Charles Junior

The strings in this piece make me sleepy.

- "Charles Junior" by Jorge Ben, from Força Bruta (1970)

Lying in Grass

I was in the middle of drafting a meandering rumination on the tragedies in Hermann Hesse's life, and then I thought better of it. Sure, lots of sad stuff happened in his life (he had severe depression and his wife was schizophrenic, which probably only exacerbated their myriad marital problems). Despite this, Hesse managed to write a lot of insightful, challenging work, and it seems reductive to focus on one already-overemphasized aspect of his life.

Siddhartha was his first work that I ever read, and the memory of experiencing that book still rests fresh in my recollection. I was just beginning my second semester of college, and I thought I knew everything. That book helped set me straight. It was one of the catalysts to my decision to study writing. It's short and stylistically straightforward, so I recommend it to any reader looking for a brief and enlightening novel.

Digressions aside, Hesse is lesser-known as a poet. The first English-translated collection of his poems was published in 1970, which posthumously afforded Hesse greater recognition for his precise poetic abilities. Here is one of those poems, translated from German by the American poet James Wright.

"Lying in Grass"

Is this everything now, the quick delusions of flowers,
And the down colors of the bright summer meadow,
The soft blue spread of heaven, the bees' song,
Is this everything only a god's
Groaning dream,
The cry of unconscious powers for deliverance?
The distant line of the mountain,
That beautifully and courageously rests in the blue,
Is this too only a convulsion,
Only the wild strain of fermenting nature,
Only grief, only agony, only meaningless fumbling,
Never resting, never a blessed movement?
No! Leave me alone, you impure dream
Of the world in suffering!
The dance of tiny insects cradles you in an evening radiance,
The bird's cry cradles you,
A breath of wind cools my forehead
With consolation.
Leave me alone, you unendurably old human grief!
Let it all be pain.
Let it all be suffering, let it be wretched-
But not this one sweet hour in the summer,
And not the fragrance of the red clover,
And not the deep tender pleasure
In my soul.

- "Lying in Grass" / "Im Grase Liegend" by Herman Hesse (1915), translated by James Wright (1970)

Break (?)

A professor in my department just walked by me in the hallway and told me that I "need to take a break." And maybe he is right. So I'm trying to do that with the justification being that I missed no class or work this semester and that perhaps I need to. Hell, maybe I don't need to. Maybe I just want to and deserve to. But that's a hard realization (for me, anyway).

Because I bought my plane ticket home this morning (I'll be back in K.C. in thirteen days!), I'm in the midst of packing my room up right now, namely my books. This means that I have to decide which two or three books I want to take with me for the next few weeks, and this decision has become much harder than it needs to be. I'm in the middle of Another Bullshit Night In Suck City by Nick Flynn right now, and his writing is fairly remarkable. He doesn't overwrite or try to compensate for anything, which I like quite a lot. So I have that, but seeing how I ended up sleeping in the Charlotte airport on my way home two years ago, I'm not taking the risk of being without another book.


Regardless, and because that rant was fairly self-indulgent and unnecessary, here is a beautiful piece of music as recompense. The piano in this song couldn't be better.

-"Miles from Nowhere" by Cat Stevens, from Tea for the Tillerman (1970)

No Time

Whenever I go back home to Missouri, I always make a point to listen to the album American Woman at least once, because it reminds me of being a blissfully ignorant high-schooler (as opposed to a blissfully ignorant college student). The music is great, of course, but I like how it makes me think of the person I used to be: impatient to see the world, perpetually fatigued, and in love with my bedroom--I couldn't even guess how many hours I spent there, drawing and reading and making weird clay models.

But I digress.

The song below, "No Time," originally appeared on The Guess Who's 1969 album Canned Wheat, but this version is from American Woman (1970). If you're at all into blues-/psychedelic-rock, my official endorsement is that you should give it a listen sometime. But now that I've sufficiently babbled, here's "No Time."

Snow

It's snowing!

...Alright, so it's really more of a wintry mix of snow and rain that's barely sticking, but it's there and I'm excited.

Winter is, for me, a great time to excuse my introverted nature with weather and sentiment (because it's easy to argue that most people don't want to venture outside in the elements when the elements are railing from the sky, that winter is a time to hole up with a good book and a warm beverage). I love winter a lot. It feels quiet and peaceful and still in a way that the other seasons can't, and it reminds me of insane short stories about people losing themselves in the rain and the snow, like "The Overcoat" or "The Wendigo." But maybe that's just my tendency to pop-cultural reference coming out. I'm really trying to tone that tendency down so that I can seem like less of a pretentious jerk.

Anyhow, I spent the morning--which was an hour earlier than I expected thanks to the time change, how nice--listening to Lindisfarne and reading and watching my window. This song feels right for today.

 

-Lindisfarne, "Winter Song" from Nicely Out Of Tune (1970)

"If—"

Dear Dennis Hopper,

Please reanimate yourself now, so the world might have more moments like this preserved forever within the faceless void of the Internet.

This is a video of Mr. Hopper reading "If—" by Rudyard Kipling on The Johnny Cash Show. The broadcast was initially on September 30, 1970. I had no idea that Johnny Cash even had his own television show, let alone that Dennis Hopper ever appeared on it or that he read classic poetry on it. That's pretty cool, if you ask me.

As for the poem itself, I have immense respect for those creators and doers who are able to plod forward, continually, no matter what life throws their way; in particular, I'm thinking of Hemingway, who claimed that Kipling "swiped" the good ideas for book titles before him in a letter to F. Scott Fitzgerald. (I can't find an online copy of the letter, but he's referring to his collection Men Without Women, which I'll be honest, I've never read. But here is a source for that because I am a well-indoctrinated college student.) And, if we're being completely objective, I probably think immediately of Hemingway because he is the most looming example of fortitude within my (very limited) frame of literary reference. I'm sure there were many others before him who wrote about quiet suffering and all that.

On a different note, I take issue with the fact that Kipling seems to define masculinity by fortitude. Although he lived in different times, when societal expectations of men often involved traits like strength and resilience, I think those traits transcend gender, and that, in my eyes, being a strong person simply makes one a more respectable human being--regardless of that person's gender.

Digressions aside, I really appreciate and respect the ideas in this poem, even if I don't always embrace them in my thoughts and actions.

Also, am I the only person who thinks that a young Dennis Hopper looks a lot like Owen Wilson?

 

"If—"

If you can keep your head when all about you   

    Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,   

If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,

    But make allowance for their doubting too;   

If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,

    Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,

Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,

    And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;   

    If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;   

If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster

    And treat those two impostors just the same;   

If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken

    Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,

Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,

    And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings

    And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,

And lose, and start again at your beginnings

    And never breathe a word about your loss;

If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew

    To serve your turn long after they are gone,   

And so hold on when there is nothing in you

    Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,   

    Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,

If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,

    If all men count with you, but none too much;

If you can fill the unforgiving minute

    With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,   

Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,   

    And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!

-Rudyard Kipling, Rewards and Fairies (1910)

You Take The Dark Out Of Night

Put some pep in your step.

Emitt Rhodes is a fellow Midwesterner and pop-music magician. He doesn't actually perform magic, I don't think, but his songs are wonderfully melodic. This song, "You Take the Dark out of Night" is from his self-titled album, which he recorded in his house and released in 1970. It makes me smile, and I hope you like it too.

Peace Frogs

Good morning, Internet.

This song is "Peace Frogs" by the Doors. After reading the news this morning, it seemed relevant.

-From Morrison Hotel (1970)