Maverick Philosopher

How Civil Wars End

Another fascinating article. But who has time for all this reading?

"Forever reading, never read." 

Wer schreibt, der bleibt. He who writes, remains. 

The Roots of STEM Excellence

An important WSJ article by Charles Murray. 

I wish Murray were more direct and less worried about being called a racist and a white supremacist. An excess of prudence and a deficit of courage? It is interesting how these two cardinal virtues pull in opposite directions. 

Related: Facing Reality: Two Truths about Race

Tulsi versus Kamala

Here and here

Saturday Night at the Oldies: Water High, Wide, Dirty, Troubled, Moody

Bob Dylan, High Water.  This is a late-career Dylan gem from Love and Theft (2001). A tribute to Charley Patton.  Demonstrates Dylan's mastery of the arcana of Americana. Our greatest and deepest singer-songwriter. 

My favorite verse:

Well, George Lewis told the Englishman, the Italian and the Jew
You can't open up your mind, boys, to every conceivable point of view
They got Charles Darwin trapped out there on Highway 5
Judge says to the High Sheriff, "I want them dead or alive"
Either one, I don't care, high water everywhere.

Nosiree, Bob, you can't open up your mind to every conceivable point of view, especially when it's not dark yet, but getting there.

Charley Patton, High Water Everywhere.  Nice slide show.

The Band, Up on Cripple Creek

Jimi Hendrix, May This Be Love.  Waterfall. I had forgotten the wonderful guitar solo.

Karla Bonoff, The Water is Wide.  I listened to a lot of Bonoff in the early '80s.  She does a great job with this traditional song.

Bill Monroe and Doc Watson, Banks of the Ohio.  Joan Baez's version from an obscure 1959 album, Folksingers 'Round Harvard Square.

Similar theme though not water-related: Doc Watson, Tom Dooley.  Doc and family in a BBC clip.

Standells, Dirty Water.  Boston and the River Charles. My mecca in the '70s, the Athens of America, the Hub of the Universe, etc.  A great town to be young in.  But when it comes time to own property and pay taxes, then a right-thinking man high tails it for the West.

Simon and Garfunkel, Bridge over Troubled Water.  A beautiful song.  

Henry Mancini, Moon River.  This was Jack Kerouac's favorite song.  Ellis Amburn, Subterranean Kerouac (St. Martin's 1998), p. 324:

One night he [Kerouac, during a 1962 visit to Lowell, Mass.] left a bar called Chuck's with Huck Finneral, a reedy, behatted eccentric who carried a business card that read: "Professional killer . . . virgins fixed . . . orgies organized, dinosaurs neutered, contracts & leases broken."  Huck's philosophy of life was: "Better a wise madness than a foolish sanity."  They drove to a friend's house in Merrimack, New Hampshire, and on the way, Jack sang "Moon River," calling it his favorite song.  Composed by Henry Mancini and Johnny Mercer, "Moon River" was the theme song of the popular Audrey Hepburn movie Breakfast at Tiffany's.  Sobbed by a harmonica, later swelling with strings and chorus, the plaintive tune's gentle but epic-like lyrics describe a dreamer and roamer not unlike Kerouac.

Indeed they do.  A restless dreamer, a lonesome traveller, a dharma seeker, a desolation angel passing through this vale of mist, a drifter on the river of samsara hoping one day to cross to the Far Shore.  Here is another version of the tune, from "Breakfast at Tiffany's" with some beautiful images.

Doc Watson, Moody River.  A moodier version than the Pat Boone hit which was based on the Chase Webster effort.

Clever YouTube comment: "It might be a little early in the day for an Am7."  But this here's Saturday night and I'm working on my second wine spodiodi. (Now you know where the Electric Flag  version came from.) Chords minor and melancholy go good 'long about now. 

My favorite verse:

Well, George Lewis told the Englishman, the Italian and the Jew
You can't open up your mind, boys, to every conceivable point of view
They got Charles Darwin trapped out there on Highway 5
Judge says to the High Sheriff, "I want them dead or alive"
Either one, I don't care, high water everywhere.

Nosiree, Bob, you can't open up your mind to every conceivable point of view, especially when it's not dark yet, but getting there.

Charley Patton, High Water Everywhere.  Nice slide show.

The Band, Up on Cripple Creek

Jimi Hendrix, May This Be Love.  Waterfall. I had forgotten the wonderful guitar solo.

Karla Bonoff, The Water is Wide.  I listened to a lot of Bonoff in the early '80s.  She does a great job with this traditional song.

Bill Monroe and Doc Watson, Banks of the Ohio.  Joan Baez's version from an obscure 1959 album, Folksingers 'Round Harvard Square.

Similar theme though not water-related: Doc Watson, Tom Dooley.  Doc and family in a BBC clip.

Standells, Dirty Water.  Boston and the River Charles. My mecca in the '70s, the Athens of America, the Hub of the Universe, etc.  A great town to be young in.  But when it comes time to own property and pay taxes, then a right-thinking man high tails it for the West.

Simon and Garfunkel, Bridge over Troubled Water.  A beautiful song.  

Henry Mancini, Moon River.  This was Jack Kerouac's favorite song.  Ellis Amburn, Subterranean Kerouac (St. Martin's 1998), p. 324:

One night he [Kerouac, during a 1962 visit to Lowell, Mass.] left a bar called Chuck's with Huck Finneral, a reedy, behatted eccentric who carried a business card that read: "Professional killer . . . virgins fixed . . . orgies organized, dinosaurs neutered, contracts & leases broken."  Huck's philosophy of life was: "Better a wise madness than a foolish sanity."  They drove to a friend's house in Merrimack, New Hampshire, and on the way, Jack sang "Moon River," calling it his favorite song.  Composed by Henry Mancini and Johnny Mercer, "Moon River" was the theme song of the popular Audrey Hepburn movie Breakfast at Tiffany's.  Sobbed by a harmonica, later swelling with strings and chorus, the plaintive tune's gentle but epic-like lyrics describe a dreamer and roamer not unlike Kerouac.

Indeed they do.  A restless dreamer, a lonesome traveller, a dharma seeker, a desolation angel passing through this vale of mist, a drifter on the river of samsara hoping one day to cross to the Far Shore.  Here is another version of the tune, from "Breakfast at Tiffany's" with some beautiful images.

Doc Watson, Moody River.  A moodier version than the Pat Boone hit which was based on the Chase Webster effort.

Clever YouTube comment: "It might be a little early in the day for an Am7."  But this here's Saturday night and I'm working on my second wine spodiodi. (Now you know where the Electric Flag  version came from.) Chords minor and melancholy go good 'long about now. 

Enlisting William S. Burroughs in the War Against Leftist Language-Abusers

I've been fulminating for over 20 years online against the language-abuse of  the language-abusing Left, having found it necessary on only a few occasions to take conservatives to task. Although my Beat credentials are impeccable,  I never took William Seward Burroughs seriously enough to suppose he could be enlisted on our side.  And then I stumbled upon this  article:

The modern left is unabashed about wielding language as a virus—or, really, as a form of control. “Supercut” videos by critics of corporate leftist media, like Tom Eliot, reveal the media figures and politicians repeating the same words and slogans over and over again: President Joe Biden, despite drooling on himself, is “sharp.” Kamala Harris has brought the “Joy, joy, joy” back into politics. Conservatives are “weird.” Abortion is “healthcare.” These word storms rip through the country via television, radio, and social media, infecting hosts from D.C. to California. Millions of people mindlessly repeat them as if they have been infected with some kind of mentally impairing disease. It’s a virus worse than COVID.

I agree with that completely. I am rather less enthusiastic about the following:

So how to fight the language virus? According to Burroughs, language can also be used to liberate. He believed that if words were cut into pieces and rearranged, you could break free from what he called the Control. Burroughs used rearranged texts, “found sound,” and tape-splicing—techniques still used by artists today—to defy the establishment. Burroughs used the method of cutting up sentences and rearranging them in famous countercultural books like Naked Lunch and The Soft Machine. 

My generation took a more direct approach to using language to dismantle Control: punk rock. Not for nothing was Burroughs known as “the Godfather of Punk.” The writer was lionized by people like Lou Reed, David Bowie, and bands like U2, Nirvana, Joy Division, Led Zeppelin, and Steely Dan. In his book American Scream: Allen Ginsberg’s Howl and the Beat Generation, Jonah Raskin describes meeting Burroughs in San Francisco in the 1970s.

I will leave it for you to decide whether the way to combat the leftist language virus is via Old Bull Lee and punk rock.

Of the Beat triumvirate, "sweet gone Jack," alone moves me, supreme screw-up that he was, and surely no role model.  

One month to go, and then then it is October, Kerouac month in my literary liturgy.