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Sarah van Gelder, editor of Yes! magazine, emailed me personally to remind me that her top-ten list and other works of Yes! are copyrighted and so their reproduction comes with stipulations, which I did not follow when I reprinted their top ten last week. I feel a little stupid, and apologetic, but I’m also somewhat elated that my blog is in fact read by the wider world. Apologies Ms van Gelder! Thanks for a magazine that has frequently given me hope over the years. The world is a better place because of you and Yes!

 

*Grammar*

 

A friend emailed to point out a typo in the last installment: I used ‘mediating’ when I meant to write ‘meditating.’ This brings up and important point about typos. For someone like me who is quite verbose and doesn’t have any copy editors double checking his copy it’s all I can do just to get the words out. It is my opinion that there are some clear typos and mistakes and some that don’t really count. For example, I wrote:

 

I would OF loved it.

 

That is an unequivocal error; it counts (hence I included it in an errata section). When writing speedily, spell check doesn’t get the words that are actually valid words in their own right, just as it doesn’t pick up on the grammatical error above. Mediating is a real word; meditating is so close that speed is what kills and I don’t think it counts really as a typo. Examples include:

 

mediate for meditate

 

medial for medical

 

and for an

 

In any of these cases, you’re talking about a difference of a single letter, and the meaning will be apparent from the context anyway, so one can be sure the speaker did not mean, for example, ‘mediate’ in a discussion of the practice of Taoism, he or she didn’t mean to discuss ‘medial’ treatments for a disease, nor did he or she mean to write, “It was and absolute catastrophe.”

 

I’d like to point out the way an if clause is supposed to work:

 

If I were master of the universe there would be no incorrect grammar in colloquial speech.

 

If it were I calling the shots, there would be no doubt of my position.

 

If he were to leave the area he could be in grave danger.

 

If my daughter had her way we’d all be wearing tuxedos.

 

Had I known his story I would never have spoken to him the way I did.

 

Please take note especially of: If it were I…; ‘if it was me’ is butchery and its use will certainly set you apart as a dullard. The pattern is: a past-tense verb in the conjunctive (if) clause and then a conditional verb to follow; so it’s ‘were’ or ‘had’ followed by ‘would’ or ‘could.’ In the final example, ‘had I known’ is conjunctive with a hidden ‘if,’ so it’s a shorter way of saying “if I had known.”

 

*Pronunciation*

 

My mother sent me a book called 100 Words Almost Everyone Mispronounces (from the editors of American Heritage dictionaries). Here’s a few a highlights:

 

Banal: buh-NAHL

[Have to admit this pronunciation sounds better than the one that rhymes with anal, though it does sound hoity-toity.]

 

Impious: IM-pee-os

[I'm just not sure how I feel about this, not sure at all.]

 

Pastoral: PAST-or-ul

[Easy to accept, harder to remember.]

 

Patina: PAT-in-a

[It is more elegant than pa-TEEN-a but one would get raised eyebrows for sure.]

 

Quay: key

[I always knew I was pronouncing it wrongly but I had no clue about the right way; I am shocked to know. Reminds me of "slough" which of course is pronounced "slew."]

 

*Poem*

 

My College Town

 

I once lived in a town

where the sun

never set,

quite as though

it were at the edge

of a very flat earth.

Days went on forever

and I’m almost certain

all that I attempted there

was sucked into a void.

It takes great effort now

even to recall its name and,

truth be told,

I’d really rather not.

Just as with my wedding day,

folks always say,

“There must be SOMEthing

about it you remember

fondly.” There is not,

in either case.

All I have are bitter

memories, of a boy

straining to become

a man, of a man

very uncertain of his own

worth, of a woman

who cursed at him then

lied through her teeth.

No, in fact, it is all bad.

On a good day I can

convince myself that

none of it ever happened,

that I never did lose

my innocent dreams,

that the unbearably cold

ways of that little town

at the edge of creation

will not in fact

live in me forever.

Most days I wake up still

right at its center.

 

*ErosAromatics*

 

It appears my trademark will go through! I can even do retail sales on erosaromatics.com, which is the icing on the cake. My brand name, Eros Aromatics, will be protected with the force of law. Soon the name will have an ‘®’ mark after it. The only stipulation is that I never enter into the adult-entertainment industry with that name; that of course is absolutely meaningless to me. I suppose it means I could never release a sexual lubricant or something like that. I’m very happy I got this trademark through; possession of that brand  name will prove quite effective I’m sure. For some reason it feels like an historic fact: I was the first person in history to trademark that name–and what a name it is, and ideal name for a perfume house. It’s just a matter of a few more papers being filed and I’m COOKING WITH GAS.

 

This week I acquired some needed ingredients and thought up a few perfume recipes. I got an orris-root/violet-leaf co-distillation which promises to be a treasured ingredient; I got it from a supplier called Floracopeia which is new to me; the only place I knew of that used to stock it has been out for a couple of years now. I have 62.5 ml of ambergris tincture on its way to me from Italy; I couldn’t imagine making a perfume without ambergris (all the other animal ingredients are objectionable to me, either morally or in olfactory terms or both). I also bought some certified-organic beeswax and certified-organic deodorized cocoa butter; cocoa butter is important in various creams, deodorants, balms, etc, but the scent of non-deodorized cocoa butter is overpowering (albeit quite pleasant).

 

The perfume recipes are Flow, Palestine, and Down Under. Flow is meant to be a heavy, heady floral; I do have one working floral recipe but it’s based on osmanthus, which has a very particular scent; I’m hoping for a more generalized floral, highlighting rose, jasmine, and ylang ylang. Palestine is subtitled Peace in the Middle East, inspired by a suggestion from Anya McCoy, perfumista extraordinaire; it’s based on a vertical accord of sandalwood, rose otto, and coriander. Down Under is meant to highlight boronia, which is a rarified perfume ingredient made from flowers grown in Australia; I’ve had some of the stuff for a few years and haven’t made good use of it yet, but after reading some more about its use in perfume, I’m now determined to concoct a winner with it.

 

*Advertising*

 

Recently, in writing copy for literature for my perfume sale, I was reminded of the power words have to induce people to action. As a longtime copy writer (stemming from graphics work), I have long been familiar with the power of well-placed words. This week I saw an ad for GM; in it they said the quality of their cars was “unsurpassed” by Honda or Toyota. Any copy writer who hears that can’t help but be impressed; it’s a perfect solution. They didn’t say their cars are “better” than Honda and Toyota; they merely implied that those makes might not be better than their own. Unsurpassed is a very fuzzy word, meaning something slightly different to everyone, hence it’s _perfect_ for advertising.

 

Rather than literal descriptions of my perfumes, talking about ingredients, I decided I would use the same language that mainstream perfume uses, the language of fantasy, as in:

 

Capture the essence of this moment. KEEPER is deep and dense. This memorable brew stands out and who knows what it might remind you of? The Orient? The Near East? The essence of all the moments you lost and hope to recapture?

 

That sort of language received thumbs up across the board. In describing natural perfumes in general, their organic, living nature, I wrote the following, and one woman said this alone would induce her to be separated from her money (she didn’t word it like that of course), the thought of experiencing this dynamic:

 

What starts out as one scent, when the top notes reach your consciousness, becomes a very different scent as time moves you into the heart notes, and something new again entirely as you reach the lasting base notes.

 

Two of natural perfume’s biggest selling points are 1) it changes dramatically over time as the different ingredients mix with one’s skin chemistry and different parts of the brew come to the forefront (synthetic perfumes are literally dead (a Kirlian photo of them is blank, whereas a Kirlian photo of a natural essence shows a rainbow of colors) and don’t change), and 2) it is entirely personal, only for you and your loved ones. People will _not_ be able to smell you across the room or from even a few feet away; only hugging and kissing will give others a whiff. Formulating those two points more fully into the language of fantasy is my next task.

 

*Execution*

 

“He who seeks revenge must dig two graves: one for his enemy and one for himself.”

–Chinese proverb

 

With DNA evidence now in common use, the old arguments about the fallibility of justice are becoming weaker. That we should avoid any acts of vengeance, as per the above wisdom, is a much more compelling line of thinking, and it goes hand in hand with the idea that civilized people do not involve themselves with killing. The difficulty really comes in when we contemplate the fact that those serving life sentences would rather be put to death. I wrote a poem about that fact a while ago:

 

311

 

No less than 311 prisoners in Italy

serving life sentences have co-signed

a letter to the president requesting

that they be “killed just once”

instead of dying a little bit every

single day. Recently, Italy, home

of the Papacy, asked the UN to

consider tabling the idea of a

worldwide moratorium on

capital punishment. Now 311

of their own men want death

instead the tiny fractions of lives

they’re stuck with now. Three

hundred eleven would rather not be

here than be forced to know of the free

ways of the outside world that will

forever be well beyond their reach.

What are any of us right-minded,

self-righteous people supposed

to think now? Day is night, wrong

is right. Our efforts to remove death

from the list of things civilized

folks are involved with are failing

worse than ever. We think

we know what people want, what

anybody wants out of life; we

don’t. We think we know what

lifers want; we don’t. And we

spend our lives thinking we might

have an inkling what women want;

we don’t. Our confusion, just like

our murderous ways, has sunk to

an all-time low. The scariest thing

about the Italian prisoners is

that I feel exactly the same way.

How come I can’t tell the difference

between serving a life sentence and

simply living out my days? I reckon

it’s because I’m a prisoner in my own

body, staring out gloomily through

the bars, remembering tearfully

the passionate way my life once was,

unable now to live my life as the man

I used to be. And I’m not even

middle aged or what they might call

“older.” I take a small bit of comfort

in knowing at least 311 men out there

are in the same lonesome boat, albeit

a different boat completely.

 

What a conundrum. Maybe soon we will simply end the lives of those who are convicted with irrefutable DNA evidence of crimes punishable with a life sentence; maybe soon we will allow for euthanasia in the same way we allow for the immediate shooting of a horse that broke its leg, knowing only interminable pain awaits. Could it be that we still take too much vengeful glee from knowing of the tortured lives that lifers lead?

 

*AdamsIndex*

 

Unemployment rate at the start of the Great Depression: greater than 35%

 

Percentage decrease in unemployment during FDR’s New Deal: 60%

 

Unemployment rate now: 7.2%

 

Percentage increase in unemployment since Bush took office: 70%

 

Parallels between the Great Depression and now: numerous and growing

 

Key to the success of the New Deal which, according to Nobel-Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman, pulled the country out of the Depression: public-works projects and middle-class jobs

 

Opportunity Obama now has to create similar massive green public-works projects and millions of middle-class jobs: inestimable

 

Degree to which the right wing supports such measures: it doesn’t

 

Measures it does support: tax breaks for the extremely wealthy

 

Reason for this lack of support, and for sustained, misguided, and erroneous maligning of the New Deal and anything similar: the DEBUNKED trickle-down theory

 

*Quotations*

 

Most people agree that Israel, like any other country, has the right to defend itself from outside attacks. However, in this unequal conflict between Israel and Hamas, Israel, as usual, has overdone it. When it comes to dealing with its enemies, Israel has a pattern of being extreme. “An eye for an eye” does not satisfy. It has to be more like one hundred eyes for one eye and one hundred teeth for one tooth.

–Alex Awad, dean of students at Bethlehem Bible College, West Bank, Palestine

 

If you have much, give of your wealth; if you have little, give of your heart.

–Arab proverb

 

A boy doesn’t have to go to war to be a hero; he can say he doesn’t like pie when he sees there isn’t enough to go around.

–Edward W Howe

 

You give but little when you give of your possessions. It is when you give of yourself that you truly give.

–Khalil Gibran

 

It is every man’s obligation to put back into the world at least the equivalent of what he takes out of it.

–Einstein

 

Think of giving not as a duty but as a privilege.

–John D Rockefeller Jr

 

I have found that among its other benefits, giving liberates the soul of the giver.

–Maya Angelou

 

Real generosity toward the future lies in giving all to the present.

–Camus

 

One must be poor to know the luxury of giving.

–George Eliot

 

[From a time capsule]

The world is to us what the Garden of Eden was supposed to be to Adam and Eve. Adam and Eve were banished, but we are banishing ourselves from our Eden. The difference is that Adam and Eve had somewhere else to go. We have nowhere else to go. We hope that by the time you read this you will have at least partially curtailed our reckless greed and stupidity. If we have not, at least some of us have tried. All we can say is learn from what we have achieved, but above all learn from our mistakes, do not go on endlessly like a squirrel in a wheel committing the same errors hour by hour day by day year after year century after century as we have done up to now. We hope that there will be fireflies and glow-worms at night to guide you and butterflies in hedges and forests to greet you. We hope that there will still be the extraordinary varieties of creatures sharing the land of the planet with you to enchant you.

–Gerald Durrell

 

*Jazz*

 

In my book, the best living jazz singer is Abbey Lincoln. I admire others but none so much as Ms Lincoln. I have seen her perform three times in my life: once at the jazz festival in Vancouver BC (where I’ve seen so much great jazz it’s silly), once at an outdoor festival on the campus of Columbia University, and a final time at the Blue Note in the Greenwich Village. The Vancouver show brought standing ovations from every one in the audience; it was inimitably stunning. At the Columbia show, on a set break, an older man said to me, “She’s somethin’, huh.” “The best,” I said. I will never forget the dismissive tone in his voice when he responded, “Well, I don’t know about the best….” I wanted to say, “Well I do, I who have been a student of jazz vocals for years, I who have been a devotee and a player of jazz for years can indeed tell you she IS the best.” I wanted to but I didn’t; I enjoyed the rest of the show.

 

The Blue-Note show was like nothing I’d seen before and nothing I’ve seen since. The Blue Note is small so I had an excellent seat. Ms Lincoln walked onto the stage proudly with her young band of up-and-comers; she has long been, since her days with Max Roach, a mentor to younger players. All great jazz musicians are; it goes with the territory. From the moment she stepped on the stage she made it clear that we were in for a monumental phenomenon; our jaws collectively dropped as she proceeded to rip our hearts out with each and every word. Early on she did I Could Write a Book and it was a show stopper. She was putting more soul into her performance than I’ve ever seen a singer give. So after 45 minutes of perfection, it was disappointing but not surprising when I heard her say to the band, “I’m finished.” They played one more short number and ended it.

 

I’m sure not a single one of us there could fault her. Sure it was supposed to be twice as long, but she gave us at least twice as much. We all knew the show would go down in our own personal history books, and we would gladly pass the memory on to others for the rest of our lives. The power of her performance that night changed my life; it radically altered my idea of how much larger than life a performer can be if she really tries. It is her presence that night I remember vividly, her regal, artful, loving, giving, sharing presence that sticks out in my mind, not the set list, not the names of the other band members, not the date. Somewhere back there in the late 90s Abbey Lincoln did a show at the Blue Note that was the show to end all shows. It makes me, to this day, feel like running out into the street in my boxers screaming, “ABBEY LINCOLN! ABBEY LINCOLN! ABBEY LINCOLN!” So, Abbey Lincoln, Abbey Lincoln, Abbey Lincoln. [No, I'm not in my boxers but you get the idea.]

 

*Movies*

 

This week’s topic is a show that ran on TV for one season (that I got from Netflix recently) called Boomtown. It’s the best show I’ve ever seen on TV, and it barely lasted a season. Looking at it now I see why: it’s far too complex for your average TV viewer, and it came off more like a weekly movie than a TV show. The premise is this:

 

Tell crime stories from the various perspectives of all those involved. So for example each show is a series of segments, each titled with the name of a different character, detectives, paramedics, criminals. The segments each overlap slightly, picking up the threads of the previous segment but moving the story a little further along, and each is from the point of view of the character in question. It’s a brilliant idea, one I think they brought to the table before they had it fully realized. In the development of the first four episodes alone it is clear the writers are still working out the kinks.

 

The telling of the story, from various perspectives, is at times so confusing that one forgets how a given episode started. It gets tighter with each installment, and is always striking deep and philosophical chords. One of the main characters is a black detective nicknamed Fearless; he is infamous for being so full of stories he talks one’s ear off. In one episode he and his white partner Joel are on a stakeout and Fearless tells one of his stories. This reminds me very much of a story I was actually told in Taiwan, one that I remember clearly; whereas the lesson in that one is “Do not fear and do not regret,” the lesson in this one is “There is no person that has not known woe.” It is retold with poetic license here:

 

In ancient China, the wife of a very rich man died. He went to a local holy man and asked, “What magic do you have that can bring my wife back?”

 

The wise man paused and then said, “You must go out and find me prayer beads from a home that has never known sorrow. Bring them to me and your grief will be gone.”

 

The rich man set out on his mission fully assuming his task was a simple one. He came to the first house on his path, an opulent mansion, and assumed the family inside would be happy. In fact, the family was so riddled with loss and woe, the man was compelled to stay and do what he could to help them; he was a rich man because he’d always been very capable, so helping out came naturally to him. Eventually, he felt he had done all he could do so he decided to resume his search.

 

But the next family he came upon was even more desperate than the first. And the one after that. And on and on. Rich and poor alike–all had known terrible miseries. And he did his best to help every single family he met. Years later, he returned home. This time the wise man paid _him_ a visit. He asked, “What happened to your sorrow?”

 

The rich man paused and then said, “I haven’t even thought about it in ages. But I found no family that has not known sadness, so I have no beads for you.”

 

“This, you see, was the lesson. What happened to your sorrow?”

 

“It is no more. I have too much to do helping others with their own grief.”

_____

 

I want nothing more than for my works to help with your own sorrows.

 

Peace, love, and ATOM jazz