As Audience, As Witness

As I was getting coffee at the cafe this morning, I had a gentleman walk up to me and ask about the Bamboo Reef t-shirt I was wearing.  He wanted to know if the business were still in operation, and I named Monterey and SF as ongoing locations.  He then told me his father had been one of Bamboo Reef's three founders--with Al Giddings and Leroy French -- back in 1961.  We chatted briefly, me asking about his father's name (which I now can't recall, grrr), and then he moved on.

I'm guessing he wasn't a diver like his father, or at least not a local diver, or he would have known . . . but we didn't talk about any of that.

I like how the man wanted to connect with something his father had helped make -- and to say it out loud -- and I, random fellow that I am, was able to participate as audience, as witness.

Waiting for Gadot

Soldate clay;
gray/green glaze:
8/10/15

If you've read my blog, you know I have a soft spot for frogs.

(I also appreciate a certain wonderful heroic character.)

A Fashionable Abalone

Is that a hat?

Foreground: The Pict

Background: The Merman's Head.

Alternative titles: Not Hadrian; Deep in Thought; or The Painted Man's Grasp.

Neil Young: "When I Write A Song"

"When I write a song, it starts with a feeling.  I can hear something in my head or feel it in my heart.  It may be that I just picked up the guitar and mindlessly started playing.  That's the way a lot of songs begin.  When you do that, you are not thinking.  Thinking is the worst thing for writing a song.  So you just start playing and something new comes out.  Where does it come from?  Who cares?  Just keep it and go with it.  That's what I do.  I never judge it.  I believe it.  It came as a gift when I picked up my musical instrument and it came through me playing with the instrument.  The chords and melody just appeared.  Now is not the time for interrogation or analysis.  Now is the time to get to know the song, not change it before you even know it.  It is like a wild animal, a living thing.  Be careful not to scare it away.  That's my method, or one of my methods, at least."

--Neil Young,

from page 158 of Waging Heavy Peace: A Hippie Dream,
A Plume Book, New York: 2012.

Lightning Strike: Bob Mould's "Stupid Now"

STUPID NOW

Please listen to me 
And don't disagree
Even as we fight 
It doesn't matter to me
(3x)

Here alone in this place
Here alone in my bed
I feel your warmth on my face
And these thoughts in my head

Everything I say to you feels stupid now
Feelings that I shared with you are over now
Haven't I been enough of a fool for you?
Everything I say to you feels stupid now

(Please listen to me 

And don't disagree

Even as we fight 

It doesn't matter to me)

Everything I say to you feels stupid now

Feelings that I shared with you are over now

Haven't I been enough of a fool for you?

Everything I say to you feels stupid now
(2x)

Let me out let me out let me out

Let me out let me out let me out
Let me out let me out let me out
Let me out let me out let me out

(Everything I say to you feels stupid now)

--Bob Mould, 

the opening song to District Line -----
The words alone, I like, but the music, the music, will take you higher.

As Archilochos said, "The truth is born as lightning strikes."
(Guy Davenport's translation in his excellent 7 Greeks.)

Arnold: "With Noiseless Current Strong, Obscure and Deep"

Below the surface-stream, shallow and light,
Of what we say we feel -- below the stream,
As light, of what we think we feel -- there flows
With noiseless current strong, obscure and deep,
The central stream of what we feel indeed.

--Matthew Arnold

(1869)