American Idyll

We Can't Be Forever Blessed

Paul Simon: American Tune

Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what they are going to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote.
--Benjamin Franklin

Nameless

rain

bird songs

river over rocks

Allow the heart
to empty itself
of all turmoil!
Retrieve
the utter tranquility
of the mind
from which you issued.

Although all forms
are dynamic,
and we all grow
and transform,
each of us
is compelled
to return to our root.
Our root is quietude.

--Lao Tzu

Sometimes The Magic Works

from Little Big Man

Human language,
for us moderns,
has swung in on itself,
turning its back
on the beings around us.
Language is
a human property,
suitable only
for communication
with other persons.
We talk to people;
we do not speak
to the ground underfoot.
We've largely forgotten
the incantatory
and invocational
use of speech
as a way of bringing
ourselves into
deeper rapport with
the beings around us,
or of calling
the living land
into resonance with us.
It is a power
we still brush up against
whenever we use our words
to bless and to curse,
or to charm
someone we're drawn to.
But we wield
such eloquence only to
sway other people,
and so we miss
the greater magnetism,
the gravitational power
that lies within such speech.
The beaver gliding
across the pond,
the fungus gripping
a thick trunk,
a boulder shattered
by its tumble down a cliff
or the rain
splashing upon
those granite fragments
--we talk about such beings,
the weather and
the weathered stones,
but we do not
talk to them.
Entranced by
the denotative power
of words to define,
to order, to represent
the things around us,
we've overlooked
the songful dimension
of language
so obvious to
our storytelling ancestors.
We've lost our ear
for the music of language

--for the rhythmic,
melodic layer of speech
by which earthly things
overhear us.
--David Abram
Becoming Animal:
An Earthly Cosmology

I Had To Move (Really Had To Move)

Grateful Dead: Bertha 4/23/77 meets Swan Lake

Once upon a time,
there was a king who ruled
a great and glorious nation. Favorite amongst his subjects was the court painter of whom he was very proud. Everybody agreed this wizened old man painted the greatest pictures in the whole kingdom and the king would spend hours each day gazing at them in wonder. However, one day a dirty and disheveled stranger presented himself at the court claiming that in fact he was the greatest painter in the land. The indignant king decreed a competition would be held between the two artists, confident it would teach the vagabond an embarrassing lesson. Within a month they were both to produce a masterpiece that would out do the other. After thirty days of working feverishly day and night, both artists were ready. They placed their paintings, each hidden by a cloth, on easels in the great hall of the castle.

As a large crowd gathered, the king ordered the cloth be pulled first from the court artist’s easel. Everyone gasped as before them was revealed a wonderful oil painting of a table set with a feast. At its center was an ornate bowl full of exotic fruits glistening moistly in the dawn light.
As the crowd gazed admiringly,
a sparrow perched high up on the rafters of the hall swooped down and hungrily tried to snatch one of the grapes from the painted bowl only to hit the canvas and fall down dead with shock at the feet of the king. Aha! exclaimed the king. My artist has produced a painting so wonderful it has fooled nature herself, surely you must agree that he is the greatest painter who ever lived!
But the vagabond said nothing and stared solemnly at his feet. Now,
pull the blanket from your painting and let us see what you have for us,
cried the king.
But the tramp remained motionless and said nothing. Growing impatient, the king stepped forward and reached out to grab the blanket only to freeze in horror at the last moment. You see, said the tramp quietly, there is no blanket covering the painting. This is actually just a painting of a cloth covering a painting. And whereas your famous artist is content to fool nature, I’ve made the king of the whole country look like a clueless little twat.
--Banksy

A Highway Of Diamonds With Nobody On It

Joan Baez: A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall

Oh, where have you been, my blue-eyed son?
Oh, where have you been, my darling young one?
I’ve stumbled on the side of twelve misty mountains
I’ve walked and I’ve crawled on six crooked highways
I’ve stepped in the middle of seven sad forests
I’ve been out in front of a dozen dead oceans
I’ve been ten thousand miles in the mouth of a graveyard
And it’s a hard, and it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard
And it’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall

Oh, what did you see, my blue-eyed son?
Oh, what did you see, my darling young one?
I saw a newborn baby with wild wolves all around it
I saw a highway of diamonds with nobody on it
I saw a black branch with blood that kept dripping
I saw a room full of men with their hammers a-bleeding
I saw a white ladder all covered with water
I saw ten thousand talkers whose tongues were all broken
I saw guns and sharp swords in the hands of young children
And it’s a hard, and it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard
And it’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall

And what did you hear, my blue-eyed son?
And what did you hear, my darling young one?
I heard the sound of a thunder, it roared out a warning
Heard the roar of a wave that could drown the whole world
Heard one hundred drummers whose hands were a-blazing
Heard ten thousand whispering and nobody listening
Heard one person starve, I heard many people laughing
Heard the song of a poet who died in the gutter
Heard the sound of a clown who cried in the alley
And it’s a hard, and it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard
And it’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall

Oh, who did you meet, my blue-eyed son?
Who did you meet, my darling young one?
I met a young child beside a dead pony
I met a white man who walked a black dog
I met a young woman whose body was burning
I met a young girl, she gave me a rainbow
I met one man who was wounded in love
I met another man who was wounded with hatred
And it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard
It’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall

Oh, what’ll you do now, my blue-eyed son?
Oh, what’ll you do now, my darling young one?
I’m a-going back out before the rain starts a-falling
I’ll walk to the depths of the deepest dark forest
Where the people are many and their hands are all empty
Where the pellets of poison are flooding their waters
Where the home in the valley meets the damp dirty prison
Where the executioner’s face is always well hidden
Where hunger is ugly, where souls are forgotten
Where black is the color, where none is the number
And I’ll tell it and think it and speak it and breathe it
And reflect from the mountain so all souls can see it
Then I’ll stand on the ocean until I start sinking
But I’ll know my song well before I start singing
And it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard
It’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall

Bob Dylan: A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall

When Its Done And Over

rest in peace Bob Weir

Grateful Dead: Jack Straw...6/9/77

Grateful Dead: Me and My Uncle~~~Big River...11/2/77

We are seeing, then, that our experience is altogether momentary.
From one point of view, each moment is so elusive and so brief that we cannot even think about it before it has gone. From another point of view, this moment is always here, since we know no other moment than the present moment. It is always dying, always becoming past more rapidly than imagination can conceive. Yet at the same time it is always being born, always new, emerging just as rapidly from that complete unknown which we call the future. Thinking about it almost makes you breathless.
--Alan Watts

Cassidy...10/31/80

Away Out On The Mountain

Jimmie Rodgers: Away Out on the Mountain

Waiting for a Train

Captain Edmund Burt,
an English military engineer,
observed in the late 1720s
that the Highlands were so
little known to Lowlanders,
that they have ever dreaded
the Difficulties and Dangers
of Travelling among
the Mountains; and when some
extraordinary Occasion
has obliged any one of them
to such a Progress,
he has, generally speaking,
made his Testament
before he set out,
as though he were entering
upon a long and dangerous
Sea Voyage, wherein it
was very doubtful
if he should ever return.
--Jacqueline Riding
A New History of the '45 Rebellion

And Tomorrow You'll Be Feeling Alright

Richard and Mimi Farina: House Un-American Blues Activity Dream

DIANA TEMPLE FROM OUTSIDE BOUCHER CANYON
SOCKDOLAGER RAPID / HANCE RAPID DISTANT
GRANITE RAPID WITH DANA BUTTE
IT WAS A NORMAL DAY

In the room, the cats eat mad spaghetti
Talking of Lawrence Ferlinghetti.
--Richard Farina

Bad Scooter's Searching For His Groove

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One of the best stories
of the early
Christian desert hermits
goes like this: Abbe Lot
came to Abbe Joseph
and said: Father,
according as I am able,
I keep my little rule,
and my little fast,
prayer, meditation
and contemplative silence;
and according as I am able
I strive to cleanse
my heart of thoughts:
Now what more should I do?
The elder rose up in reply
and stretched out
his hands to heaven,
and his fingers became
like ten lamps of fire.
He said: Why not be totally changed into fire?
--Annie Dillard

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