rebeccakuder

W-O-M-A-N (Turn that frown upside down!)

Peggy Lee. That lady must have had some darn fine warshing gloves.

One excellent reason to have Peggy Lee’s “Fever & Other Hits” lying around:

Say one morning you find cat barf in your kid’s bin of wooden food (each piece with velcro dots to let the child mimic chopping) because it was left on the floor (lesson: if you leave your toys on the floor, Dante, aka “Big Tiny” the cat might barf on them), you can turn a frown upside down!

Here’s how:

1) Assess which turnips, carrots, and tomatoes need warshed. Remove the big chunks first.  Get a clean bag and stash the unsullied food.

2) Get a used toothbrush (that you won’t reuse for your mouth), some good soap, and the sullied wooden food.

3) Start scrubbing.

4) Realize, through your disgust and crankiness, that this is an opportunity to teach your toddler the word “REPULSIVE.”

5) Realize still further, through this repulsive task, which song has popped into your head.  And laugh.

6) Put down the half-clean wooden carrot top.  Wash and dry your hands.

7) Put on Peggy Lee, risk blasphemy by skipping over the song “Fever,” which always reminds you of the good old college days, and watching Pee Wee Herman lip synching in platform shoes; pine momentarily for the careless 1980s.  (Anyone remember that?)  Skip directly to song number two.

8) Sing along, “‘Cause I’m a woman,” and make sure your daughter hears you spelling that glorious word.

(To the gentlemen: Before you get your boxers in a twist, yes, I know you can clean cat barf too.  Sure can!  And plenty else.  But you’ll need to find your own song, darlings.  This one is ours.)

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Shut up and sing the song

Jack Hardy’s (magic) green velvet coat

When a songwriter at Jack Hardy’s weekly songwriters group would explain what he or she was about to sing, Jack Hardy would say, “Shut up and sing the song.”  Abrupt, and to some, rude, but a valid procedural point for a workshop, even more notable in its good advice to the writer.

Let the work speak for itself.  If something is  important enough, yet is not on the page, or in the lyrics, put it in there.  Rework or revise it later if you need to, if what you mean is not conveyed through your magic lattice of words, sounds, syllables.

I’ve stolen Jack’s  line when approaching fiction workshops: it applies.  I feel very rude ever telling someone to “shut up,” and usually preface it with context.  As an imperative to action, “Shut up and sing the song” is simple and worth doing.  (I’m talking to myself, too.  For years, I whined about how I wanted to write and yet was not doing it.)  Shut up about what you want to do, wish you could do, mean to do, intend to do.

Shut up and sing the song.

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Jack Hardy (household icon)

Jack Hardy playing at my wedding

When Jack Hardy and his band played the Studebaker Family Reunion in 2001, he and the band stayed at our house.  I came back from work that Saturday afternoon to a kitchen full of fiddles and song; they were warming up for the evening’s gig.  Five years later, he came back with a band that included his bright-glowing daughter, Morgan.  I haven’t met his other family, but was so impressed with Morgan.  She seemed wise and mature for her years, and full of talent.

Jack Hardy sang and played at my wedding.  Jack’s presence filled whatever space he inhabited, no matter the scale and scope.  His songs seep into my soul.

My daughter might be his most fervent three-year-old fan.  She loves and sings so many of his songs.  “The moon is full, it’s just not hungry anymore,” she sings, looking up at the moon.  When the recent ice storm truncated our willow tree, she wanted to play Jack’s Willow Song.  (She looked out the window, told the tree to listen as we played it inside.)  In the mornings when we make oatmeal, first she has to pick up the 1 cup metal measuring cup–it’s her telephone–and call Jack Hardy to tell him to come over and play “Blackberry Pie” or “Sheila” or her recent favorite, “Willie Goggins’ Hat.”  My husband and I had been saying we should call him on the actual phone, and let the girl talk to him for real.  I wish we hadn’t waited so long.

His ways of knowing and telling about nature and human nature will help form hers.  Jack Hardy is part of her landscape and her narrative, and she will never get to hear him play his music in person.  I ache when I think about what his children and family are going through.  But the hardest thing for me to release at the news of his passing is that Merida won’t be able to hear him play live.

There’s a hole in the world now.  True of anyone’s passing, but the gap Jack leaves here is so large, and will echo, as do the strains of his music, through time and space.

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A proud moment

This morning, completely unprompted, my daughter said, “Filitino Box Spring Hog,” then further clarified to say,  “Cookin’ up a Filitino Box Spring Hog!”  (Naturally, I made her repeat it for the camera.)

Indoctrinating her into the world of cultish/semi-obscure music is working.  I’m so proud!  (Can “Chocolate Jesus” be far behind?)

And here they are, the lyrics of Tom Waits’ “Filipino Box Spring Hog” pasted below, thieved (along with the photo of Little Red’s Recovery Room) from Tom Waits Library.  And here’s a live video. Boy do I wish I’d seen that Mule Variations tour!

Filipino Box Spring Hog

(Mule Variations studio version, 1999)

Well I hung on to Mary’s stump
I danced with a soldier’s glee
With a Rum Soaked Crook(2) and a big fat laugh
I spent my last dollar on thee
I saw Bill Bones, gave him a yell
Kehoe spiked the nog
With a chain link fence and a scrap iron jaw
Cookin’ up a Filipino Box Spring Hog
Cookin’ up a Filipino Box Spring Hog
Cookin’ up a Filipino Box Spring Hog

Spider rolled in from Hollister Burn(3)
with a one-eyed stolen mare
Donned himself with chicken fat
Sawin’ on a jaw bone violin there
Kathleen was sittin’ down in Little Red’s Recovery Room(4)
in her criminal underwear bra
I was naked to the waist with my fierce black hound
And I’m cookin’ up a Filipino Box Spring Hog
Cookin’ up a Filipino Box Spring Hog
Cookin’ up a Filipino Box Spring Hog

Dig a big pit in a dirt alley road
Fill it with madrone and bay
Stinks like hell and the neighbors complain
Don’t give a hoot what they say
Gotta slap that hog
Roll em over twice
Gotta baste him with a sweeping broom
You gotta swat them flies and chain up the dogs
Cookin’ up a Filipino Box Spring Hog
Cookin’ up a Filipino Box Spring Hog
Cookin’ up a Filipino Box Spring Hog

Rattle snake piccata with grapes and figs
Old brown Betty(5) with a yellow wig
Tain’t the mince meat(6) filagree
And it ain’t the turkey neck stew(8)
And it ain’t them bruleed okra seeds
though she made them especially for you
Worse won a prize for her bottom black pie
The beans got thrown to the dogs

Jaheseus Christ, I can always make room
Cookin’ up a Filipino Box Spring Hog
Cookin’ up a Filipino Box Spring Hog
Cookin’ up a Filipino Box Spring Hog
Cookin’ up a Filipino Box Spring Hog

rebeccakuder

Happy Valentine’s Day

Tom Waits, an icon and inspiration

Today’s beautiful song…  As much as Tom Waits was (and is still) a balladeer, it seems somehow accidental that he wrote and sang this song.  I love the 1970s introspection, like he’s talking to himself…  I wish I could have that time machine and go back and sit next to the piano for this one.

I love the way this song makes me feel.  I am so glad not to be lonely.  Hoping that anyone who’s lonely today will feel less lonely listening to this gorgeous little dream.

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Everything’s so easy for Pauline…

Neko Case, looking cool as usual. But I think she's still "Margaret."

This song haunts me.  Neko Case is amazing from any angle: musician, poet, strong survivor of life’s trials.  But this song sticks with me, and I can’t shake it off.  I’m sure the story is not as simple from Pauline’s point of view, but still…  This song seems as much a poem as any of Simon and Garfunkle’s poetry.  Here are the lyrics.

“Margaret vs. Pauline”

Everything’s so easy for Pauline
Everything’s so easy for Pauline
Ancient strings set feet a light to speed to her such mild grace
No monument of tacky gold
They smoothed her hair with cinnamon waves
And they placed an ingot in her breast to burn cool and collected
Fate holds her firm in its cradle and then rolls her for a tender pause to savor
Everything’s so easy for Pauline

Girl with the parking lot eyes
Margaret is the fragments of a name
Her bravery is mistaken for the thrashing in the lake
Of the make-believe monster whose picture was faked
Margaret is the fragments of a name
Her love pours like a fountain
Her love steams like rage
Her jaw aches from wanting and she’s sick from chlorine
But she’ll never be as clean
As the cool side of satin, Pauline

Two girls ride the blue line
Two girls walk down the same street
One left her sweater sittin’ on the train
The other lost three fingers at the cannery
Everything’s so easy for Pauline

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Somebody please give me the keys…

Behold the new boss of the world!

Because if I were boss of the world, I would:

1) Outlaw tobacco companies, and train all their employees to work for new, innovative companies that promote smoking cessation and preventive health facilities.  Don’t worry, they would all still have jobs: the CEOs could clean the bathrooms.

2) Invent something that would make texting (and talking non-hands-free on a cell phone) impossible while driving.  Maybe it would involve an electronic force field that makes cars immune to the technology.  I might make something where people could speak text messages, but we’ll see.

3) Invent something that would disallow anyone from using cell phones or text messages until they were mature enough to understand that the person you are sitting with LIVE is more important than whoever just sent you the following zeros and ones: “sup?”

4) Manufacture bikes, good walking shoes, and gardens that could feed towns and make things all pretty and easy and better for the planet.  I’d get everyone some new comfy shoes, like Kevin Klein’s character did in “The Big Chill.”  Happy boxes.

Like Nick Cave (Grinderman) said in the fabulous ditty called “Get It On”:

“I’ve got some words of wisdom!”

Oh yeah, I’ve got lots more where those came from.

Where are my keys?

rebeccakuder

Gogol Bordello (Do your thing!)

My, oh my, I saw Gogol Bordello last night.  Excellent Brazilian expatriates Forro in the Dark opened.  Though I didn’t say for the whole GB show (being a tired parent, too far from home for a late night drive), all that I saw and felt was incendiary.  See them if you can.

There is something about being with people who are doing their thing.  Clearly, these folks were at it.  I remember a boy in high school who threw discus for the track team.  There was a photograph of him with discus in the yearbook: elemental, he was doing his thing.  My high school boyfriend had the same look when he was playing his guitar.

My husband looks that way when he reads his fiction aloud.  It’s hypnotic.

My daughter is part of a Montessori toddler preschool.  They sing a song that goes through all the kids by turns, “Go on Merida, do your thing, do your thing, do your thing, go on Merida, do your thing, do your thing and stop.”  At home, she sings through all the children’s names.  They take turns.

Last night was Gogol Bordello’s turn.

The planet needs more people out, doing their thing.  It will make us all happier.  We can take turns.

I’m going to go back to doing my thing and write this novel now.

rebeccakuder

Life is good. (What about death?)

You’ve probably seen those “Life is good” tee-shirts.  Maybe some of you own one.  A dear friend of mine abhors them, and I think her abhorrence has to do with 1) the ridiculously overly simplified message 2) the faded, pseudo “weathered” quality and bad cut of the tee-shirt, and 3) the bad font and design used.  (I’ll add the evidence to my left as an exhibit for the prosecution.)

But let’s stick with the watered down and nearly meaningless phrase, “Life is good” for a moment longer.  Most people I know would say that Life is a lot of things.  Kind of like soul, perhaps?   George Clinton knew how complicated soul was, when he wrote,  “What is soul?  I don’t know.  Soul is a  ham hock in your corn flakes.” Soul is a lot of things, apparently, some unexpected, perhaps tasty, and surely poetic.

And now let us turn in our dusty lunatics hymnal to John Dee Graham, another musical scholar, about another related overused and vapid expression (“It’s all good”).  John Dee Graham says, “Anyone who tells you that it’s all good is either an idiot or a liar. Because it’s not all good.” (John Dee Graham is the lovable crank who ad libs, in a live performance of a song of his that was used for that firefighter movie with John Travolta, “Cheer up Travolta!”  But that recording was before Travolta’s son died, so I don’t know if JDG would say the same thing so glibly today.  Still, I doubt he’d say, “Life is good.”)

Life is complicated.  Even that is an empty platitude, because now the word “complicated” has been simplified and watered down by that other phrase that’s all over the fracking place, “It’s complicated.” I see it most often posted under relationship status on Facebook.  Yeah, life is complicated.  Relationships are complicated.  Sudoku puzzles (for me) are complicated.  Folding an origami crane is complicated.

But for fun, let’s presume for a moment that Life is good.  Does that mean that Death is bad?  (Is death the opposite of life?)  Isn’t it all really a big circle, a wheel, or something round, that continues, like Ouroboros (I had to do a google search for that name), the snake eating its own tail, forever and ever?  When we can unattach enough to be detached, isn’t that a more complicated and also more accurate way of looking at it all?

To quote another musician on possibly related topics, or at least the recycling of carbon (and life):

“Come down from the cross, we can use the wood.”

“We’re all gonna be just dirt in the ground.”

I’ve been around a lot of death this year.  I don’t know the answer to these questions.  I know about the deer body we saw decomposing across the street in the Clifton Gorge park.  It melted pretty fast.  The other day, I wondered if my precious Houdini, who we buried in 2007, is more than bones now.

What about death?   I want a tee-shirt.

rebeccakuder

Song for my new year

Yesterday, I listened to Dead Can Dance “Toward the Within” because, happily, it’s Dead Can Dance season again, and their music always helps me into the right moody mood for autumn.  This song, “Cantara,” struck me as the proper anthem for my new year.    The sort of warrior voice that echoes through this song, in Lisa Gerrard’s language, seem just what I need.  I don’t usually choose battle metaphors, but this notion, the idea of preparing for battle, seems right for some reason.   (Contradictory for a Libra, maybe.)

At the end of the video, Lisa Gerrard mentions her child’s pre-verbal state, and how the child sings, unfettered by the bounds of language.  Maybe my war is with language, and I need to sing without words.

And I’ve been fascinated with death lately, fascinated with the full process that it is, and all that it implies.  After listening to Gerrard and Brendan Perry, it seems like this song is my right anthem for now.