Sometimes, we can write only what we know

Sometimes, we can write only what we know

By PHILIP MARTIN

Sunday, October 18, 2009

LITTLE ROCK — Iknow a good third of the country is crazy.

I know some of you will agree, but we might have trouble determiningexactly which third that is.

I know it would have been fun to have Rush Limbaugh in the socialistNational Football League, a collectivist institution where thesuccessful are systematically punished, all members collude to restrictsalaries and revenues are pooled and shared.

I know I wouldn’t want to work for Comrade Al Davis.

I know no one ought to be coerced into pledging allegiance to anything.

I know earthquakes. That weren’t no earthquake.

I know I haven’t done one of these for a while-I had better pace myself.

I know the best test of a society is how it treats its weakest and mostvulnerable members.

I know a shame when I see one-and what’s going on in the Forrest Cityanimal shelter is a shame.

I know I’m planning on heading down to the Hot Springs Film Festivaltoday. And next weekend.

I know people ought to know the meanings of “abstruse,” “sui generis”and “louche.”

I know the post-literate era has arrived. Congratulations.

I know the Renaud brothers’ Warrior Champions: From Baghdad to Beijingis heartbreaking. And uplifting. But mostly heartbreaking.

I know how to blend Scotch whisky. (I still don’t know why.)

I know that if Barack Obama hadn’t won the Nobel Prize some peoplewould have given him grief for that.

I know that an emolument is like an honorarium.

I know the Constitution says “No Senator or Representative shall,during the Time for which he was elected, be appointed to any civilOffice under the Authority of the United States, which shall have beencreated, or the Emoluments whereof shall have been increased duringsuch time; and no Person holding any Office under the United States,shall be a Member of either House during his Continuance in Office.”

I know I think that means Obamacan’t accept the prize money-which he’ssaid he’s going to give to charity anyway.

I know to always get a receipt.

I know politics ain’t bean bag-it’s pro wrestling.

I know that video of the photographer putting Vick’s VapoRub underGlenn Beck’s eyes to induce crying in a photo shoot doesn’t mean thatBeck isn’t sincere when he cries on air.

I know that you can accept someone’s sincerity without agreeing withtheir nonsense.

I know what happens to nosy fellows, kitty cat.

I know I DVR enough TV on Sunday night to last me the whole week.

I know World Series games played in November are wrong.

I know that 10 Best Picture Academy Award nominees are toomany-especially this year.

I know it begins with your family-but comes ’round to your soul.

I know we find nothing easier than being wise, patient, superior. Wedrip with the oil of forbearance and sympathy, we are absurdly just, weforgive everything. For that very reason we ought to disciplineourselves a little; for that very reason we ought to cultivate a littleemotion, a little emotional vice, from time to time. It may be hard forus;and among ourselves we may perhaps laugh at the appearance we thuspresent. But what of that! We no longer have any other mode ofself-overcoming available to us: this is our asceticism, our penance.

I know that was Nietzsche.

I know that every few hundred years or so another German monk comesmuttering out of the Black Forest.

I know all about Alex Jones, thank you.

I know the story of the Hurricane, the man the authorities came toblame.

I know asking a question is usually more important than answering it.

I know broadband Internet access is considered a legal right in Finland.

I know he did 10 years in Attica, reading Nietzsche and WilhelmReich-and that the comedian David Steinberg was the best man at histhird wedding.

I know Elgin Baylor is still the best I’ve ever seen.

I know about hashtags.

I know he found his supper waiting for him.

I know it was still hot.

I know no one expects the Spanish Inquisition.

I know you’d have to drug me to get me up in a helium balloon.

I know there’s a crack in everything, and that’s how the light gets in.

I know good pitching beats good hitting-until it doesn’t.

I know Tommy Lasorda was wrong about Pedro Martinez.

I know “a saint is someone who has achieved a remote human possibility.It is impossible to say what that possibility is. I think it hassomething to do with the energy of love. Contact with this energyresults in the exercise of a kind of balance in the chaos of existence.A saint does not dissolve the chaos; if he did the world would havechanged long ago.”

I know. Beautiful Losers.

I know politicians, ugly buildings and whores all get respectable ifthey last long enough.

I know Noah Cross.

I know a man may imagine things that are false, but he can onlyunderstand things that are true, for if the things be false, theapprehension of them is not understanding.

I know. That was Isaac Newton.

I know that for all the short-term trouble it causes, the only thing adecent person can do is to stand up to bullies.

I know if it were easy everyone would do it.

POP NOTES Onstage, McMurtry’s in the zone

POP NOTES Onstage, McMurtry’s in the zone

By Philip Martin

Sunday, October 18, 2009

LITTLE ROCK — What a lot of people think art is about is the feelingthat starts down deep in the heart of the gut and seeks release, to besung out or scribbled frantically down. This is art, they believe, andthe hotter it comes in, the better it generally is.

That’s a mistake. No matter what we’ve been led to believe by artistsand those who celebrate them, art is not a feeling contest won by themost sensitive. Force of feeling has nothing to do with quality ofwork. Most of us are capable of intense emotion; few of us are able toreliably sublimate that emotion and direct it into a meaningfulexpression. Spewing can perhaps be therapeutic, but the real artist isnever swamped by feelings and hauled down into a morass of sentiment.

This is what listening to James McMurtry makes me think of - it’s thecoolness of a quarterback standing in the pocket as large, violent menthrash around him. They say for better athletes the game seems to slowdown, that moments linger as they check through their options. That ishow he sounds to me, as though he has the time to consider and choosehis options, which chord, whichnote, which conversational lyric withwhat degree of sardonic bent should be applied now ... and now ... andnow.

Live performance is different from constructing a song in the studio.It’s the difference maybe of acting onstage as opposed to acting inmotion pictures, or drafting rhymes on foolscap as opposed tofreestylin’. It requires a skill set beyond a simple aptitude for song.To perform live requires the projection of attitude and the ability toengage the empathy of an audience. An artist can work alone; aperformer must collaborate with strangers.

Live in Europe (Lightning Rod, Rating: A) is not the first successfullive recording Mc-Murtry has released. His 2004 set Live In Aught-Threewas a terrific album that restored him to the near-stardom thataccompanied his 1989 major label release on Columbia, the JohnMellencamp-produced Too Long in the Wasteland.But if that albumannounced a new talent, it was a difficultto-market talent: a dry,pulverous voice spinning noirish stories of small-town America.McMurtry wasn’t - and isn’t - a bel canto vocalist, but he is astraightforward and effective one. His Telecaster lines were clean andstinging; hisband was an efficient, lowmaintenance machine.

While none of the reviews could help but remark on Mc-Murtry’s lineage- he is the son of the novelist Larry Mc-Murtry and it was through hisfather that he was able to get a demo tape to Mellencamp - Wastelandwas generally greeted as an auspicious arrival, the birth of a new andimportant rock ’n’ roll voice.

But the next three albums failed to chart, and by the mid-1990s,McMurtry was a cult figure who didn’t fit into any easily marketablegenre. Like Steve Earle and Lucinda Williams (another literary scion),McMurtry attracted fans who were emphatic, loyal and outnumbered by themasses to whom the major labels marketed. In another era, he might havebeen an “integrity artist” like Bob Dylan or Leonard Cohen or Lou Reed,prized more for the excellence of his work than his ability to moveunits,but such vanities aren’t supportable in an MP3-centric age.

But if McMurtry was never well-served by the star-making machinerybehind the popular song, his work in the high minors suggests that it’sstill possible to dream of a career as singer-songwriter. The recordshe issued through labels like Sugar Hill and Compadre - especially theexcellent Childish Things (2005) and the highly politicized Just UsKids (2008) - were more consistent than any of his Columbia albums,even his highly regarded debut.

And now the new live album, a souvenir of his first tour of Europe,cements him as a live performer of considerable charm and power aswell. McMurtry - his usual three-piece band augmented by keyboardistIan McLagan - runs down a set list drawn mostly from Just Us Kids. (Abonus DVD, from a performance in Amsterdam, only duplicates two songsas it includes McMurtry’s two almost-hits: “Too Long in the Wasteland”off his debut, and a searing 10-minute version of “Choctaw Bingo.”)

McMurtry is not now, nor has he ever been, a rock star.He lacks theostentatious presentation, the radiated id. But he’s an interestingperformer. And a genuine artist.

James McMurtry opens for the Drive-By Truckers at 8:30 p.m. Saturday atthe Revolution Room, 300 President Clinton Ave., Little Rock. Ticketsare $25, call (501) 823-0090.

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Hate can’t mitigate tragedy, public or private

Hate can’t mitigate tragedy, public or private

By PHILIP MARTIN

Sunday, October 11, 2009

LITTLE ROCK — One of the first trials I ever covered was that of anaccused pedophile, a scared and scrawny young man who looked likedCletus Spuckler, the recurring (and presumably inbred) hillbillycharacter on The Simpsons. Cletus, 18 or 19 years old, was accused ofsexually abusing a very young relative, a pre-school niece he wasbabysitting.

As sensational as those facts might seem, the case did not draw muchattention. I was the only reporter present-there was no one there fromthe big town of Lake Charles, La. And outside of the professionals, theonly people in the courtroom were relatives of the victim and thedefendant.

These were desperately poor people, and they all lived very near eachother, in an unincorporated area that was known colloquially as their“cove.” They were the kind of people that a lot of people don’t haveany problem looking down on, the sort of family that shows up in a lotof selfconsciously Southern fiction. They were no-counts,good-for-naughts, petty thieves and welfare cheats.

As I remember it, the trial was brief and juryless, the judge ruledfrom the bench. Cletus halfheartedly denied he had done wrong, but hecouldn’t look his niecein the eye when the little girl took the stand.He was found guilty and given a long stretch in Angola.

Before he was led out of the courtroom, the mother of the victim stoodand reached out and tenderly touched her brother on the arm. No bailiffintervened, as they stood there for a moment, silent and bewildered,neither of them with any idea of what could or should be said under thecircumstances. She let him go, and they led him off into a corridor andinto a holding pen.

Then she turned to her daughter and hugged her, and daubed at thelittle girl’s tears. The family filed out and went home to supper. Totheir bills and heartaches.

Maybe that story makes you angry, maybe it just makes you sad. But whatstruck me about it was how quietly and unremarkably it was allaccomplished, how little was made of these life-changing events.Therewas no one there to heckle the child molester, no one there whomeant to use the sordid facts of the case to illustrate any imaginedlarger point about the moral slippage of American society. It was aprivate tragedy, and everyone involved seemed resigned to theinevitability-and ultimate justice-of the judgment.

There was no easy way to compartmentalize the moment, to pretend it wassomething that might be dealt with expediently, boxed up and warehousedaway-closured off-in some dusty corner of the soul. It was a complex,compounded hurt comprised of betrayal, loss and fear. It wasn’tanything any of them were ever going to get over. But they were kin, ofthe same kind, and it was no use denying that either.

We can’t pretend to understand why other people do what they do; I’mnot sure we can even begin to understand why we ourselves act incertain ways. Do you sometimes catch yourself mimicking your parents,appropriating their rhythms and attitudes if not their precise words?Blood has its part in shaping us, but we also make ourselves, bywatching films and reading books and trying on personas. Some of ushave more choices available to us than others; some of us feel we haveno choice at all.

There is something inside you that you must suppress; something capableof the worst kind of crime. This darkness doesn’t make you a monster,it makes you human: Cain slew Abel, and the Lord called him cursed.

People read that in their Bible, and they take that part in differentways. Some still think that the mark of Cain is black skin, and theyuse it to rationalize and transfer their problems with their ownperceived inferiorities. But I think we’re all Cain’s children, andthat his mark is a cool and self-vindicating space in our heart wherewe all sometimes find ourselves. Freudians call it the Id; itconstantly commands us and even the best of us sometimes listen.

Most criminal acts result from a failure of impulse control; someonesees what they want and they take it, either without considering theconsequences or by convincing themselves that somehow theircircumstances are exceptional. We expect others to understand-after weexplain ourselves. (If we are compelled to explain ourselves.)

But the truth is that there is no excuse for what some of us do. All ofus are capable of being stupid and cruel, and most of us have donestupid and cruel things. Some wrongs are worse than others.

David Letterman’s randy antics may not rise to the level of “crimes,”and his apologies and public habit of self-deprecation may besufficient to see him through. We can root for him, even though werecognize that he has behaved barbarously.

Roman Polanski’s case is confused by the possible indiscretions ofjudges and prosecutors-however horrible his crime, if there’s a findingof judicial misconduct he ought to walk. Not because he deserves to gofree, but because the rest of us deserve a government that plays by itsown rules.

Curtis Vance is an alleged murderer. If you followed the courtproceedings last week (I did, I read the newspaper accounts and checkedthe Twitter account a couple of times every hour during his hearing toglean what I could) you probably have an idea of what he is accused of.

All he is owed is due process. I don’t like the death penalty as amatter of policy, but I understand why my friends are outraged. But wehave to sublimate that outrage, to understand that anger onlyinterferes with the serious work we have to do. Our oft-sad world isnever improved by hate.

pmartin@arkansasonline.com

Perspective, Pages 82 on 10/11/2009

Thanks,

PM

Philip Martin
Arkansas Democrat-Gazette

Screen gems/Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival

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Rod Stewart’s career as joyful as it is frustrating

Arkansas Online
Critical Mass: A gift unfulfilled

By Philip Martin

Tuesday, October 6, 2009

LITTLE ROCK — The just-released The Rod Stewart Sessions 1971-1998 isenlightening and alarming, as it confirms my worst suspicions andslimmest hopes.

The four-CD boxed set (Warner Bros./ Rhino, $64.98) is deep Stewart,consisting of failed and alternative tracks that were never meant to beheard by people outside the singer’s trusted circle. That it evenexists is evidence of the worst sort of avarice, the willingness toexploit the unhealthy obsessive appetites of completists and thewishfulness of true believers.

There is a part of me that loves the set. As I mine it for flashes ofthe old true part of Rod the Mod, the cheeky musician’s musicianmoments when the sheer joy of noisemaking breaks in on the drabgrayness of a studio session, I can’t help but feel I’ve been grantedan opportunity to time travel. It’s like having a backstage pass to analternative history of a fallen idol.

That is how I feel about Rod Stewart, who I believe squandered thegreatest gift ever bequeathed a rock singer. His voice is the best rock’n’ roll voice ever, a whisky-soaked tenor croak with frayed ends thatcrackle and drag. When Stewart was singing material worthy of thatmagnificent instrument - “Every Picture Tells a Story” or “You Wear ItWell” or “Gasoline Alley” - he was making some of the greatest popmusic of all time. In my heart, the Stewart fronted Faces are at leastthe equal of the Rolling Stones.

People forget, or never knew, that Stewart was once an amazing artist,a rival of Dylan and Van Morrison. They only know him for the tartan,the soccer balls, the spandex, the serial suicide blondes, “Do Ya ThinkI’m Sexy?,” the shamelessness of his half-hearted shambling through the“Great American Songbook.”

They don’t understand how great he was - how much talent he had at hiscommand - and how tragic the past 30 or so years of his enduring and,by any objective measure successful, career have been.

Robert Johnson may have sold his soul to the devil to acquire genius;Stewart threw his genius away for a Maybach and a private jet, for moremoney than his children’s children could ever spend.

Still, he didn’t betray us, he only betrayed his gift. And how heapprehended that gift is a mystery we can’t penetrate.

It is tempting to take The Rod Stewart Sessions as an attempt atself-explanation, in that it does provide evidence that some of thetendencies of mid- and late-period Stewart (the will to camp it upchief among them) were present even in the early Stewart. But thatpresumes that Stewart was intimately involved in the process ofselecting these tracks - a claim the marketers have refrained frommaking.

Instead, they credit producers Andy Zax and Cheryl Pawelski for siftingthrough “a warehouse of Stewart’s tapes” to recover the “songs,outtakes, and ephemera” presented on these discs “to paint a picture ofwhat might have been.” (Isit my imagination or does even theadvertising copy seem rueful?)

But what might have been seems very close to what actually is. Thefirst two discs of the collection are superb. The opening cut on thefirst disc - an alternate “Maggie May,”with completely different worklyrics (suggesting that Stewart was, at one point at least, afastidious writer), but apparently the same instrumental bed - has theeffect of pulling us into a spooky, bizarro world. Both this and theearly version of “You Wear It Well” suggest lyrics were the last partof Stewart and guitarist Ron Wood’s process. Both songs have a loosead-libbed feel - when, on “Your Wear It Well,” Stewart hits the line“And I fell, on the hard floor/Just because I adore/Your underwear,”the fragility of the iconic track is exposed. All classic rock is justa giggle and a grin removed from a goof.

Studio run-throughs and spirited if ragged takes of familiar materialcompose the rest of the first disc. Especially pleasant is a version ofthe Bee Gees’ “To Love Somebody” Stewart cut with Booker T. and theMGs.

Then the second kicks off with an absolutely stunning, emotionallywrecking version of “The First Cut Is the Deepest” that cuts thefamiliar version from A Night on the Town. That’s closely followed by avengefully rocking “Innocent (The Killing of Georgie Part III)” thatprovides the closure to the murder ballad “The Killing of Georgie,Parts One and Two.” And that’s followed by an almost redemptive barband version of “Hot Legs” - the single version of which was theprecise point where we began to lose interest in Rod Stewart, as weperceived he began to lose interest in anything other than preservinghis rock ’n’ roll lifestyle.

And while there are highlights on the final two discs - disc fourincludes a smoking alternate version of Dylan’s “The Groom’s StillWaiting at the Altar,” and the piano-based take on the Lennon-McCartneychestnut “In My Life” is charming - for the most part they mirror thetrajectory of Stewart’s public career. From the mid-1970s on, he seemsless and less engaged with his work. (The creative nadir of Stewart’scareer may be his hack rewrite of Bob Dylan’s “Forever Young,” that’simaginatively titled “ Forever Young,” and is represented in early,piano sketch form of disc three.)

Part of what The Rod Stewart Sessions reveals is the human frailty of aone-time artist of integrity turned American Idol shill. While theexcellence of the first half of the set indicts the comparatively emptysecond half, harsh judgments are somewhat tempered by the realizationthat Stewart has always been a singer of eclectic interests, and partof our argument with his choices comes down to the question of taste.

Probably as many people (consumers) are gratified by Stewart’s recentwork with Clive Davis as have ever heard his U.S. debut. WhileStewart’s early work on Mercury is a touchstone for some of us, it isobscure stuff to most people who grew up with CDs instead of recordsand with MTV rather than FM rock.

Not everybody even agrees that Stewart was a great singer - he gottossed out of an early version of the Kinks (then called the Ray DaviesQuartet) because the drummer’s mother didn’t like his voice. Hisfirstever recording session was cut short when the legendary producerJoe Meek ran into the studio either - depending on whose account youtrust - screaming at the top of his lungs or blowing a raspberry at the16-year-old Stewart.

David Hume, in his 1757 essay “Of the Standard of Taste,” points outthat even people of similar education and cultural backgrounds - who“have early imbibed the same prejudices” - are likely to exhibit markeddifferences in what they like. Taste is an elusive concept that is partphysical sensation and part psychic response. The heart wants what itwants even if (and sometimes because) whatever it is will surely causethe heart to break.

It’s not my job to guess what Rod Stewart wants, or wanted - hishappiness is not our business. It’s only fair to acknowledge that norock singer ever made me happier.

And no rock singer ever made me sadder.

E-mail:

pmartin@arkansasonline.com