As a serial monogamist, I've been involved with, married to, or in a serious relationship with, a relatively small quantity of women. Over the decades, I willingly adapted to the druthers, hobbies, and preferences of my partner. I started with Catholic Mass (I was young, forgive me for my hypocrisy) and over the next thirty years, as I dumped /slash/ became the dumpee /slash/ agreed we should go our separate ways...I morphed. From church, to wherever any other military personnel would not be, to bingo, to wherever her boyfriend wouldn't be, to slot machines, to hiking trails, to dance clubs, to casinos, to . . .
Now I—too—kroak on occasion; and I've learned the words to some. One of my favorites is The Soggy Bottom Boy's rendition of Man of Constant Sorrow. Here's why it is the perfect song to sing in public:
Not many sing it because nobody remembers the artist or title.
Once the first chords begin...everybody recalls it from the film, and loves it.
It's short.
You can almost talk all the words with a breathy nasal twang.
There are a few well-spaced instrumental breaks so you can catch your breath.
If you over-pantomime a few hillbilly-esque step-turn-kicks and duck-walks (from the film) while pretending to run your thumbs under shoulder straps you can OWN the audience.
I'm unsure which came first—learning that our births were exactly 106 years apart or falling in love with his brushstroke-genius. Vincent by Don McLean always reminds me of today. As an added coinkeydink...my favorite painting is at the three-minute and thirty-second point of this video.
For all the skeptics who don't believe in coincidences: Ginny and I didn't discuss today's topic ahead of time. It's just a happy circumstance that her song reminds her of giving birth and my song reminds me that Vincent Van Gogh's and Veach Glines's geboorte verjaardag valt samen. Since, in the US, today's date is depicted: 3-30; I also didn't coordinate with the creator of this video to insure Wheatfield with Crows would appear at the 3.30 mark...and it really has been my favorite since 1994, when I saw it at the Van Gogh Museum.
...one floor below me you don't even know me, I love you...
- Caught my Mother in a lie; began
filtering my thoughts and actions (and stopped confiding).
- Had my first
crush on a classmate—Janice Brailer (but not on her twin, Janet).
- Discovered masturbation (far out,
man).
- Began to cultivate a new-found
interest in music different from that favored by family members.
- Asked for a Panasonic Ball Radio
for Christmas, which I'd seen in a magazine.
- Joined the Nashport Elementary
basketball team (a mean feat for the shortest boy in class).
- Became crossing
guard (allowed to be late for first period; had to leave last period before
everyone else).
I actually received the
Christmas present I asked for—unheard of in my family—since we normally
received clothes, books, safe and sanitized bargain-bin toys which may have
been popular a year or two prior, and odd things that mom and
2dad wrongfully concluded we would enjoy. I hung this radio on my
headboard and listened to it constantly until the battery died. And the
next battery. And the next. Weeks. Months. Any rainy
weekend, most winter evenings, every night...I was in my bedroom with the door
closed. Doing homework. Reading books. Beating off while
fantasizing about Janice. But always listening to my radio.
The prefixes great- and grand- before "parent" measure both the distance along a family tree and (oft-times inappropriately) imply a distinguished performance, therefore, I'll use more algorithmic pronouns. Grandfather is father2; great-grandparents are parents3 (ad infinitum).
My parents5 (on mom's-father2s-side) would have thought the need for parenting skills was as ridiculous a concept as paying for water. They came from people of means. This was New England in healing-from-civil-war American times! Not only was indoor plumbing making it easier to relieve oneself with comfort—no more trudging to the outhouse in the middle of the night with a kerosene lantern and a Sears & Roebuck catalog—but this newfangled electricity-thingy was making all manner of things easier. Just in time too. The first Republican president's emancipation-thingy meant you had to cut back on the unpaid-household staff and all the nannies had been the first to go.
My parents4, proud Bullards from the northern Bullard stock, sent their son (father3) to Exeter Academy. He matriculated to Harvard with all of his schoolmates as was expected of him. After college, he married a Davis (mother3). She was also from a family of means and her uncle5 had been Isaac Davis.
My father2 was shipped off to boarding school just like his father a legacy at Exeter Academy. Unlike his father, however, he dropped out of Harvard because he impregnated my mother2 and needed a job now that he was all-but-disowned. His mother, always very full of herself, said to him—about my mother2—"How could you? With the low-born offspring of common grammar school teachers! Your life is over! Now you'll never amount to anything."
My mom—the compound-product of generations of the never-parented—couldn't attend Exeter Academy like her brother (my uncle) because of that unfortunate born-with-a-vagina-thingy. Instead, she got a summer waitressing job at The House on the Hill, an inn and restaurant in Kennebunkport, Maine, run by my father's parents. Mom did, however, fully embrace her parent's pregnant-before-marriage-thingy. And then dad had to stop busing tables and join the Navy in order to support his newly formed unplanned family.
I never knew my dad, Leverett Glines, nor any of his ancestors because my mother divorced him when I was just three and then moved us back-in with her parents—my parents2—whom I called Nana and Papa.
For the few years we lived at Nana and Papa's house (until my mom re-married and we moved in with my 2dad) Nana would oft times attempt to lull me to sleep, naptime and bedtime, by playing music on the 45rpm record player which was always positioned on the back of the organ, or by playing the organ itself. Of the stack of 45's she played over-and-over, I strongly remember only one. This one. And every time I hear this song, Canadian Sunset by Hugo Winterhalter, I remember my Nana.
I have absolutely no parenting skills (and don't miss not having them, either). Is that because of my genetics? My environment? Probably because of heaping dollops of both.
Watching Christina Aguilera sing I Am Beautiful will chime no more emotional bells than Andy Rooney creaking I Am Elderly or Mel Gibson blathering I Am Crazy...but, every time I watch the two-minute video of Madame Aguilera's tune being sung by an animated ostrich, it strums my heartstrings, brings tears to my eyes, and—no matter how many times—makes me feel a little sad.
Although today's topic in Ginny's video-a-day challenge was 'song that makes you sad,' I decided (like I do) to color outside the lines a bit. Not because there aren't plenty of songs which make me sad. Oh sure there are me'boyo. By the raft load. Hell, I'm ovaries-deep in male menopause. I get a wee bleary if I overhear someone discussing In The Ghetto by the late-great Mister Presley. [Note: I've not a clue why the last few sentences came out as if I were a leprechaun. But, they did. And re-reading them made me giggle, so I left them.]
I jumped aboard this thirty day cruise because Ginny kicked it off four days ago by smashing her "video-a-day" bottle of bubbly across the bow. So even though this song, alone, doesn't make me even a little bit sad—in this video, it does. And has ever since I saw it six years ago.
Sad songs are better if you begin listening in a happy mood. If you're not happy right now, listen to yesterdays song first.
There are certain beats, chord combinations, and rhythm syncopations which strike us viscerally. I think everyone should become as self-aware as possible—which, along with identifying mood-altering sounds, includes learning your odors, flavors, tactile sensations, and visual stimuli.
I'm calmed by seeing earth-tones (especially orange), tasting vanilla or wintergreen, and smelling lilac. There's a dusty powdered-rose odor that can cause me to become quite angry if I'm not able to get out of its aura of influence fast enough. And, I wrote about a song yesterday which makes me uncomfortable-angry if I hear it and can not turn it off - which are some of my Asperger's traits.
Today is (this) is Day 3 of follow-the-Ginny title: A Song That Makes You Happy.
Gina G's, Ooh Aah Just A Little Bit turns my amp up to eleven and bludgeons happiness into my nervous system. I don't really like the song very much. It's too chirpy and bubblegummy. But medicine doesn't have to taste good. If I'm down, all it takes is three minutes. Anyone who can stay in a bad mood after hearing this song is a hardcore angerball scrooge-grinch.
Until the summer of 1990, there was nothing in my Song You Fucking Hate category. Sure, there were (and are) entire genre's I don't like to listen to, but fucking hate? Strong words for a few minutes of lyrics surrounded by a melody. However.
The song Ginny fucking hates is Kenny Loggin's - Playing with the Boys. In her video-a-day challenge (which I'm shadowing—today is Day 2) she states: "...I hate the living snot out of this horrible (yet refreshingly homo-erotic) soundtrack abomination..." She chose not to detail much in the way of why. In my case, I have an explanation. You betcha.
After eight years as an Infantryman and MP, in the spring of 1990 I began my apprentice year as an CID Agent at Fort Benning, Georgia. At the risk of overusing the adverb du jour by using it twice in one sentence (and this might go without saying) it's important to underscore at this point in my tale about a song I fucking hate, that summer in the southeastern United States is-was-and-forever-shall-be fucking humid. As I arrived at work 0700 on Monday, 18 June 1990, the temperature was in the mid 90s (34 Celsius) and the humidity was over 80%. The dress shirt under my suit jacket was soaked-through with sweat just from walking from my air-conditioned car to my air-conditioned office. I was the "Duty Agent" today and, therefore, would be the lead investigator on all crimes reported to this office for the next 24 hours. At 0730 the MP Desk Sergeant informed me of an alleged suicide. This would be my first as a Duty Agent.
The fifteen foot (4.5 meter) square barracks room I needed to search, measure, collect evidence from, photograph, sketch, dust for prints, describe in detail, and videotape, was not air-conditioned. Its windows were closed. I had to keep its door closed.
The room contained a bunk bed set, two desks with chairs, two wall lockers (wardrobes), a large stereo system, a television, a small area rug, and fifteen assorted rifles. One nearly headless body wearing an Army BDU (green/brown/black camouflaged uniform) was on the tile floor near the wall opposite the door. A brain was laying next to a loaded M16 rifle inside a pool of coagulating blood about the size of an adult's hula-hoop. A portion of the back wall and ceiling above the body was splattered with blood, tissue, hair and bone fragments.
I processed that scene for over two hours wearing plastic gloves on my hands before I could allow the mortuary assistant to enter the room. Then, because he was alone, I helped him load the body into a body bag and used the cardboard backing from a pad of paper to scoop the brain into the bag.
Prior to shooting himself in the face with two rounds of 5.56 NATO ammo, the soldier had programmed a Metallica CD to play the song Fade To Black, indefinitely. The volume was set to about 25dB. So quiet that, although I was aware the stereo was on, it took me more than 20 minutes to realize I was hearing the same song over and over. While processing the scene, I had to listen to that song—his fucking suicide note—at least a dozen times before I could dust the stereo for prints and turn it off.
The inside of that room was well over 110 degrees (44 Celsius) before I finished—I was constantly wiping my face and neck with a towel to prevent my sweat from contaminating the scene. Dealing with the smells was memorably unpleasant...but the song. I still can't listen to it without feeling uncomfortable (so, if the video below doesn't play correctly please let me know).
I am here to testify that the Ludovico Technique from Clockwork Orange is real (although Metallica is not Beethoven and I was never a huge fan). After processing this suicide, I immediately began to create the work of art pictured at the top of this article (also titled: Fade To Black). I finished it in about three months. It was approximately 5' x 3' x 18" deep (1.5m x 1m x .5m); acrylic paint on spray foam, constructed on a wood and metal base. I sold it in 1999.
There are some high-quality writers I eagerly look forward to reading. Andrew Vachss, Dean Koontz, and Malcolm Gladwell are three (off the tip of my temporal cortex) who've sufficiently proven themselves that I spring for their hardback.
There are other writers who I feel the same way about. Ginny is one. Because she posts infrequently, I normally check monthly for new articles on her site, Praying to Darwin. Today, I discovered she just lit a self-inflicted fire under her own ass. The intent of Ginny's post a video-a-day for a month self-challenge, in her own words: Who knows what kind of stuff that’ll make me write about?
If I'd not checked on Praying to Darwin until after April Fools Day—and she was already a couple posts into this challenge (I say this because I can't completely avoid commenting on the funny flying pink elephant in the corner)—I wouldn't think about joining hands in solidarity or in emulation or in an icky meme-like fashion. But. This is her day one. That's a sign. A SIGN, I SAY. So. I'm in.
I enjoy spurring myself towards discovery, research, and the crystallization of ideas (both new-to-me and new). This was why I compiled Like a Version: My Alpha-vile Autopsy. Creating the pics and mining for just the right words in order to identify an alphabet of things I dislike was an extremely self-informative challenge.
Back to Ginny's Day 1 topic: My Favorite Song. Her's is Everlong by the Foo Fighters. I hadn't seen the video in a decade and didn't remember it. It contains overlapping dream sequences.
I have an aversion to dream sequences. It's not strong enough to call dislike, but I recognize my avoidance urge. I'm bothered by them (which my little sister once called dream sequins and then got mad when I wouldn't tell her what I was laughing about) because when a story uses a dream to explain what a character is thinking I can't stay in the story. Flashback's are fine; story within a story—also fine; jumps in time, yup, still fine...but when a character says, "I had this dream..." Nope. As I read (or watch) my mind keeps reminding: this is just a dream.
I feel the same avoidance urge when reading fiction and the main character is a writer; or watching a TV show, play, or film about an actor; or listening to a song about music; or when the poem is about poetry; or the artwork is about the medium; or the joke is about being funny.
There are exceptions, but most creative people don't have what it takes to craft a convincingly successful multiple reflection in a mirror. Or a dream.
Following in the shadow of Ginny's footprints—my favorite song...anchoring me in time. The instrumentals of Starship Trooper by Yes are as important (if not more) than the lyrics.
...take what I say in a different way and it's easy to see that this is all confusion...
This radiation dose chart (created by Randall Monroe of xkcd) explains in layman's terms some of the various sources of radiation and their relative dangers.
