On Songwriting

If my words did glow with the gold of sunshine
And my tunes were played on the harp unstrung 
Would you hear my voice come through the music? 
Would you hold it near, as it were your own?
It's a hand-me-down. The thoughts are broken.
Perhaps they're better left unsung 
I don't know, don't really care 
Let there be songs to fill the air.

Ripple in still water
When there is no pebble tossed 
Nor wind to blow

"Ripple" - Robert Hunter/Jerry Garcia - The Grateful Dead

I’ve been thinking about the experience of writing songs--which I have only done a few times in my life a long time ago.  One friend I know launched passionately into a major period of songwriting recenty, inspired to go actually arrange and make a recording in Nashville.  I’ve seen M launch into lengthy, intricate guitar riffs that are completely improvisational.  I’ve known many friends through the years who have written music.  The other night my brother-in-law played a Beatlesque tune on my back porch that was so good I was trying to dredge up the memory that would tell me which 60’s band recorded it when, only to learn that it was an original.

I myself wrote three songs (that I remember) earlier in my life.  They came to me out of the blue and almost fully formed with only some lyric tweaking needed, and it was like a small miracle each time.  Writing songs is magical.

I just finished reading an autobiography called “Life” by Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones.  The book was aptly named since it is remarkable that Keith is still among the living after his colorful career immersed in blues, rock and roll, and every drug you can name.  The book is surprisingly detailed and insightful and has some special treats for guitarists since he talks about his discovery of open G tuning as well as his early and electrifying (literally) experiences with amps and sound systems.

Keith has this to say about song writing:  “What is it that makes you want to write songs.    In a way you want to stretch yourself into other people’s hearts.  You want to plant yourself there, or at least get a resonance, where other people become a bigger instrument than the one you’re playing.  It becomes almost an obsession to touch other people.  To write a song that is remembered and taken to heart is a connection, a touching of bases.  A thread that runs through all of us.  A stab to the heart.  Sometimes I think songwriting is about tightening the heartstrings as much as possible without bringing on a heart attack.”

Keith talks at one point in the book about the search for the holy grail of the lost chord--many songs have been sung about that one.  Especially interesting to me are the great songs about songwriting, like The Grateful Dead’s “Ripple” quoted above, and of course, Leonard Cohen’s oft-covered “Hallelujah” which also speaks of that elusive chord:

I've heard there was a secret chord

That David played and it pleased the Lord

But you don’t really care for music, do you?

Well it goes like this, the fourth, the fifth

The minor fall, the major lift,

The baffled King composing Hallelujah.

Hallelujah indeed to all the great songwriters of the world, known and unknown but all appreciated.

Skullcandy

Last Sunday I decided to venture out and buy a pair of headphones for our home PC so that when I wanted to listen to music or video clips while I’m on the PC in the family room, I can freely do that without having to worry about disturbing M while he’s reading or watching TV.

So we went to Best Buy and got some advice from a patient young man, very tall, very skinny, a huge mass of long, golden brown curls haloing his head. Since I’ve never owned headphones before (I know, hard to believe), I had amusing questions for the young man like, “do you think that little hole in the front of my computer speaker is for earphones? How can I be sure?”)—but he answered all my questions with a bemused look (you can also plug these headphones into the similar little hole you will find in the IPod you have). He warned me that the earphones were quite powerful so I should take care not to blast my ears to kingdom come on the first try.

I wanted something fairly inexpensive since I had no idea what I was doing, but of high quality that would shut out ambient sound pretty well so that I don’t have to hear the Nuggets game in the background when I’m listening to Joni Mitchell. I ended up walking out with the somewhat age-inappropriate earphone brand “Skullcandy”, thoroughly secured in snappy clear and black plastic packaging decorated with ominous looking skulls. The brand name has made me feel slightly more dangerous than I have any business feeling, I think. 

I went home and plugged these headphones into the little hole in the speaker without incident, and then (being careful to keep the volume low at first), tried listening to a song I had recently downloaded to iTunes, Bonnie Rait and John Prine’s version of John’s “Angel from Montgomery.”

Wow. It was wonderful.

Now I understand better why my kids make sure they have music wherever they go, in the current age a possibility when previously it was not.

The music came through beautifully, in all its nuances and glory, and I was left wondering why on earth I had waited so long to treat myself to this “skull candy.” I was so transfixed that an annoyed M had to stand right in front of me waving his arms to get my attention—he’d been trying to talk to me from behind, and I hadn’t heard a thing. In the classic teenage move I lifted up one of the earphones and said, “WHAT??”

Anyway—lesson learned. This was another reinforcement of the importance of treating my brain regularly to new experiences and sensations—great music, books, art, nature, conversation. What else have I been unwittingly starving for? And what are you starving for?

Remember what the dormouse said,
Feed your head. Feed your head. Feed your head.

                        "White Rabbit" - Grace Slick

Paper Bird

In my continuing effort to get a life outside work, we ventured down to Pearl Street for this summer’s first Bands on the Bricks event, featuring a homegrown Boulder band called Paper Bird. Paper Bird is an intriguing 7-member musical mixture with three female vocalists doing strong, tight harmonies, a banjo, a bass, a guitar – all spiced up with the occasional Dylanesque harmonica riff and a jazzy trombone. Once in awhile one of the women whips out a trumpet and blows a few bars to punctuate a song. Almost all the tunes they do are original and despite the fact that the sound mix wasn’t quite right and the vocals didn’t come through optimally, I became an instant fan, going so far as to buy both a t-shirt and their first CD, “Anything Nameless and Joybreaking.” They have a new CD coming out in July called “When the River Took Flight” that I’ll probably try out as well.

I’ve been listening to the CD in my car all week – a vintage sound and interesting lyrics (which you know I am a sucker for from my previous blogs). Example:

"If i sewed together all my illusions of youth i could make a coat that would keep me warm in December. if we laid all of our desires side by side we'd be walking on broken glass for miles.

chorus:  if i ask enough questions with no hope for reply would i understand the structure of love? i'd like to understand the structure of love."

                                              Esme Patterson, Paper Bird

It’s a satisfying combination of not-easily-categorized bluegrass, jazz, blues, folk—they were a breath of fresh air. If you haven’t heard them before, give them a whirl.

Unfettered and Alive

On the way to work Friday morning Joni’s “I Was a Free Man in Paris” plays on the radio. I turn up the volume and sit in my car in the parking lot to listen all the way to the end.

“The way I see it,” he said

“You just can’t win it….

Everybody’s in it for their own gain

You can’t please ‘em all

There’s always somebody calling you down.”

The song is said to be about Joni’s agent/promoter David Geffen, creator of Asylum Records in 1970 (I know—that’s a long time ago). It’s about the high cost of selling your soul to the corporation and the longing for freedom from it all.

So--if you work for a corporation, or more generally for money in any sizeable amount, have you automatically sold out? When I hear that phrase “free man in Paris,” I feel a great longing for the freedom of not having to answer to anybody else for things I don’t necessarily believe in—but on the other hand I do try every day to stay true to my principles, even as I also work toward the goals of the corporation as I understand them and when they make sense to me. I focus on treating others with kindness and fairness, and on teamwork.

“I deal in dreamers
And telephone screamers
Lately I wonder what I do it for…”

Sometimes I find myself skating uncomfortably close to some sort of edge; I ask myself again and again whether what I’m doing is right and struggle to stay the course accordingly.

“I was a free man in Paris
I felt unfettered and alive.
There was nobody calling me up for favors
And no one’s future to decide.
You know I’d go back there tomorrow
But for the work I’ve taken on
Stoking the star-maker machinery behind the popular song.”

The ethical tests I usually use at work and elsewhere are: 1) could I explain it to my Mom and 2) would I be able to read about it in the newspaper and be proud of the calls I made. There’s always the option to walk away—you are always the free man in Paris in this sense. There are potentially high costs of course, but you always have to know walking away is an option. Therefore, there is no excuse for violating your core principles, right?

Earth Day 1970

White tents and booths with information on compost piles and solar panels have sprung up in Boulder’s Civic Park for Earthfest on this partly sunny spring day. I remember the very first Earth Day, in 1970. I was a member (I might actually have been president, I can’t recall for sure) of the Edgewood High School Ecology Club. One of our main projects was to build a large brightly painted wooden box with a hinged lid which we placed just outside the entrance to the grocery store in Ellettsville, Indiana. Here, ecology-minded citizens could deposit their newspapers and cardboard for recycling (back then, this was pretty much the full range of our ability to recycle materials, at least in Ellettsville). Periodically when the box was overflowing and the grocery store manager’s annoyance had reached its peak, we would borrow a truck, load all the newspapers into the back, and drive to the west side of Bloomington where there was a place we could unload the papers for recycling.

Today in Boulder we have three separate containers right outside our house, one for paper, cardboard, glass and plastic, one for compost material (vegetables, egg shells, coffee grounds) and one for the irredeemably unrecyclable remaining crap, which we try through good buying habits to keep to a minimum. The contents of each of these are conveniently hauled off on a regular basis as part of our trash service. We have a little white ceramic compost collector by the sink lined with a pale green compostable bag and I always feel a tiny sense of accomplishment when I carry one of these full bags of vegetable discard out to the larger compost container. We are lightweights, however, as there are other people right in our neighborhood with their own compost piles and large vegetable gardens on which they spread the compost they generate. Even so, we continue to make small strides to better honor Mother Earth and hope that the larger initiatives for renewable energy will take hold.

Another thing my Ecology Club did back in 1970 was create and perform a short save-the-earth skit at various schools in the area, and at the end of the skit as the finale we paraded into the audience singing a song, me leading the way with my trusty guitar. Our teacher and sponsor was Mrs. Wilt, a tiny bespectacled woman with long black hair whose quietly radical teaching style somehow slipped under the radar of our rabidly conservative school administration back then. She selected and helped us learn a song for our traveling ecology road show; peculiarly enough in retrospect, the song was “Suicide is Painless,” the theme from Mash:

Through early morning fog I see
Visions of the things to be
The things that are withheld for me
I realize and I can see
That suicide is painless
It brings on many changes
And I could take or leave it if I please…

So, “WTF?” you might well ask, children (because only my children could possibly still be reading this, and I can’t be certain of that). I think the song was meant in this context to evoke the same concept as the image of the unaware frog in the bath being slowly brought to a boil. And thus ends another strange tale of long ago and far away in Ellettsville, Indiana, US of A.

It's All Right

After a weeklong business trip with the usual sense of isolation combined with strange moments of connectedness with airport strangers that business travel usually brings me, I woke up intensely grateful to be back in Boulder. This morning I listened to a Paul Simon song that’s been running through my head all week, the music based on a Bach chorale and the words so very relevant for the current time and for my return home from traveling: “American Tune.”

Many’s the time I’ve been mistaken
And many times confused
Yes, and often felt forsaken
And certainly misused
But I’m all right, I’m all right,
I’m just weary to my bones
Still, you don’t expect to be
Bright and von vivant
So far away from home, so far away from home

This country continues the long struggle of picking up the pieces from the latest hurricane in Galveston and environs. I see pictures of the places we visited in March on the west coast of the island, now totally destroyed. Meanwhile Wall Street has had its own hurricane and the U.S. government, counter to the current administration’s usual philosophy of letting the free markets resolve these messes, is stepping in to bolster the “giants who cannot be allowed to fail” before they topple and destroy our economy. But it’s only money, right?

Do listen to "American Tune." Simon sang it for the Democratic Convention in 1980. He sang it again on the first Saturday Night Live after 9/11. Simon has said in interviews that he wrote it in 1973 after Nixon won reelection.

And I don’t know a soul who’s not been battered
I don’t have a friend who feels at ease
I don’t know a dream that’s not been shattered
Or driven to its knees
But it’s all right, it’s all right
We’ve lived so well so long
Still, when I think of the road we’re traveling on
I wonder what went wrong
I can’t help it, I wonder what went wrong

In these times it’s important to remember how lucky we still are and how much we have to be grateful for as we seek the change we need in November. You can imagine Paul Simon waking up on a November morning to another four years of Nixon and writing this:

We come on the ship they call the Mayflower
We come on the ship that sailed the moon
We come in the age's most uncertain hour
And sing an American tune
But it’s all right, it’s all right
You can’t be forever blessed
Still, tomorrow’s going to be another working day
And I’m trying to get some rest
That’s all I’m trying to get some rest.

The song could leave you with a bleak feeling but I choose to take it as a hopeful call to find our way and make it all right before it is too late, to find our way again on this “long strange trip.” It’s time for a different approach. McCain represents safety and assurance to some, but there is no security because we are blazing a new trail on many fronts: financial, international and ecological. These lives we are all living—what radical changes may really be required to continue to live in this world and ensure that all the other inhabitants may also live? I believe Obama recognizes what we all must realize--much must change and greed must fall.

I intend to continue to recognize the abundance I have in the simple joy of living. To draw my happiness from the moment, not from all the “stuff” and money and accumulations. A key question: am I being generous enough to my fellow human beings? Am I practicing enough acts of random kindness? Eckhart Tolle says:

Many poets and sages throughout the ages have observed that true happiness is found in simple, seemingly unremarkable things...Why is it the "least thing" that makes up the best happiness?...The form of little things leaves room for inner space, and it is from inner space, the unconditioned consciousness itself, that true happiness, the joy of Being, emanates. To be aware of little, quiet things, however, you need to be quiet inside. A high degree of alertness is required. Be still. Look. Listen. Be present.

And…if you are having a cynical moment (or two or three) as you read this, please ask yourself how you like living with this cynicism every day and what you or anyone else is getting out of it. As John Lennon sang: "You may say I'm a dreamer...but I'm not the only one. I hope some day you'll join us, and the world will be as one."

The year was 1965 and I was twelve years old. I wanted to learn to play the guitar, so my parents got me a golden-bodied acoustic and signed me up for lessons at Tom Pickett’s Guitar Gallery on East Kirkwood Avenue.

In the Hoosier town of Bloomington it was not a happening scene yet in 1965. A leather vest here, some long-haired guys there, but not so much love and peace and psychedelia. But Kirkwood was right down the street from the Indiana University campus and in the next few years as I was folksinging more and more, barefooted beings called hippies began to frequent the avenue in fringe, brightly colored clothes, and beaded headbands, smelling of incense and patchouli oil. Many of them also had guitars, slung over their backs like apparel.

My long-haired (and very exotic, I thought) teacher started me out with D and A7, and at first I had to work hard just to simply strum and smoothly change back and forth between these two chords. I was heartened to learn that a person could play hundreds of songs just with two chords. The first song I learned was “Good News”:

Good news, chariot’s a’comin’
Good news, chariot’s a’comin’
Good news, chariot’s a’comin’
And I don't want it to leave a me behind.

I picked up other songs along the same lines like “Hush Little Baby.” Soon I had graduated to 3(!) chords, adding G. I learned how to read tablature, and then I learned the magic of minor chords with Dm and Am. With just these chords and another progression: G-Em-C-D, thousands of songs could be played. Eventually I learned bar chords, and then almost anything (theoretically) was possible.

I began to play and sing everywhere I got the chance – for my friends and family, in Dunn Meadow next to IU, in talent shows, even once on a local TV station at a very early hour one morning. My father loved to harmonize on some songs like “Tell Me Why” and “Kumbuya.” By then I had learned a lot of anti-war songs as the draft and the raging Vietnam War started to take more of my friends. “Strangest Dream” was one of these:

Last night I had the strangest dream
I'd ever dreamed before.
I dreamed that all the world had agreed
To put an end to war.

I also sang “Simple Song of Freedom.”

Come and sing a simple song of freedom.
Sing it like it’s never been sung before.
Let it fill the air, tell people everywhere
We the people here don’t want a war.

And of course, “We Shall Overcome.” Not to mention Dylan’s “The Times They Are a’ Changin.’” The guitar teacher mischievously taught me that one at a very young age, perhaps hoping to introduce a mild insurrection in my distinctly unrebellious young life – but my parents never seemed to object, perhaps because I was an incredibly well-behaved little thing until I diverged from their plan in my twenties and started living with Mark (shacking up, as my Dad called it). They were worried about our level of commitment to each other. Thirty-five years later Mark and I are still together, so there you have it.

I learned lots of folk songs, playing and singing for hours a day sitting on the edge of the bed in my room, probably driving my entire family crazy. Folk songs were a great form of expression for me and are to this day. I loved the lyrics and had a knack for memorizing them – learning whole sets of songs made famous by Joan Baez, Judy Collins, Joni Mitchell, Leonard Cohen, Bob Dylan. It was one of the most exciting and inspiring periods of learning and growth in my life and I’ll never forget it.

Of Lady Mondegreen

I have learned a new word (where has it been all my life?): mondegreen. It comes from a 17th century ballad about how they have slain the Earl of Murray and Lady Mondegreen. Only the real words are “laid him on the green.”

The word “mondegreen” was coined by writer Sylvia Wright for misheard poetry or lyrics. In her original discussion of this in 1954 she defined the mondegreen as actually better than the original—but few samples I have seen meet this criterion. Some are better than the original, some are hilarious, and some are simply stupid.

Another example Sylvia Wright gave was “Surely good Mrs. Murphy will follow me all the days of my life,” which is really Psalm 23’s “Surely goodness and mercy will follow me all the days of my life.”

One of my favorites is “’Scuse me while I kiss this guy,” for Jimi Hendrix’s “’Scuse me while I kiss the sky.”

Then there is “A gay pair of guys put up a parking lot” for Joni Mitchell’s “They paved paradise and put up a parking lot.” As well as “We’d like to know a little bit about your far-off isles,” for Paul Simon’s “Mrs. Robinson.” The real words: “We’d like to know a little bit about you for our files.”

And “the ants are my friends, they are blowing in the wind” for Dylan’s “the answer my friend is blowing in the wind.”

Since I am a great fan of lyrics and have memorized many songs, mondegreens are particularly amusing. I know I’ve been amazed at what I thought I was hearing in a song and what the actual words were when I looked them up. Sometimes when you look lyrics up on the Internet you find a bad version which is actually a series of mondegreens, so beware as always of anything you discover there.

The word mondegreen, after 54 years, has finally made it into the Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary, and is a welcome addition. Feel free to post your favorite ones in comments below.

The Voice in the Head

I have been thinking a lot about a concept covered in Eckhart Tolle’s “A New Earth” – the voice in the head. He tells the story of being on the subway on his way to work and observing a woman having a loud and angry conversation with a voice in her head. The woman is very agitated and upset, and looks down and off to the side into empty space as she continues a conversation along the lines of: “And then she said to me…so I said to her you are a liar how dare you accuse me of…when you are the one who has always taken advantage of me I trusted you and you betrayed my trust…”

Tolle mentions that later, as he is standing in the men’s room at work washing his hands, he thinks to himself, “I hope I don’t end up like her.” A man standing next to him looks briefly in his direction, and he realizes he has said these words out loud, he is already like her, that his mind is just as “incessantly active as hers,” and that really if she is mad, so are we all to some degree. Tolle says:

For a moment, I was able to stand back from my own mind and see it from a deeper perspective, as it were. There was a brief shift from thinking to awareness…at that moment of detachment from my mind, I laughed out loud. It may have sounded insane, but it was the laughter of sanity, the laughter of the big-bellied Buddha. ‘Life isn’t as serious as my mind makes it out to be.’ That’s what the laughter seemed to be saying. But it was only a glimpse, very quickly to be forgotten. I would spend the next three years in anxiety and depression, completely identified with my mind. I had to get close to suicide before awareness returned, and then it was much more than a glimpse. I became free of compulsive thinking and of the false, mind-made I. … Thinking is only a tiny aspect of the consciousness that we are.

This might have been part of what Adam Duritz of the Counting Crows is talking about in the song, “Perfect Blue Buildings,” repeating the phrase,

How am I gonna keep myself away from me
Keep myself away
How am I gonna keep myself away from me
Keep myself away...

It's an idea that many of the books I’ve been reading express in one way or another; the AA groups refer to it as “stinking thinking.” The meditation books describe techniques for cessation of thinking, for emptying the mind. My skill is slowly increasing at stepping outside of myself, noticing my thinking, and more importantly countering it when it is causing anxiety, grief, or my personal favorite: guilt.

Avalanche

I heard a song on the radio the other day by Shawn Colvin called “Shotgun Down the Avalanche” from her album “Steady On,” Columbia Records 1989. And now it is a bit of an earworm for me so I am writing about it to see if it cures the earworm. It starts out:

I’m riding shotgun down the avalanche,
Tumbling and falling down the avalanche.
So be quiet tonight, the stars shine bright
On this mountain of new fallen snow.
But I will raise up my voice into the void
You have left me nowhere to go.

This seems like a song about inevitability, in ability to control events. As far as I know, an avalanche can’t usually be controlled, other than perhaps the practice in Colorado and other states of using a shotgun to trigger one at safer and more alert moments. The song goes on:

Sometimes you make me lose my will to live
And just become a beacon for your soul.
The past is stronger than my will to forgive,
Forgive you or myself, I don’t know.

I’m riding shotgun down the avalanche,
Tumblin’ and fallin’ down the avalanche….

Words to songs have always been meaningful to me, and I probably have the lyrics to hundreds of songs lodged in my brain. Somehow this song reminds me of certain lessons that life keeps trying to teach me with mixed success:

• I only have control over my own reactions.
• Sometimes helping is robbery.
• You can’t fix everything, no matter how good you are, and sometimes inaction is the best choice. But sometimes not. How do you know? Reach down into your heart and do what it tells you.

The avalanche is an apt metaphor. Stevie Nicks wrote a much-loved and much-covered song in her early twenties called “Landslide.” She wrote the song in Aspen, Colorado on the night before her dad's operation at the Mayo Clinic, at a time that for many reasons was a turning point for her career and her life. She had a lot going on--and it all converged at once in this song that questioned whether she could really make it to the next stage in the career and the future she had envisioned. She ended up deciding to stay with her music – and three months later on New Year’s Eve Fleetwood Mac called her.

She says about the song: “I realized then that everything could tumble, and when you’re in Colorado…you think avalanche. It means the whole world could tumble around us, and the landslide would bring you down…when you’re in that kind of snow-covered surrounding place, you don’t just go out and yell, because the whole mountain could come down on you.”

Landslide

by Stevie Nicks

I took my love, I took it down.
Climbed a mountain and I turned around.
And I saw my reflection in the snow-covered hills
‘Til the landslide brought me down.

Oh, mirror in the sky, what is love?
Can the child within my heart rise above?
Can I sail through the changing ocean tides?
Can I handle the seasons in my life?

Well, I’ve been afraid of changing
‘Cause I’ve built my life around you.
But times make you bolder, even children get older,
And I’m getting older too.

Oh, take my love, take it down.
Aha, climb a mountain and turn around.
And if you see my reflection in the snow covered hills
Well, the landslide will bring it down.

And if you see my reflection in the snow covered hills
Well, the landslide will bring it down.

Summer of Love

In the full, humid heat of an Indiana July in 1967, my parents packed the family into our light blue station wagon for a road trip headed west. I was thirteen years old. In those days, smoking was acceptable everywhere, even on long-distance car trips, but there was no air conditioning, so the windows were open to make up for it and all we had to do was dodge the burning ashes as they flew out the front windows and back into the rear ones.

Since there were no DVD/CD players, video games, or even reliable radio reception for miles at a time, we took along story books, comic books, crossword puzzles, and notebooks for journaling. We sang songs like “Tell Me Why,” and “Ezekiel Cried Dem Dry Bones.”

We played word games: Twenty Questions and a game called Hink Pink. In Hink Pink, you think of a noun and a modifier that rhyme, provide a definition as the hint, and players guess what the hink pink is. If the rhyming words have multiple syllables (and certainly all the syllables must rhyme), then you provide this hint when you describe your hink pink at the beginning of the game. You might say: “I have a hink pink that is an “obese rodent.” And the solution would be: fat rat. If you, perchance, had a multi-syllabic puzzle you might say, “I have a hinky pinky that means “crazy horse,” and the answer would be “silly filly.” Or a hinkety pinkety that is a “complimentary sparse distribution,” the answer being: flattering smattering. Or a hinketity pinketity that…but I leave this last one as an exercise for the reader. (If you have a really good hink pink that must be shared, leave it in a comment below.)

Thus we somehow managed to amuse ourselves for entire days of travel and restrain from driving each other insane to some degree, although this is easier for me to say because I squirreled myself as far away as possible in the rearmost compartment of the light blue station wagon, and the three siblings including my manic brother and two younger sisters were confined together in the middle seat. (In another example of how we did things differently back then, we never wore seatbelts; if we had been rear-ended I would have been mooshed like a little sardine.) But we managed to avoid for the most part the dreaded moment when my father would slow down and yell, “Don’t make me stop this car!”

Toward evening the kids would start begging for the ultimate treat, a motel with a Swimming Pool. No reservations were made ahead of time so often our exhausted father, faced with motels that had orange neon “no vacancy” signs or were so exceedingly seedy that we couldn’t stomach them, or did not have swimming pools, would drive much farther than planned to get us to the tiny motel room next to the big pool. After checking in, the next move was always cannonballs into the pool to work off all the unexpended energy from a long day of travel.

We passed through Reno on our way to the West Coast, with its exotically dressed ladies and noisy casinos that did not allow minors inside. My father was skilled at winning motel money in poker games. As another example of “things you wouldn’t do nowadays,” Dad handed me a twenty and told me to take the kids and find something to eat while he and Mom gambled for awhile. So I did that, and then the kids and I got distracted by a more accessible area with nickel slots, and not knowing that this was off limits for minors, I pumped a nickel into the nearest one. Suddenly, lights were flashing, bells were ringing and an alarmed woman was hustling the four of us out of the area. My chastened mother came to claim my winnings of about $40 in nickels, which to me back then seemed like quite a bit of dough.

We finally made it all the way to Fisherman’s Wharf in San Franciso, where people that some called hippies were thronging in large numbers, wearing colorful tie-died clothing, peace symbols and headbands, burning lots of incense and other stuff. Guys had hair as long, if not longer, than mine, which was down to my waist back then. People were handing out subversive literature, with ideas I had never, ever heard before and shocking pictures of sexual activity that caused my Mom to blush and pull the papers out of my hand, discarding them with amused horror. There were colorful posters with imagery that was said to be psychedelic, and something called flower power. We had arrived just in time for the Summer of Love. On Fisherman’s Wharf I put my nickels to good use and bought myself a dark brown leather hat with a floppy brim, which my father immediately dubbed my “Go to Hell Hat” for reasons I didn’t fully understand. I wore this hat constantly for the rest of the trip.

As we drove down The Big Sur, Highway 1 was lined with hundreds of hippies, all hitchhiking. In yet another example of things you would never do nowadays, my Dad picked up one of these hitchhikers and peppered him with friendly questions about how he had come to be on the road, where he was headed, what he believes. There was discussion of the need for peace and love, there was concern for something called the draft, and about a war that was raging in a place called Vietnam. The fellow was very good-natured and forthcoming with these questions, and thanked us politely as we dropped him off near the campground that was his destination.

That trip West was quite an adventure, and as we were passing through Terre Haute on the final stretch of our travels back home to our little conservative God-fearing rural Indiana hometown of Ellettsville, I had an epiphany, inspired by pondering the many strange hypocrisies and contradictions of a small town where most folks go to church every Sunday but full blown vandalism in the form of soaped windows, TP’ed trees and corn thrown against picture windows occurs every October 31st.

As a result of the ephiphany I actually made up a song, lyrics and music, wholly out of thin air, with guitar accompaniement. That autumn I won second prize singing this song at the annual Fall Festival. It was quite a hit because it was about sports, based on a cheer we used to do at ballgames. It is one of three songs I ever composed, and its lyrics are now immortalized in this blog as follows:

Ellettsville

I come from E-double-L-E-double-T-S-V-I-double-L-E.
A riot every Halloween and a church on every street.
I said E-double-L-E-double-T-S-V-I-double-L-E.
Our high school ain’t got long-haired kids
And we don’t take LSD.

Well I was born in Hoosier town
I lived there many a year.
I went to their schools and their basketball games
And I learned all their cheers.
But just one cheer stands out so clear
It’ll always be with me.
It’s E-double-L-E-double-T-S-V-I-double-L-E.

Well it’s football in the early fall
And winter brings basketball.
In summer there is baseball
For the guys who ain’t heavy or tall.
But through it all I can hear that call,
It’ll always be with me.
It’s E-double-L-E-double-T-S-V-I-double-L-E.

I said, E-double-L-E-double-T-S-V-I-double-L-E.
A riot every Halloween and a church on every street.
I said E-double-L-E-double-T-S-V-I-double-L-E.
Our high school ain’t got long-haired kids
And we don’t take LSD.

There is a game played overseas
Without a ball or goal.
And guys who go to play that game
Are playin’ with their souls.
I’ve often wondered how the hometown boys
Will bring home victory
Without that cheer to pull them through
Without their parents tried and true
To yell E-double-L-E-double-T-S-V-I-double-L-E.

I said, E-double-L-E-double-T-S-V-I-double-L-E.
A riot every Halloween and a church on every street.
I said E-double-L-E-double-T-S-V-I-double-L-E.
Our high school ain’t got long-haired kids
And we never faced defeat.
Ellettsville...Ellettsville.

Pandora

I am trying hard to let go of work for a few days and relax my mind. Today I’ve been playing on-line Scrabble (very much against the advice of my chiropractor who says I should be on the computer as little as possible lest I turn into a hobbly hunched old woman). As I play I’ve been listening to the wonderful on-line radio station Pandora, which plays – well, it plays whatever you please. And it never, ever has commercials. And it tells the name of the musician or group and the name of the piece. Oh, heaven. I was turned on to this by my clever son when I was whining once again about commercial radio and how all the stations sound alike. You create your own radio station specifying the name of an artist or song. Or you can choose from a variety of genres. Lately I have been listening to the holiday channels “Peaceful Christmas,” “Folk Christmas,” and “Traditional Christmas.” I have also created a few channels including “Joni Mitchell Radio” and “Bob Dylan Radio.” Songs that match the key words are played, not necessarily always the artist him or herself. You can also give feedback, e.g. “I don't like this song. It's not what this station should play,” or “I'm tired of this song, don't play it for a month,” or “Why is this song playing?” and it is all taken into account the next time you log on. Pandora is provided as part of the Music Genome Project, which collects information on the taxonomy of music and analyzes it based on 400 musical characteristics, then adds to this information over time. Oh, sometimes the Internet and computers are marvelous things...

Wish You Were Here

There is a succinct phrase Mark uses to describe death and one of his philosophies about it; I first heard him mention it when my Mom died and he says it comes from an old movie, although I have never found the reference. The phrase is: “You’re not here, you’re here, you’re not here.”

Somehow this links in with an earworm I’ve had for the past few weeks: the classic Pink Floyd tune circa 1975, “Wish You Were Here, ” by David Gilmour (music) and Roger Waters (lyrics). To me this is a song about the despair and grief you feel when someone you deeply love is not really there anymore—even when they might be right next to you.

The song begins with the sound of a woman’s voice on the radio and what sounds like a twist of the knob, scanning the channels, classical music, a search for a better station. Then strumming begins on a 12-string acoustic guitar, quietly scratchy at first as though over the radio. The sound seems to floating across a lake late at night. It gets a little louder and another guitar joins in with the lead. Finally the song starts:

So, so you think you can tell
Heaven from Hell,
Blue skies from pain?
Can you tell a green field from a cold steel rail?
A smile from a veil?
Do you think you can tell?

And did they get you to trade
Your heroes for ghosts?
Hot ashes for trees? Hot air for a cool breeze?
Cold comfort for change? And did you exchange
A walk on part in the war
For a lead role in a cage?

How I wish, how I wish you were here.
We're just two lost souls swimming in a fish bowl,
Year after year,
Running over the same old ground.
What have we found?
The same old fears,
Wish you were here.

Listen to it sometime. I swear it is a song about two people together but apart: "Wish You Were Here.” At the end, you can hear the lonely sound of wind scouring a desert or moor (or perhaps the dark side of the moon).

You’re not here, you’re here, you’re not here.

Face at Nissi's

On Ginny’s 50th Birthday I had the incredible fortune to be invited back to Nissi’s to hear a Colorado-based a capella men’s singing group called Face. Go here to hear a sample from Face and understand that everything you hear is done with their voices alone, each holding a mike on the stage. There are no instruments.

They were incredible, and I enjoyed every minute of it. They provide all percussion and other instruments via their voices alone (a fact that was dubiously received by at least one member of our party because they were so good at it). They also have a strong musical, choreographic and rhythmic sense with their entire bodies that made their performance a joy to watch. Each of the seven members of this troupe is hugely talented in his own way and contributed strongly to the whole. Additionally, given comments they made they do at least some of their own original arrangements, which lends another angle of creativity.

I especially enjoyed their version of John Lennon’s “Let it Be,” which they said was a brand new arrangement they were only performing for the second time, and also their version of Paul Simon’s “An American Tune,” which they related back to a classic choral piece by Bach, I believe, which they said had been the basis for Simon’s tune. You know this Paul Simon song if you hear the lyrics:

Oh, but I'm all right,
I'm all right
I'm just weary to my bones
Still, you don't expect to be bright and bon vivant
So far away from home
So far away from home

They began with the German classic, sung in (possibly fake?) German with many jokes about their ability to pronounce it, and them morphed it into the Paul Simon piece seamlessly, and with great emotion and insight.

In a rendition of Mancini’s “The Pink Panther,” they requested a random animal sound from the audience before the song began, and then ended up breaking up not only the crowd but the performers, as a hilarious attempt was made toward the end to introduce a donkey to the panther. They said that they had had a request for a monkey the night before, which I can only imagine.

Their percussion expert did a short set of “drum solos” that included a version of “Wipeout,” just to show his virtuosity with the drums, (actually sounds produced entirely with his own voice).

One of the most entertaining things is how the group occupies the entire stage, obviously enjoying the music as they move to it. You have the urge to move also. Try it, you’ll like it. They also make lots of jokes and clearly have an almost improv sense of humor – I laughed several times, which is definitely good for the soul.

This is a group that appears regularly at Nissi’s, so you will have other opportunities to see them. In fact, you can see them there on July 22 and 23 and again in late August. Recommendation: buy your tickets early at Nissi’s because it was a full house tonight. Once again I have to implore the population of Boulder County, and particularly Lafayette for heaven’s sake since they are right in your neighborhood, to check out Nissi’s and give them the support they deserve for their own support of live music in this area.

Face also mentioned they would be at Boulder’s new 29th Street Mall Friday night July 6 at 6:00 pm.

Rob Rio Revisited

Twenty-five years ago in South Boulder there was a tavern called La Paz, and in that tavern some nights we had the joy of hearing Rob Rio play boogie woogie piano blues. He was and is amazing - I cannot even describe it except that it makes me smile, laugh, clap and hoot each time I hear it - to understand you've gotta hear it for yourself.

Back then, Rob had long black hair down his back that he wore tied back to keep it out of the way, and often played with a cigarette hanging precariously from his mouth.

Due to the alertness of our friend Ginny, last night we had the unexpected pleasure of hearing him again after all these years, at Nissi’s, a new restaurant in Lafayette that is hosting live music many nights of the week. I walked away a renewed fan of Rob’s – and a new fan of Nissi’s. The local owners have great taste in music, genuinely support it, and also know how to run a high quality restaurant.

Support live music in Boulder County, and check out their calendar! If you want more of Rob, check out this youtube of him playing "Rocket 88"!

Rain

It's been raining more than usual here in Colorado, a very welcome event. The rain, and the time of year, remind me of a song by Adam Duritz of the Counting Crows called Omaha. It's from their 1993 album “August and Everything After” that always makes me think of my brother Paul, who told me once that it was one of his very favorite tunes. As usual, it is the lyrics that draw me most to a song I love.

It starts out with a verse about an old man—tearing him down, rolling a new leaf over. “The old man treading around in the gathering rain,” is perhaps somebody who thinks he is so right that he walks on water. This makes me think about my brother's relationship with my dad. They loved each other, and each could never be what the other needed.

Then the chorus comes in for the first time.

“Omaha, somewhere in middle America

Get right to the heart of matters

It's the heart that matters more

I think you better turn your ticket in

And get your money back at the door”

My brother and I grew up with our family in middle America – southern Indiana to be exact. The song makes me think of Indiana’s best seasons--the rain, the earth, the green fields.

The next verse is about life change or the hope for change —“rolling a new life over.” In this verse the old man is “threading his toes through a bucket of rain.” My father was a master gardener. Dad would often garden in the rain, or simply stand outside during a rainfall to revel in the water coming for the garden or to admire the lightning show. We all tried to help him with the garden, although his standards were so high that it was hard to please him. Even weeding and watering have a right way and a wrong way, could be judged insufficient, you see. It could feel like he was walking all over you. He didn’t mean to, but he did.

For Paul, I can imagine there was always the hope of ultimately pleasing him, somehow or another. But Dad was walking on water, and Paul was underwater.

In the third verse, there is a “young man rolling around in the earth and rain” in order to “turn a new girl over.” Paul had a hard time with relationships, in his own family and with girls. In the end, he was never really able to find a long term relationship for many reasons, mostly due to his own choices and because he struggled with mental illness and addictions. He was very lonely, I think. (To “get right to the heart of the matter – it’s the heart that matters most.”)

In the end, perhaps we all want to turn our tickets in and get our money back at the door. We all have our hearts broken. This song has heart – listen to it when you get a chance. You'll be glad you did.

Judy

I used to sing a lot. Folk songs. I would sit on the grass at Indiana University’s Dunn Meadow in Bloomington, Indiana and sing song after song with my guitar, usually with a pretty good audience.

I still sing, but mostly in my head. I still know most of the words to many, many songs, and they arise in my consciousness as a kind of running commentary on my life. Thus, as I walk up to the side door to enter my place of work on a Monday morning, I might have Janis Joplin’s tune going in my head:

Oh Lord, won’t you buy me a Mercedes Benz?
My friends all have Porsches,
I must make amends.
Worked hard all my lifetime, no help from my friends.
Oh Lord, won’t you buy me a Mercedes Benz?

Why that one? Who knows, it just seems right.

Two Sundays ago, at the suggestion of my daughter Cait, I got to see the incomparable Judy Collins in concert at the Paramount Theater in Denver.

I loved it. She had a piano player as backup but did several songs by herself, either with the guitar or playing the piano. Her voice is still clear, strong and beautiful.

She sang a few old-timey folk songs including “John Riley” – the one where the young woman has patiently waited seven years for her true love to come home, explaining to the stranger in the garden that she remains faithful, and he reveals that he is himself her long lost John Riley (happy ending, although the woman is far more patient than I think I would be in similar circumstances).

She sang several others that I love, including “Amazing Grace,” her bittersweet rendition of “Send in the Clowns,” and songs about Colorado including “Someday Soon.” She won applause by mentioning that her 91-year-old mother was in the audience, and told stories about her father Jack and growing up in Denver surrounded by musicians.

She sang Joni Mitchell’s “Both Sides Now” and told the story of how she had first heard the song--a friend (Graham Nash?) had called her at 3 a.m. from New York City insisting she listen to a singer he had discovered.

She spoke with great affection of the first time she met Leonard Cohen, how attractive he was, how grateful she was that she never fell in love with him as friends had. She told him he could not sing, but that she would be recording his songs the next morning. She stepped over to a special smaller sparking keyboard, and I thought for a minute she was going to sing “Famous Blue Raincoat,” but instead she sang one I of Leonard’s haven’t heard much but would like to learn: “A Thousand Kisses Deep”:

And sometimes when the night is slow,
The wretched and the meek,
We gather up our hearts and go
A thousand kisses deep.

She also sang an absolutely heart-breaking version of a song dedicated to her song Clark, who committed suicide in 1992 at age 33, called “Wings of Angels.” She has written a book about this called “Sanity and Grace: A Journal of Suicide, Survival and Strength.”

Wings of angels tears of saints
Prayers and promises won't bring you back
Come to me in dreams again
Wings of angels tears of saints

We also heard “City of New Orleans,” “Open The Door,” “Since You’ve Asked,” and many more. It was a great evening and I was glad Cait shared it with me.

Inspired, I played my guitar with Mark the other night and sang again for several hours, one of my trustiest songbooks (“Rise Up Singing”) open before me. It felt really good but my fingers are sore. They’ll toughen up if I keep it up.

Full Flight to Denver

Do not fly into California via the San Jose airport again if you can possibly help it.

I thought the flight times were a little more convenient, and the cost was a little lower. And it wasn’t too bad flying into San Jose from Denver. But the dinky United gates in San Jose on my return trip were extraordinarily crowded, and boarding the airplane involved climbing stairs up to the airplane door lugging my beloved computer.

The flight was delayed and there were too many stressed out people waiting already in the small gate area, so it was literally a case where there was no room to breathe and no place to put myself that wasn’t somehow in somebody else’s way.

“Oh my Grace I’ve got no hiding place…” Paul Simon

Center seats both to and from my destination didn’t help matters. It is interesting how many airline passengers view both armrests as undeniably theirs. When you end up in a center seat between two big guys, this can be problematic.

After a long but reasonably productive week in Dublin, I just wanted to get home last night, and it was harder than it had to be. But the pleasure of eating the tasty beef stew Mark had cooked to welcome me home and of sleeping in my own comfortable bed again made up for it.

One is the Loneliest Number

One is the loneliest number that you’ll every do.
Two can be as bad as one,
it’s the loneliest number since the number one.

Harry Nilsson/Three Dog Night

It is amazing how you can be lonely in a crowd, lonely when surrounded by people that you talk to every day. The missing element is the connection, the intimacy of being able to share your innermost thoughts with somebody else and know that they understand and care. I was reminded of this recently by someone I love very much.

On my journey, I have to do a better job of remembering just to listen, and connect, and not always try to fix things.

The Christmas Letter, written December 2

It is snowing in Boulder today with more than a foot already on the ground. The tiny, lighted deer graze under the maple tree in the front yard, looking like they have thrown thick white fur overcoats across their shoulders to keep warm. The multi-colored lights framing the front porch glow softly beneath the snow. This year we’ve had several visits from real deer, more often than ever before. One large rogue buck with huge antlers and a large tag proclaiming him to be #90 has spent much quality time in our back yard, nipping off the heads of all the roses in a feeding frenzy. paying no mind at all to our objections. Teams of wildlife service people have shown up with their radio frequency devices to track #90 and verify his location for their records.

I have begun my yearly practice of singing Christmas carols in the shower, in preparation for the annual caroling party, beginning with the lilting “It Came Upon a Midnight Clear” and moving toward a crescendo with “O Holy Night” and “Silent Night” as the traditional finale. Since this is my only effort at practice, I approach it with hybrid vigor, as my father might have said.

I also find myself humming a certain Joni Mitchell song called “The Circle Game.” You may remember it. The chorus: “And the seasons, they go round and round and the painted ponies go up and down. We’re captive on a carousel of time. We can’t return, we can only look behind from where we came, and go round and round and round in the Circle Game.”

I don’t know about you, but this time of year makes me think more about missing family members and friends. Sometimes we wish for one last conversation with them, so we can say those things we should have said. This perhaps reminds us to say those things while we can to the living.

I have learned (I hope) by this point to remember the best and most wonderful things. Lately I am remembering my brother Paul, who left us in May. Paul had a rough time over the last few years (and in trying to help him, so did I). But I remember the great joy with which he played his fiddle, and the huge energy he devoted to riding his beloved bicycle in the mountains, and the hilarious sense of humor he had when we spent an evening in the old days cooking barbecued ribs on our back porch and drinking beer. He did love singing the Christmas carols also. Let this paragraph be a small tribute to the best things in Paul.

Another thing I do this time of year is remind myself of how lucky we are. Caitlin has graduated from high school and moved on to Colorado State University in Fort Collins, where she is doing very well in school and also getting some experienced as a DJ with the local college radio station. Shannon continues as a junior at the University of Colorado in Boulder, also doing very well and working toward a degree in Integrative Physiology when he is not snowboarding.

Mark and I are in relatively good health and grateful for our cozy house and our love for each other on this cold winter’s day. We are heading out later to look for the perfect Christmas tree. Recently we have seen positive change in the country, and have a growing hope for a better direction in the coming years.

Much love to all of you with the wish that you will have a peaceful and loving holiday season.