Meeting Joan #5

“Look up, look up; Look up with your beautiful blue eyes.” Her voice had an ethereal yet grounded quality that mixed with her mysterious angel like image most evocatively. Yvonne looked up at the singer. Assuming she was going to moan into the microphone about love and sunflowers, this was quite unexpected. Yvonne watched as she kept the rhythm of the song. Heels balancing on the bar that connected the stool legs. Toes tabbing with precision and purpose against the outside leg. Fingers striking those strings which were holding this story of night-time fun so well. Yvonne found herself, much to her bewilderment, shaking her head from side to side and lightly clicking fingers in time with the infectious rhythm. Her head was filled with memories of Greg when they first started going out.

“But we trip on laughter with no one to greet”

This woman singing was to her as if she had been there with them in the days before the love had rusted and finally disintegrated. It was unbelievable.

Meeting Joan #4

Photo Credit: Pedro Kuperman

“These are songs from my first record, “Songs to a Blackbird”. And a few earlier ones.” She began with a melancholy rhythm. Plucking the strings and sliding her fingers across the fret board with slow ease. Yvonne laid her cheek in her hand, elbow on the table. Sighing as she felt the rolls of skin stretch up towards her eyes. So much for an undisturbed drink. They never have entertainment on a Thursday. Why tonight? She didn’t even know the woman’s name. Clearly some over-rated hippie-folk type.

From that moody introduction the strumming suddenly picked up and Joan began to sing.

 

 

Meeting Joan #3

The woman on stage was tuning her guitar. Even from here, Yvonne could see that this folk singer was covered in jewellery. Not mature pieces like diamonds or gold necklaces but pieces made from shells and wood. Articulating the hippie culture that was seeping through the country. Nothing more than upper middle class kids living off large allowances. Using the idea of freedom as an excuse for smoking pot and sleeping around. Yvonne rolled her eyes at these thoughts. As if someone was actually there, listening.

The singer coughed into the microphone. She was ready to play.

 

Artist: MK Miller

Meeting Joan #2

The low buzz subsided. Wine glasses were placed back down on the table without a sound. Nails of perfect shape belonging to beautiful and rich women caressed the starch white table clothes. There she was before them- the much talked about Detroit music sensation.

Yvonne sat in the back, alone at a corner table. Tired and feeling fat. The dress she’d pulled out of her closet had last been worn in 1963. Six years ago. A typical little black number. Strapless and sleek. Not anymore. Determined to make it fit that evening she had pulled, pushed and squeezed herself into it. Now she sat, successful in her goal but uncomfortable. The waiter arrived with her triple brandy on the rocks. She smiled at him with hope. A desperate and lonely woman smile. He returned the gesture with a quick upturn of the mouth. It lasted for a split-second.  Like the people around her, he was being drawn to the beauty on stage. She held the tumbler with two hands. The sensation of ice against glass gave her something to feel. The condensation wetting her palms. She lifted it to her lips, intending to sip slowly. Wanting to savour something that made her feel good inside. The first drop hovered on her lip. The smell of the liquid drug was intoxicating. This time she just couldn’t hold back and be sensible. It fell down her throat. Sliding with ease over the ice blocks, she tipped it all back. In earlier days, such a moment of excess would have caused great anxiety to Yvonne. Greg would have been unaffected by it, perhaps not even noticing. Now she didn’t care. There was no-one to see.

 

Meeting Joan

 

I’m going to tell a story using installments…

The club was dark and smoky. A cosy room where notes hung in the air long after they had been played. Men and woman chatted quietly, glasses clinked and night-time smiles were exchanged. The stage was bare for the moment. A single mike stand upon which rested that marvelous invention accentuating all great chords and vocal techniques. A wooden barstool stood behind the stand. She entered from the left, barefoot and stepping lightly. Her prominent tool of the trade slung over one shoulder. Clutching a glass of water in the other. Queen of the earth and fairy child she was. A pale brown skirt that reached the ankles rested on her narrow hips. A white knitted jersey hung loosely around her shoulders. Hiding behind a curtain of straight blonde hair she walked across the stage, hardly acknowledging her audience. Once legs were tightly wound through the bar stool and comfort gained from holding her instrument so close, she greeted the eager spectators.

“Good evening everyone. Thanks for coming. I’ll play straight through- no in between chats.”  That was all.

The Journey

One day you finally knew

what you had to do, and began,

though the voices around you

kept shouting

their bad advice–

though the whole house

began to tremble

and you felt the old tug

at your ankles.

“Mend my life!”

each voice cried.

But you didn’t stop.

You knew what you had to do,

though the wind pried

with its stiff fingers

at the very foundations,

though their melancholy

was terrible.

It was already late

enough, and a wild night,

and the road full of fallen

branches and stones.

But little by little,

as you left their voices behind,

the stars began to burn

through the sheets of clouds,

and there was a new voice

which you slowly

recognized as your own,

that kept you company

as you strode deeper and deeper

into the world,

determined to do

the only thing you could do–

determined to save

the only life you could save.

– Mary Oliver

On the Road

…the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes ‘Awww!’

Reading On The Road by Jack Kerouac lit a fire inside and shook awake the travelling mad beatnik poet I know I am.

He captures the essences of people and things so well. The descriptions of listening to live jazz musicians were phenomenal. I found myself constantly penciling in favourite quotes and keeping a notebook of Sal and Dean’s wonderful insights.

At the beginning I was frustrated by the lack of structure and endlessly arbitrary things that kept happening. Ironically, this is what I loved most about the book by the end. All the incidents that took place throughout the book were so different from one another. There was no intricate plot with strong character development that kept me reading furiously. I was just hooked by the energetic adventures of Sal and Dean. Where would they go next? Who would they meet? These were the answers I had to discover.

I fell in love with their sense of freedom and ability to take unconventional life path decisions. Neither of them ever thought about what direction they wanted their life to go in or what things they should be achieving. They just lived one day at a time, enjoying every moment. Like the form of the novel, there was no structure to their existence. They worked with the simple philosophy of no attachments and living life to the full in every sense of the expression.

Reading On The Road opened my eyes to an interesting blend of travel writing. In this book the main characters were always travelling, meeting people and having these fantastic adventures. Back and forth they missioned across the United States. Every trip and journey was different. Never having been to America, I was enthralled by the descriptions of the cities, towns and places they would grace with their larger-than-life presence. Kerouac was describing an America in the late 1940s but it has instilled within me a desire to go and explore this vast and diverse continent.

I connected with the descriptions of listening to jazz in clubs across America on a very significant level. In many of these passages Kerouac articulates in writing great truths about the phenomenon of music and especially music being made in the late twentieth century. The following is such an extract.

All of a sudden somewhere in the middle of the chorus he gets it-everybody looks up and knows; they listen; he picks it up and carries. Time stops. He’s filling empty space with the substance of our lives, confessions of his bellybottom strain, remembrance of  ideas, rehashes of old blowing. He has to blow across bridges and come back and do it with such infinite feeling soul-exploratory for the tune of the moment that everybody knows it’s not the tune that counts but IT- Dean could go no further; he was sweating telling about it.    

Read this book. Dare to Dream and Discover.

Jack Kerouac

The Dark Stuff

Nick Kent is one heck of a music journalist and story teller. I first encountered his writing in a collection of articles entitled The Dark Stuff.

This is a book I just couldn’t put it down. The tale of Brian Wilson: a brilliant pop composer riddled by a need for perfection so strong it destroyed his outer and inner worlds. It was totally engrossing and I was fascinated, somewhat disturbed by my macabre interest.

Kent writes without frills and reveals the raw and honest truth of prolific people in the music industry. He does it using vivid imagery that draws you in from the start. I began to feel quite obsessed and infatuated by his writing and the people he was talking about. Stars such as Brian Wilson, Brian Jones, Keith Richards and Mick Jagger are painted as truly fractured and damaged individuals. Yet for me, reading about them with the characteristic depth that Kent employs, has made me adore and worship them even more.

This definitely has to do with the distinctive texture of the writing. He writes with a real respect for these people. The articles in The Dark Stuff are not about spilling the trashy truth of once famous rock stars onto the page so that hoards of fans can see their real heroes. They are about digging deeper to understand the real people behind musicians who have had a phenomenal impact on this world.

I trusted his interpretations of experiences implicitly. He has lived and breathed and boozed with these crazy cats.  This is Kent’s world: a damaged but hauntingly beautiful place of gorgeous men and women, egos and insecurities, drugs and alcohol but above all music that changes and sustains thoughts and dreams. He takes you into this space and as much as you are shocked and bewildered you don’t want to leave.

Like a war correspondent who will report from the firing line, Kent doesn’t tiptoe in the audience or nervously wait around the backstage door; he walks straight in and tips that vodka back with the rest of them.

One of my favourite passages in the book is when Kent describes Keith Richards. In his trademark style, without focusing on conventional things like build, height and hair colour, he paints the most evocative and vivid picture of the legendary guitar man.

‘But he’d only stay the centre of attention until Keith Richards walked in the room. At which time all eyes would shift towards the guitarist and pretty much stay that way for the rest of the evening. Keith wasn’t what you’d call a ‘mingler’. He’d lope into a room, often accompanied by a couple of unsavoury individuals who seemed destined to have their faces turning up on some FBI ‘Wanted’ posters in the not-too-distant future, slump down on a chair, turn his back to the milling throng and glower a lot. Talk about drop dead cool! I thought he was just like Lee Marvin in The Commancheros, only with better hair and a bad-ass pirate earring too. There was this doomed poetic quality about him that Marianne Faithful pegged nicely when she talked about ‘how if you’re an over-imaginative schoolgirl who’s read her Shelley and Byron, well that’s what Keith Richards is. This perfect vision of damned youth. Even though he’s turning more and more into Count Dracula.’

 

Joni’s Blue

As this blog weaves its way through a landscape of stories, a common thread will quite possibly be music. Music is my lifeline. And so here I share a music moment. A Blue music moment:

Joni Mitchell’s Blue (1971) is a most loved album. Critically acclaimed, this album took confessional songwriting to another level. However it is so much more than just confessions where Joni wears her heart on her sleeve. She ploughs the depth of human emotion in a way that seers through the soul. It is a magnificent exploration of blue spaces and places. The vulnerability we all hold inside is revealed through her poetic lines and threads that weave above sparse piano and guitar chords. Blue articulates emotions and thoughts in the most profound way. Listening to this album is having an intimate and honest conversation with a significant person.

Every song on Blue is a masterpiece. I have chosen my five favourite tracks to explore at greater depth.

Joni never states exactly, in cold hard fact, what she is talking about. This is one of her greatest lyrical abilities. Through the sketching and painting of wondrous word images she evokes the senses. The sense to explore and investigate – to listen to the lyrics again and again. To slowly draw out the universal truths layered so delicately in the stories she tells.

Little Green is the third song. A whimsical and sad lullaby to the child she bore out of wedlock and gave up for adoption. These sentiments are never stated but the lament to her lost child whispers throughout:

Born with the moon in Cancer

Choose her a name she will answer to

Call her green for the children who have made her

Little green, be a gypsy dancer

The title track Blue begins with the line:

Blue, songs are like tattoos

This is one of the most beautiful and brilliant beginnings as I sink into my soul. The melancholy swims around as Joni delves deep into her psyche and mine. Songs are indeed tattoos that mark my existence and live in my mind’s ear and eye. This image is expanded when Joni sings:

Blue, here is a song for you
Ink of a pin
Underneath the skin
An empty space to fill in

This speaks to me of how music and lyrics seep into the skin like that of tattoo ink, forever etching themselves on and in my very being. They live there permanently. A single strike of the piano key or strum of a guitar string will retrace me back to the moment that sound took residence, settling underneath my skin.

River is a tale of lost love using the coming of the Christmas season as a backdrop on which to paint these sorrowful sentiments. Joni speaks of love and relationships in such a deeply personal way. She draws me into her world because she is real and so are these losses. The need to run away when love has let us down is universal but only Joni expresses it with such tangible feeling and eloquence:

Oh I wish I had a river so long
I would teach my feet to fly
Oh I wish I had a river
I could skate away on
I made my baby cry

The penultimate song on the album is A Case Of You. It talks to love. Love is overwhelming and all-encompassing in this bittersweet ode. The lyrics are outstandingly beautiful. The imagery is rich with details of Joni. There are references to Canada – the country of her birth. Her passion for painting. This song takes me back to times when I have felt this kind of love. Soaring so high and tangled up in the magic threads that this kind of love weaves.

I remember that time you told me, you said,

“Love is touching souls”

Well surely you touched mine

‘Cause part of you pours out of me

In these lines from time to time

Oh, you’re in my blood like holy wine

You taste so bitter and so sweet

Oh, I could drink a case of you, darling

And I would still be on my feet

I would still be on my feet

Blue concludes with The Last Time I Saw Richard. Joni paints a sad and cynical tale which perhaps mirrors her own experiences that inspired this album. Yet, like the rainbow after the storm I have come through the darkness and depression, transformed. I realise these blue spaces are not permanent but merely phases. The album ends with this hope:

Only a dark cocoon before I get my gorgeous wings

And fly away

Only a phase, these dark café days

I know I will listen to Blue again and again. Each time will reveal something new and greater insight will be gained. This is the trademark of great art. Like a kaleidoscope each viewing or listening reveals different colours and patterns. There is inherent brilliance that stays constant but enough space in the sound and words to feel and hear something original forever.

Thank you Joni for this musical treasure.

Remembering Robin

 

Robin Williams – Esquire Magazine

It seems right to start Seeking Story with a tribute to Robin Williams. For his life was stitched with story. These tales he told us through laughter, voices, his kind eyes, dressing in drag, poetry and dreaming.

He walked with me through my childhood and into adulthood. I laughed as a seven year old at his generous and larger than life genie in Aladdin. I was amused and moved by his portrayal of a father who disguises himself as the nanny to see his children more often in Mrs Doubtfire. And then it was Robin’s performance as English teacher John Keating in Dead Poets Society that convinced me of his greatness. I was utterly taken with his deft use of language and ability to inspire independent thought, along with his always present sense of humour. I saw elements of my own father, who was an English teacher, reflected back.

The most poignant moment for me in this much loved film is the scene where Keating sits at Neil’s desk and takes out the Five Centuries of Verse poetry book. In it he turns to Robert Frost’s poem The Road Not Taken. The camera focuses on the last three lines:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I –

I took the one less travelled by,

And that has made all the difference.

The significance of these lines in both the film’s story and how they intertwine with Robin’s own life cannot be overridden. Throughout the movie John Keating urges his class to question and redesign the straight lifeline society has shown them is the way forward. He celebrates nonconformity, uniqueness and originality.

In his life and in his role as artist of all sorts Robin Williams lived these attributes to the full.

As Williams himself said,

‘You’re only given one little spark of madness. You mustn’t lose it.’

 

 

 

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