Lillian

It’s true you’re only twenty-five, Lillian

But what matters most is that you’re alive, Lillian

Life’s just a pattern that’s always repeating

The clock on the shelf might be over-heating

But listen, your heart is now beating

It’s you now, you’re one a million

The wheel just keeps turning

It may seem to the eye of the discerning

Nobody sees and nobody’s learning

But in all eternity there’s only one Lillian

The history book and the map, Lillian

Want to box you up into a trap, Lillian

All the codes you’ve so long hated

Return as if they had been fated

The ticking of time cannot be sedated

The routine has become so vaudevillian

The cycles are never completed

The universe never depleted

But don’t think that you’ll be defeated

As long as you’re here you are Lillian

I Sing the Body Atomic

Me trying to channel the Captain channeling Walt Whitman (if that's not obvious)

Well ah take off your shoes

And now take off your pants

And ah take down the doors 

But leave the windows to look through

Just draw the blinds open

Draw the blinds right open

Then draw the window, draw the mirror

And keep on drawing till you draw yourself

One day the sun won’t shine

The sun will stay in bed, won’t care to shine

But I won’t mind and you won’t need to mind

As long as you can feel that beat

All ya need’s the beat, that great big atomic beat

Rub those atoms together and feel the heat

Feel the heat, heal the light

And feel my heart, feel the heat

Yeah those little atoms in orbit

All turned on and shining bright

Shining like my heart and I didn’t forget to smile today

No I didn’t forget my heart

Well we can make that sun

If we have to we can break that sun

Every atom shines on shines on through

It’s that boogie momma beat

It’s the birds and the bees you see shine through

The birds are shining and the bees are too

All that light it’s two bees shining, shine shine on

Hear that boogie-woogie beating in your heart

Draw the doors and windows and blinds wide

Open ‘em wide and deep inside you

Rub those atoms together and feel the heat

Feel the heat and feel the beat, that boogie momma beat

FSK

Mister Francis Scott Key, after all the fanfare

The question remains: are we saved or forsaken

You had asked it yourself: is our country still there

Is there anything left with the pounding we’ve taken?

Will the rockets and bombs prove to be all that strong
Leaving us just a question in our national song?

With so much that’s been damaged, say what can we save

In this land of the free and the home of the brave?

Mister Francis Scott Key, you yourself have done wrong

It’s a truth we ignore, but it can’t be denied

And the words we don’t say, the verse we won’t sing

That our founders themselves had stories we hide

But where is the blame? And where is the shame

If the peril in the night we cannot even name

And what is our debt to the native and slave

In this land of the free and the home of the brave?

Today's Verse: 5 December 2023

There's another cyclone raging in the bay

Souvenirs are strewn across its rocky shores

Torn to pieces by the last one

That passed this way before

There's a cyclone, mighty cyclone

There's a cyclone in the bay

I think I want to get out of here

Now its been too many years

Many years stuck in this place

This place I came to escape

To escape indifferent fate

But traffic's at a standstill

No good choices do remain

A low pressure system

Spreads out like a duvet

The airport's closed forever

There's a cyclone in the bay

Jymn now you too have arrived at that age celebrated in the Beatles song.  May you be needed and fed for another year and many more.

Your sincerely,

Wasting Away

Flag Day

 As part of my ongoing project to write a song for every holiday

Flags are waving throughout the land

Come on now strike up the band

I don’t really understand

It’s Flag Day, Flag Day

From every car lot, every mall

Flags are flying straight and tall

Stand up and salute them all


It’s Flag Day, Flag Day

Everywhere the flags are flying

Everywhere they’re on display

It is very mystifying

Why flags should have a special day

There’s no speech, no oratory

No one ever tells the story

All we do is wave Old Glory

It’s Flag Day, Flag Day

Geography of Sorrow

Dennis had said that he wanted to do some new recordings on the theme of "Cosmic American Music," which was Gram Parsons term for his own music, mixing the country music of that era with hippie music.  I don't think that's what Dennis means, I think he just means our songs but with slide guitar and National steel, but here's what I came up with as a first attempt at my own version of it:

The Geography of Sorrow

I placed my flag in the new world

To flourish and to burgeon

And threw myself on the green land

As if it were a virgin

And though I thought I’d conquered it

It all turned contradictory

I found there was no apple pie

In what had seemed a victory

What’s the geography of sorrow?

What’s the geography of tears?
How do we map the loss

The hatred and the fears?

This land’s become my body

A map, immense and vast

It always flows out bountifully

But hides behind a mask

The land remains eternal

Though it’s life’s as short as mine

Silent as a history book

But ticking, watching time

What’s the geography of sorrow?

What’s the geography of tears?
How do we map the loss

The hatred and the fears?

I felt a mighty anger

Fire flooding from above

I’ve felt the wrath of fear

But this is wrath of love

It’s I who am now guilty

It’s I who played the whore

I kneel down and bow my head

Dressed as a conquistador

What’s the geography of sorrow?

What’s the geography of tears?
How do we map the loss

The hatred and the fears?

It rained the other night--always welcome in Northern California--and I felt some twinges in my right ankle.  It took me a few moments to realize that this my old football injury from St. John's greeting me from across 45 years. There are some things the body doesn't forget.

Happy birthday Johny!

 Now the earth's gone around the sun sixty-three times since it first shown on your budding body. And today it starts its round again. Have a good trip, one more time.

If it has a frame, it's a work of art

 

Tracy & Frida, October 10, 2023

RIP Kenneth Anger

 https://www.theguardian.com/film/2023/may/25/kenneth-anger-obituary

Dennis goes solo

 http://dennisfinnegan.com/new-recordings-2

Latest from Laco

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Hear No Evil

The sounds at night. The sounds I hear at night.
I hear—I do not hear—I hear a tune
The silence and the song is what I hear.
What I don’t hear is you. I don’t hear you.

I hear no—
I fear no—
I hear no evil

I dream of how we’d walk out through the hours
I’d hear: click clack. The ticking. Then it stops .
When I look you’re not beside me. You’re gone.
Still I catch your footprints on the sidewalk

I hear no—
I fear no—
I hear no evil

You’re gone. The song goes on. The song is gone.
No chords. Not even notes. Perhaps just urges.
The silence and the song. But what I want
I want right now. The darkness. Silence. Perfect.

I hear no—
I fear no—
I hear no evil

Steal softly through sunshine...

 Saw Eugene Chadbourne the other evening at the Museum of Art Brut in Lausanne.  Small but very appreciative full house, mostly "young people", i.e., younger than me.  He sang and played a lot of nice songs. His Beefheart cover filled me with joy. I saw him once in Boston about twenty years ago, double bill with Jimmy Carl Black. I think this was better. He's the only musician besides myself I've seen play the Marauder.  Alas, he's sold the parts.

 We were at some sort of county fair/battle of the bands event. Tracy hadn't shown up yet, she was stuck in traffic or something, but we managed to tear up "Spheres" with just the three of us.

#9 Bream Song

The lake in the song is Lac Leman, and the bridge the good old Pont de Mont Blanc, which had a way of shaking as you walked across that now would make me think an earthquake was on the way.  I forget if I actually dreamed this, or imagined it as I was walking across the bridge stoned or just made up at some point.

I dreamed as I was walking across the lake

Just a dream, just a dream, just a dream

The bridge beneath my feet began to shake

Just a dream, just a dream, just a dream

A school of flying fish rose up in synch

Like dead poets, bless the poets

Electric yellow, neon green and pink

Like dead poets, bless the poets

I recognized those fish flying overhead

Just a dream, just a dream, just a dream

Were the poets I read in my youth, now dead

Just a dream, just a dream, just a dream

The shining spirits of poets who had died

Like dead poets, bless the poets 

Through neglect, disease or suicide

Like dead poets, bless the poets

Just a dream, just a dream, just a dream 

Like dead poets, bless the poets

Just a dream, just a dream, just a dream 

Like dead poets, bless the poets

The only beauty it seems that we revere

Just a dream, just a dream, just a dream

Will flash and shine, explode, then disappear

Like dead poets, bless the poets

Like Berryman and Dylan, if you please

Just a dream, just a dream, just a dream

Anne Sexton, Sylvia and Weldon Kees

Like dead poets, bless the poets

We all so love to dream of a special heaven

Just a dream, just a dream, just a dream

For rock stars who have died at 27

Like dead poets, bless the poets

And what’s illuminated in their wake?

Just a dream, just a dream, just a dream

Is it the blue of sky or blue of lake?

Like dead poets, bless the poets

Just a dream, just a dream, just a dream 

Like dead poets, bless the poets

Just a dream, just a dream, just a dream 

Like dead poets, bless the poets, &c.