the corn
And the carrion crows locked in circling flight
Emily grew restless, distant and forlorn Like the wild fires that raged through the night

I should have known it would happen and one night it happened,
There were tears and accusations, tantrums and blows
And in the morning there was nothing but a note and a daisy
And a dust cloud hanging over the road.

Last night awakened by the first wolf of winter; in the morning the hills in a blanket of white.
Sometimes I swear that there’s no music finer than the sound of the wind in the pines.

Well, this world is a big place full of buildings and cities
And the cruelty gathers where the big rivers roll
But there’s a road that lead out into wide open spaces
And it’s there that I’m fixing to go.

LOVE BUZZ #3

Well, how could this happen? Was I not immune
To the thrust of the sun and the draw of the moon?
I’m working on Sundays. I’m getting no sleep.
I’m drinking cold coffee and I’m thinking in Greek.

I got a love buzz, I got a sweet tooth
I got a tendency for telling the whole truth.
Well, you know that burning urge they talk about
All the time?
Well, I got it bad, baby, and I got you in mind.

Well, maybe a vacation would settle my mind
Like Christmas in Mexico where the sun always shines.
Well, I’m living on oxygen, I’m traveling light
But I get mighty hungry in the still of the night.

I got a good nose for the smell of a striking match
I’m like Pinocchio baby, I got no strings attached.
Well, you know that freaky Friday feeling like a wind chime
Well, I hear it ringing baby when I get you in mind

So you don’t see the connection, you don’t follow the groove
Of the curve of your words or the way that you move.
I’m a slave to your intentions, my loss is your gain
I crave your attention like a dog on a chain.

Tender is the feeling like a freshly laid bruise
that you notice one evening while reading the news.
Well, I tried to ignore it, I tried to be cool
But it spread cross my body and it turned me into a fool

So wiggle that sweet walk, give me a sugar rush
I got me a line of talk that’s bound to make you blush
Well, I don’t know where this might go
By the time we get to the cherry wine
It’s just a feeling, baby, when I get you in mind.
Well, I don’t know where this is gonna go
By the time we get to the cherry wine
Cause I got a love buzz, and I got you in mind.

NO ROADS THAT DO NOT BEND

Well, I went to check out the Mystic Maze south of Kingman, Arizona
Where the People of the River lived before the Age of Petroleum
But in the changing light I saw no remnant of them there,
Just a red tail rising on the currents of the air
And I turned to Kate and I said, “Do you know what’s happening here, my friend?”
She said, “There are no roads that do not bend.
There are no roads that do not bend.”

We’ll I stepped into a time machine just to get my kicks
I went back to 1955, I was driving down route 66
And I had to pull to the side of the road just to stop and stare
All the cars were round and old and in serious disrepair.
And I turned to Kate and I said “Do you know what’s happening here, my friend?”
She said, “There are no roads that do not bend.
There are no roads that do not bend.

Why don’t we take a long drive on the highways and the byways.
Let’s visit every national park in the nation.
For the hour is slowly moving in,
The winds of change will soon begin
To leave all hobos stranded at the station.

So you’ve holed up in some river town in the Sacramento Valley,
Or maybe you’ve gone back to Mom and Dad in their sweet suburban oblivion
Or have you sunk your roots somewhere your children can’t get in?
You who used to liken yourself to pollen in the wind.

Well, I have to blow this candle out, the mosquitoes are too thick
And with each hour my passion grows like a fire on an oil slick,
Well, why do you have to be so quiet? Can’t you make a sound?
Don’t you feel that big wheel turning underneath the ground?

And I turned to Kate and I said, “Do you know what’s happening here, my friend?”
She said, “There are no roads that do not bend.”
She said, “There are no roads that do not bend.
There are no roads that do not bend.”

BABY BOY

Now that you’ve had some time to find your way around the hexagram
In every quiet clocklike chocolate moment of the night
Seeds of new concern are germinating in the aftermath
Looking at life on one hand while on the other hand looking at how we life
I wonder how do you feel about the baby boy?

Before he was a pedestrian he was looking out through the universe
See here boy, we got a promise here
We’re gonna try to make you smile
After awhile he was dancing around as if to embrace the universe
And nothing I say can approximate the way you make me smile
I wonder how do I feel about the baby boy.

Bless my father dreaming tonight in the loving eye of the television
Bless his long term vision to be the last good man in Babylon
Bless my mother’s lovely face as she worries about the television
The nuclear family scatters under the threat of a nuclear holocaust
I wonder how do I feel about the baby boy.

The military argues the prosperity of a war
Even you liberal lovers of the good life, look how well you live
Well, these things are done on foreign shores, you need not even know
Think about all this precious freedom in which to realize yourself
Tell me how do I feel about the baby boy.

In good time a man of peace comes walking down the road
Scuffly patent leather sandals ringing out over the cobblestones
He says there are no more fires burning in the fields of heaven
Hush now, this is the hour of division, the government from the firmament
I wonder how do you feel about the baby boy?


OUR LADY OF THE BREEZE

Hail Mary, full of grace. Hear how the trees rustle in the wind
Holy Mary, mother of God, how are you?
Bless my soul this life of mine! A quivering course to the heart of love.
Truth and darkness intertwined together.


Everywhere I go the eyes of death are at my shoulder
Stand and take your orders
Deeper still my spirit sinks into the well of Maya
Ooh loo roo la da la da

In the night this pilgrim passes, remembering when he stood on the mountain of God
Take my pain, cruel whips and lashes do not mar you.


Other pilgrims hurry by to clamber up the ladder, to falter at the alter
Still this equal thirst demands its portion of the water
Ooh loo roo la da la da…


In the lake a raindrop splashes. Blessed is he who comes in the name of the lord
Save your skin, the neon flashes, the word confuses.


Hail Mary, full of grace. Hear how the trees rustle in the wind
Holy Mary, mother of God, how are you?
Hail Mary, full of grace. Hear how the trees rustle in the wind
Holy Mary, mother of God, how are you?

THE PASSING OF A TUNE

We made a stop in the city, the windshield was dirty
The mechanic, he told us the news
She was inclined then to thumb it, but I was far from it,
I hadn’t got over the blues
It was God’s holy half acre, it was Market and Jones;
I was counting the holes in my shoes

And there was a drag queen, she was buying her outfit for the ball
And there was a beggar out paying a penance for us all.

She lived a short walk from Macys, my fingers were greasy
I guess I approached her too soon.
There was a man in the lobby, he must have been crazy,
Howling like a dog at the moon
And I confess when she asked me I told her your name
O, I thought that she might change her tune.

And there was an air preacher preaching a sermon to the air
And an old Catholic barber was making a crucifix out of hair.

There was a time I was gallant, my gold was my talent
I chose to distribute my wealth.
For then my life was an ember, I can’t even remember
When I first came to mistrust myself.
O, I saved some time for the book I was reading to you
But now it just sits on the shelf

And there was a moon goddess saving her body for the moon
And there was a songwriter mourning the passing of a tune.


WHILE ON THIS EARTH WE STAND
When morning breaks on the wheel of time
The stars will fade and the sun will climb
Immense and holy, grand design, Gloria Deo

Our daily labors we attend
Our earthly courses to defend
Unseen, our spirits must ascend in glory Deo.

How great the mystery of our lives!
In sleep we wake and in dreams we rise
To chart the secrets of the skies, Gloria Deo.

Don’t waste this moment, this gift of time
Throw out your beacon, let it shine
Let Spirit use your heart and mind
While on this earth you stand.

When darkness falls in the form of the night
The stars again through the curtain break
Infinite vision! Holy light! Gloria Deo.

How strong this yearning! How sweet it’s cease!
How deep the stirrings of release!
Take back your part of heaven’s peace
While on this earth you stand.

When darkness falls in the form of the night
From cosmic reaches the starlight breaks
Infinite vision! Holy Light! Gloria Deo

Gloria Deo, Gloria Deo, Gloria Deo

© 2006 by Jim Nail

two poems

Sorry I haven't been reading or writing the blogs for awhile. As an act of intention I will post this:

I found two poems in one of my old journals, written on May 12, 1997. I generally think I am a better songwriter than a crafter of stand-alone poetry, but these tickled me, so I thought I would post them here:

Poem #1

In the heart of a blue spruce night
in the reflective waters of a cascadian lake
a bright green fireball falls
the trail fades before it can be traced
it seems to linger a little longer in the reflection
These things never seem to reach the ground,
muses the hermit
as he tosses a stone into the lake
but it's too dark to see the ripples.

Poem #2

Signs abound, stationary in stone, fluid in time
but haste not, ye traveler, in your interpretation
That black cat crossing your path may be more about the dog
that is chasing hi than about any ill luck he portends.
That spread-eagled ladder inviting your path down the sidewalk
It may be better to stand under
than to understand.

Small Boat Still Sailing

I'm letting some people know that the entire novel is still available on this blog. In the archive list click on the posting dated January 8, 2009. This will be Chapter One. You can follow the thread from there.

Thanks for reading!

Jim

mysterious happenings on the oregon coast

So Thursday night around midnight I walked out on the beach and the breakers were cresting with a pale blue glow. Dinoflagelates, bioluminescence. I wasn't sure at first until I walked down to the shoreline and kicked the wet sand. It sparkled like faery dust. Up the beach a group of aging hipsters on their way to Burning Man were celebrating the 5oth birthday of one of their members, a female fire dancer who was juggling several flaming hula hoops.

The next day we hiked out on Cape Lookout. Someone had attached a leaf to the sign advising hikers on what to do if they encounter a bear ("if a bear attacks, fight back"). The leaf was notched so that it looked just like the face in The Scream by Edvard Munch. At first I thought it was just an oddity of nature until we came across several more similarly notched leaves on the trail. See photos.

Coincidence?

No Roads That Do Not Bend

www.myspace.com/amazingflyingsky

Another new song on My Space- follow the link to hear it.
This is a new, lower and slower version of a song I had posted in the past. It's in memory of Kate Wolf who was a friend. I had the good fortune of being asked to play accordion on a couple of her albums. In her song, "These Times We're Living In" Kate wrote: "If I could I'd tell you now there are no roads that do not bend." That line kept rolling in my head as I was driving through the Mojave Desert where the road often seems to stretch unbendingly all the way to the horizon.

The Mystic Maze is a large system of furrows near the town of Needles, California, created in ancient times by the Old Ones. I stood on a bluff and looked out over the fields at the changing light of dusk but I couldn't see anything. Later an old Mojave told me that they are best perceived from the air, which is interesting because when they were created air travel was not a reality. Or was it?

Small Boat Still Sailing

Don't like to be so self-involved, but one question keeps bugging me. Over a period of months I gave away my entire novel, Small Boat Sails into Big Mystery, a chapter at a time. What I want to know is, who read it and what did they get out of it? The response at the end was minimal. One friend said the ending was more "religious" than most of the books she reads. A friend who is a pastor said he was disappointed by Claudia's behavior at the end, but he saw it as the typical excess of a "new Christian."

The story that unfolded as I wrote the book continues to unfold within me and resonates in waves with what is currently happening in my life. Other people, in stories, songs, conversations, letters, are using the image of a small boat sailing on a big, dangerous ocean to describe the mystery of our current era.

I don't know what else to do with this book. It is not my first novel, but all the others seem like "practice" for this one. I know there is something to be said for the craft of art, how it is something to be honed, like fine woodwork or watercolor technique. I put a lot more into the craft of this work than anything else I have written. But ultimately it was more like a storm that raged through me than a project I was working on. I have no idea if I have created a marketable product. That's why I gave it away, rather than tried to sell it. Some say that people don't take seriously the things you give away. They only value the things they pay for.

The book was not intended to be "religious" or promoting any specific religious doctrine. Among other themes, I was exploring the contrast between a spiritual presence taking the form of Jesus against the confines of organized Christianity.

If you haven't read the book and you want to, start with the posting dated January 8, 2009, Chapter One, and continue from there. My light is still lit. Stop in a see me anytime.

A Wheeled World Will Roll Away

Lately I've been mostly using the blog to let you know when I post a new song on My Space. They let us post ten songs at a time now and I try to keep ten there at all times. The latest went up yesterday. It's called "A Wheeled World Will Roll Away." I wrote it in 1992. Brendan was 12 and Devin was 9 and it was looking like my traveling days were over. Little did I know that in 12 years I would have a job that would send me flying and driving all over the continental United States, amassing a large catalog of new songs and stories. Now that job is gone and the song suddenly takes on a new, welcome resonance. Follow the link to listen to it, and the other nine songs currently posted:

www.myspace.com/amazingflyingsky

Here are the lyrics:

A WHEELED WORLD WILL ROLL AWAY

See the silver highway rolling on, see the golden fields of Avalon
The green hills hiding in a veil of grey
Many colors fading into one, a radiant union like the sun
To reach before your life is over.
Look again the wheel is losing spin
Look again the ring is wearing thin
The sunset colors splash and fade away
Many kindred souls have come and gone
They plucked the highway with their song
And now they sleep beneath the clover

A wheeled world will roll away (X 8)

In the sky the swans are winging home, see the chevron shifting like a poem
The birches blazing in their autumn clothes
Every son of thunder knows his end, the place where home and highway blend
The bend that draws the homesick sinner
In the time it takes to tell the time little birds compose their closing lines
The last song fades into the afterglow
A screen door slams and a barn door swings
And a hound dog barks and a woman sings
The bell is ringing, time for dinner.

A wheeled world will roll away (X8)
I told the road to take me down the road
But the road refused to take me down the road (X2)

On the road the cars keep rolling on
In the night they wake you with their song
The life they call to mind seems far away
So you turn and seek the shadows deep
And travel lightly into sleep
And make the changes without knowing

(Chorus)

artichoke tonight

Tonight I have a 30 minute gig at the Artichoke Music coffee house on Hawthorne Street in Portland, 8 PM. I'll be joined by my good friends David Peyton on flute, Leslie Logan on violin, and my lovely, faithful wife Claire singing harmonies and making miscellaneous weird noises.

Right now I'm feeling very insecure about my singing voice- a great disconnect between the emotion behind my songs and what seems to come out when I try to perform them. I'm not fishing for complements here, just trying to give an honest description of where I'm at. Tonight I hope to lay low, work with the microphone and try to get out of my self a little, into the love (make love not art).

If you are local and you are free, please come and hear us, and the other fine musicians who will undoubtedly be performing at this fine venue.

early light

Another new song on My Space- please listen; it's the one called early light. Feel free to listen to the others too, if you'd like. Here's the link:

www.myspace.com/amazingflyingsky.

This was one of many songs I wrote in the mid-seventies after I first discovered there is more to spirituality than just being a good Methodist. In fact, holiness is not so much a virtue as it is a presence, one that is as close as the air we breathe, and is accessed not so much by our efforts to achieve it as by our surrender to its loving insistence in our lives. Hence the lyric:

There is no choice, he said, it's all been done before you
Matters of surrender are not left to choice or chance
So stop your aimless running, there's a place in the circle for you
We're meeting on the hillside, won't you come and join the dance?

I was also under the strong influence of progressive bands like Yes and King Crimson at the time, so I tried to infuse my songs with a spirit of rhythmic and harmonic experimentation. I hope this song still speaks, 30 years later.

Love Buzz #3

Another new song on My Space. This one's just for fun.

One morning I was making a pot of my favorite fair-trade coffee- "Love Buzz" by equal exchange. I started singing:

Well, I got a love buzz
I got a sweet tooth
I got a tendency
For telling the whole truth...

Wow! A song! So I went to the internet to check the title. It turns out there is already a song called Love Buzz, originally by a Dutch band called Shocking Blue, who also gave us the song "Venus" which was a big hit for Bananarama and was later featured in a very silly ladies' shaver commercial. The original Love Buzz was also covered by Nirvana.

So I call my song "Love Buzz #3", the first Love Buzz being the Shocking Blue song, the second being the fair trade coffee. Mine is the third. Listen to it please:

www.myspace.com/amazingflyingsky

new song on myspace

I posted another new song on My Space, plus a short blog on how (and why) I record my songs. The link is:

www.myspace.com/amazingflyingsky

The song is about the contrast between two lifestyles. On one hand there's the drop-out-get-back-to-the-country-escape-society lifestyle. On the other there are those who want to plunge themselves into the heart of the human condition in all its ragged glory, usually best accessed on the streets of the City. Wendy Waldman wrote a great song on this subject. It's called "Back By Fall"; the best rendition is by Maria Muldaur on an album called Sweet Harmony. I borrowed a line from her song for mine, but first I contacted her through My Space for permission. She was graceful enough to write back, but her answer was no. So if you listen to her song next to mine you might catch the line that was changed.

Here are the lyrics:

This world is a big place and the people all gather
In buildings and cities where the big rivers flow
But there’s a road that leads out into wide open spaces
And it’s there that I’m fixing to go.

So I found me an acre in the Anderson Valley
On a high wooded ridge with a view of the sea
And I met me this woman named Emily Carson
And I asked her to live there with me.

Sweet was that summer, 1967, languid the days in the warmth of the sun
And the wind in the pines like a whisper from heaven brought no portent of the trouble to come.

Winter was hard but we met some good people,
Refugees from a commune they called the Morningstar Farm
Deep were the nights by the old Danish woodstove
Burning thoughts as a way to stay warm.

Emily had a brother, he came up from El Cerrito,
He was broken and homeless and ravaged by cocaine
And he wrestled with demons seven weeks on the back porch
Until the winter finally gave in to the spring.

One morning in April we found him sitting by the woodstove,
clean shaven and lucid and squirelly-eyed
He said I’ve had a vision of a pathway untraveled, and a call that will not be denied

You see the answer is simple, it’s like a wheel in a wheel
It’s like a night in the day, like a day inside the night
It’s a gift to be given, it’s a secret to reveal, it’s a love to bring into the night.

That summer was a scorcher and the wind burned the corn
And the carrion crows locked in circling flight
Emily grew restless, distant and forlorn
Like the wild fires that raged through the night

I should have known it would happen and one night it happened,
There were tears and accusations, tantrums and blows
And in the morning there was nothing but a note and a daisy
And a dust cloud hanging over the road.

Last night awakened by the first wolf of winter;
in the morning the hills in a blanket of white.
Sometimes I swear that there’s no music finer
than the sound of the wind in the pines.

Well, this world is a big place full of buildings and cities
And the cruelty gathers where the big rivers roll
But there’s a road that lead out into wide open spaces
And it’s there that I’m fixing to go.