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06 augustus 2004
The Last Vacation
We're off for a while. And while I rarely enjoy being away from San Francisco (no, I'm not a hermit, I just so love it here), I'm sure we'll have a splendid time. And I always end up with stories.
No roughing it this time around...Sam's parents have broadband and wireless. Bill & Edgar have broadband, as do my folks. We're taking one of these with us to fill in the wireless gaps.
We'll be at the beach (the Jersey shore), Fire Island, Manhattan, and lounging by the pool at my Ancestral Home.
I've never been on a cross-country flight in first class...it should be quite comfy, when I'm not slapping Sam's hand down for pointing and laughing at the people back in "steerage" (his word).
While in NYC, I'll also be saying goodbye to him. It's like dropping a younger brother off at college. There will be tears. I've already warned Sam. (I'm secretly hoping that she will slap me and tell me to snap out of it).
Also, I know that there are a few of us meeting up in NYC. Email me if you wanna join in the confab-ulousness!
Posted by jeff at 09:05 am | Comments (0) | TrackBack
05 augustus 2004
The Holy and the Broken Hallelujah
It always throws me, perhaps more than it should (but then again, maybe less than it should), when certain wishes come true. And when one doesn't even know the wish, and it comes true anyway, well, what the hell do you do with that?
I speak of k.d. lang's new album, Hymns of the 49th Parallel. And actually, I speak of a particular song on that album, Hallelujah.
This is a song written by Leonard Cohen and I originally heard it as part of a tribute album, I'm Your Fan sung by John Cale. It's a quiet and intimate song that, at times, also achieves soaring heights with expansive intervals. It's a song that contains, in my mind, the single most story-dense lyrics ever written:
I heard there was a secret chord
That David played, and it pleased the Lord,
But you don't really care for music, do you?
It's a commentary on another person, both scathing and dispassionate, bitter and resigned. In the context of the relationship in question, it speaks just as much about the singer. Maybe even more.
John Cale's voice is a good fit; someone with a far more powerful voice would have been better, I always thought. So when Bono of U2 did his own version of the song, I was thrilled. Then I was disappointed: he sang it with one of his whispery—and, dare I say it, all-too-precious—voices. Well past October.
So it's a song that I've been going back to for years. It's a bit of a respite from the world, saved for those times when I'm particularly sensitive (some might say over-sensitive) to the lack of importance the world places on the marvelous, the enchanted, the live-a-day numinous.
You say I took the name in vain
I don't even know the name
But if I did, well really, what's it to you?
There's a blaze of light
In every word
It doesn't matter which you heard
The holy or the broken Hallelujah
The world in these times is lousy with the ordinary; the letters of the law grab pitchforks and oil torches in hopes of exorcising the spirit of the law. The legions of the faithful who demand proof, who don't want to feel so they insist on merely touching (sometimes violently), who fear being made the fool to such a degree that they're willing to sacrifice joy as well.
We all make our own ways in the world, each and all ultimately alone, though there is joy and comfort and companionship and love along the way. Why do so many trade that multiplicity for a foolish consistency of abject, defensive rancor?
I did my best, it wasn't much
I couldn't feel, so I tried to touch
I've told the truth, I didn't come to fool you
And even though
It all went wrong
I'll stand before the Lord of Song
With nothing on my tongue but Hallelujah
Give k.d. lang's version of this song a listen. There is absolutely no literal value to the song, but an embarrassment of riches in all those other things that mean so much to me. There's a blaze of light in every word...
Posted by jeff at 09:47 am | Comments (0) | TrackBack
03 augustus 2004
Crow Bar, San Francisco
Tonight, I went to the Crow Bar. A good friend of mine is a bartender there; the owner of the bar (a cool guy named Roy) needed help and advice with his Mac, so I was happy to help. Truth be told, Macs—especially Mac OS X machines—need so little assistance, that I can sound like this totally magnanimous guy..."You call me any time if you need help with your Mac"...and it almost never comes to pass.
No, seriously...I like to help...I mean it whenever I say it.
Sam and Bill (B. Ill) came along, but they just hung out, played air hockey and drank beers.
I played Galaga, and a pinball machine. And drank the Dutch beer, Hoegaarden. It's been a while since I just hung out at a place. I didn't think I'd feel at home there at all—it's located right in the middle of all the giant, racing-light festooned tittie bars in San Francisco—but it was awesome. We even got Doris Day parking—in North Beach!
The picture of the TransAmerica Pyramid was taken by resting the camera phone on top of the roof of the Jeep. Best view of the building you can find.
Posted by jeff at 12:26 am | Comments (0) | TrackBack
01 augustus 2004
Not My President
I fear that people think that John Kerry will be a Savior of some kind. I fear that people will expect too much from John Kerry as POTUS.
Why? Because there is no respect for popular consent, popular vote these days. No respect at all for the privilege and honor of being able to cast a vote which can change the world.
Jimmy Carter was My President. That is to say, he was the first president I remember remembering in any sort of detail. I was twelve when he took office. Gerald Ford was the President before him, of course, and of course I remember Gerald Ford, but even then it seemed he was just the guy filling the place cuz the real guy got kicked out.
So, Jimmy Carter was my president. Bill Clinton was my Best President. I miss him terribly, get wistful whenever I think about how it was when he was in office.
But you know what? Ronald Reagan was My President, too. George H. W. Bush was, as well. Much as I hated Ronald Reagan for the overweening neglect of anyone who wasn't rich, anyone who wasn't big-corporate, anyone who wasn't straight and WASP-y (whatever their skin color), he was still the president. You can't NOT respect that.
Or can you?
I always thought of George H. W. Bush as a bit sad, a bit weak, more than a bit effete, but again, he was the President of the United States. I disagreed with so much of what he stood for. I didn't at all like the fact that he had flip-flopped so majorly on something so important to so many people: a woman's right to choose. Back when he was Ronald Reagan's opponent in 1980, he was definitely an old-school conservative about abortion and more directly, about the size of government. He supported the right of a woman to choose the course of her own biology—until Ronald Reagan chose him as a running mate. Then he sold out his ideologies in favor of political gain. But still, he was Vice President of the United States, and then POTUS. And you have to respect that.
Or do you?
George W. Bush, on the other hand, does not feel like my President. He never won the election, he just outdistanced the losing. Thanks to "activist judges", he got to be president because the voting process itself was deemed undeserving of Due Process. That he's colossally inept and barely scraping by intellectually on the general ineptitude and/or unwillingness of the populace to look behind the curtain of obviousness and literalism to find deeper truth, is just the acrid icing on the caustic cake.
Prior to 9/11 (that's 11/9 to you non-Americans), I had a bias against Bush, but I spent the smallest amount of time, at least, wondering if there were any upsides to the things he did. Post 11/9 (that's 9/11 to you provinicial Americans), it all just fell apart. The wheels came off the wagon when he squandered the feeling of national unity in favor of a self-serving jingoism that served no one but his own friends, at the cost of over 10,000 lives so far. There is no upside.
I can't say for sure that if Bush wins the election—if he even allows an election—that I'll think of him as a legitimate keeper of the Oval Office. He has an incumbant—and Incumbant's—advantage that he didn't earn in the first place. I suppose we'll know when we know.
While I have every faith that John Kerry will win this November's election (assuming Bush allows ones) fair and square and will make an excellent POTUS, I sadly, depressingly, fully expect those on the Right will continue to screech and screed and equivocate about the so-called equivalence of liberalism and "evil". I feel uncomfortably certain that they will abandon their so-called patriotism and say that "John Kerry is not my President!"
I'm of the mind that they'll pile on his every effort, they'll commit either-or fallacy after either-or fallacy (like they're doing already), they'll drag him down and then they'll blame him for failure.
As an American—hell, as a human being—I have an almost obsequious respect for the Office of the President of the United States.
Will the Right, when John Kerry is Our President?
Posted by jeff at 03:21 pm | Comments (1) | TrackBack