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Wednesday, June 9th, 2004
John Holbo has an interesting post up examining Bookslut's laws of adaptation, in which he includes this passage from Nietzsche's On the Use and Abuse of History for Life: The person who cannot set himself down on the crest of the moment, forgetting everything from the past, who is not capable of standing on a single point, like a goddess of victory, without dizziness or fear, will never know what happiness is. Even worse, he will never do anything to make other people happy. Imagine the most extreme example, a person who did not possess the power of forgetting at all, who would be condemned to see everywhere a coming into being. Such a person no longer believes in his own being, no longer believes in himself, sees everything in moving points flowing out of each other, and loses himself in this stream of becoming ... Or, to explain myself more clearly concerning my thesis: There is a degree of insomnia, of rumination, of the historical sense, through which living comes to harm and finally is destroyed, whether it is a person or a people or a culture. In order to determine this degree of history and, through that, the borderline at which the past must be forgotten if it is not to become the gravedigger of the present, we have to know precisely how great the plastic force of a person, a people, or a culture is ... It seems to me like this could tie in pretty well with Eliade's stuff about transformation of history into myth as a way of forgetting. Though I am still not sure quite what Eliade (or Nietzsche) is getting at... -- and sorry, yes, about posting such cryptic notes on my reading of this book -- I am finding it kind of mystifying. In particular I can't really get a sense of the book as an essay -- he is cataloguing a lot of disparate observations that seem somehow to be related but is not (as yet) doing the work of pulling them together in a way that I can recognize. But perhaps in the last half of the work it will start to cohere. I do find the disparate observations quite intriguing.
posted afternoon of June 9th, 2004: Respond
➳ More posts about The Myth of Eternal Return
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Sunday, June 6th, 2004
It was a good weekend. Eva came to visit yesterday, with her newish baby Benjamin (6 months old, extremely cute). We had a great visit and went for a nice long walk. I got the second gate up and it works according to specifications. Ellen and Sylvia drove to Bethlehem today, to visit Joyce and her daughter Susanna, and I got a good bit of time to myself. This afternoon's jam was excellent -- Doug came, who has not been able to for the past couple of months, and everyone was playing at the top of their ability. I had the idea today to play a meddley of "Rocky Raccoon" and "Rag Mama" -- pretty easy to do as they are almost the same chords -- and they both sounded better this way than on their own.
posted evening of June 6th, 2004: Respond
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Monday, May 31st, 2004
At the jam today, we finally agreed on chords for "City of New Orleans" -- this is a bit historic as every time we have played it before, we've gotten bogged down in arguing about the correct chords. Here it is: Intro:
| G / / / | G / / / |
G / D / | G / / / |
Riding on the City of New Orleans
| Em / C / | G / / / |
Illinois Central Monday morning rail
| G / D / | G / / / |
Fifteen cars and fifteen restless riders
| Em / D / | G / / / |
Three conductors and twenty-five sacks of mail.
| Em / / / |
All along the south bound odyssey,
Bm / / / |
the train pulls out of Kankakee
| D / / / | A / / / |
Rolls along past houses farms and fields
| Em / / / |
Passing towns that have no name,
Bm / / / |
freight yards full of old black men
| D / D7 / | G / / / |
And graveyards of rusted automobiles.
Chorus:
| C / D7 / | G / / / |
Good morning America, how are you?
| Em / C / | G / / D7 |
Say, don't you know me, I'm your native son.
| G / D / | Em Em7 A7 / |
I'm the train they call the City of New Orleans
| B♭ C D / | G / / / |
I'll be gone five hundred miles when the day is done.
Dealing card games with the old men in the club car
Penny a point ain't noone keeping score
Pass the paper bag that holds the bottle
Feel the wheels rumbling 'neath the floor
And the sons of Pullman porters
and the sons of engineers
Ride their father's magic carpets made of steel
Mothers with their babes asleep,
rocking to the gentle beat
And the rhythm of the rails is all they feel.
Nightime on the City of New Orleans
Changing cars in Memphis Tennessee
Half way home we'll be there by morning
through the Mississippi darkness rolling down to the sea.
But all the towns and people seem
to fade into a bad dream
And the steel rail still ain't heard the news
The conductor sings his songs again,
the passengers will please refrain
This train's got the disappearing railroad blues.
 Update: what I mean to say is, the above is some chords that Jim found via a Google search when he was looking for the lyrics; they agree almost completely with the chords which we all had agreed on, independently of looking at that transcription. (The main difference is, we had F instead of B-flat in the last line of the chorus -- I think the transcription is probably correct here, though F sounds pretty good too.) Ignore most of the 7's and 9's in the transcription, which are good flourishes to put in but not an essential part of the song's chord structure.
posted evening of May 31st, 2004: Respond
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I will not be able to play the open mike this Wednesday; but I have started working on a set for next week: "Richland Woman Blues", "Don't Think Twice, It's All Right", "No Expectations".
posted morning of May 31st, 2004: Respond
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Thursday, May 27th, 2004
The Myth of Eternal Return -- Eliade's take on ritualistic behavior (or at least a subset of same) is that by reenacting segments of their culture's creation myth, people can extend the scope of their "created" cosmos to a new element of their reality -- e.g. a marriage or a new baby. On p. 24 he says, "... it is not merely a question of imitating an exemplary model... the principal consideration is the result of that hierogamy, i.e. the Cosmic creation." This seems like an interesting distinction to me.
posted afternoon of May 27th, 2004: Respond
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Wednesday, May 26th, 2004
The set went ok. It was about 15 minutes long, I had a lot of energy throughout but my fingers started losing track about 2/3 of the way in. I missed a lot of notes on "Rag Mama" and by the end of the song it seemed like I had fallen apart almost completely. But, the audience liked it so who am I to judge? Other guitar players tend to be a pretty forgiving audience. Passing the time before the music started, I took Underworld idly off the bookshelf there and started reading it on a whim -- I found the language most easy on my ears. So I borrowed it and will see how I do reading it over the next few months. It is too big for me to really carry it around conveniently so I imagine it will be mostly evening reading.
posted evening of May 26th, 2004: Respond
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As noted below, my memory of reading the book from 15 years ago suggested that the whole body of the story is Marlowe's journey upriver, and the final scene is his arrival at the Inner Station to find Kurtz dead. In this fantasy Heart of Darkness, the final sentence of the novel is "Mistah Kurtz, he dead." Needless to say, the actual book goes a little different -- I spent a little time while reading the middle third or so of it, trying to reconcile my expectations to the plot that was unfolding. I did not abandon them entirely until Marlowe actually met Kurtz; until then I was holding on to a thin thread of hope that his talk about their meeting was some kind of metaphor. This shows, I think, the danger of rereading something with expectations when your memory of it is so far gone, and suggests that I should reread it a second time -- it is after all quite short. So I think I will keep it along with me for a while yet. I am going to turn my attention to The Myth of the Eternal Return; but when that drags (as it will) I will have some backup reading on hand.
posted evening of May 26th, 2004: Respond
➳ More posts about The Heart of Darkness
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Heart of Darkness -- I had forgotten that Kurtz is alive when they get to the Inner Station.
posted morning of May 26th, 2004: Respond
➳ More posts about Joseph Conrad
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Tuesday, May 25th, 2004
Here is how you transition from "Palette" to "CAGWYW": ...G / B / C / /
G / D / Em / /
G / D / Em / C /
G / D / Em / F /
F / G7 / C / C
C / / F / /...
Trust me -- it sounds sweet. In other jammin' -- I finally figured out how to tie "Stagger Lee" and "C.C. Rider" together; just strum the last chord of "Stagger Lee", rest for a measure, and start right in. That sounds a lot better than the noodling around I had been trying to do. "Rag Mama" is finally together. Never before have I really been satisfied with how I played that song; but tonight the speed was right, the beat was right, I had the vocals down. (3 out of four times that I played it tonight -- hope I hit lucky tomorrow night on stage.) I am not talking about the Band song called "Rag Mama Rag" -- this is a tune by Blind Boy Fuller (which I originally know via Jim Kweskin and the Jug Band): A7
I'm goin uptown with my hat in my hand
D
Lookin for de woman aint got no man
G7
Just as well be tryin to find a needle in the sand
C
Lookin for a woman aint got no man
Chorus:
Dwee-de-daw, dweedly-daw, Rag Mama,
Come on, baby, do that Rag
Well you get yourself a woman you best get two,
One for your buddy 'nother one for you,
Got me a wife an a sweetheart too,
Wife don't love me my sweetheart do
Took my woman down to Meeker St.,
Honey now, honey now, whatta'I see,
Saw my woman with a man, she was holdin' his hand
(that ain't right!) Aw,
Pistol in my pocket, black jack in my hand, says
I'm gonna get that so-and-so
Now, who'd'a thought my gal would treat me so,
Love another man at my back door
Mind, mama, what you sow,
Cause you gots to reap just what you sow
posted evening of May 25th, 2004: Respond
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Monday, May 24th, 2004
I'm working on a 3-song set for the open mike on Wednesday. Tonight I tried out "Palette on your Floor", "Can't Always Get What You Want", and "Rag Mama". At least the first two are definitely good to go -- the third needs a little work but I was shocked to be able to play it as well as I did. Gabe assisted me over the phone with a way to transition between "Palette" (which is in G) and "CAGWYW" (which is in C) -- on the final turnaround you go from D to Em instead of back to G, and then to F, G7, C and you are suddenly playing in the key of C.
posted evening of May 24th, 2004: Respond
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