All photographs taken on walks around San Miguel de Allende, the Magic City.
Lurking in the dark corner of the far left tabs
on my computer, for two weeks now,
Concerto for flute, no. 1 in G-Major, K. 313 (1778)
By Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and performed
By the Iceland Symphony Orchestra.
I imagine that Mozart and the ISO have
Survived so much. An Iceland orchestra must Continue reading
FREE ANNOTATION AND HOT LINKS:
#1. GREAT ESCAPE: The plan was for me to get up early and walk Moppit so Rose could take an online yoga class before the sun turned up the heat.
The internet was down.
A man and his wife and their dog go for a walk.
There is no punchline.
Stepping outside feels alien enough
Without turning it into something else.
San Miguel is pared to its essentials Continue reading
YESTERDAY …
Horrified doctors and medical experts and disinfectant manufacturers scrambled to warn people not to ingest cleansers like Clorox, Lysol, and Pinesol as they could kill you.
WHICH BRINGS US TO TODAY …
President Trump announces the rollout of a stunningly innovative national testing program developed by his team of advisers.
In a word: Labradoodles. Continue reading
ANNOTATED LOG and HOT LINKS:
#1: FEVERED DREAMS: Still in a stupor, with the sun barely over the horizon, I started thinking about exercise — creating walking and running routes — both inside our compound and outside. Came up with some excellent ideas, both included steps — lots and lots of steps.
I concentrated really really hard to fix the routes in my mind, to gauge the aerobic benefits, and to estimate the caloric burn.
#2: AND THEN … Completely satisfied, I dropped my head back on the pillow and went back to sleep. My work here is done.
#3: KEEP IT CLEAN: Gave Moppit a bath. Then I took a shower. We both needed it. For different reasons.
#4: WHAT’S THE BIG IDEA: Today is a day for grand schemes I fantasized about building an online roots music festival. All the great roots cities — Chicago, St. Louis, Memphis, Nashville, Austin, New Orleans — must have radio stations dedicated to the kinds of music that defined them as the sources of blues, jazz, rock, Americana, swing, country.
When I was a rock music writer and starting to pull some juice, I proposed spending a summer traveling the country from music festival to festival filing reports from the road. The idea got about 30 seconds worth of consideration in newspaper time. Thirty seconds equals the amount of time it takes to say No!” in the real world.
I still think it was a good idea.
Instead, I got to spend two weeks that Spring, driving my kids to every theme park in Southern California to test out their newest attractions just ahead of the season debuts. To them, at least, I was a hero for about half the summer. You should have seen the expense check. There are A LOT of theme parks.
#5: SO, INSTEAD: I made lunch.
#6: BIG READ: And read some more of “The Invention of More.” While the book was published in 1940, the author pretty much nails our modern-day concept of holograms.
#7: GIFTING GONE WRONG: Neil Gaiman was offering free downloads of his classic “American Gods” until April 26 but, um, the download site @NetGallery and his publisher “weren’t ready.” Neil deleted his generous offer with a promise to iron out the “snags” and try again soon. If I were you, I’d “friend” Neil real soon. On Twitter: @neilhimself.
#8: MEDITATION: Shakespeare’s Sonnet 29. It is short. Let me just post it here. Quick synopsis: Love conquers all
When in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes
I all alone beweep my outcast state,
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,
And look upon myself, and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featured like him, like him with friends possessed,
Desiring this man’s art, and that man’s scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least;
Yet in these thoughts my self almost despising,
Haply I think on thee, and then my state,
Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven’s gate;
For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings
That then I scorn to change my state with kings.
#9: WATCH: “Live with Carnegie Hall” Pianist Emmanuel Ax hosted an hour-plus broadcast with Yefin Bronfman and Marc André Hamelin from their homes. The informality of great musicians in their homes — Ax has grown a shaggy beard and his piano is out of tune slightly — is as endearing as their music is stunning.
Shows next week: Angélique Kidjo (4/2) and Joshua Bell (4/30). (Note to self: Learn how to spell “Carnegie.”)
#10: PODCAST: “Rabbit Hole” Episode 2. The series is exploring how the Internet is shaping minds (and ensnaring many of them). It is as disturbing as a slasher flick. Social media algorithms analyze your viewing habits then feed you more of the same, and more, and more and more. Imagine your kid watching an Alex Jones video and then seeing 10 more backed up on his recommended list. And it gets worse. Watch and know your enemy.
#11: MOVIE NIGHT: Another oldie, “Topper Returns” (1941) In a case of mistaken identity, Joad Blondel gets bumped off and comes back as a ghost to solve her own murder. Who else but America’s milquetoast Topper (Roland Young) is recruited to help. Just a lot of goofy B&W fun, except for the cringe-inducing role of Eddie “Rochester” Anderson as the easily-frightened chauffeur.
He does get off the best lines in the movie, including:
Eddie, the Chauffeur: “Doors closing by themselves. People talkin’ to nuthin’ and gettin’ answers. I’m going back.”
Clara Topper (a ditzy Billie Burke): “Back where?”
Eddie, the Chauffeur: “To Mr. Benny. Ain’t nuthin’ like this ever happened there.”
Sleep on it.
Miss me? These days you can’t say “I am sick” without sending tremors through the universe. But now I can say, “I was sick, for a couple of days.” Whatever the symptoms, they did not add up to COVID 19.
I was just sick. And now I’m better and life goes on and gratitude pours in to fill the void.
As many of you know, when you are sick, you basically do nothing. So, since I sense you don’t want unnecessary detail on nose-blowing and sneezing, let’s say I did nothing of note (“Honk!” … sorry) on Monday and Tuesday.
But here’s today’s ANNOTATED LOG!: Continue reading
A scene from Ambergris Cay, Belize, on Easter morning, 2015. The building on stilts is called “The Wedding Shack.” At one time, newlyweds were rowed out there and abandoned until they consummated their marriage — or ran out of champagne.
It is not every year that a man turns 70, especially in a year when a global contagion seems to be targeting his demographic with the determination of an avenging angel.
Virus or no virus, I never expected to see this day. In truth, I never expected to see 30, or 40, or … well, you get the picture. I’ve always had this premonition, like a renewable annuity, that this decade or the next could very well be my last. Continue reading
ANNOTATED LOG:
#1 CONNECTED: Rose Alcantara’s daughter, Caira Button, celebrates her birthday today, far from her Chicago home but in very good company in Western New York. Rose sang Happy Birthday to her from our home in Mexico. Technology rocks.
#1A FACETIME WITH FAMILY: Spent almost an hour in a video chat with Ryan and Larisa and grandson Augie, who is saying his first words! They remain in place in San Francisco where it can’t be easy. One of the world’s most beautiful cities outside your door … and you can only look out your window.
#2 BIG OOPS: The worst thing you can do upon waking is open up Facebook. Trust me, bad news accumulates while you sleep. All this rage with no outlet …
C. Stimulus funds will reward more than 43,000 MILLIONAIRES with an average $1.6 million each.
#3 WELCOME RELIEF: Found in Garrison Keillor’s Letter from Manhattan. Crafting good limericks and simplifying life — that’s the life. “It’s been a quiet week in apartment 12B.” That’s the stuff.
#4 TELEVISION: “CBS Sunday Morning” is like nestling in with an old friend. I can hear my blood pressure settling down for the day.
#5 DISCOVERY: Nobody has a lock on the truth about coronavirus — yet — but everyone has an opinion. I found a reasonable voice in Richard Lehman, professor of Shared Understanding of Medicine at the University of Birmingham. His post in the British Journal of Medicine opinion page is calm, reasoned, informative, fact-based. I look for more from him.
#6 PAIRINGS: Pink Floyd’s “Ummagumma” goes especially well with Gore Vidal’s 1977 essay “On Re-reading The Oz Books” from the New York Review of Books archives.
L. Frank Baum wrote 14 “Oz” books, the unevenness of which Vidal excuses because the man was writing 48 other books at the same time.
I’ll admit it, “Ummagumma” and me on psychedelics did not go well in late-1969. It goes better with the Wizard of Oz. Wish I knew that then …
#7 VIDEO: I’m not sure where I found it but there is an amazing video of liquid-limbed hipsters holding a dance-off to the Devil’s Music, jazz, baby. On further research, I found an 8-minute version that says this is a Sunday night party during the Jazz Roots Festival in Paris in 2015. Swing, baby, swing.
#8 I WROTE A POEM: Titled “Remembering to Dance Like Nothing Else Matters.” The first half was inspired by this video and the rest is based on something that happened to me in the early-1980’s in Rosarito Beach, Baja, Mexico. I’m not a poet. These things just happen.
#9 PODCAST: While walking Moppit tonight, I tuned into the New York Times show “The Daily.” On Sundays, the program presents a spoken piece of long-form journalism borrowed from partner app AUDM. Today’s is “The Woman Who Might Find Us Another Earth.” Sara Seger is a brilliant astrophysicist, a certified genius, but befuddled by the most common challenges of living on Earth.
#10 SHORT STORY: Edna Ferber’s “The Gay Old Dog”(1917). Chicago man becomes a Loop-hound. That is not a compliment, or, wasn’t back in the day.
#11 I leave you with this, the BEST PLAGUE PARODY SONG YET:
________________________________________________________________
Enough. Stop.
Let the outrage machine simmer.
Turn off the echo chamber.
Take a breath. Exhale.
Invest six minutes in some simple joy.
Maybe a memory or a YouTube video
Search for something like:
“Crazy good dancing”
And see what comes up.
Wantonly happy dancers
All legs and jazz and smiles
Effortless abandon belying the practice, practice, practice.
Lose yourself in the motion
In the ecstasy
In the rhythm and youth and heat and sweat.
Remember all the times you
Could have danced and chose not to.
Too late for regret but ample time
To remember.
And wonder if every step not taken
On some lacquered floor
Now rises up like bile,
Angry fingers dancing across a cold keyboard
Dance, dance in your room.
Dance, dance in your yard.
Dance, dance in the office.
Dance, dance in your cubicle.
Dance, dance in the post-op.
Dance, dance in the checkout line.
Dance, dance on ZOOM with everyone you know and strangers.
For once, we have the space to dance.
Social distancing creates its own stage.
Dance as if the sanity and safety
Of the whole world depends
On your awkward, gangly, unique
Beautiful, joyous, free steps.
Don’t post, don’t throw more flames on
Facebook fires already consumed.
Step away from the keyboard
And dance, dance, dance.
Recall that long-ago Sunday trip
To storied Rosarito Beach Hotel,
Safely south of Tijuana’s gamey streets.
A womb of illusions and harmless fantasies,
Behind ancient stone walls,
And thick oak doors. An escape
For those who could not afford a flight,
Could not afford a house in Palm Springs,
Missed the invite to Malibu.
The bar on the bluff
Overlooking the crystalline capped surf
Contained like a landscape in glass windows
And tinkling bar glasses
All glass and lapping cerulean expanses.
Like flying. Above it all.
With a white baby grand on a lemon oak-panel floor.
And kids, Hollywood kids
Refugees from the studio lots and unemployment lines
And waitress jobs, and parking lots
All tumbled down to Rosarito, answering a primal cry
For something exotic, something foreign
Something away, just far enough away
To rekindle thwarted dreams
Here, in the Rosarito’s bar
We’re all somewhat mysterious celebrities,
Stars on the lam, like Gable, Lombard, Bogie.
Bar the doors to the imaginary paparazzi,
Warm up the piano,
Let the revue begin! What
Did they say … Let’s put on a show!
Kids with a thick dossier of rejections
And even more talent
Leap to the floor
Singing and dancing with abandon
Sweaty abandon, finely honed and practiced abandon
From high school musicals and college debuts
And second rows on stage
And gaudy rock-star glutted stripper bars.
Icy margaritas fuel scorching moves,
torching songs.
Saucy, sultry, racy chops
Designed for the lines of thin summer dresses
And nicely fitted khaki slacks and T’s.
Star-struck dreams are tossed,
With flaming hot ambitions,
Into the dance floor bonfire,
Like nothing matters, when
Come Monday,
Everything will.
But not now, god willing, not now.
Now is only the music and the chops
And the hothouse air and tropic sun
And shimmering mirrored ocean below
And Spanish exclamations from smiling bartenders
And the illusion that we are all
In a Cinemascope Technicolor
Foreign film, the script of which,
Is within our own power
To write.
Every moment is a closeup
Everyone is a star. Everyone is
Hitting it big.
Monday is an opening-night away.
More margaritas, amigos.
More music, more dance, more song
For up North, a thousand more
Just like us
Are having their dreams coddled and crushed
On the mercilessly hot streets of Hollywood.
But not you, not me
Not today.
The war will still be raging when we return.
But we will rejoin the fray with smiles
A new, fresh look for the face.
Isn’t that worth it?
THE ANNOTATION:
#1 In a perfect world, I would be up at 5 a.m., — meditate, walk the dog, make coffee, write until 9 a.m., do yoga/Pilates for an hour … blah, blah, blah. Say, has anyone seen a perfect world out there lately?
Lesson No.1: Repeat after me: I will not beat myself up. Nor anyone else. How you cope is exactly right for you. But do no harm (To you, me, or anyone else … including small pets and goldfish). Continue reading
Musings, Magic, San Miguel and More 