Remembrance of Strings Past

Who do you think is the best guitar player?  Why not meditate on how many angels can dance on the head of a pin? Which is about the room Kristin and I have some nights dancing in Fells Point.

Such a conversation got me pondering my path up and down life’s fretboard.

When I was 5 or 6, my Dad would sometimes take me on house calls. One of his patients, Mr. Ketzner, seemed to own every type of stringed instrument. That gentle man died when I was about 12 and bequeathed me a Vega “Little Dixie” tenor banjo. I still have that lovely instrument.

When I was 13, the Mahon brothers moved in down the street. Pat played rock then transitioned to jazz and eventually classical. From him, I purchased my Gibson ES-175. Joe, a folkie, taught me flat-picking standards like Wabash Cannonball and Tom Dooley. 

My college career began coherently enough, but was soon befogged in ignominy. One shining light was Charlie Brocco. Many a cold, upstate New York night he showed me not only where my fingers went, but how to make the strings sing. He also taught me not to regurgitate songs, but to make them my own. 

In the waning of my 20s, I came to the realization that the time had come to abandon my Peter Pan lifestyle. A return to college and the casino industry ensued. The guitar became a hobby, an idle way to pass the time.

Life’s river flowed, and the revolution of Fortuna’s wheel brought me to Fells Point. In the waning of my 50s, I was touched by a red-haired Aoide, the muse of song. Through her, I embraced and was embraced by a brotherhood of players.  The guitar is again a passion. Words cannot express my gratitude. As ever - BB


"There is no end. There is no beginning. There is only the passion of life." - Federico Fellini

Writing on the Wall

Graffiti personifies the concept that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Some see it as a symbol of urban decay, some as art, some as vandalism. Its spontaneity and unsavoriness attract me.

Cave drawings are not considered graffiti; they are assumed to be "societally approved." But the troublemaker is part of our collective unconscious. I know that some paleolithic prankster drew an arrow to the backside of a cave-drawn beast showing the other dwellers that Atok was an ass.

Graffiti disconcerted the Egyptians, Greeks and Romans. From Napoleon's troops to WWII dog faces, soldiers' names and/or obscene bon mots marked the military global presence. During the 1968 French student revolution, graffiti functioned as a political call-to-arms.

By 1977,  New York artists like Jean-Michael Basquiat brought media attention to graffiti. Ten years before that, a Philadelphia kid named Darryl McCray began what is considered modern graffiti.  Cornbread (McCray's tagger name) became a legend in the City of Brotherly Love. Known not only for his art, but for his unique placement of graffiti, Cornbread tagged the side of an elephant at the zoo and Jackson 5 airplane.


The dorm bathrooms at Siena College provided my first, and only, canvas for graffiti. Always more garrulous than graphic, my scribblings tended to be more literary. No dirty limericks, or "Here I sit broken-hearted..." ditties, my stall scrawls gravitated toward the satiric and sardonic.

A favorite work was the on-going poem. During a morning meditation, one would write a single line. As more guys dropped in, other lines were added. By the next morning an entire verse was composed. A new day would bring a new oeuvre - as ever BB

Soyez réalistes, demandez l'impossible. (Be realistic, ask the impossible.) - graffiti in Paris during the 1968 student protests

That Guy

He’s that guy, you know, the guy who played in…Anyone who has watched an old movie or television show with me has heard that phrase. 

Growing up during the Golden Age of Television, I overindulged in cathode ray tube emissions. Not sated by the torrent of effluvia produced by episodic programs, I immersed myself in old movies.

For reasons unknown even unto myself, I enjoyed sitting through the credits putting the players’ faces to their names. Ergo my encyclopedic (and somewhat useless) knowledge of character actors and “B” movie stalwarts.

From the westerns: Royal Dano, Dub Taylor, Jack Elam, and Arthur Hunnicutt

From gangster flicks: Mike Mazurki, Brian Donlevy, Elisha Cook, Jr and Murray Kinnell

Cue the ones who change genres faster that cold cream removes pancake make-up:

Akim Tamiroff, J. Carroll Naish, Aldophe Menjou, Helmut Dantine

Unlike the Avon lady, some of these names may not ring a bell. (Another pun becoming anachronistic in the age of the Interweb) However, most will recognize the faces. These actors lent their talent to hundreds of movies and TV shows. Yet, they remain anonymous images flickering on late night TV.

Don’t despair old friends. I still remember. As ever BB

“I don't mean to be forward, but ain't I had the pleasure of meeting you two broads before?” – Mike Mazurki in Some Like It Hot

Who's Buried in Grant's Tomb?

Trick question? You bet. The answer is no one. The General Grant National Memorial, commonly called Grant's Tomb located in New York City's Riverside Park, is a mausoleum. One gets entombed, not buried, in a mausoleum. Semantics aside, saying Ulysses Grant would be only half correct as entombed next to him is his wife.

The "correct" answer has led to the untrue belief that no bodies are interred there. But then, aporcypha abounds among us.

From the Greek for hidden away, apocrypha originally referred to Biblical books considered by the canonical powers as not divinely inspired, i.e. the Gnostic gospels. The word's definition has expanded to mean anything spurious.

Another classic example is the idea that before Columbus' voyage in 1492, people believed that the earth was flat. Since ancient times, most knew the earth was round. A century before the birth of Christ, Eratosthenes calculated the world's circumference within 100 miles of the actual figure. Even the common man could look at the unobstructed horizon and notice the earth's curvature.

The "world is flat" theory became popular after Washington Irving's 1828 biography of Columbus. An inveterate story-teller, Irving wouldn't let facts interfere with a good plot device. I concur.

Other facetious facts include Ben Franklin's support of daylight saving time. He mentioned it in a letter as a jab at the French habit of sleeping late. He did not mean for the idea to be taken seriously. Unlike Paron Weems' stories about George Washington. Weems coined the cherry tree story. His goal was to immortalize Washington as an American-Augustan demi-god.


Why does ever-gullible man take such pleasure in these tales? I believe it's an atavistic predisposition. Some chromosomal link to ancestors sitting watching the fire's shadows play on cave walls as the tribal storyteller weaves his verbal tapestry. Intrinsically, we are as credulous as those cavemen. Our technology has advanced, but we still delight in a good story and passing them on to others. It would be more romantic relating them around glowing embers as opposed to opening and/or sending an email.

To debunk some popular emails which people enjoy sending me: the word shit in not an acronym for shipping manure, Captain Kangaroo did not rescue injured fellow Marine Lee Marvin on Iwo Jima and displaying the middle finger as an insult has nothing to do with the Battle of Agincourt. - As ever BB

"There are people so addicted to exaggeration they can't tell the truth without lying."  ~Josh Billings*

*Pen name of 19th century humorist, Henry Wheeler Shaw - no relation

Did You Hear the One About?

Last night...New Orleans...Midnight...the police announce that Mardi Gras had ended and begin clearing the streets. Ash Wednesday had begun and with it Lent.

Easter is the first Sunday after the first Full Moon after the Vernal Equinox. Lent, a period of fasting, penance, retrospection and alms-giving begins 40 days before that. Well, kind of...today is March 9 and Easter is April 24. If you do the math, that's 46 days. Sundays don't count as Lenten Days. (Note: this is Roman Catholic. There are slight differences in the observance by other denominations and the orthodox churches).

Lent ends on Easter Sunday. Again, sort of...as of the Second Vatican Council, Good Friday and Holy Saturday are no longer considered Lent, but part of the Easter Triduum. Confused yet?  Just take two stations of the cross and call me in the morning.

As an altar boy, I enjoyed serving Mass between Holy Thursday and Easter Sunday. In respect for Christ's suffering, the sanctus bell is replaced by the crotalus (clapper in the vernacular). Getting the full sound out of this required subtle wrist action.


The only thing cooler was being a thurifer. You had to know how to swing the thurible to keep the incense from falling out and burning properly. The thurifer (just love using that word) also had to know the sequence of swings. At Christ the King, those who screwed up felt the wrath of Monseigneur McIntyre especially if you were his grand-nephew - lucky me.

So begins the celebration of the passion of Christ. On Good Friday, he was crucified, died and was buried. On the third day, the stone of the sepulcher was rolled away, he arose and walked out. If he sees his shadow, it's six more weeks of Lent.

Quite a lead in, just to relate one of the most sacrilegious jokes I know- as ever BB

"God is a comedian playing to an audience too afraid to laugh."  - Voltaire

Answers?

"Any answers? Any questions? Any rags, any bones, any bottles today?" - Groucho Marx as Professor Wagstaff in Horse Feathers


From Plato's academy to Wagstaff's Huxley College, man has pondered the answers to life's great mysteries. But as Douglass Adam's wrote when ultimate answer (42) was solved, we then have to figure out the question.

In ancient Greece, wandering scholars, known as sophoi, provided education for money. Plato abhorred what he saw as specious scholastics. He preferred philosophers, literally "lovers of wisdom," who gave freely of their knowledge. A related debate wages today, but both sides doth reek more of power than prudence.

Metaphysics deals with the first principles of things. It looks ontologically at the existence of being and epistemologically at how we know being.  Can universals exist in reality, or merely as concepts? Empiricism versus skepticism versus existentialism - as Jefferson Airplane sang, "The human name doesn't mean shit to a tree."

Philosophical debates tangle in the rhizome of man's ego. The Buddha illustrated this in his Flower Sermon offering a blossom rather than expressing a rational creed.


Western thought focuses more on control than knowledge. Ken Kesey addressed this concept in the screenplay, Over the Border, encapsulated in his collection, Garage Sale. In it, he ponders the great question, "How does this thing run?" Which inevitably leads to the next question, "How do I drive it?" Finally comes the ultimate interrogatory, "How the hell do I get off it?"

Man still embraces the hubris of Icarus...as ever - BB

"The answer is never the answer. What's really interesting is the mystery. The need for mystery is greater than the need for an answer." - Ken Kesey

Puissant

On a cold, snowy evening, I curled up in a comfortable chair, wrapped 
myself in a warm blanket and read a tome on Celtic culture. I came across the phrase, "the puissant Celtic race..." I dinna ken its meaning, so left my toasty cocoon and went to my dependable dictionary.


Puissant - adjective, archaic, poetic/literary meaning having great power or influence.

St. Paddy's Day being only a few weeks away, this phrase stirred a musing on my Celtic roots.


During the Paleolithic era, tribes with common bloodlines wandered Europe and crossed the land bridges to Britain and Ireland. As the glaciers melted, the seas rose separating these landmasses from continental Europe. Celts traveled across Europe, to the Iberian Peninsula, across the water to Ireland, from there to Scotland. Others crossed the water from what is now France to Britain. They did not know that the people they encountered shared common lineage.

The race had a powerful influence indeed. Before the dawn of the Roman Empire, Celtic tribes controlled from the North Sea to the Mediterranean, from the Atlantic Ocean to the Black Sea. Their strong points included lyrical poetry, art and metallurgy. While the Celts had strong clan loyalty, their weak point was organization.

They had no central leaders, no strong governmental units. Thus they fell under the aegis of first the Roman Empire, then succeeding regimes. The Celts were true anarchists. Proof that anarchy can lead to a fruitful, vibrant society despite the word's modern connotation.

So, instead of celebrating St. Paddy's Day in a drunk revel of Guinness and whiskey, explore Irish culture.   Enjoy the words of James Joyce, Jonathan Swift, W.B. Yeats and a host of others. Experience the joy of Celtic myth through Herminie Kavanagh's Darby O'Gill stories. Listen to the sounds of the Chieftains, the Irish Rovers. For those with more modern tastes try the Drop Kick Murphys and Floggin Molly.

Make the day much more than just a green dyed Frat party...boy maturity sucks.  As ever - BB

"For the Gaels of Ireland are men that God made mad/For all their wars are merry/And all their songs sad." - G.K. Chesterton