Sweet, sweet freedom

Last night I turned in my last final paper of the semester (huzzah!) and now I stand facing the future. A future of 43 days without obligatory reading. It is time for the annual inter-semester reading spree; here's what's on the list (in no particular order, and not necessarily guaranteed to be read):

• The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay (okay, so this one is in particular order since I'm already reading it--about 150 pages in)
• The Knife Man
• The Devil in the White City
• Assassination Vacation
• The Third Policeman
• The United States of Arugula

Thoughts? Suggestions? Maybe I should strike a book or two? Maybe I should add a couple? I'm open--I realize there's an imbalance on the side of nonfiction. I want to make as much out of this reading time as possible.

Also on the slate for the break: revising my biographical essay on my Great Uncle Ronald that I wrote for a class last semester. Time to get that puppy published. And I need to keep in the habit of writing non-scholarly stuff. Need to keep my focus--it would be a shame to get stuffy at this point.

Peace on earth

In case any of you have forgotten, I've embedded a copy of the best version of "Little Drummer Boy" ever.

Okay, so it's the only good version of "Little Drummer Boy" ever. Still... David Bowie + Bing Crosby = magic.

Feeling scholarly

On Saturday I visited the Library of Congress to--get this--do research. Yes. That's right.

I've been a few times before, but it's generally been for tourism-related reasons. Which are valid enough; it's a beautiful building with great exhibits and other things to see inside. But this is the first time I was there to sit down with rolled-up sleeves and my glasses slowly sliding down my nose while I craned over hard-bound tomes belonging to our nation's official source for congressional research.

So yeah, I felt pretty cool. Here are some highlights of a visit to the LOC, whether for research purposes or otherwise:

• It's like a full-service library. When you know the call number of the book(s) you want, you fill out a slip and hand it to the librarian. In a little while they bring your books to you at the desk you've chosen. And they're all really helpful, friendly, and knowledgeable if you need any help with your research.
• It's full of history. The original LOC burned down in 1814 when a bunch of drunk British Canadians ransacked our capital. As we rebuilt, Thomas Jefferson donated his personal (and quite extensive) book collection to form the foundation of the new library. The builders also decided to stick it to the Brits by making the building better than ever, using the finest materials. Up in the rotunda there were some accoutrements that called for metallic leafing, so they used the rarest and most expensive metal available at the time: aluminum.
• Aluminum leafing aside, it's a beautiful building (as I mentioned before). The inside of the rotunda and all of the vaulted ceilings in the public areas are all covered in mosaic. I love mosaic. More about the art and architecture incorporated into the LOC here.
• People are quiet inside because it's a library. If only people would be quiet in the Lincoln Memorial, seeing as it proclaims itself a temple.
• They've got a Gutenberg Bible in a glass case. So cool.

Ten feet from legendary

Saturday night, after eight hours in a car, yelling at the non-entity that caused stand-still traffic on the New Jersey Turnpike, navigating an island city that I do not know, and paying profiteer prices for parking, I sat in a dark nightclub ten feet from a piano where Dave Brubeck sat creating. The set started at 8:00 and I finally sat down at 8:15. It took me about two minutes of deep breathing and immersion in music to clear my head. That left me with less than forty minutes of an all-too-short set to enjoy some really, really great jazz. The next morning I went to church with friend Scrumpestuous D, picked up a total stranger, and spent another 8 hours in traffic coming home (read about the homeward trip here). Forty minutes ten feet from Dave Brubeck sandwiched by a total of 16 hours in the car? So worth it.

Dave Brubeck is one of my heroes. He revolutionized jazz in the 1950s with his experiments with time signatures. Up to that point, the vast majority of jazz music was arranged and performed in 4/4. It was simply what was accepted. Then in 1959, Brubeck released Time Out, a daring record that challenged the 4/4 standard. Kathy's Waltz (in 3/4) was an innovation. Even that seemed tame after the album started out with Blue Rondo a la Turk, which shifted back and forth from a frenetic 9/8 to a cool 4/4. The biggest hit off the album--and the biggest hit of Brubeck's career, was Take 5, played in 5/4. He was a musical innovator; he didn't allow himself to be bound by the accepted standards when he composed. He fell back on his classical piano training often and blended its influence into his music.

Before making his musical mark, Brubeck served his country in the army during World War II. Deployed with Patton's Third Army from 1944 to 1945, he was pulled from a unit headed for the front lines because of his musical finesse. Brubeck played piano as the lead of a racially integrated jazz band called the Wolf Pack. They provided entertainment for the troops in an as yet segregated Army. When they returned to the United States at the end of the war, he stayed with his band members for a while, but their mixed group met resistance. Brubeck describes it in Ken Burns' Jazz:

When we landed in Texas, we all went to the dining room to eat, and they wouldn’t serve the black guys. The guys had to go around and stand at the kitchen door. This one guy, he said he wouldn’t eat any of their food, and he started to cry, and he said, 'What I’ve been through, and the first day I’m back in the United States, I can’t even eat with you guys.' He said, 'I wonder why I went through all this.' You know, the first black man that I saw, my dad took me to see on the Sacramento River in California. And he said to his friend, 'Open your shirt for Dave.' There— [crying] there was a brand on his chest. And my dad said, 'These things can’t happen.' That’s why I fought for what I fought for (Jazz, Episode Seven: Dedicated to Chaos).

When he formed his famous quartet that produced Time Out in 1959 and stayed together until 1967, his bassist, Eugene Wright, was black.

I got to ask Mr. Brubeck a question once, in a Q&A at the Kennedy Center in March 2008. I asked him to talk about what it was like to play in an integrated band during a time when the general public resisted the idea of blacks and whites performing together (I may have used the word "pioneer" in there). He talked about the brotherhood and bonds created by music. He emphasized that jazz or no jazz, we're all brothers and sisters, and that was what always mattered to him.

Dave Brubeck is not only a great musician who left an indelible mark on the face of jazz, but he's also a great human being. His forward-thinking attitude and conviction for what was right may not have necessarily broken down racial barriers or overcome a nation's prejudice, but it certainly made a difference in the lives of his fellow Wolf Pack members, or in the life of Eugene Wright.

And I sat ten feet behind him on Saturday night, watching him create. He continues to meld classical themes into jazz constructs. Despite being 87 years old, he continues to play fluidly and pour an unseen reservoir of energy into his musical performance (his gutteral "aaaahs!" and "haaaaahs!" could be heard throughout the club, punctuated further by a stiff kick into the air under his piano). And he embraces the ideal of jazz as a musical form of freedom. Right before his quartet closed their set with their best-known standard, he stood at the microphone and said, "People ask us all the time if we get tired of playing 'Take Five.' Of course we don't. We've played it every show since 1959, but we never play it the same way. In fact we play it a different way every night. How do you like that?"

I like it even better the way he expressed it in Ken Burns' masterful documentary:

When you get a group of musicians really playing... it was this feeling of freedom, and then a guy would get a solo and this was his expression of freedom. A trumpet player, a trombone, or the saxophones, or the pianos. And then they were completely free, away from the constriction of the written music, but improvising on top of it. And this is the thing I love the most about jazz—it’s the thing that expresses the United States, it expresses freedom. All over the world, jazz is accepted as the music of freedom. It’s the most—it’s more important than baseball!

Going local: Eastern Market

A week ago Saturday I visited Eastern Market with friend Amanda. Eastern Market is located in the upper-left corner of Southeast Washington, DC, not far from the Capitol. It's easily accessible by rail--it has its own Metro stop on the Blue/Orange line--or by car. Just park on the street in the surrounding neighborhood.

Unlike the other markets reviewed thus far, Eastern Market is open more than just one day a week, and it's much more than a farmers' market. The farmers' portion, plus the arts & crafts and flea markets are open on Saturdays and Sundays (farmers' market: 7 am to 4 pm, arts & crafts and flea markets: 9 am to 6 pm). There's also an indoor area known as the South Hall, open Tuesday through Sunday (Tuesday-Friday: 7 am to 7 pm, Saturday 7 am to 6 pm, Sunday 9 am to 5 pm). There. Logistics out of the way.

Now to the meat of the matter. A visit to Eastern Market, as you may have guessed, is much more than a visit to a farmers' market. If you go there and all you do is buy a sack of apples, you've missed the boat.

The first thing I do at Eastern Market is enter the South Hall and eat at Market Lunch. In spite of the name, my last visit here was the first time I'd actually ordered a midday meal. Usually I would go in the morning, but this particular Saturday I was looking to fill the afternoon. I ordered the crab cake sandwich with a side of collard greens. The sandwich was very good (not as amazing as the girl in front of us in line would have had me believe), and I liked the collard greens, but I could have used half the portion they gave me. Breakfast is really where Market Lunch shines. I especially recommend the blue bucks (blueberry buckwheat pancakes) or the French toast (paying extra for the pecan topping is a must). The fellow who works the counter is sassy in a way that keeps you coming back, the service is fast, and the prices are more than reasonable. And on any given Saturday morning, you're going to see Mormons standing in line with you. The rest of the South Hall is home to butchers, fishmongers, and bakers who sell high-quality, fresh products.

Next on my list of stops is Capitol Hill Books. Not technically part of Eastern Market, the used bookstore is located right across the street to the south of the old South Hall (the original brick South Hall building suffered an electrical fire last year; it is currently under renovation and should reopen next summer). Capitol Hill Books is probably the folksiest, most mom-and-pop-type operation I've ever seen. What's more, it pulls it off without feeling forced. I would be surprised if I found out the proprietors ever said, "Hey. Let's figure out how we can be more folksy around here." The ambiance is achieved naturally.

The view from the front window is indicative of the interior as a whole--stacks and stacks of books, not necessarily on shelves (look at the staircase). The store is organized in a patchwork manner, with genres assigned to general areas (fiction, mystery, poetry, and music upstairs; sci-fi and gardening in the basement; nonfiction main level), and subgenres posted on the shelves with helpful notecards. The notecards are spread throughout the store, wherever they might be helpful in your careful search for a particular author or title. "John Gardner on floor behind Hesse." "Gabriel García Márquez located under García." "M-R goes down and across (Arrows may help)."

A friend of mine refers to Capitol Hill Books (really one of her favorite haunts) as "the socialist bookstore;" she's sure that the owners and employees are teetering off the left-hand side of the political spectrum. I couldn't really say; I've never been indoctrinated or even engaged in any kind of political conversation. The gentleman seated at the checkout counter usually just makes humorous and good-natured comments about your purchases. Once he went so far as to quote an entire Yeats poem to Amanda. She melted into a puddle, but she remained a moderate voter.

Stomach full of blue bucks, newly purchased used books in hand, I then return to the market and pick up produce. The vendors line the sidwalk that runs on the east side of the old South Hall. Most of the vendors sell vegetables or fruits, though there is a regular table that offers homemade salsa and dips--both as samples and as packaged wares. The produce is good, nothing notable about the quality, though I did discover a handy feature at one of the vegetable stands during this last visit. The seller packaged small varieties of veggies together into food storage bags and sold them as a bunch for three dollars each. I got a bag with red potatoes, green beans, and a little bit of broccoli. A good deal for what you pay. I also walked further down the line and picked up some Nittany apples (my new fall favorite).

Finally, there are the flea market and the arts and crafts portions of the market. The flea market is located to the south of the temporary South Hall, and it's filled with all sorts of wonders: rugs, trunks, statuettes, jewelry, scarves, handbags, and so on. The arts and crafts booths are set up on the sidewalk opposite the farmers' market sidewalk, and also on the patio north of the old South Hall. Jewelers, potters, painters, photographers, and others show their handiwork. Even if you're not in the market for anything from here, it's always worth it to peruse. Some of the vendors are quite talented--Dan Kessler, whose work has been commissioned by the White House, is there every Saturday.

Eastern Market, as a farmers' market, is not a place I would regularly frequent. The produce is decent, but not spectacular, and the commute into DC takes much longer than a jaunt over to Arlington or a walk to Del Ray. But combining the farmers' market with the prospect of delicious breakfast and used books and local culture adds an allure that keeps me coming back.

Going local: Old Town Farmers' Market

Several weeks after my visit*, my review:

The Old Town Farmers' Market is situated on the fountain plaza next to City Hall, at the intersection of King Street and Royal, right in the liver of Old Town (I really think the heart of Old Town is the waterfront at the end of King Street and the Torpedo Factory--King and Royal is close, though). It's the earliest starter of all the markets I've reviewed so far; it opens at 5:30 and shuts down at 10:30. Like the Arlington Farmers' Market, Old Town is open year-round, availability of fresh produce notwithstanding.

It probably has the largest area out of the markets I've reviewed as well. In spite of the large fountain in the middle, Market Square has a lot of space, and the vendors sprawl across it. The large area provides for a wider variety of wares than I've seen in other places. Beyond the traditional produce, meat, dairy, and baked goods, crafts peddlers and florists dot the rows of booths. This is good for those looking for more than just food offerings. Bad for those creeped out by severed doll heads used as mounts.

Questionable display choices aside, I also haven't been as impressed with the quality of produce I've picked up in Old Town. Mealy apples, fresh cider that tastes like it's from concentrate--not up to par with Del Ray or Arlington, in my opinion. To be fair, I've shopped those other markets much more frequently than I've shopped Old Town. I shouldn't judge from this past experience; I may have picked a lesser vendor or just gone on a bad week.

The best thing Old Town does have going for it is its location. Like the Del Ray and Arlington markets, it's situated in the middle of a bustling area well known for its shops, haunts, and restaurants. At the Old Town Farmers' Market, you're within walking distance of the waterfront (the heart), several good restaurants, and a few notable historical sites (such as the Alexandria Courthouse and the John Carlyle House). It also has the feeling of community that exists at the other markets, only it's the Old Town community as opposed to the Arlington or Del Ray communities. Choosing a market out of the three to visit based on the neighborhood depends, then, on what you're in the mood for. Old Town is definitely more full of tourists. Arlington's Courthouse/Clarendon area is a target spot for yuppies, while Del Ray attracts former hippies, indie hipsters, and yuppies who are pretending to be hipsters.

Overall, I prefer the Arlington and Del Ray markets to the Old Town offering.

This past Saturday I also visited Eastern Market and took some pictures. I hope to have that review up by the end of the week.

*Special thanks to special guests who accompanied me for my site visit: Amanda, KE, and especially Katherine, who loaned me her camera and emailed me the pictures for this post (I forgot my camera at home).

Jared needs...

A friend of mine blogged about the virtue of googling the phrase "________ needs," with the blank filled by your name. The results can be quite humorous. For example, here are my top five:

1. Jared needs to go!
2. Jared needs to lay the smack down on these guys...
3. Jared needs your support.
4. Jared needs his own Backyard FX Show.
5. Jared needs to DIE!

Apparently the fellow from the sub shop who sullied my good name is not a popular guy on the interwebs.

Anyway, try it yourself for hilarity and jest.

Post results in the comments or on your own blog...

Going local: Del Ray Farmers' Market

Two months later, here is my review of the Del Ray Farmers' Market.

The best thing about this market, to me, is that it's a five-minute walk from my house. Located across the street from the Dairy Godmother in the heart of Del Ray, the market is actually pedestrian-friendly for a lot of local residents. The parking situation is a little worse than Arlington's (the market in Del Ray actually covers the only parking lot in the vicinity), but that is not an issue if you arrive on foot and carry out your produce. For those who might drive, there is usually some street parking not too far away. For those walking with dogs, you'll have to tie them up on the fringe of the market--no dogs allowed inside.

At first glance, the market seems much smaller than its Arlington counterpart. The parking lot it covers isn't really all that big, and staring across the street it looks like the number of vendors that can be crammed in under the few tents ought to be pretty limited. But after going to the market a few times and going back to Arlington, I've decided that the number of vendors at Del Ray can't be that much lower. Even if it is, the Del Ray market carries a competitive amount of variety and quantity in its offerings.

The vendors at Del Ray sell produce as tasty and fresh as those at Arlington--especially notable are the tomatoes and peppers. Look around and you'll also find a variety of specialty products like jams, preserves, syrups, and vinegars. The central table-tent of the lot belongs to bakers who offer samples of breads, cookies, rolls, muffins, and cakes.

If anything suffers from the cutback in size, it's the variety of meat and dairy vendors available to shoppers. There is a good meat vendor that sells fresh eggs, and one or two dairy booths. My first week there I bought a container of maple syrup yogurt; it was good, but not as good as the Blue Ridge Dairy honey yogurt from the Arlington market.

For its size, though, the market is a great place to shop and it has the same friendly community feeling present in Arlington. The Del Ray community is famous for its small-town, mom-and-pop feel, and the farmers' market there fits right in.

You can shop the market on Saturdays from eight in the morning until noon. The market opens in the spring and stays open through the first Saturday in December--if you want to scrounge for produce in the winter you'll have to visit Arlington or the Old Town Farmers' Market.

Fringe benefits available to those who choose to patronize the Del Ray Farmers' Market include the Cheesetique (where the cheesemongers know everything there is to know about cheese!), Let's Meat on the Avenue (an old-fashioned butcher shop full of the freshest meats, run by an experienced Australian), and Tops of Old Town (not food, but the hats are cool and the proprietor is the sweetest lady you'll meet).

Going local: Arlington Farmers' Market

It has been spread abroad that white people love farmers' markets; I am no exception.

There are five farmers markets convenient to where I live in Alexandria: Arlington Farmers' Market, Del Ray Farmers' Market, Old Town Farmers' Market, Upper King Street Fresh Farmers' Market, and Eastern Market. It is my intention over the next three weeks to visit each of these in turn for the sake of comparison and contrast. If all goes as planned, I'll place a review of each of my market visits right here for your viewing pleasure.

I started this past Saturday with the Arlington Farmer's Market. Located next to the Arlington Courthouse, the market runs every Saturday from 9:00 am to 12:00 pm, and it appears to be open year-round, which is a plus.*

The market itself covers a fair-sized lot. The official website for the market claims to have thirty producers involved, but I don't know if they're claiming that all of them are present each week. Whether they are or not, there is certainly a large selection present, with multiple vendors to choose from for fruits, vegetables, breads, honeys, meats, dairy products, and flowers.

The last two times I've visited, I found the vendors quite friendly. They're willing to make change for a twenty and make recommendations regarding their produce, and they all seem very appreciative of your business. There's also a spirit of friendly cooperation and neighborliness among them--this surprised me a little, since I walked into the market assuming that two stands selling fresh vegetables would consider themselves at odds with each other.

I stopped at one particular stand that had a sign promising delicious and unique cherry tomatoes, tried one, and felt compelled to buy a pint. I already had a few tomatoes in a half-flat box that I had purchased from a vendor across the way, and as I payed for the cherry tomatoes the man at the cash box looked closely at them.

"Those don't look like our tomatoes"

"No, I bought them from one of your competitors over there."

"Oh, they're not our competitors," he grinned warmly. "We're all just neighbors here." Nevertheless, he did lean in closer and whisper, "Ours are better!" Then he chuckled.

The spirit of camaraderie extends to some degree to the patrons of the market as well. Everyone seems to be kind and deferential to one another. There's a sense of community--maybe it's the common interest in sustainable, local agriculture; maybe it's the smell of fresh basil and flowers that hovers in the air between stalls.

I've been quite pleased with all of my purchases from the market--particularly the colossal blackberries from Westmoreland Berry Farm and a batch of peaches I picked up from another stand this week. Those cherry tomatoes were pretty dynamite too. I'm also excited to finish off my store-bought yogurt soon so I can dive into the fresh honey yogurt I purchased from the booth run by Blue Ridge Dairy. The small spoonful I tasted promised a true, cultured yogurt flavor with just enough honey to soften the bite.

The two drawbacks to the market are the fact that it's about a ten-minute drive to get there (small drawback), and parking is fairly limited considering the popularity of the market (larger drawback). If you're lucky you can find street parking, but most patrons have to use a lot adjacent to the market. Cars are constantly moving up and down the lanes of the lot, searching for an empty spot or someone who is leaving. Once you finally park, each spot is metered. Make sure you have change on hand.
Overall, though, I've really enjoyed my experiences at the Arlington Farmers' Market. I recommend it to anyone who has the means to go on a Saturday morning and the desire for fresh, local produce.

*Many fruits and vegetables won't be available during the winter months, but it's nice to know that a market is still open during that time, offering whatever is available.

Barack Obama for Childlike Emperor

A friend shared a link with me where you can go to generate your own inspirational Barack Obama quotations.

I thought it was important for Mr. Obama to address the current state of affairs in Fantasia, as he runs against the Childlike Empress for her position this year:

Generate a Barack Obama Quote!

"I think it's time we had a national conversation about Fantasia. We need to get past all the Swamps of Sadness and recognize that we are our own best hope for overcoming the Nothing. We need Falkors, not G'morks. Falkors are our imagination. And we need to have change in Fantasia."
Generate your Barack Obama quote at Buttafly.com

He goes on:

Generate a Barack Obama Quote!

"These people haven't had imagination for fifty years. So you can't be surprised if they get bitter and cling to their Swamps of Sadness and their G'morks and their the Nothing. That's what my campaign is about. Teaching all the little people in this country that they can have Falkors."
Generate your Barack Obama quote at Buttafly.com

I believe in the audacity of imagination; I believe in a new Fantasia. This is change we can believe in.

Bored scribblings

I was just cleaning up my little officeoid (it's not a full office--it only has 3.2 walls), and I came across a few "notes" I had taken during two different meetings. The first set of notes was torn off of a steno-pad. I think it's from something I sat in on up at my client site:

--Bees can kill me, but they haven't yet

--Jenn and I think we inherited a cooking gene

--Jazz, rock 'n' roll

--Let's talk about what we think we're going to talk about talking about, but never actually talk about it.

The second set of notes is from a meeting at my office that some of our clients were invited to. Chuck "Malapropism" Dogberry of the clients bought pizza to try and seem like a cool guy, and the thing went on for about four hours. Around hour three I drafted a will onto one of the pizza napkins in case I should die of boredom or take my own life:

Last Will and Testament
To whom it may concern:
If you are reading this, I have been found dead with my eyes burned out by a laser pointer and the pen attached to that laser pointer jammed deep, deep into my jugular.
'Twas CAP [the client program I support] that brought me here, and 'twas CAP that drove me to this end.
To my brother The Shark I bequeath my music collection and my DVDs, except Matt can have "Firefly." Everything else I leave to Matt Sztuk and Michele, who will play Rock, Paper, Scissors to decide who gets what.
To Jamie [my supervisor at the time] I leave a kick in the shins.
[signature]
Jared Gillins
28 FEB 2008

These are some of the most productive meetings I've attended with my clients.

Posted just to have a link for a comment in Shark's blog

I just needed to be able to refer to this in a comment I'm leaving in The Zap! Pow! Zoom! Initiative.

The Far Side was created by Gary Larson, who also holds the copyright. This cartoon was posted not to curb the legal purchase of Far Side materials, but rather to utilize it as an example in an ongoing discussion about the nature and validity of comics as art. This cartoon will be removed upon request by Mr. Larson or his legal representatives.

Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might

OR Ecclesiastes 9: 10

Finished with finals, I find myself flat-furnished with a fullness of Free Time. Which begs the question: What to do?

I want to make sure that these summer months don't slip past me without a serious effort on my part to make the most of them. Last summer I did some good stuff--I spent Memorial Day weekend at the beach, ran a 10k, visited Utah twice, did some hiking, got heat exhaustion and had to have two bags of fluid pumped into me intravenously, read several books, and put on weight.

Here's what I've got so far for this summer:

• Exercise regularly to finish recuperating my knee and lose the weight from last summer
• Read several more books
• Plant a garden (or at least plant the pots and boxes in my back yard)
• Play the guitar every day
• Blog weekly

• Fine-tune the papers I wrote for my creative nonfiction writing class--have at least one ready to be submitted for publication by the end of the summer
• Bike the many trails around here--including the length of the Mt. Vernon Trail
• Get out of the metropolitan area and do some hiking
• See at least two 80s musical legends in concert (here I come, Yaz and George Michael!)

• Continue to hone my grilling skills; allow friends to enjoy the meaty fruits
• Visit Polyface Farms in southern Virginia
• Find the Darth Vader gargoyle on the National Cathedral
• Learn to use my cool camera better

Those are a few ideas, anyway. I'm open to suggestions. Anyone? Anyone?

Sunday I was eloquent

I show no bravery of shining gems.
Truth, Independence, are my fluttering plumes.
'Tis not my form I lace to make me slim,
But brace my soul with efforts as with stays,
Covered with exploits, not with ribbon-knots,
My spirit bristling high like your mustaches,
I, traversing the crowds and chattering groups
Make Truth ring bravely out like clash of spurs!

-Edmund Rosamund, Cyrano de Bergerac, Act I, scene iv

I read Cyrano de Bergerac during the second semester of my sophomore year at high school. I remember being enthralled with the play--I couldn't get enough of the language. The title character's wit and ease with which he used words spoke to my young fancy and germinated an early desire to be... eloquent. That was the word I remember coming up with. Cyrano was eloquent. I would be eloquent too.

I may have told a few people about that desire shortly after it was espoused, but mostly I kept it to myself.

----

On Sunday this week, after speaking in sacrament meeting on friendship, fellowship, and regional activities, I was approached after services. A friend pulled me aside and told me plainly that she thought I was eloquent in my talk. Eloquent! It was the first time anyone had used that word to compliment me. Perhaps I am on my way.

Calling all ska fans!

I'm writing a paper on ska and its fans, and I created a little survey to help me collect some data. If you are a fan of ska (and only if you consider yourself such a fan), please click on the link and take the survey. It's pretty short--should really only take you five minutes or so. Thanks!

Click Here to take survey

The appeal of the blues

OR "I sing the body electric"

My first plan for today after work is to drive to Borders, pick up the Muddy Waters Anthology, and then proceed to bury myself in a dead black man's sorrows. This became part of my schedule after I woke up this morning with the blues.

I was feeling fairly rotten so I put on Eric Clapton's From the Cradle for the drive to work. Oddly enough, belting out "Blues Before Sunrise" along with Slowhand elevated my mood a bit. Each track made me feel a little better and then better, until the guitar solo on the bridge of "Five Long Years" (track 5) made me almost giddy.

So what is it about the blues that can take my cares away? It almost seems counter-intuitive, like it should have the opposite effect. Listening to a man moan about his broken body, destitute lifestyle, and cheating woman isn't really a pick-me-up. Listening to a woman pour out her sorrows over the man who left her for a better gal doesn't exactly make one think of better times. Or does it?

On the first episode of Ken Burns' Jazz, Branford Marsalis points out that to sing or hear the blues is to cathartically embrace the fact that life is full of problems and troubles. The blues, then, are there to "free" the singer and the listener. It frees them from the burden of pretending that everything's just fine all the time.

The blues are also intended to lift people--show them that they may have it bad, but it could be worse. Blues are often hyperbolic in their descriptions of suffering. Back to From the Cradle--in the song "Third Degree" Clapton sings verse after verse on the crimes and misdemeanors his woman has him accused of. Then, giving the reasons why each of those claims must be false, he slowly paints the portrait of a blind, lame, illiterate, broke, and possibly impotent man, whom bad luck is simply killing. Nobody is that bad off--and maybe that's what the blues listener realizes as he hears the guttural moans and weeping, wailing guitar.

I think that that guitar is also key. I mentioned that Clapton's solo on track 5 picked me up further than anything else on the album had thus far. I think that part of the power of the blues is its ability to transform emotional energy into music. You could probably make this argument with several other genres, but I contend that the blues is especially good at it. To play the blues you have to have "soul," which is to say you have to know how to express your soul through your instrument and voice. Human beings are vessels. Some of these vessels carry music, and only a portion of these musical vessels know how to pour out their contents. Fingers and throats become conduits, larynges and guitars become universal translators that communicate aurally what was previously stored internally. And for some reason, when that human musical message comes out in the blues, it speaks directly to the blues listener.

Reading back over what I just wrote, I don't know if I actually explained anything. But in the end it doesn't really matter, because either way the blues have made me feel better.