Saturday, February 15, 2014

Horsepower Potential





I love The Who. And I don’t care if you do, or you don’t.   The Entwistle gem, “Heaven and Hell” from “Live at Leeds” came on the mix this morning just in time for jumping jacks.  It’s funny.  I can tell its “Live at Leeds” just listening to the crowd for the few seconds before the band begin.  It’s a particular crowd.  It sounds like a loud, loutish mob, perfectly suited to the onslaught that awaits them.  I don’t push the band on my kids as I did, with less resistance, when they were younger, before they had their own bands.  The Beatles are the beachhead, and from there bands like “The Kinks” and “The Small Faces” and definitely “The Who” registered and Inshala, remain, memorable.  The classic clip of them on the Smothers Brother’s show singing “My Generation” sets each of them up as such memorable individuals, full of mischief, color, and power.  The Stones, by contrast, perhaps not surprisingly, never connected with my daughters, though I tried.  And with jumping jacks abandoned and air guitar / air drumming in full flurry, sweating like and old stallion, I proceeded at full volume from “Heaven and Hell” to “Young Man Blues” and then, over to where the aspirin were.

I don’t usually give up on literature, but I’m taking a break from “The Age of Innocence.”  As I mentioned a few posts back, I was reading it aloud to my older daughter and, thus far, it doesn’t lend itself to late night oratory.  I’ll finish it on my own most likely.  But my daughter requested and I will submit to putting Edith down for now.  I had brought a few things from home and over the summer and suggested I read the first page of a few different bits and she could choose which one she liked the most.  It had been years since I read any of them as well and I was intrigued to see which one proved a hit. 



I’d explained to her the idea of a dystopia and that Orwell, who she knew from “Animal Farm” had one and that Huxley had another.  The first page of “A Brave New World” is intriguing in a dry, clinical sort of way.  The first line of Camus’ “The Stranger” is rather unforgettable. You’re there, certainly, right away. The first page of Tolstoy’s “The Death of Ivan Illych” pulled at me, perhaps most strongly.  The atmosphere, of late nineteenth century Russia, fits rather perfectly when its cold outside.  I, for one, wanted to just keep on going but I could tell these blustery lawyers and their self-serving chatter wasn’t catching my daughter at first listen.  “The Bell Jar’s” first page has you walking down Manhattan in the hot sticky summer.  A young lady, confused and obsessed, suddenly about the Rosenberg’s, which is fascinating if you know who they were.  But, in this case ended up being one more thing to explain.  “Why do people go insane?” was a rather remarkable, impossible, question, which that page generated.  Finally, we sampled the first page of Dylan Thomas “Under Milkwood” which I remembered being quite a bit more accessible than this opening proved.  But it is a play, and so I gave it as spirited a delivery as I dared.  (You get it?  Everyone’s already dead.”)

And in Olympic spirit, there must be a winner.  I figured we were getting ready for a rather slow and unpleasant decent down under the bell jar myself, but I was surprised to hear that she wanted to continue with Mssr. Thomas.  Wow.  OK.  Perhaps it looked smaller than the others.  And so I continued.  Not long into the scene, with dead sailors using Welsh euphemisms to describe the wenches they missed the touch of, she, mercifully interrupted and said, “uhhh”, to which I said “yeah.”

So the silver medalist, who now took the podium with la medalla de oro, was Camus.  Cool.  I’ve wanted to reengage with him for a bit now and so, off we go.  She wanted to know what it was about.  What do you say?  “Killing an Algerian.”  Where’s Algeria?  Why is a French guy there?  Who was Camus, anyway?  This is what I live for.  I’ll keep you posted. 

In my neighborhood Starbucks this morning.  A quick run out, as the coffee supply was down to nil.  Packed this Sunday morning, like the churches wish they were.  As per my manuscript, “Seven Deadly Starbucks” the tide has now long since shifted and this is a Chinese establishment, filled with well heeled locals, that foreigners like me, sporadically fill out space within. 



It’s cold out there.  No one is enjoying this weather.  But winter’s in retreat now.  This is the solar equivalent of late October.  Which is dark.  But peel back another two weeks and this dreary weather will be in its death throws.  Then we’ll see the horsepower potential for this new year raise up on its hind legs and neigh, if that’s the sound a horse makes.  Perhaps we’ll hear a snort and an emphatic exhale, as well, in the dusty Beijing spring time.  A year of the horse to 破浪[1].  I can feel it.  And I need it.  A strong, purposeful New Year. 

Alright.  Coffee deliveryman is heading back home.









[1] chéngfēngpòlàng:  to brave the wind and the billows (idiom); to have high ambitions

No comments:

Post a Comment