Slow Saturday at
home. Kids around. It’s a discipline not to fill up the day with
a million things for them, for me, for us to do. Just let it unfold. They are generally busy with schoolwork.
I try to read an article out of the paper every day with my
older daughter. I showed my wife an article about a woman who sources design
and fabric and color materials from the Miao people of southern China. She and the girls had just been on a
stitching project together. My wife
asked my older daughter to read the article out loud to her, knowing our
routine. She launched in with a dull
flat, “this is obligatory” diction and we asked her to read it with a
feeling. Then, it was absurd with every
word over emphasized version. Finally
she commenced with something approaching sonorous.
I got drawn in to the story and found it fascinating, as
this woman traced designs and techniques she saw in a Shanghai museum and
assumed were lost to history, down to Miao villages in Guizhou Province. I took some time to explain what a “non for
profit” was and how such a thing might exist.
My wife and I were intrigued, discussing the article and then we paused
and asked that flatulent-like parent question:
“What do you think?” “Boring”.
Hmm.
Now, she knows about the Miao people from school. She has traveled in Cambodia and northern
Burma and many surrounding areas and umpteen other places. So she has some context for this part of
China and the otherness profiled. She
likes designing clothes with her mother and has a wonderful creative
sense. So why is a story about a woman
who traced down these remarkable designs and dye making techniques, seemingly
devoid of merit?
I suppose the simple answer is because it was something she
had to do. Seeds planted, I suppose. But as to diction, Chinese does not have a strong tradition of oratory. There is no Cicero, or Socrates who persuades
others publically, through the power of his (or her) spoken argument. Luminaries in Chinese history wrote poems,
essays and petitioned the court in the written form. When Mao told the nation that it had “stood
up” in 1949, he did so with a thick Hunanese accent that he shared with many other
senior-most cadres. None of the classic
leadership from that time spoke particularly clear, forceful Mandarin. It is hard to imagine a Chinese leader with
the oratorical prowess of Winston Churchill, FDR, JFK or Barak Obama. Power is secured and conveyed by other
means. To 振振有词[1] is certainly part of the
tradition, but it is not prioritized or lionized. And when my daughter,
who is the product of a Chinese education system reads flat, I think of
this.
A man who was always able to speak colorfully, if not clear
and convincingly, was Lemmy Kilmister. A
buddy of mine sent me another article from today’s NY Times with an irresistible
title. I dove straight in and read, to
myself, this morning: “Motörhead’s Lemmy Kilmister: ‘I’m Paying for the Good
Times.’ http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/24/magazine/motorheads-lemmy-kilmister-im-paying-for-the-good-times.html?hp
There is no way I, for one, could pass up that read. The circus is in town. Lemmy, like Iggy perhaps, a live human
sacrifice, who lived, has a star-studded history, an Engergizer’s endurance and
the indefatigable resistance of a Timex. (licking/ticking). Born in Stoke on
Trent in December of 1945, after V.E. day had been declared. I hadn’t realized that he actually saw the
Beatles perform at the Cavern Club there in Liverpool and, bought a guitar
after hearing “Please Please Me.” He
learned all the chords to the album was enamored with the harmonies.
Importantly, Lemmy was particularly shaken by John Lennon’s sarcasm. The more I
learn, the more I like. Later he was a
roadie for the Jimi Hendrix Experience and claimed to have been the one
responsible for scoring Jimi his acid. I
haven’t seen the movie that was made “Lemmy” but will certainly have to.
One particularly wise bit from the NY Times article involved
the theme raised yesterday of sarcasm and the English:
ML:
Do you feel as if you take a sarcastic approach to rock?
LK:
If you don’t, you’re dead, you know, and if you believe that good things
are going to happen, it’s going to be severe for you later, because they
aren’t.
Go Lemmy. Sarcasm is
a powerful totem wound inextricably like sex into all that is alchemy in Rock
and Roll. Unfortunately, the quality of this particular inquiry in the condensed article fell far short of what it could have been. Lemmy comes off sounding quite reasonable while Mark Leibovich seems inappropriately disrespectful, over and over again. You’d think it would be apparent, questioning a sixty-seven year old man that a more contemplative discussion could be entertained. Profiling wry, refinement is the surest way for an author to indicate he has neither. But I’m as guilty as the next guy. The title is what pulled me in. We’re expecting the bon vivant to be made an example of and as a result, the exchange is light and surface.
Lemmy’s initial band, Hawkwind’s version of the song
“Motorhead” (1974), came on while pounding
imaginary stairs at the gym today. The
one with the lovely ironic fiddle solo, where there would otherwise be a
screaming guitar. If there were every any question about the
wisdom of methamphetamine binge, Lemmy sets the record straight in this oddly
evocative song. The story about how he wrote it on the porch of the Hyatt Hotel
LA, stopping traffic as he did so, is priceless:
Sunrise, wrong side of another day,
Sky high and six thousand miles
away,
Don't know how long I've been
awake,
Wound up in an amazing state,
Can't get enough,
And you know it's righteous stuff,
Goes up like prices at Christmas,
Motorhead, you can call me
Motorhead, alright
Brain dead, total amnesia,
Get some mental anesthesia,
Don't move, I'll shut the door and
kill the lights,
And if I can't be wrong I could be
right,
All good clean fun,
Have another stick of gum,
Man, you look better already,
Motorhead, remember me now
Motorhead, alright
Fourth day, five-day marathon,
We're moving like a parallelogram,
Don't move, I'll shut the door and
kill the lights,
I guess I'll see you all on the
ice,
I should be tired,
And all I am is wired,
Ain't felt this good for an hour,
Motorhead, remember me now,
Motorhead alright
The reportage back from the fourth day of a five-day marathon
has the quality of a dispatch from the front, caught in some
“cross-fire-hurricane.” Importantly, the
tune is, the only rock song on record, to make use of the word
“parallelogram.” Useful, perhaps, for those of you who fancy
yourselves one day appearing on quiz shows.
Lemmy’s affinity for crank was, to him, a matter of productivity:
I first got into speed because it
was a utilitarian drug and kept you awake when you needed to be awake, when
otherwise you'd just be flat out on your back. If you drive to Glasgow for nine
hours in the back of a sweaty truck you don't really feel like going onstage
feeling all bright and breezy... It's the only drug I've found that I can get
on with, and I've tried them all — except smack and morphine: I've never fixed
anything.[6]
I took a quick search and couldn’t find two other, significantly
more interesting interviews I’d read of Lemmy when he was younger. One was from back in 1974 or so, around the
time he wrote the afore quoted speed freak anthem. It appeared in a “Time Out” anthology, where
he comes across as a rather contemplative, abrasive, young, street tough. “When I fix someone, I really fix em” he
yells to someone mid interview, before describing how some Hells Angel thug
mercilessly beat him, not long ago.
The other interview I remember, was of a much more wise and
worldly Lemmy Kilmister, interviewed in High Times in the mid-eighties a decade
later. The interviewer is trying to get
him to go on and on about his drug use, but Lemmy cautions the gent and the
readers and if memory serves, says:
“Listen, this probably isn’t going to be good for your magazine, but I
wouldn’t do any thing really. Smoke some
pot. Have a beer. Otherwise I’d leave it all alone.” Then he goes on to tell obligatory stories of
snorting what he thought was speed that turned out to be God-Knows-What and how
he proceeded to levitate above himself mid performance and watch himself for a
while, as he played.
If we were a bit more Confucian we’d pay some respect to our
aged rock veterans. At least the ones I
get to choose. I’d like to create a
King Kong vs. Godzilla reality TV show where Lemmy and Ginger Baker (the
drummer of Cream) are filmed living in close quarters. More on Ginger, some other time.
[1]
zhènzhènyǒucí: to speak forcefully and
with justice (idiom); to argue with the courage of one's convictions
No comments:
Post a Comment