Bette Noir to the Romantic Heart #4 - LOVE

This was no starry-eyed damsel looking dreamily into his eyes and declaring, "It just doesn't matter, no matter where we go, no matter what we have, no matter what happens, as longs we are together, that's all that matters."

Meg Ryan said it to Tom Hanks throughout the eighties and early nineties after all. Bergman said it to Bogey fifty years before that., but Bogey knew better, and put her on that plane.

No. This was a definite reversal of that. The look, saying without words, "You, your presence, your touch, your voice; it's not enough. I am not willing to go through that struggle with you."

 I wander between two thoughts. What was he thinking? Was it because he knew she would always regret staying in Casablanca? Or was he really thinking that putting her on that plane was best for her and he would be the one to suffer and that she would get over it in time. I can make a judgement, that I don't want to believe, that he was using her all along and with the seeming lack of concern as he walked into the fog with Claude Rains. He could have easily walked into the fog with Bergman - a much happier ending - a Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks ending - that neither fit the time nor the place.

Bette Noir to the Romantic Heart #3 - WAR!

The Romance of War died along with General George C. Scott*. He said "Wonder weapons? By God, I don't see the wonder in them. Killing without heroics? Nothing is glorified? Nothing is reaffirmed? No heroes, no cowards, no troops, no generals. Only those who are left alive, and those who are left...dead. I'm glad I won't live to see it."

He did not. Having never been fired at, I am the least qualified to comment, but it seems to me that war is ugly and always has been. It's only saving grace, if it could be called that, is the romance that used to be attached to it. It meant something beyond the living or dying. Soldiers would not agree having been through it, but for others, at the very least, the ideals of honor, courage, and sacrifice, perhaps even the idea that the cause is worthy, was a coping mechanism we could draw on to get through the terror of a loved one coming home injured, maimed, partially alive or not alive at all. Now there is only the pushing of buttons or the pulling of a trigger in far away lands.

 

*yes I know George C. Scott is an actor and not a general. He played General George S. Patton in a very long movie. But I could not find an actual quote from Patton so I merged the two. Besides, from what I can tell, Patton, was not all that heroic in his own right. 

Bette Noir to the Romantic Heart #2 - VENGEANCE!

Comeuppance for a deed done wrong is one of those romantic notions, a Monte-Christ-ian trope, that peace can somehow be attained by yanking another's tooth after they had yanked yours. Superficially, that burn to lash out, to get back at, to inflict a mutual misery seems to provide that peace, that relief. But really, with the benefit of being fortunate enough to look back, it only serves to provide a distraction in the consuming purpose it provides.

Once vengeance is complete, there is an emptiness remaining where purpose once dominated time and space. For a while, this void appears to be a sort of peace; but reality shows that it is only depression disguised as serenity. He put your eye out. You put his eye out. In the end, vengeance and the hatred that comes with it leaves us all blind and toothless.

JOE DOES IT AGAIN! - Muddy Wolf at Red Rocks

Bought a new CD to add to my collection of all things JB:

It's a tribute concert to Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf live at Red Rocks. Everyone knows Joe sounds best live...the disc opens with either Muddy or Wolf talking about the blues, Joe adds his two cents worth too. Hearing these two blues players talk about what they feel when the play, or what they feel that MAKES them play is absolutely fascinating.

One feels the Mississippi Delta in tracks like Mississippi Heart Beat. And in a couple of tracks the songs start out with Muddy or Wolf singing and playing - old recordings sounds like - and then a few bars in JB cranks up the Gibson and finishes it off. One must turn one's volume up to 11.

Tiger in the Tank, Double Trouble, All Aboard (Mean Ole Frisco!), Spoonful (yes that spoonful), All Night Boogie, and Evil are the most notable tracks in my opinion. At the end of the set JB says goodnight to the crowd and to Colorado but, if you read the liner notes, you know there's more. His encore is introduced with "We thought we'd end the night playing some of our own tunes." Crowd erupts. "What harm could come of that?," he says.

Love Ain't a Love Song starts it off. Then the very best version of The Ballad of John Henry- JB gets all distorted and Jimmy Hendrix-ified on the solo. The ubiquitous Sloe Gin, a slightly different take than his acoustic version or the Live From Nowhere In Particular disc. Clearly a crowd favorite.


Then there's Oh, Beautiful!

JB singing. No music.

Oh beautiful, if you were mine
I would write you letters and pour you sweet wine
Oh beautiful why you so blue?
If you can only see the way I see you

That was nice I think. Different from the typical JB, even Mountain Time was a much happier love song. This is mysterious - a good kind of dark shadowy thing. Then just as you are expecting the next chorus, JB and MuddyWolf band crank up a hard driving riff that spins you 180 and then back again to the next verse.

Oh gravity weighing on my soul
Keeps bringing you round back to me
Like dirt to a stone
Oh gravity don't you ever go to sleep
Might wake up in the morning
and she'll be gone from your reach

The vocals come to a silent end, a pause, 2,3,4...and

That damn guitar again!

Last verse same as the first, song ends with the elipses just like in the lyrics below.

Oh beautiful, if you were mine
I would write you letters and pour you sweet wine
Oh beautiful, why you so blue?
If you only can see the way I see you.....

Bette Noir to the Romantic Heart #1

There is a great black beast that mauls, to death, the romantic heart. I think it is called reality. From the cries of "Chivalry is Dead" in the 70's to "Love Ain't A Love Song" in 2015, the hopeless romantic has been disappearing as the world realizes that real life has no end like the movies or our favorite love song. There is no Hallmark ending...perhaps there is no ending at all; perhaps life goes on in a singular, painful straight line, punctuated by the occasional euphoria of the hope of a happy ending. Maybe, just maybe, my heart is just broken and I will soon get over it. Maybe I am so happy I feel sad. Maybe, after all of this, it's just indigestion.


This is a new series of posts called Bette Noir (Black Beast) to the Romantic Heart - it is sad. Sorry.

Home Didn't Change While I Was Gone; I Changed Before I Came Back

Going Home

"You can't go home again?" Why? I've often pondered this question, usually, shortly after trying to go home again. I usually end up assuming that home had changed. "Why can't it all just be as it was?" After talking to a good friend, I've had a change of mind. He said, "Home isn't where you were, it's where you are and home changes with you. When you go back home you find that it has changed because you have changed because you've carried it with you the whole time."


I think he was right. The home I see and touch and hear and feel changes because I change. The drift between what I remember home to be and what it now, is because of the changing perspective I have during my absence. I can "see" home from the outside. But I can't "see" the "me" from the inside. As I drift on the inside, by degrees, it goes unnoticed by me and I assume I am standing still. I also expect Home to be standing still with me. But I am not standing still. I am drifting. Now separate yourself from home, for a year, two years, or more and come back. You've drifted. Home has not. Home now seems foreign and we ask why it did not stay as it was? It did.  It's me that has changed.


Life, if I recall my favorite but all too often forgotten philosophy, is meant to be lived in a straight line. Circling back is wasted motion.


"There is no such thing as a decision. There never was. There's whether you've had a good day or a bad day, there's going forward because there is nothing behind. And running forward- because if you stand still any longer you'll fall over. There's movement or there's stagnation, there's the past that drives you..."- John le Carre, The Night Manager

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The Dark Matters - fragment that went nowhere #1

"Night is, as it were, a hand placed on our soul. At certain hideous and solemn hours we feel that which is beyond the wall of the tomb encroaching on us."

- Victor Hugo, The Man Who Laughs

Chapter 1
I awake at two thirty in the morning, heart racing, sweat soaked, and in a panic. I had not been dreaming, or at least I do not remember a dream. But I am convinced she is there, knocking at my door.

"I will not let you go!" she says.

Within just a few minutes as my vision clears from sleep and the vortex of a rapid rise from my bed slows and the room once again stands still, I realize that this is not so. There is no one at my door. No camper upon my steps. No way She could ever find me even in this technologically advanced world where information on anyone and everyone is just a Google away. I lie back down and quickly succumb to deep exhausted sleep.

At three thirty, it happens again.

Thump! Thump! Thump! this time it is not She standing before me. It is her minion, side-kick is an altogether too comical and flighty description. It is He, a handsome rugged man when viewed in the physical; a stumpy, imperfect amalgamation of stubborness and pride when viewing the soul. His thick middle finger extended from the stumpy, thick muscled fist is pounding my chest. The thumping I took for a knock at my door was in reality the echo caused by this grotesque finger tapping firmly on my chest. There are two things that haunt me. This finger and then the face, stoic but for the turned down mouth as if He were going to weep. This face comprised of eyes that pierce me through my adam's apple, a fear inducing, projectile. Thoughts are projectiles and his were megaton bombs, their whistle and sonic boom make me able to understand his message before the words proceed from his twisted mouth.

"I am your father. You can't change that!" Thump, thump, thump.