Synecdoche

Nights and days pass inside my mind and I can not figure out how to finish this set of entries about the 2013 Fall in 170 Wurster Hall.

Days and nights pass outside my self, pushing me to write a last entry before the Fall ends.

Two words have knocked me during these Moons and Suns of time: "to close" and "farewell". I had not write them until now. As soon as I jotted them down I realize why am I blocked: closeness is something not so far from a grave. Whereas farewell is a word that I knew for a poem by Neruda: a poem that nothing has to do with 170 Wurster Hall, even when Farewell is rooted around my heart and it was through my hands that I explored my heart at 170 Wurster Hall.

There are no place for talking about death nor to intellectualize a meaning that does not vibe at this time. For 170 Wurster Hall is a time for place and rhyme. A rhythm for myth and tune. A hearth for the rainbow and the lighthouse. A sea outside of a bottle that it is outside of a message. A cabin. A delta. A crossroad. A hammer. Honey falling down. A bridge and a hill. A wrapped mountain. A whale in the middle of the air. A New York map. A shoe on the wall. A spring beneath the stairs. A mermaid. A good night for Irene.

An echo...

A peace in its labyrinth. Lights in the heart. Doors. Mustaches and plaits. A little headlight. Clay. Branches. Sticky tongues. Dreams. Tears. Laughing. Watercolor. A spring of life...

Walking eyes from the East to the West. To the South. To the Middle East. And back to the West: A compass sealing on the map. A captain...

Crossroads

The other night I was mesmerized by delta blues' songster Robert Johnson. I just realized at some point that I was absorbed by his voice and performance. Then I wanted to know more about him. It shocked me how young he was when he died and what few recordings there are of him. Reading of his life I remembered that I had seen years ago a film about him and the legend of how he exchanged his soul with the evil in order to become the most extraordinary guitar player. I also remembered that at that time I was condonscending with the story. A Hollywood stuff I thought. But now it was different.

What is the symbolic meaning of a crossroad? I wondered. I looked for lighthouses to iluminate my ignorance. I found several pictures of the blues intersection of highways 61 and 49. Most of them pure kitsch. But I also found an interesting article about criminals and suicides buried at crossroads in the pre Victorian era. The magic thinking expected that the souls of those condemned people got lost at the intersection and were unable to return to the town. Thus, a crossroad is a place for marginal, disposable, people.

However, marginal people also means people who live at the margin, at the frontiers, outside of the mainstream of conventions. Outlaws and revolutionaries. People at the borders: Hermes' believers.

A linear thinking assumes a binary moral between good and bad. A less simplistic but also linear thinking acknowledges a continuum between a bipolar ethical landscape. A croossroad denies such simplification, for it summarizes the intersection of two ways of life: ethical / unethical, conventional / unconventional, given / constructed, spiritual / material, accumulative / unattached... Both ways run in their own continuum where differences are not of quality but of intensity.

In this sense the quid is not how far are you from one pole within a pathway, but what far are the paths from each other. A dynamic answer to such question requires individuals that are aware of their agency. Builders of choices and founders of decisions: Hermes' believers.

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A delta is not different from a crossroad. That's why I depicted the intersection as one of water. The roads are not disguised by their color or texture but by the constant choice making that individuals do at the crossroad. In this landscape a crossroad is the setting where individuals set depth and meaning: sense and orientation...

Quilt

Few months ago I read that some Chinese poems with four verses have a peculiar form: the first verse introduces a topic; the second continues it; whereas the third verse introduces a new topic, and the last joins the former verses. It is like by means of a thematic juxtaposition a new meaning emerges. This new meaning is not the direct sum up of the topics, but a subtle nuance that knits them and creates diferent tones, colors, and warmth. Like a quilt. For lyrical ends, verses one, two, and four should rhyme. It is clear that this rhyming emphasizes the irruption of the third verse. This a free - non rhymed - example:

A silk trader in Tokyo has two daughters
20 years old is the oldest and 18 is the youngest
A soldier can kill with his sword
But those ladies will kill you with just their gaze.

Mississippi John Hurt' lyrics are a flowing river. Suddenly a boy throws a flat pebble over the water. The pebble hits the river, giving birth to ephimerous circles. The river takes the circles with him. The pebble jumps and hits the river again. The river collects the circles. The boy smiles. Eventually the river swallows the pebble. Then the boy puts his hat on his head and leaves his guitar aside. Now he is a man. A peasant that shares his crop with the land owner. A logger going to the forest to chop some wood. A picker that dyes the cotton with his purple.

This night the man arrives to his hut. Puts his hat on the table. Lights the night with logs in the hearth. Reminds the boy throwing pebbles in the Mississippi River. John is the name of the boy. John takes his guitar. John sings a song about a man that picks cotton but this night is cold and the man has no logs to light his night. The left hand of the man is hurt. John does not want a cold night to the man: John reveals to the man that he should ask the youngest daughter to make him a pallet. It does not matter if the fabric is red cotton or Chinese silk. The man sleeps beneath the quilt, rumoring something about guilt and a Chinese poem for a 20 years old girl. 

Bell

A man in love is dying. He rests on his bed. The beloved woman is not with him. Why she is not there? because they are not married and in this conservative world they can no inhabit together under such circumstance. That is the social context. Whereas the emotional one is cruder: she does not love him. She is at her house. Knitting? Playing the piano? Sleeping? Certainly she is not thinking about him.

The last wish of the man is to see her. He commands to his servant: "Go to her house and bring her to me. Say her she must come to my side: Now."  We need to acknowledge this action, because of it now we know a couple of things: first, on that world you do not ask your siblings or friends to make you an intimate favor, even when you are in the rush of dying. Second, he is not poor, he has at least one servant, nor she is, for in a conservative society there is no pot to melt social classes.

Classes do not mix. But coexist. They are the pattern of the social fabric. How do they communicate among them? To answer that question let say that he is a landlord and she is the daughter of another one. He commands the servant in order to communicate with her. Among people of the upper class a servant is the message (or a door, a laundry machine or a car). That is why the woman takes her time before going to the deathbed: she receives a message, puts it aside, and thinks about going or not, about what to wear, and how to take control of this uncomfortable situation. “What does he want from me? – she wonders – To make me the faster widow in the history?” First lesson: if you are dying, do not send a message, but a messenger that can hurry the situation on your behalf.

The communication is more complicated between a landlord and a servant. Thanks god, customs help to facilitate the dialogue. A servant is not supposed to interrogate a landlord about what he is doing or thinking or ask explanations about why the landlord does not ask a friend to bring the lady. The servant would break this custom only in case of an emergency: "Excuse me for awake you, my lord, I am afraid that the house is on fire. Do you mind if I help you to dress to go outside? I will need to throw some water." Or the servant would break it in case of an extreme personal necessity only if the timing and place allow it, of course. "Dear lord: my son died. And I failed to save the money to his burial..." Second and final lesson: customs are dikes.

Coexistence of far social classes in a close place is a tricky thing to the landlord. He needs to separate the possible settings and manage them in different manners. The regular activities only require him to command accurately and monitor the accomplishment every now and then. "I want the curtains of the library open at the sunrise and close at dusk." Like the fiat. The problem arises, for instance, when the landlord suddenly is thirsty: he is not supposed to shout “A glass of water.” Nor you can expect that he uses his feet and hands and goes to the kitchen to help him. He could do it but he would not. Instead the landlord uses bells to alert the servant that he needs something and to signal where is he.

So, the dying man, William, rings a service bell. The servant goes to him to receive his last command. The servant becomes a walking message that delivers itself to the woman, Barbara Allen. The servant fades away. After a long while, Barbara goes to the deathbed and makes a prognosis for free to William: “You are dying”. She leaves him. William dies while she is walking back to her house. The church bell tolls the knell. Now is god who calls to the service.

The narcissistic Barbara assumes that William died because of her. Barbara does not realize that he was dying before she made the obvious prognosis. She knows that there are a lot of men dying for her. Her narcissism makes Barbara to believe that she is a magnanimous person and decides to manage god’s will, dying the next day in order to avoid a massacre.

Barbara and William were buried almost together, not so far but no so close. Customs are dikes. William is next to the place to sing to god (singing is the way that god prefers to know about his creatures' news). William roots a blood and passion flower. While Barbara is outside, nourishing an almost immaculate little flower. She was good at the end, but not enough to be a white rose.

Hearth

"What circle?" I wonder as I listen to the Carter's song Can the circle be unbroken. Maybe it is the circle of life. However, this is not a circle but a cycle: from birth to death, from ashes and dust to life. The carbon cycle. No, it is not that circle. Why to mourn if this cycle is broken? Why to ask to keep it? It does not guarantee rebirth or reincarnation of those who kick the bucket.

This circle could not be neither the old Greek's and existential Nietzsche's circle of eternal return. Because a circle like that it is not only pagan but also centered in the here and now, not in the eventual end of time and final trial. If every moment is a replica of several moments in the past, we only have one opportunity to make a choice to be ourselves: at this place and this time. This is the foundation of our freedom. And freedom is not a synonym of Lord. They could be similar, but certainly they are not the same. For the simple reason that we can not ask Freedom for the salvation of the soul of those who died. Although it is clear that some of us put our hopes in freedom to liberate our minds and bodies in this life.

Tony's hearth (detail) by Lux (2013)

There is, however, a circle to ask to keep unbroken when a loved one passes away: the circle around the fire that warms the bodies and nourishes the spirits in the night. This is the circle that you want to preserve. Because at this circle there is nothing else but life and joy of living.

Appalachian cabins are unique because their porches, but also for their hearth. They materialize two sides of human experience of place, solitude, and proximity. Outside, at the porch, we enjoy seeing the vast sky and the changing forest. Singing. But to be in peace with all that open space, the mind needs a counterbalance, around the fire, at the hearth, in darkness. Sharing.

In Spanish, the name for hearth is hogar. But hogar also means home. Whereas in Greek mythology Hestia " is a virgin goddess of the hearth, architecture, and the right ordering of domesticity, the family and the state" (see more). A matriarchal figure inhabits the hearth, the heart of the home. The center of the circle. At the end, the song asks the Lord to keep the goddess. It is a matter of balance: openness and intimacy, sunshine and fire light, sun and moon...

Mary

They say that the song is about a certain Mary: Martha's and Lazarus' sister. Maria and Martha pledged for the resuscitation of Lazarus. A miracle like this wipes hesitations about whether or not Jesus is the Messiah or only a prophet. If so, the song is a religious statement.

But she is not the only Mary in the Bible. Maybe she is Maria Magdalena: this Mary cries for the lost of the one who, by means of compassion, sees his humanity in the human drama of the other. If so, the song is about the human seed fostered by the heart.

She could be, nevertheless, a third Mary: the one who cleaned Jesus feet with balm and wipped them with her hair. She cried of joy for the forgiveness of her sins. If so, the song is about hope.

Maybe they were the same woman...

I think, however, that weeping Mary is the sinner one. And only the sinner. The liberty will free the bodies of the slaves, like other bodies were liberated from the Pharaoh. Whereas the grace of God will embrace the faithful souls: no matter if they sinned. There's no reason to cry, there's hope, even if you feel like a feather in the air.

On Earth as it is in Heaven

Earth

"The first function of music, especially of folk music, is to produce a feeling of security for the listener, by voicing the particular quality of a land and the life of its people. To the traveler, a line from a familiar song may bring back all the familiar emotions of home, for music is a magical summing-up of the patterns of family, of love of conflict, and of work which gave a community its special feel and which shape the personalities of its members. Folk song calls the native back to his roots and prepares him emotionally to dance, worship, work, fight, or make love in ways normal to his place." Lomax, A., The Folk Songs of North America. In the English Language (p. xv)

Down in the valley, the valley so low

Hang your head over, hear the wind blow

Hear the wind blow, dear, hear the wind blow;

Hang your head over, hear the wind blow.

Roses love sunshine, violets love dew,

Angels in Heaven know I love you,

Know I love you, dear, know I love you,

Angels in Heaven know I love you.

Heaven

"This was a psalter in whose margins was delineated a world reversed with respect to the one to which our senses have accustomed us.  As if at the border of a discourse that is by definition the discourse of truth, there proceeded, closely linked to it, through wondrous allusions in aenigmate, a discourse of falsehood on a topsy-turvy universe, in which dogs flee before the hare, and deer hunt the lion."

Eco, U., The Name of the Rose (p. 76)

"American dancing rhymes were cryptic and allusive, relying on wild, zany images to convey hidden erotic meaning. Here they were met more than half-way by the songs of the Negroes, which concealed beneath their surface innocence a world of irony and protest, and by the funny songs of the blackface minstrels, which were silly, but sometimes amusing parodies on the Negro jingles. All were rooted in an old Celtic type which turned the world upside down and inside out...

You should have seen the eel with his pipes, playing a broadside,
The lark with its nest in the gander's beard,
The water-hen crooning and playing the Jew's harp,
The church leaping and dancing all over the valley

"Americans have created many such darn-fool ditties out of non-sequiturs and splintered images - songs which, like surrealist paintings, mirror the swift turbulence of modern life. They recall that mythical bird, the Kansas jay-hawk 'that flies backwards because he doesn't care where he is going' bat wants to know where he's been. When you hear the old jay-hawk squawlin' you know that if something' ain't happened, it's goin' to.'" Lomax. op. cit. (p. xxiii)

Between a kiss and a knife

Kiss

The last two days I've been trying to remember what's the first song in my mind. Not in a ranking sense but in  a chronological way . As soon as I started  to think about it, I discarded the primary school songs, as well as the different variations of birthday or lullaby songs. Since I was looking for songs that connect with my personal moments. I failed to remembered it. But suddenly I realized that I still keep, in my mother's home in Mexico, my very first record: "Presumido 78", a black vinyl single, 45 RPM, recorded by Kiss.

Maybe I was eight years old when I got it. Maybe my parents gave it to me for my birthday because I asked them to do it or maybe I bought it saving the coins that they gave me every other Sunday. Anyway it's a present from them. Why? I don't know, but I think that it was because they loved me and they liked music. Although, I am pretty sure that they dislike this kind of music. They prefered Mexican folk songs. And the Beatles and Elvis Presley, but certainly not the Rolling Stones nor Led Zeppelin. They didn't speak English, but liked catchy, dancing tunes and that's all.

In this way they were more honest than me. Because I also didn't speak English. I didn't understand what the song was about. And I don't remember why I liked the music itself. I don't know what to think about all this misunderstanding. But now I realize that I wasn't alone in my incomprehension. Because the original title is "Strutter" and the record label translated it as "Presumido". I agree: in a general meaning, to strut is presumir. In English the adjective is the same for boys and girls: strutter. But in Spanish the adjective varies according to the gender: presumido (boy) or presumida (girl). The problem is that the song is about a girl and not a boy!

They mistranslate the title. Or maybe not. Maybe they were marketing geniuses that realized that their target was male consumers, that wanted to brag (presumir) about they have the newest single of Kiss. In this sense, they knew more about me than I knew about my self.

But what did I want to brag about? That's an easy question: the cover photo. It still mesmerizes me. The customs, the make-up, the fist's language and... the tongue! The attitude mesmerizes me since I was a child at such level that I, and thousands more, went to a concert of Kiss in Mexico City, back in the nineties, almost 20 years after the record was released. I fear that everyone at this concert were nostalgic presumidos that didn't understand what the songs were about, but wanted to see fireworks, fake blood and high-heeled seniors on the stage, pretending to be the youngsters that they and we were... Or maybe all that was just another marketing business...

Knife

Knocking the doors of the memory I remembered a song that makes me feel happy, close to my parents. We were in a Summer trip to Michoacan. We went to Tzararacua waterfalls. I think that I was five or six years old. After the promenade through the park, I was sat with my mom waiting for my dad. Maybe he went to the bathroom. When he returned he got with him a puppet.

I think that it was the first time I saw one of them. Of this kind, I mean, with treads moving limbs and head. I was so dumb when I tried to play it. My father looked my frustration, took the puppet and started to play it, the puppet was dancing while my dad sang a song about some guy named Juan Charrasqueado. My frustration disappeared and became happiness. And my father had to sing Juan Charrasqueado and play the puppet (Juan, of course) all that Summer.

Last Spring I realized that the song that my father sang while playing Juan was very different from the mexican corrido with the same name. I don't know why. I only know that during the Mexican Revolution, men soldiers were nicknamed Juan - the same way that during French Revolution men were Jacques.  And I also know that charrasca is a knife. Thus Juan Charrasqueado was a revolutionary soldier who was wounded by or armed with a knife. For me, Juan is a puppet that danced on the edge of a waterfall and took me from isolating frustration to delighting warmth.