Too busy live-blogging the football games, but never too busy to post my favorite holiday song on Christmas day!

Dreaming Of The Masters

Bee

Still been busy live blogging the CFB bowl games over on another site, but that doesn't mean we can't keep posting these Old School Friday posts here.  Here's more John Coltrane (I said it couldn't all be done in one post) performing Africa from the 1961 LP Africa Brass, the first Coltrane album I ever bought and still one of my favorites, with a sound as big and as heartfelt as the entire African continent.

No time to post today.  I'm live-blogging today's college football Bowl Games over at another site, and I'm all posted out tonight.

Normal posts will resume shortly.

Old School Friday

I can see now how these Old School Friday posts are going to progress - each week's selection makes me think of the next week's, and just as Don Cherry suggested Pharoah Sanders and Pharoah Sanders suggested Alice Coltrane,  Alice Coltrane almost demands that I post John Coltrane.

Of course, Coltrane is such a pivotal, essential figure in jazz music that it would have been hard to keep this series going for long without posting something by him.  I've actually been striving to put off a Coltrane post for as long as I could just to give some other voices a chance before turning to the master (note to self: rename the Old School Friday series to Dreaming of the Masters after the Art Ensemble of Chicago song). But as I said before, after posting something by Alice Coltrane, it's almost impossible not to post something by John.

The question is where to start.  What one song should I select to properly capture the creativity of arguably the greatest musician in the 20th Century?  Actually, in all likelihood, I'll probably be posting Coltrane for a few weeks because just one is hardly enough, but still, where to start?

Coltrane's music has long been important to me - the very first paper I wrote in college for my Freshman Composition course, in response to the instruction, "Write about anything you care deeply about" was a short piece on the music of John Coltrane.  His tenor provided much of the soundtrack of my life since around 1974, but I would be dishonest with myself if I didn't choose Wise One to begin, as it's the song that has seared itself most deeply into my subconscious.

The reason for my selection is so personal and so intimate and so sensual that I can't even tell you about it - not out of modesty or some sense of propriety, but because I don't have the necessary skill with words to properly paint the picture.  I'll say this much - in 1979, when Mary Ellen put this record on the turntable the morning after what was probably the sexiest, most romantic, most enchanting evening of my young life, I knew as we continued our long and meaningful conversation and the intro to Wise One came over the speakers that I had found the right one and that I was in love.    

Ausar Temple

For those of you thinking that the Old School Friday posts of music fusing exotic Middle to Far Eastern sounds with spiritual themes was just a 70s trend among certain jazz musicians,  I offer Ausar Temple by Angel Deradoorian (Deradoorian, Dirty Projectors, Avey Tare's Slasher Flicks) from her 2017 album Eternal Recurrence.

This is what a Zen temple might sound like at 4:00 a.m.

Alabama!

See Alabama?  America knew you could do it and make the right choice in a year when it seemed that most of the rest of the country kept making atrocious choices.  You did the right thing, even if something like 49% of your voters went the wrong way.  But for every one of them, there was one of you and in the end, you had one left over to elect Democrat Doug Jones over Republican pedophile, anti-constitutionalist, gun-fetishist, and Shiite Baptist Roy Moore.

Thank you, Alabama. Now I can pick the Crimson Tide in the college football pool with a clear conscience and not have to cheer for the infernal Clemson Tigers just to spite your electoral decision.

In the end, we knew dignity and decency would win out over fundamentalism and hate.  Alabama, on at least this night of nights, you're awesome!    

Paleontology Humor

"I have every excuse to just stay shut in and play video games on my computer all day, at least while I'm not out raking snow."

It turns out I used my snow-bound shut-in time exactly as I had intended, and managed to complete The Wild Hunt storyline in Witcher 3.  No spoilers here, but we defeated the foes that needed defeating, resolved the mysteries surrounding key characters, mastered a new card game, and even had energy left over for a few romantic side adventures.  

I have to admit The Witcher lived up to its reputation as one of all-time best video games. The plot was as sophisticated and nuanced as a novel, the characters were satisfyingly complex, the gameplay was exciting, and the whole thing ran flawlessly on my HP Envy laptop.  Really can't find anything to complain about, and recommend the game without reservation to any and all.

What with side quests, exploration, and time spent just wandering around like a dumb-ass, it took me 130 hours of gameplay to complete the storyline.  I purchased the two DLC Expansion Packs for the game, so I still have plenty of gameplay left before I play the whole thing through again from the start.

Meanwhile, snow's still on the ground outside but my strategy of raking the snow-covered wet leaves away from the car succeeded and I finally got my automobile to the top of the hill and the end of my driveway.  Frankly, I wasn't sure that plan would work, but it did.  I even quit playing Witcher long enough to venture out and do some grocery shopping today.  The ordeal even made me grateful and appreciative once again of having a car (belated Thanksgiving, anyone?).   

An unusual weekend by any account, and I'll actually be glad to get back to my usual routine on Monday.  Can't say that at the end of too many weekends.

Winter In Georgia

Forget the Los Angeles wildfires and the Iranian earthquake.  Puerto Rico's recovering just fine, at least according to our so-called President.  But in a real catastrophe of near Biblical proportions, it snowed yesterday in Georgia.

Many parts of Atlanta received at least 6 inches of snow, according to the National Weather Service.  Some parts of Atlanta’s western and northern suburbs had up to a foot of snow Friday and Saturday.

Atlanta famously shuts down when even a half-inch of snow falls.  Six inches of snow nearly equals the total accumulation of the last decade.

I left work at noon yesterday in the middle of the storm.  The commute, which should take only about 20 minutes, actually takes 30 to 45 minutes with Atlanta's rush-hour traffic, and as many as 60 minutes on a really bad day.  Yesterday, the drive took me about 75 minutes, so I was actually relieved that I didn't wind up in one of those infamous six- to eight-hour debacles of snowstorms past.

I couldn't make it any further up my driveway than shown in the picture above.  The storm hit right at the peak of the autumn leaf fall (it occurs late in the year here in Georgia), and my driveway was due to get leaf blown that day.  The crew didn't make it due to the inclement weather, so I had about an inch of wet leaves on my driveway beneath the six inches of wet, slushy snow.  Traction was impossible.

The car's still there.  I can't drive it further up the hill, and I'm too close to the side retaining wall to let it slide back down and park on the street.  Today, I raked the wet leaves and loose show away from the car (have you ever raked snow before?  first time for me), so that tomorrow's sun will warm the blacktop drive and melt away the remaining ice and snow.  Perhaps that will be enough to gain the traction needed to free up the car and move it out of the driveway, one way or the other.  

 Thousands are still without power, some poor guy got electrocuted by a fallen power line, and I'm sure there were many, many accidents on Atlanta's streets and highways, so I don't have it too bad.  I have power, food, a meditation pillow, internet access, and alcohol, so I have every excuse to just stay shut in and play video games on my computer all day, at least while I'm not out raking snow.

Old School Friday

After posting Pharoah Sanders last week, the obvious direction to go from there is to play something from Alice Coltrane's collaboration with Pharoah, and I can't think of a better thing to post (or music to listen to on this cold, wintery night in Georgia) than the incredibly beautiful Journey in Satchinananda.

After John Coltrane's untimely death, his wife Alice continued the spiritual journey she had started with her late husband.  Indian spirituality and mysticism played a very important role in the couple's life and on the musical side, it manifested in a new type of music where ragas, harp and chants blended seamlessly with avant-garde jazz notions. Alice's spiritual path eventually led her to lead an ashram in California.  Alice passed in 2007, but next March we'll be hearing members of her ashram perform some of her devotional music in Knoxville, Tennessee.

We have infinite respect for any musician, much less a woman, who manages to find her own unique voice and style while surrounded by the legendary jazz figures of her time.  John Coltrane was obviously a towering figure in the world of jazz, and it must have taken a lot of courage and self assurance for his wife not to be just a curator of John's music, preserving the tradition and protecting his reputation, but instead to be so true to her own  muse or muses and boldly go where no one had gone before. 

We don't normally post entire albums in this Old School Friday series, but it would be almost criminal to leave any portion of this magnificent recording out of the mix.

Writing in today's New York Times, at least in the on-line version, novelist Ben Dolnick notes:

"At the core of Buddhism is the concept of non-self. The idea, basically, is that the thing you think of as you — the entity whose well-being occupies your every waking thought — is an illusion. This doesn’t mean that your body is a hologram . . . What non-self refers to, rather, is the thing that you think of as your true self — the little captain who lives somewhere behind your forehead and looks out through your eyes. The thing that says, 'I hope people like me' or 'I can’t stand another minute on this train' — that, Buddhists believe, is what needs to be seen through and rooted out.

This teaching, Buddhists insist, has the potential to eliminate your suffering entirely. But it is destined to remain so much inert philosophy, no more life-changing than the quadratic equation, until you’re able to actually glimpse your little impostor, to fix him in your mental cross hairs." 

Amusingly, Dolnick notes that Donald Trump seems to be doing exactly that, as his constant references to himself in the third person suggests a sort of detachment from the ego-self.  When Paul Manafort was indicted, Trump remarked, "There’s not a mention of Trump in there.” When discussing potential Russian interference during the election, he asked, “Perhaps Trump just ran a great campaign?” Back in 2009, he tweeted, “Be sure to tune in and watch Donald Trump on Late Night with David Letterman ….”

Referring to oneself in the third person is usually seen as abnormal, almost pathological. When the writers of a drama wish to signal that someone suffers from a terminal case of self-regard, they have him refer to himself in the third person.  But when we refer to ourselves in the third person, Dolnick says, the very thing that we're used to thinking of as ourselves appears separate from the one doing the speaking. Which means that shifting into the speech patterns of a narcissistic lunatic can be a means of realizing a life-altering truth - you are not your thoughts; you are not your feelings. 

No one thinks, even for a minute, that Donald Trump is an enlightened bodhisattva, or that when he refers to himself in the third person, he is expressing not a personality disorder but an intuitive grasp of the subtlest of Buddhist teachings. But thinking along Dolnick's lines makes Trump's bombastic, braggadocios speech seem somehow humorous, which in turn relieves some of our suffering.  And since the end of suffering was the goal of  the Buddha, Dolnick is doing the work of a bodhisattva by teaching us how to laugh at the oppressor.

Cordoba's Paco Acedo, who's best known for his diving expeditions in the Arctic and beneath frozen Russian lakes, has apparently decided to warm it up a bit and recently trekked through remote parts of Papua New Guinea, taking time to dive among some World War II-era wrecks at Guadalcanal in the Soloman Islands. 

His video summary of the trip is fascinating and simultaneously informative and hypnotically mesmerizing. The world, apparently, is a most interesting place.

The beleaguered Trump Administration and Senate Republicans finally got something done, and in keeping with the general theme of the past year, it's about the worst thing they could have done. Late last night, the Senate passed the most sweeping tax legislation in 30 years. The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act is projected to add more than $1 trillion in deficit spending over 10 years, despite the fact that the Republican spent the Obama years obsessed over the national debt. The final vote was 51 in favor, 49 against, with all the Democrats and Rep. Senator Bob Corker of Tennessee voting no.

The core of the bill is a permanent tax cut for corporations combined with much smaller, and temporary, benefits for everyone else (i.e., you and I). Over the next decade, the $1.4 trillion tax cut would disproportionately reward the wealthiest Americans while piling on the national debt—which in turn will likely be used by Republicans as a justification for cutting Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.

If you have any questions about this, here is Prof. Reich to break it down for you:

Old School Friday

The obvious next step after revisiting old favorites Abdullah Ibraham and Don Cherry, really the only logical thing to post after that, is to continue this Old School Friday remembrance of music past by listening to some Pharoah Sanders.

The only problem, what with Pharoah's prodigious body of work (and the man's still living and playing to this day), is where to start and what to play.  I could easily go an entire month of posting nothing but favorite selections of Pharoah's and still have enough left over to burn an entire CD with, but after some due consideration and meditation, we'll go with Hum-Allah-Hum-Allah-Hum-Allah because, well, listen and you'll know why.

Beyond the Coltrane quotes and the incredible bliss interrupted by passages of intense chaos, the song functions as a spiritual journey deep into the soul of both the composer and his sidemen.  It's incredible stuff and the sheer beauty of it all still brings tears to my eyes these 40 years later (it was recorded in 1969 but I didn't discover it until around 1976 or '77).  The vocals are by the criminally underrecognized Leon Thomas.

If this music moves you as much as it still moves me, you'd be well advised to check out other Sanders compositions like The Creator Has A Master Plan or Upper Egypt and Lower Egypt, or, really, just go and listen to anything by the man - you literally can't go wrong.