Kodachrome

They give us those nice bright colors
They give us the greens of summer
Makes you think all the world's a sunny day
I got a Nikon camera
I love to take a photograph
So, Mama, don't take my Kodachrome away

~ Paul Simon

If this song is familiar to you, you will certainly recall the opening line:  When I think back to all the crap I learned in high school . . .   Having had a 30-year career as a high school English teacher, that line does make me cringe a bit.  While I don't dispute that there is likely a lot of "crap" being taught, I'd also like to think that everything I taught was meaningful.  "All great literature is about what it means to be human," said my colleague and friend JoAnn.  And I had the opportunity to teach great literature.  I choose to believe that it made a difference.

But on to the lines quoted above.  I was always taken by the idea that we tend to record our lives in sunny days.  Ever the optimists, we take advantage of the blue skies and bright sun to get out our cameras (or now, our phones) and click away.  Or maybe this was more true back in the dark ages, when we had to pay for our Kodachrome film and then pay to have it developed.  If there were only 12 pictures per roll of film, there was no desire to waste them on cloudy days.  Hell, I'm old enough to remember when color film was a luxury.  Although Kodachrome was invented in the mid-30s, most of the photographs I have from the 50s and 60s are in black and white.

The Wizard of Oz movie was produced in 1939.  When I was growing up, it was broadcast on television every year, sometime in April.  I never missed it.  Although I cannot remember when my family switched from a black and white TV to a color set, I know that, through many years of watching the film, I had no idea that the movie is not in color until Dorothy lands in Oz.  It was all Kansas to me.

Twenty miles southeast of Bryce Canyon in Utah is another red-rocked nirvana, the Kodachrome Basin.  State Park literature states, "The color and beauty found here prompted a National Geographic Society expedition to name the area Kodachrome, after the popular film, in 1948."  Although it always seemed to be too commercial a name for a natural area, I understand the reasoning.  There will come a day, I suppose, when the history of the name will be lost on visitors, especially since Kodachrome film was retired in 2009 after 74 years.

When Paul Simon sings this song, he often switches the last line around.  Sometimes it's Everything looks worse in black and white, and sometimes it's Everything looks better in black and white.  He claims that he doesn't remember which way he originally wrote it.  I guess it's all a matter of perspective.  And you get to decide.

Bathtub Gin

Here comes the Joker
with his silly grin
He carries a martini
made of bathtub gin

Here comes the Joker
We all must laugh
'Cause we're all in this together
and we love to take a bath

~ Phish

So.  I'm housebound today while Bathfitter installs my new shower.  Seemed like a good idea to find a song lyric about bathing or showering.  I considered Little Feat's Fat Man in the Bathtub, but as much as I love all things Lowell George, I wasn't inspired to blog about it.  So I turned to Google and found Phish's Bathtub Gin.  (Oddly enough, Phish also did a cover of Fat Man in the Bathtub.)  And once again, I am amused by the temptation to apply the events of the day to the lyrics.  Is it coincidence that Mark Hamill recently recorded some of Donald Trump's tweets in the voice of The Joker?

Phish played three nights at Bethel Woods (site of Woodstock) back in 2011, so I may have heard them do this song.  Trey Anastasio has to be the happiest guy in rock and roll; the man cannot stop smiling while he is playing!  Such joy!  One of the reasons my son chose the University of Vermont in Burlington is because that's where Trey and Mike Gordon got together and formed Phish.  Despite that questionable motivation, Sam got an excellent education at UVM.

But back to the song.  Bathtub gin is a term born in the 1920s during Prohibition.  It refers to any kind of homemade spirits.  It may have resulted from the fact that the bottles of booze, which needed to be topped off with water, were too tall for the kitchen sink and needed to be finished from the bathtub faucet.  Or maybe it was the fact that, in order to supply larger establishments with the illegal alcohol, the distillers needed to be discreet in order to avoid detection by police.  The common metal bathtub was small enough to escape notice, but big enough to produce large quantities.  I find it humorous that one would drink a martini, a drink associated with "the elites," made from bathtub gin!  But we do live in a culture of knock-off purses and cubic zirconia bling, don't we?

'Cause we're all in this together and we love to take a bath.  As in "suffer a heavy financial loss"?  Fasten your seat belts!  Inauguration Day is only ten days away!

Before the Deluge

Now let the music keep our spirits high
And let the buildings keep our children dry
Let creation reveal its secrets by and by
By and by . . . 
When the light that's lost within us reaches the sky

~ Jackson Browne

Wow, ten posts in and I'm just getting around to a Jackson Browne song?  It won't be the last.  Jackson Browne is, hands down, my favorite lyricist.  I got to tell him that once when I spoke to him at Levon Helm's Barn in Woodstock NY.  Levon had recently died, and Jackson was doing a benefit concert to help keep the Barn in business.  Margaret and I sat in the front row; I was directly across from Jackson as he sat at his piano.  At one point, he stared at me as if he were looking into my soul.  (I have witnesses.)

Before the Deluge appears on the 1974 release Late for the Sky.  Can this song really be over 40 years old?  As with so many songs that have captured my attention in the last few months, this one could easily have been just written.

Some of them were dreamers
And some of them were fools
Who were making plans and thinking of the future

Well, there's the 2016 election in one of many nutshells.  We all vote with an eye toward the future, or at least toward our very own personal future.  Dreamers?  Fools?  I don't think it's one or the other, even though our polarized population might think so.

While the sand slipped through the opening
And their hands reached for the golden ring
With their hearts, they turned to each other's heart for refuge
In the troubled years that came before the deluge

Time speeds by while we work to acquire all that we think we need to live.  And of course, none of it is as important as love and security and peace.  John Lennon tried to tell us this many years ago:  All you need is love.  Well, that and a good craft beer.  We'll probably need that if the "troubled years" last very long.

Box of Rain

Look out of any window
Any morning, any evening, any day
Maybe the sun is shining
Birds are winging, no rain is falling from a heavy sky
What do you want me to do
To do for you to see you through?
For this is all a dream we dreamed one afternoon long ago

~ Robert Hunter

Yesterday's post began and ended with lyrics by Norah Jones.  Specifically, there was this:  Who knows, maybe it's all a dream.  I'd like to continue with the dream theme today, if for no other reason than to highlight one of my favorite lines ever:  For this is all a dream we dreamed one afternoon long ago.

It's hard to pick a favorite Grateful Dead song, but Box of Rain, which was included on 1970's American Beauty (perhaps my favorite Grateful Dead album) has to be way up there at the top of the list.  Robert Hunter has an innate talent for songwriting.  Phil Lesh had given him some music, wanting to create something in honor of his dad, who was dying.  Hunter delivered.  In regard to the title, Hunter said, "By 'box of rain,' I meant the world we live on, but 'ball' of rain didn't have the right ring to my ear, so 'box' it became, and I don't know who put it there."

But back to the dreaming.  First of all, let me say that I love the words we use to divvy up the day:  dawn, morning, afternoon, twilight, dusk, evening, nightfall.  Whenever I encounter one of these words, my mind illustrates the time of day with sunlight, shadows, moonlight, and moods.  Extremely evocative for me.  So to refer to dreaming in the afternoon (as opposed to night, when we are typically dreaming) not only shakes up my everyday perceptions, but also provides a vision and a mood.  It's kind of lazy, peaceful, and other-worldly.  And to further poke my rational mind, Hunter tells me that it was a dream from long ago.  When?  In another life?  I can employ the willing suspension of disbelief and buy that.

And that provokes much larger questions, ones that involve reincarnation, past lives, and a spiritual sensitivity to possibility.  Are we only living in a dream?  I was always taken by the idea that this human life is not real, but our dreaming life is.  And if that's true, you know we're all in trouble!  Or maybe not.  Maybe our dream worlds are devoid of human stress and angst.  Nice thought.

And it's just a box of rain, I don't know who put it there
Believe it if you need it or leave it if you dare
And it's just a box of rain or a ribbon for your hair
Such a long, long time to be gone and a short time to be there

My Dear Country

 . . . nothing is as scary as Election Day

But the day after is darker
And darker and darker it goes
Who knows, maybe the plans will change
Who knows, maybe he's not deranged

~ Norah Jones

Norah Jones wrote My Dear Country in 2004, her response to John Kerry's loss to George W. Bush.  In revisiting the song today, two months after Election Day 2016, I could not help myself.  Some of you will see the parallels; others will deny them.  My intention here is not to start a political argument.  But darkness does seem to be pervading our lives these days, no matter which side you lean toward.  I often feel like I am living inside a Harry Potter novel with the Forces of Evil shrouding the atmosphere.  Two days ago, Evil struck very close to home for me with the killings at Fort Lauderdale International Airport, a mere 40 minute drive south.  I have flown into and out of that airport many times.  There but for fortune . . .

But Russia.  I cannot see it from my window, but I remember well being taught to despise the "Commies" as a child growing up during the Cold War years.  In my mind's eye, I can still picture a scene in my living room, my parents watching intently as the black and white console TV informed us of the Cuban Missile Crisis.  We had a pseudo fallout shelter prepared in our basement, canned goods lining a shelf in preparation for our survival during WWIII.  Children were scared during this period, most especially during the air raid drills enacted at our schools.  "Duck and cover" in my school meant cramming as many children as possible into the space under the stairwell, behind the yellow rubber safety patrol raincoats.  (I can still smell that rubber.)  We tried to pretend it was all a game, but deep inside, we were scared.

And I, like many, am scared today.  Do not insult us for not "moving on" or "getting over it."  I try to focus on the Russian people, who may be as frightened as I am.  I call up Sting's song Russians and these lines:  We share the same biology / Regardless of ideology / What might save us, me and you / Is if the Russians love their children, too.  And I have no doubt that they do.  But their government has overstepped, and our response to that interference in our democracy must be addressed carefully.  I, for one, would feel much better if a calmer and smarter head was going to be in charge of those responses.  Preferably responses that were not delivered via Twitter.

A Horse with No Name

I've been through the desert on a horse with no name
It felt good to be out of the rain
In the desert you can remember your name
'Cause there ain't no one for to give you no pain

~ America

Okay, I never said my choices would be restricted to GOOD lyrics, did I?  My nomination for worst line ever written is 'Cause there ain't no one for to give you no pain.  There are so many things wrong with that line, I wouldn't know where to begin.  Yes, I find that line worse even than Someone left the cake out in the rain (from McArthur Park).  How odd that those two lines rhyme!  Coincidence?

But I'm not here to bitch about that bad line.  Dewey Bunnell was only 19 when he wrote the song.  I know his type . . . he slept through English class for four years, then woke up to song-writing.  All is forgiven, Dewey.

Dewey was an Army brat living in England and wrote what he originally titled Desert Song after a visit to the California desert.  Although the contemporary wisdom in 1972, when the song made the charts here, is that "horse" is slang for "heroin" and that the song is about drugs, Dewey says that's not true.  He insists that "horse" represents a means of entering a place of tranquility, and this tranquil place was best represented by the desert.

Now I would not disagree with that, and those of you who have spent time in the Southwest wouldn't, either, I think.  At the risk of sounding trite, I find the Southwest, with its mesas and deserts and hot springs, to be a very spiritual place.  When in Sedona this past summer, my companion and I hiked up to the Boynton Vista Vortex.  Those energy fields did not provide me with an other-worldly experience, but the sheer beauty of the red rocks was enough for me to claim a sense of peace and tranquility.

On that same Southwest road trip, we visited Arches National Monument in Utah.  This was my second visit to Arches, and it was my goal to  tackle the hike (designated "difficult" in the park literature) out to Delicate Arch, made known to many from Edward Abbey's Desert Solitaire.  Difficult, yes, but so worth the time and effort.  Once in view of that majestic natural structure, it is clear that one has entered "a place of tranquility."  We may not have been riding a horse with no name, but we remember much more than our names from that experience.  We remember serenity and awe and an overwhelming gratitude that the landscape of America, with its deserts and rivers and mountains, is there for us to experience.

True Love

Our love is like a meth lab in your mother's basement
Crudely born from jugs and far too willing to explode
We weren't trying to get high; we were just trying to clean the kitchen
Struck the right combination, yeah, and up, there you go
True love is gonna make you lose your teeth
True love . . . you're 62 at 23
True love will always start out burnin' kind of sweet
So sweet

~ Darrin Bradbury

So after the last two posts, I thought it was time for a love song.  Do you like it?  If you are not familiar with Darrin Bradbury, give him a Google.  I promise, you will be entertained!  When he first moved to Nashville, Bradbury spent the first three months living out of his car in a WalMart parking lot.  My guess is he found some inspiration there.  He is one unique songwriter, at least in my opinion.  I mean, just look at that metaphor he sustains in the lyrics above!  Read them once and think "meth lab," then read them again and think "true love."  Get it?

My love is like a red, red rose.  Blah, blah, blah, blah blah.  I find Darrin's lyrics to be so refreshing.  And that has nothing to do with the drug reference.  I think his songwriting is relatively brilliant.  He gets an idea and he follows it through.  Think about how people fall in love.  Isn't it usually an accidental thing?  I mean, you don't just set out one day and say, I am going to fall in love today.  (Wait . . . didn't I just do that in my last blog?)  But you know what I mean.  I have always thought that the best lovers began as friends.  We weren't trying to get high; we were just trying to clean the kitchen.

I admit, I'm not too sure about how losing one's teeth relates to falling in love, but I am sure that love starts out kind of sweet.

Another Darrin Bradbury song I like is his tribute (of sorts) to the "ironic demise of three childhood heroes," namely Jack Kerouac, Lenny Bruce, and Daffy Duck.  The song is predictably titled Life Is Hard.

It's funny where it starts
And it's funny where it stops
And the whole thing in the middle
Well, it's bound to break your heart

As deliciously irreverent as Bradbury's lyrics may be, I suspect he knows a thing or two about the heartbreak part.