The Rationality of Music
I grew up thinking music wasn't all that important in my family.
It wasn't pervasive like the argumentative silence-- the constant grudge that was held against communication and creativity in general. But I was wrong. Impressions leave a mark, and they are only half-truths, empty indentations, before the long paragraph that would follow as explanation.
Music was part of our myth, after all; the Polyphemus, kneeling.
I grew up believing I wasn't musical, and competitive as is my nature, I was determined to make up for that deficit. I asked Mother for a flute one year. The year before they would have selected openings for Band. I was eight.
Flute, sax, clarinet, trumpet, or drums. Those were the options for tutoring.
"Ask your grandfather," was the monotone answer behind the magazine, after a long sip of homemade latte. Mother liked a little coffee with her heavy cream, between the lazy trailings of her red tipped dragon companion. Newports.
Her father, Bruno, with deference, was one step from church and God Almighty--
he was Bank.
Promptly, my grandparents returned from a trip to Europe with a lovely hand carved wooden recorder. (Flute, sax, clarinet, trumpet or drums, remember? unless trying out for string orchestra.) Sigh. I was disappointed. I had no natural ear; otherwise maybe I'd be already mimicking bits of Mozart... with all humility, I knew I needed lessons.
Mother played the piano; and refused to teach us. The basics, to me and my sister. Finger positions, chords...
"I'm not good enough," she sighed pushing some junk mail from side to side.
I persisted.
I wanted a flute. For a very specific pragmatic reason.
It's odd the way things metaphorically distort mentally, in the eye. Stress. They say children lose their distance-vision as a defensive response--to things they fear to see or wish to shut out of their lives.
Listening intently to the inside.
I don't condemn them for it, philosophically. Our parents refused to get us glasses, though both my sister and I "clearly needed" them by mid-elementary years. The admonishment was that the crutch of lenses would make the myopic condition irreversible.
As might be imagined, it made school difficult-- not seeing the board, math problems, or oncoming persons, or gym balls, etc., etcetera.
I strategized that a flute would secure the comfortable "convincing" distance I'd need to actually see the music sheets, and discretely learn the notes, in sound and name, and the corresponding finger positionings... Music is dynamic like that...
The Bank, reconsidered.
And gave me a beautiful, old, imported Stradivarius.
It was gorgeous. Red carved and lacquered wood with requisite horsehair bow and an amber block of intoxicating pine-scented rosin. They immediately encouraged me to take it out and hold it, under the chin proper, with arms extended... my nine-year-old heart breaking at every silent punctuation of the natural dimensions required.
No, I could not see the music sheet to save my life.
Not only did I have no natural talent to "play by ear," but now with musical notation in front of my face, I was a certified idiot.
I was just awful. Mrs. Bobiak all but said so.
I practiced of course, at home, at odd angles, to memorize the songs so as not to mortify myself, in front of peers, but time and time again, if asked to start at some arbitrary point (on paper) I was at a loss... f*k if I knew what note was what where, and somehow Mrs. Bobiak never grasped that I could not see the sheet...
My sister, on our Father's insistence for fairness, was also given a Stradivarius, the subsequent year; to her bewilderment; and she took the thing with emotional distance. She never saw the issue. She was musical, and voice was her preferred instrument.
As for the violin, she seldom practiced.
To wrap this part of the torturous history, a brief stint in foster care, as well as court appointed healthcare, landed us both in unfashionable, but functional eyeglasses. My sister made rapid progress. Mrs. Bobiak said so and smiled politely at my continued ineptitude.
I continued to grow up believing my family really didn't care for music...
All the perquisites were there, but surrealistically misplaced.
Father, on his part, had recorded with a band of his own devising (...Ciche Mnichi, meaning The Silent Monks) in which he played Banjo. Our family house had a modest collection of unplayed vinyl with the standby labels and titles, Elvis, Roy, Aretha, Beatles, etc... here respectability shattered... the expensive stereo was as if permanently transfixed to a leaky corner of the living room, where water seeped from the cathedral ceiling and made it semi-operable... and upstairs in the library closet, audio cassettes number in the 100's including four sometimes five copies of identical albums... maniacally... still sealed in cellophane, and those hard plastic wrap around handles designed to prevent theft....
And the greatest treasures, of lyric and instrumentals, were bootleg. Wojtek Mlynarski. Maciej Zembaty, Edith Piaf, Leonard Cohen, among others. And some that got transferred over, and over to fresh blanks... Like ABBA and 100 of the World's Most Beautiful Melodies...
As it turned out, Father cared so much for music that he would rather play it in his memory, than suffer a washed-out reality over poor equipment or disintegrated copy. He told me, when he could not suffer another note by Aula Babdul (*on poor mix tape containing the otherwise esteemed Paula Abdul).
Which explains, in part, why music was listened to primarily in the car...
It was Mother who surprised me most, years later... when she met my husband, music fanatic Bunny Villaire, and it turned out they spoke as if the same language, like veritable encyclopedias, referencing fairly obscure gems of music recording...
Mother even voiced the title on his mind an hour before our wedding as he searched his files for just tune as I descended the stairs...
"...play the Power of Love," she suggest. "Perfect," he answered, setting the needle.
I understand now that love of music is kept locked, close to the heart, and emerges at times, spiritually like Gospel or Jazz, improv.
And it is beautiful to take part in Song, whatever the genre; and its counterpart.
The track that comes to mind, as haunting my music experience:
https://youtu.be/qYS0EeaAUMw?si=Yn0rNy6gHhh_JQHR
Celestial Queue
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[CLICK!]
Pusherman, taps on the steering wheel, mountain justice, and a primitive gnaw.
In case anyone has a case of the Mondays, on the show today, in number 26, Curtis Mayfield sings us into three reads by three vastly different talents with one vast thing in common: Each one is their own creator with a style like no others. Top off your coffee, and sail away with us.
Here's the link.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mMz90tLIE5s
And here are the pieces featured within.
https://www.theprose.com/post/812076/memories https://www.theprose.com/post/811802/the-women-in-the-trees https://www.theprose.com/post/812519/the-line
And.
As always.
Thank you for being here.
-The Prose. team
The Call I Answered
Frolicking high notes danced into my ears, aimed straight for my heart. A part of my soul awakened for the first time that day. I never heard something so enchanting, at the same time so haunting.
The melody was an arranged marriage of pain and joy; I had found my new drug. Celtic music introduced me to my love for all things Irish and Scottish including my heritage which was nonexistent before.
With every lilt of the penny whistle and rolling thunder of the bodhrán, my ancestors seem to reach out across the centuries. They remind me of the many sacrifices made so that I would not suffer the same, as well as the battles fought to renew my strength for the challenges I face.
Under The Nether Bed
Stoned out of their minds on Hobbit blood,
Snorting Dwarven gold,
Dragons getting the munchies,
Eyes bugged-out and rolled
From side to side in lizard slide
Stark with spark in threatening arc;
Wiggy as wizards and twisted as twine,
Penumbral beasts grown bored of myth
Beyond the barrier line.
What alchemy could burn a blood
That lives to father fire?
What herb or weed could fry a mind
That swallows souls entire?
Heat and steam and Autumn gleam
Stoked and smoked, by blood invoked
Ticklish and tipsy and sordid and strange
Dwelling two inches inside your left ear
Beyond touch of time or change.
–And slapped by reality’s cosmic broom..!
“Shoo! Shoo! You nasty things!”
Alien eyes glow crazed in darkness
Closet walls chafe green-scaled wings
Spaceless room and breathless tomb
Hid by lid and trap and id—
wished away by generations,
confidently thought destroyed,
they’ve found a hole
and they’re
...annoyed.
Keeping it Real
Seems that people will do just about anything to gain the spotlight these days, prying themselves into it; fake tits, ass and all.
Think about it. Who is it you are trying to impress, anyways?
Fame is a strange thing to seek, especially that kind. Is fickle too, fame is. Especially that kind. Hare today, goat tomorrow.
You want them to cheer when you walk into the room? You want to dazzle them?
Then seek your fame from the right people, and for the right reasons. Who stands taller, shines brighter, or is remembered longer than a dad walking in from work?
Be famous to the right people, and for the right reasons.
Don’t those people deserve a forever G.O.A.T.?
Bittersweet Nothing
Incubation tomb,
Wormhole to the womb,
Out into the skewed scatter
Of a million unknown days,
And spat out like Jonah
From soporific embryonic seas
That once lulled me into a slipstream sleep,
That entrenched its world,
Fathoms deep.
My febrile seedlings are rage ready for feeding
And I am now the starring role
In now here nowhere.
Day one.
They crudely clamp my cherry flesh
With feral precision,
And the mothership of mother
Lays unaware in her morphine drip cocoon,
Now but a rag doll frame
Of cracked and poked contour clay
And a jumbled jungle of sinewy limbs
Hung up into a submissive V,
While the defiant airs of the doctors
Cloud good will
With cloying empty gestures
That sickens God Himself.
And maybe my pinpoint eyes
Saw the monster behind the curtain
And wanted to scramble back
Into Eden’s haven,
But mother lays near death
With her veins a bullet train wreck
Of razor ribbon origami nightmares
As the overlapping overload
And analog readouts
Scream haunted transmissions
Of bad tidings
And numerical harum scarum.
The nurses are angels
Bathed in day glow white,
And dance with tribal drumfire,
While the rattle of my tinny roar
Is but a most lonesome whimpering bid
To return to God
That pulses through glass
And weakly shakes the earth
With its feeble revolution
And murmuring protest.
I am now a flightless bird
That only knows,
That the humming artificial sun
On the chalk white ceiling
Can never warm my numb bones
Nor settle the collapsed composition
Of afterbirth aftershocks,
And the fragmented grunt
Becomes undone;
And all of this,
On just day one.
I already know this place is dead.
Mother’s bed was hallowed
And God spoke like muffled thunder
Through the pale pink walls.
I cry.
My cup of tears runneth over.
I am coma eyed with silver slash vision.
I am undreamed dreams that I dreamt I dreamed.
I am welcomed to the dark ironies
And colliding planes
Of moon and sky and sun.
It is day one.
My cup of tears runneth over.
God,
Hold my hand,
As we walk through this wonderful wasteland,
Of bittersweet nothing.
I Love The Music and I Won’t Ever Quit!... (...Legitimately!)
Anyone who knows me knows I'm a certified music lover. I am a fool for it...I drool for it. It's my bread and butter. I'm so throughly obsessed that I: A. Work at a Record Store and consider myself a Music Detective; B. Write Songs and head my own band and haven't not been in a band since 2001; C. Have a massive music collection that doubles as my side hustle; D. Dream of one day owning my own Night Club/Record Store; E. Create imaginary scenarios in my head with my fav musicians of how we would hang out and chat if we finally ran into each other in the real world. I know. I'm a bit kooky.
My first album I owned was on Cd and I remember it was my own pick and paved the way for a vast majority of what I listen to which splinters off into many differing sub-genres. This particular gem was MC Hammer's 'Too Legit to Quit'. MC Hammer had it all in my teenage mind. He had a challenging fashion sense; he loved to dance; and he loved to rhyme. Hammer was all about making a splash with his presentation, and it was his gutsy Pop Rap that set the wick of my desire for electronic; funny; atmospheric and sexy music that had a distinct sense of style. The dude wore pants that were called 'parachute pants' and were very hilariously parodied in one of my fav comedy shows in the 90's In Living Color. Hammer also had a lot of good messages in 'Too Legit' that intrigued me to continue to pursue the interest of challenging subject matter that explored discrepancies in race relations and challenges inflicted by a blind society. He did all this with a lightening quick delivery that challenged and demanded reaction in the form of dance! I was 11 when I bought this album, but continued to branch out into differing segues of protest music that had a dance beat up to the present day.
I remember the next step up from this album(though there were differing choices made before this choice that also influenced me, like a handful of tape cassettes by the UK Punk/Goth/Pop/Experimental chaps The Stranglers) was Marvin Gaye's 'What's Going On' that I begged my Mom like an eager beaver with music fever for my 16 year old Birthday. This funky happening piece of art got my blood pumping and I was wowed by the poetry that dripped from Gaye's passionate voice but it lacked Hammer's steady pulse or humorous edge. For this reason it didn't get as many spins as MC. Onward I went to discover more and more music in an attempt to fuse these two elements of Poetry and a Beat driven electronic pulse equipped with a goofy grin.
Indeed I was intrigued by other music in my teens that got my booty shaking and bumping to a more distant shore then any place Hammer may have came from, but Hammer opened many doors for me. As soon as these doors creaked opened I made sure to jam a foot in and keep it lodged in there like a crook who has a sneaky taste for diamonds. Suddenly I was immersed in bands like UK's Underworld, and the solely instrumental UK Ambient/House band Future Sound of London. I wouldn't have given Future Sound a chance if I hadn't first been drawn to the surreal and oddly funny poetry antics of Underworld and their hypnotic Euro House beats with observational ramblings. On my favorite Underworld album strangely dubbed 'Second Toughest In the Infants' Underworld challenged me with surreal lyrics that were disjointed yet beautiful and drove my poetry with their odd feeling based tones. On Jaunita; which was the 1st track on the album, there was magnificent song that kept your interest for it's entire sixteen minute length which was jaw dropping for many in it's extraordinary length. The lyrics to this song were mesmerizing:
"...Homeless strays,
Gathering
Outside your window
Bootleg babies call to you lying among the mosquitos
That summer's fever coming
Cats are gathering
Outside your window
Homeless strays
Bootleg babies,
Calling to you
Lying among
Lie among the mosquitos
Your rails
Your thin
Your thin paper wings
In the wind
Your sun, fly
Danglin
Danglin
Your window shattered in the wind
The sun lying
Your cocacola sign
Your rails
Your thin
Paper wings
Paper wings
Resonator..."
Very William S. Burroughs like indeed who was my favorite writer at the time.
With Future Sound I finally stripped the poetry away altogether and allowed the atmospheric ambience create poetry ideas in my head without the words leading the way. When this dissection of the words occurred I was finally inspired to be a singer and write my own songs. There were sound samples of people talking in Future Sound that kept my fish on the line with their dark humor theme of people in society interacting with an ever increasing mechanized society engulfing their freewill.
I haven't listened to MC Hammer's seminal album for years, but now listening to it I hear elements of House music and Funk that I tumbled down into rabbit hole style which would later metamorphose into Euro House and Italo Disco in terms of my taste. Of course there was also elements of Hip Hop in Hammer, but a slightly modernized version of 80's Rap which is devoid of bad language and showcases a more tongue and cheek element to it that doesn't take itself too seriously. To this day I'm always reminding myself when writing music that an element of humor and child's play must be present in the music process! I do at times use a cuss word or two but they are almost completely subliminal if rarely if at all present.
Thanks to MC Hammer for keeping me drunk on the discovery of new and challenging music buried in the abyss of a hefty pile of records and cds. Music makes life more bearable and is the host at every party! I love the music and won't ever quit! In the world of music there's always a new music tidal wave to surf on, and the treasures at the end of the beach are always great in terms of newly discovered musical bliss boasting a questionable fashion sense.
Too Legit to Quit:
https://youtu.be/wiyYozeOoKs?si=TFP9N6KHg2paEvFt
MC Hammer in parachute pants in 'U Can't Touch This'
This song was why I purchased 'Too Legit to Quit' though it ended up not being on this album:
https://youtu.be/otCpCn0l4Wo?si=6Zq4YjDXkof---ff
4/19/24
Bunny Villaire