New Blues Dialog

A Resting Wolf in a Man's Large Teeshirt
My cup of hot street coffee is sitting on the floor by my chair in which I sit typing on this post. Not a whipping post today.

The noise is ferocious outside my window. Every known kind of Caterpillar destruction machine is just over 20 feet or so from my back window. A huge shovel. And two little Cat jackhammer machines that are irritatingly brash with their cacophony.

Cacophony. A beautiful word.

Plus I was listening to Professor Cornell West, he insists on Professor or Reverend, and, yes, Cornell West is a reverend and a professor (at Princeton). I was listening to Professor West--and he used to be at Harvard and he quit Harvard in a rage over Harvard making Larry "the Snob" Summers its president. Larry hates people of all ilks. Cornell didn't say that outright but he intimated it in his spiel.

Cornell West, in spite of his "confrontational theology" (his theology is Christianity) or whatever he calls it, is pretty hip in terms of all I wrote in yesterday's The Daily Growler in criticism of Obama (the date was actually the 18th and not the 17th as the blog banner says). Like, he's happy with Eric Holder, though, too, he's concerned about Holder being a Clintonista (Robert Kuttner's classification, and Kuttner would make a great Sec'y of Treasury) West says Holder will have to prove his worth beyond any shadows of any doubts or he's in trouble with his own peoples. Of course, West had no good words for Larry Summers. He was puzzled by Obama's wanting the guy on his staff. Yet, like West emphasized, this is the first black president. You've got to believe Obama's quite hip to what these goons he has working for him really represent--maybe his key to the Power Elite executive men's room. West says Obama may be using the Clintons to his advantage. All the white folk cynics like myself just don't trust Slick Willie--come on, he's the guy who ruined his wife's bid for the presidency--shooting his mouth off down South--in the white safety of the Old South--and Cornell West agrees with me on Slick Willie, too. The Slick One once more may be a thorn in his wife's side as she tries to "vet" herself with Obama as Sec'y of State. That word "vetting" still puzzles me as to where it suddenly popped up from. I swear this was the first election I've ever heard that word used. "She's being vetted by...." Who does "vet" these people? The Dumbocratic Party? Obama's coalition--mostly Clintonistas (like Robert Ruben, like Eric Holder, like "Senator" Hillary Clinton)? I'm confused. Like whoever "vetted" Sarah Palin--I mean, come on, aren't they fools? Cornell West got me back out on the growling path...and I said I was avoiding that today.

My coffee is getting cold. Funny how we like certain things excessively hot and other things excessively cold but other things lukewarm--a word I've loved since I was a thinking child (I started thinking at 2).

I accidentally saw a woman on yesterday's Oprah Show (Oprah the Sow, WOW, is she getting fatty fat--look out, Okra, diabetes is next) who can remember every little detail of her life from when she was 8 months old--she can describe every day of her life since then, even minor details as to what clothes she was wearing on certain days--like you say to her, "OK, babe, November 13, 1989." And this woman would start telling you, "I got up that morning at 7 am. I had a bowl of Groat Clusters and then my dad asked me if I'd like to go to Grandpa Milliped's for Thanksgiving." "How do we know you are remembering exactly or you're not making it up as you go along?" "Here, check it out." With that this woman hands Oprah a huge thick notebook marked "1989." "Open it to November 13th." Oprah obeys. "Holy Christ," Oprah bellows on opening the thick book. "This is amazing. How the hell can you read this?" She holds the book up to the camera. It's a calendar-type notebook, you know, weekly calendars with big square places to write appointments and shit in. In each of these squares this woman had written everything that had happened to her on that day in a script that was so minuscule that it was almost impossible for the naked eye to read. I immediately thought of my old pal L Hat and how he can write minuscule. I once knew a young Texas "preacher boy" who also could write minuscule and his Holy Christian Babble was just chocked full of these tiny unreadable-to-most-eyes notations and marginalia. [I myself write pathetically raggedy and sprawling fast--some of my notes being bigger than signboards I'm so rushed to write them down--I need huge margins for my notes.] So Oprah took a magnifying glass to this chick's chicken scratch and on November 13th she read along the notes as this woman spouted out what was written there word for word. "This is amazing, folks, simply amazing." One of Okra's guests asked, "What's it like in your head?" "Sometimes it ain't easy," the woman said (she was a big overweight obviously psychologically bothered woman--an Obsessive Compulsive woman). "Sometimes," she continued, "I'm still a few minutes behind where I am at the moment with my memory--you know, I haven't caught up with myself yet. That's hard sometimes." Hell, I figure the babe is a flim-flammer, but she caught my fancy for the moment.

That's what I love about the fantasy world of commercial teevee--where every word's a commercial--even Okra is constantly harpo-ing on something up for sale--like a book she's read or a movie she's seen that had a "profound" effect on her or perhaps had an effect on her gal-pal Gayle (also beefing up into a stock-like (meaning cow-like) woman)--or the constant stream of Hollywood celebrities she has on who are there to advertise their latest Grade B effort at making a movie. "What's it like to work for John Poo-Poo, the great Chinese director?" Oprah asks some empty-headed bimbo who's on her show peddling her latest movie. "Oh, Oprah, he's so wonderful a man. He's changed my life...blah, blah, blah, babble, babble."

Note: White folks (who name their kids Zack, Jennifer, Charles, Mary, Dick, Jane, and Dweezel, etc.) have always been amused by what black parents name their children; not really understanding that black parents name their kids as far away from white names as they can get. Even if they use a common white name, they pronounce it differently on purpose. That's why a common white name like Darrell when black-a-fied becomes Dair-rell--or perhaps they give their kids what they instinctively know are true African names and there are African names on slave registries--though very few. What's in a name anyway? Nothing much. My name, Wolf, is common as hell. A lot of white folks are named after animals. God, Wolf Blitzer, for instance. How many guys named The Growling do you know? OK, my mother and father were weirdos who named their kids after the phases of the moon and its light's effect on little wolf-boy babies. "Put those fangs back in your mouth and eat your spinach." Spinach has always been considered by whites as a power food. Look at Popeye and what he did for the canned spinach industry. White mothers and fathers all across the USA had to stand over their kids threatening them with a fate short of burning them at the stake if they didn't eat their spinach--not just a couple of bites, but all of it. I hated spinach as a kid. But not as an adult. I love spinach now.

My coffee hath grown cold. Cold coffee is verboten with me. I remember how cool the word verboten became in the 1950s. I never hear it anymore. Like taboo was a big word in the 1940s.
Words. I love words. Words direct us. Holy books are called "The Word" in most religions. Words are stored in books--or they used to be. Now they're stored on these blogs or on Websites.

Suddenly the construction noise has moved up toward the streetfront and all is just as suddenly quite back here in the alleyway. It is baldass cold in New York City today--around freezing all day--getting down into the Thor-like 20s tonight. And tomorrow is Thor's Day. Hey, let's celebrate!

My friends are on my ass to start another blog. A specialized blog. Dealing with music. Dealing with the art of writing. You know, a high-brow blog! "I don't have time," I react. "That's all you do have," they reply. It is tempting. I have so many knowledgeable friends in the music-thinking and music-performing business--thedailygrowlerhousepianist actually makes his living as a musician (hey, he's a big church organist now, too--how close to my Ivesian heart is that?--it is at church organs that many a great musician has evolved). I also know a little drummer boy who knows more about jazz than I'll ever know and he's severely younger than I am. I don't know...I don't know. But, I'm not going to worry about it.

My coffee is ice cold now.

I'm reading Look Homeward Angel as my bathroom reading material. Oh what a glorious writer Thomas Wolfe was (the big oaf writer from North Carolina and not the Old-South fop from Richmond who wears a white suit all the time to identify himself with his public. Thomas Wolfe the big oaf from North Carolina never wore a white suit in his life, I'll bet).

Here, read this--what a colossal writer this dude is:

"A destiny that leads the English to the Dutch is strange enough; but one that leads from Epsom into Pennsylvania, and thence into the hills that shut in Altamont over the proud coral cry of the cock, and the soft stone smile of an angel, is touched by that dark miracle of chance which makes new magic in a dusty world.

"Each of us is all the sums he has not counted: subtract us into nakedness and night again, and you shall see being in Crete four thousand years ago the love that ended yesterday in Texas.

"The seed of our destruction will blossom in the desert, the alexin of our cure grows by a mountain rock, and our lives are haunted by a Georgia slattern, because a London cutpurse went unhung. Each moment is the fruit of forty thousand years. The minute-winning days, like flies, buzz home to death, and every moment is a window on all time." [The first three paragraphs of Thomas Wolfe's Look Homeward Angel--about a stonecutter whose life's ambition is to carve a perfect stone angel head, an ambition that causes old Oliver Gant a hell of a lot of transition and transcendence--what a great piece of American writing--I mean that's exactly what we non-Native Americans brought to this continent of Red Americans from our ancient pasts--pasts that come from all ends of the world--and Big Thomas's point is, he's amazed by how these various peoples and their cultures picked this particular point on the world's map to come to looking for a future--like sailing into Baltimore harbor from England...or from Holland...or forced here from Africa--and Wolfe has problems with "Rebels" and the Old South's racism and its anger at being a loser to N-worder lovers--Wolfe is a universalist and the Old South is reserved, limited to serving old ways and violently opposing new ways! And new ways are hard to take when your ancestry has put you down smack-dab in the heart of the Hills of Catawba--somewhere in those mountains of western North Carolina (Wolfe was born and raised in the awesomely located and interestingly natural and unusually artsy-fartsy town of Asheville)(I have a dear old pal whose roots go back to Asheville and I'll bet you he's a Thomas Wolfe fan, too) and eastern South Carolina--the Catawba--which ironically enough is a Native American word, as so many of our location names in this big country are.

I grew up out on the lone prairie with tons of languages floating around my head--Native American (like Waxahachie) (Comanches and Apaches in my part of the world); Espanol a la los indios del Mexico; the Spanish-English mixture called Tex-Mex ("Hey, amigo, where's el patron, en la cuidad?"); the old original Texas English-Mexican Spanish mixed language they called Texian; then there was an urban Spanglish; Cuban Spanish (Texas took in a lot of Cuban refugees in the late 1950s and early 60s, you know, Cubans fleeing Fidel Castro); German (a dude named Prince Karl founded a colony in Texas called New Braunsfel back in the early 1800s when Texas was still Mexican by birth); Italian (there were Italians who worked the coal mines around Strawn, Texas); Czech--there are tons of Czechs that settled in Central Texas around Itasca; Swiss: there's a town in Central Texas called Swiss Alp; etc. etc.

A part of my family that lived down in the Rio Grande Valley spoke English, Spanish, and German (Schumachers)--my mother's brother lived in New Braunsfel where he ran a movie theater--and during the week his theater had German film nights, Mexican film nights for the Braceros that worked in the cottonfields and picked the mustang grapes of the area--as a result he spoke English, Spanish, and German--he had lived in Scotland and I remember him speaking Scottish with my elder Scottish grannies (Crags or Craigs) on my mother's side. I, however, could never seem to concentrate long enough on any language, including "proper" English, to learn it well--I mean, I was using schoolyard venacular when I was in grade school and that included the word "fuck." It was just a natural way to speak English given my heavy Texas-drawl--I mean, slow talking, slow walking ("slow pokes" they were called--pokes were dudes--like cowpokes) was what I grew up with--siestas were taken regularly; good meals were eaten with gusto. You could go into my old man's shop any afternoon he was open and catch him sound asleep in one of the chairs he had in his waiting room. My old man called it his "see-esta time." He had women customers who would sneak in when he was taking his siesta and kiss him awake--oh, my old man. What a dude. I didn't realize it then. His eccentricities embarrassed me: like the cheapass Roy Rogers cheaply made kids straw cowboy hat he wore everyday except Sunday (when he wore his "good" handblocked-regularly Miller custom man's chapeau (what he called all hats)). Bad enough the straw hat as it was originally, but my old man made it worse by spraying it with a cloudy covering of aluminum paint--and Roy Rogers rarin' up on Trigger's back could easily be seen emerging from that sprayed-on paint that opaquely covered that crappy-looking cheapass kids cowboy hat. Only now do I see this man as an influential character in my wolf-man construction--Jesus, I was lookin' in the mirror this morning and, shit, there the old man was, staring "I told you so" back at me. I even speak the language like he did. My mother's way of speaking! My mother was focused so she didn't say much and when she did it was in proper English, since my mother thought of herself as a poet really--her mother had been a "published" poet--so my mother when she did talk talked proper English. She wrote that way, too--even though now that I think about it my old man wrote well, too. Hell, my old man knew Latin--I keep forgetting that kids in his day and age were taught Latin in high school. In fact, my great-grandfather, an English teacher, probably knew Greek as well as Latin. My father was a great memorizer of poetry--James Whittier and James Whitcomb Riley were his favorite poets--and my dad spouted off their American-frothy lines at will all the time. "A boy stood on the burning deck...." I can hear my dad saying it now--with all the dramatics of an actor, too. Shit, my old man was an actor--and so am I. "To wit." Does "twit" come from "to wit"?

It's now after noon. The cats are growling again--loudly--bothersome--though character toughening--and I'm goin' out drinkin' with the boyz Fry-day night.

Hot damn. I'm listening to Macy Gray--and God-Awlmighty I loves me some Macy Gray. You want'a know the old wolf-man, listen to Macy Gray. especially her On How Life Is, an Epic CD (are CDs totally obsolete now?)--do I have to buy an iPod? I don't want to. I didn't want to buy a Walkman when they became the trendy thing to have back in the 80s but I eventually bought one--I had it up until the big Blackout of 2003. I listened to the Yankees game on the night I had to spend in the deepest Hell of that blackout--when the electricity goes out in New York City it's a scary occasion. Think about it--we had no water for two days--no water to drink, so you had to walk down 11 floors and find a guy from Jersey or Philly in the street selling bottled water--and you bought as many bottles as you could afford and you climbed back up eleven floors--in the dark--in the heat--it was in the 90s--during the Holy Hell night I had to suffer through it was 95--and I tried to sleep with my head hanging out one of my windows but it didn't help--it was too hot to sleep--too hot to do anything but lay around and sweat and curse Con-Edison and the British-constructed power grid that runs all the electricity from Ohio over east to the whole upper East Coast--and I listened to the Yankees game--from California so the game went on up to about 2 o'clock--then I listened to whatever was on the radio the rest of the night.

It amazes me how many songs these chicks like Macy Gray can come up with--and I love Macy 'cause she always gives credit to the blues as her background--though she likes disco, too. Macy's stuff is a compilation of all the cultural beats--you hear some soca, some ska, some reggae (especially a reggae drummer who's shootin' lightnin' bolts all over the head of his unwired snare), some disco, some funky-funky--one of her tunes starts off with a "Fuck-fuck-funky for you"--meaning that Macy is all funky for some funky love--stinky, isn't it?
"Like Cleopatra got the masses at my feet/Gotta living dwell down on easy street/and I'm the latest craze...." from Macy's "Do Something."

I'm hunkering down on into the day. Let's see what comes about.

thegrowlingwolf
for The Daily Growler