Cables O'er The Ocean, Pallets On Your Floor
"Every inheritance is a kind of haunting, and we inherit almost everything."-Audrey Wollen
…and the hard rain is coming down.
The scene outside our mountain top vista showcase darkly translucent fog and drizzle hugging the distant mountaintops as they become two dimensional cut-out backdrops in an oversized shadow puppet performance. Shadows on the walls of caves.
I started the morning yesterday with Mississippi John Hurt’s Vangaurd recordings…the ones he made in the 1960s upon “rediscovery.” Now I write these words with his 1928 first recordings on the turntable where the songs are recorded just a little faster by a younger hand…with a tad more attack on the strings. But even them, Hurt was a master of his own genre of blues, so sweet and smooth…levitating our dry space above the chaos of the weather.
It is the 120th anniversary of the Hawaii-San Francisco telegraph cable being finished and open for use. Suddenly, we could communicate over the distance of half of the biggest ocean on the planet…which led to farther western communications as already laid cables from islands to mainlands were connected. As discussed in the article by Alexander G. McAdie (which is a truly wonderful and interesting read), this huge event shined a light on the bad land of San Francisco (and the Western part of the country) in a big way, taking it out of the Eastern shadow the wild west was still in at that time.
Little did the people of San Francisco comprehend the importance of this international connection, given the event a year and a few months later: it would become a major form of communication after the major earthquake left the city off-line in every way. In Hawaii alone by 1906, several thousand people had migrated to San Francisco and had relatives desperate to hear about their fate. It is almost impossible to comprehend a world before international communication, especially in our new reality of getting news and information as soon as it comes.
And where was Mississippi John Hurt during this big event of San Francisco/Hawaii connection? He was eleven…growing up in Avalon, Mississippi…a rural town out-of-the-way of the already out-of-the-way regions in the out-of-the-way sparsely populated deep South. He had already started picking on a guitar two years prior, with the only musical references being the few folks that played on the area’s sole storefront porch, Rufus Hanks being a name that is referenced from that time, or at a community get together. That lack of connectivity to the outside world played a big factor in Hurt’s signature playing style: there was no way for him to receive the outside influences and thus no one played or sounded like him. Not Robert Johnson. Not Charlie Parker. Not Bukka White or Sleepy John Estes or Leadbelly or Blind Willie McTell. No one had that sweet, soft sound.
Developing beauty in a vacuum while other parts of the world got closer and more connected…
Keep dry, keep warm.
Laura Baker’s PAINTING BOX: Before The Year Ends edition
Laura Baker’s curation of wonderful images is always something to look forward to, and this latest installment is a great installment, featuring visual artists that have inspired her over the past year (most I had not heard about before)…as well as showcasing her own painting and her husband Steven Baker’s watercolors…
This is a fascinating read, and of course, another argument for the power an necessity of art in our daily lives: “Medical science can only tell us so much. To understand pain, we need the cultural tools of history, philosophy and art”
Christian Bale on How The Pale Blue Eye Crafts an Origin Story for Edgar Allan Poe
“There’s so much information about Poe, but being able to invent these things — that maybe he was charming, maybe he was a bit foolish, maybe he was witty and stupid all at the same time… All these little things offer him a bit more range to the Poe that we think we know now, as this more sinister, dark gloomier person. I think that territory’s a fascinating one, to reinvent this idea of who this Edgar Allen Poe is.”
Mark Twain House in Hartford vandalized three times with thrown rocks, bricks, asphalt
“The Mark Twain House & Museum in Hartford has been vandalized three times since Dec. 23, with windows broken by bricks, rocks and chunks of asphalt, the executive director of the historic house museum said Wednesday. Pieter Roos said the thrown objects damaged not only windows but also “sheared off three fingers of a 19th-century marble statue, a Venus de Medici, that was on long-term loan from the Wadsworth Atheneum.”
List of Bob Marley's Children and Grandchildren in the Music Industry
With the passing of Bob Marley’s grandson Jo Mersa Marley last week, there has been a lot of journalism dedicated to his legacy, and the legacy of all the Marleys. And there are A LOT of them. Don’t know who is who? The insider knows….
On the Seashore of Endless Worlds
By: Rabindranath Tagore
On the seashore of endless worlds children meet.
The infinite sky is motionless overhead
and the restless water is boisterous.
On the seashore of endless worlds the children meet with shouts and dances.
They build their houses with sand and they play with empty shells.
With withered leaves they weave their boats
and smilingly float them on the vast deep.
Children have their play on the seashore of worlds.
They know not how to swim, they know not how to cast nets.
Pearl fishers dive for pearls, merchants sail in their ships,
while children gather pebbles and scatter them again.
They seek not for hidden treasures, they know not how to cast nets.
The sea surges up with laughter, and pale gleams the smile of the sea-beach.
Death-dealing waves sing meaningless ballads to the children,
even like a mother while rocking her baby’s cradle.
The sea play with children, and pale gleams the smile of the sea-beach.
On the seashore of endless worlds children meet.
Tempest roams in the pathless sky, ships get wrecked in the trackless water,
death is abroad and children play.
On the seashore of endless worlds is the great meeting of children.
Truly fantastic poem, fabulous Hurt! Edvard and Edgar are favorites, of course. I recommend Peter Hammill/C. Judge Smith's "Fall of the House of Usher", and K-O Knausgaard's book on Munch. My friend Adrienne says she knows Audrey W's parents. Another tremendous post, David.