RUDIMENTS, pt. 1,319
(the emperor of nothing at all, pt. TWENTY-ONE
There are always parallel streams
of thought underway - in all aspects
of what we live. We usually notice one
but 'choose' the other. However it goes.
The human mind seems to have a good
propensity for carrying such dualities
along, thinking through them even as
that 'thought' remains unconscious to
us as we go about our usual routines.
Think of all the people at desks in the
offices all around the world, and just
imagine the depths and distances of
illumination and travel and basic
consideration of things that all those
minds have wrought, even as the
paperwork got done, the bills got
paid, the coffee made, and the
very workday itself was then
channeled out.
-
All this working with Jack Stove - the
woods, being high above the old river,
the tall trees, the paths and the very
place there in the forested landscape -
got me to thinking, while I worked,
of one particular current of 'Americana'
that had caught my fancy. I was always
(not past-tense yet, please), I have
always, been one to easily get lost in
that 'old America' stuff - those feelings
of rough comfort, slow days, things
done by hand, implements and tools
of unpowered wood and metal, walking
paths through the woods instead of
driving paved roads, setting still awhile
to just muse or relax or watch a rising
sun, passing cloud, noontime sun,
moving shadows, and setting sun;
the times before power and electric,
when animals were cared for, not
just corralled, transported, bludgeoned
and killed, for profit, when smoke still
curled in twists and swirls over farms
and farmhouses. That's mostly all
gone now, yes, and I know that, but
I can still merge my treasured ideas
of all that - especially out now in
these parts where I live - with the
more jagged crush of the 'modern'
day, which seems to be running on
amuck, without yet having found its
premise or ideal. Whatever...and
I'm way out of touch.
-
The same 'pop' culture that mostly has
ruined our personal environments -
just for the sake of 'selling' us more
crap and making a 'profit' off of us -
(the great, unwritten, code of American
Capitalistic faux-Democracy), had
popped up two rather simple and
repetitive 'songs' - back in the late
1960's or early 1970's - and these
were two tunes, with words, that,
right then, standing in the middle of
the forested woods of, say, 2022, that
ran through me with crosscurrents of
(somehow) that old America. I never
never quite knew how they'd done it,
but the two songs seemed to run at
and be parallel with each other at the
same time, and capture an old flavor
of those strange days of their subject.
It's kind of neat when that can happen...
and there are others, but I only cite
these two. They're both eerie; they
each capture well a time and a feeling,
of the same sort - with the river far
down below me - that I was able to
step into and share while I worked.
(It's that ever-flowing thread of mind,
which I mentioned just before).
Neil Young, and The Band, respectively.
-
"Look out, Mama, there's a white boat
comin' up the river, with a big red beacon
and a flag and a man on the rail. I think
you'd better call John 'cause it don't look
like they're here to deliver the mail..."
That's 'Powderfinger' by Neil Young,
about a Civil War era river sighting
by a young, war-age boy sighting his
first, intruding, gunship along their
isolated river-area home. There are
plenty more words to it, but you can
find them yourself. It's more just a
feeling and an aura that are brought
up by the song. Just like where I was
right then. The music deftly plays with
the words too, nicely stringing them
through all their suggested trains of
thought and feeling.
-
The other one, by The Band, does just
about the same thing, for the same era
and sense of time and place. I always
thought these two songs ran neck and
neck with each other in reaching this
'sacred' American spot. I never knew
which one did it 'better' (you know
people like to rank and number stuff,
in their linear and quantitative ways
of thinking. If that's really 'thought'
at all). They're both doing the same
thing, and greatly. I always tended to
either as being equal. 'The Night They
Drove Old Dixie Down' - which opens
with 'Virgil Caine is my name, and I
drove on the Danville train; till so much
cavalry came and tore up the tracks
again. In the Winter of sixty-five, we
were hungry, just barely alive. I took
the train to Richmond that fell. It was
a time I remember oh so well....'
This song, as sung, is in a more dark
and minor key and thus brings forth
a somehow darker tone. But, both
work well at what they do (did), and
each captivated me in the same way,
now, and then.
-
[I always quarreled with that first verse.
All the translation of the lyrics all say
'till so much cavalry came, and tore
up the tracks again.' BUT, there was
a Civil War General named 'Sumner',
and I've always wondered if that was
the name being sung, instead of 'so
much' - which phrase is a little too
irresolute for this here use].
-
In any case, I assume you can get my
drift and my intention in setting this
out: There is an air, all around us, that
envelops and carries us along - through
the present, but through the past as well,
and TO the future. It's as illogical as
it is imprecise and hazy, but so what?
When I am within it, I know exactly
where I am and to where I am headed.
Good or bad, Jack Stove, there it is.
Load that wood, tote that barge...
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