Analect 2.66x

21 March 2007. Morning light. Rain pools on sun green grass--walking through in sandals. Last night's storm. How to understand. The Appaloosa, for instance. Brown forequarters, then white. Degas rider--lithe, small head--indistinct, as if the horse were all. Budyonny's men--Cossacks from the Kuban--described by Isaac Babel. Letopis. His "differentness." Talmud and French liqueur--literature, that is. De Maupassant. Anything to get beyond Odessa--those thousand steps, down to a colorless sea. The Moldovanka--Benya Krik, "poltora zhid," the Jew-and-a-half... "Terse, astringent, lyrical." Moon over the Brzuch--their fate.

"One shy star..."

Analect 2.65x

20 March 2007, Tuesday. Rainy morning. Mist rising from milky blue-green pool... A few lone swimmers, orange cap. Woman with black umbrella, upright, burnished lipstick, dark dark red. Waiting for the bus. San Francisco and points beyond. P&O Orient--full page ads in Horizon magazine--1957. Fiji, Manila, Hong Kong. Causeway Bay and Sheung-wan. The warren of market stalls, one after the next--open sacks, spice and root. Tiny dried fish by the thousand, shape of ancient sea horse--to what end? Ginseng, black tea...aromas, darkened corners... Last night: story of Orpheus--the descent. Eurydice. Where has she gone. Oh but he knows. Refashioned as a song... "And tonight she sleeps on the cold cold ground, in the arms of Gypsy Davey..." Un embrazo muy fuerte...

Analect 2.64x

20 March 2007, Monday. Pearl gray cloud bank to the west, whispy edges of sun to the east. Brilliant green of Chinese elm, filigree. Last night: Son Seal, Chicago Blues...world of Robert Nighthawk, Elmore James, flashes of Albert King, Junior Parker, too--and Muddy Waters on the jukebox at the Dipsy Doodle. Sylvio's, Smitty's, the Expressway Lounge (over on Fifty-fifth)--and the Flamingo. A fan by the name of Wesley Race--holds the phone outside the booth so that Bruce Iglauer can hear. "Who the hell is that?" Shades of Leonard Chess.

From Robert Palmer, Deep Blues: "Between the sets I asked him about all the ghosts I was hearing. Were they really there? "The things that I heard and learned while being around those guys are things you can't forget,' he said. 'Even though you're tryin' to do your own thing, that basis will come out. A lot of time it may come out without your being conscious of it. You're hearin' somethin' that sounds like Robert sometimes, and somethin' that sounds like Elmore? Sure man, it's there.'"

Analect 2.63x

16 March 2007. Sunlight in wash of pale blue--still early, Navigator Escrow casting long shadow on Bank of America wall. Senegambia--the music always participatory--down to the northern coastline of Guinea...what had been the Wolof realm, then Sierra Leone, Liberia, the Ivory Coast--Ghana, Togo, Dahomey. Nigeria and Cameroon. Pitch-tone language--the rising and falling sounds, distinct and significant. Voice masking in parallel with change in appearance. Mirliton membrane drawn over the mouthpiece-- "a buzzing timbre, not unlike that of the kazoo." Ritual and religion, sacred singing. Follow to Blind Willie Johnson, Dark Is the Night. East Texas coastline, hurricanes and floods--the fire in winter, wrong place, wrong time, and yet the voice lifts, incantatory--joy and pleading--charged, resolute, sometimes with another responding--as if there were an answer (oh, but there is).

"Who's that calling? John the Revelator..."

Analect 2.62x

14 March 2007.

On the Wring Side of Solano

On the Wrong Side of Solano
we're goin' from door to door
There's an ancient troop of gypsies
And prophecies galore

They'll tell you of the future
All you'd ever want to know
On the Wrong side of Solano
The seagull and the Crow

Jim's phrase, from yesterday morning. Inevitable point of departure--like the stories of Harlan Howard at the Sunset Grill in Nashville-- "three chords and the truth..." All of them, sitting at one of the tables or at the bar, a phrase overheard--someone gets it down on the back of a napkin... "Heartaches by the Number," among others. Or, when he was still driving a forklift in LA, "Pick Me Up On Your Way Down." Not so lyrical, of course. More a kind of bourbon-tinged irony. Old-style Camels. But what the hey. You go with what you're given...

Analects 2.61x

13 March 2007. Golden morning light. Tiny brown and white puppy appears in front of window, red leash--then gone down the street, anorak woman in tow, multiple wry grimace--in her own world. Sunlight falling gently across entire back end of Coca Cola truck--nosed into the 7-eleven. Red and white swirl, all on the diagonal. Stubby Marathon van zips past--also white, but worn in--color used...   Beuys again. That image from Renée Block--with cape and shepherd's crook. Nicholas recalls his arrival "...in an ambulance on the Van Wyck Expressway."   Mississippi Sheiks: "World Gone Wrong." From 1920-something. Also prescient. Dylan, too--another turn of the screw. And yet--the great marshland, open water, stands of reed...pampas grass, coriander...   Casmerodius albus...

Analect 2.60x

12 March 2007, Monday. Daytime moon, one pale slice, above whispy cirrus clouds. Trudging bus, gleam of black SUV. The errors of our ways. Songs played until late--Dick's spread of harmonicas--pulled like musical rabbits from a blue nylon kit bag, The Hoener in C--manifest presence--like a double-decker sandwich--played with the muted wings of his fingers reaching high into the air on either side. Then a tiny one--in D, maybe--bright horizontal wafer--fits in one hand. Melody notes from some old-time trail drive--moon over the Ruby Mountains, a spring somewhere up ahead. Mules tied off just behind a chuckwagon, livestock grazing peacefully in the twilight. Mesquite, sage, chaparral. "The last nomadic herders," his trip to Mongolia. Clumps of soil dug up along the byways of Genghis Khan. Horse just outside the yurt--always ready to go...

Analect 2.59x

9 March 2007, Friday. Milky morning light--feels like late autumn, air crisp, touch of breeze off the bay. Last night--even after we'd finished--Doc Watson singing his a cappella Amazing Grace, with Jean Ritchie on harmony--then the mountain Baptist church--shape-note singers, someone calling out the first line in a clipped, hickory-pitched voice. Image of Roscoe Holcomb, his lone figure, narrow face, sinewy arms. Paul Robeson, too--the man as well as the song. Slow, deeply felt--his sense of measure. "...that saved like a soul like me." The Rutgers football shot--muddy field, long ago, leather helmets, horse hair padding. The Emperor Jones, those kinds of roles. Othello. With stolid woman of elder years--a comrade, CPUSA--both of them smiling. Then: Swing Low. Two pure-voiced women, also from a southern church--this time East Georgia. Folkways recording. Old songs as they're sung, simply and well--the meaning within. Mahalia Jackson on tv set--four white figures just behind--for decor?--as she belts out "Down by the Riverside." Good spirits--but a lone missionary in a foreign land. Finally, almost everyone's stepped out for a rest--Sister Rosetta Tharpe--on the long platform of a railway station, somewhere in England. Two of them, strutting side by side--an entry, a celebration. "A little rain..."

Analect 2.58x

8 March 2007. Small patch of sunlight falling across upper right corner of the page. Jet on diagonal across luminous sky. Map of darkened world--Stuttgart to Jakarta--tousled figure half-wrapped in Lufthansa quilt--or was it BOAC? Or are they both just names from the past--entities, that is--quasi-personae, making the world seem known. As opposed to Joseph Beuys, on his first visit to the US: I love America and America loves me. Lone figure in heavy hooded cape, made of what looked like gray felt-- shepherd's crook emerging from the top, face hidden. His companion--a coyote--the two of them behind metal bars across one end of gallery...welcome. Or the jet aircraft at JFK--raw metal fuselage, uninflected, no stripes or names--just one long titanium ding an zich...

To waken the dead, to bless the living...

Analect 2.57x

7 March 2007, Wednesday. Down by the Salley Gardens... Quiet gray dawn, wafts of steam rising from surface of pool...woman in soft red, sporadic underwater strokes, head above the surface like some caucasian otter. How things ought 'er be...Woody Guthrie's diction--out of the Indian territories... "You'd better go back to Ok-la-ho-ma...," tornado winds and the sudden freeze...Seminoles shipped west--the quiet forest dwellers--marched across to the harshest plains...Canada winds at full gale, all the way down the prairie. No wonder it's clipped--the words, I mean--no time to do anything but stay warm--or cool, as the case may be--all this reflected in the way you talk. Inviting, though--like a cabin door, open to all...
As opposed to the Irish hearth. Decades of stories--centuries--each one refashioned, time and again--enjoyed in the making A kind of luxury--rural, loquacious...hill and dale, cows on a winding path...the need for song...

Analect 2.56x

6 March 2007, Tuesday. Light blue sky--a California cerulean--with distant cirrus whisps. Giant golden Corona Extra bottle sprawled on its side down more than half the length of an imposing white truck. Improbable liquid pouring forth into blue bubble-rimmed pool--vignette of tropical sea--a grass-roofed hut perched at end of wooden pier. One form of travel... Horizon beverage, small red letters on door of cab. Behind me, a chirpy voiced woman at color copier. Cheerful, instructive, businesslike. They decide on 200... In front, someone else, an older person at bus stop, light green chenille jacket, unruly close-cropped hair, looking down over furrowed brow as she leans back against the post. Monthly pass in one hand, row of small geometric diagonals running down one side. In the other: a nylon backpack, soft, black. The two models--verses from Dante. Less playful than they seemed...

Analect 2.55x

5 March 2007. Puffy torpedo clouds with flashy edges--a sky full--back-lit like some divinely incandescent flounder...scales and fins, always the criteria, scales and fins, so that the catfish, the gar, the perch, even, come into question. Can this pass? A history of color--among other thoughts--begin with that early painting from Venice--a Scylla and Charybdis (or perhaps simply the Bosphorus)...a single wide-sailed ship en route in between. Warm tones and cool--all that we might need. Desert track near Antofagasta. Chilean miners, described more with her eyes and gestures than anything else--also en route--a desolate bus station in a remote town--from there a day's walk to the mines. "To walk to the end of the earth." "To walk and return, drunken." "To walk until you meet another person, and then to continue together."

Analect 2.54x

2 March 2007. Sun-filled morning, blue clear sky. "No day but today"--hand-painted sign on back of sizeable roll-door truck--a dull orange and muted red--like something out of the Upanishads. Ancient stories, told and then retold again. As with the songs: Lady Isabel and the Elf-Knight. She must undress--but will he not turn around...she seizes him by the waist, casts him into the sea. Two figures on a shore--joined by a story, their own, of course. Bird as witness, messenger, judge. Parrot in a golden cage--price of her freedom?

Jet zooming across the sky, dipping under one faint cirrus cloud...gleam of sunlight on white street lamp orb...secondary illumination. The words appear, disappear--like small stones, moving from one to the next. Pebbles in a river--a rosary. Buddhist beads...ochre and red...

"I thought of you, too..."

Analect 2.53x

1 March 2007, Thursday. Mottled gray skies, beads of rain on gray hood of LXi. Jim hopping across the street in his Carhart overalls, mass of non-descript hair--en route to gray--and floppy black sweatshirt. "That's money right out the door...," to Greg--regarding wall behind desk, now empty of cards and fliers, photos of bluesmen, labor leaders, children... Lacey's family, gathered in the rumpus room, or in front of some school front in Arkansas. A narrow white corrugated box, too, pinned up at a slight angle--with drawing of bird, delicate, almost invisible. "That's money right out the door." His quasi-Southern diction. "You know, I almost didn't get any sleep last night, knowing I was going to have to come in and do double-sided..."

Empty wall, like a bank of clouds on the horizon--propitious, welcoming--full of possibility. "So, this could be you..."

Analect 2.52x

28 February 2007, Wednesday. Morning sun, blue sky. Sparkling light on all the hoods and trunks in 7-eleven lot. Two older Asian women passing by just in front, side by side, engaged. The long green Transbay Express rumbles up Solano...clicking tumble of copier just behind. Reading one paragraph of Sebald last night: a small Rembrandt, from the Dublin collection--point of illumination within the darkness. The Flight into Egypt--Joseph and Mary and even the donkey, all unseen. Yesterday, with Hojin and Nathaniel--looking on the screen for site of the Battle of Austerlitz... Moravian countryside, to the east of Brno. A prominent hill, to the left of the highway...dirt track to the top--unexpected marker, cast in bronze, commemorating what took place: December, 1805. Google map, google hybrid, back and forth--towards some kind of meaning--also invisible. Dylan's face in the Scorcese--so open and immediate. Wanderer and gypsy--a shaman, too. Shape-shifter...

"And these visions of Johanna are now all that remain..."

Analect 2.51x

27 February 2007, Tuesday. Blue sky with a few white clouds, sun in the east. Sound of bus as it rumbles by, whoosh of cars on damp pavement from yesterday's storm. Woke up with lines from a song...

In Scarlet town where I was born
There was a fair maid dwellin'
Made many a youth cry well a'day
And her name was Barbara Allen

T'was in the merry month of May
The green buds they were a swellin'
Sweet William came from the west country
And he courted Barbara Allen

He sent his servant unto her
To the place where she was dwellin'
Said my master's sick, bids me call for you
If your name be Barbara Allen

Well slowly, slowly she got up
And slowly came she nigh him
But all she said as she passed his bed
Young man I think you're dyin'

Oh yes I'm sick I'm very sick
And death is in me dwellin'
Unless I have the love of one
The love of Barbara Allen

Oh don't you remember in yonder town
When we were at the tavern
You gave a health to the ladies round
But slighted Barbara allen

Oh I remember in yonder town
When we were at the tavern
I gave a health to the ladies round'
Gave my heart to Barbara Allen

Then tripped she lightly down the stairs
When she heard those church bells tollin'
And each bell seemed to say as it tolled
Hard-hearted Barbara Allen

Oh mother, mother go make my bed
Make it long and narrow
Sweet William died for me today
I'll die for him tomorrow

They buried Barbara in the old church yard
They buried sweet William nigh her
Out of his grave grew a red red rose
And out of hers, a briar

They grew and grew up the old church wall
Till they could climb no higher
And there they twined in a lover's knot
The red rose and the briar...

Analect 2.50x

26 February 2007. Gray mauve sky at dawn, light rain. Girl on dark bike, pale yellow slicker, darting past, down the hill. Across the way, 7-eleven lot--two bright brake lights on back of small truck--earthen green--man slipping on his boots... Gypsy days, gypsy Davey. The figure behind the song. A strong man in biker gear--sleeveless tee--Zampano--or, a shadowy figure, prominent and hidden all at once, that part of the self no one sees--everywhere revealed. A caravan, moving along a country road. Winter trees, one small fire--all of them gathered there, two on narrow wagon steps, others hunched slightly against the rain. Sound of some instrument--faint in the mist, simple line of a song. Budapest, Varna, Trieste--Almería, la Camargue. White horse in an empty field. The wind and the rain...

Analect 2.49x

24 February 2007, Friday. Blue blue all across the sky--the storm must be way east by now, out over the valley. Air rinsed clean, slight chill...ready to go... Last night, again until late--Woody Guthrie--his wiry vitality. Okemah, Oklahoma--the Indian Territories--a hole in America, tornados and oil. Then the drought. "Dust storms hit, they hit like thunder. Dusted us over and covered us under..." Churning clouds all along the horizon, out of nowhere... The West Texas plains--Pampa--his uncle Jeff, a few songs. Heading west, by whatever means. Everything stuffed and strapped into an old Ford--if you had one--and if you had gasoline--the Depression, too. "Shows the damn bankers men that broke us, and the dust that choked us..." Sing what you see--his guide light. Sing what you see...

Analect 2.48x

23 February 2007, Thursday. Rain horizon--sky aglow with gray light. Soupy downpour just after seven--watery ricochets in curbside puddles, then a breather... Orange-red pickup with gleaming break light, 7-eleven lot. Another, a duller red, with dark windows, pulled in at an angle nearby. Ryan's understated delight with highways in LA--endless cars, each with a contemporary personality--waiting to be painted. The Pakistani man in convenience store--he has a cold. Night shift. World of mosques and teeming marketplaces--barley, hemp, millet...seeds and grains. Baskets of folded paper--cardamom, cayenne--saffron in tiny bags. A neat pile of eggs in clay bowl, one by one--raisins and figs. Narrow glass of tea, heavy with sweet, but always clear. Two men, squatting on their haunches, Urdu companions, shooting the breeze. Ancient bicycle reappears--Javed's back from the hadj--heading out after long night...

Rain again now, steady. Man opening umbrella--a touch awkward--under far awning...

Analect 2.47x

21 February. Sunny morning, scattered clouds.
A Woody Guthrie and (much extended) family list:

Woody Guthrie
Almanac Singers
Moe Asch
Asch Records
Folkways Records
Stinson Records
Pete Seeger
Sonny Terry
Brownie McGhee
Cisco Houston
Bess Hawes
Leadbelly
Josh White

Will Greer
Golden Gate Quartet

Frank Proffitt
Doc Boggs
Jean Ritchie
Ewan McColl (Britain)

John Lomax
Alan Lomax
Ruth Crawford Seeger
Pete Seeger
Mike Seeger

Harold Leventhal
Irwin Silber (later)
Max Gordon (The Village Vanguard)

The Weavers
Fred Hellerman
Millard Lampell
Lee Hayes
Pete Seeger
Ronnie Gilbert

Leadbelly
Blind Lemon Jefferson
Robert Johnson
many many others

Paul Robeson
Marian Anderson

Burl Ives
Jean Ritchie
Aunt Molly Jackson
Oscar Brand
Richard Dyer Bennett

Carl Sandburg
Thomas Hart Benton
Erskine Caldwell
John Steinbeck
Grapes of Wrath
Ben Shahn
Walker Evans
Dorothea Lange

John Lomax
Alan Lomax
Ruth Crawford Seeger
Pete Seeger

Wobblies
Little Red Songbook
Joe Hill
Communist Party
Progressives
Harry Bridges
"I'm not a communist, but all my life I've been in the red..." Woody Guthrie

The Great Depression
Dust Bowl
FDR (Roosevelt)
WPA
FSA
Eleanor Roosevelt

Jim Crow
Civil Rights

Bound for Glory (This Train)
Dust Bowl Ballads
Talkin Dustbowl Blues
Tom Joad

Folkways Records--early recoding sessions with Moe Asch
Lonesome Road Blues
Goin' Down that Lonesome Road
Goin' Down that Dusty Ol' Road
So Long It'S Been Good to Know Yuh (Dusty Old Dust)

I Ride an Old Paint
Barbara Allen

Country Music
The Carter Family
Jimmy Rodgers
Roy Acuff
Grand Ole Opry
Uncle Dave Mason
Clarence Ashley
Ralph Stanley
Ernest Tubbs

Aaron Copland
Carl Sandburg

Woody Guthrie: Bound for Glory (Intro by Studs Terkel)
Joe Klein: Woody Guthrie: A Life

Apologies for this cascade of names. Think of it as the beginnings of a self-guided tour.
A beehive, a web of meaning...

Analect 2.46x

20 February 2007, Tuesday. Warm gray clouds, billowing, heavy with with whispy edges, long sliver of blue running through in the distance. Alan Lomax book--The Land Where the Blues Began. River song:

I went up on the landing,
I folded my arms,
I never missed my dog,
Till the boat was gone.
Oh-h-h, ee-e-e-e.

Roustabout, you got no home.
You makes yo living on the shoulder bone.

Lord, we work hard, babe,
And they know we work hard, babe,
And they know we work hard, babe,
And you know you work hard...

May your fortune be as deep as the ocean
And your misfortune as light as its foam...

Analects2.45x

19 February 2007. Even blue to the sky, green grass matte across yard--all the new shoots. Three squirrels in spring attire--welcome. Buds on plum and Chinese elm--a wash of new leaves, set against twisty red-brown limbs. Every turn revealed.

It was there on your banks we fought many a fight
Sheridan's boys in the blockhouse that night
They saw us in death but never in flight
Roll on, Columbia, roll on...

Roadway high above the river, hugging the side of the gorge--waterfalls and ferns--sixty-some inches of rain, forests damp with dew, russet-topped mushrooms everywhere--more a warm gray-brown, boletus edulis--the good ones, open spore tracks under wide cap, forest denizens, solid in their stance...stalwart fungi--they belong there...

Green Douglas firs where the waters cut through
Down her wild mountains and canyons she flew
Canadian Northwest to the oceans so blue
Roll on Columbia, roll on...

Winding road with hand-set walls of stone--our kind of Europe--from sometime in the '30s--the WPA. Men at work at last. Also a blessing...
Oregon bound... 2.45

Analect 2.44x

16 February 2007. Friday morning. A few layers of thin white cloud in the south--in sun-filled sky. Today, again--soft air of spring. Beautiful, even when one loves autumn best. Leonard--your favorite season. How could it be any other. We are what we dream? Or is it the other way around. Huddie Ledbetter as a boy, on the shores of Caddo Lake...that quiet expanse of water--the Red River--in far north-western Louisiana. No white people living there then-a world at least in part free of the terrible, on-going oppression. Betsy--late last night: "The horror." she meant it--straight out of Conrad. A horror of our own creation. Scar from ear to ear. "Some fellow tried to cut my head off." That was in the newsreel--with John Lomax posing the questions... They say his tuning notes were very gentle--as we heard, sitting there together. And that Leadbelly played best for children--they understood him. And he them. Endlessly growing--the fresh horizon... 2.44

Analect 2.43x

15 February 2007. Mid-morning sun, warm, like spring. Ojalá. Last couple of days--reading about Leadbelly. Played at Wheeler Hall early in April 1945--just a few days before I was born. This from Phil Elwood, then a student at Cal, who'd helped arrange the event: "on a Saturday night in a 'large loft over a double garage in the fancy Claremont district of Berkeley on Ruble Road. I suppose there were twenty of us, mostly couples. some of them left-wing types... None of us were quite sure what was going on, but we'd been told Leadbelly was going to come and we were going to sing.' When they arrived, Leadbelly was already there, and 'he was in very good shape. I can't remember if it was 'drink tired' or just tired. He was seated the whole time. The women in particular liked him. He was a powerful personality. As a personality he was rather forbidding, but then I always felt a little nervous around people like that.'"

"Oh, the Rock Island Line..."

Analect 2.42x

13 February 2007. Oblong warm gray cloud positioned behind upper corner of white bank wall. Sunlight, intermittent, to the east. Warm, now cool, now warm. Flash of figure as I glance up--teenage boy with fender guitar in limp brown sack...appurtenances. Like the tape from Katie--Hound Dog in Big Mama Thornton's original rendition. On a television stage, her gray massif holding the space in front of photo city facade--side men off to the side, the lead guitar player reed thin to her imposing bulk. He looks up, a bit anxiously, left hand at very top of neck, three fingers whammed across as he pulls off a rudimentary blues run. Modulated, reserved even--the ball is in her court. Big voice, yes--warranted, it seems--a belter, like Joe Turner...he started in a St. Louis bar, the voice already there... "Rain rollin' down my window pane..."

Analect 2.41x

12 February 2007. Sun, but with clouds to the west. Stolid woman, late 20s, at window monitor, her young daughter tucked away on gray rug at end of aisle, alongside. Sitting with her head down, arms around her knees, head tucked in. Bottoms of her small jeans lined with several inches of lace. Worn patent leather shoes. Story from Alan Lomax--the black women in Mississippi--customs from Africa--how the women there were so much responsible for the agriculture--maize and yams. They lived close by the fields--to be able to take their young children with them as they worked. A pattern of necessity... Her face up now, fine brown-blond hair, upturned nose, sloping gray-brown eyes--agile little mouth, pulled in at the corners--one expression after another--inner life unknown...

Come on there, chillun,
Sister Katie, we got to go,
Sister Katie, we got to go,
Sister already gone,
We got to go,
We got to go...

Analect 2.40x

9 February 2007. Rain and gray. Yellow light under overhanging eve of Navigator Escrow...captain's wheel on curved-top sign... Figures in slickers and umbrellas, faces inward. Painting room yesterday--also rain. Deborah's black and white Longhi print, her tentative chipboard version right alongside. Sanaa--doing Corot. The view through Roman aqueduct arches--1820 something--just as vital right now. We recognize a touch of lighter tan--unexpected--under one of the overhanging curves. Another navigator. Ryan's murky Los Angeles--views into the distance. Hint of mountains, city interspersed...beginnings of something strong--heroic, even--despite the anomie. Lydia--her Prussian blue--now with a kind of brownish-pink in with the white--hooded figure. "Every Russian woman..." She expects me to know. Ivan Grozny, Kazan'--the defection of Prince Kurbsky to the Polish side... Anthony and Nathaniel, drop-cloth desks--anchoring the corners...

Analect 2.39x

8 February 2007. Gray morning--parallel rows of fluorescents inside the 7-eleven, dark mansard shingles, stained here and there. Big brew sign, tilted coffee cup--paraphernalia. Albert Nachman plumbing driver climbs into high van--his two-tone cap--dark blue and white--atop a boney narrow head. Sitting inside the cab, crueler and coffee--shape of a commercial phone held at an angle--longish antenna--checking calls as well. Hand to mouth, fingers tapping his upper lip, almost in rhythm--like the story of Jimmy Dale Gilmore--no, Butch Hancock, their songwriter, driving a John Deere in West Texas cotton fields. "Lubbock or Leave It." His phrase--along with lots of others. "I was driving a terracing machine, working for my dad... So on that old tractor I found out that that speed and gear was the key of G and you could play any song you wanted in it. I got to carrying a notebook and jotting down songs out there. I'd go home at night and try them out on a guitar and they'd be done. In Lubbock there's nothing between you and the clouds or you and the earth..."

Amarillo rose...

Analect 2.38x

7 February 2007. Layers of gray cloud packed in like sturgeon sidings--trunks and gullies. Silver light hovering too. Three sea gulls--tiny against distant sky, heading inland before the rain. One or two drops--a herald... Last night: Iris DeMent's story again--her family's farm, a generation back, on the St. Francis River in northeastern Arkansas. Cypress trees, black locust, tupelo and floating willow--Dawidoff knows all their names--nearby the Cherokee Trail of Tears... A small hand-made barge, ferrying long sacks of cotton to the far shore, then by wagon to the gin... "..."What she heard her mother sing moved her in ways she wasn't prepared to explain... 'I'm so wrapped up in these sounds,' she says. 'It's more than music to me. It's a kind of place. I know about these songs. It's music where people are sitting and writing about life, the things they're struggling with and the hard times. They're about tryin' to get through life and hope for the future...'"

Analect 2.37x

6 February 2007. White plume of steam against milky white sky. Plumber's truck with long lengths of copper pipe on the diagonal up onto the cab--no, it's a red-orange fiberglass ladder, maze of gardener's equipment, one plywood side pane along top of worn white metal. Mistakes. Inconsistencies. These things happen. Like George Jones , when his new wife gives him a white Dodge pickup for his birthday--he goes down to the Nashville(?) dealership, decides on the spot that he wants the green one as well. Twenty seven cars and four golf carts--how many vehicles can a man drive? And yet, his enunciation--the way he'll linger on a word--mining the meaning--wins over all. No other excess can compete. Like Rose Maddox, close in her mother's tow, belting forth songs at age eleven in Central Valley bars--Visalia, Tulare, Modesto. World of the fields, picking apricots and peaches at 25 or 50 cents an hour--that's when you become a band. "Let's sing..."

Analect 2.36x

5 February 2007. Mist-covered moon, floating just above the hills. Edges lost in darkness. Morning: also veiled, sun just now pushing through. Woman in jaunty white baseball cap disappearing for a moment behind large green truck--amber dome light flashing on cream white cab. WM. Two guys in heavy work clothes, dulled fluorescent-green safety vests--one leaning back slightly, hands in his ample pockets. Just in front--the German doctor, walking carefully up the street, head tilted upwards, houndstooth, sheaf of papers tucked in close. Last night: Doc Watson and Bill Monroe--also a duet, Doc singing the lead, Monroe in high-voiced harmony on the chorus. Banks of the Ohio. Where the song comes from--two solid men, 200 pounds, catching empty oil drums as they were tossed from a train in Detroit--Monroe in his youth--but here, an almost delicate tenor, with subtle mandolin line--like a honeysuckle vine on a trellis...crucial embellishment. Sadness of the words...taken up in the flow...

Analect 2.35x

2 February 2007. Bands of yellow sun pouring through gray clouds. A fan of light from above--as in a 19th century devotional. Last night: what is the difference between gospel and spiritual?--the first being the music out of Protestant evangelical tradition--African-American as well as European-American...where the spirituals are very much the body of song from the black South--out of Africa, almost certainly, with their sliding notes, call and response... Ghostly slow black and white footage of the Swan Silvertones--a kind of music with or without the sound. Then Turner Junior Johnson--harmonica answering each phrase of his wavery voice...young girl in a modern kitchen, close focus--song of praise, as she veers into ecstasy...and an inexplicable re-enactment--Down by the Riverside--a re-knowing of slavery--green chartreuse t-shirts, mop handles, a plastic bucket or two--in some church rec room, perhaps, the camera all jiggly, calls from the audience--laughter, affirmation. Their beautiful voices...

Mary had three links of chain
and every link was freedom's name
Pharaoh's's army got drownded...
Oh Mary don't you weep...

Parshas B'Shalach--this week. "And the waters divided..."

Analect 2.34x

1 February 2007. Pearl gray trailing clouds. Blond woman with bangs, muted cerulean coat--crustacean--striding up Solano, narrow black circular cord in her left hand, fingers tight... Another walker, more loping gate, her arms swinging back and forth with an unpredictable grace. Dawidoff on Doc Watson--Arthel his given name. Blind before he was a year old--something of a memory of the moon. But a life fully lived, down to choosing a dress for his beloved--by feel. Clarity of sound--as if he were chosen. So seemingly straightforward. So straightforward, period. "Like doing carpentry or fixing a car...," both within his grasp. But more than that, too, of course. How to feel the song. "...a large heart behind the words..."

Calico...home...

Analect 2.33x

31 January 2007. Gray on gray. Yellow street lamps before dawn, far end of the block, through branches of camphor trees. Song of a dove. Steady note, then higher, then gently falling. At intervals, again now and again. Last night: the Louvin Brothers. No doves there. Fire and brimstone more likely...at least in Ira's lyrics. Ira Louvin--a man possessed...down to his name. Meant every word, too. Hill country salvation--Sand Mountain--massive plateau in the northwest corner of Georgia--violent and remote... Was it the isolation or the poverty--or simply the starkness of it all... Charlie: "I think my brother was tortured by religion." And yet, not to believe... Cattle and kind. Sheep grazing on a hillside--cows, too. Jazzbo prancing through the fence gate, late late afternoon--leading the ewes down steep meadow path to waiting barn...soft white doves there, too--high on the eves, evening calls...

Analect 2.32x

30 January 2007. Jet with upturned wing tips, gleam of sunlight on its nose--veering across whispy bank of clouds. The rest of the sky a milky blue. Dark-haired fellow in gray sweatshirt--a builder--climbs into heavy maroon pickup with incongruous silver panels along the sides... Ralph Stanley...a shy man before his brother--the extrovert--drank his liver away. "A dram drinker," they called it--at least according to Nicholas Dawidoff--who does usually seem to get it right. The way the voice--high and lonesome--corresponds so closely to those hills and hollows. Clinch Mountain country... An unpainted cabin--weathered gray wood--lived in for seventy years. Iron pump handle, sloping porch, tool shed and barn. One cow, a few rows of corn. Hardscrabble... House Carpenter, Barbara Allen, Banks of the Ohio, Omie Wise...

Analect 2.30x

26 January 2007. Solid gray thick-enough-to-cut-like-butter sky. Softened edges. Two crows and one white gull on asphalt of 7-eleven lot. The crows encroach, but the gull pecks them away. An ornithological standoff. John Ford, maybe... Last night--sound lines. Melody of This Land Is Your Land, picked out on the guitar with Carter Family lick--just enough to get the thing going. Stephanie on bass, Angie on washboard. Our Scandinavian trio leaning back and forth... Anthony across the circle, sitting on the floor, plugged in--embellished riffs way up the neck. Joe's can with walnuts--motley of bottle caps applied to the outside. Applied--that's the word. As if the thing had always existed--and we simply grace each new turn. Urs: Is there truth in the wind? Indira--Lonesome Valley--a song opening out into the world...

Analect 2.29x

25 January 2007. Puffing cloud of white steam against warm gray sky--just over worn mansard shingles of 7-eleven roof. Narrow vertical antenna obscured for a moment--then crisp again against more yellowish patch of sky. Man in shorts on old-style bicycle, baby carriage contraption towed behind--small red pennant, also on vertical. Latina with newspaper bags and a slightly crooked smile--morning stock from grungy gray-green van. Inside--window nearby--woman in sleeveless blouse--the hairdresser's--standing with arms akimbo (all in black), head tilted to the left, inspecting her work. Worried-faced woman in crisp London Fog, just a glimpse of her head as she backs out in late-model dark bronze Honda SUV.

Ollie Gilbert, somewhere in northeastern Arkansas--now fifty years back.

Down in the valley
The valley so low
Hang your head over
Hear the wind blow...

Analect 2.28x

24 January 2007. Mid-morning sun in pale sky. Massive longitudinal soda truck--red, white, black, moored across two parking spaces, a handicap zone, and twenty-some feet of red no-parking curb--projecting a couple of extra yards into 7-eleven driveway for good measure... That's across the street. Next door, Kathmandu--Lena and her husband, seated in doorway alcove, on yet-to-be unwrapped wooden bench--handmade, each leg still in raffia... Their small backs turned to the sidewalk and street, taking in the sun. My guess is that they're drinking tea--pale Assam in small chamfered glasses, mixed with honey and mare's milk. But no, they're sipping from some franchise cups--same soda as in front, no doubt. Meeting us half-way. Doc Watson and Clarence Ashley-- "Will The Circle Be Unbroken"

Analect 2.26x

22 January 2007. Single gull dipping and turning against blue morning sky. Woman of middle years with small dog on leash--who turns his head just now and looks back up at her. They disappear around the corner. Earlier: wind against canvas sheeting over playing field fence--each gust sends giant ripple across the surface. Reading last night: concluding pages of Austerlitz. The Paris library, built on a ridge of pre-historic chalk--and the ruins of German warehouses for storing goods confiscated during the war--rugs, paintings, china, furs--stuff of bourgeois life. "It's a bourgeois town"--Lead Belly, around the same time--but he's talking about D.C. This morning--the Libby jury--hard to select. No one who speaks out against Bush acceptable. Song as weapon? No--just song as song. Reaching back into the past, the arms we most need...

Analect 2.25x

19 January 2007. Sun, just now over the hills, pouring light. Early: Javed in 7-eleven. Back after Mecca, Karachi--I can only guess. "Mucho trabajo, poco dinero," he says, two or three times, more as a mantra than anything else. Photograph at top of New York Times--waves pounding the sea wall of an old European town. Cover of New Yorker: Bush as Nero--playing a lyre, by self-appointment. Last night: Down in the Valley. After a good shot of Polish vodka. Told story of Robert and Gabryela--driving with them from Amsterdam east, across Germany to the Oder...small town where family of the school principal welcomed us. Friends of Gabryela's family from the time of the war. Feather beds, cucumbers with dill, mushrooms gathered from nearby woods. A school building, their apartment one of the rooms--a shelter. Having lived like this always. Song.

Analect 2.24x

18 January 2007. Gentle sun this morning--why is that? Sometimes harsh and raking, today an infusion of golden light. Cold again in the night--white frost across the field, shapely figure in the dark, her agile scraping at a car window. Last night: Lonesome Valley. Not just a voice, but an entire being from the past--emerging almost miraculously from the screen of laptop...Mississippi John Hurt--his taut skin, lively eyes--many emotions, the subtlety of them all. A kind of rolling motion, too, as if he played from the shoulder, rolling into each note, each phrase. "I learned one number all the way through." In the dark of night, his mother's musician boyfriends asleep in the other room--always the sounds--breathing, light snoring. He takes up the guitar--very quiet. First notes--fingers follow what the heart must know.
One could weep.

"You've got to walk that lonesome valley..."

Analect 2.23x

17 January 2007. Rain yesterday evening--glossy steps outside fourth floor door. First day back at school, cold classroom, grungy desks--yet enthusiasm of new group... Po Chü-i, ancient poem: The Hundred-Fire Mirror. We read each line. Can you convince us of the meaning. "Was he a court poet?" The meaning of mirror...red-jade powder, golden oil, polished bronze... This morning: sun everywhere, now glinting off metal pocket clip on my pencil. Also a mirror. Last night, late: Austerlitz. His disturbing, detailed reiteration of the camp at Terezin. Nothing left to chance. Returning to London, he watches a film made there at that time, now in slow motion. Kinds of distance, layers of remove. And then: Agata's face. His mother's. A mirror as well.

Analect 2.22x

16 January 2007. Layers of white frost on dark car windows...grass playing field white as well. Steam billowing from over the roof of the pool--white against black dawn sky. Steam inside, as well--from blue-green water. Sylvia Plachy's photographs--many years ago. The baths in Budapest--muted green tile, figures half-appearing in the mist. Yet sense of home. Like Blind Willie McTell, his version of Amazing Grace. Not singing--just his slide guitar, erie and haunting--as if the notes appeared of themselves. A choral group, too--sound of the reverend's voice, introducing--then a run of moaning incantation--melody lost in the harmony of their insistent, rhythmic chant--voices adding in, more for presence than for song.

"Do Lord, oh do Lord, do remember me..."

Analect 2.21x

15 January 2007. Haloed sun in blue winter sky. Yesterday, early: large woman in layers of coats, small shopping cart, slumped back asleep in Starbuck's lounge chair--undisturbed. Images of the South: cotton field, plantation house, the river. Parchman Farms and Sugarland--the names pretty much covering the spread. A google search shows they've been turned into bands--strange phenomenon, this willful inversion. "From prison farm to play list," something like that. Midnight Special, for instance. Paul's outrage, years ago, at its neutralization as a cityboy song--whitened up, middle class. As opposed to the moaning trials of the run from Memphis to Chicago. And even more: lone window against nighttime sky, a few stars, train whistle somewhere in the distance...

"...shine her light on me."

Analect 2.19x

11 January 2007. Curling column of white steam against pale blue sky. Cold. "Maybe we'll get that snow they're talkin' about." White panel truck in 7 eleven lot, pulled in at an angle just under the eave. Figure in dark hooded sweatshirt making his way towards double glass doors. Orange-red numeral on wall above, smaller green eleven cutting through. Poverty of invention? A contradiction, in any case--where the claims of immediacy can offer so very little. And yet, and yet, we make this our world. Anthony and Steph at City Lights--from that time. Dharma Bums. What he remembers. Sugar, was it? A Buddhist dream? Mountain top somewhere northwest--a source, point of origin. The initial vision...held and held...

Analect 2.18x

10 January 2007. Morning fog, gentle gray everywhere, golden yellow mixing through just above the hills. Anticipation. Wash of buds on Chinese elm--also golden yellow. Motionless against the gray. First and last words, so often the same--or is it just that it feels right so. River Jordan--not Appalachia, but Burning Spear. Lyrics by the Itals, too. "Meet me at the bank of the beautiful river..." Evocation, no matter what the source. Last night: June Carter, with a lanky, expressively nervous Johnny Cash. Pete Seeger on banjo--but nicely in the background. "Blue Eyes." Steadfast and plaintive. True song. Later--with Ahron. Down in the Valley. The first notes, also true...

Passing through...

Analect 2.17x

9 January 2007. Sun through wide window, long morning shadows across Solano. Early crow on street light stanchion, sleek shoulders, flexed, then five raucous caws. Teenager maybe--or a corvidean James Dean? Note from Tom, apropos yesterday. Black Oak is on the block. Do I know a buyer? Nights before, mornings after--as in Flaubert, A Sentimental Education. Waking in the dawn... Rereading Austerlitz. The Antwerp station. Nocturnal zoo...mixtures and inversions--nothing as it seems--questioning the seeming itself. Eyes peer out of the darkness, impossibly open--awareness is all. "The helmsman, inattentive if only for a moment..." Unterjoch, Uberjoch...

Analect 2.16x

8 January 2007. Black sky before dawn, constellations through camphor leaves. Orion the Hunter. Scimitar or sword? Reaching down to lower shelf in Black Oak last night--Evan Connell story of the gypsy man in Santa Cruz, The Fisherman from Chihuahua. "Santa Cruz is at the top of Monterey Bay, which is about a hundred miles below San Francisco, and in the winter there are not many people in Santa Cruz. The boardwalk concessions are shuttered except for one counter-and-booth restaurant, the Ferris-wheel seats are hooded with olive green canvas and the powerhouse padlocked, and the rococo doors of the carousel are boarded over and if one peers through a knothole into its gloom the horses which buck and plunge through summer prosperity seem like animals touched by a magic wand that they may never move again."

Analect 2.15x

5 January 2007. Band of yellow light across obsidian black formica--wooden handle of brush, luminous, varnish chipped away at the end. Clear sky. Tiny stationary bird on power line in the distance, turns now to the east, flies off. Same black car, same spot on 7-eleven lot--now with brilliant sun on trunk panel. Sebald's character, in Riva again--this time as Dr. K. It was the Hunter Gracchus, hinted at in the first pages. Photograph of barque, with "dark, folded sails." Working back from image to story--his modus operendi--except that here the story preceded as well. Retold in scrupulous detail--everywhere evocative--crags of the Dolomites shooting up behind. (Betsy's mother: "Just wait--they shoot up.") The helmsman--inattentive even for a moment, and the ship can never land...

Analect 2.14x

Gray and rain. Wet black asphalt, parked dark car, glowing sign in cleaners' window: same day service. Like in Oceanside--the pier in winter, fog, sound of waves below, feel of the swells. $5 a Pay Day--that was it. Sales to young marines--Camp Pendleton--arrived from Philly, Iowa, Kankakee--en route to a shaved head and God knows where. Knife fight--just the tip of the blade. "That's all I need," explained a barrel-shouldered sargeant. "That's all you need." Careful stacks of shirts, pinned and folded, plywood counters, worn and varnished... Walters, not even our name. Something received, ad hoc, but serious in its own way. Banks of fluorescent panels above, linoleum floor, long desk at back--the register. Always standing--an unwritten rule. Just $5 a Pay Day...