Common Glory
Greetings from the modern swamp,
Amedeo Modigliani once said, "It is your duty in life to save your dream."
In northern Alabama, a young black woman worked a bunch of different jobs -- bagged groceries at the local Kroger, sold used cars, worked at Domino's, fried eggs at a diner, hauled trash and delivered mail. After work she would play guitar and sing and work on getting a band together. She had never been out of the South, seen the ocean or a mountain, but she was on a mission to make the world listen, whatever it took. "Yeah, you got to hold on!" she sang in the chorus of the song that won the Grammy for Song of the Year in 2012. At 23, Brittany Howard and her band, Alabama Shakes sold a million copies of their debut album. Stardom. World tour.
Johnny Allen Hendrix was born in 1942 in Seattle and started playing guitar when he was 15. He moved to Tennessee and played rhythm guitar in different bands on the Chitlin' Circuit, was "discovered," and moved to England and proceeded to burn down the notion of an electric guitar in a pop group and emerged as the greatest guitarist in history. Turned the planet on its ear at Woodstock, literally set the instrument on fire at Monterey Pop. Wore the clothes of a revolutionary and spoke the language of the astral traveller. Voted World Top Musician in 1969, Performer of the Year, Rock Guitarist of the Year... And dead at 27.
John Berryman, an American poet, said of a particular man, "For a while here we possessed/an unusual man," referring to a friend we all recognize by his language. That man went to Dartmouth for a few months. Dropped out. Later Harvard for three semesters. Quit. Farmed. Wrote. Tried to teach. Farmed again. In 1916, he described himself with his "most notable trait, patience in the pursuit of glory." and so far, "Don't seem to die." That was in 1916. In 1961 Robert Frost was an American institution; he recited a poem from memory at JFK's inauguration as the sun was too bright for him to read his notes. He died at 88.
In Japanese is a phrase, "mono no aware." It's the understanding of the transiency of the world and its beauty. The phrase is meant to convey a sense of beauty as ephemeral, that the passing of beauty is a sadness, but the experience of it is redemptive.
I was planning to write a completely different missive than what you are reading right now, but a couple conversations I had yesterday with two friends altered that scheme. In one, he had had a medical crisis at an age way too young and is now reformulated as a man on "borrowed" time. Every day is a chance to be not who he was, but who he wants to be. Smartest dude in the room, Hell Yeah, or... enlightened, with the emphasis on light, lightened, unburdened, source of light... The other, dealing with a crumbling business model, the kids home nonstop, is spending time in the woods. Skinned up to the top of Mt. Mansfield last Saturday, alone, and fell asleep in the sunshine glorious for an hour, realigning in real time the priorities of life and joy and being right here, right now.
My mother was in a theater production with dancers, a chorale, and an orchestra in a huge summer-stock pageant sort of thing in Virginia society in the 40s called "Common Glory". That pairing of words has stuck with me my whole life (so far). There is so much esoteric wordiness shouted in the service of political analysis, art criticism, journalistic hooha that this notion of the sublime in the simple is, well..., sublime. What may come? Who knows?! But, Frost said a poem is "a momentary stay against confusion." An excellent song is a place. You can go there anytime. It's a refuge from the noise. Real ART sings. Changes your posture. Will Brittany Howard go the way of Jimi or Robert? Who knows, but you should listen to her voice, and his flying, searing sound. You should look around carefully at time passing. It's full of passing beauty and dreams coming true.
That Modigliani guy is right.
Love love and more all the time.
Bruce Mac
P. S. So, here we are. And I haven't instructed you to buy something from me, so Sarah, my gallery director and right-hand-mastermind will yell at me, not too loudly though. Buy art y'all. Before you can't. Today is better than tomorrow, cuz tomorrow never comes...
P.P.S. Case in point: I was lamenting to myself (you guys do that too, right?) how long it's been since I've heard thunder. Minutes later my son sent me a text video of it hailing in Montana in his backyard. Thunder. From my cell phone. Can't make it up.
