The Bishop and the Butterfly: Murder, Politics, and the End of the Jazz Age
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    Friday Night Train of Thought (Murder of Crows)

    By Elusive Trope on Sat, 08/27/2011 - 12:55am |

    In the thread that came from my blog regarding My Dinner with Andre, Wim Wender's film Wings of Desire came up.  Now I could do a whole blog on this film, but the reason that I bring it up right now is that it was my first exposure to Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds.

     

     

    Let me say that Nick Cave is one the great under-rated musical artists of our time.

    I was able to see him live once at the Paramount in Seattle.  He berated the audience because they were being like drunk frat boys and yelling out songs for him to sing.  They couldn't just let him and the musicians he has assembled to perform the set, to let them be taken away by the vision he created.  He became my hero at the moment. 

    (which is close to the moment I saw Elliot Smith at the Crocodile Cafe, doing an acoustic set.  The crowd had actually sat down on the floor to listen to him - a first at the Crocodile as far as I know - and were shushing anyone who was talking in the back.  Some "frat boys" who had too many Heinekens were shouting "Do Needle in the Hay! Needle in the Hay!")

    Most of us wanted to strangle the frat boys.  But Elliot, in his at-the-moment recovery from heroin addiction, treated them with respect.  Then he played St. Ives Heaven. Just like this:

     

     

    There is such the darkness in each of our souls.  And yet we all good souls.  And yet we do bad things. 

    In developing a blog site, i focused on creating a site on the works of Herber Blau.  His first major work of literature was An Impossible Theater: A Manifesto. The first epitaph of the first chapter is William Gibson's The Seesaw Log:

    On the other heart, I had murder in me.

    Which reminds me of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds' album (remember those?):  Murder Ballards.

     

     

    Which reminds me not only of dick day's blog Crime & Punishment (and of course that one novel everyone talks about), but of the tv show Criminal Minds, which is part of another blog i have been trying to develop.

    What is that creates the evil in us?

    Or is it really evil that we're talking about?

    Listening to Nick Cave at the Paramount playing the piano, something like this:

     

    Where is this train going?

    I don't know.

    And maybe that is good thing.

    So to leave the train of thought on good note:

    [not to be taken ironically]

    Comments

    See you have to end a presentation like this with Somewhere Over the Rainbow! Ha

    These songs which are not that easy for me to take in—all at once. Kind of like when I first listened to Highway 61 revisited!

    But I pick up some lines and they send me.

    I might not believe in a hereafter but there are folks I have 'met' who do and I sympathize and I do not wish to curse them but rather hold to them in my heart! In order to become part of them? Part of their existence?

    So to end with Over the Rainbow—all righty then!

     


    by Richard Day on Sat, 08/27/2011 - 1:55am

    all righty then.

    or as my friends in BC would say: all righty then, eh? 

    never quite sure. modesty and humility. even as evil lurks.  it is a difficult tightope.


    by Elusive Trope on Sat, 08/27/2011 - 2:03am