Mix Tape

The thing about a mix tape is that it was generally made with you in mind. Unless you had a playa on your hands, mix tapes were made by one person for one other. The songs selected were intended for, or evocative of, or telling a story of some sort for one person, or maybe a small group. It was a personal form of communication made using constructs of popular culture. Either that or it was an attempt to get laid.

I'm a big fan of the Marvel movies. It would be an understatement to say I was stoked by their recent Phase 3 movie slate announcement. I haven't read any of the "Guardians of the Galaxy," comics or graphic novels, though I have been meaning to, but had heard solid reviews of the movie, so took a chance and snarfed it up. Younger daughter Ava and I have watched it twice, the second time so her older sister could watch it as well.

The mix tape looms large. The soundtrack for Guardians, which I have downloaded and listened to a number of times, is a mix tape made for our hero Peter Quill (played by Chris Pratt) by his mother in the 1980s. "Awesome Mix Vol. 1," was her collecting her favorite songs to share with her son. In addition to being completely iconic, badass 1970s and 80s songs, they are woven perfectly into the movie.



"Come and Get Your Love" by Redbone, anyone? Ava has been singing that song all morning and now counts it as one of her three favorite songs.

When I run with tunes these days, I work out a playlist and then hit shuffle, to let the Universe throw me a sort of running mix tape based on songs I'm vibing on. The Guardians soundtrack is currently tumbling with Digable Planets, Beck and D'Angelo, among others.

But the mix tape philosophy got me thinking about other art forms, books and movies that I dig. A mix tape is not a novel. It is most likely not about plot. It's about every song, every section, chapter, part, being something onto itself, and also not allowing any filler, any lulls. "Pulp Fiction," "True Romance," and "Snatch" are films that feel episodic, where there is scene after scene of simply and utterly cool. Bands like De La Soul, A Tribe Called Quest and The Beastie Boys put out albums that felt like mix tapes.

There is a level of care and attention given to a mix tape that only certain authors can come close to replicating for a whole book, or work of any sort. I got the mix tape high the first time I read William Blake's "Marriage of Heaven and Hell." I'm cruising through some deep and heady stuff, one "song" ends and here come the "Proverbs of Hell (plucking a few favorites at random):"

The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom.

A fool sees not the same tree that a wise man sees.

He whose face gives no light, shall never become a star.

Eternity is in love with the productions of time.

The hours of folly are measur'd by the clock; but of wisdom, no clock can measure.

The most sublime act is to set another before you.

And Blake just mows you down with rapid fire, fortune cookie bullets. Poets, essayists and short story writers are more likely to conjure mix tape magic it seems, with their ability to work the pause, the silence between the songs; and their prerogative to change direction, change tone, pace without notice--heavy metal to bluegrass to reggae to jazz. One of the literary lions who clearly understood mix tapes was Jorge Luis Borges. You can see it in "Labyrinths," or "Dreamtigers," or almost anything he put out into the world. Maybe for Borges, a mix tape was a labyrinth:

Time is the substance I am made of. Time is a river which sweeps me along, but I am the river; it is a tiger which destroys me, but I am the tiger; it is a fire which consumes me, but I am the fire.

Then I reflect that all things happen, happen to one, precisely now. Century follows century, and things happen only in the present. There are countless men in the air, on land and at sea, and all that really happens happens to me.

Before unearthing this letter, I had questioned myself about the ways in which a book can be infinite. I could think of nothing other than a cyclic volume, a circular one. A book whose last pages was identical with the first, a book which had the possibility of continuing indefinitely.

Maybe that is another aspect of the mix tape--it is almost cyclic or circular; it doesn't matter where you hit play, you are pulled in, wrapped up; you can start and stop at any point or just let it ride.

If that's the case, Borges definitely got it. You can see him taking copies of a new book to his close friends, his lady friends, his peeps. Or maybe he'd be kicked back in a chair, next to a cat, waiting for folks to come to him. I mean, he's Borges. Maybe he would just send a text that said: "New mix tape: Come and Get Your Love. Borges, out."

Eliot in Your Bones

T.S. Eliot abides. He was the last of the big three mind blowers for me in college (the first two were William Blake and Friedrich Nietzsche). Eliot was maybe the biggest of the three, because he combined some of the aesthetic/poetic vibe of Blake with the philosophical depth and inquiry of Nietzsche. My last college essay was on Eliot and the philosophy of F.H. Bradley, who Eliot wrote his PhD dissertation on at Harvard.

In the library at Washington College, I found Eliot's book of essays, "Sacred Wood," where his notion of "Tradition and the Individual Talent," reworked my thinking of the literary tradition we inherit, and how that inheritance requires work and study, it isn't just given to us. And the idea that you don't just read the dead poets to know the past, but also feel it in the here and now:

...not only of the pastness of the past, but of its presence: the historical sense compels a man to write not merely with his own generation in his bones, but with a feeling that that whole of the literature of Europe from Homer...

Writing with a literature in your bones.

After college I put Eliot down for a while. He had redefined poetry, tradition, allusion, scholarship. And that wasn't the world I was inhabiting at the time. A few years later, at some bookstore or another, I found "Four Quartets." Meeting Eliot the first time was mind blowing and hard work, and deep study. Four Quartets was meeting Eliot again for the first time. This Eliot was lyrical, deep, philosophical. I could read him on my own without needing a library for back up.

This past week I was looking for a book in the garage to give to a friend. During that expedition, I unearthed Four Quartets. It was sleeping in a garage box. The next morning, I started from the beginning:

Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future,
And time future contained in time past.
If all time is eternally present
All time is redeemable.

Four Quartets are connected meditations on our place in the Universe, about Time, and about the Divine. Each of the poems also represents one of the elements: Burnt Norton is air, East Coker is earth, The Dry Salvages is water, Little Gidding is fire. You want depth? You want philosophy? You want poetry you can delve into a spin your head around? Four Quartets has it,

I've been dwelling in solitude a lot lately, my thoughts inhabiting the space around me. Finding Eliot again has brought back a calm, a peace that I thought I had lost; an introspection that is also a self inquisition:

I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope
For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without
         love
For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith
But the faith and love and the hope are all in the waiting.
Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought:
So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the
        dancing.

I fu**ing hate waiting. I am not good at patience. But there is a zen to Eliot's waiting, where the stillness becomes dancing. That's the kind of stillness I need to find. Dance while you wait, please.

Eliot's notion of cyclical time, time that loops back on itself, where the end and the beginning are the same. It's what I find in coming back to Eliot. Again, for the first time. Eliot is in my bones.

     We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.

Christmas light-tinted glasses

Let's say there are two types of consciousness: Christmas morning consciousness and the other 364 mornings a year consciousness. There is something about Christmas morning that is different. That takes you back to being a kid. It is full of hope, anticipation. You can't wait to get out of bed.

So what's up with the rest of the year? Why can't that Dec. 25 feeling be the norm? What the hell are you asking me for? Why don't you ask yourself?

It seems like that is maybe the one morning a year we give ourselves permission to not think about work, not to think about bills, or the everyday, mundane quality that days can quickly take on. We allow ourselves to dwell in a sort of awe. To see the world through Christmas-light-tinted glasses.

It's easy to blame the rest of the world for the fact that we don't feel or see the world this way everyday. But ultimately that's bullshit. How I look at the world is up to me, not just as an abstract responsibility, but every morning.

I'm not saying I've mastered it. Far from it. There are plenty of days I struggle to get the day going. I'm pissed at the girls for not getting ready for school. I'm having a mental/spiritual 38 degrees and rainy day going on in my head.

But I'm the one who has to fix that. I've got to work that through and get back to that Christmas morning consciousness. What William Blake identified as "twofold consciousness." What Colin Wilson tried to convey in his book "The Outsider."

What are the ways I can cultivate that feeling? For some people, it is solace/faith/hope through religion (Christmas is Jesus's birthday, after all). For some people meditation (I've got to do a lot more of this). For some people maybe a morning run (I need to get back to that). Maybe there is a mantra to chant to bring it all back.

Personally, I like the idea of leaving the Christmas tree up all year long. Maybe change the decorations to reflect the current season--flowers in the spring, Red Stripe and flip-flops and fishing rods in the summer, football in the fall. Oh to see the world everyday through Christmas light-tinted glasses.

The road of excess

If you've ever been hungover, you get William Blake. At least what he meant when he wrote, "The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom." The morning after, when your head is pounding, your stomach wants to hurl and life cannot progress as it should, you experientially understand "excess," or too much, and why you should avoid it.

That doesn't mean you won't do it again, but you've learned where that behavior leads, in a way that you wouldn't by someone telling you.

I know the road of excess. And I hope I've been able to glean a couple of its palaces. I think it's as solid a piece of advice as you'll find scribbled out there, in memorable, bumper-sticker form. The way I see it, there are two problems we have as a culture with following Blake's adage:

1) We master "excess" and never get around to the wisdom part. For example: debt. obesity. pollution. All those ad nauseum buzz words that plaster newspapers and politispeak and talk shows. All things whose excess should be able to lead us directly the wisdom of how to let go, ease off, scale back, etc. We just keep plowing down the road of excess, probably until we run out of gas and never reach the palace.

2) We try to claim the palace without having tread the road. This seems especially problematic to me. Here's why. The teenage and early 20s especially should almost be known as the road to excess years. If we don't make mistakes by way of excess, trying shit, falling down, and storing away the lessons learned (a.k.a. "wisdom), we'll also call this "living life," then it seems to me that come 40s, 50s, whatever, we are walking mid-life crises waiting to happen.

And by the time that phase of life comes around, there are frequently those pesky things like families, kids, mortgages, etc., that get royally bent over when we go out to learn the excess road.

The equally interesting thing, to me, as a parent, and as someone who certainly used those years for excess (for better and worse), is how we try so hard to plop our kids directly into the palace of wisdom, without ever having them find it on their own via the road. We don't want them to fuck up or fall down or hurt or embarrass themselves. We put them in bubbles that don't allow them to glean wisdom or life lessons that might help or shape them.

I'm sure I'll be no different. I'm sizing the girls up for protective bubbles even now. But there is something to be said for Blake's advice. On a far-too-preachy Thursday morning.

Rimbaud vs. Ripken

We were five miles into a trail run, zagging along the Creekside Cliff Trail, when AK threw Rimbaud out as his favorite poet.

The context was my Mike Tomlin letter and achieving success or acclaim (too?) early in life. Is it too soon? Do people extinguish themselves without toil as kindling? Without pacing themselves?

Hendrix. James Dean. Kurt Cobain. It's frequently creatives--artists, musicians. Rimbaud stopped writing at age 19. And yet is thought of as one of the most revolutionary writers, and major influence on subsequent writers over the last couple hundred years.

Security once gained, heart and beauty are set aside...

Rimbaud may have been on to something there. The poet Franz Wright has railed against the notion that poets and writers must today be teachers, academics to earn a living and earn respect. Wright argues that what this creates is sameness. He pictures William Blake and Rimbaud--two outright game-changers--in their tenured professorships and what a sham, a nightmare that would have been. Their struggle, what they went through, their place in life, informed their work, which was different than anything that had come before them. Teaching freshman English was not for them.

In our trail running seminar on creativity and success, AK and I agreed that being a slow starter, a late bloomer was perhaps the way to be. To have perspective and pacing alongside whatever success you encounter. Merwin is my example; my model for someone who is at the top of their game later in life. Don't burnout and do nothing.

Call it the Ripken example. If you live near Baltimore, you know Cal's sustainment phenomenon. Just keep going.

This week I rode to Philadelphia with two Coast Guard admirals, tagging along to write a couple stories. They never stopped working--pouring over notes, discussing strategy, what's next. It was inspiring.

They are of the age where you talk about retiring from the military, yet they are moving and doing more now than early in their careers, prior to earning the stars on their shoulders.

For some, once you've made it, attained the security that you set out to get, you stop. Welcome complacency and laurel resting.

I like the Merwins, the admirals, the Ripkens, the distance runners, who keep going. Who want to see what is around the next corner. Who realize the slog, when turned on its side, is a dance. That you can't achieve a moment like this, without playing 2,129 games in a row ahead of it...

Ink story

I have a two-pronged tattoo policy: first prong, I have to sit on an idea for a tattoo for a year and still dig the idea. Second prong, tattoos have to be positioned as to be covered by a short-sleeve shirt.

The second prong is the white collar workplace clause. I worked for a museum for two or three years before my bosses knew I had ink, which didn't and probably wouldn't have mattered anyway.

I got my first tattoo when I was 25. The idea came from a British Romanticism class at Washington College. I was bowled over by William Blake (especially after suffering through Neoclassicism the semester before), his free-form, wild-eyed flow and his artwork. Flipping through books in the stacks in the college library, I saw it and knew:

I had several friends who started their ink affairs in high school. I always dug it, but never had anything I wanted to get. I didn't want a tattoo just to have one; it had to say something. About me.

So Blake was first. The second came via a Catholic priest who brought in a rune of St. Patrick and recited and discussed its inscription and the piece with a group of us. I don't think he figured it would wind up in ink on my right shoulder. I tabled the idea for a year and kept coming back to it. I took it to Jon in Salisbury, discussed, changed it up to fit a shoulder and there it sits.

The third came from Chogyam Trungpa's book, Shambhala: The Sacred Path of the Warrior. It is the symbol he gives for the dawn of the Great Eastern Sun, a worldview of "seeing life as a natural process and tuning in to the uncontrived order that exists in the world.... seeing that there is a natural source of radiance and brilliance in the world--which is the innate wakefulness of human beings."

Each of my tattoos are a sort of personal symbol or icon that have revealed themselves to me at pivotal points in my life; points that have warranted, for me, remembering, have inspired me and which I carry with me. As well as being artwork that I really dig...

Taken together, they are symbols of reason, passion and understanding. They are literally and aesthetically a part of who I am: a walking (sometimes running), thinking, breathing work-in-progress, built upon certain building blocks.

Another trip to Salisbury may be coming soon. I've had a number of ideas tabled over the past couple years. Ideas that may become the next symbol(s) in/on my mobile lexicon. Either that, or I may just roll in and get Yosemite Sam with "Back Off" written under him or Woody Woodpecker...

Thoughts on Icarus

We've all flown too close to the sun. Pushed beyond intellect and above reason to grab that wave, slide a rail, make a peak--whatever your wax-lined wings soar towards.

Maybe yours come apart differently--accelerator, drink, joint, line, bottle, fling--to each their own undoing, not spirit soaring, but crashing hard to the sea.

Some get lucky. Maybe the wings held, kept the boundary. A gift, earned or chanced to somehow follow where Blake found, "the road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom."

What do we do with that life returned? What did we find or learn? How did it change us? How is the world different or we different in it? What will we do or say or live that Icarus couldn't?

"I Can Eat 50 Eggs." or Touchstones

"Sometimes nothin' is a real cool hand." I knew I would remember that line as soon as I heard it. The line where the title of the Paul Newman film, "Cool Hand Luke," comes from. Luke is playing cards, and wins the pot, with nothing in his hand, and when he is ball-beaten for it, that's his response.

We've all got personal touchstones that we come across. Things that when we see, hear, read, experience, we know are going to stick with us, become part of us, make us better, or in some way help define us. I've been thinking about some personal touchstones of late, and thought I'd throw some out there. The list is incomplete, non-exhaustive, not in order of importance, or alphabetical order, or any real kind of order for that matter, but here are some:

1. Cool Hand Luke - as mentioned above. A film where Newman makes life interesting on his own terms, in any situation or circumstance, and rises above with grit, moxie, imagination, a sense of play, and perseverance. Never mind the ending, etc., this isn't a film review, just some of the things that make the movie a touchstone for me. I dig a character who will come out of nowhere with a statement like, "I can eat 50 eggs."

2. "The Marriage of Heaven and Hell" - At present, I only have three tattoos. One of which is an engraving originally by William Blake (though he didn't do the ink on my shoulder). Blake's poem blew the doors off what I thought poetry was or was supposed to be. There was verse, there was prose, there were the "Proverbs of Hell"--this was substance, questioning, free form. This was life-changing. And after suffering through the strict and sterile (for me) Neoclassicism movement in Gillin's Washington College class, to have Gillin lead Romanticism with Blake, and coming into The Marriage, signaled to me that this was the proverbial shiznit. And Blake set me up for Wordsworth and his Prelude, which I sat alone reading and re-reading in awe. But Blake and The Marriage were the game changers.

3. "Paul's Boutique" by the Beastie Boys - This was the first album (cassette, actually) that I ever went to the record shop (Records Plus in Easton at the time) and bought the day it came out. I was more into punk, hardcore/skate music, and reggae when "Licensed to Ill" came out and never really caught that album the same. But I distinctly remember Eric Abell and I rolling into Records Plus, buying Paul's Boutique, then playing it while working on a painting job, an Ocean City trip to the Econo Lodge, and then that album becoming one of the backbones of our high school soundtrack, and indeed the soundtrack of my life. The pop-culture allusions, historical/Biblical references (Shadrach, et al), diversity of musical styles, this album never gets old for me, I still catch new stuff after 20 years of listening, and it works on so many levels.



4. Fallingwater - I took art history at Chesapeake College. Sitting in the dark, as Professor Plumb (Clue, anyone) flipped through and lectured about various paintings and artists, it was all blurry. Until Fallingwater took the screen. Blending a man-made structure with the natural surroundings intrigued me. But the idea that the family really dug this stream and that Frank Lloyd Wright turned around and built the house over top of it, so that it flowed through and then out of the house, completely thrilled me. I had never given much thought to architecture, and seeing those slides led me into Wright and his work and sparked a new interest. I have had subsequent discussions with artists about his work and its lacking humanity or a human touch (can't say I'd want to live in his houses), which has also been a point of departure on what I hope to do with my own chosen art form, but again, Fallingwater is a touchstone for my thinking here.

5. The Transcendentalists - I didn't accomplish much of anything at N.C. State, academically speaking. Just stringing together enough credits to help me towards an associate's degree and lead me to Washington College. But it was in Raleigh, while I should have been at class, that I really dug into Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and Walt Whitman. Straight spirit-chargers all three. You can't read "Walden," Civil Disobedience," or "Song of Myself/"Leaves of Grass," and not be amped. But one that hit me hardest is Emerson's essay, "Self-Reliance." Here's a taste:

"Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist. He who would gather immortal palms must not be hindered by the name of goodness, but must explore if it be goodness. Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind."

Soul food for anyone who considers themselves "a loner, a rebel, Dottie."

6. "Kind of Blue," by Miles Davis - I put this on in the truck a few days back and let it play for a few days. That is a ritual that can accompany any mood, mode, or muse. It's an album that can fill or empty me, inspire, relax, and invigorate. I won't carry on, but it's an album that's downloaded onto every computer I work on, ipod, and vehicle. Indispensable, aesthetically and spiritually.

7. Buddhism - I grew up Episcopal. Spent some time studying the Old Testament at St. James, but was never able to get any organized religion to really resonate with my being, soul, whatever-phrase-you'd-like-here. I've always leaned more toward philosophy than religion for Life questions and searching, but studying Buddhism at Washington College gave me a deep insight as to how to synthesize those two disciplines. Authors/thinkers like Thich Nhat Hahn and Chogyam Trungpa have been worldview changers for me; and the (not frequent enough) practice of meditation is both a sanctuary and a thing of beauty. If only I could be better about regular practice ;) Either way, Buddhism has been a big touchstone for me, even giving me new eyes with which to look at Christianity and other world religions. It has also given me a better lens through which to encounter East-meets-West writers, including Robert Hass and Gary Snyder.

8. Tom Robbins - leaving Washington College, I was set for graduate school in Philosophy, phenomenology and continental philosophy, specifically. When we opted out of that plan, I found a job working at an art museum. Higher learning and art both lend themselves to a high seriousness. Through a writer's group, I got turned on to Tom Robbins as a writer I would dig. Dig I did. I tore through every one of this books, in random succession. His stirring of great story telling, philosophy, history, religion, art, sex, cultural taboos, into a pot with heavy doses of humor and idiosyncrasies, was exactly the slap on the ass of high seriousness I needed at the time. I didn't realize you could laugh out loud while spooning down your existentialism. My voice and aesthetic and what I look for and expect out of my favorite writing was changed. Period. "Jitterbug Perfume" is likely my favorite TR novel, but all of them together form the touchstone for me here.


9. Paul Rand - You've gotta love anyone who busts out the Color Forms logo. I've always been a visual learner. To ace French vocabulary tests, I would write out the list of words a few times and then be set. If I hear something important, probably gone. I've got to take it in visually. Working at an art museum, in visual communications and design, and with great graphic designers has made me look at the world altogether differently. Logos and branding, sure, but also the way information appears on a page or website, the concept of negative space, the impact of words from what is not around them, or in relation to an image, illustration, or placement on the page. And one of the first graphic designers and writers that hooked me was Paul Rand. If you don't know design, you still know Paul Rand. From the IBM logo, to Ford, go look at the website dedicated to his life and work and it is unreal how many cultural icons he has had a hand in creating. And if the subject grabs you, his writing on design is equally illuminating.

10. Robert Hass - Hass built the house that Blake laid the foundation for. He's the guy still writing today, that I come back to again. And again. His books "Sun Under Wood" and "Human Wishes" I read and re-read. And when I try to think I am giving him too much credit and building him up in my mind, when I go back and check those out again, he pulls it off all over again. He pulls off East-meets-West, nature writing, prose, poetry, self-reflection, and there is always something deep there, along with the form and language itself. Hass received some recent props, winning the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for his book "Time and Materials." Every book I have of his has a prominent place on my book shelf and inclusion on my short list of aesthetic shaping works.

So there's ten, since that's a nice number for lists. I can't call it a TOP ten, but I couldn't build a top ten list without including a whole lot of those as touchstones. But The Clash's album, "London Calling," a cat I am reading a lot lately, Franz Wright, Bob Marley's album "Exodus," William Carlos Williams, Gary Snyder--I'd have a hard time making a definitive ten. In part because touchstones are added and sometimes shifted for me over time. But you know them by the fact that they help define who you are, they affect or change you in some way. They are a part of you. So what are your touchstones?