July 21, 2013 If you ever go to Houston, boy, you better walk right, You better not squabble and you better not fight. That cop will arrest you; he’ll sure take you down. You can bet your bottom dollar, you’ll be jail-house bound. Yonder come Miss Rosy - how in the world do you know? I know her by her apron, and the dress she wore. Umbrella on her shoulder, piece of paper in her hand, She’s going to see the gov’nor, to release her man. Brownie McGee and Sonny Terry, “Midnight Special / Too-Nicey Mama” “All art that does not enter the nerves and senses of those who enjoy it, so that they who have experienced it see or feel the world from then on with something of the genius of the artist who has moved them is, in the end, not worth being produced.” Harry Graf Kessler – the Diaries The business card I was using to mark the entry fell out just as I finished copying this down so I don’t have the date. Sometime in the late 1890’s. Books piled up on the floor, stacked on the table, festooned with slips of paper and business cards marking the pages I want to copy from, or refer to for some obscure reason, junk printed off various websites, yellow legal pads full of notes, Rube Goldberg would be proud to claim my system for his own. Yesterday I spent some time cleaning up the apartment to the point of god-awful messy, as opposed to EPA- rated dangerous to your health. All the while considering the challenges facing me vis-à -vis replying to the latest from the future Doc G. Decided the best move would be, insofar as possible, to avoid the challenges. It’s plain I’m not any kind of philosopher, more of what Billy Joe Shaver once described as the “rodeo bum, son of a gun, hobo with stars in his crown” sort. By which I mean to indicate I’ll take my inspiration from wherever I can find it. Speaking of which, inspiration I mean, Friday I’m wading through the heat, heading home, thinking about conspiracies, the way you do, and then I remember something I heard Gore Vidal say that night in Berkeley, something to the effect that we were all of us conspiring there in the hall, as in breathing together, and after thinking a bit more about conspiracy, naturally (a dangerous word, one that most often should be taken ironically) I began thinking about the Greeks, because I’ve not stopped thinking about the Greeks, on and off, ever since the future Doctor G quoted Plato and now I’m mulling over Julian Jaynes’ contention that at least in the Iliad, if not in the Odyssey, consciousness is held to be found in the lungs (phrenes), thus with the breath, or breathing. I believe you can see where this is heading. Yesterday, along with the cleaning, and avoiding, and writing the beginnings of a reply to FDG, I’m reading a bit of Kessler on account of having just finished “Age of Wonder” and not finding anything else that compelling, and wouldn’t you know it, Count Harry’s off to Greece and has some keen insights to share, the one that seemed most germane being that the ancient Greek’s conception of freedom is closer to what we’d call sovereignty than any modern usage would have it, due to the fact that the ancient Greek sense of identity is above all bound up in his role as citizen or member of a particular polis (thus Aristotle’s definition of man as political animal). Could Harold Bloom be right? Did it take Shakespeare to hip us to what it is to be human in the modern sense of the word? Although how does one go about explaining David Hasselhoff? Seriously, as “modern” or contemporary as the Greeks and Romans at times appear to us, that’s only in comparison with the Egyptians or Sumerians or Babylonians. Or Texans. Let the Midnight Special shine the light on me Let the Midnight Special shine the ever-lovin’ light on me. In nomine Patris, et Filii, et SPIRITUS Sancti
Posted on: Sun, 21 Jul 2013 08:18:59 +0000