End of Watch

 

David Ayer's End of Watch renews and refreshes the now many decades-old "cop buddy story." What's delivered is insight into how far policing has changed -- particularly American policing in a quasi-guerilla urban war environment. We've come a long way since the first appearances of Twelve Angry Men and Adam-12, for instance. What's new is diversity -- and high-capacity weaponry. Sometimes, police-gang interactions look like civil war or revolution. But the police force better represents its constituent population at large than it has traditionally, even in the recent past.

End of Watch revolves around two cops (played superbly by Michael Peña and Jake Gyllenhaal) and their work and social circles (Natalie Martinez, Anna Kendrick, America Ferrera and others). It's not a veteran-rookie tale, but rather a two partners plus everyone they know microcosm. The cop-to-cop banter is particularly noteworthy, in some ways the heart of it all. Nifty-fifty film -- dig city, man!

Today's Rune: Signals.           

Kierkegaard Says

In carting around ideas and notions put forth by Søren Kierkegaard (1813-1855), let's take a look at a couple from Frygt og Bæven / Fear and Trembling (1843). These definitely seem to hold continued relevance in the early 21st century.

"Fools and young men prate about everything being possible for a man. That, however, is a great error. Spiritually speaking, everything is possible, but in the world of the finite there is much which is not possible."  (Walter Lowrie translation, Fear and Trembling and The Sickness Unto Death, 1968 edition, Princeton University Press, page 54.) 

To me, this is pretty basic -- everyone who can has to choose carefully what they are doing with their lives, or bumble along; either way, our options are limited by time and place. Choose wisely -- if possible. Not everyone can do X, Y or Z. But maybe more could mind their Ps and Qs.

"He has comprehended the deep secret that also in loving another person one must be sufficient unto oneself."  (Lowrie, page 55).

The optimum relationship is one between existential equals. This is not to say that everyone can function optimally at all times or even at the same level, only that such would be an idealized balance.

One more quip as a bonus point: "He resigned everything infinitely, and then he grasped everything again by virtue of the absurd." (Lowire, page 51).

Zen and the art of grokking. Compare with Donovan's "There Is a Mountain:" 

"First there is a mountain, then there is no mountain, then there is . . ."

Today's Rune: Journey. 

Les dames du Bois de Boulogne

Robert Bresson's Les dames du Bois de Boulogne (1945) provides a study in manners at the tail end of the Second World War.  It's worthwhile not so much because of the stakes involved, which seem paltry when set against global catastrophe, but because of the memorably stylized performance by María Casares as Hélène, a scorned woman with the wherewithal to exact fiery revenge -- like a barrage of Congreve rockets fired at a dried out wooden ship. Her target: the feckless Jean (Paul Bernard). The trap: Agnès (Elina Labourdette), a wartime prostitute who is more or less pimped out by her mother, a woman of former country wealth now decimated but aiming to survive.

 

We've seen this sort of scenario dozens of times, though other renditions tend to add outright murder into the mix. I like the fact that this one doesn't -- it becomes more interesting, more caught in a time zone of its own.   

Jean Cocteau worked with Bresson to adapt Les dames du Bois de Boulogne  from a section of Dennis Diderot's 18th century novel Jacques le fataliste et son maître. Ultimately, though, María Casares steals the show with her fierce persona.   

Today's Rune: Journey. 

Ramblin' Jack Elliott Comes to Town (Part II)

Jack Elliott and friends at Live Oak Music Hall & Lounge (1311 Lipscomb Street, just off Magnolia) in Fort Worth, Texas (continued).

Ramblin' Jack sort of complimented Larry Mahan's black hat look with his own white hat and red suspenders, cowboy clothes, boots and acoustic guitar. He did "Old Shep" after a story abut his dog Caesar who would occasionally take the wheel of an old pickup truck and drive very slowly. He tuned up, said this was the final stop on his latest five week or so tour, that this was the first time he really tuned his guitar right. "It's an honor to break in a new edifice," he said.

Of his moniker, he noted "there’s no 'g' in his name except in England," where they say "Rambling Jack." Put his shades on after a while. Told about Jesse Fuller, the "Lone Cat," and did Fuller's "San Francisco Bay Blues," explained how the Lone Cat created his own multi-faceted instruments.

At some point, Ramblin' Jack got tired of his voice cracking due to touring and "weather changes," and asked for a medicinal drink from the bar. Live Oak owner Bill Smith brought him a glass of whiskey or its equivalent on ice.  Jack: "There’s too much ice . . ." He explained that too much ice is bad for one's humors (or humours, if you prefer), especially while singing and talking.

He told tales about busking around Europe for years in the 1950s, right into the early 1960s, with his wife at the time, June (Hammerstein/Elliott, now Shelley).  They eventually parted ways and later she became a special assistant to The Rolling Stones during their great Exile On Main St. (1972) period in France. He mentioned her memoir, Even When It Was Bad... It Was Good (Xlibris, 2000) -- more to tell about the whole episode, maybe in another post.   

After a particular breakup (with June?), Ramblin' Jack found himself in the middle of a snowstorm in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, a local appearance cancelled on account of the weather, so he made his way to a DJ friend's radio station and did some stuff on air until the DJ decided to close down the station. Before he did, Jack climbed a hundred rungs up the radio tower into the storm, head thrust into snow swirling all around, before coming back down, feeling bleak and cold. The DJ took him to a mountaintop hunting lodge, made a fire and they settled down to venison, Wild Turkey and a Bob Dylan album. This was when he learned (despite being a slow learner, he said) Dylan's "Don't Think Twice, It's All Right" (and later recorded it, in the late 1960s).  When he first played it with Bob Dylan in the audience, Dylan said, "I relinquish it to you, Jack." And then, after this storied introduction, Ramblin' Jack played the song and it was a truly groovy moment!   

At various times, Ramblin' Jack's live singing style reminds me of Willie Nelson, Woody Guthrie, Nick Cave, Neil Young and Bob Dylan.  Here he did "Diamond Joe" and a mix of folk, blues, country and country rock.

 

He also did one version of  Jelly Roll Morton's "Windin' Boy," which has the line "I’m the Windin’ Boy, don’t deny my name." (He referenced Alan Lomax here -- and there are two versions, both ribald but one version more so than the other -- as in NC-17 rating).

Ramblin' Jack Elliott is a living reminder that recorded music really only goes back about a century. What's incredible is that he (like Chuck Berry and B. B. King, dudes I've also turned out to see in the near past) has been playing and singing for more than half of its entire arc. How humbling and cool is that? My motto: any artist 65 or over, get out and see 'em before they retire or otherwise stop performing -- if possible.

Today's Rune: Journey.  

 

 

Ramblin' Jack Elliott Comes to Town (Part I)

OK, folks, found some if not all of my fistful of notes about Ramblin' Jack Elliott and friends at The Live Oak Music Hall & Lounge (1311 Lipscomb Street, just off Magnolia) in Fort Worth, Texas.
 
The interior music hall part of Live Oak (like the lounge, outside floor level and upstairs deck area) is relaxed, intimate and -- at this early date in the venue's history, anyway -- easy to negotiate. For the Ramblin' Jack show, round tables and chairs were available and maybe fifty or sixty people really lucked out by turning up and tuning in on a two-tufted Tuesday night.
 
First, The Whiskey Folk Ramblers played their energetic "folk noir" for the greater part of an hour as warmup act. New album: The Lonesome Underground. A link to their website here: http://www.whiskeyfolkramblers.com/  Got my ear -- keep one out for 'em.
 
Just about everyone in the room seemed like a real character. During an interlude, I spoke with a dude with an accent like Billy Bob Thornton's, originally from Abilene, who spoke at length about the Fort Worth music scene past present and future. When not also talking about his kith, he focused on kin, in particular the storied wildman who died as a brigadier general fighting for the Confederacy at Pea Ridge in 1862, Ben McCulloch. This Ben here had followed Davy Crockett from Tennessee to  Texas but was laid out with a case of measles before he could reach the Alamo, and so lived a while longer, long enough to fight two different duels with the same man, one with rifles and the second with pistols (he finally killed the other feller); he himself was felled by a Union rifleman.  Anyway, it was also important to this dude to elaborate on why Fort Worth is a far better place than Dallas, whose denizens always manage to mess up a good thing (examples given included Deep Ellum and the sculpture garden). 
 
Before even the Whiskey Folk Ramblers took the stage, two fierce looking cowboy type dudes walked back and forth along the side edges. One of them had a broadbrimmed black hat and was vigorously chewing gum.  Figured out later this was Larry Mahan, a world rodeo champion in the 1960s and 1970s. He had real style, like a gunslinger, and ended up on stage with Ramblin' Jack to sing a ribald variation on a cowboy song. 
 
As for the main act, Ramblin' Jack performed for about two hours, including a break for Jim Bonnet (or Bonet -- pronounced the French way and maybe even a distant relative) to recite a couple of cowboy poems -- one of them called "Lasca" from the 19th century. I looked up the words. One small part goes like this, about "Lasca, this love of mine:"

. . . once, when I made her jealous for fun  
At something I whispered or looked or done,
One Sunday, in San Antonio,
To a glorious girl in the Alamo,
She drew from her garter a little dagger,
And -- sting of a wasp -- it made me stagger!
An inch to the left, or an inch to the right,
And I shouldn't be maundering here tonight;
But she sobbed, and sobbing, so quickly bound
Her torn rebosa about the wound
That I swiftly forgave her.
Scratches don't count
In Texas, down by the Rio Grande.

After a break recovering from tonight's very real Texas tornadoes, to be continued.

Today's Rune: Signals.

Ramblin' Jack

A very real performance by Ramblin' Jack Elliott at The Live Oak Music Hall & Lounge (1311 Lipscomb Street, just off Magnolia) in Fort Worth, Texas. 

If I can translate notes scrawled in dim light on a tattered napkin and a couple of business cards, details will follow in the next post. Wonderful night, including a Havana (food) and Revolvers (ale). Yes! Tuesdays are rarely this good in life. 

Today's Rune: The Self.    

All That Is Solid Melts Into Air

Another precious gem from the book mines -- Marshall Berman's All That Is Solid Melts Into Air: The Experience of Modernity (1982).

And I'm seeing a clear series of interconnecting patterns, along the lines of the quip (inspired by a thought that is longer and more complex) by Søren Kierkegaard: "Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards" (1843). Clever lad, but when shortened to virtually slogan length, not entirely true. We do have some understanding, some inkling, of where life is going, or could go, when (or if) we take time to muse.

But as for All That Is Solid Melts Into Air, Kierkegaard makes appearances, as do Gogol, Baudelaire and Dostoyevsky (Berman goes with the Dostoevsky spelling) -- among a gob of other groovy writers, thinkers, dreamers and knowers. In a nod to Bob Dylan and the 1960s, there's a chapter called "The 1970s: Bringing It All Back Home." And throughout this book, everything that might seem eclectic and loosely based is seen holistically, even as constant change often makes people feel as if they (along with the years and decades) are blowin' in the wind.

Technological-communications, town and city planning, transportation, time itself as measured and understood by human beings -- all through the past couple hundred years have brought and have seen and have experienced dramatic change.

Take some examples, and then some water and an aspirin. Ha:

Railroads
Telegraph lines
Engine-powered ships
Electricity
Widespread indoor plumbing
Telephone lines 
Airships and aeroplanes, submarines and jets
Automobiles
Radio broadcasting
Air conditioning
Poison gas and rockets, nuclear bombs, napalm
Television
Reliable birth control
Spacecraft and satellite communications
Personal computers, internet
Digital, mobile wireless devices
Pilotless drones and miniaturized robotics
Social Media
3D Printing/Micro-manufacturing
Holographic projections, image cloaking
The known and the unknown
The foreseeable and the unforeseeable

Yeah, Steve Miller has it this way:

Time keeps on slippin,' slippin'
into the future . . .

And don't you know it?  That's why, I suppose, it's somewhat comforting to have or develop some kind of feeling of continuity, some grounding, some context, some historical and philosophically glimpsed sense of things.   

Today's Rune: The Self.