Saturday Night Soup for the Soul (13)

he birthday odometer turned over another mile this week sending me into a mood of brooding introspection. The music I have had circling through my brain reflects this process. People say we got it made Don't they know we're so afraid? Isolation We're afraid to be alone Everybody got to have a home Isolation 1. Isolation is an obscure song from John Lennon's first post Beatles crack-up LP titled "Plastic Ono Band" . The LP is still rated one of the great works of popular music. It is stark, stripped of all fru-fru production embellishment, and sounds as powerful today as when it was released in the fall of 1970. The theme of the LP is feeling one's raw emotions unfiltered, undulled by drugs or by distraction, and undiluted. John had a lifetime of avoided reality going back to the abandonment by his father Freddy, and of the early tragic death of his mother Julia that he had never properly felt, dealt with, and buried. He poured his guts out on this LP. I too feel isolation. I often feel myself to be a minority within a minority. That ancient sense was in my thoughts and broodings this week. Though some things in life are hard to bear Dont let it bring you down Should the sand of time run out on you Dont let it bring you down 2. Don't Let it Bring You Down has such a nice moody musical feel to it. Resignation and acceptance of things one cannot change. Pondered a series of such things this week in my dark brooding. I am preparing to bury these ghosts: four immediate family members who have died in the past two years, two suicides of close friends since 2000, and another death I’ll speak of in a couple of songs. “Close the book, silence the bell and blow out the candle. Life is to precious to be spent making peace with ghosts that never listen”. From "Ghost" -- thank you KB for reminding me how to live. This song comes from a 1978 Wings LP titled London Town. Paul rented two yachts. One fitted with a recording studio, and the other for he, Linda, the kids, Denny Laine (ex Moody Bluesman). Togeteher, they sailed about the Caribbean recording a sizeable chunk of this LP. Damn if he doesn't know how to do it good. That has always been a big-time fantasy of mine – to go on some long trip, and take all my tools of the trade along. A sort of artist's Magical Mystery Tour. 3. Treefingers is an obscure song from Radiohead's Kid A CD. This has that winter fog sound -- when you turn off conscious thought and drift into the realm of the sub conscious. 4. and 5. Wholy Holy takes me back to the summer solstice in 1971. I was still a teenager, and enjoying an all day outing in Seattle with a friend, who became my first boyfriend, before the day ended, most romantically, on his living room floor. During the outing, Lonnie bought the first ghetto blaster I had seen: a big portable 8 track tape player. To go along with it, he bought Marvin Gaye's new LP “What’s Going On”. I do not remember much about listening to the LP that day other than the title track. I was totally into rock at that time (though was on the verge of discovering the official homosexual symphony, which I will write about in a future soup post). Lonnie was into soul. I was a highly creative highly intelligent white boy who could not dance. Lawrence (his birth name) was into clothes, fashion, and going out to underage gay dance clubs. I was romantic, affectionate, longing to nest and to marry. Lonnie was into anonymous sex for sex's sake (I did not know this at the time) and later went to bathhouses in Seattle (I think that was several years later). Nothing in common, he and I, except we were both good hearted gay men who for a six month time frame were in a relationship. Fast forward to 1997. He is longing to see me one last time, from his death bed. He told his companion, while he lay dying, that I was the nicest person that he ever met. Oh my God. That is one of the nicest things anyone has ever said about me. I don’t even know if I feel worthy of such praise. But he also said that he did not think that I would not want to see him. I have reflected all week as to why he would have such an idea. Someday I will write about this event in full. A true cautionary tale of relationships. I did not know that he was dying. I had not heard from him in 12 years. Yet, as he faded, I was in a car driving 800 miles filled with joy at seeing him again, and making plans to spoil him rotten with lots of love, friendship and attention. Tragically, this gem of a person died the day before I arrived. But the seeds he planted took root in me, and drove deep to the center of my soul. A part of him will now live on in me, forever and ever until the day I die, and beyond. So I end this week’s soup with Aretha Franklin’s (a true genius) version of Wholy Holy. For those of you who think that I am stridently anti-religious, guess again. I am just full of surprises -- a bit like those Russian nesting dolls, or to paraphrase Winston Churchill, I am "...a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma". Or so I have been told. Once again, someday I shall tell the whole story of Lonnie and I, and of the circumstances of his death. All of this makes it's way into this week's soup. You can get your 31.2 Mb bowl of Saturday Night Soup for the Soul by clicking the Soul jukebox.

Saturday Night Soup for the Soup (14)

or those of you who read this week's entry and check out the music, you will certainly learn a lot more about me than I have ever revealed, and I am leaving many, many clues, and secret messages buried throughout this post. One piece of music dominated the past week for me, every waking moment. Must have listened to it one hundred and one times. A comment from KB on last week's Soup got me going on down the line this past week, remembering my first romantic love, the guy I shared it with, and some tramatic emotional events that I never properly reconciled at the time they happened. Let's get down to Saturday's Soup for the Soul (I am unusually hungry this week), and while I am at it, finish the story I began last week, and free my own soul. 1. Sweet Passion is an obscure and extremely rare song (it only exists on vinyl) from the one and the only Queen of Soul, Miss Aretha Franklin. She is beyond genre, beyond categorization. She is Aretha, and that is that. Her voice has extreme range and power that blows all the wanna be diva's off the stage, and out into the parking lot. And yet, unlike today's crop of screechy wailing women who mistakenly think that every song must be raised to a numbing climax, Aretha knows restraint, and uses her power sparingly, hitting you when your guard is down, and knocking you down for the count with one perfectly executed sucker punch. Aretha wrote Sweet Passion, and as is often the case, she is at the keyboards playing chunky piano chords that come from the “sanctified church” (how many of you know what the sanctified church is? Surprise suprise: I do). This song became a mantra for me years ago and then sunk out of site deep into my subconscious. The long ending of this is like a soul chant, where the word “Passion” is the mantra, and the fade creates the impression that this song goes on and on thru time, without end, through all eternity. Years ago I bonded deeply with this song. It became a mantra of the moment for me, and then sunk out of sight, deep into my subconscious, just as the vinyl LP ended up in a box that I have moved with me for 27 years. . This week the lid got ripped off my memories, and off the the cardboard box, and it all came back to life again, along with my mourning the loss, and the death of my first love, Lonnie. I wanna teach you loving A to Z Bring me right on down to my knees Do it good, baby, do it sweet Your’re my soul mate and I sure am your bee Sweet Passion, Passion, Passion Lonnie and I met working part time at the post office while we both went to school. I had never been attracted to anyone outside my race; the thought had not occured to me that I could. It all began as an innocent complement he paid me: "You look good in that shirt, it makes your arms look good". So we became work friends, and finally had a day outing together in Seattle that end up romantically on his living room floor back home that night. The first day of summer, 1971. I was still a teenager. He was one or two years older than I. I took this picture that day. Lonnie was a very gentle and humble guy. A house painter by trade. Not the least bit intellectual, but as genuine as you could ever want. It is because of him that I like black gospel music, and classic Aretha (1966-1980), and Al Sharpton, and black people in general. I get along extremely well with them and am very relaxed socializing with them. I hope it shows in my eyes, and voice and manner that i absolutely and honor them, and will stand with them should I be called to do so. Yes his effect on my life has been transforming to the core. But it evolved over a long period of time and continued even when he was not a part of my life. Lonnie had a chaotic upbringing, from what I was able to glean from his few comments. I do not think he ever received any tender attention or affection from either parent (absent father, mother who drank). However he did have two very stable cousins, Bobbie Jean and Ella Mae, the first who was the rock of the family, and of the local African American community at large. It was from her I learned that their family surname was the same Scots-Irish surname as mine, and that we shared common family stories going back to pre civil war Virginia. I was delighted to think that he and I could be distantly related thru my father's side. He did not share me enthusiasm for that possibility. Hey, this was during the time of “Burn Baby Burn”, the Panthers, Angela Davis, and Huey Newton. I doted on him, probably giving him the tender affection he had never experienced. I made dinner for him (he loved pork chops, gravy, salad, greens which I cannot stand). After dinner we'd go to bed, have sex, play around, watch TV (he loved Here's Lucy -- Lucille Ball being another Leo like him...and my mother...and my father), and then he would go home. He found it very hard to be affectionate in return. Therein lay a problem that proved to be insurmountably fatal. I now realize that he did not konw how to express love and affection. Neither did my own father. Hum... Walls starting shaking, I heard love crying out Happiness is giving away, Security is coming down He fell. I Fell. And all there is left to tell Is all the king's horses, all the king's men Couldn't put out two hearts together again. 2. All The King's Horses comes from Aretha's 1972 Young, Gifted, and Black LP. It is available on CD. GET IT WHILE YOU STILL CAN. The entire LP/CD is great. Aretha wrote this one, too. And she plays the celeste on it. This particular song, about a relationship gone terribly wring, is one I played over and over and over in spring of 1972. I remember that terrible cold Sunday night in January 1972. He had gone up to Vancouver, and was late coming over for dinner. I waited for his call until 10:00 PM with a now cold dinner sitting on the kitchen table. He finally called, and I heard it in his voice. I finally asked him point blank if he had met someone else, and he said that he had. Another Bill -- but this one a bleach bottle blow dried blond. (Okay, I never actually met him, Bill might be the nicest guy who ever lived, but my mind is made up so do not try to confuse me with any facts to the contrary). I hung up and cried so hard that I thought I would die. The candles on the kitchen table flared up and burned like bon fires as I heaved my guts out crying. I do not think that I cried this hard again until the night my mother was all but killed by her doctor on April 7th, last year. I have never told anyone this. (Okay Prince William...so why not tell the whole world? Maybe you can also broadcast this into outer space while you are at it). Hell, I have never even told myself this. I had a complete and total nervous breakdown when we broke up. Shattered into a million pieces. How did I deal with it? I didn't. I did not seek or even consider getting help... (One did not do such things back then, seeking help was for crazy people). I just swept the emotional fragments the best I could under the carpet of the subconscious, and stumbled ahead into my adult life. I turned 20 weeks later (I am a Pisces fish, two of them, swiming opposite directions). The picture above was taken three weeks after we broke up. 3. Today I Sing the Blues is from Soul '69. Some of you younger readers don't know the difference between empty wanna be diva posers who top today's charts, and Aretha, the real meal deal, whose recordings will love on forever. Oh yeah,Aretha is the latter. This song is the blues, as only Aretha can perform them. Listen to her line "I didn't know why..." as it slowly soars -- off key and flated, her slowly, painfully, and excruciatingly stretching the time that it takes for her to actually reach the “correct” note (not sure of she ever does). She finished the sentence “...I had that sad and lonely feeling, until my baby said we’re though”. Imagine that gap toothed stupid idiot "Shell pest strip" skank Madonna trying to sing this song. Uh...why don't you tell us how you really feel? Lawrence kept coming by my apartment (I had moved twice in four months time to try and change the emotional channel) for periodic booty call, which made it all the more worse, and worser, and them MUCH worse for me, until one night in March or April, or May, or June... I exploded at him in a insane rage calling him "a fucking god damned stupid n***er" and throwing him out of my apartment, and out of my life. Not one of my better moments, to say the least. But it happened, and I am if anything, impeccably honest. I was an artist back then. I mean an artist painter, like Tony de Carlo. I think one of the reasons I love his work so much, besides his work just exciting me so much, and my personally enjoying his mind, is that in him, in my fantasies, I see what i might have become had I kept painting. Here is an out of focus pic one of my paintings, a self portrait painted on the "Saint of of Valentines" day that year. So happy (not). A very painful pointing, really. So I got on with my life. Joined a band (vocals, writing, keyboards), and then decided to fall back on my left brain to earn a living. Became a computer programmer, became highly political for the first time in my life, tacking hard to the far right... (Hell, I was doing "Andrew Sullivan gay conservative contrarian" when he was still being butt boy to the priests at Catholic Boys school). ...and I morphed into a much, much, MUCH darker version of my former self. This picture reveals a lot. TO BE CONTINUED NEXT WEEK: Lawrence comes back into my life as a friend with John, his new boyfriend, Lysergic Acid Diethylamide, I begin visiting San Francisco's South of Market sexual underground and hob knob with the America's rich and famous gay elite, I recognize aids for what it is before it was called aids, I move to San Francisco and my career goes into orbit, Lonnie moves to east bay in Oakland and missed connections, I fall in love again, this time with a beautiful smooth caramel coloured Bolivian boy...and get badly burned once again, the Gospel, Mormon Missionaries, Baptising people in the name of the father, the son, and the holy spirit, I am Born Again on I-5 north of Sacramento, Old Saint Mary's Catholic Church, I meet Chai, an ex Buddhist Monk turned SF muscle boy who plants more seeds into my soul and this time I inadvertantly break his heart, things come to a head with “Either I go, or I take this damn town town down with me”, and moving back home to learn that I arrived one day too late. Some of next week’s music is included in this week’s soup. Enjoy. Hot damn, the soup tastes mighty good this week, does it not? I have a ballet to go to tonight (Swan Lake) to see a future Julliard student. All of this makes it's way into this week's soup. You can get your 31.2 Mb bowl of Saturday Night Soup for the Soul by clicking the jukebox.

Age 19 or 20

Saturday Night Soup for the Soul (15)

or this week, there are many directions I could take this column. I could finish last week's "Part I" column but will defer that until July for reasons that will be apparant when I publish it. I could report on the week's personal events. Two interesting threads -- one most pleasing and the other not so pleasing wove throught the week like twin opposing ribbons. Will focus on the former, and let the latter go, which is more my style. BTW: Dreampt last night of a huge Couger and her two cubs patroling along the road side where I was driving. That dream inspired the collage below titled "Last Night's Dream". In my yard, the choral siren song of the seductive nymphs of spring are breeding enchantment in every nook and cranny of the garden. Buds swelling and the major onslaught of my huge rhododendron collection is about to begin. Pictures will be provided next week. For this week, I also thought that I would take a final look back at my “Winter of Discontent” as portrayed in photographs I shot going back to November. The second music I choose is reflective of the mood. 1. I'll Get You was written by the John and Paul juggernaut, to be their fourth UK single, in released in August 1963. I woke up singing this song this morning. I have always liked the way John and Paul sing in exact unison, but an octive apart (Paul of course taking the girly high part). This was the single that detonated the nuclear device that in a few short months, went on to blow away all of the cultural fabric of the western world, and as we now know, infected all the minds of a generation of youth trapped in the Soviet “prison of nations” and lead to the eventual downfall of the Berlin Wall, and the dismantling of the Soviet Empire. "If the radiance of a thousand suns were to burst at once into the sky that would be like the splendor of the Mighty one. I am become Death, the Shatterer of Worlds" Vishnu, from The Bhagavad Gita, However, before the Beatles had released this single, John and Paul came up with what has gone on to become their first of so many musical anthems. When “She Loves You” was instead released as the fourth single (it is the after dinner aperitif at the conclusion of this week’s soup) all hell broke loose in the UK with Armies of youth converging with their every public sighting. Their lives became one of living together trapped in a glass bubble floating on a raging sea of hysteria, riots and pandemonium. Once more in their career, in 1967, they would again transform the entire fabric of western culture. Now this is about as world class and an artist can hope to get. They would attempt it one final time, and this time, the glass bubble, along with the Beatles themselves, would fracture. You might think that I should write a book. I am – focusing on the abortive third attempt of January, 1969. Imagine I'm in love with you It's easy cos I know I've imagined I'm in love with you Many, many, many times before It's not like me to pretend But I'll get you, I'll get you in the end Yes I will, I'll get you in the end. Oh yeah, oh yeah 2. Shostakovich Symphony 12 - Movement 2 "Razliv" is music of such incredible depth, that I could write from now until next Saturday and only scratch the surface. Someday I will do this for you. No single major work of his is more misunderstood or underrated. He said it was about the revolution of 1917, and even "Razliv" refers to a town where Lenin fled to in hiding after a coup attempt failed. Well, if Shostakovich tells you what something is about, you know that that is the one thing that it is NOT about. Movement one is the stunningly powerful and concentrated bit of musical writing that I have ever listened to. A veritable life and death struggle between two strangely related themes: one the essence of eternal dissonance (evil) and the other eternal resolution (good). The movement ends with evil hog tied and gagged with a dirty stained jock strap belonging to a sweaty, oiled up 280 lb hairy Turkish wrestler, stuffed into evil’s yapping mouth. Evil is mounted onto the hood of good's car, wriggling and struggling in vain to get free. Click here to listen to the short transition between movements one and two. Movement two is something quite different. It is reflective, contemplative, and brooding. Small hopes arise out of the stillness like brief and bright sunlight coming into an otherwise foggy, misty day. Overall it is hopeful I think, but there is some “licking of wounds" as it is music that is filled with profound and indescribably deep healing. Someday I will dissect this entire symphony for you when time, energy, and desire intersect. All of this makes it's way into this week's soup. You can get your 31.2 Mb bowl of Saturday Night Soup for the Soul by clicking the jukebox.