Time lies waiting in the wings

 

 

Dearest,

There isn't much time left of course, so deciding what to do with it is increasingly hard.  Our robot overlords are coming over the ridge yonder, and unlike the neighbor I had as a young girl, I do not have a revolver to repel them with.  I think my neighbor might have thought that Soviet soldiers would come over the hill to get her, but, maybe she meant her own government?  I suppose it doesn't matter now, if it ever did.  I thought then, as I do now, that trying to hold back imaginary foes with a handgun was a perfectly ludicrous notion, unless you were a white hatted Western movie hero or a cinema secret agent. 

She showed me the gun, kept in the glove compartment of her yellow van, to reassure me, to empower me.  Except that empowering people by packaging it with a bonus gift of fear is actually enslaving them. 

I tell you all this tonight, because I am thinking of how I will accomplish all that I have planned:  a trip to Spain, writing a Warren Zevon song, skating a waltz jump, opening a lunch counter.  I worry, I am afeared, that I might not get all this done. 

ring ring

Dear All,

Hey, how you doing?  Here is your song to sing today.  Want a dance remix?  Have one.  Or two.

O! Dear!

Dear Friends,

O!  I haven't enough time to convince you of the imperative of abstraction in art, and you simply must jump in the water without preparation.  At my job, I have been trying to convince a group of people of this very thing, and all I can do is heap up visual evidence, because when I try to speak of these things, they become flat, stale, and didactic. 

The author here, in this article, suffers similarly, but the images!  O, o!!  O!

Read This!

Dear Cinderella,

I am cleaning this week, because I am having some people over-  there is a lot of dust and spider webs and paper scraps-  what my Mom and Dad always called 'schnitzels' of paper. 

I have a whole box of these paper scraps, because I think I might one day make new paper out of them.  Or maybe I will stuff them into a sculpture skin, and I only I will know that the innards are schnitzels saved over years. 

I also have bags of fabric snippings- no, I don't mean anything you could make a quilt with, I mean really small snips and threads.  They make nice little piles and I love the way they sit in rows. 

I know that I am going to have to become comfortable with the disappointment others will have in me for this behavior-  I know that collecting bottle caps has become 'hoarding' and that makes me quite ill by today's standards. 

Phooey on that, and read this, too, while you are at it.  It's long, it uses big words and it is subversive- you will love it!

Discouragement.

 

 

 

Dear Chordful,

Today's song to sing is a favorite of mine, although, for me, it holds discouragement within.  I give you its chords, but they are not for me, because I still cannot make my hands into those shapes on my guitar's neck.  I know many of you can, though, and so this song is especially for you to play.  I often find the songs I want to play are beyond my literal reach, but oh! there are so many songs!  There is always another one for me to kludge through happily- for example: Sea of Heartbreak.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Les Paul & Mary Ford are wonderful, and their songs are filled with what seems to me must have been the optimism of the age- the technological wonder of  the electric guitar and multitrack recording.  Not very long before this film was recorded, Les Paul's elbow was destroyed in a car accident and his arm was permanently set at nearly 90 degrees to facilitate playing the guitar.  And doesn't it sound as if he never put the guitar down?  I love to ponder this poetic notion of limbs that have been altered to make music as I try to make my own fingers hold down 6 strings at once.

 

 

 

 

PS

Do you care for another?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Take the Catbus

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dear Watchers,

 

 

Have you seen this bus?  You know I wouldn't ask you to if it weren't really important and worthwhile, so would you watch this film sometime?  You won't regret it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

PS

If you won't get on a bus without knowing where it is going, then perhaps you will want to consult this map containing pedantic explication.  The quotes from the film-maker are the bits to treasure.

 

 



 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



 

What's that?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dear Stringed,

 

What do they call that, when the music is tromping,dragging along, stumbling?  The club-footed rhythm of this kind of waltz?  It's just right, isn't it?  I am sure it has a proper name.  Write to me, if you know what it is called, at the usual address.  Or come by, I am playing it on my guitar, on the porch, in the fading light.  Here are the chords, we can play it together: