The Writer's Almanac for Sunday, February 11, 2007
Poem: "The Psychiatrist Says She's Severely Demented"
by Bobbi Lurie
from Letter from the Lawn: Poems by Bobbi Lurie
© CustomWords. (buy now)
The Psychiatrist Says She's Severely Demented
But she's my mother.
She lies in her bed,
Hi Sweetie, she says.
Hi Mom. Do you know my name?
I can't wait for her answer, I'm Bobbi.
Oh, so you found me again, she says.
Her face and hair have the same gray sheen
Like a black and white drawing smudged on the edges.
The bedspread is hot pink, lime green. Her eyes,
Such a distant blue, indifferent as the sky. I put my hand
On her forehead. It is soft, and she resembles my real mother
Who I have not spoken to in so many years.
I want to talk to her as her eyes close.
She is mumbling something, laughing to herself,
All the sadness she ever had has fled.
And when she opens her eyes again, she stares through me
And her eyes well up with tears.
And I stand there lost in her incoherence,
Which feels almost exactly like love.
Sunday, February 11, 2007
Friday, February 9, 2007
I saw Blue Man Group tonight.
It was a safe harbor of postpunk pop culture absurdity
to the initial wave of media frenzy that was already washing over
the dead body of Anna Nicole Smith in all its fleeting voluptuous stiffness.
The 21st century now has its candle in the wind
(Cue audience cell phone glow* and clown-headed mourning devil horns**:)
...
Three giant TV screens.
CONSTANT TEXT MESSAGES RUN NING
DI GI TAL READOUT S A CROSS TH E S T A G E .
When the readouts weren't TEXTING,
they were displaying kinetic commentary on the music.
LOUD, PULSING, PERCUSSIONS BEAT
in to
THE AUD I ENCE' S E ARS.
(A video camera obeys
ROCK STAR LESSON # 23:
Get to KNOW Your AUDIENCE
by plunging down a fan's throat all the way
to his sphincter, I guess.
pristine pink innerds lit up under a scope's blaring kleig.)
Then there was the music, and the muscial references. AD-DC. VAN HALEN. the girl from ipanema. OZZY OZOMATLI whiipit good Did I mention Pink Floyd? Great originals, but great covers too and ROCK STAR LESSON # 287: BACK A POPULAR SOCIAL CAUSE
(It chose to protest global warming with BMG in videoscreen masks.)
For their first encore, three-dimensional giant bits of burning paper floated down from the three GIANT TV screens, skittered across the DIGITAL READOUTS while TWOM AN GRO UP (backed up by three percussionists, two guitarists, bass, keyboards/vocals and klaxon-powered female vocal) beat big fluorescent plastic spoons on a black tuba/z apparatus. (I thought of, who was it, Trent Lott?: 'THE INTERNET IS A SERIES OF TUBES ... ") molding in our ears the rythm of BABA O'RILEY ...
...
EXHIBIT 17
(TEXTED THE DIGITAL READOUT:)
THIS PIECE OF PAPER FLOATED
(TEXTED THE DIGITAL READOUT:)
THIS PIECE OF PAPER FLOATED
TO EARTH NEAR BLUE MAN'S APARTMENT
IN NEW YORK CITY
...
SEPT. 11, 2001
... Klaxon-powered female vocal:
IN NEW YORK CITY
...
SEPT. 11, 2001
... Klaxon-powered female vocal:
Out here in the fields
I fought for my ideals
I put my back into my livin'
I don't need to fight
To prove I'm right
I don
I don't need to be forgiven
...
...
Yeah yeah yeah. Yeah, yeah. ani di franco woulda been proud. Joan Osborne coulda sung harmony.
textmesage powerthroatedchickvocal unDENIABLEEPIPHANYERUPTINGINYOURBRAIN
(choreographed)
Y O U ' R E A L L W A S T E D
(choreographed)
Y O U ' R E A L L W A S T E D
Yoko would have fit right in,
Grace Slick's White Rabbit in an electric green and blue maryjane
moby would just need to duck his head in a blue paint can
jerryrubin laurieanderson thediggers
PATTISMITHGROUP
TALKINGHEADS
PATTISMITHGROUP
TALKINGHEADS
A N D Y W A R H O L 1 5 M I N U T E SSSS
.................................. hare krishna hare hare krishna
.................................. hare krishna hare hare krishna
all we are saying is Give Peace a Chance
(I wondered in what parallel universe's Vegas lounge
BMG would be collab-aborting
with George and Giles Martin on "Love"
instead of Cirque do Soleil.
And I can't wait to see "Love" - that's not intended as any slam.)
. . .
...
. . .
It was 40 years ago today,
Ed Sullivan let a Brit band play
on that same stage that
David Letterman reminded us about it from tonight.
40 years later, Blue Man Group's first encore lent new poignancy to a lyric it didn't even have to sing:
("One," might be the answer if, say, Eric Clapton or some other target were the butt of a vicious joke)
( ... it would also be a good name for a song)
...
* These have evidently replaced the salutes that smoky-hazed fans used to signal with flickering lighters, back in the day.
Friday, February 2, 2007
FREE WILL ASTROLOGY / Courtesy Rob Brezsny
VIRGO week of Feb. 8-14
"You've been walking the ocean's edge, holding up your robes to keep them dry," writes Coleman Barks in his translation of the 13th-century poet Rumi. What he means is that you've been too tentative and inhibited in your relationship with the tidal forces of love; you've been holding back from giving your total devotion to the primal power that fuels the universe. "You must dive naked under and deeper under," Barks and Rumi continue, "a thousand times deeper!" Consider taking the poets' advice, Virgo. If you can't manage diving a thousand times deeper, try to least make it a hundred times. Happy Valentine Daze!
VIRGO week of Feb. 1-7
When Martin Luther King Jr. was 12 years old, he was so depressed he tried to commit suicide. I'm glad he didn't succeed. He grew up to be one of my heroes: a peaceful warrior who fought for justice with militant love. Studying his life, I learned that it's possible for a man to have both a well-honed intellect and a fierce spiritual faith. He showed me that uplifting passion, lyrical language, and inventive imagination are essential elements of political activism. He proved you can be devoted to divine mysteries without turning into a fundamentalist fanatic who hates non-believers. In accordance with the astrological omens, Virgo, I urge you to draw inspiration from a hero who means as much to you as King does to me. For extra credit, find out how this indomitable soul managed to triumph over his or her life's low points.
I'll have to think about this one. Like Brezsny's, my heroes tend to be dead: Lennon. Brautigan. Other musicians and poets and writers. One of them just passed this week: Molly Ivins. Which reminds me of another" my mother. Lucy was a newspaper writer too, a reporter and a columnist who plied her trade for papers that are either dead themselves (The Buffalo, N.Y., Courier-Express) or hanging on by their tearsheets (The Bradford Era, The Salamanca Press). Those of you who never had the pleasure of sitting down around that silly pink dinner table at 608 Broad Street will never know the serio-comic melodramas she used to regale the family with (told through various characters, with different voices and accents, and the occasional prop) as she re-enacted pedestrian things like city council meetings or sitting out in the hallway waiting for the Hospital Authority or the Seneca Nation council to come out of their interminable closed sessions. Mom and I had many disagreements in our years together, but the last time I saw her--emaciated and gray on her nursing home bed, I kissed her on the lips and she whispered to me words I'm never forget, words that, again, you'll never know.
This one's for you, Mom.
VIRGO week of Feb. 8-14
"You've been walking the ocean's edge, holding up your robes to keep them dry," writes Coleman Barks in his translation of the 13th-century poet Rumi. What he means is that you've been too tentative and inhibited in your relationship with the tidal forces of love; you've been holding back from giving your total devotion to the primal power that fuels the universe. "You must dive naked under and deeper under," Barks and Rumi continue, "a thousand times deeper!" Consider taking the poets' advice, Virgo. If you can't manage diving a thousand times deeper, try to least make it a hundred times. Happy Valentine Daze!
. . .
...
FREE WILL ASTROLOGY / Courtesy Rob BrezsnyVIRGO week of Feb. 1-7
When Martin Luther King Jr. was 12 years old, he was so depressed he tried to commit suicide. I'm glad he didn't succeed. He grew up to be one of my heroes: a peaceful warrior who fought for justice with militant love. Studying his life, I learned that it's possible for a man to have both a well-honed intellect and a fierce spiritual faith. He showed me that uplifting passion, lyrical language, and inventive imagination are essential elements of political activism. He proved you can be devoted to divine mysteries without turning into a fundamentalist fanatic who hates non-believers. In accordance with the astrological omens, Virgo, I urge you to draw inspiration from a hero who means as much to you as King does to me. For extra credit, find out how this indomitable soul managed to triumph over his or her life's low points.
I'll have to think about this one. Like Brezsny's, my heroes tend to be dead: Lennon. Brautigan. Other musicians and poets and writers. One of them just passed this week: Molly Ivins. Which reminds me of another" my mother. Lucy was a newspaper writer too, a reporter and a columnist who plied her trade for papers that are either dead themselves (The Buffalo, N.Y., Courier-Express) or hanging on by their tearsheets (The Bradford Era, The Salamanca Press). Those of you who never had the pleasure of sitting down around that silly pink dinner table at 608 Broad Street will never know the serio-comic melodramas she used to regale the family with (told through various characters, with different voices and accents, and the occasional prop) as she re-enacted pedestrian things like city council meetings or sitting out in the hallway waiting for the Hospital Authority or the Seneca Nation council to come out of their interminable closed sessions. Mom and I had many disagreements in our years together, but the last time I saw her--emaciated and gray on her nursing home bed, I kissed her on the lips and she whispered to me words I'm never forget, words that, again, you'll never know.
This one's for you, Mom.
Love always,
your red-headed son
(the living one, eventually to be somebody's hero, I hope)
Friday, January 19, 2007
Virgo
Week of Jan. 25-31
The swan is a beautiful bird, right? If you see one gliding across a pond, it evokes in you a feeling of calm. In fairy tales, it's a symbol of natural grace, an emblem of animal elegance. But those lovely associations are becoming irrelevant in England, where swan populations have grown so massive and voracious that they're threatening ecosystems and damaging biodiversity. I guess we could say that their destructive overabundance exemplifies the theme of too much of a good thing. It's an apt metaphor for the challenge I believe you'll face in the coming days, Virgo.
Week of Jan. 25-31
The swan is a beautiful bird, right? If you see one gliding across a pond, it evokes in you a feeling of calm. In fairy tales, it's a symbol of natural grace, an emblem of animal elegance. But those lovely associations are becoming irrelevant in England, where swan populations have grown so massive and voracious that they're threatening ecosystems and damaging biodiversity. I guess we could say that their destructive overabundance exemplifies the theme of too much of a good thing. It's an apt metaphor for the challenge I believe you'll face in the coming days, Virgo.
FREE WILL ASTROLOGY / Courtesy Rob Brezsny
VIRGO week of Jan. 18-24
I hate greed almost as much as I hate hatred. So I was mistrustful when your inner teacher hinted that I should look in the thesaurus under "acquire" for clues to your major themes in the coming months. There I found words like "amass," "collect," "gather," "secure," "earn," and "take possession." After duly meditating on your astrological aspects, I decided that what your inner teacher was driving at is this: 2007 should be a time of building up your reserves, carving out a more substantial niche, and getting the tools and resources and training that will provide a foundation for your dreams well into the future. So here's my question to you: Can you engage in this much acquisition without becoming grasping, predatory, and manipulative? Personally, I'm sure you can.
VIRGO week of Jan. 18-24
I hate greed almost as much as I hate hatred. So I was mistrustful when your inner teacher hinted that I should look in the thesaurus under "acquire" for clues to your major themes in the coming months. There I found words like "amass," "collect," "gather," "secure," "earn," and "take possession." After duly meditating on your astrological aspects, I decided that what your inner teacher was driving at is this: 2007 should be a time of building up your reserves, carving out a more substantial niche, and getting the tools and resources and training that will provide a foundation for your dreams well into the future. So here's my question to you: Can you engage in this much acquisition without becoming grasping, predatory, and manipulative? Personally, I'm sure you can.
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