At first I didn't quite know what I would do with the book, other than read it over and over again. My distrust of history then was still strong, and I wanted to concentrate on the story for its own sake, rather than on the manuscript's scientific, cultural, anthropological, or 'historical' value. I was drawn to the author himself.
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The Beatles
Posts about The Beatles
READIN
READIN started out as a place for me
to keep track of what I am reading, and to learn (slowly, slowly)
how to design a web site.
There has been some mission drift
here and there, but in general that's still what it is. Some of
the main things I write about here are
reading books,
listening to (and playing) music, and
watching the movies. Also I write about the
work I do with my hands and with my head; and of course about bringing up Sylvia.
The site is a bit of a work in progress. New features will come on-line now and then; and you will occasionally get error messages in place of the blog, for the forseeable future. Cut me some slack, I'm just doing it for fun! And if you see an error message you think I should know about, please drop me a line. READIN source code is PHP and CSS, and available on request, in case you want to see how it works.
See my reading list for what I'm interested in this year.
READIN has been visited approximately 236,737 times since October, 2007.
Last night I was watching a Beatles movie -- I remember at the end of the movie/dream, when John was rushing about trying to produce a film, saying to Belle Waring, "What is this movie? It's better than Let It Be [by which I meant Magical Mystery Tour] but not as good as Help!" -- she agreed but did not know either. I felt aggravated at there being a whole nother Beatles movie about, which I knew nothing of.
For part of the film I was onscreen, trying to inveigle my way into hanging out with the lads; my plan was to convince George that I was a friend of John's, and John that I was a friend of George's -- surely I lifted this from the plot of some old sitcom or buddy movie. George and Ringo were rather short, and John and Paul were taller. Everybody was at Coney Island or some similar place, where John was trying to put together a large conceptual art project. I do not remember its precise nature but it involved a lot of props -- scenery, costume jewelry, etc. I was in the process of bullshitting George about my acquaintance with John, when Jim Cross called me on my cell phone -- I pretended it was John and told him to "come on over here, I'm with your friends" (I had suddenly forgotten George and Ringo's names) -- come to think of it this particular sequence had a strong feeling of "I Love Lucy" to it.
There was a short sub-dream after this one ended, in which I woke up and feverishly scribbled down the bit about John's conceptual art project on a tablet I kept on my bedside table for the purpose of recording dreams. Ellen woke up too and was reading over my shoulder -- my script was uncharacteristically sloppy and I was misspelling a lot of words. Lots of self-reference in this dream about movies and writing. Ellen said this morning, she thought we should rent "A Hard Day's Night".
Update: We are watching "A Hard Day's Night" this evening, and I am surprised at how close the appearances of the Beatles in my dream were to this movie (except for Ringo, who looked more like the Ringo on the cover of Sergeant Pepper's, sans uniform). But: the dream Beatle whom I identified as George, was John; and vice versa, mutatis mutandis. Don't have much clue what this means. Sylvia, in response to the lyric "I know this love of mine, will never die, and I love her": "Sometime you'll die!"
posted morning of November 26th, 2005: Respond ➳ More posts about Music
Permit me to compose drunk for a moment, in honor of Michael's birthday. (Happy Birthday, Michael! Michael has been visiting us for a week, roughly, and is going away to Boston tomorrow. I always thought he was a native of Berlin, but turns out he is a native of southern Missouri who has lived most of his life in Berlin.)
Yoga class tonight was taught by a substitute (a little spacy, I thought -- and I have a nerve, to be thinking of other people as spaced out) -- when we did the corpse pose at the end of class I had the following thoughts:
This is not a great pose for me to meditate in. I feel much less self conscious when standing or sitting.
You know what would be great? I should just levitate now.
OK, let's go, levitating muscles. Start lifting!
Well of course I didn't go anywhere. It made me start thinking, in a strongly non-meditative way, about Jonathan Livingston Seagull, a book which I just loved as a teenager and have felt embarrassed about ever since. See what I was thinking, roughly, was: If I was JLS I would just know that I could levitate, and it would happen independent of my wishing it to. But of course the point of JLS was that you didn't have to be a particular person to get this supernatural effect, you just had to be completely comfortable in your being.
posted evening of April 15th, 2008: Respond ➳ More posts about Readings
So it seems like Robyn Hitchcock has written some of the soundtrack for an as-yet-unmade movie about the life of Brian Epstein. He sang two songs from it at the Turning Point show; the first one especially is beautiful, and catchy as hell. The lyrics do not seem to be on the web yet, so here is a quick transcription (the titles are my own, just taken from the choruses; I don't know what Robyn calls these tunes):
This is from a forthcoming movie about the life of Brian Epstein, which hasn't been made yet; but it's been written. Not sure if it's in "development" or "turn-around"...
Knock yourself out yesterday, tomorrow will be fine
It's all for the best you say, somewhere down the line
Everything is fine, Everything is mine.
Pharoah's tomb is empty now, you can crawl right in
Bandage up your sin, bandage up your grin
Oh I, am in a hurry for the sky
Yeah I, am in a hurry for the sky
You can easily confuse, money with success
Success is always relative, money's absolute
Money is acute, money be my girl* -- Yes...
Oh I, am in a hurry for the sky
Yeah I, am in a hurry for the sky
Number 2 said to number 1, you fix us up oh we've finished son
Number 3 said to number 2, I wish I could trade boots with you
Number 4 said to number 5, How does it feel to be eaten alive?
Number 5 said,
I, am not an integrated guy,
Yes I, am in a hurry for the sky
Hurry, for, the, sky...
* On the record it is "money in your dress". Not sure if this was heard right in the live version.
Tryptizol, Librium, Carbitol
Here's another song from the Brian Epstein saga; in this one, Brian's getting near the end, and he has a cocktail* that sustains him:
Ah, I feel so close in my head,
I feel so close to my bed;
You've got me spinning around.
I, feel like a big chandelier,
Could crash any time around here;
You've got me spinning around.
When, the world revolves around you,
And then you revolve too...
You've got me spinning around.
Tryptizol is a brand name for Amitriptyline, an antidepressant.
Librium is a brand name for Chlordiazepoxide, a sedative.
Carbitol is a brand name for 2-(2-Ethoxyethoxy)ethanol, a solvent used in mixing drugs; it was named as the cause of death in the coroner's report on Mr. Epstein's death.
In comments to NickS's covers post, Matthew links to a fantastic version of "Strawberry Fields Forever", by Los Fabulosos Cadillacs. Lovely! And it gives me a chance to remember Ellen's brief memoir "1996", published in In My Life: Encounters with The Beatles, about playing Anthology 2 for her fourth-grade class in East Harlem.
"Draw me what you hear in the music," I say.
They show me giant strawberries growing next to an apartment building, the sun's rays as streams of musical notes, the word music in big colorful letters, a strawberry tree identified with phonetic spelling swter breey fealds.
It was Ellen's first full-time teaching job (after many years of adjuncting), and she had a good time with the class, and her students had a good time learning to read and write.
"So were you a Beatlemaniac?" Yazmine asks.
"Oh, sure, of course," I answer in all seriousness. "I always will be."
Robyn Hitchcock's playlist this morning included a Beatles title I didn't recognize, "Rain" -- I asked Ellen about it this morning and she hummed a few familiar-sounding bars; I thought I'd look into it.
Turns out "Rain" is the B-side of "Paperback Writer" from 1966. It is by John; it was not released on an album until "Hey Jude" in 1970. According to Wikipædia, it is the first commercial recording to feature backwards vocals. Sweet sounds! Here is video of the boys inventing MTV:
I've just seen a face,
I can't forget the time or place
That we'd just met, she's just the girl for me
And I want all the world to see we've met
Na na na na na na
Had it been another day
I might have looked the other way
But I had never been aware
And as it is I dream of her tonight
Na na na na na na
CHORUS:
Falling, yes I am falling
And she keeps calling me back again
I have never known
The likes of this, I've been alone
And I have missed things and kept out of sight
But other girls were never quite like this
Na na na na na na
CHORUS
I've just seen a face
I can t forget the time or place
And we'd just met, she's just the girl for me
And I want all the world to see we've met
Na na na na na na
Emily tries but misunderstands, ah ooh
She's often inclined to borrow somebody's dreams till tomorrow
There is no other day
Let's try it another way
You'll lose your mind at play
Free games till may
See Emily play
Soon after dark Emily cries, ah ooh
Gazing through trees in sorrow hardly a sound till tomorrow
There is no other day
Let's try it another way
You'll lose your mind and play
Free games for may
See Emily play
Put on a gown that touches the ground, ah ooh
Float on a river forever and ever, Emily
There is no other day
Let's try it another way
You'll lose your mind and play
Free games for may
See Emily play
↻...done
posted evening of March 16th, 2012: Respond ➳ More posts about Syd Barrett
about playing Anthology 2 for her fourth-grade class in East Harlem.
