November - 2009 Special Edition

A Poetic History To How Music Moved You

CONTENTS:

Poets & Writers

Barbara Crooker Robert Cooperman Bruce Majors Charles Rammelkamp Davide Frame Lyn Lyshin Kenneth Pobo Natalie Villalon Nils Peterson Roger Craik John Riley Peggy Landsman Anthony M. Majahad Dianna Robin Dennis Debby Forte Barbara Eknoian Elaraine Lockie Judith A. Lawrence Delbert R. Gardner Gretchen Fletcher Jacob M. Carpenter Richard Roe Laura E. Holloway Beatrice M. Hogg Beth Browne Vera Long Joseph Reich Carole Longo Harris Louis Gallo Neal Whitman Julia Ponder

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3 3 4 4 5 5 6 6 7 8 8 9 10 10 11 12 12 13 14 15 16 17 & 25 17 18 18 19 20-21 22 23-24 26 26

River Poets Journal Special Edition

Jukebox Junct ion USA

River Poets Journal Jukebox Junction USA Published by Lilly Press Editor: Judith A. Lawrence Co-Editor: Joseph Reich

All future rights to material published in the River Poets Journal are retained by the individual Authors/Artists and Photographers.

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Editorials

As I’ve mentioned before, one of the best things about being an editor of a literary journal is the writers you meet along the way, whether locally, across the USA, or internationally through mail or email correspondence.

Joseph Reich and I were enjoying occasional email chats on all kinds of things, from poetry, prose, music and art, to food, Philadelphia, NY, sharing some favorite bands, singers, songs and groups we were enthralled of and then one night in an email Joseph mentioned, “wouldn’t it be great to have a themed issue of poems that were inspired by music or favorite songs?”

The idea really intrigued me as music plays such a large part in our lives. If I taped all the CD’s, records and cassettes back to back in my home I would have enough music to play continually all year and then some.

I often question why I have this impulse to buy yet another album when I know that I may not get around to playing it for some time, but the thought that it’s there, accessible for when I’m in the mood, allowing the luxury of the occasional laid back day or night, pulling out that old chestnut, sliding the disc into my player knowing it will take me away, weave images and magic into the fabric of my life, and every once in a while even inspire a poem.

The Jukebox Junction USA Special Edition has been a labor of love. The difficult part of pulling this collection together was that there were so many wonderful submissions it was difficult for both Joseph and I to make the final selections.

In our selections, the poet’s names were removed from their submissions, and each poem was assigned a number in place of for unbiased selection.

I hope that you enjoy this wonderful collection and that the lyrics, music and poems bring back some meaningful memories and inspiration for you as well.

Judith A. Lawrence Editor/Publisher

I just wanted to sincerely and earnestly say how many wonderful and thoughtful submissions Judith and I received over the past few months for our theme issue, "Jukebox Junction," which likewise just made our task that much more challenging in having to choose and boil down and triage it all into one thematic and salient collection; appearing to touch on musical periods and influences all the way back from the Twenties to the present day, and encompassing a whole wide range of eclectic musical forms and genres.

We were also pleased to have received a variety of submissions from so many different regions of the country, from small town to rural to suburban to the big city, as well as internationally.

For all of those who didn't make it, I just wanted to say how honored and grateful we were to have received your submissions, as well as your willingness to share with us what appeared to be some real profound and sentimental and nostalgic memories, and do hope the experience was as cathartic for you as it was for us.

I believe what Judith and I have put together here is a real insightful and intriguing, engaging and absorbing collection as evidenced by "Jukebox Junction," and now please feel free to dig in at your own leisure, and mosey on down memory lane to the melody of your choosing, and wherever that path may happen to lead you!

Joseph Reich Co-Editor Jukebox Junction, USA

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Name of Songs: Thunder Road, Independence Day, 4th of July, Asbury Park (Sandy) Hungry Heart Name of Album: Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band Live/1975-1985 Name of Artist: Bruce Springsteen

Me 'n Bruce Springsteen Take My Baby off to College We hit the turnpike early, O Thunder Road, every inch of the car packed: sweatshirts, prom gowns, teddy bears, such heavy baggage. She's both coming and going, this shy violet of a child, the teenager too hostile to be in the same room, breathe the same air. Now she dozes beside me as the car spools up the miles, and I slip in a favorite tape, raise the volume. Her skin, edible, a downy peach, her long hair unwinding. My foot taps the accelerator with the beat; the Big Man, Clarence Clemons, pours his soul out his sax, yearning, throbbing, as the turnpike pulls us west, bisecting Pennsylvania, tunneling through the mountains: Blue, Allegheny, Kittatinny, Tuscarora, this big-muscled, broad-backed hunk of a state.

We drive deeper into the heart of anthracite, the wind blows through the dark night of her hair. A harmonica wails and whines, brings me back to my tie-dyed college years; sex looms like a Ferris wheel, carnival lights in the water, but we've reached our exit, here she is, it's independence day, ready or not, Pittsburgh, city of smoke and grit, polished chrome and glass, soot streaked buildings, pocket handkerchief neighborhoods, abandoned steelworks, the Monongahela River. I deliver her again, heavier this time. We set up the room, she turns cocky and sulky, breaks into sobs when I leave.

On the return trip, I play the same tapes over and over. The miles roll by, I'm driven by the beat, everybody's got a hungry heart, nearly there: Lenhartsville, Krumsville, Kutztown, green rolling hills dotted with cows, Pittsburgh's iron and steel filling the horizon in the rearview mirror.

©Barbara Crooker

Name of Song: Dark Star Artist: Grateful Dead Name of Album: Live/Dead, 1969 Setting: The Fillmore East, NYC Love Interest: Not Nearly as Important as the Music Verse: Dark star crashes, Pouring its light into ashes.

The Night the Dead First Played “Dark Star” at the Old Fillmore East

Dark Star: a black hole. But to us at the old Fillmore that night, “Dark Star” meant the music of the spheres:

Pythagoras might’ve been up near the stage, twirling to the beat the drums laid down hypnotic as a snake charmer, the guitars and keyboards weaving, like the dance of DNA molecules, the universe forming that night.

Garcia’s guitar a pterodactyl soaring on thermals, diving for prey just under the surface, then stroking skyward again higher and higher, almost more than music was capable of.

And all the while we swayed like a field of wind-weaving barley on this night of pulsing planets, comets, and stars.

When we left the concert hall, dawn was turning East Village buildings the color of doves.

“What the hell was that?” one friend asked. “I don’t know,” I answered, “but I never wanted it to stop.”

©Robert Cooperman

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Name of Song: Purple Haze Name of Album: Are You Experienced Artist: Jimi Hendrix Year: 1967 Setting: Tennessee Technological University College Student, Loose lifestyle Love Interest: The Sixties Hometown: Dayton, Tennessee, Small Town, USA Season: Quiet waves, Summer Verse: Purple haze all in my eyes, uhh/Don't know if it's day or night/ You got me blowin, blowin my mind/ Is it tomorrow, or just the end of time?

Flying Like Angels

We made John’s Place an icon, Pabst Blue Ribbon like sacred wine, a watering hole for the lost. Somehow we always got back to school.

Minds blew at the edge of knowledge, psychedelic dynamo, free love time, leaning toward darkness or light ––freedom was hard.

Jose Garcia wore ringlets of love in army green, stepped on a land mine, came home in a box. Didn’t make it back to school.

We thought the smoke-filled days, liquid nights would never end––now it seems like, what’s the song? Purple Haze…

But we were cool in that purple mist driving the dark side of the road, flying like angels going nowhere in the smoky, yellow van with blue flowers and the red door painted black.

©Bruce Majors

Name of Song: In the Middle of Nowhere Artist: Dusty Springfield Year: 1965 Setting: Middle of Michigan Hometown: Albion, Michigan Season: Fall, cool evenings Verse: Baby won't you tell me/What am I to do?/I'm in the middle of nowhere/Getting nowhere with you.

Hooking the Gut

In the middle of Michigan, just past the middle of the century, CKLW, the AM station out of Windsor, provided the background music to the movie of our lives. Across the river from Detroit, they played all the current hits to the teenagers in the cars in the small towns in the middle of nowhere, a non-stop stream of hit songs as we circled through the town, six or seven of us high school boys packed in a single car, singing along to Motown, the Jefferson Airplane, the Dave Clark Five, Beatles, Animals, Rolling Stones. We orbited the planet that was our town, our universe – hooking the gut, in the local phrase – Victory Park, the college campus, past fast food joints and ice cream stands, smoking cigarettes and talking about the girls with whom we were getting nowhere.

©Charles Rammelkamp

Jimi Hendrix Dusty Springfield - at home

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Song: Mississippi Album: Love and Theft, 2001 Artist: Bob Dylan Hometown: Venice, Italy Verse: Well my ship's been split to splinters and it's sink-ing fast. I'm drowning in the poison, got no future, got no past. But my heart is not weary, it's light and it's free. I've got nothing but affection for all those who sailed with me.

Mississippi

This song in my mind recurs, persists and it’s like that land down south with houses with verandas filled with large leaves from whose margins raindrops hang and never fall and clouds and sun clash quietly and pools linger harmlessly for a long time after the floods.

This song steps forward with the stride of the long-legged heron and with it flies, eyes so accustomed at surveying and at one with the slow wings’ beating and the trees’ swaying.

I see this room without me, the window-panes reflecting branches and sky, it’s a big room, like the big pace of the song’s refrain and I think it’s great to shed your skin and breath and keep walking kissing that land where we know everything changes just to let nothing change.

©Davide Frame

Name of Song: Me and the Devil Blues Artist: Robert Johnson - Blues singer/song writer Hometown: Virginia Season: May, drizzle Verse: You can bury my body down by the highway side Lord, my old evil spirit can catch a Grayhound bus and ride.

May, Drizzle, Virginia

Sixth day of pewter. The cat coils under the microwave, ex- cited by garbage trucks as I open mail, a little cautious as if something dangerous could be there. Bruise sky. Ozone’s cheap perfume in the trees. I think of Robert Johnson with a poisoned drink in one hand from some one sure he’d been cheating with his wife, sang bury my body by the old railroad sign so I can catch a ride on the old Grey- hound bus and ride and ride. Dead at 28, a voice says as the cat coils on terry cloth as if it was purple velvet maybe dreaming of gizzards or being worshipped with flayed salmon and sparrows

©Lyn Lifshin

[Robert Johnson's death is as mysterious as his life. The prevailing theory is that he was poisoned in a juke joint in Three Forks near Greenwood, Mississippi. He was buried beside the highway, where the busses pass by, in the small Zion Church cemetery near Morgan City.]

Bob Dylan in Mississippi

Robert Johnson (One of two, possibly three

photos taken in his short life)

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Name of Song: Gingerbread Man Name of Album: Mony, Mony Artist: Tommy James and the Shondells Year: 1968 Love Interest: Stan (no name in song though speaker calls himself a gingerbread man) Season: Spring, more cool than I would like Verse: Hey girl, if you lost your way Reach out and take my hand I’m a gingerbread man

Gingerbread Man

Flip it over. I agree, “Do Something To Me” is a great A side, but “Gingerbread Man”

could have Top 40’d on its own. The guitar craves a kiss. It’s OK,

guitars can be promiscuous. I’m a gingerbread man, too. At my worst I’m crummy, overdone. At my best,

I taste good. Songs are red blood cells— give me enough of them, I can stay healthy.

©Kenneth Pobo

Name of Song: Wu-Tang Clan Ain't Nuthin' ta Fuck Wit Name of Album: Enter the Wu-Tang (26 Chambers) Artist: Wu-Tang Clan Year: 2008 Setting: Princeton University, nerd camp Love Interest: the philosophical stoner guy Hometown: Alamo, CA Season/Weather: clear summer night Verse: Ti-tiger style/Tiger style/Tiger style (Wu-Tang clan ain't nothin' ta fuck wit)/BANG IT/Tiger style (Wu-Tang clan ain't nothin' ta fuck wit)/Tiger style (Wu-Tang clan ain't nothin' ta fuck wit)/Tiger style/Tiger style (Come on!)/Bang it! Huh! Come on!

Untitled

Swaybacked groaning table we commandeered held up by our faith in shouting and swaying raw summer nights roaring tiger-style banging our life-love (we knew everyone else was dead) with a badass backbeat we thought and protested nothing except fall and the waning of dazing pseudo dangerous days a few hands and Wu-Tang Clan gave us shields and arms beyond repulsion in our fun and need for each other danced on the table it was our sinking ship smoothing our springing anxieties with burgeoning laughter and foreign courage you kissed me alien raw wandering it became everyone’s bacchus kiss we were squished hugged chanted courted and there are so so many I hung batlike prostrate and ready off that table to touch cool grass remember there was an earth to catch me never felt screamed sang laughed safer someone else commandeered the speakers animal and nervous with the hastening escape of such nights as we proclaimed all with comic savagery (fear of losing it all): ain’t nothing’ to (laughter) wit living on ruckus that threat of collapse and rumbling still

©Natalie Villalon

Tommy James - 1960’s

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Name of Song: Go Way From My Window Year: 1950 Live Concert: Gladys Swarthout Setting: Centre College, Danville, Kentucky Love Interest: None Hometown: Mt. Vernon, NY Season/Weather: Fall, Cold. Dreary Lyrics: Incorporated in piece

Go Way From My Window

I’m sitting in a bar – drinking a martini larger than I’d make at home – because I do not want to drink alone. I am, of course, drinking alone.

I like the noises, the “warm, drunken wash of voices,” the beat of the bad music just beneath disturbing loud – I’m aware that the gin is good and I’m aware that I’m thinking of Gladys Swarthout when she came to Danville, Kentucky in the fall of 1950 to perform at the basketball court which four times a year doubled as a ballroom and once in a blue moon as a concert hall. I’m sitting in the bleachers listening, something to do in a town and time when any something was better than the usual nothing.

I float above the clinking beer glasses remembering how beautiful and exotic she was – broad-chested, dark-haired, big-voiced, and I remember wondering what we were both doing there. I was sitting next to my roommate, also from New York, who in the spring would serenade the girl’s dorm singing “Some Enchanted Evening” in his fine baritone, and when his former girl would not come down and join him (these were the days of girl’s dorm lock-downs and house mothers and the like, and it was maybe two in the morning, his voice muzzy with drink) brought out a pistol full of threats. He waved it around and shortly after waved goodbye to the school.

One could say “girl’s dorm” then; Breckinridge Hall was the boy’s dorm in turn. The returning GI-billed soldiers lived in Vet’s Village, ran a never-stopping card game, and supported a steady trickle of moonshine from the hills. I was 16 and a long way from home which mostly felt good.

I can’t remember the first part of her program – maybe some 19th century German art songs about babbling brooks and the beloved which I likely wasn’t ready for. At the end she sang, “Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child” which explored a place in me I didn’t know existed, and then, “Go Way From My Window” :

Go way from my window Go way from my door Just leave me with my broken heart And bother me no more, And bother me no more.

I’ll give you back your diamonds, I’ll give you back your rings But I’ll ne’er forget the love we knew As long as song birds sing, As long as song birds sing.

her big voice carrying passion so darkly that no sweet-voiced Judy Collins ever could seduce me a decade later.

My drink is gone, though the ice cubes I suck on are reminiscing about the good times.

©Nils Peterson

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Name of Song: Apeman Name of Group: The Kinks Year: 1973 Setting: Heard this when I was having a miserable time as an English schoolboy in Aberdeen , in the north of Scotland (but I always liked this song) Verse: I'm an apeman, i'm an ape ape man. (features car horn --mentioned in the poem--and traf-fic and city noise)

"Days" (which is another Kinks song)

The man who honked his car horn twice In the opening bars of “Apeman” by the Kinks Watches his granddaughter play in the sand In a municipal recreation ground On an afternoon in south-west London.

And as he thumbs in line the brittle worms Of Captain Black into their greaseproof sleeve And tongues it closed along the join, He is not thinking of that afternoon When the Sixties seemed to sigh their last and go, And he, just as was told to do, Opened the door of his Ford Cortina And, as if annoyed at someone pulling out, Banged two times with the heel of his hand The plastic disk the size of half a crown

He was only someone someone knew Who knew the Kinks. He never met the band. Now the sun of another century Slides westward. He muses that there used to be An air-raid shelter where she’s playing now Beneath the cheerful tunneling And unfamiliar playground characters Which must be from American TV Where during bombing raids (His father used to say) the neighbours smoked, Played darts and cribbage, crossed their fingers, hoped That Jerry wouldn’t score a direct hit, And felt how small it was to be alive.

The elms that stood through four kings’ reign Are spreading into twilight now. He asks himself how many years remain. The little girl is dawdling, looking back To where her pail-shaped castles in the sand Are growing smaller as she’s led away.

©Roger Craik

Name of Song: Mercy, Mercy, Mercy Name of Album: Live at the Club Name of Artist: Cannonball Adderley Year: 1976 Setting: Attic of the old farmhouse where I grew up Love Interest: Kristy Ketchum Hometown: Rural North Carolina Season/Weather: Summer, of course, hot and sticky (there are no lyrics to this song)

Mercy

When I was a boy and self-born in religion my aunts, uninterested in being washed with the saving blood of Jesus Christ, called me Preacher Boy. (They both lacked imagination and made a series of bad marriages.) Come Sunday mornings I traveled alone in a white shirt, clip on navy-blue tie, penny loafers shined the night before, down a failure of a county dirt road studded with rocks that jabbed through the red soil like a reef slicing a surf. In my memory it is always cold fall. At the end of my walk I'd wait for the bus to the Providence Primitive Baptist Church, practice my weekly verses, press my wet hair back with a ten-cent black comb.

I strapped myself to the word of God; stood and swayed when hymns were sung; wanted death to be a wool glove. But the hold of that ancient agony collapsed the first time I heard Cannonball Adderley and his Sextet play “Mercy Mercy Mercy.” It was recorded live in '66. Cannonball was gone before I heard his funk rise from the turntable and wash the sea of salvation away. All was lost. What could I do? Day spun into night! I became blind as a fish with scales for eyes. That touch of the dark felt right.

©John Riley

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Name Of Song: "Nothing" Name Of Album:The Fugs First Album Artist: The Fugs Year: 1965 Setting: Dream Town, New Jersey Love Interest: No one in 1965. After 1972, Richard Logan. Hometown: Newark, New Jersey Season/Weather: Fall, brisk and drizzly Verse: Sunday nothing, Monday nothing, Tuesday and Wednesday nothing, Thursday for a change a little more nothing, Friday once more nothing...-Tuli Kupferberg

Nothing Dreaming

Tuli Kupferberg and I are dancing. He is light-years ahead of me, Maybe old as twenty. I myself cannot be Many moons past eight.

We aren't holding hands exactly, Only our fingertips touch. They are sticky. We've been noshing Messy chunks of halvah, Melting chocolate gelt.

Mr. Slowpoke, my uncle Phil, Fresh from a stretch in eternity, Roller-skates across the floor On wheels of salted bagels. "Kam mit tsores!" he calls to us,

And time, the way it does in dreams, Whirls by, dreidel-like, Revealing all its sides To me.

I am...I am distracted by Kaleidoscopic visions And winks from my mind's eye.

Tuli, meanwhile, is spieling His nada, his gornisht, his nothing.

I am turned around.

Cracked and scratched beyond repair, One of my favorite 78s Is skipping like mad past all the best parts,

Bucking the needle at every turn, Knocking it out of the groove.

©Peggy Landsman

Fugs Final Performance Concert - September 16, 2003

[Founded by Beat poets Ed Sanders and Tuli Kupferberg in 1964, The Fugs pioneered a blend of Beat-style lyrics, political rant, comedy and jug band music that influenced Frank Zappa's Mothers of Invention, The Velvet Underground, The Stooges, and Alice Cooper.

Tuli Kupferberg gained indirect notoriety as the real life "guy who jumped off of the Brooklyn Bridge and lived," immortalized in Allen Ginsberg’s epic Howl.]

Allen Ginsberg, excerpt from Howl

“who jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge this actually happened and walked away unknown and forgotten into the ghostly daze of Chinatown soup alley ways & firetrucks, not even one free beer,”

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Who was that trumpeter

accompanying some forgotten blues piece, recorded on a graphite disc – circa 1920?

What happened?

Did you die from an overdose of Sportin’ Life’s happy dust?

Were your notes absorbed into the ether of time, or handed down to your children like the ancient Greek epic?

You bear me to another world; I spiral inward; your rich tones filling the hollows of my soul.

When your music ends, its haunting echoes still reverberating in me, the radio announcer can’t identify you.

He calls you a lost chord.

©Anthony M. Majahad

Name Of Song: Symphony #3 by Aaron Copeland Name Of Album: Copland: Symphony No. 3 Artist: New York Philharmonic, Leonard Bernstein, Conductor Year: 1980 Setting: NYC - Avery Fisher Hall Hometown: Hopewell, NJ Season/Weather: Crisp NY day - don't remember the season Verse: "Fanfare for Common Man" used as a theme for various Olympic Games, is the basis of the final movement.

Copland's Third "Common Man," in Four Movements, New York, Avery Fisher Hall

I how can I write for instruments with leaky pens black dots on white page

I solely desire to write me on your body with this warm finger

touch your coldly drawn breath, crescendo in C 'til notes multiply, die

II dreaming your hands jazz body weeps, sighs, together we dance along brass

III audience restless ears disregard anguished notes hid in open chords

IV racing to leave, they trample our feet, curse our seats run for subways, cabs

we ponder Common Man's ability to miss his own life's refrain

©Dianna Robin Dennis

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Name of song: Stairway to Heaven Name of album: Led Zeppelin 4 (released in 1971) Artist: Led Zeppelin Year: 1973 or 1974 Setting: My bedroom Love Interest: Just being alive, shared friendships, rock music. Boys were still in the future Hometown: Barrington, R.I. Season/Weather: One late summer night Verse: And as we wind on down the road/Our shadows taller than our souls/There walks a lady we all know/Who shines white light and wants to show/How everything still turns to gold,/And if you listen very hard/The tune will come to you at last./When all are one and one is all/To be a rock and not to roll./And she's buying a stairway to heaven.

Here's To A Memory And A Favorite Song

Candle plume and verse converge upon the moment sway across the wall, gather on the ceiling a canopy of promise explodes just like a preacher's storm moves us to religion

Cloistered in my room on the corner of the second floor in nineteen- seventy- three or four we sisters in faith, a tribe eternally linked sing in tounges known only to our breed

We wear our hair hung loosely, parted down the middle shirts, an east indian gauze jeans low waisted, belled our clogs and wooden sandles scattered on the floor

Burning incense of solidarity we let all pretense go our shining pollyanna eyes always looking forward never back

Inside that little room on Linden Drive the air is warm the Spirit alive we watch our shadows dwarf our souls and know the difference

By the cool black window my cat Natasha on her pillow, purrs There is something out there The stars of promises past the moon and little bits of matted sun are fanned by jasmine breeze, skirting through the curtains and in between her whiskers to smells of Indian summer and a cricket applause, and pulsed with hope and fireflies

We sing our prayers at night dreaming we are that lady answering the piper's call the sultry swells of Robert and Jimmy's silky strumming in our ears

©Debby Forte

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Name of song: Tears on my Pillow Name of album: A single Artist: Little Anthony & The Imperials Year: 1959 Setting: Lake Hopatcong, NJ Love Interest: Ronnie M. Hometown: North Bergen, NJ Season: Summer, warm Verse: You don’t remember me, but I remember you Twas not so long ago you broke my heart in two Tears on my pillow pain in my heart caused by you

The Summer of Possibilities

I entered Lake Hopatcong’s only ice cream parlor. He was standing behind the soda fountain and I noticed his white blond hair. Just so I could see him every day, I ordered sundaes, apple turnovers and banana splits. By summer’s end, I had gained ten lbs. One day he canoed past our hotel dock looking for me, but I had gone home for the weekend. Many nights that winter I fantasized how I would be more outgoing and by summer I’d land a date with him. I arrived at the lake on a sunny June morning and he whizzed by in his pink convertible with three friends. Later, I entered the ice cream parlor expecting to see him, but found out he had just left for the Navy. That summer, every time I heard “Tears on my Pillow” on the radio I cried for him. ©Barbara Eknoian

Name of Song: Goodnight Irene Name of Album: In Times Like These Artist: 1950, my father/2006, Arlo Guthrie Years: 1950 and 1999 Setting: 1950, a song at bedtime/2006, a concert hall in San Francisco, CA Love interest: My father Hometown: Big Sandy, Montana Season/Weather: 1950, all seasons/2006, autumn Verse: Irene goodnight, Irene goodnight Goodnight Irene, goodnight Irene I'll see you in my dreams

Song from the Other Side

Arlo knew the secret long before scientists conceived cloning He discovered it in the guitar strums and famous folk lyrics from his father Toured the country with reincarnate rituals Mouth-to-mouth resuscitation songs that released Woody from his sound-proofed box

But did he know how many other resurrections he wrought How the first bars of Goodnight Irene could recall forgotten renditions from other fathers Like one who sat singing beside a bed banishing nightmares and cooling fevers With such nostalgia that the daughter thought Irene might have been her mother

Did Arlo know how his lyrics released those moments long held in ransom Before breasts budded and fevers that became adolescent endemic refused to be soothed by a song And there was no antidote for the parental paralysis that followed

Frozen feelings that endured the test of time While the daughter slipped on them in icy dreams Until songs from the dead melted early memories That dribbled out and down her cheeks in a concert hall ©Elaraine Lockie

Little Anthony & the Imperials

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Name of Song: I Only Have Eyes For You Group: The Flamingoes Year first released: 1959 Setting: First Ballroom Dance Love Interest: James Dean Hometown: Philadelphia, PA Season: Late Summer, balmy Verse: are the stars out tonight…I don't know if it's cloudy or bright…I only have eyes for you…

Boulevard Ballroom

The year I turned eighteen I emerged from my cocoon, all that was terribly wrong magically righted.

On the wings of my metamorphoses I floated down a flight of steps leading to the Boulevard Ballroom, next to Big Boy’s Buns and Hamburgers, and the Boulevard Pool where the previous summer I lost my bikini top…not enough there to fill an A-cup.

A transformed image emerged complete with Nathalie Wood hair, alabaster blemish free skin, red, red lipstick, batting curled eyelashes, perfectly straight seamed silk stockings, strappy tapping black sequined high heels, dressed in a borrowed low cut cinched swirl of dark gold, forest green, and deep purple fluid chiffon, an emerald pendant gleaming on my breast, with sparkling matching dangling earrings, the scent of Chanel clinging in the air.

The ceiling was ablaze with stars, cut crystal balls spinning fantasies, twinkling jewels rotating on the floor. Capricious Gods watched hushed in the wings.

With an intake of breath I glided nervously toward the line of young men waiting on the sidelines with fresh haircuts, decked out in their best suits, silk ties, white dress shirts and gleaming polished shoes, the same men whom only a year before had not taken a second glance suddenly shifted interest toward me.

A tall angular young foreigner with Elvis pompadour advanced quickly to my side, bowed courtly and swooped me in his arms. I looked up into wistful brown eyes, knew instinctively I would break men’s heart’s that night, and the music played… as he crooned in faltering English in my ear… my love must be a kind of blind love… I can't see anyone but you… Sha bop sha bop...

©Judith A. Lawrence

The Flamingoes

Nathalie Wood & James Dean Rebel Without a Cause

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Name of Song: An Affair to Remember (Our Love Affair) Name of Album: Nat Cole Sings the Great Songs (1966) Artist: Nat King Cole, performer; words by Harold Adamson and Leo McCarey; music by Harry Warren Year: 1969 Setting: Grand Canyon Love Interest: Marilyn Hegarty Gardner Hometown: Keuka Park, NY Season/Weather: a blisteringly hot September Verse: Our love affair is a wondrous thing/That we'll rejoice in remembering/Our love was born with our first embrace/And a page was torn out of time and space/Our love affair, may it always be/A flame to burn through eternity/So take my hand with a fervent prayer/That we may live and we may share/A love affair to remember

Love at the Rim (For Marilyn)

Leaving Vegas after 8:00 p.m., We drove through the night, my bride of a year and I, To avoid the oven of the desert day. The stars were flares viewed through a velvet screen, And we heard Nat sing about "Our Love Affair" A dozen times to help Miss Holiday Inn Broadcast her own love message through the air. Next morning we stood on the Southern Rim (After a few hours' sleep inside the car) And tried to comprehend the giant chasm Licked into shape by the wandering Colorado.

At a lookout point my wife did a frightening thing: She walked a jutting ledge to where a tree-- A straggly-haired cliffhanger of a pine-- Had clawed its roots between the rocks. She climbed The crooked trunk and wrapped it in her arms, Then twisted around toward the canyon rim So all I saw of her were her willowy arms About the trunk and one foot on a limb.

Soon her face appeared beside the trunk: Several pine needles sticking to her hair And a pixie smile in her hazel eyes, As she crooked a finger at me in mock seduction, Made me laugh at her despite my fear. But there was the precipice, and I forgot

The myths and legends her appearance brought To mind.

"Come back," I called, pretending calm; "It's a bit dangerous, love, and--well, the child--"

"Yes, the baby," she agreed, sobering, And the not yet obvious fetus made her grope Her way to me with care, back from the wild Where she had ventured without fear of harm. Then breathing freely, we gazed from behind the rope At the canyon carved as the patient river streamed An aeon or so before our souls were dreamed.

©Delbert R. Gardner

Nat King Cole

Movie - An Affair to Remember

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Name of Song: Que Sera, Sera Artist: Doris Day Year: 1956 Setting: the beach in Palm Beach, Florida Love Interest: boys Hometown: West Palm Beach, FL Season/Weather: hot summertime Verse: When I grew up and fell in love, I asked my sweetheart, 'What lies ahead? 'Will we have rainbows 'day after day?' Here's what my sweetheart said: 'Que sera, sera, 'Whatever will be, will be; 'The future's not ours to see. 'Que sera, sera, 'What will be, will be.'

Beach Party

Phosphorescence drips from bodies emerging from the night ocean, a black, horizonless extension of the night sky.

They trudge through sand carrying collected driftwood, blankets, and transistor radios as Doris tells them “Que sera, sera.”

They laugh away nervousness and shake dark drops of ocean onto the bodies of their friends sitting in pairs around the fire

who will eventually make their way away from the others and become an archipelago of isolated islands scattered down the beach.

©Gretchen Fletcher

Name of Song: “Memories are Made of This” Artist: Dean Martin Year: 1956 Setting: Stand of Australian pines in a vacant lot by Lake Worth in West Palm Beach, Florida Love Interest: boys Hometown: West Palm Beach, FL Season/Weather: hot summertime Verse: Take one fresh and tender kiss Add one stolen night of bliss One girl, one boy Some grief, some joy Memories are made of this. Sweet, sweet memories you gave-a me you can't beat the memories you gave-a me

50’s Girls

Under the shade of pines we stretched taut stomachs (we’d dared to bare in two-piece suits) across the hoods of Fords and laid down coats of wax rubbed in wide swirls on trunks and fenders, taking care not to scratch the surface as we caressed tail fins. Before the sun could dry the wax, we buffed our boyfriends’ cars to mirrors that reflected faces eager to please boys who stood by and shared Luckies while they compared waxes, cars, and girls. Someone's transistor on a blanket was tuned to Dean Martin telling us that memories are made of this – even this small moment we would remember forever.

©Gretchen Fletcher

Dean Martin Doris Day

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Name of Song: Nightswimming Name of Album: Automatic for the People Artist: R.E.M. Year: 1995 Setting: Farm creek in rural Midwest Hometown: Oregon, Illinois Season/Weather: Warm summer night Verse: Nightswimming deserves a quiet night I'm not sure all these people understand It's not like years ago, The fear of getting caught, Of recklessness and water They cannot see me naked These things, they go away, Replaced by everyday

The Naked Moon Smiles Down

Moonlight rushes through trees, pulls apart fat leaves, drenches the black night in white candlelight and the moon smiles, filling the air as bright as possible.

Bare frogs bound from shadows to the water. Black crickets chirp in delight. Blazing fireflies hover in anticipation, flashing to add their light.

Deep water rushes to the bend then slows fighting not to be swept past, humming softly, begging, encouraging, persuading.

Electricity heats the air as t-shirts and jeans rush through outstretched arms, over heads, past goosebumps and skinny

thighs, knees, ankles into piles on wet grass. Hearts pump. Arms cover. Girls rush to hide. Boys smile with wide eyes racing and straining not to miss.

Heart beats pound waves. Long hair and smiles float on the creek. Stomachs squeeze and feet kick beneath. Fireflies join and drown. The naked moon smiles down.

©Jacob M. Carpenter

Released - July 15, 1993 (UK)

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Name of Song: Ring of Fire (Carter & Kilgore) Name of Album: Ring of Fire Artist: Johnny Cash Year: 1963 Setting: Nashville, Tennessee Love Interest: Darlene Residence: Marietta, Ohio Season: Spring, 1963 Verse: Love is a burning thing/and it makes a fiery ring/bound by wild desire/ I fell into a ring of fire

The Burning

Like a bottle of beer on a dare, I chug down a mug of scalding black coffee with four sugars at a corner table in “The Pit,” exam cramming, paper writing, boozy weekend, busted romance.

Like a slinky landing on a step, Darlene sinks into a chair, laughs like the wicked sister who steals boyfriends; she’s high octane caffeine, custard-filled doughnuts, a torch song, a concert grand sharply tuned.

She says, Bach and Glenn Gould, I fugue for the four voices of a torrid wind; Errol Garner, leaves falling on keyboards; Earl Hines, keys dancing in infirmaries. I mention my ex- and Darlene shakes her hair, bountiful and wind thrown

like a set of bellows fanning flames, like the hip slinging vamp of the gypsy’s dance. I can hear my roommate muttering clichés about fires and frying pans, squared circles. I’ll skip the pep rally, leap into a flaming ring and sizzle like sirloin on open fire at a beach bash.

Regret grins as a cruel relative, leaves its rain check, instructions for fire extinguishers. Beguile me and burn me, douse me and leave me a smoking ruin, my heart peeled like scorched skin. Send Johnny Cash for the dregs.

©Richard Roe

Name of Artist: Gail Davies Setting: upon seeing Gail play The Station Inn in 6.5.08

Nashville in the Dark Ages

I.

The 12th Avenue Illuminati make their way through the shadows of skeletal warehouses in the June dusk.

They move like late September moths to the subtle glow of a secret legend. Her name is a shibboleth.

II.

People pulsate through neon flicker and buzz, clogging arteries in the heart of town, unaware of its bloat -beat-beat-beat- meaningless rhythmic pounding beneath the steady dull hum of a city-wide flat-line, unaware of atrophied limbs and empty shoes, unaware that the soul is at the Station on the outskirts of town.

III.

She opens her arms wide, her fingers wide, her mouth…

Her lungs blossom Blues and Bluegrass.

Beat. Beat. Beat. Not enough. Not enough.

Outside, 12th Avenue is bare as bone.

©Laura Eleanor Holloway

[ “For years Gail Davies has been like one of music's private treasures,” wrote William Zmudka in the book, Her Music Is Her Own, “Jealously hoarded by a relative handful as someone special, a sort of gourmet's delight. “]

Gail Davies

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Song: That’s The Way of the World Album: That’s The Way of the World Artist: Earth, Wind and Fire Year: 1975 Setting: Pittsburgh, PA, in my friend Crystal’s dorm room, song playing on her stereo Theme: Reflections on My First Year at the University of Pittsburgh Hometown: Lawrence, PA Season/Weather: Spring Verse: We come together on this special day/Sing our message loud and clear/Looking back, we touched on sorrowful days, future pass, they disappear/You will find peace of mind/If you look way down in your heart and soul/Don’t hesitate 'cause the world seems cold/Stay young at heart, 'cause you’re never, never old/That’s the way of the world...

Fresh Woman

At seventeen- I stepped onto the bus To travel from naiveté To knowledge On my own for the first time.

On a bright September morning- Everything changed Small-town girl to the Steel City- The Cathedral of Learning Beckoned with promise With vistas unimaginable.

Now in Spring- Confidence is born With the turn of a page- Filled with wisdom- Voyages of a lifetime Start with just one fearless step.

That’s the way…

©Beatrice M. Hogg

Name Of Song: Into The Mystic Name Of Album: Moondance Artist: Van Morrison Year: 1987 Setting: Chico, CA Love Interest: Thomas, II Hometown: Chappaqua, NY Season/Weather: Early winter, cool and dry

Into The Mystic

"We were born before the wind, also younger than the sun" -Van Morrison

It was on the roof, the south side streets quiet and still the skies of your town not quite a city to me, bright with stars.

I had seen the Milky Way on a Colorado highway years before but that meant nothing now. We smoked and laid our heads back to the click of aluminum chairs. We were together for a while though we knew it couldn't last.

You loved me so much you said it had to be past life stuff like the words in that song and I liked that. I was young and you missed your lost youth.

I went and moved on and you stayed there but the mystery of the stars never left you and the song sailed on in my memory.

©Beth Browne

Van Morrison

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Music: Country Artists: Varied Years: Ongoing Setting: Stillwater, OK Love Interest: Othadell Long Season/Weather: Summer/Hot

George Jones; Tom T. Hall; Elvis

I forget appointments, dates, and time of day but I remember old love-songs: She’s My Lady; Lady Love; Come Back, Lady; This One’s for You; I Don’t Know What You’re Doing But Keep It Up!

I pull up onions, dig down deep in the hard-packed soil to find a bucket of red and white potatoes. I cut the okra pods from the tall leafy stalks. I’m itching to my elbows; should have worn long sleeves and gloves. I pick a basket of fat, juicy tomatoes, eat a couple of tiny sweet tom-a-toes. I carefully pull from the vines crisp greenbeans and pickle-size cucumbers, leaving the big ones for seed. I pull a few red-globe radishes and some tender leaves of iceberg lettuce.

It’s getting hot as blazes. I turn on the garden hose, let the cool water flush through my fingers, over my arms, splash some on my face, and quench my thirst before I sit down in the shade of the house to cool off. At the sink, I wash the gritty off the vegetables, break beans and put some on to cook. I slice a platter of red tomatoes, cucumbers, white onions, and place the radishes and lettuce on one end of the platter, with a few chips of ice. I cut the okra, put some on to fry and put a few bags in the freezer. I check the roast and make a pan of brown gravy.

It’s time for my favorite DJ’s show, so I turn on the radio, lean back in a cane-bottom chair and listen to Country Music. Looking Back I Should Have Married You; If I Have to Steal Your Love, I Will; Middle Age Crazy; You Light Up My Life; Chains of Love. Tom T. sings May The Force Be With You Always. Eddie Arnold sings For the Good Times. George Jones closes with If My Heart Had Windows. I heave a sigh.

I forget phone numbers, street addresses, area codes, zip codes, but I remember songs by John Denver, Glen Campbell, Lou Rawls, Charlie Rich, Charley Pride, and, most of all, Elvis. Maybe my heart, mind, and soul have been brainwashed and re-programmed with songs on the radio, in the long lonesome years. I scrape the new red potatoes, slice some to fry, turn the burner down under the skillet of okra, make tea, chip ice, listen to the news (all bad today).

But then I hear the chug-chug of my dearly beloved’s John Deere tractor coming down the road. I rush out, letting the screen-door slam behind me, then I run across the barnyard, take off the chain and hold the gate wide open. © Vera Long (previously published by Anderbo.com - Vera Long was the winner of the 2006 Anderbo Poetry Contest)

Elvis Presley With Fans - Tupelo, MS Tom T. Hall

George Jones

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Name Of Song: Red Red Wine Name Of Album: Labour of Love Artist: UB40 Year: 1983 Setting: 116th & Broadway, Columbia University, buzzed & happy Love Interest: All those mean pretty girls in high school who turned to fantasy Season/Weather: Crisp Fall Evening Verse: Red red wine/It's up to you/All I can do I've done/ Memories won't go/Memories won't go/ I have sworn every time/Thoughts of you would leave my head/ I was wrong, now I've found just one thing makes me forget...Red red wine...

Red Red Wine

Dear Sister,

Just the other evening when I felt my mind playing tricks on me I was thinking how there is something so comforting & self-affirming about memories & how they hold such a rare & rich & even transcendent sense of meaning of unconditional belonging & that they can never ever really change or betray like almost everything else in Nietzche & Voltaire's wicked & self-interested & nihilistic conception of humanity & how in many ways they are diametrically opposed to all of Freud's defense-mechanisms free & fleeting without any sense of boundaries & yes God Bless the opposite of man's transparent manipulating & how there's something so nice & necessary & surreal even so real about a memory as just the other day I was telling Erica about that first freewheeling evening I had spent with you & your crew up at Columbia & so without further a-duh as she might very well say let there be no further delay with any of this stray storytelling somewhere around twilight making suppertime with those sexy sexless girls from Barnard & how there were all these different kinds of pastas & wines most likely very well just one pasta & one wine yet I'd like to kind of continue on if you don't mind & on came on at the perfect time the song "Red Red Wine" by that Reggae group from The Eighties from London or England I think the lead singer was white & making that our theme song for the rest of the night spending good times with good ol Juan who just got an A on some sort of Art History paper & we all sat around in this cluttered circle of squares as he eagerly passed it around page by page (saying such spirited things like "Hey! Are you finished with that one?" & us hesitantly answering "Uhhh...No, not exactly quite yet...") explaining & analyzing what he believed to be all these brilliant nuances of symbolic meaning with a beaming & childlike mentality & clearly he was very insecure & interesting & there was this other Don Juan type of guy who was making at us Casanova eyes while I believe rolling blunts & I remember you & your friends (might have even been Tamara that pretty Borderline girl from Argentina who always got involved with crazy men strung out on heroine or else was always the other women in some strange triangulation of cheating wives & husbands) telling me how he couldn't have any real significant relationships unless there was some type of intimacy or physical contact of some kind or another & me thinking how could that really be so right or wrong considering what a complex & cruel city of overwhelming & unnecessary suffering & I even looked up to him for his willingness to engage in such wild & needy escapades of what I considered to be a righteous type of reality rather than all of this pathetic & absurd pointless philosophizing that really gets you nowhere I mean there was really so much more to be said about these romantic adventures than any kind of cer-ebral bullshit banter where it is true you always ultimately end up excruciatingly lonesome lusting & longing literally lamenting about some past present or future lady while spending the whole evening tossing this fantastic frisbee on some big empty quad in the middle of a blessed dripping sleepy-eyed city trying to find it the last second before it came hurling at our higher than holy happy heads with the fast & funny & fine high on "red red wine" dry comic athlete Harry Lipman & then all of us piling into some taxi & barreling down Broadway forgetting time & reality with a certain amount of liberating laughter & explosions of levity & him

UB40

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holding his frisbee out the racing taxi against the palm of his hand in the whipping breeze to test all the rules & laws of gravity & somehow sneaking it beneath his coat or maybe even being the clever punk that he was checked it with that big black bouncer at the door & boogying all night at Studio 54 for the first time with your older sibling that meant the world to me & then noticing in the bathroom with oblivious backs turned from me Juan & Harry pissing side by side & Juan asking Harry if he liked my sister & me thinking that that was kind of cool yet how odd it was to view these two older college guys I couldn't help but to really admire & like casually & nonchalantly chatting about your sister conversing at the urinal & then somehow falling asleep stripped down to the bare essentials in the deep dark night of the Upper West Side thinking & dreaming & thinking about that delicious & blissful night not really thinking at all about the future & thinking how this was a damn fine notion & how Kerouac & Ginsberg & even Hemingway & Buddha must have felt & were not so much wrong & how they were even right & how it was the first time in my life you did not see me merely as this annoying little pest yet someone who kept up with the best of them waxing eloquently about Joyce & Dostoevsky & shocked the hell out of you with my literary ramblings instead of simply being this bad boy thief who accrued a solid D average & how it is sincerely so strange to be writing this to you exactly twenty years later the night before I am about to move into my new home with my new wife looking out to some luminous lawn at dreamy dawn seeing it draped with a gentle dew or snow or some kind of meteor storm & how I suppose now it's time to finally move on & how there's so much to really be said about a simple memory which beholds all the meaning & true sense of belonging that can ever & will never betray you like anyone or anything like some lifelong companion that will stay with you 'till eternity even when you're sinking in some sea nile wheelchair of old age babbling with a saucer of tea looking out to some strange & spectacular sea humming the bars that seem all too familiar & might even sound a little some-thing like that soliloquy "Red red wine..." ©Joseph Reich

Studio 54 - 70’s - unknown photographer

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Name of Song: Paper Doll (written by Johnny S. Black, 1915) Artist: Mills Brothers Year: 1943 Setting: Apt. #45 East Main Street, Bradford, Pennsylvania Love Interest: Gerald & Parma (otherwise known as Boss & The Doll) Verse: I'm gonna buy a Paper Doll that I can call my own A doll that other fellows cannot steal And then the flirty, flirty guys with their flirty, flirty eyes Will have to flirt with dollies that are real

Music at the Do Drop Inn (excerpt from “Vincenzo’s Promise,” a book in progress)

During the forties, when money was really tight, Gerald bought Parma sheet music for her player piano. Paper Doll, was one of their favorites. On Friday nights, when Parma played poker with “the gang,” Gerald stayed home and listened to Your Hit Parade on the radio. He knew all the lyrics and crooned just like Bing and Ol’ Blue Eyes.

On Saturday nights, Big Band sounds flowed through their upstairs apartment dubbed the Do Drop Inn. Laura, Gerald’s sister, played the large carved oak player piano positioned in the center of the living room. Sing-a-longs were popular. Cousins took turns pumping the pedals to rotate the paper piano rolls. They created strange sounds by pumping the pedals backwards and loved to peek under the lid and watch the felt covered wooden hammers pound out favorite tunes: Indian Love Song, Yes, We Have No Bananas, World War I songs and Broadway show tunes. The funniest song was, I’m My Own Grandpa by Dwight Latham and Moe Jaffe.

A neighbor skillfully tapped the mother of pearl keys on his accordion and squeezed out Lady of Spain, O Solo Mio, and Back to Sorrento. Polish friends whirled around the living room on the first note of Beer Barrel Polka. Parma’s friends, dressed to the nines, sometimes celebrated New Year’s Eve at #45. Once they celebrated at the Moose Club where Gerald sang along while the Mills Brothers performed Paper Doll.

After WW II Parma went to work in a resistor factory for money to buy a washer, dryer and new living room furniture. She also decided to give the player piano away because it took up too much space. Two strong men attached the piano to heavy ropes and lowered it from the porch railing to the sidewalk. The whole neighborhood watched and prayed the ropes wouldn’t break. The new owner took the piano to his hunting camp. Rumors spread that he chopped up the beloved piano for firewood.

During the fifties, Parma was always in the kitchen rattling those pots and pans. The former Kane High Charleston Champ couldn’t resist joining the teenagers. She cut a mean rung on the linoleum floor. Romantic Gerald, who only slow danced, got caught up in the Twist. After a double hernia operation he kept his promise to dance the Twist at his daughter’s wedding.

© Carole Longo Harris

Boss & The Doll

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(excerpt from “Vincenzo’s Promise,” a book in progress)

Name Of Album: Already it is Dusk, String Quartet Artist: Henryk Gorecki Year: 2005 Setting: Viewing Photos of Titan Transmitted to Earth Hometown: Radford, VA Season: Winter/Dusk

Listening To Gorecki’s Already it is Dusk while Viewing the First Photos of Titan Transmitted to Earth From the Huygens Probe, 2005

In the dream I’m back in my grandmother’s kitchen, an art deco, vault-like affair with fifteen-foot ceilings. The cat, Opie, has managed to squeeze into a sealed tin of sliced beets, and it’s my job to open it up so he won’t suffocate. A stranger stands beside me, a misty figure, the revenant?, to observe my progress. I use an old-fashioned can opener, and when the lid just about snaps off, I pull it back while still attached, and Opie leaps out like one of those goofy coils in tubes of fake peanut brittle or popcorn. Bloody juice sprays onto the checkered tiles, but at least Opie is free, and unambiguously alive, unlike before, when both alive and dead at once, he floated with the beets. We have this power – to close a deal with the wink of an eye.

Gorecki must be the saddest man in the world. I would like to invite him into my grandmother’s kitchen serve some tea, ask about the veiled, funeral women. Liquid methane flows on Titan, with temperatures of minus 298 degrees. There is something holy about a day when we all witness what no one else has ever seen. The staggered white and black tiles of a thirties’ kitchen, the profound basso of Poland, Saturn’s moon . . . Saturn, god of melancholy. At the moment I am about to drink a glass of burgundy, which by itself will send me stumbling up the stairs into a bedroom, far from that kitchen, and Poland and Titan, but, on the other hand, when I ooze into uroboric sleep, I hope we can all agree that already it is dusk, and already it is dawn.

Say Gorecki sits in a café in Warsaw imagining himself on one of the rocks of Titan. He is frozen solid but observes the rivulets and streams of natural gas forking around his feet. The terrain reminds him of the convolutions of a human brain.

Aside from Earth, the solar system has proved desolate, inhospitable, alien . . . we are alone; we alone devise both pogroms and space probes. No aliens, friendly or otherwise, no angels. Gorecki composes another hymn to dejection, and I, headphones in my ears, listen to it forty years ago in my grandmother’s kitchen, before it was written, before we photographed Titan, and, thereby, created it. In the dream I become alive in the past, drink tea alone in my grandmother’s kitchen, except I am not alone . . . there is that presence (but not my grandmother, not Gorecki), an ally. The room is warm and oceanic; I feel content as soft flames or liquid . I can gaze into the dark sky and suppose the speck of light I see is a planet, and revolving around it serenely, a forbidding moon, a place so remote, so impossible, that the air chills and my lungs turn to ice. But only for a moment . . then I remember that the dream, more real than Titan or the present, chose me; it’s peculiar logic crafted me. And with gladness, I boil more water on the stove.

©Louis Gallo

Photo of Titan Transmitted to Earth From the Huygens Probe, 2005

Henryk Gorecki

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Name of Artist: Mick Jagger Setting: Mick Jagger comes to me in a dream, looking sad and melancholic.

The Hidden Life

In 1959 Sylvia Plath dreamed that Marilyn Monroe manicured her nails, Marilyn, though still alive, itched to swallow those pills three years later; and soon thereafter Plath’s pruned fingers turned a greasy knob until it hissed. Me, I’m stuck with Mick Jagger. He drifted forth in tattered clothing, meek, spectral, not the raw Liverpudlian bloke on stage. I’m here to help, mate, he said sadly, fusing his rheumy otiose eyes into mine. What you don’t know hurts the most, he said. Think I want this job? It’s a hot little Swedish model I’m after . . . but here I am, by the grace of St. Jude. So if you don’t mind, let’s get on with it.

And that’s it, I swear . . . he receded into some cloudy vista, and I, heart pounding, shot up in bed. I just met Mick Jagger! I cried at the darkness, only to fall back into deeper slumber, remembering nothing the next morning.

So I relate this nugget from the perspective of the dream and all that happens beyond ourselves, the way autonomic nerves sizzle and bristle without our consent or awareness. All that churning, all that rock & roll.

Of course it’s a bit odd -- Marilyn, a woman, comes to Sylvia; Mick, a man, to me. Should have been the other way around, should have been sexy. Mick and I can still kick around some. And suppose Plath dreams about Marilyn now. Or Marilyn, Plath? Or Mick, me-- fat chance on the latter, but mysteries abound. Don’t you get this feeling that the pieces of our puzzles have fallen into disarray? Don’t you just want God to arrive with a corps of angelic engineers and cleaning people? Bob Vila would do, maybe Miss Manners . . . or some ancient Greek shoulders carved out of stone.

It’s what you get when wish fulfills itself: niches, wormholes, cracks and rips-- where real life hides, where you hide, where Marilyn, Mick and Sylvia hide, where secrets burst into flavors so new, so startling, the universe changes.

The plot thins; you’re back on the narrow, waiting for some clink, chirp or pssst to happen. Or not happen. Until, again, with the precision of radioactivity, dream fangs puncture the jugular and transport you drop by viscous drop: an Atlas truck loaded with Marilyn’s furniture runs out of gas on the interstate; Plath’s casket of lost journals rests on a glacier; Mick’s larynx squeaks, a smudge of ash. Me, I cling like a hangnail to the static of applause that anoints with slow rain. Me, I’m beating time on some dashboard.

©Louis Gallo

Mick Jagger

Sylvia Plath Marilyn Monroe

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Name of Song: Mood Indigo (Bigard, Ellington, Mills) Name of Album: The Duke Ellington Songbook Artist: Ella Fitzgerald w/Webster, Peterson, Ellis, Brown, Stoller Year: 1957 Setting: Los Angeles, California Love Interest: Ellie (1959); Maryanna (1963); learned to sing the song in 1998/99 Hometowns: Whippany, New Jersey (1959); Marietta, Ohio (1963); Madison, Wisconsin (1998/99) Seasons: Any season, after dark Verse: Always get that mood indigo/. Since my baby said good-bye/ In the evenin' when lights are low/ I'm so lonesome I could cry/'Cause there's nobody who cares about me/ I'm just a soul who's/bluer than blue can be/ When I get that mood indigo/I could lay me down and die.

That Mood Indigo

(1) It’s like sitting alone, watching television, a movie that seems vaguely familiar - - someone’s gone away, someone else looks for that someone and there’s no one to tell you, you have already seen it more than once.

(2) Lately you’ve been morose. People ask if you’re O.K. You used to like their little jokes, the stories, but now it seems they want to spill the crumbs of their lives on your lap, an endless trail of faithless lovers, fights with the boss, impossible children - - They’re cobwebs in your face, burrs sticking to your pants - - you itch to brush them off.

You want to play solitaire but have no idea where you put the deck of cards. So, there’s no use and besides you don’t like the way the jacks stare at the queen of hearts.

(3) Looking out the window at night, the moon’s an orange blaze; its light stings like sleet. Stars are the words on a page you can’t comprehend. Jettison the moon, it shows you dark circles under your eyes. Cover the stars, put the book away, don’t bother to mark the page.

The radio plays a number you requested at a small cafe, jazz trio, bass player’s yellow fingertips on blue strings - - used to sing it as a duet, making up nonsense syllables, little love words. You can’t turn it off, this melody that blue would sing if it could - - haven’t gotten around to those “cure for blues” clichés sent by friends. (4) It’s a song Ella sang at Duke’s place, that blue kind of rightness, like a navy dress trimmed with white lace. You sit alone sipping tea with honey, nibbling on a hazy blue memory.

Ella - - you heard her live years ago in Jersey, phrases that sipped your tea pianist’s chords squeezing lemon slices. Let memory take its course, the song repeat its chorus, and wait for that last phrase, hold on to that last note as long as you can.

©Richard Roe

Ella Fitzgerald - 1940 - Photographer - Carl Van Vechten

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Name Of Song: A Tisket a Tasket Artist: Ella Fitzgerald (tenor sax: Wayman Carver) Year: 1938 recording on the jukebox at amusement park in 1965 Setting: Paragon Park in Nantasket, MA Love Interest: Nancy Siegel Hometown: Framingham, MA Season/Weather: summer vacation All the other kids were into The Beatles. Me? I love jazz. Old time jazz. Verse: A-tisket a-tasket A green and yellow basket I sent a letter to my love And on the way I dropped it

East of the Sun, West of the Moon

I made a list of all the places I would go before, as Wayman Carver once put it, “The dude left town.” Young fellows never hear of him, which is a shame. I mean, he was –– correctoroony – is – the father of my man tool. Yeah, the jazz flute is my gig. I went first to the last place anyone would go. Easter Island. Daddio, this place is far out. 2000 miles West of Chile. 2000 miles East of Tahiti. From the navel of the world, the mysterious land of the giant stones arises. I stood in front of the huge stone heads, “moia,” that dot the coastline and knew they were cool cats. They dug what I blew at dawn. A letter to Nancy. A-tisket A-tasket. ©Neal Whitman

Name of Song: Georgia on My Mind Name of Album: The Genius Hits the Road Artist: Ray Charles Year: 1994 Setting: Chattahoochee River Bank Love Interest: G. Fox Hometown: Griffin, Georgia Season/Weather: Summer, hot and sultry Verse: Melodies bring memories That linger in my heart..... Some sweet day when blossoms fall And all the worlds a song.... Georgia, Georgia, no peace I find.... Georgia, Georgia, the whole day through Just an old sweet song keeps Georgia on my mind.

The Chattahoochee

This river runs deep, deep and wide. The sounds of the river go deep down inside. Do you hear the sounds? Listen very close, To the sound of the river that you love the most.

Think of the ones who have been on the Chattahoochee. Have felt this cool water, Sautee’ and Nacoochee. They’ve walked on this ground, And heard these same sounds. The rippling water, the wind on their face, The songs of the birds in this wondrous place.

Go back , back, far far away, This is the place that you want to stay. Can’t you see them standing there? Washing clothes on the river bank without a care. Standing on the rocks in their bare feet, Spearing the fish that they all will eat.

The people on the river come and go as they will, But for the river constantly going nowhere, time stands still.

©Julia Ponder

Wayman Carver - The Troubadours Band Ray Charles

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Facts/Legends

Bruce Springsteen: Bruce originally wrote Hungry Heart for the Ramones back in 1978, but John Landau (his manager) told him he should keep it because of Bruce's past history of giving songs to other artists and them having hits with the songs. It became his first # 1 song.

Grateful Dead: The band was going by the name The Warlocks and Jerry Garcia went to a dictionary and said "whatever I point to will be the new name". He then opened up the dictionary and placed his finger on the page. When he looked down, he had chosen "Grateful Dead", which is an American folk myth. When a person pays to bury a body that no one claims it is said to appease the dead & making him grateful - the Grateful Dead.

Jimi Hendrix: The working title of the Jimi Hendrix guitar classic" Purple Haze" was "Purple Haze - Jesus Saves" and was based on a long manuscript, according to the late Monika Dannemann ("The Inner Life of Jimi Hendrix"), "Hendrix's lover at the time of his death." In the manuscript Hendrix stated that the entire meaning of the song came from a dream he had. Ms. Dannemann said, "he looked down on earth and saw an unborn fetus waiting for its birth. At the same time he saw spirits of the dead leaving earth. Screams from the children were reaching into the heavens. The earth became engulfed in a great flood, and later in the dream he was walking under the sea. Part of the song was about the purple haze which surrounded him, engulfed him, and in which he got lost.

Dusty Springfield: Mary Isabel Catherine Bernadette O'Brien was born in West Hampstead, England, to an Irish family, and was raised in the West London borough of Ealing. The name "Dusty" was given to her when she was a girl, since she had been something of a tomboy in her early years. Dusty was brought up listening to a wide range of music, including George Gershwin, Rogers & Hart, Cole Porter, Duke Ellington, & Glen Miller among others. She was a fan of American Jazz and the vocalists Peggy Lee & Jo Stafford. Her father, a tax consultant used to tap out rhythms on the back of her hand, encouraging Dusty to guess the musical piece. At age 11, she went into a local record shop in Ealing and made her first record, one of Irving Berlin’s songs, "When the Midnight Choo Choo Leaves for Alabam."

Bob Dylan: Dylan's harmonica is heard on records by Harry Belafonte, George Harrison, Steve Goodman, Roger McGuinn, Booker T. and Priscilla Jones, Doug Sahm, Carolyn Hester, Ramblin' Jack Elliott and Sly & Robbie. Among the pseudonyms Dylan has used when appearing on others' records have been Blind Boy Grunt, Tedham Porterhouse, Robert Milkwood Thomas, Roosevelt Gook and Bob Landy.

Robert Johnson: According to a legend known to modern blues fans, Robert Johnson was a young black man living on a plantation in rural Mississippi. Branded with a burning desire to become a great blues musician, he was instructed to take his guitar to a crossroad near Dockery Plantation at midnight. There he was met by a large black man (the Devil) who took the guitar and tuned it. After tuning the guitar, the Devil played a few songs and then returned it to Johnson, giving him mastery of the guitar. This was, in effect, a deal with the Devil; in exchange Robert Johnson was able to create the blues for which he became famous.

Tommy James & the Shondells: Mony Mony - the band had the music written, but needed a girl's name for the title. Tommy looked up and saw the corner of the Mutual Of New York building sign, “MONY. “ “They went up to Broadway and talked all these strangers into coming down to the studio and going 'Mony, Mony!’ “There were all these serious guys out there having lunch, and we said, 'You want to sing on a Tommy James record?” Laguna

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Wu-Tang Chan: The name "Wu-Tang" is derived from the name of the mountain Wu Dang (Wudang Shan) in northwest Hubei Province in central China with long history associated with Chinese culture, especially Taoism, martial arts and medicine.

Gladys Swarthout: When Gladys did the movie "Champagne Waltz" in 1937, she sang her songs in five languages, adding French, German, Italian, and Spanish for the foreign versions of the films, making them quite popular overseas.

The Kinks: At the conclusion of their summer 1965 American tour, the Kinks were banned from re-entering the United States by the American government for unspecified reasons. For four years, the Kinks were prohibited from returning to the U.S., which not only meant that the group was deprived of the world's largest music market, but that they were effectively cut off from the musical and social upheavals of the late '60s.

Cannonball Adderley: Known for his voracious appetite, Adderley's high school friends originally nicknamed him "Cannibal," and the name evolved into "Cannonball."

Led Zeppelin: Stairway to Heaven - On January 23, 1991, John Sebastian, owner and general manager of KLSK FM in Albuquerque, New Mexico, played the song for 24 solid hours to inaugurate a format change to Classic Rock. It played more than 200 times, eliciting hundreds of angry calls and letters. Police showed up with guns drawn after a listener reported that the DJ had apparently suffered a heart attack, later because of suspicion that - this being 8 days into the Gulf War - the radio station had been taken hostage by terrorists dispatched by Zeppelin freak Saddam Hussein. Weirdest of all, lots of listeners didn't move the dial: "Turns out a lot of people listened to see when we would finally stop playing it."

Van Morrison: According to a BBC survey, the song, “Into The Mystic” has such a cooling, soothing vibe, it is one of the most popular songs for surgeons to listen to whilst performing operations.

Ella Fitzgerald: In 1932, Ella’s mother, Tempie, died from serious injuries she received in a car accident. Ella took the loss very hard. After staying with her Father Joe for a short time, Tempie's sister Virginia took Ella home. Shortly afterward Joe suffered a heart attack and died, and her little sister Frances joined them.

Unable to adjust to the new circumstances, Ella became increasingly unhappy and entered into a difficult period of her life. Her grades dropped dramatically, and she frequently skipped school. After getting into trouble with the police, she was taken into custody and sent to a reform school. Living there was even more unbearable, as she suffered beatings at the hands of her caretakers.

Eventually Ella escaped from the reformatory. The 15-year-old found herself broke and alone during the Great Depression, and strove to endure. Never one to complain, Ella later reflected on her most difficult years with an appreciation for how they helped her to mature. She used the memories from these times to help gather emotions for performances, and felt she was more grateful for her success because she knew what it was like to struggle in life.

UB-40: stands for "Unemployment Benefits" form #40, a reference somewhat well-known in the UK but not known in the states. The boys came up with the name for the band while standing in line at the unemploy-ment office. It was the name of the form you had to complete to receive unemployment benefit at that time in Britain. The album cover was a mock UB40 form