After the Fall...

...somebody told me that, back in the 60’s, when fabled rock band Iron Butterfly tried to record a song called In the Garden of Eden, the singer was too wasted to pronounce the words, so it came out In A Gadda Da Vida....which is a good story...if, most likely, completely dubious....then, that's true of most creation stories...and why they tend to be ruined when taken literally...

...around that same time Joni Mitchell sang we are stardust, we are golden, and we’ve got to get ourselves back to the garden about a fabled rock festival she didn’t actually get to attend, though many of her friends did, and she’d wanted to...so, really, she wasn’t singing so much about that legendary communal gathering, or even the longing for the fabled garden that, according to that 33 rpm myth, the festival was about....but longing for that longing...hoping for that hope...impossibly dreaming of holding that impossible dream...

The Paradise is in the desire, not in the imperfection of accomplishment...
Allen Ginsberg

...some years ago was sitting in a coffee shop...there was this kid...mid-teens, or so...not bad looking...kinda gawky...he was there a lot...usually alone...like me...but, this one afternoon, there was a girl...about the same age, kinda cute, clever smile, long hair tied back in a child’s ponytail...kinda gawky, too...sitting across from him at a tiny table...and looking every bit as nervous and awkward as he....though anyone could tell they liked each other...a lot...and that they themselves knew...even if they weren’t really sure how to proceed from there...and I couldn’t help thinking goddamn, what I wouldn’t give to be that kid right now...

...(don’t worry...this isn’t some sick Allen/Polanski/Humbert kinda story about a pervy middle aged guy going after little girls....more a sad, wistful middle-o'-the-wintertime kinda one, about wishing one could turn bad memories in for good)...(even if it’s better to follow what the bumpersticker says and give up all hope for a better past...like all the yogis and Buddhists say, live in the here and now...even if so many of them seem so hung up on mythical pasts...when perfectly enlightened words were written by perfectly enlightened sages...which, I guess, shows just how hard it is...and why we shouldn’t be too hard on ourselves for now and then wallowing in our self-indulgent might have beens)...

...to be in his seat, zits, confusion, and all...with the boundless fears that go hand in hand with boundless hopes...countless strange discomforts, all fresh and new...but also the knowing that, deeply disturbing as this clash of innocence and experience called adolescence might be, for this moment at least, he wasn’t alone in it...and that he and she could only imagine what flowers might grow out of their confusion...

...harsh as the end of that story in Genesis was...prospects of mortality and death, angels with flaming swords, and all that...at least Adam & Eve had each other...

The Body Electric

...have always had a kinda vexed relationship with technology...I mean, without modern antibiotics I’d at least be deaf, if not dead...and have trouble imagining life without the Daily Show or cinnamon Pop Tarts...even if the fruits of our busy modern minds seem to be driving humanity off a cliff at alarming speed...

...and I’m kinda doubting the planet’s gonna miss us much...

...but I'm thinking right now of one of the few true miracles of today's technology...rising above petty concerns with its awe-inspiring amalgamation of essential utility and general really really goodness...if, at times, horribly misused...even for ghastly and near-unspeakable atrocities (particularly during the 80’s)...nonetheless, a modern wonder and sign of the highest capabilities and dreams of the human species...

...of course I’m talking about the electric guitar...

...heard about that yoga & music festival out in California...at first thought it sounded cool...like a yoga Woodstock...sadhana and rock n’ roll swirling together like chocolate and peanut butter...

...then, lookin’ at pictures, gotta say it just looked a bit too...yogic...too peaceful...just too fuckin’ healthy...

...don’t get me wrong, I’m totally into the yoga thing...the inner peace thing...the living healthy thing...the meditation and asana thing...but, wonderful as it is to spend time at yoga retreats and ashrams...it's not exactly rock n' roll...

...which is okay...it probably shouldn't be...but still can’t help thinkin’ there’s gotta be a place for danger...recklessness...dancing with chaos...it’s better to burn out than it is to rust...let fury have the hour, anger can be power...even honey, I’m the world’s forgotten boy, the one who’s searchin’, searchin’ to destroy... *

...but, maybe that's just me...

*Neil Young, Joe Strummer, Iggy Pop, respectively...

...in memory of Les Paul, 1915-2009...

Things To Do While Drinking Coffee #3

*kudos again to the High Point Cafe, West Mt. Airy, State of Mildly Befuddled Sarcasm, USA*
If I told you what it takes to reach the highest high,
you’d laugh and say nothing’s that simple.
But you’ve been told many times before, messiahs pointed to the door, no one had the guts to leave the temple.
Pete Townshend
During the summer between 9th and 10th grade, I listened to Tommy by the Who almost constantly...but I don’t think I really understood why....never mind that I was listening to the story of a kid who went deaf dumb and blind to block out the world following a traumatic experience...written by the dorkiest looking guitar player to ever lead a rock band...and sure, the music rocked... and Roger Daltry looked so fucking cool in the Woodstock movie waving the long fringe of his hippie jacket like wings singing see me feel me touch me heal me listening to you I hear the music gazing at you I get the heat...and I myself an painfully lonely alienated kid locked in my room blasting music loud enough I hoped it might block out the rest of the world...possibly even make it disappear...of course Pete Townshend...even as his own left-over-from-mortally-wounded-adolescence pent up frustration and rage windmilled and destroyed an endless series of guitars...had something loftier in mind...like any ‘60’s rock star whose acid experiences led him to India, he created Tommy as a metaphor...deaf, dumb, and blind but staring at the mirror...unable to perceive anything but his own ego...so smash the mirror and he’s free to become...another rock star.....I, alas, never got to be a rock star...and, at 42, with guitars I rarely play and never played well, am thinking it may be time to throw in the towel on that particular dream...don't cry, don't raise your eye, it's only teenage wasteland...