BECAUSE IT MATTERS

There are different kinds of intelligence, as we know. Some of us have keen kinesthetic intelligence, while others may be more blessed with logical (mathematical) intelligence, or linguistic, or musical intelligence. It would seem the Cosmic Divine doesn’t give everything to anybody. Other aspects of intelligence, like inquisitiveness, for example, co-exist--or don't--within all the concentrations listed above. The works of a highly inquisitive composer are likely to break new ground, while the works of a mildly inquisitive composer are likely to be more pedestrian.

Another element of intelligence that exists in varying amounts from individual to individual is insight. Insight is closely related to perception. A perceptive person is likely to see beyond the surface in interpersonal interactions and come away with a layered comprehension of what's occurred that others less perceptive simply won't. Insight works much the same way, but it extends beyond interpersonal interactions to the socio-political and cultural landscape of which we're a part. Insight, if it forms at all, will do so in response to that landscape. It's also related to one's linguistic ability, since as neuroscientist Michael Egnor (building on Chomsky) says, "Language is a tool for abstract thinking--a necessary tool for abstraction--and humans are the only animals who think abstractly." Insight depends on one's ability to think abstractly, and that ability certainly varies from person to person and may well relate to an individual's level of linguistic intelligence.

In any event, the next time we're scratching our heads trying to figure out how on Earth that seemingly intelligent human being has said or done whatever it was in response to the socio-political and landscape, we might consider that the individual lacks insight. He or she is just not going to see beyond the surface and there's probably not much to gain in pointing out the insights obvious to us. It's worth a try, but we may be talking to a brick wall.

Since insight would ideally be abundant in the collective consciousness for effecting the common good and the advancement of the species, a society would be wise to invest in education that focuses on the development of linguistic skill. Chomsky maintains that everyone is born with innate grammatical understanding, upon which we hang meaning gleaned from those around us. How better then to ensure our future existence than to educate the masses well and broadly, to bring reading back from behind our screens and writing back to the desk as a tool for reflection, to saturate our world with meaning? Our histories--both personal and cultural--are getting lost and, therefore, so is knowledge itself. Too often we can't see beyond the end of our noses, which doesn't bode well for our future.

Before I return to my beloved writing desk, I want to say a few quick things about the show last night at OZ. First, it was exciting. The first 40 minutes seemed like 10 and the second 40 like 5. So, extreme action performance art would seem to work well with my ADD. Secondly, I'm amazed at the physical skill of the performers and found myself crushing on Elizabeth Streb, who was sitting in front of my little perch by the audio control booth. She looks like Patti Smith mixed up with David Bowie, Rick Ocasek, and maybe Tommy Tune. I thought, why can't I look cool like that? She was on the job, however, with her notebook and pen, monitoring the delivery of her vision by the cast. Tim O asked me to snap a pic of him and E after the show, which I did as they chatted. She's very sweet, in addition to being super smart--and as I've already made clear, COOL.

I saw a friend there who owns a very successful zip line/character building enterprise and we expressed similar concerns after the show. She said parts of it were "Gladiator-esque," and I had to agree. She doesn't want someone hurting her or himself to entertain her. Yeah.

I've had convos with students about the phenomenon of Parkour in which kids gather around public architecture and in a wholly unorchestrated manner perform dare-devil jumping and skateboard stunts down flights of concrete stairs, off high landings, etc. Of course, there's a great difference between Parkour and Streb's program, which is meticulously thought out and has received many prestigious cultural awards.

But what's driving the extreme sports/performance phenomenon? Is it okay? Have we grown so desensitized that we literally have to put ourselves in danger, inflict pain upon ourselves, risk bodily injury, or DEATH in order to feel good? Is this a new kind of character-building?

Idk, but it would appear that STREB did what all great art does: filled me with awe and much food for thought. Kudos, E. Very well done!

P.S. There's a documentary on Streb called Born to Fly, btw, on Netflix.

P.S.S. I think I've found another #MerkuryGirl.

On the subject of reparations, there is much to consider. Spiritual practice encourages me to hold fast to my conviction that a commitment to reparations is necessary in order for human society to survive the current disruptions to world order. No society is free and clear of guilt. Man has abused man since prehistoric time. But that's not the point;Accountability is the point (one that came up again and again during the Golden Globes last night, btw). I must begin at my own logical beginning. As Gaugin wondered with his paintbrush, who am I, where did I come from, and where am I going? I can't separate myself from such existential inquiry.

I'm white---Irish, English, Dutch, w/a Cherokee bloodline somewhere in the mix. My ancestors settled in Appalachia and were not slave holders. They lived off the land and later off the mines, a backdrop that hardly screams "white-privilege," but I have benefitted from white-privilege throughout my life, nonetheless, as has my daughter. I have benefitted from the pushing of native Americans off their land and from the oppression of minorities so that I might be given opportunities denied to them. Do I flog myself with a cat-o-nine-tails? Of course not. But I do say, with my words, and with my actions, that what the white man did to the indigenous people of North America was wrong? Yes. The institution of slavery was wrong and the subsequent and latter-day manifestations of segregation, police brutality, and mass incarceration are equally wrong.

I use my time and talents to right these wrongs in whatever ways, great or small, I can. I say and demonstrate that I am sorry. I teach my child to do the same. I ask God for forgiveness of my sins and pray that the sins of my forefathers be forgiven. However, I believe that only when all white people ask God to forgive their forefathers for these crimes, will the sins of our forefathers cease their visitation upon this nation.

The attached prose poem is part of a longer autobiographical work about my relationship with my sister Sonya Kathryn Poole, “Katbird,” who was born with cerebral palsy. More and more, I think of her body like the Earth, finding the destructive behavior wielded upon it directly related to the destructive behavior wielded upon the Earth. These feelings about my sister’s body have been greatly exacerbated by the candidacy, election, and inauguration of Donald Trump as President of the United States.  

It’s hard to think about---

My handicapped sister

Raped in her bed at 13 years of age by the director of the institution where she lived during the school year;

And harder to think about

The scar on her abdomen

Which was explained as the result of an appendectomy

When my mother called the institution about it that summer;

The attorney told my mother it wouldn’t work in court

With Katbird unable to speak clearly

She’d gotten the story out to us

But we knew how to translate her spastic gestures, her garbled tongue

It wouldn’t even be her word against theirs; it would be just their word

A jury could never be convinced

So, we just swallowed the whole horrible thing and kept on keepin on.

I don’t care what anyone else says, and don’t give me that Illuminati bullshit ---

Beyonce was Mother Earth in her spectacular Grammy performance

Inviting us to dive into a lemonade sea where off-shore drilling is forbidden

Very pregnant, with twins, in a chair teetering precariously on its back legs, she made me gasp;

We used to tilt Katbird’s wheelchair back like that to pull her up hills

Backing her in through hundreds of Appalachian doors

“I’ve got you,” I’d say

She was a heavy load for a younger sibling

My dad would hurry over and grab the handles---

“I can do it,” I insisted, and he’d let me be, falling back just a step or two.

One day I pushed her all the way up Summerlee Avenue, a steep incline with broken sidewalks. I’d been talkin about how “A Hard Day’s Night” was playing at the theater on Main Street, and Katbird got all excited. She started bouncing up and down, dancing with her arms from where she was sprawled out on the living room floor, sitting up on her knees. She begged with her eyes and chin. When I whispered, “I’ll take you,” she shrieked in delight.  

It’s hard to think about---

How I couldn’t protect her, ultimately

From the old white patriarch

Who felt entitled to destroy her

Because he could;

I wonder how he kept her quiet

A hand over her mouth, I suppose.

Gangstagrass: Bridging the Gap

When I say that Gangstagrass is important, I’m suggesting that their bringing together two races and two genres of music uniquely representative of those races makes them interesting on many levels and infuses the project with healing powers for a culture in sore need of healing when it comes to matters of race, not that any of its members have it in mind to be medicine men (or women). To the contrary, one gets the impression that Gangstagrass is one of those happy accidents. I don’t know, though. Maybe there really are no mistakes in the universe; maybe the coming together of hip hop and bluegrass was inevitable.

As a West Virginian with just enough education to make her a smartass on occasion, I’ve often found it quaint how hill people will call the banjo a “banjer,” but ”banjer” is really much closer to the original banjar, than it ever was to “banjo.”  The banjar was a gourd and string instrument played traditionally in the West Indies and brought to America via the slave trade in the 18th century. There’s quite a bit more in the way of linguistic history leading up to the final incarnation of the word as it’s universally spoken today, but suffice it to say the etymology is well documented and cements the connection between music typically thought of as “black” and music typically thought of as “white,” a connection that blossomed in the agrarian landscapes of the antebellum south and eventually made the climb into Appalachia through North Carolina and East Tennessee, crossing the Cumberland Plateau into the rugged hills of Kentucky and West Virginia.

This unlikely comingling of these distinctly different musical strains concurred with the mountaineer becoming the property of the coal baron, as the African had long been the property of the plantation owner. It might be argued that no white man or woman in America has ever experienced the brutalities of bondage that the African people have experienced on American soil, and while I would never oppose that position, I would suggest that the coal miner and his family were more than metaphorically owned by the coal industry, owing in fact, as the classic mining ballad Sixteen Tons reminds us, their very souls to the company store. I’m not aware of documentation of beatings or lashings done to miners by company foremen, but the certain death by black lung was a slow and agonizing one, with respect to which the owners of the coal companies displayed no sympathy, often responding with, in fact, a saying which became cliche, that a mule was more valuable than a man. The deadly explosions underground, many of which might have been avoided with the enforcement of greater safety measures, became routine. The first or second generation Scotch-Irish miner, when lucky enough to emerge from the hole in one piece, was a marked man, a spectacle in blackface walking home to a row house owned by the company, which would take most of his pay as rent. There he’d soak in a tub of hot water by the kitchen stove, never able to wash completely away the black from around his eyelids or from under his fingernails, while his labored cough provided a painfully percussive soundtrack for what was a daily ritual preceding an early death.

The banjo’s odyssey didn’t end in Appalachia, of course. It made its way up the eastern seaboard with prominent displays in Philadelphia, New York, and Boston. Louis Armstrong pioneered its use in jazz with his “hot” bands of the 1930s, and I seem to recall Django having brought a banjo into his Parisian mix, although I might be the mixer-upper in that narrative, figuring that two words with so much alphabetical kinship must otherwise be related. Getting back to what’s for sure the truth, in the 1940s, Pete Seeger created a long-neck and published “How to Play  5-String Banjo,” which became a classic instructional text. Seeger had prepared the way for the instrument’s movement into the folk boom of the 1960s, the heart of which was divided between Greenwich Village and Cambridge Square. Today the banjo continues to pop up in the darnedest places, indispensable to old-time revivalists like Old Crow Medicine Show and providing just the right gnarly twang in countless soundtracks calling for down-in-the-mud authenticity, such as those in the FX Series Justified, the theme song for which is written and performed by Gangstagrass.

When I say that Gangstagrass is important, I’m suggesting that their bringing together two races and two genres of music uniquely representative of those races makes them interesting on many levels and infuses the project with healing powers for a culture in sore need of healing when it comes to matters of race, not that any of its members have it in mind to be medicine men (or women). To the contrary, one gets the impression that Gangstagrass is one of those happy accidents. I don’t know, though. Maybe there really are no mistakes in the universe; maybe the coming together of hip hop and bluegrass was inevitable.

As a West Virginian with just enough education to make her a smartass on occasion, I’ve often found it quaint how hill people will call the banjo a “banjer,” but ”banjer” is really much closer to the original banjar, than it ever was to “banjo.”  The banjar was a gourd and string instrument played traditionally in the West Indies and brought to America via the slave trade in the 18th century. There’s quite a bit more in the way of linguistic history leading up to the final incarnation of the word as it’s universally spoken today, but suffice it to say the etymology is well documented and cements the connection between music typically thought of as “black” and music typically thought of as “white,” a connection that blossomed in the agrarian landscapes of the antebellum south and eventually made the climb into Appalachia through North Carolina and East Tennessee, crossing the Cumberland Plateau into the rugged hills of Kentucky and West Virginia.

This unlikely comingling of these distinctly different musical strains concurred with the mountaineer becoming the property of the coal baron, as the African had long been the property of the plantation owner. It might be argued that no white man or woman in America has ever experienced the brutalities of bondage that the African people have experienced on American soil, and while I would never oppose that position, I would suggest that the coal miner and his family were more than metaphorically owned by the coal industry, owing in fact, as the classic mining ballad Sixteen Tons reminds us, their very souls to the company store. I’m not aware of documentation of beatings or lashings done to miners by company foremen, but the certain death by black lung was a slow and agonizing one, with respect to which the owners of the coal companies displayed no sympathy, often responding with, in fact, a saying which became cliche, that a mule was more valuable than a man. The deadly explosions underground, many of which might have been avoided with the enforcement of greater safety measures, became routine. The first or second generation Scotch-Irish miner, when lucky enough to emerge from the hole in one piece, was a marked man, a spectacle in blackface walking home to a row house owned by the company, which would take most of his pay as rent. There he’d soak in a tub of hot water by the kitchen stove, never able to wash completely away the black from around his eyelids or from under his fingernails, while his labored cough provided a painfully percussive soundtrack for what was a daily ritual preceding an early death.

The banjo’s odyssey didn’t end in Appalachia, of course. It made its way up the eastern seaboard with prominent displays in Philadelphia, New York, and Boston. Louis Armstrong pioneered its use in jazz with his “hot” bands of the 1930s, and I seem to recall Django having brought a banjo into his Parisian mix, although I might be the mixer-upper in that narrative, figuring that two words with so much alphabetical kinship must otherwise be related. Getting back to what’s for sure the truth, in the 1940s, Pete Seeger created a long-neck and published “How to Play  5-String Banjo,” which became a classic instructional text. Seeger had prepared the way for the instrument’s movement into the folk boom of the 1960s, the heart of which was divided between Greenwich Village and Cambridge Square. Today the banjo continues to pop up in the darnedest places, indispensable to old-time revivalists like Old Crow Medicine Show and providing just the right gnarly twang in countless soundtracks calling for down-in-the-mud authenticity, such as those in the FX Series Justified, the theme song for which is written and performed by Gangstagrass.

In anticipation of seeing Jack tonight at the Bridgestone, I'm reposting this piece from my summer writings.

Talking with Jim Rooney about his memoir last week, the subject of the Confederate Mountaineers came up, a bluegrass group headquartered in Boston’s Copley Square during the 50s and appearing regularly on a radio show broadcast from there called “The Hayloft Jamboree.” “There’s a lot to be said for having a base,” I said and Jim readily agreed, for without it, the artist is a rolling stone hanging his hat wherever and calling it home. But when an artist inhabits a physical space and hangs an Open for Business sign in the window, he says “I’m in charge of my destiny and this here’s ground control.” In the current music industry, no one is sending that message more loudly or more clearly than Jack White from his Nashville starship, Third Man Records.

He may have consulted a marketing guru or two, but setting up shop comes naturally to Jack, and one gets the feeling that the logo (a broadcasting spire with three humanoid cutouts at the top), the motto (“Your Turntable’s Not Dead”), and the mission statement (“… TMR strives to bring a spontaneous and tangible aesthetic back into the record business”), are all homespun. In fact, a lack of pretense with Jack is palpable. This is a guy who sharpened his store-minding skills in a Detroit upholstery shop, a guy who understands how springs, padding, and coverings work together, a guy whose example bears out the etymology of the word “upholstery”: It first appears in 1597, during the Middle English period, taken from upholden, which joins up + hold. It’s the upholsterer’s craft that holds everything up, that’s the foundation of the house that Jack has built. His work as an upholsterer also honed his design skills, the nucleus of which are innate no doubt. Just think of his distinctive suits and set designs, from the White Stripes forward. Jack enjoys spreading a visual feast and knows exactly how to do it.

Making something from nothing is the heart and soul of creativity. S.I. Hayakawa in his famous essay on the subject says that what distinguishes the creative person from the pack is the ability to trust one’s instincts, to be comfortable standing out, and to move bravely forward with inspired ideas without necessarily being sure about how everything is going to work out. These characteristics are immediately apparent in Jack. It goes without saying that he’s a non-conformist, but his abhorrence of imitation is fused with the work ethic of a self-made man, who at the end of the day may well be a workaholic. Jack’s not the child of the 2% and his approach to doing business is not top-down. His success has not been fed to him in a silver spoon. The only silver spoon likely to be found around Jack’s joint would be part of a merchandise bundle, with the TMR logo crowning the handle, Jack’s way of saying “God bless the child that’s got his own,” his way of passing on proof that the American Dream is still alive.

I've made a list of the vocalists who've helped shape my sound, not just the singers I love, but those whose delivery I've consciously imitated, all the while knowing that I'd shed their skin at some point and do my own thing. In chronological order of influence there are Dionne Warwick, Astrud Gilberto, Joni Mitchell, Billie Holiday, Nancy Wilson (black Nancy, not white Nancy), Stevie Nicks, Edith Piaf, Mabel Mercer, Marlene Dietrich, and Lotte Lenya. I remember someone in the 70s saying to me, “You could make your voice sound exactly like that,” referring to Stevie as we listened to “Dreams.” As much as I loved her, sounding just like her didn't appeal to me. I was fiercely determined to sound like no one else, but I was head-over-heels in love with Stevie's delivery.

At the time, I couldn't pinpoint what it was about her that was so mesmerizing. Of course, there's that tone. Stevie's one of those singers you can hear a millisecond of across Grand Central Station and know for certain that it's her, that rich contralto effortlessly dipping down surprisingly low on occasion, only to soar just as surprisingly into a fairy-like falsetto. There's the conversational phrasing. She's laid back but not laissez-faire, talking to us in a down-to-earth way that makes us privy to pivotal moments in her everywoman's life---Well, here you go again/You say you want your freedom/Well, who am I to tie you down?

Another unique linguistic characteristicof her songwriting is the signature change of person in her lyrics that the grammarian school of rock criticism has had a field day with: Thunder only happens when it's rainin/Players only love you when they're playin . . . Okay, so “you” is no longer the lover she's talking to in the beginning;we get that. There are far more striking examples of Stevie's sleight of person trick, of course, too many to mention and not worth mentioning as far as this English major is concerned. There's a scene in the 2013 documentary In Your Dreams which weaves in some old footage of Lindsey Buckingham admonishing Stevie about the person thing, telling her that “it's a rule of thumb in writing that you don't shift tense and person,” that people aren't going to know what she's talking about. Stevie's not having it, can't be bothered with it, and apparently her millions of fans can't be bothered with it either. I've always thought of Stevie like a dervish, sampling points of view as she swirls, creating a collage of sound-bytes around a central theme. The grammar is tricky, but a consistent point of view is simply not an integral part of Stevie's very particular art of composition.

Stevie is very consistent in one respect as regards language, however, so much so that I've decided it's the essence of her magic: the way she shapes her “r”s. Mostly I'm referring to words ending in “er.” Sometimes she may round them off when they're internally placed in a line, but they're often left open at pentultimate positions in a line. There are countless examples of this stylistic device throughout her repertoire, but one of the most beautiful pieces of evidence is found in her rather recent rendering of “Annabel Lee,” the poem by Edgar Alan Poe set to music by Stevie as a teenager but not recorded until the In Your Dreams album project: And the moon never [nevah] beams/Without bringing me dreams/And the sun never [nevah] shines/But I see the bright eyes/. . .Neither the angels in heaven above/Nor the demons down under [undah] the sea/Can ever [evah] dissever [dissevah] my soul from the soul/ Of the beautiful Annabel Lee.

On the heels of Dylan’s 73rd birthday, I wonder how he celebrated. I know very little about his personal life, and I’m sure he’d have it no other way. I’ve never understood groupies or people who allow themselves to get all wrapped up in celebrities. I’m not criticizing them;I just don’t understand them. Of course, an artist without fans is an artist unknown, so I’m guessing Bob’s glad he has ‘em, but fans are definitely a source of irony, paradox, and all those other double-edged swords: necessary for existence but potentially suffocating at the same time.

I guess I would describe myself more as a follower, with Desire being my favorite Dylan album, probably because it combines folk with exotica, a combination I consistently mine in my own work. I also find Dylan doing the best singing of his career on this album. Just listen to the controlled note bending on “Isis,” and again on “One More Cup of Coffee.” It’s brilliant;his rhythm’s perfect, his intonation is perfect—sans auto-tune, alas! (The thought of Dylan using auto-tune is incongruous, to say the least, and would make a funny New Yorker cartoon.) Beyond the technical prowess he shows here, however, there’s also the razor-sharp conveyance of wit and emotion. That expressiveness is his trademark, of course, but it’s on steroids throughout this pirate’s collection of rare jewels, stolen from Apollo, apparently, who seems to have been on holiday along the Tropic of Capricorn at about the same time as Dylan and his merry band of gypsy music makers.

In truth, thievery played no part in assembling the songs, but collaboration did. While we think of Dylan as the ultimate solo artist, he nonetheless values a meeting of like minds and thrives in the company of a well-matched partner. And man, what a partner he found in Jacques Levy! Levy was an amazing guy—a clinical psychologist (with a doctorate from MSU, no less), a songwriter, and a Broadway director who worked with Sam Shepard, Jean-Claude van Italie, and an array of other interesting figures on the New York theater scene during the 60s, 70s, and 80s. At one point he collaborated with Roger McGuinn on a musical that never quite panned out, but songs from those sessions ended up on Roger’s future recordings. Levy met Dylan through McGuinn and in '75 became director of the Rolling Thunder Revue but not before co-writing with Dylan all but two of the nine gems on Desire, which came out in 76. Why I didn’t discover this album until the early 80s I can’t quite figure out.

Levy became a much sought after lyricist, contributing to records by Joe Cocker, Carly Simon, and Crystal Gayle and to books for a number of musicals, including Brecht on Brecht in 2000. No wonder I, the author of Banjo Girl (the log-line for which reads “Matewan meets Cabaret on the way to The Promised Land in this gritty 1930s period piece, rich in lyric balladry …”), would come to count among my favorite things a creation that Jacques Levy had a lot to do with! Bucky Baxter, pedal-steel player for Dylan in the 90s and my neighbor for a while, sent an early incarnation of Banjo Girl to Levy in New York in August of 2001. He was just getting to it on 9/11. Needless to say, the discussion was put on hold and as things turned out, never managed to rise from those ashes. Sadly, Levy’s health began to fail after that, and he died of cancer in 2004.

Another reason Desire is so potent is the presence of Emmylou Harris, in a way that no one had ever heard her before. She seems to be hawking out the harmonies from a stall in an old world bazaar. We can smell the incense and clove cigarettes, see the veil of smoke, feel the heat, and the pent-up desire in every note she sings. If I weren’t sure that I’d left western waters with the first two cuts, I was beginning to get the message with “Mozambique”: Desire is a trip you’ve not taken before, and Emmylou was to be my tour guide. She was ready to follow that Little Tramp of a sufi anywhere, and I was right behind her. 

She nails it for the second time on “One More Cup of Coffee,”an incredible piece of music, penned by Dylan on his own. Levy’s outstanding contribution notwithstanding, Dylan has never needed anybody, of course, when it comes to writing a great song, but here we find Dylan, too, like we’ve never found him before, belting out the sharp nine of the Middle Eastern scale like he’s singing his ABCs. I don’t know how much Torah singing Dylan did growing up, but what comes out of him through the melody of this song is atavistic, and very beautiful. Again, Emmylou shows brass, finding her own ancient well and pulling out a harmony that I imagine her singing by a desert campfire, her camel resting in front of a dune. Her work with Dylan on this album doubtlessly laid the groundwork for the alternative direction she would take years later, first with Cowgirl’s Prayer in '93 on which she recorded a song of mine, and then more decidedly with Wrecking Ball in '95.

I confess to smoking a lot of hashish during the weekend I discovered Desire. Kouros, my Persian boyfriend and I were living in L.A. and sorting through what direction we ourselves were going to take, in the wake of the dust storm brought about by the Ayatollah in Iran. The hash helped to soften the harsh edges of that reality but also to open our minds to realities beyond the frightening news reports. Kouros’s family and friends were now refugees of that revolution, arriving on our doorstep with harrowing tales, all true, of having crawled for miles through mountain passes to get out of the war zone and onto a plane. I certainly sympathized, but I wasn’t sure I was ready for my home to serve as a way station. The lyrics to “Oh Sister” pierced my conscience, and they’re still hard to listen to. Sung by Dylan and Emmylou in close communion, they placed a burden on my shoulders that I struggled with:

Oh sister, when I come to lie in your arms

You should not treat me like a stranger

Our Father would not like the way that you act

And you must realize the danger;

Oh sister, am I not a brother to you

And one deserving of affection

And is our purpose not the same on this earth

To love and follow His direction;

Oh sister, when I come to knock on your door

Don’t turn away, you’ll create sorrow …

Monday, May 19th, was the birthday of Mickey Newbury (1940-2002), which led me to recall a road trip I took with him and a small posse in the spring of '95, just a few months, as it turned out, before he stopped performing. His health was in obvious decline, and though he'd been clean for years, he was prone to reminiscing about the miraculous pain-killing power of heroin. He was struggling.

The driver on the trip was a fan of mine and insisted on playing my music for Mickey as we traveled from Knoxville to Atlanta and back. Mickey listened with complete focus. Whenever I doubt myself as a writer, I think of Mickey's face in the back seat of that pimped-out stationwagon, lost in a song of mine called “Little Star,” a very personal piece in the “I Can't Make You Love Me” vein. He was such a sensitive listener;he really GOT ME, and I loved him for that. We discussed the fact that I was categorically all over the map, and he was the guy to understand that condition perfectly, being one of the last songwriters in Nashville revered for his diversity, at one point having radio hits in the pop, rock, r&b, and country genres all at the same time, the guy who told us, after all, that he “just dropped in to see what condition [his] condition was in.” Today he'd be given an “oddball” ticket and sent back to where he came from, which was Houston, I believe. Whenever I say to myself that I'll never want to go to Texas again, I remember that Mickey was from there and consider that perhaps I'm being rash.

I wasn't on the bill, but Mickey insisted I play a few songs before he took the stage. He showed me how to tune my guitar down a half-step then capo on the 1st fret, the logic for which was pretty much lost on me at the time, but John Jorgenson tells me that Mickey probably did it because “the nut is not cut exactly right on an acoustic guitar causing the open chords to play out of tune. By capoing up and tuning down, the first fret becomes the nut eliminating any tuning issues caused by a badly cut nut. Also the strings will feel slightly looser and perhaps easier to finger.” I resisted the technique at the time because I mistakenly thought it would present yet one more tuning issue to deal with on stage, but I realize now that the whole point of it is to reduce tuning issues. I've decided to try it out for the summer and see how it goes. Mickey will probably be looking down from his quarters in the big house saying, “Sheez! Don't rush into anything!“

On another note, in addition to Mickey's kindness and encouragement, I appreciated his almost fatherly candor in cutting straight to the chase to warn me that my traveling companion was “afeard” of my imminent success. He all but told me to run in the opposite direction as fast as I could. Thankfully, I didn't wait 20 years to take that piece of advice, but when I did, the psychopath in question made off with a substantial sum of my money, then came back around to loosen the lug nuts on my car wheels by cover of night. Mickey saw the whole thing coming within 30 seconds of meeting the guy.

Mickey would only eat at Cracker Barrels when on the road, but he loved talking about food. At the end of the night he would tell everybody he'd meet them in the morning for “a big ole breakfast,” which would certainly involve biscuits and gravy. Mickey was thin, so I don't imagine he was over-indulging as a rule. I think it was the idea of food, the poetry of food, that he loved more than actually eating it. He spoke in rapturous tones about a dessert he'd eaten in a dream, a special kind of cake, not exactly a sponge cake, not exactly a pound cake, but layered with what sounded to me like a lemon curd topped with fresh berries and whipped cream.

After that trip, I never saw Mickey again, but I've thought about him often through the years and never without refining in my mind the recipe. Divined by an angel of song whose path on his way to Heaven briefly intersected with mine, in a May much like this one, I've settled on a standard Génoise batter:

                                          Mickey's Dreamcake

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease and flour, or spray with baking spray, two 9-inch round pans. You can double the recipe and use four pans. For a more fanciful cake, use one large rectangular pan and after the cake has baked and cooled, cut into four-eight squares before layering. Be creative with the architecture! You might want to top a square with a smaller round, or two smaller rounds, etc. It's a dream cake and entitled to defy logic. What follows below, however, is logical;I promise!

Melt ¼ c. butter and keep it warm;

Beat 6 eggs (at room temperature) with 1 cup of sugar, 1/3 at a time for 5-8 minutes, until the mixture is lemony in color and has reached the state known as au ruban---like a continuous flat ribbon when dropped from a ladle;

Add 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract;

Fold in 1 cup sifted cake flour;

Add the melted butter, again folding it in. Do not beat! Beating will deflate the batter.

Bake for 30-40 minutes, just until done; turn out immediately onto a rack to cool. (I take a rack out of my oven before heating if I've made the double-sized rectangular cake.)

Optional:

Wash some colorful guitar picks and place them inside the cake(s), as favors, before frosting.*

Frilling (b/t a frosting and a filling):

Spread 1/8” lemon curd over each layer. (I use Trader Joe's Authentic English Lemon Curd, but you can make your own beforehand. Epicurious has a simple recipe for one.);

Spoon fresh washed and dried berries in any combination of ripe blueberries, raspberries, strawberries, etc. over the lemon curd.

Top with whipped cream icing, doubling as needed:

Cream together 2 cups of powdered sugar w/6-8 tablespoons of heaving whipping cream;

Add ¼ teaspoon salt, 1 teaspoon vanilla and and beat until smooth. Add more sugar if too thin, more cream if too thick.

And last, but not least, sprinkle with stars!

Earlier today in a tweet I said that insufferably bad songwriting is, like the dead apparently, always with us. The case in point is ubiquitous, needing by now, like it or not, no introduction to anyone, living or dead, if one subscribes to the theory that every sound ever uttered is existent in the space time continuum --- forever and ever, Amen. So, it's wonderful that we might actually be able to hear Jesus from the boat delivering his fishers of men sermon across a third wall of water, but it's a thorn--- in my side at least, that I might also have to hear, over and over, a song like “Let It Go” in the background.

The lyrics to the song are not that bad: “The snow glows white on the mountain tonight/Not a footprint to be seen/A kingdom of isolation/And it looks like I'm the queen.” I can be down with that sentiment. Though it tends to take a schmaltzy plunge from there, the message to move bravely forward past one's oppressor is well-taken and fittingly attached to the feminine perspective. It's the music that destroys the song.

How can music destroy a song? Too easily, and it happens all the time. In “Let It Go,” the devastation occurs through the boorish strategy of key change assault, first occurring after the rather lovely minor palette beneath the verses. At that point, there's a knee-jerk transition into a difference-splitting major/minor channel. I hasten to add that the channel device is not the problem here. Steven Tyler taught me how to use channels effectively and I've found them to be just exactly what some of my own compositions have needed. The problem here is that the channel is plodding, banging the listener over the head with every beat, building to an all-out major key cluster fuck in the chorus, which in spite of celebratory dynamics is, at the end of this long song-day, just one more plodding piece to a puzzle for ages 5 and under. Taken altogether---if one can take it---the suggestion is that life's important lessons can be mastered like this song is constructed, simply by knowing how to move the third man, as it were, back and forth a half-step. The architecture is punishing. I feel trapped, like poor Idina Menzel, her face frozen, in fact, in a pained expression. Her fine voice and I are both prisoners of a psychotic harmonic scheme unable to feel any remorse for running roughshod over one sonic landscape after another without so much as a dandy's fare thee well at each abrupt departure.

“Let It Go” is pastiche songwriting at its worst, and to the extent that it represents an existent school, it's a negative trend, one that negates subtlety and nuance as integral parts of the art of music composition.