Can I Turn On the Radio, by Earl Pickens
I’m off to spend a belated fathers day with my boys, so here is a quick musical uplift for this Sunday from a local favorite of mine. If you ever get to see Earl in concert you’ll be in for a treat. It’s like he’s doing a fun little gig for a few close friends. That’s how he makes you feel. This was, I think his first video a few years back and it always makes me so happy to watch it. The man has talent and a heart, a combination I just love. Enjoy!
Music Rolls on: Wagon Wheel Cover, by Ashes for Trees
Wow, what a week it’s been! Sorry, that was supposed to be a musical week on the blog, but things got away from me. I filled out applications and got a new job, quit the old one; I decided I couldn’t finish my degree and make my dreams come true while breaking my back making my employer’s dreams come true. Sometimes there is only so much one can take, especially when you are already burnt out in a field that was only a second choice as a “back-up” until financial recovery. Sigh… So ahead, I am looking at some internship possibilities, and possibly editing, more poetry submissions, maybe leading that poetry workshop my mentor wanted me to help him with before he got too sick to do it. And while I make that final semester of A grades, I’ll pay the bills with tips. 
Big relief, really.
Ok, so now it’s time for the segway into the music, and how do I tie this all together. Give me a second, I’m a poet; I can do this. OK. So.
This song is a traveler’s song, a workman’s song. And I have been busting my ass for some time now. I started back to school less than two years ago, part time. But I cannot finish well, working 6 days a week for low pay and no benefits, even if the restaurant is one block away, and even though, thanks to my host-ish personality, I am amazing at what I do. So, I knew I would need to branch off into the things that will add to my degree and make me more hire-able in a field I have wanted to be in for a long time. My frustrations with the status quo were probably just my ego’s way of telling me it was time to hit the kick stand and really start this machine rolling. If you look at this the wrong way, it appears to be a step backward, but I think it’s a leap forward, freeing me from some responsibilities that are preventing me from doing what I want. Ah, here I go again, getting off course in this post. That’s what I don’t want to do.
I want to die free, as the song says, not at the wheel of someone else’s dream. So here is a song by my future sister-in-law, Katie, and her band Ashes for Trees. Their accoustic cover of “Wagon Wheel,” featuring the family animals, Buddy and Benny and honoring for Father’s Day a man who I am happy to know, the father of some very talented and beautiful people in my life.
Music Week Series: “Bootcamp for the Broken Hearted,” by Mary Cigarettes
This blog started a few years back when I was feeling rather depressed. In what had become an unhappy relationship, I started blogging again as a way to keep me at my art, anything to keep me writing instead of turning inward again– to those times when friends and relatives would email and leave messages, “Are you dead?” I chose to structure the blog around the three major things in my life that brought me joy, because joy was what I needed to remember. Those things were of course, my incredible children, my poetry, and nature, particularly of the flight feathered sort.
I don’t post much of my own poetry here or on Youtube right now, but that’s mainly because I am working on the old fashioned printed form, submitting for publication. But eventually more and more of them will find audio visual release here as well. I also don’t post enough music, though I do love it, and my beloved is a musician whose videos you might have seen here before. Yes, this blog needs a tad more of that, as well as a tad more of my own journal-ly stuff.
I have been back to school, pursuing my art and my desire to teach (in one form or another), and while I have felt more than a bit discouraged in the workplace lately, a new-found Youtube friend has reminded me that I really do love and care about hospitality. I think I am currently burnt out on it though. The combination of spoiled Americans who sit at the table and create their own menu and are too easily apt to be rude or ungrateful, and the experience of caring more about someone else’s dream than they do… well, frankly I need to get away from this for a while, and concentrate on having more time to feed and please the people I love around my own table. Perhaps later in life I could come back to it as a profession, on my own terms, in a better economy. But for now, dear friends, why don’t you sit with me, pour a glass of wine for yourself from that bottle there, and then come to the kitchen. We’ll cut onions and cry and laugh, and make a rich sauce out of this life.
This week I’ll post some favorite musicians who inspire me in hopes that they inspire and encourage you too. First off, because I was just listening to this song for the tenth time today, here is that friend from Youtube, Mary Cigarettes performing his “Bootcamp for the Broken Hearted.” Coming up later today, a performance by my favorite musician of all, my own beloved Mr. BPK. Stay tuned (and yes, I’m a poet, so I intend that phrase to be understood on multiple levels)!
“Fire and Ice,” a Poem by Robert Frost, read by DJB
Mr. Frost handles here a very serious subject with a touch of dry New England humor as well as a moment or two of serious pondering. The images are all from google searches on hatred, ice, fire and desire. If one is yours and you prefer me not to use it, just let me know. I hope the presentation here does justice to Frost’s intentions.
Fire and Ice
by Robert Frost
Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great,
And would suffice.
“For the Young Who Want To,” a Poem by Marge Piercy
phlogiston
1730, “hypothetical inflammatory principle,” formerly believed to exist in all combustible matter, from Mod.L. (1702), from Gk. phlogiston (1610s in this sense), neut. of phlogistos “burnt up, inflammable,” from phlogizein “to set on fire, burn,” from phlox (gen. phlogos ) “flame, blaze” (see bleach). Theory propounded by Stahl (1702), denied by Lavoisier (1775), defended by Priestley but generally abandoned by 1800.
“phlogiston.” Online Etymology Dictionary. Douglas Harper, Historian. 07 Jun. 2011.
There really isn’t much more I can or should say about this poem, except that it is one that a favorite teacher and mentor of mine once read to me. It is splendid advice to the young or unpublished writer about not losing heart. But it is also a reminder that doctors are not doctors because they read about medicine; pilots are not pilots because they read the flight manual, or even 150 books about how to fly. “A real writer really writes,” the poet says, and so for me this piece becomes not only an encouragement but an indictment for those who dream but don’t do. Would you want a mechanic to fix your car if he has read all the specs, and memorized the names of the parts, but has never gotten his precious little hands greasy on a car before? A real poet might not be published, but she has most certainly written poetry.
Ok, ambiguous rant over. Here is the video. I hope you enjoy it.
“For the Young Who Want To”
by Marge Piercy
Talent is what they say
you have after the novel
is published and favorably
reviewed. Beforehand what
you have is a tedious
delusion, a hobby like knitting.
Work is what you have done
after the play is produced
and the audience claps.
Before that friends keep asking
when you are planning to go
out and get a job.
Genius is what they know you
had after the third volume
of remarkable poems. Earlier
they accuse you of withdrawing,
ask why you don’t have a baby,
call you a bum.
The reason people want M.F.A.’s,
take workshops with fancy names
when all you can really
learn is a few techniques,
typing instructions and some-
body else’s mannerisms
is that every artist lacks
a license to hang on the wall
like your optician, your vet
proving you may be a clumsy sadist
whose fillings fall into the stew
but you’re certified a dentist.
The real writer is one
who really writes. Talent
is an invention like phlogiston
after the fact of fire.
Work is its own cure. You have to
like it better than being loved.
Marge Piercy, “For the young who want to” from Circles on the Water: Selected Poems of Marge Piercy (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1982). First appeared in Mother Jones V, no. 4 (May 1980). Copyright © 1980, 1982 by Marge Piercy and Middlemarsh, Inc.
Comments