“I can’t know”

Posted on by March 30, 2013

When one of our children was confronted with something that was really hard to figure out, he used to say “I CAN’T KNOW”.

Of course, that was when he was pretty little…things are rolling a lot more smoothly now.

We always thought it was a hilarious and true statement.  How hard is it to get our heads wrapped around some new skill or bit of knowledge…and how tempting would it be to shut the whole “learning process” down and just say, “I can’t know”?

“I can’t know” is so much more definitive than “I don’t understand” or “give me a minute”…it’s the perfect way of saying, “just hold on a minute…why are you bothering me with this whole alphabet thing?  I need to get back to my transformers…let’s just drop this subject right now.”

At this stage of my life, I’m starting to figure out that there’s a lot that I don’t know…but I’m not apt to think that I can’t know….at least not very often.

And what I think I can’t know…I just ignore.

just a random find…fine indeed

Posted on by March 29, 2013

Ah, so good.  Here’s a video from a young guy named Allen Stone.

Here’s some info about him from his official site

Like many soul singers, Stone got his start in church. He was a preacher’s kid, so whipping crowds into a call-and-response frenzy as he performs “Say So” is second nature. Steeped in gospel music and shielded from secular songs, Allen didn’t discover soul music until he was a teenager and started collecting classic albums from the 60’s and 70’s.

“Soul music from that time wasn’t just about bumpin’ and grindin’ at the club—it was a huge part of a cultural movement. That’s where my inspiration comes from,” says Stone, who was also schooled by folk records of the period.

Good for you…there’s a lot to be said for doing it all “old school”.  As soon as our three-year old won’t be tempted to scrub off the stylus, I’m going to get my turntable out and school my kids on what real music is all about.

This guy is pretty great…check him out.

 

where’s jimi?

Posted on by April 17, 2013

What’s going on when …how many years after your death?…43 years after your death…you’re such a major influence that people are still producing cool covers of your songs?

What kind of legacy and influence are you going to have a hundred years from now?

And finally…some video of a guy actually riding Voodoo Child!  That’s the beauty of YouTube…you never know what you’re going to run across.

 

 

So…that’s just a small sampling of the videos of folks playing..and riding…. just that one song. Amazing.

kind of like soul food

Posted on by March 27, 2013

“Survivalism” is kind of like “soul food”.

Soul food is just Southern cooking by a different name.  Food for the soul…good eatin’.

Survivalism isn’t much different from anything that a backwoods, country folk would be up to every day of their life.  It’s just surviving by a different name.

But… good grief…you can sure come across like a real paranoid weirdo if you take it too far.  Motivation is powerful…but if you’re motivated by the coming zombie invasion or Koreans dropping from the sky, you’re zooming off into weirdoville.

There is always something coming …and when you watch crazy North Koreans bragging about the reach of their nuclear weapons, you think it might get weird soon…but good stuff happens, too.

No need to let the unplugged fan fill your head with thoughts of everything that might hit it.

fun hogs

Posted on by April 23, 2013

There was an article this morning about a young guy dying trying to duplicate a YouTube stunt that some other young guys filmed pulling off in Utah.

It used to be that we never had the chance to call anything crazy or dangerous that we did a “YouTube stunt”.  It was just something goofy that stayed in the same small group…bragging rights on a small scale…”remember when Robert climbed the crane?  Good gosh…I was scared…”.

Now, you if do something crazy and film it there’s a chance that 17 million people will see it.

That’s a lot of potential peer pressure…it used to be bad with just a small group egging each other on…imagine what it would be like to have 17 million people saying “dooooo itttttt!!!! you go, boyeeeee”.

Here’s the original YouTube video….

Read the comments…there doesn’t seem to be a whole lot of sympathy for the young kid who died.  Apparently, he misjudged the length of the rope he’d need and bottomed out when he jumped.

This video makes it look so fun…with the cool soundtrack and all….that it almost makes me want to do it with a good length of clothesline…and I’m afraid of heights.

Here’s a “making of” video of the stunt….

Watching this, it makes me wonder if the kid who tried it and wasn’t successful had a chance to watch this video?

The thing about something like this is that the ropes that climbers use are called “dynamic ropes” because they stretch.  The ropes stretch…they stretch so that in the event of a climbing fall, some of the shock is taken out of hitting the end of the rope length….and unless you’re planning for it, I could see where somebody could hit the ground on a long pendulum like this.

Listen to the comments at the end of the “making of video”…the guys are talking about people doing the stunt after seeing the YouTube video.

Thankfully, the folks that I hung out with didn’t have access to any videos of other people doing crazy things.

The fun hogs had enough imagination to get into as much trouble as they could handle without that kind of help.

(A short post script…did anyone else expect a soda can to ‘splode at some point?)

 

 

waging heavy peace….talking to Neil Young

Posted on by March 25, 2013

waging heavy peaceI just finished reading “Waging Heavy Peace”, by Neil Young.

I suspect that it’s the closest I’ll ever get to sitting down and having a real conversation with him.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This is a stream of consciousness “memoir”…ruminations on his past and his current life and projects that feels like one of those conversations that you can pick up anytime…like I expected to be able to say, “now…where were we before you left to plug in your electric car?”.

I’ve always had a strong interest in Neil Young’s music.  He always seemed to be willing to do whatever it took to move forward as an artist….even if the results weren’t as commercial as some of his more successful projects. I had a lot of respect for him as an artist because of both the quality and humor of his music…and the integrity that I saw in his artistic choices.

This book opened up his life and let me see that there was a lot more than just his music to admire.

The book jumps around a lot….early days to present…and, like the long walks he talks about enjoying taking on his ranch, covers a lot of ground.

He talks about his family and his environmental projects.  He talks about friends he’s had and friends he’s lost.  He talks quite a bit about his music and the people he made it with….but this book isn’t just a musical memoir…it is about his thoughts about his life and his place in the world.

I’ve read other reviews that complained that he talked too much about his cars, or his train collection, or anything else in the book that wasn’t music related…but it just made him seem like a complete and more interesting person to me.  I don’t know why we expect any of our artists to be monochromatic personalities…it’s all the side interests that make them who they are…and let them make interesting art because of all the idiosyncrasies.

Neil Youngimage from the guardian.co.uk

 

I’m listening to “Live at Massey Hall 1971” on Grooveshark as I’m writing this….it’s interesting to remember how young all those guys were when they were making this music.  It really was a while ago.

Neil Young has a lot to remember…but this book is a good reminder that he’s got a lot going on in the present, too.

the best thing for a child

Posted on by March 24, 2013

My little boy and I both woke up early this morning.

I get up early every morning, but this morning I had some company.

When I get up with Nate, my day is different in a good way.  We have some juice and I brew up some coffee for me…and we usually have something to eat, too.

When he asked for a yogurt, I realized that we’d already accomplished something good in his short life.

When he asked, he said “please”…and when I brought him his yogurt, he said “thank you”.

That’s not so earth-shaking a thing in a lot of people’s eyes…but it’s a pretty big deal if you think about what it does for a child and his or her future.

To give a child the ability to honestly express courtesy and gratitude for the things that people do for them sets them up for a lifetime of being appreciated in return by the people doing them the kindness.

Manners are a big deal.  More than anything…more than socioeconomic factors, or physical strength, or the ability to play the banjo really well…to be able to say “please” and “thank you” covers a lot of good ground.

Nate doesn’t understand what a salad fork is at this point…or when to bow….or why he’d need to cross a t….but I was proud and pleased that he knew how to be polite.

It is a pleasure to get up early with him while everyone else is sleeping.

hot white sidewalks

Posted on by March 23, 2013

firewalking ceremony in china

I used Google Earth to take a look at our old house in San Jose the other day.

It was a normal looking little house…I think my father told me that in 1963 he bought it for 27,000 dollars.

Last time I checked, it sold for close to a million.

That’s not the real point to this story…but it’s just another illustration of how things change.  Nothing stays the same….and that’s a good thing.  It would be a pretty boring world if they did.

Looking at our old house, I started thinking about playing in the backyard.  I was 10 when we moved away from California….so my memories of space and scale are those of a little child…but it’s surprising how strong those memories are even now.

We had a backyard that was fenced in with redwood fencing….tall fencing that the kids in the neighborhood used to use like a trespass highway…like some nascent neutral zone that we could walk up on and never touch other people’s property (unless it was the low hanging fruit on their fruit trees).

The backyard of the house on Frolic Way was like a manicured jungle…grass and rose bushes and lemon trees and mud for GI Joe crawl fests…and a small plastic swimming pool for when it got hot.

When it got hot, the white sidewalk became a griddle.  Fire walking without the coals, a test of impending manhood….a rite of passage to make it into the house to claim the popsicle that was waiting inside.

I remember that we had a window of opportunity…step out of the pool, run down the hot sidewalk, and  try to make it to a shady spot before the water on our feet disappeared.  It was a “don’t look back” kind of situation…if you looked back to see the evaporating footprints on the white fire, you were a goner for sure.  I don’t remember any of us turning into a pillar of salt…but I do remember jumping in place and wondering how the ground could be so hot.

I don’t know why I’d want to…but a couple of days ago, I started to think of how this was a good theological moment to “wax spiritual” over.

My life has been a steady stream of jumping out of the pool to test just how hot the sidewalk really was.  I knew it would burn me…but until the coolness dissipated…until my feet were bone dry…I always forgot how it felt to be out on my own.

I’d go running back to the pool…wheeeeee…jump in and get cooled off for a while…and then start thinking about those delicious apples…I mean popsicles…that I knew I could reach if I just slid that chair over to the freezer.  Pretty soon, I was out of the pool again….running up the alabaster oven…turning to look at my footsteps evaporating in the sun…calling out, “God!!!  Where’d you go?”

I think devotion should be more than just seeking a response to need.

I think there has to be something more behind it than calling out to be cooled off when things get too hot.

You know, though…I do like popsicles…and the pool was always there before.  I can make it back.

I’m sure of it.

image from hungeree.com

the video store had boxes that frayed

Posted on by March 22, 2013

video storeOne of the surest signs of “maturity” is starting to reminisce.

I think when a person is young, they’re too busy running around and in the moment to spend too much time looking back.

Get some years under your belt and you’ve got a bigger pool of memories to pull from.

Maybe it’s like a reverse picture of Dorian Gray…the memories pull us down to a place we don’t want to go…age us prematurely..I don’t really know.

The thing about my memory is that it’s kind of like I’m falling down a mineshaft…bouncing from side to side with each new thought…until eventually I land on the bottom and settle on one of the thoughts that more often than not turns out to be kind of strange and inconsequential.

Right now I’m thinking about video stores.

Video stores?  With all the important things going on in the world, I settle on video stores.  Why?

Well….back in the day, why, that was really living…why, I remember when Jimmy John used to pull up in his ’71 Charger and honk his horn just for a laugh…

Just kidding, the memories aren’t going to take that strange a turn.

No…I was thinking about video stores…and then I got to thinking about record stores…and then I got to thinking about the mercantile with its penny candy and those movies you could watch for a penny if you were willing to turn the crank and watch the cards flip over….

KEEEEEDINNNGGGG….

I really was thinking about video stores…and going in to spend/waste time picking up VHS boxes to flip them over and read the back.

If it’s that hard to make up my mind, why didn’t I ever clue in that maybe there were better ways to spend my time than flipping video boxes?

The thing about video stores….and the thing about a lot of the ways we used to purchase media like records or movies…is that it was such a tactile thing.  Those boxes were solid and clunky…you knew you were getting a “thing” when you went to pick out a movie.

It was a pretty social thing, too…maybe by default but you couldn’t help but engage occasionally with the other folks wasting time trying to decide on which movie they’d get that evening.

I love streaming movies on Netflix…it’s a movie lover’s dream to have a bunch of movies to call up at will….but I couldn’t help but think that it was a lot like going to the video store…a small percentage of decent movies and a whole lot of weirdness that I’ve never heard of before…and lots of time wasted because it was so hard to figure out which was “least crummy”.

“I’m here…I’ve got to pick something out…”

Now, so much is internal and isolated…we sit at a terminal to Skype,  or pick out a movie…read the news…order a blender….buy our books….reserve our books at the library….write a blog about sitting at a computer doing the things that used to take us out in the world…

whuhhhh?

The video store was such a diversion from “real life” …it was such a squandering of my time (and of all the folk’s time who were waiting on me to make up my mind) …but in retrospect…to reminisce….looking back at it all now…it was pretty much the most interactive media experience that I’ll probably have for the rest of my life.

But…with a few clicks of my mouse, I’ll add another something to my queue and forget that I ever had to stand in line to rent that Jackie Chan VHS for the third time because I couldn’t remember that I didn’t enjoy it the first two times.

Maybe that’s another kindness of aging…you forget what you’ve spent so much time reminiscing over.

image from solongvhs.com

it’s what we watch

Posted on by May 2, 2013

Children’s programming is where it’s at.

At least, it seems to be where we’re at these days.

Luckily, a lot of it is pretty entertaining…so when our three-year old becomes obsessed with a show, it helps that it’s watchable.

The weird thing about it all is that much of the time we know more about what’s happening with the rescue bots than we do with what they’re doing in our government to rescue us from the fiscal cliff.  You know what you know….we are surrounded by transforming robots and television shows about transforming robots.

I’ve mentioned it before…but I sure do wish I had stock in  the company that thought up the idea of having a bunch of toy robots that need other robots to be complete…and then maybe the robots that complete the robots that needed the robots to be complete need robots themselves to both look good and feel complete.  Lots of need….lots of buying if you can’t escape fueling the robot need.

What a bunch of needy little toys.

But it is kind of cool, really….”now this one turns into what ?  A fire truck? That’s pretty cool”.

I wonder sometimes if the really good lesson here is just learning how to appreciate…and how to stop living for myself so completely.

It’s a good thing to be able to enjoy what other people enjoy…even if you’d sometimes not watch the same show about the same robots for the 10th time.