THE SIGNAL from David Katznelson
“When people will not weed their own minds, they are apt to be overrun by nettles.”― Horace Walpole
This weekend, on Saturday, is Shel Silverstein’s birthday. It was just a few days ago that I had ANOTHER of so many conversations about that damn book of his, The Giving Tree. Beloved when I was a kid…that story just sticks around, getting darker and darker as one gets older and older. I am assuming that everyone…EVERYONE…knows the tale Shel inflicted upon us in 1964. You know…a boy loves playing with his favorite tree just to keep ditching it to pursue life experiences and then returning to make demands of the tree…taking it’s natural resources every time as the boy grows to a young adult and then a mature man…taking the resources in order find happiness. Every time he takes from the tree Shel blasts us with the aside “and the tree was happy”…happy to give up major parts of itself to a friend it dreams of playing with like it did in “the old days”. That is, until the man-boy ends up sawing off the trunk of the tree leaving just a stump, as to which Shel admits, “and the tree was happy….but not really.”
And yes, the boy shows up once again as an ancient human, who WB Yeats might refer to as “a tattered coat upon a stick” and finds comfort sitting on the stump of his childhood friend…who he took everything from. And yet….”the tree is happy.”
I rid myself of the story for years until I had kids. Then, as I assume happens to most parents, it was gifted to us as a baby shower present. We did not have a chance: baby got to hear the story and despite being fearful of the shockingly evil portrait of Silverstein on the back cover, wants to hear it again and again. And with every reading it sinks in to my adult soul: I am no longer the innocent boy who played in the tree’s branches.
I am now the middle-aged character…right in the middle of the story…asking for too much for my own happiness. And yes…the world is burning all around us—as I read these never-changing words—because all of us little boys grew up thinking we could continually derive happiness from the natural resources we were presented with as kids. The Grist recently wrote a piece on how The Giving Tree is “a parable for climate crisis” and they are dead on right. But the tragedy really does not stop there. It is a story about all of our lives, our needs, our occasional feelings of loneliness and sentimentality…and ultimately our mortality. All of this is wrapped up in a children’s book…one of the greatest children’s books ever written. It is also the story of parenting….or really any role you find yourself in where giving up everything is not only expected but strangely an aspect of fate.
But it does ultimately tell the story of simple needs…beauty in simplicity…and that is something I can embrace as I read the story to my kids…and ultimately (hopefully) their kids, as I continue to grow into the next iterations of the boy in The Giving Tree.
Happy Weekend! Shabbes!
Barbara Campbell Cooke, 85, Widow of the Slain Sam Cooke, Is Dead
My friend Chris Morris alerted me to Cooke’s passing as well as directing me to this article which reveals other aspects of her life that I just didn’t know…unfortunately much of it dark. She had a hard, tragic life laid out here. RIP Barbara Campbell Cooke.
Something Large Just Smashed Into Jupiter
The headline sounds like the beginning line of a Shel Silverstein poem (feel free to add what might be the poem’s next lines in the comments section below). But in all seriousness…something large DID smash into the biggest planet of them all..and we have the film footage!
Auction of Emily Dickinson’s Hair Sparks Controversy
“…Including some debate over whether the hair is what it purports to be…”
I read this article a while back…and Alta has now taken down its pay wall so anyone can enjoy it. Pretty mind-blowing stuff in our new mushroomy reality: “Artist Phil Ross built sculptures, furniture, and houses with fungi. Now, his mycelium material is being used in Hermès bags, and his company is worth millions. The unlikely entrepreneur’s next idea: lederhosen, made from the fleshy plants.”
Poet Patricia Smith wins $100,000 lifetime achievement award
It is so nice to know that poets…who probably have one of the most misunderstood and potentially difficult jobs of all time…do occasionally get both celebrated and compensated for their craft. Last week also saw Toi Derricotte winning the 100K Academy of American Poetry prize. Smith’s poetry is grab-you-by-the neck verse, with jazz rhythms and razor sharp messaging, making assaulting reading that is important, sometimes joyous, many times angry, always completely engaging. I love her poem about Buddy Guy (of course)…there are many great ones in her lifetime achieved catalog.
Devendra Banhart and Noah Georgeson Really Love Trees
A playful interview celebrating Devendra’s new album, an album as a duo with Noah Georgenson where they create haunting mystical landscapes. The conversation finds the two friends commenting on pictures they have taken of trees. Who doesn’t want to read that? Especially with revealing lines like “What’s happening in this photograph is something called inter-crown spacing, which is when trees almost touch, but they end up giving each other space. I think this is a metaphor for how the whole record works…”
WEEKEND LISTEN: July (s/t)
I do love psychedelic music and there are some key records that best exemplify the genre: this record by July is one of them. I was needing to trip into a 60s land for a spell this week and this is a go-to record for just that sort of mental holiday. I mean…even just for my favorite song Dandelion Seeds the album is worth a listen, with its playful guitar phasing framed by a driving set of drums…and its ultra-strange yet satisfying barely conscious mid-point interlude. But over the span of the entire artifact, there is reverberated electronic instruments, colorful lyrics, Kinks-style melodies and a blue-meanie groovy feeling that is signature for the time period but also rises up in its own right; it’s a great record. There are songs on this platter that sound from the first second like you have befriended them long before…and they will stick with you long after. Having an original Epic pressing of this rarity is a blessing…and sounds so warm through the stereo system…but even streaming, the record will blossom in your ears on a sweet late summer dusk….
Sweet Daddy
BY PATRICIA SMITH
62. You would have been 62.
I would have given you a Rooselvelt Road
kinda time, an all-night jam in a
twine time joint, where you could have
taken over the mike
and crooned a couple.
The place be all blue light
and JB air
and big-legged women
giggling at the way
you spit tobacco into the sound system,
showing up some dime-store howler
with his pink car
pulled right up to the door outside.
You would have been 62.
And the smoke would have bounced
right off the top of your head,
like good preachin'.
I can see you now,
twirling those thin hips,
growling 'bout if it wasn't for bad luck
you wouldn't have no luck at all.
I said,
wasn't for bad luck,
no luck at all.
Nobody ever accused you
of walking the paradise line.
You could suck Luckies
and line your mind with rubbing alcohol
if that's what the night called for,
but Lord, you could cry foul
while B.B. growled Lucille from the jukebox;
you could dance like killing roaches
and kiss the downsouth ladies
on fatback mouths. Ooooweee, they'd say,
that sweet man sho' know how deep my well goes.
And I bet you did, daddy,I bet you did.
But hey, here's to just another number.
To a man who wrote poems on the back
of cocktail napkins and brought them home
to his daughter who'd written her rhymes
under blankets.
Here's to a strain on the caseload.
Here's to the fat bullet
that left its warm chamber
to find you.
Here's to the miracles
that spilled form your head
and melted into the air
like jazz.
The carpet had to be destroyed.
And your collected works
on aging, yellowed twists of napkin
can't bring you back.
B.B. wail and blue Lucille
can't bring you back.
A daughter who grew to write screams
can't bring you back.
But a room
just like this one,
which suddenly seems to fill
with the dread odors of whiskey and smoke,
can bring you here
as close as my breathing.
But the moment is hollow.
It stinks.
It stinks sweet.
