ALBUMS: Original Gold Hits. Vol. 1 (Johnny Cash, 1969); Ticket to Ride (Carpenters, 1970)
MVC Rating: Carpenter 3.0/$$; Cash 4.5/ $$$
Iconic is a word way overused these days. I should know, I love the word so I overuse it.
Catherine Willis( Oliver) signed copy;.
But I’m tying Johnny Cash and Karen Carpenter together because their voices, wildly, widely different, are iconic voices in the USA and beyond.
Iconic as in widely known and distinguished by excellence. Thanks Merriam-Webster.
Now I’m doing the cliché of using a dictionary definition as a lede (newspaper spelling for opening).
Focus. Stay focused.
Voices. “Hello I’m Johnny Cash.” You can hear it as you read it.
Not beautiful but craggy as a Tennessee ridge. Lifeworn and tinged with emotion.
His voice elevated the sometimes banal words he sang. Oh, he had dozens of classics, but there were some duds in his decades of songwriting and singing. Ballad of a Teenage Queen? I could live without that one for, oh, the rest of my life.
Karen on the other hand had the voice of an angel. A relaxed contralto or alto, I don’t know much about these music types. But it was different from the high timbre styles popular today. It was soft, deep and ever so slightly sultry. Like Mom putting you to sleep with a lullaby. It was butter. This Ticket to Ride album is their first and it was originally called ”Offering.’ It suffers from too much of brother Richard singingl and overdone arrangements. It was almost as if they didn’t know what they had with Karen’s voice.
The Johnny Cash record is a compilation of his early hits and they are iconic, or classic if you will.
Folsom Prison Blues, a song he wrote, has the classic line: “I shot a man in Reno, just to watch him die.” Now he’s stuck in Folsom prison worrying about all the good food he is missing when the train comes presaged by its lonesome whistle.
A cold callous murdering line in a song that somehow resonated with mainstream audiences as part of the deep-throated storytelling of Johnny Cash. He had some tragedy in life, a couple of arrests for amphetamines but he never served hard time beyond a few short stints in jail. He did however play live at San Quentin, and his appearance helped turn around the life of an inmate. I wanna be a singer, convict Merle Haggard said after hearing Cash play.
Karen of course faced her own demons. What happened to her, starving herself to death, belied her persona, her songs, her voice. One can see the Man in Black crossing over once in awhile to the dark side. But few beyond Karen Carpenter’s inner circle, knew the pain inside Karen. From this experiment of a first album, she went on to produce standards of vocal pop, Closer to You, We’ve Only Just Begun. That’s what we’ll remember her for.
Counting down my 678 vinyl records before I die of brain disease.
Here are two albums I’m going to review together because, well, it seems like a good idea as I type this.
There’s nothing that really ties them together other than they were out of the mainstream of rock. Captain Beyond was a hard rocking psychedelic band made up of members of several well -known hard rock bands: Deep Purple, Iron Butterfly, and Johnny Winter.
Captain Beefheart, on the other hand, is kind of a legendary California artist who put the avant in avant-garde. Surrealism is another word associated with him. He collaborated with Frank Zappa some. He was apparently considered a child prodigy and sculpted at age 3. ‘Nuff said. The double LP Trout Mask Replica was considered his masterpiece.
The music of Captain Beyond starts promisingly enough with Sufficiently Breathless, which is the airy light and nicely played title track. But from here on, it’s hit and mostly miss including some spacey backward tracking loop leading to a sort of a Sourthern-fried jam band ditty called ‘Everything is a Circle.’ I agree. But am not too hot on the song which accelerates as it moves amid a glossy crunch of power chords, into nowhere, or maybe the beyond.
While Beyond take themselves seriously, Beefheart aka Dan Van Vliet and crew clearly does not. With songs like Hey Garland I Dig Your Tweed Coat, and Semi-multicolored Caucasian. The band flows in and out of traditional song structures (usually out), using accoustic guitar interludes, with switched up thrash as background to Van Vliet’s surrealistic raps.
For example: “Bumblebees, their wings arranged with pictures out of the past and the rainbow baboon gobbled fifteen fisheyes with each spoon’
That’s not surreal, that’s twisted Captain Kangaroo. Or just bad sushi?
For examples of both Captains’ strange music listen below.
Counting down my 678 vinyl records before I die of brain disease.
When Particles Collide signed album. I saw them play on Eric’s back porch.
ALBUM : Ecotone/This Town (2016)
I am once again interrupting the order of MVC to play a new album by an up and coming band.
The band is called When Particles Collide and it has an unusual story.
This is a wife and husband duo: Sasha G. Alcott and Christopher M. Viner.
That’s not what is so unusual, though. Remember Sonny and Cher, Captain and Tennille? Well, Sonny, this is no Captain and Tennille, (just thought I’d Cher.)
What’s unusual is that the couple — although playing locally and touring occasionally off and on from their home state of Maine — decided at the ripe young ages of 40-something to quit their day jobs to tour the country for 14 months. Doing that rock‘n roll thing. When I say country, I mean country. Their Unstoppable Tour, after dozens of dates in the great Midwest and beyond, WPC still has plenty more dates planned, ranging from West Virginia to Florida.
My ‘old man’s league’ basketball buddy Eric Stockman is a friend of the band and I listened to them play live on his porch here in the Birmingham metro area a few months back. I initially plannedto put my autographed record into my pile and do a post when the W’s rolled around on MVC. But given the fact that they are currently on tour, I just decided I’d go ahead and do this post.
They were great in their porch concert. A good friend bought me their album which Sasha and Chris graciously signed.
It’s a scorcher with stinging guitars and strong vocals from Sasha reminiscent of Heart’s Ann Wilson or Pat Benatar to reach back a ways for a reference. Way more Joan Jett and not at all Captain and Tennille. There’s also a Talking Heads, Suburbs artsy funky thing about them. (Suburbs, wow, pulled that one from some ninja brain cell that’s fighting off rogue proteins.)
I like the album a lot but I did miss one thing from the porch concert and that was a little softer sound such as when they did a gorgeous cover of John Prine’s ‘Angel From Montgomery.’
Coincidentally, I am also pleased to announce that they will be releasing, according to Stockman, an acoustic album. Can’t wait. And while I still have the mic, I’d request ‘Angel.’ And if the duo would consider a suggestion for a cool funky song befitting Sasha’s vocal abilities, I’d love to hear her tackle Sly Stone’s ‘If You Want Me to Stay.’
That was about LBD awareness but also about basketball, one of my passions and one of the subjects I want to write about more in this blog. (You can read my other basketball-oriented posts by clicking on the basketball category on the right side of your screen.)
So here we go. I want to discuss playground or street basketball: the unspoken rules, the etiquette or lack thereof, the cautions and how to keep yourself from getting punked. A street word, punked or punk. You hear it a lot on the court. It basically means you get embarrassed by your opponent.
I currently play weekly with a great group of about 15 men from various walks of life. We’ve had loud arguments, we have had hard fouls, we have had some questionable calls. But we’re not really playing street ball here. A Baptist church gym in Irondale is a long way from the famed Ruckers Park in New York City.
These rules can apply to all of this range but probably applies to street games moreso than church games. (Though the church games may surprise you).
These rules come from my observations, not just ringside but in the games. I have played with NBA players (just a few times), college players, YMCA stars and playground legends. And just plain folk trying to get their hoop on.
Oliver dribbles by Chris Harress. Mike’s Madness. Trish Crain photol
In my younger days, I used to go to pick-up games just about anywhere I could find them. I’d take my ball and shoes on vacation. When we lived in Orlando I don’t know how many times I played on the St. Petersburg beachside court while we were on vacation. (Catherine is a saint).
I’ve played in pick-up games in my 20s, 30s, 40s, and still going a little bit in my 50s. I’ve played on the roof of the Orlando Sentinel newspaper production center, which I’ll write more about in a later post. According to the previous Commissioner Gene Kruckemyer, I was (at least at one time) the all time leading scorer in that twice – a –week game. I played about 10 years there. I’m pretty sure there is no actual written documentation of Kruck’s assessment. And mind you, he’s not talking about the best all time player up there, he’s talking about a survivor who developed lizard skin to play in such conditions. (Get on a roof in the middle of an Orlando August and just sit there. You’ll have a puddle working in about five minutes. We had big athletic long distance runners come and fold in the heat b/c they ran outside before dawn or trained inside during summer months. They didn’t have that heat stamina like a few of us regulars had developed, a stamina fueled by lots of hydration mind you.
After all these years, I’ve only been to the emergency room three times from playing hoops. Once in Orlando, at a park playground, for scratching my retina after getting poked in the eyeball. I had to wear a patch over my eye. Once at Drake HS in Marin for scratching/gouging my head on a chain link fence above my eye: 33 stitches for that. And once in Leesburg, Fla., for breaking my leg so badly the bone came out of my skin (compound fracture).
The dozens of knee and ankle sprains have left me with tendons that are sort of like busted guitar strings. They are so loose they don’t really sprain any more.
Here’s the rules, which like legs, are meant to be broken.
And then argued about.
Don’t Say Sorry
Remember what Ali McGraw said to Ryan O’Neal: “Love is never having to say you’re sorry.” For the love of basketball never say you are sorry. Never say you are sorry about a bump or a foul or an accidental trip. I know this goes against a lot of people’s natural inclination to be, well, nice. But don’t do it. Unless the dude is leaving the court in an ambulance, do not say that word. Your guys will think you are weak and quit throwing it to you. Their team will get an extra boost by sensing weakness. I don’t know the physiology or psychology behind it, just don’t do it. Many pick-up games include a guy who goes around apologizing for a foul, his missed lay-up or bad defensive play. Sorry means you’re sorry. If you must say something, pat your chest and say ‘My bad,’ (it kind of sounds like ‘I’m bad.’)
2) Don’t Trash Talk (Unless You are good at it)
In the San Geronimo Valley west of Fairfax, Calif., I played for years. New faces weren’t uncommon in this part of the Bay Area , and one guy I remember on my team thought he was all that. He was rather large and a fair ball player, but nothing more than some of the talent I played with in that area. He turns to me and says, ‘I thought you Valley boys were supposed to be so good.’ He spat out a profanity. And he was on my team! Trash talking his own teammate. Later in the game I put up a shot deep in the corner that rimmed out and he yells out, ‘Come on man take good shots. Jeeezus.’ Walking back on defense I got close to him and said, ‘ Look, man you don’t know me.’ In that short phrase, i’m sending a message that he’s never seen me before. How do you know that shot is out of range? It wasn’t.
And the other players on the court knew. Because they knew me.
We locked eyes and I knew the words I used had an effect. I was using words often heard in other street games. I continued to shoot because the other teammates — kept finding me with a pass. Made a few in a row and he got quiet.
3) Don’t Fight (but give every indication you will)
I’ve played in 100s of pick-up games and have seen maybe 3 or 4 real fights. Most of it is a ‘hold me back’ sort of fight where two guys start pushing and shoving and teammates hold them off before it escalates. I lost my temper once — this was in Oakland –when somebody fouled me hard in the back of my head with their elbow as I was going for a layup. I turned around. He was walking away and I bounced the ball off the back of his head. Little bounce. He turned around. “Did you throw the ball at me? His voice was escalating as he started quickly to charge me. I squared myself and he bumped chests with me and continued his lack of respect for my personal space by touching noses with me. I don’t really want to word-for-word the exchange but it had to do with him saying he was going to mess me up, or words to that effect. I responded with equal force by saying, then let’s go you big bad doo doo head or something perhaps a little more ‘street.’ He looked hard at me and I looked hard back, and it ended as most of these do with nothing. But I did see in a run-down recreation center in Apopka, Fla. an interesting nose to nose confrontation gone bad. Two guys were in each other’s face. One guy grabs the other by the neck and squeezes, which is no fun for the victim. But the squeez-ee knew something about defensive fighting: He snapped his head forward, head-butted him, splattering the squeezer’s nose like an overripe cherry tomato. Fight over.
4) Don’t Bring a Ball (but keep one in your trunk for emergencies.)
In Eustis, Fla. I played in a game with strangers. We had some good games. They nicknamed me Pistol Pete after I did a double clutch layup ending with a finger-roll bucket. I played and I left.Then I remembered. I forgot my basketball. I went back, about 30 minutes later some were still playing a few were missing. Where’s my ball? I asked. What ball? That was just one time. It took at least three or four sacrificial 25-dollar balls before I created the rule.
5) Don’t call wimpy fouls (or other non street-ball violations.)
A real foul must alter a shot that potentially would have gone in. A real foul moves bodies; the slapping in a real foul echoes through the gymnasium. Blood is evidence that a real foul has occurred. A corollary to this rule is to refrain from calling violations that frankly are written in invisible ink on the street/pick-up ball circuit. For example never call 3 seconds in the lane. If I or anyone else wants to get in the lane, spread out a blanket, bring a sandwich and Grapico, let them do it and suffer the consequences. Also, never call an illegal or moving pick. I know I know, some will disagree with this but 50 percent of game time would be wasted due to arguing if illegal picks are called. By the same token, rarely call traveling, double dribble, or palming. And please if you touched it last before going out, own up to it. We don’t have replay camera. Flip a coin but do it fast, the game is waiting.
6) Cease, stop, desist:Don’t say ‘And one’ as soon as the ball leaves your hands. And-one means you made the bucket and were fouled which in some leagues means that you get a free throw shot. ‘And-one’ means bucket (two points) and another shot at one point from the foul line. Let me in on a little secret you ‘And One dolts. There is no free throw shooting in a pick-up game. Duh! There is no AND ONE. It’s just another way to say FOUL. In street ball if you make the bucket and are fouled that’s it. You get the bucket. If you miss, your team gets the ball back again because of that foul. AND-ONE lunkheads just heave it up say the magic words and hope it goes in. Like a broken clock, its right at least twice a day. When it finally does go in, they run around the court pumping their fists. Remember they are celebrating nothing. They may as well say And-Nothing. DISCLAIMER: I am in no way dissing And 1 street ball organizers (that sounds funny) that brought us Skip 2 My Lou, the Professor and Hotsauce. Different topic altogether. Iove those guys.
7) Have fun. Seriously. Do I have to write this? Yes because the above rules I just wrote make it sound like it would be better to go ahead and get that root canal without anesthetic than show up at the park. But we ballers are driven by this. I used to stand in rain with several others waiting for enough for a game. I once went to a game in unfamiliar territory where a guy who had a 40-ounce malt liquor in his hand at 9 a.m. reminded everyone that he had a gun in his car.
I watched him closely for several games to be prepared to run if he went to the car. The guy actually was assigned to cover me. He had a scowl on his face. I never made eye contact and passed a lot so I could live to play another day.
POSTSCRIPT FOR TV B-ball announcers. Don’t say”Score the ball.”
As in this kid can really score the ball baby.
What else is there to score with? A Frisbee’?
Redundancy much Vitale and your minions.
Isn’t it enough to say this kid can score. No, apparently, this kid is exceptional at scoring the ball. Overheard, one player complaining to his coach: Gosh coach, I didn’t know we’re supposed to score the ball. Another player: do you mean I need to cut it like when scoring steaks and vegetables. Maybe we are supposed to take it and carve it like a pumpkin?
Arthur is one of my favorite artists. I feel like he has somehow channeled some of the best of my 678 vinyl records and re-created them, absorbed all their influences. Dylan, Stones, Beatles, Lou Reed, James Taylor, John Mellencamp, Small Faces, Byrds, Bad Company, Donovan, Cat Stephens, the Replacements, Violent Femmes.
Rare hand-drawn cover by Arthur for his Temporary People album
This is that A-music artist I mentioned in my previous post that somehow got stuck in the C-section.
He has channeled a lot of music and culled the good stuff. He copies and creates. He can write hits. He can write and perform alternative to alternative. He has, I heard, worked in a record store or was it guitar store? Either way makes sense.
He’s so prolific, I feel like he needs to slow down. His lyrics dip close to cliche but then swing back to poetry: I need to smell your dad’s cigar in the ashtray as you wrote in Redemption Son. That’s concrete; it immediately brings me to where you are at. The cigar summons the ghost.
But, I mean this with all love. There’s something about his tremendous musicianship, his bass to falsetto vocal delivery. He makes beautiful and cathartic songs. I hope he finds that thing that will take it even higher.
‘Cause I been caught in between all I wish for and all I need’
Yes, that’s us. All of us. Good line.
I’ have lot of Arthur on digital. This is my only vinyl record of him. His body of work occurred in the CD era, so I appreciate this album. Here’s a couple videos that only give you a glimpse. Also below is a lyric so simple but so sad. Don’t know if it would help.
If you’re gonna leave, you should say goodbye
You should say goodbye
You should say goodbye
I’m counting my 678 records down and reviewing them one by one, racing the progression of my disease, Lewy Body dementia.
As I finished off the B’s (finally) this weekend, I thought I’d give a brief update on the numbers.
I have reviewed, by my own uncertain tally, 71 albums. That means 607 to go.
My total post number is 82. Some of those posts were not ‘countdown’ reviews but intermissions, interjections or just my impressions. (It’s all right to have a good time, it’s all right). Oops. Diversion.
Yes, the B’s were a long haul.
Headed toward my vinyl countdown
Of the 71 albums reviewed, 12 were A’s. I counted. That means there were 59 B’s. Wonder why so many B’s and so few A’s; maybe it starts with the influence of the Beatles. Only to be followed by Beat Farmers, Bongos and Bread.
So, 71 albums reviewed since Sept. 16 when I posted my first two reviews, King Sunny Ade and Aerosmith. Back of the napkin math, I’m knocking out about 20 albums a month or 5 albums per week. (Remember this is on top of some of my other essay attempts.For example, this post will not count as a review toward my countdown.)
So at 20 albums a month that means I’ll need about 30 more months to get to Zappa or Zevon or Zzzzzz, whomever may be waiting. I am going alphabetically by artist, realizing (now) that ultimately leaves us in the end with a Z to A listing on the blog. Oh well, things are a little upside down anyway.
So let’s see what we see in the C’s. I see perhaps some CCR, some CSNY, , ample EC, and some more obscure ones you never even heard of like Crack the Sky or Lee Clayton. But guess what, there is likely going to be a song or album or artist on this blog that (eventually) may deliver the soundtrack of your life. That’s how much I believe in the power of music.
Brett L. https://www.flickr.com/photos/brettlider/72767718/in/photostream/
Speaking of such an album or at least a contender for being one of my favorite artists. I’m going to drop an ‘A’ album review here soon. The A artist, Joseph Arthur, and this unusual vinyl 2007 record called Temporary People, was misfiled. I rummage through my records quite a bit and sometimes do that. So it’s catch up time on My VInyl Countdown. The ‘new’ vinyl record given to me several years ago by my daughter Hannah and her husband Tom, who knew my fondness for Arthur. Hannah and I actually went to see him in San Francisco at the Bottom of the Hill. Before that my wife Catherine and I saw him in downtown SF, at the Great American Music Hall, from a table at the front.
So stay tuned for that post. Meanwhile, check out this Arthur song from his earliest days as the former Ohio native and Atlanta record store clerk does one of his early songs, which was resurrected by Martin, the Coldplay guy, Stipe, the REM guy and Arthur to raise money for Hurricane Katrina victims.
ALBUMS: Singles Going Steady (1979); A Different Kind of Tension (1980)
MVC Rating: Singles, 5.0$$$; Different: 4.5/ $$$
Punk. I’ll be using that word in a totally unrelated way about street basketball. Posting that one in the next few days.
But I don’t have a lot of what you would definitely call punk music. I love the Clash and have some but they were more than punk. Listen to Sandinista. A friend of mine in 9th grade (mid to late 1970s) brought over a record by a new sensation, the Sex Pistols.
God save the Queen, she ain’t no human being, they spat-sang
It was three chords turned up to 11 spewing anger, a response or stand-up to classic rock music played by multimillionaires, Pink Floyd, the Who, Rolling Stones, all aging rock stars who ‘made it.’
The Sex Pistols point was heard, loudly. That point, we’re mad dammit. Angry about the way things are set up in society, so the next best thing to a revolution is to scream about it at volumes sure to sink into our fat heads.
Problem was, the music was pretty much driven by relentless spewed anger, effective on one level but often lacking basic musicality. The older groups, such as the Who actually did do this kind of stuff decades ago, smashing instruments, screaming they won’t get fooled again, and being, well, punks. But of course that wasn’t the point. The point was, the punks said that the music was for the people not the greedy record industry and be angry about that as your starting point.
Enter the Buzzcocks. A most influential band that had clever lyrics, a driving raucous rhythm section (bass and drum) and rock and roll, Chuck Berry, Bo Didley guitar chords.
Lyrics? Well the song ‘Orgasm Addict’ was banned from British radio. My favorite songs off of the two records I have are ‘Hollow Inside,’ ‘Everybody’s Happy Nowadays,’ and the more ambitious songs like ‘I Believe’ and the title track. Catchy punky short songs that some listeners will inevitably say sounds all the same. If really doesn’t, especially when you get to the ‘Tension’ record. Some thought provoking slam music here.
Buzzcocks are an obvious influence of Green Day, those Berkeley garage punksters that actually did become multimillionaires with the Buzzcock sound. For an interesting but silly debate on that influence, go here.
Counting down my 678 vinyl records before I die of brain disease.
ALBUMS: Trap Door (1982); Proof Through The Night (1983); T Bone Burnett (1986); The Talking Animals (1987)
MVC Rating: Trap: 4.0/$$; Proof: 4.0/$$; T Bone 4.5/$$$; Talking 3.5/$$
I think I may be the only one in Alabama to have four T Bone Burnett albums. For one thing, Burnett is much better known as a producer than a singer-songwriter. And he is generally better known among fellow record industry folks, albeit as one of the best in the business.
So there’s not a lot folks around with any T Bone Burnett albums, much less four.
His resume is not short on his work for others: Los Lobos, Elvis Costello, John Mellencamp, Counting Crows, and the BoDeans are just a few who are recipients of Burnett’s excellent production values and arrangements. He’s won Grammy’s for the movie soundtracks of, among others, Cold Mountain, Walk the Line and O Brother Where Art Thou (one of my favorite movies and one of my favorite soundtracks.)
As for his own recordings, they are interesting, literate and sometimes peculiar.
I got interested in T Bone after reading about him leading a back-up band for Bob Dylan, probably in the 70s or 80s. The Rolling Thunder Review it was called.
I bought Trap Door in 1982 and enjoyed the extended play record. This EP had six songs, more than a 45 but less than an LP, long-playing record.
With sharp guitar from David Mansfield, this was good top to bottom. Burnett obliquely channels some songs through his Christianity, but he is not usually identified as a Christian artist. Although he has often played with like-minded musicians.
Re-visiting these albums I am struck by the fact that the least ambitious, I like the best, and the most ambitious I like the least. My favorite, the self-titled 1986 album is country folk at its strumming best.
River of Love by T Bone deserves to be a classic. Little daughter and I Remember are lovely. Oh No Darling makes you want to do some swinging round the room.
The Talking Animals album, is his most complex and least accessible. He enlists great help, Bono, Ruben Blades, Peter Case, and Tonio K. (More on Tonio later in this blog, he’s one of my favorites.)
Is Purple Heart with Bono on background vocals about Prince?
The Tonio collaboration on the song The Strange Case of Frank Cash and the Morning Paper is a talk-sing sort of parable. I believe they may be making a statement on the nature of truth as revealed in the symbolism of story. You know like the Bible, hence the title of the album.
One Amazon reviewer giving the Frank Cash song five stars called it ‘one of the strangest and most imaginative songs of the 20th Century.’
Looking back I see a stream of morality running through his songs, not moralism per se, but morality in such songs as Ridiculous Man, Hefner and Disney, and the tongue in cheek cover of Diamonds are a Girl’s Best Friend.
Robert Christgau, my go-to critic for succinct wisdom, gave Burnett good reviews in the early years but soured on him over time, specifically over the Talking Animals. Christgau acknowledges and recognizes his intelligence and accomplishments, Grammy’s and all, but “why hasn’t he developed any kind of audience?
“Because for both a roots guy and a Christian guy (converted Dylan, some say), he seems like a cold son of a bitch.”
Aw Christgau, didn’t you hear the sweet song, presumably about his daughter, called ‘Little Daughter? You know the one where he brings her clothes of rayon. Rayon?
Don’t want to give short shrift to Trap Door and Proof through the Night. Some great songs in there, After All these Years, When the Night Falls, I Wish You Could Have Seen Her Dance.
For my money his best record is the ‘O Brother’ soundtrack, an album he produced and one of the great records of all time, as it introduced a whole new generation to bluegrass, gospel and folk-blues.
An interview with the man reveals a lot about his knowledge of recording and production and engineering.
Counting down my 678 vinyl records before I die of brain disease.
Tell me if you do this. I set clocks ahead of the real time. For example, if it’s 10 a.m., the clock by my bed will say 10:09.
Same in the car, though it might say 10:08. I’m already feeling the smiles of recognition as you read this.
I, and you who do this, are trying to trick ourselves.
When you look up at the clock you go: Oh my gosh it’s 8:15, I have an 8:30 meeting. Adrenaline kicks in. Then you remember don’t you, Groundhog Day suckers, that it’s actually only 8:06. Just doing that calculation stimulates your brain again. You’re up.
(Some people do do this, right? I’m just hoping it’s not some LBD symptom and everyone is out there going, ‘All righty then.’ Onward.)
People familiar with this blog know I have been diagnosed with Lewy Body dementia, about a year ago. It’s a degenerative brain disease that affects movement and memory, to varying degrees in varying people. There is no cure and no known cause. But the sad fact is that the average lifespan after initial diagnosis is 4 to 7 years, according to the Lewy Body Dementia Association.
I have time, but probably less of it than the average 58 year-old.
So given this unexpected deadline in my life, I’ve been pondering some big questions about mortality, death, life and existence. You can imagine I’ve been a big hit on the holiday party circuit.
PARTYGOER: Hello Mike, I’m Jim. I am your next door neighbor’s friend’s cousin.
ME: What’s time?
PARTYGOER: (Looking at his watch): Oh it’s 7:50, Ten to 8.
ME: No! What is time?
(I enunciate with dramatic impact on the ‘is’.)
PARTYGOER: (Looks at me and squints after staring at his watch. He knows what time it is, alright: Time to go.)
So forgive my navel gazing. You may want to stop here because I dig myself into a black hole on this one as this blog post goes on.
You may not have time to read about time.
I worry I don’t have time to write about time, but am pulled by a great compulsion to understand more than I understand now. I know this has been studied some by Albert Einstein among others. But let’s just say I’m going to approach this without that extra burden of knowing anything at all about quantum physics.
I don’t have time.
How many times do you hear that? Or say that? What does it mean?
Doesn’t everybody have time? At least up until the end of life. So it’s not that we don’t have time, it’s just that we prioritized the time in a way that there is no more of it for something else.
[Hint No. 2, initiallythe poet and the character,]
But you could make time? You could cancel your 2 p.m. meeting to have lunch with your third grade classmate, whom you haven’t seen in decades, since, well, third grade. He’s just passing through. It’s your decision to make time or not.
Making time for lunch doesn’t mean you actually created any more time; you just replaced one time consumer with another. (BTW, go see the snotty little third grader, he might be interesting. This actually happened to me in Florida and I didn’t make time. Felt guilty for 20 years.)
People after long boring meetings (not at our work place, of course) have been known to say, ‘Well that’s an hour of my life I’ll never get back.”
Buck Chavez, a coach and semi-legendary basketball star in Marin County, Calif., was forever hustling everyone to get our Saturday pick-up games going. He hated the long process of shooting for teams. “Time is one thing they don’t make any more of,” he used to loudly proclaim.
My problem, starting with not having a degree in quantum physics, is that I always want to peek behind the curtain.
How does time work? Einstein has posited that time travel is possible, in theory, but there are so many paradoxes that make it seemingly impossible.
A chat website on a NASA.gov page featured a timely discussion about time travel, saying we are already traveling through time at the rate of 1 hour per hour.
It’s bending it down to something like 50 minutes per hour where time travel would be possible. Is that right? Kind of like messing with the time on your alarm clock. Or maybe that should be 70 minutes per hour? I’m already confusing myself.
Did I mention that I know absolutely nothing about quantum physics. Or the theory of relatives. (Although I do know that sitting in a dull meeting makes time seem unbearably slower than a vacation day on the beach.)
Here’s how the NASA folks on the website explain time travel based on Einstein’s theories.
Say you were 15 years old when you left Earth in a spacecraft traveling at about 99.5% of the speed of light (which is much faster than we can achieve now), and celebrated only five birthdays during your space voyage. When you get home at the age of 20, you would find that all your classmates were 65 years old, retired, and enjoying their grandchildren! Because time passed more slowly for you, you will have experienced only five years of life, while your classmates will have experienced a full 50 years.
So, shoot, keep up the support for Lewy Body dementia research, but I’m keeping an eye on time travel research as well.
A colleague of mine, AL.com and Reckoning columnist John Archibald gave me a book called Einstein’s Dreams. It’s a well regarded fictional collection by Alan Lightman. They are short ruminations of what Einstein might have been dreaming in 1906 when he worked at the patent office in Switzerland, pre-E=MC-squared.
One essay asks us to imagine a world in which people live just one day.
A lifetime is compressed to one turn of earth on its axis, or the rotation is slowed so much that one revolution of the earth occupies a whole human life.
(Hmmm. It doesn’t say anything about dog years . Sorry Gus.)
So one day, one life. That means, the book says, “a man or woman sees one sunrise, one sunset. In this world no one lives to witness the change of the season.”
On the other hand, suppose people live forever, the book says in another essay. Each city would divide into two groups, the Nows and the Laters.
The Nows, knowing they’ll live forever want to take advantage of everything, learning new skills, meeting new family members (think of your Christmas list as your grandchildren and their children live forever and procreating more relatives), trying new jobs, etc. Meanwhile, the Laters sit around and drink coffee and say, eh, I’ve got plenty of time to get to that. Sounds a little like the dichotomy I set up in Random vs. Straight Playlist.
I think I would be a Later, kind of like I think I lean more toward Random. That said, I think right now, I’m a Now.
So science has just enough answers to make it more confusing — and tantalizing. Art, like the Einstein Dreams novel, can help us understand. Or confuse us more.
Who better describes the bittersweet nature of passing time than T.S. Eliot in The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock:
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.
For I have known them all already, known them all:
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;
That’s what time is for us, I think. Measuring, counting minutes and longing for those moments long ago that we see frozen in photographs. And I think it is unfortunate that we see time as a measurement of a thing we don’t really understand.
For us, it’s not really what time is — but it’s what the clock says. Even if you change the time 9 minutes ahead on that clock, that doesn’t mean time changed. It may have momentarily changed your perception of time. But that was an illusion.
Kevin Harris in a forum on the Christian website Reasonable Faith said in a posting:
I think timelessness of God and his creation is the best explanation of all the evidence. True existence seems to be the eternal ‘now.’ Real time is imaginary; the mind imagines it. Imaginary time is what seems real to the human mind. But the human mind is simply observing motion and changes in the physical universe.
And instead of saying all of your goodbyes, let them know
You realize that life goes fast
It’s hard to make the good things last
You realize the sun doesn’t go down
It’s just an illusion caused by the world spinning round
Counting down my 678 vinyl records before I die of brain disease.
I’ve talked to some of my friends, jokingly, suggesting I do a ‘Lewy Mike’ stand-up comedy routine.
Here’s my routine, very much still in the early stages:
I walk out onstage to polite applause.
“Hello,” I say to the rapt, but small audience in a downtown comedy club.
“I am Mike Oliver and I have Lewy Body dementia.”
Scattered chattering, facial contortions of confusion, all related to questions along the lines of what the heck is Lewy Body dementia. I could have gone to see Star Wars over this stuff, a member of the audience might have proclaimed.
So I explain.
“It’s kind of a cross between Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s.”
Oh, the audience murmers, they’ve heard of those devastating degenerative brain conditions.
“And so I ask how many of you here tonight have Parkinson’s or have a loved one with this disease.
“Let’s get a show of shaking hands.”
I peer out and notice a handful of hands in the air, shaking. All right I say.
“Now those with Alzheimers:” (long pause)
I look around. “Well, just forget it.”‘
Um. (sporadic applause, low level booing. Mayday. Mayday. The blood is leaving what’s left of my brain.)
I step up to the microphone. “Uh, can’t you see,” I plead with the audience.
“I’m dying up here.’
Well, guess that is a little dark.
But it’s dark humor, a way to chase away the blues demons. I’ve tried this act to some select friends and we’ve had a good laugh. I want to let them know this condition, as utterly horrible as it is, and I’ve cried after meeting those in late stages knowing that may be me–it will not stop the love and laughing that I adore in my life.
emotion.
The dozens of knee and ankle sprains have left me with tendons that are sort of like busted guitar strings. They are so loose they don’t really sprain any more.
just replaced one time consumer with another. (BTW, go see the snotty little third grader, he might be interesting. This actually happened to me in Florida and I didn’t make time. Felt guilty for 20 years.)