This entire episode started with a little research into famed politician and actress Helen Gahagan Douglas; a member of the U.S. House of Representatives from California's 14th district (1945 – 1951). She was born on November 25, 1900; died June 28, 1980 at the age of 79 and appeared in the movie She in 1935, playing Hash-a-Motep, queen of a lost city, "She who must be obeyed."
In 1950 she ran for a seat in the upper house against Richard Nixon and according to one source:
… Gahagan Douglas was considered by many liberals to have been the prototypical victim of a smear campaign. Alluding to her alleged Communist (or "Red") sympathies, Nixon suggested that she was a "fellow traveler," citing as evidence her supposed "Communist-leaning" votes in Congress. He referred to her as "the Pink Lady" and said that she was "pink right down to her underwear." Gahagan Douglas, in return, bestowed upon Nixon one of the most enduring nicknames in American politics: "Tricky Dick."
It is a shame that no one has honored Gahagan Douglas with more than a simple footnote here or there; popular culture is awash with odes to feminist/ diva/ high camp icons … you would have thought some band from the Kill Rock Stars label would have jumped all over this.
Still, someone captured something of her in a song; a very old something, as it turns out. I was searching the Internet and ran across this, a recording (or so it is claimed) of a 1935 78-rpm recording by some Gaelic jazz band (?) called The Urisks. I suspect this is a hoax, since I can find no information about this band except the Myspace profile that posted the video (it is from a wrock band, people with far more free time on their hands than I will ever have). The only other reference to urisks are Celtic fairy tales where the band must have got its name. Still, regardless of who they are, it is a curious song and I found the video they apparently sampled Queen Hash-a-Motep's speech from.
So, Helen Gahagan Douglas, wherever you are. Thank you for all you have done and thiis is for you!
I was 14 in 1984. It was a time when shameless icon worship was not just unavoidable but seemed to be a good idea as well. That year the person I would have taken a bullet for was Cyndi Lauper. She was the first live concert I ever went to alone. To me, She Bop sums up everything that was great about 1984; terrible, terrible (and yet somehow endearing) special effects, the whole "conformity versus chaos" as somehow expressed in a burger joint and poofy hair; Beefcake Charly's bikers; bingo and Uncle Siggy; parents who appear in their daughter's videos and still lip-sync poorly; and an ode to reading Blue Boy magazine … a hardcore gay magazine that causes Cyndi's car to steam up.
But one thing bothers me that I cannot find an answer to; in the video there is a short animated sequence but I cannot find any reference to the artist who actually did the drawings. Does anyone know this?
None of this has anything to do with my poem and translation I made yesterday. I mention it simply because everyone, everywhere, has some sort of embarrassing skeleton in their closet. After all once Cyndi began hanging out with WWF pro-wrestlers I couldn't look my friends in the eye *sigh* oh, the shame. the shame …. so I figured I'd air mine before running for public office.
Lo que fue.
Lo que no fue.
Quiero que sepas
una cosa.
No soy ni uno
ni otro. Esto no
es nigromancia.
Esto no es
bendición.
Los candiles
se apagan.
Va demasiado
rápido.
La lujuria y
lo que no es lujuria.
Amor mío, bien
lo sé.
What was.
What was not.
I want you to know
one thing.
I am neither one
nor the other.
This is not
black art.
This is not
blessing.
The oil lamps
are put out.
It goes too
quickly.
Lust and
what is not lust.
My love, all this
I know.
My brother Eli and sister-in-law, Mary, are two of the coolest people I know. It's not just that their music is, to me, the soundtrack of the last 7 years of my life, it's that they are a total blast to hang out with. I deeply regret I was unable to be in the audience when they performed their older material as the residency band at Pehrspace in Los Angeles. Some of my happiest memories was hauling their speakers and equipment on the occasions I was able to go see them perform in small dives in Santa Monica.
I wrote this poem earlier this night before I found their new videos, but still aguja de hiel (bitter needle) would make a great name for a band, though I find it odd that the phrase has only (to the best of my knowledge) been used once by a poet, that of Federico Garcia Lorca in his poem Ay voz secreta del amor oscuro. Curious.
Amor mío,
aguja de hiel,
tú nunca entenderás
lo que te quiero.
Verte desnuda
es recordar los muertos,
lengua de fuego.
Este música,
si yo muriera, sin
fuego ni pebetero,
nos brindaban el aroma
del salvación.
Este fragancia de
carne. Este grito
no enfriada todavía.
My love,
bitter needle,
you will never understand
the love I feel.
To see you naked
is to remember the dead,
tongue of fire.
This music,
if I die, without
fire or censer,
offered us the aroma
of salvation.
This perfume of
the body. This scream
not yet cooled down.
At 80 years old and still performing around Europe, Freddie Redd will always be the greatest jazz pianist for me. I know there are bigger names out there than Redd's — and my praise certainly would never diminish the contributions of, say, Fats Waller or Count Bassie — but so many jazz pioneers have such a large cult of personality built up around them that they are no longer human, they have attained mythic status, and thus are very boring. The only thing fun about a cult of personality is watching it crumble for all the right reasons.
Redd is brilliant, I think, because he embodies what I respect most in artists; he makes his music because he loves making music and everything else is just fate. In other words (if I can impose my own limited, highly judgmental criteria for what makes exciting art) give me an artist who is in love with the way any day over someone who is focused on the end product and I will be happy. I bring all this up because I think my translation skills fall under this line of thought; I have no idea how bad my Spanish is, I suspect it is very bad, but I had a great time working on this poem and so, in the end, that is all that mattered.
Still, unlike almost all of my other translation, it was interesting not writing in English then translating but rather the opposite. Someone might read this and think, “This boy has no idea just how much he is hurting Español.” But perhaps it is good to hurt the language you are working in? Perhaps it those who use the language like a piano — hitting a lot of missed notes but ending up with a thing of beauty — that are the successful ones in the end? One night the poet Frank O'Hara was giving a reading and who should be in the audience but a very, very drunk Jack Kerouac, who interrupted Frank by shouting, “O'Hara, you're ruining American poetry;” Frank countered with, “That's more than you could ever do!”
And that is so damn true.
Amor mío, fuego
que devora. No hay
pianista.
El piano es
silencioso. Yo
no sé.
Un castillo
en el aire.
Tempestad en seco.
My love, devouring
fire. There is no
piano player.
The piano is
silent. I do
not know.
A castle
of clouds.
Dry storm.
Saxophone players are rare in this world; female sax players doubly so. I had been listening to Ada Rovatti the night before; I love her hard bop sound, her song Airbop. I am sure there must be a female, Armenian sax player somewhere as well, holding court in a jazz club in Beirut or London; I have yet to find her. Who I did find is, though, is Liana Papyan, a Yerevan-based dudukaharoohi, or duduk player. The video is very sincere, which I appreciate. What struck me the most, though, is her sound. So much of the duduk's droning music is played as a lament, which makes perfect sense, since the the horn can summon up pure grief easily (when I first heard the duduk, in Gyumri, I thought of rocks crying in the mountains). But that is not the only direction a person can take the duduk and deep down I have always been hoping to find someone who'll do with the duduk what Dizzy Gillespie did with the trumpet; take it in directions no one else has tried. I won't say because of this one video Papyan is the heir apparent to Gillespie but the burden of potential is there. So, if one day you are able to read this, Liana, I think you can do it; I want to see a bebop duduk player.
No sleep. New flower, nor tsaghik, has sprung.
No roots, yet. Perhaps memory will creep
back. A new flower, nor tsaghik, has flung
out her hennaed song far from where her deep
roots were laid, were hennaed. That is the song
I want you to hear. Do not cheer, do not
think that this small song can forget its long
past. No cause for applause. Who has forgot
to wake and sing? Who has forgot that small
song they were born under, that will withhold
nothing? No pause. Stay awake. Wooden flute,
a new flower, nor tsaghik. Now recall
the notes they taught you; recall just how old
they are; how far you are from the first root.
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