Hungarian Lights

Leonad Cohen has been on my mind lately, not sure why, but I find myself keeping Time with his songs in my head and phrases have been brought to the fore, whether as snippets of memories or as expressions in the Present.

Once such memory is a trip I took to Buda-Pest some twenty years ago, almost to the day. I was traveling with my friend Max, who deserves a book all in itself, and we took a journey to the East of sorts while we were both students in a European Studies program here in Antwerp, the first time I lived here.

Eastern Europe was just opening its doors, as the Wall had just come down some years before, and I had been "lucky" enough to be in East Germany before that had happened, so I was able to see the dramatic difference of the before and after some years later.

Max and I headed out to Prague per overnight bus, which was nothing short of an ashtray on wheels. This was a time when there was no such thing as non-smoking, and between the Czechs going home and the Western Europeans going to visit, it was a nine-hour chain smoke. For someone who has never smoked, let's just say it was less than pleasant.

After a brief stint in Prague, we jumped on a musty, old railcar that was part of the Orient Express, and headed to Budapest, the former sister city of Vienna of the formidable Austro-Hungarian empire that supplied the world with so much art and architecture, and of course, music. The waltzes along the Danube are legendary in Classical music, and in thinking of Budapest, I then must have Cohen's "Take this Waltz" on the brain.

One of the most vivid memories I have of that trip was an old-fashioned coffee house on the Pest side of the river. There, the waiters wore iron-pressed long, white aprons. The ceilings held numerous large chandeliers, which had these yellowish globular lights that barely gave off more than a spectral aura, much less light. The walls were covered in large, Baroque mirrors and there was a long wooden bar, finished out in brass. Max and I were the only patrons having coffee, with a staff of 15 or so waiters, waiting for the masses to come. It was out of Time, and somewhat surreal.

That memory, for me, fits perfectly with Cohen's surreal waltz....

Stony Ground

As people who know me, know well that it is nearly impossible to pin down my “favorite” genre, musician, song, or type of music, and I try to expose myself to as many different types as possible. My biggest re-morse from India is not bringing back a bag full of Indian music, both Hindi and Tamil, but that will be for next time.

However, in the past week or so, this is my “favorite” new song that I heard on Radio 1 here in Belgium. It was one of the first times in a while that I sat in my car til the song was done.

I knew it was Richard Thompson, as I have been aware of him for 20 years or so, so I was not listening to hear who it was, but rather just to listen until the song had played its course.

As it is just out, there is no official video yet, so this may serve as a placeholder in the meantime. It is from Joe’s Pub in NYC from a few days ago. The album is called “Electric” and I have scanned it on iTunes and will most likely get the CD next time I am wandering the aisles of a music store, most likely next time I take a trip down to Brussels.

Not the best quality, but it gets the mood across.

Enjoy

Big Bang Bang Theory

Bang Bang Bang

I feel like I need some levity in my life, so I chose this video today. Now granted, the original “Alouette” song is far from pleasant, and is rather twisted for a kids’ song, bringing to mind the original Brothers' Grimm stories, but Mark Ronson, DJ of the well-heeled brings us a nice version here.

Ronson, literally born with a silver spoon in his mouth, became the DJ for the tony crowd.

But, this song make me smile, and after this week, that is all that matters right now.

Rumoured to be True

The making of Rumours was a tumultuous time for Fleetwood Mac, which is an understatement. The band literally imploded upon itself. Christie McVie and John McVie had divorced and were not speaking to each other. Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks, the dynamic duo of Buckingham and Nicks, who had originally been brought in for Buckingham to replace guitarist Bob Welch, though Nicks became a crucial voice of the band, broke up and were fighting all the time. Mick Fleetwood, the paterfamilias of the band, was having an affair with Nicks, all the while his wife was having an affair with his best friend (the only people not in the band). All of this was going on while recording in a very small, claustrophobic studio.

Most of the songs on the LP are vitriolic bards against each other. “Gold Dust Woman” is Lindsey railing on Nicks. “Oh, Daddy” was a weird “homage” to Fleetwood. “You Make Loving Fun” was a song Christie McVie wrote for her new lover, and her husband John had to play bass on it during the recording and subsequent tours. “You Can Go Your Own Way” more or less speaks for itself. And, the list goes on. “The Chain” is an ominous reminder of what happens when things fall apart. And, so on.

I recently watched a documentary on the making of this album, and though it has always been a favorite of mine, having watched this, it was nothing short of a miracle that this album was ever made. Yet, it was in that extreme Chaos that one of the most beautiful acts of Cosmos came about. I have listened to that record at least several hundred times in my life, from beginning to end. And, yes, I do still listen to it on the vinyl so it is an “effort” to switch it to Side Two. I have never once tired of it, and I believe it will remain one of my top 5 albums for the rest of my life. I cannot imagine many others displacing it.

I first was exposed to Fleetwood Mac probably 35 years ago, when I was just 8, by my older cousins from New Mexico. They lived in the government-constructed town of Los Alamos as my uncle was associated with The Lab, and they lived in a government-constructed house, which they had modified. It had a largish, rambling room up top, which was the kids’ room, and there was a record player. One of my cousin’s favorite bands was Fleetwood Mac, and Rumours came out about that time. I remember listening to it there, as well as everyone laughing about the provocative album cover design, and falling in love with it, and have never looked back again, so to speak.

Amidst the turmoil and the heartache, the venom and the broken trust, apparently, one night, Christie McVie sat down at the piano alone and wrote a “prayer” for the group. When the others heard it, they had to have it recorded, and they booked a grand piano, put a flower on the piano and a glass of champagne and recorded it immediately. The final version was done in one take. “Songbird” was the result and it shows that there is beauty in the eye of the hurricane, that even when all else around is falling apart, there is something that remains. It became a tradition for a flower or flowers and a glass of champagne to be put on her piano during each live performance.

It is a good prayer for all of those you Love and have Loved, even amidst the Chaos, there can indeed be Beauty.

Here is a recent version of her singing it live, some 30 years later.

Time, It's Time

I have been in the midst and throes of a rather long-winded move, which was a bit complicated for several reasons, and has been drawn out over the span of the past month or so.

Every day I always felt that I had to be "doing something" with regards to the move, and at times I would just stand amongst the boxes and papers and rubbish heaps of things I needed to get rid of, and would just stand and stare, overwhelmed, feeling that "it would never end." Though this was small in comparison of scale to the move that I did when we moved across the Atlantic, it felt rather draining all the same.

Tonight is the first night then, that I don't have to be "doing something" for this move, as for all intents and purposes, it is done. Some blank spaces on the walls to be filled in, but for the most part, it is done.

As my daughter is with her mother this weekend, I am alone, sitting at a desk that I bought many, many years ago, in the hopes that it would be my "writing desk." Sadly, it has not been for those many, many years, until now. Because of the new configuration of my apartment, I have a splendid view out the window of colorful tree-lined boulevards and a true sense of space.

I remember having this feeling in Austin when I was settled into an apartment there as a student. Though it was not my first apartment, it was the first one that I felt that sense of Space, which I do now. I remember just sitting there in my couch, listening to music all evening, doing absolutely nothing, but like the king figure in Depeche Mode's Enjoy the Silence video, I just enjoyed it.

Another song that makes me feel this way is Talk Talk's "Time, It's Time," because, well, it is Time that I feel this sense of Space again. Though I enjoyed my last apartment, it was not my Space.

This is.

It is Time.

Take the Time to just listen to the Autumnal song...like the butterflies and moths on the picture, it has a hypnotic effect.

Fashion Goon Squads

If you know me, or rather, if you have known me long enough, you will see that I don’t have a specific “style” of dress, in fact, it is rather an antithesis to having a style, and that has been true all my life.

Currently I am wearing a white linen “hippie” shirt cut low enough to have my Buddha necklace pop out from my chest hairs, with 501 jeans and leather sandals. Yesterday I was wearing cords, a “rodeo-style” button-down, long-sleeved collared shirt with rather conservative leather walking boots. Or, I might one day be wearing lululemon shorts and work-out t-shirt, or another, a hand-made silk paisley shirt from India with hemp pants, or if formal, an Ike Behar silk tie, Hugo Boss shirt and Brooks Brothers’ slacks with rather expensive hand-stitched Italian shoes from Bologna. This is not to pat myself on the back, but rather to say, depending upon the day that you meet me, you may get a hippie, a yuppie (though I am pushing the “y” on that one…) a jock, or a fashionably dressed man.

In Jr. High and High School, I was considered both the best and worst-dressed person, at the same Time! My nickname was “slob” on the swim team as I would wear my Uggs (as in the original ones, 25 years ago) down to holes in the sole, and toes sticking out and ripped shirts and sweats to swim practice at 5am, though also wore a skinny tie and parachute pants with spiky hair later that day to High School.

Am I fashionably schizophrenic then?

I have known people for decades who look exactly the same every day, in every picture, and yet, when I look back at pictures of myself, it is literally like looking at someone different every time. Although I have been somewhat conscious of doing this, though not as a “statement,” but now that I am in my fifth decade of life, I have left quite a wake of fashion mistakes and triumphs behind me.

My facial hair is no less dramatic. I have had a Nietzsche-style moustache that looks like I have a hamster on my upper lip to a quite unassuming soul-patch, a Van Dyck goatee, a full “grizz” beard (already in 11^th grade, getting yet another nickname…) or a pencil-thin John Waters-esque moving to a Salvador Dali twirl-able stache as well as being clean shaven for years at a time.

Hair? From shaving it down to the scalp with a bandana when I took my PhD comprehensive exams (freaking most of my colleagues out when I walked in) to have a ponytail when I played college water polo at UT-Austin. Spiked, gelled, and even bleached with peroxide at one time out of vanity.

Body hair? I like to think that I have “just enough.” Luckily I did not inherit my dad’s hairless chest, but rather from my maternal side where all the men have a decent v-shaped shrubbery, though not excessively, and thank god, no real back hair save for some stray hairs that I bend into contortions to pluck out every now and then.  When stressed or excited, I can literally “flash” a 5 o’clock shadow within the span of a day, so my shaving patterns can be adjusted within a few days to have a goatee, beard, or clean. And, being a swimmer, I have been shaved my body from head to toe numerous times…

So, who the hell am I?

If it came down to fashion, hairstyle, facial hair, or what?

The Goon Squad is definitely coming for me I fear if it comes down to the Fashion Police.

It makes me wonder then, how do others “see” me on any given day? Given Malcolm Gladwell’s concept of “Blink” I could be a million different people to anyone whom sees me, and who wishes to make a snap judgment, they might get quite a different blink from day to day..

So, what stays the same?

The Eyes, I guess.

When I was in college, on the swim team, there was a contest on campus for the “eyes” and I was voted “Mr. Eyes” for the team and my “eyes” were used to represent the team on campus for the contest. Though I did not “win,” I guess that is the one thing that really has not changed on me. I have gained weight, lost weight, changed fashions, but, the windows to my Soul, I think, really are my Eyes.

And, if you know me, or as before, if you know me long enough, you know that when I look you in the eyes, I am present, and I am listening to you, and it really doesn’t matter what I am wearing, or what my hair looks like, or if I have a beard or clean shaven, the true test of a person is simply, can you “look someone in the eye?” If someone can do that with me, then I really could not care less what you look like. Next time you talk to someone, really, deeply look into his or her eyes, and try to forget being part of the Fashion Goon Squad.

Be-ing Human.

Emotional Echoes

Well, there is a Time, and there is a Place for all things.

Over the past few weeks I have gone through many, many thoughts, and have been here and been there with where the future may go.

Today, on Studio Brussel, the Flemish station from the multi-lingual capital of the EU and Belgium had a Facebook-off between two songs, and Gnarls Barkley's "Crazy" won out. I was driving around Antwerp in my "new" used car and it just really hit me.

My mind has been wiped clean of so much emotional shit over the past couple of years that that line stood out so vividly. Echoes of emotions within my brain...

Where my life will lead me in the next year, I don't know. So very much has happened that I cannot even begin to imagine.

Though, whatever I do, I do know that I am not "in control" of things, meaning, there are such greater powers at work.

I am just happy to be here for now. I hope that you are too....