LIFE – Page 12 – Don't Gel Too Soon

For Ellie Greenwich, Who Really WAS Leader of the Pack, With Thanks

When our kids were little, we used to sing. All the time. And early on, many of the songs they loved were written by this woman: Ellie Greenwich. She was a tough cookie I think. She was also one of the great song writers of her generation. Ever heard Be My Baby? (“Bee my, bee my bay bee, my one and only baybee…”) Chapel of Love? (“Goin’ to the Cha pull and we’re gonna’ get ma a a reed”) River Deep, Mountain High ?(“Do I love you my oh my, river deep, mountain high” that was Tina Turner.) Ever hear of girl groups? Then you’ve heard of Ellie Greenwich. There’s a reason she’s in the Song Writers Hall of Fame. She died August 26, the same day as Senator Kennedy, so I’m a little late, but I have a lot to thank her for.

Freshman year we lived in a dorm with a big porch facing Seelye Hall, the main classroom building. We’d put our stereo speakers in the windows over the porch and blasted whatever we liked at the time, especially in the spring, as the snow melted and spirits rose. One of our classics was “Leader of the Pack.” All of us, the Gang of Four as we were then, could re relied upon, for no reason, to belt out “Hey there, where’d you meet him?” to which another would reply (in song, of course, and I know you know this) “I met him at the candy stoh – ore.” It sounds so silly, doesn’t it? But it wasn’t.

The tribal music Greenwich gave us was alive with the spirit that was all of us, before the War tore everything apart, when we just had fun and our minds were full of ideas and ambitions, and songs, and romantic daydreams, and songs, and learning how to be grown ups (slowly) and songs. And her songs were so universal, so full of a love of living and living for love – way before we even heard of our sister alums Gloria Steinem and Betty Friedan. Somehow, as things became more serious, Doo Wa Diddy Diddy Dum Diddy Doo didn’t flow off the tongue so easily. That’s why I was so glad when a Broadway musical, Leader of the Pack, opened in the 80’s and gave us another chance – and a great cast album, full of many of her greatest songs.

My own favorite is all tangled up in a memory. It was a sunny fall day and my six-year-old and I were walking down a street someplace in the Village. And we were arm-in-arm. And our walk had a rhythm – right feet at the same time, left feet at the same time, just the two of us. And the rhythm? It came because, together, crossing the nearly 30 years between us, together, we were singing –Da Doo Ron Ron.”

Not quite this great, but not bad, either. So thanks Ellie. And the rest of you – see for yourselves.

Last Day in London, for Now, and What Did I Find?

This bench sits along the Thames, on the South Bank, between Waterloo and BlackFriars Bridges. It’s a nice bench. Since we leave London tomorrow I had my last walk along the river today. And it gave me a gift

I walked around it, to sit down and say goodbye to the river, the bridges and London – found this:

It’s been a lovely time. We fly in the morning. See you on the other side.

Back to the Future: Futurism at the Tate and 1968

In the early 20th Century there was a band of wild men who created an entire new way of thinking about “Art.” They were called Futurists and for those of you who took Art 11 and already know about them, I understand that I didn’t discover them – this being particularly true since they are currently appearing in a retrospective at the Tate Modern here in London. AND for my penultimate (I think) post here I want to tell you about them because they were a real kick.

This painting, by Luigi Russolo, is called “The Revolt.” On the right you can see “the people” pushing up against the hard line of the establishment. It’s the same thing the Futurists themselves were doing. Here’s their major “Manifesto.”

These are our final conclusions:

With our enthusiastic adherence to Futurism, we will:

Destroy the cult of the past, the obsession with the ancients, pedantry and academic formalism.
Totally invalidate all kinds of imitation.
Elevate all attempts at originality, however daring, however violent.
Bear bravely and proudly the smear of “madness” with which they try to gag all innovators.
Regard art critics as useless and dangerous.
Rebel against the tyranny of words: “Harmony” and “good taste” and other loose expressions which can be used to destroy the works of Rembrandt, Goya, Rodin…
Sweep the whole field of art clean of all themes and subjects which have been used in the past.
Support and glory in our day-to-day world, a world which is going to be continually and splendidly transformed by victorious Science.

The dead shall be buried in the earth’s deepest bowels! The threshold of the future will be swept free of mummies! Make room for youth, for violence, for daring!

As I wandered through, alone and more available for being by myself, (this one is Carra’s The Funeral of an Anarchist) I felt that I knew these guys. Yes they denigrated women (more on that in a second) but their rebellion, their anger, their passion, their desire to change everything – that was familiar. Of course I never wanted to destroy; none of us did. But the feelings of anger, of disappointment in the ways of the world, the desire to find new ways to say things, those were familiar — and swept me back to the determined, impassioned girl I was then. I can only describe my reaction as delight.

You’re going to tell me that this is the kind of blind passion is just what was wrong with the 60’s. And for those who transformed these feelings not into art but into primitive acts of violence – they were wrong then and they’re wrong now. That’s what is so amazing about art. You can act, and express, through representation instead of concrete acts of violence and hatred. That’s what these enraged men did. Meanwhile, the women artists were pretty angry, as you can imagine. One of them, Valentine de Saint-Point, although she agreed with their ideas, had some of her own to go along with them. Like this:

“Women
are Furies, Amazons, Semiramis, Joans of Arc, Jeanne Hachettes, Judith
and Charlotte Cordays, Cleopatras, and Messalinas: combative women who
fight more ferociously than males, lovers who arouse, destroyers who break down
the weakest and help select through pride or despair, “despair through
which the heart yields its fullest return.”

I wish I knew more because there’s so much more to this; the impact of Cubism on all
of it, the way it affected artists in nation after nation, and, most of all, the sheer energy of
art that, instead of freezing a moment, seems to set it free and follow it.

Colbert, The Word and Woodstock

The Colbert Report

Mon – Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c

The Word – Hippie Replacement

www.colbertnation.com

Colbert Report Full Episodes

Political Humor

Tasers

I know, I"m in London and I should stop putting up videos of TV shows. But I love this one. And, it's what we call "timely" since the 15th is the 40th anniversary of .. well watch this and see for yourself.

It’s Hard, Ain’t It Hard, Ain’t It Hard, Ain’t It Hard: the No Good, Awful, Terrible, Very Bad Day

Sometimes things are so sad, and so hard, and not your story to tell – and they follow you in and out of rooms and around corners and out into the street and you feel like you're riding on some perverted, malformed roller coaster.
There's nothing to do, really, but apologize for the maudlin language, sit back and hang on for dear life.

Like the Counting Crows song about sitting in the hills in Hollywood hoping "this year will be better than the last." The new year is coming so I suppose that's worth considering. It's hard though.

For those of you who know us, nobody's sick and nobody's dead and we're still married and our family seems fine. This is something else. And it's really, really hard – because it doesn't feel right or fair or even sensible. We've gotten through everything else so I guess we'll get through this too. I wouldn't even bring it up but I own those of you who are still taking the trouble to stop by here an explanation for the silences between posts. Just wish us well, OK?

Paris is a Movable Feast – and We Are Making the Most of It

Ernest Hemingway is pretty passe these days, but in his wonderful memoir of his time in Paris, he wrote something that returns to me every time I’m here “If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life, it stays with you, for Paris is a movable feast.” And so it is. Right here it’s going to rain, and the sky is far more grey-blue forbidding than I could get the camera to record, and it’s around 4 PM and we’ve been walking since 10 AM this morning. And we haven’t really done anything – not in the way tourists go into museums and enrich themselves. For us these streets, and the Seine, and the beautiful old buildings and boulevards – well, they’re the richest of all.

It’s pouring rain on the bookstores of Boulevard St. Michel on the Left Bank near the Sorbonne, but that doesn’t stop the book shoppers. Paris is a city of readers, one where great writers have been held as heroes and mourned by the city – and much of the entire nation when they died. There are many restaurants and cafes on the Left Bank, which had been home not only to Hemingway and Fitzgerald and Gertrude Stein and Sylvia Beach but also to Simone de Beauvoir and Jean Paul Sartre and so many others. They are crammed with people all the time – whether it’s the Deux Magots or the Brasserie Lipp or Cafe de Flore because these places have an enormous literary history and those who visit here know that these are the places to visit even if they’ve never read The Second Sex or The Sun Also Rises or even The Great Gatsby.

Or maybe they just know, like these two troubadours, that Paris, when you’re young, (or, hopefully, any other age) is still a gift. So many have already written better words about the indelible impact of this lovely place; I’m really just here to agree with them.

Brick Lane in the Real World – Things Have Changed in London

You can see it there – the street name in English and, I think, Bengali – the street brought to life in Monica Ali’s wonderful book. Brick Lane was a sensation, well reviewed on both sides of the Atlantic and beyond, as well it should have been. Reading it, a reader not only felt the feelings, but also heard the voices and smelled the cooking smells of a crowded immigrant neighborhood in London’s East End.Well we went there today, expecting to see the veiled women, street food and crowded food markets that orient us in a neighborhood like the one we lived in as we read Brick Lane. But the book was published six years ago. And Nazneen, her sad husband, lover and daughters have surely moved on.

Gentrification has arrived – as surely as this old shop will soon be transformed into a web-connected, foam and half-caf coffee joint. As we walked the streets today, they were full of cool people in multiple earrings, tight skits, hip tee shirts and modern demeanor, and with the goods to satisfy them. Revealing, low cut short skirted dresses, funky feathered jewelry, pork pie hats and weird purses hung from stalls in side markets and on the Lane itself. Music was bluegrass and Hendrix and newer than that — nothing remotely ethnic. There are lots of curry and other ethnic restaurants but they have wine lists and chic fonts for their menus. And there are liquor stores.

I’m not sure precisely why I’m telling you this except to remind us to be grateful for gifts like this wonderful novel. Things have surely changed here on Brick Lane, but thanks to Monica Ali, her ear, her eyes and, especially, her heart and empathy and imagination, we have a lovely document of life as it was here just a decade ago. This immigrant literature, whether it’s Ali, or Lahiri or Henry Roth or Saul Bellow or Amy Tan or Betty Smith, provides historical scrapbooks as communities shift, or are displaced. So it’s nothing new; it’s just so dramatic to arrive on the Tube at a place so recently real to me and to see it, already, well past the point it lives in in my mind.

Another Day in London Town and Some Questions About This Health System

You can get an MRI in 24 hours in London. Of course it will cost you L250 and is not covered by the National Health Service — but you can get one.

How do I know this? I walked into a spa-like place on Drury Lane to find a massage for my husband and there on the reception desk was a brochure announcing the opportunity. Why? NOT because National Health doesn't provide MRIs, but because you can wait as long as 6 months to get one. That's one of the legends of National Health that looks like it 's at least partly true. Then I had a tiny experience of my own.

A small disaster and quick work. I was up very late last night talking to a friend in DC -' til 2 AM. So when I got up this morning I was a little raggedy. And in the process of slicing bread the knife slipped and I stabbed myself in the left hand. Bled like anything. There I was, alone in the apartment, bleeding and imagining sliced tendons or non-stop bleeding or God knows what.

I was impressive though. Stopped the bleeding with pressure and ice, called our local Boots' pharmacist, who told me to call a walk-in clinic who told me they were NOT insured to apply a butterfly bandage and gave me the name of a doctor far far from here. Not too reassuring.

I struggled into some clothes and walked to Boots to beg for help, and even though they'd refused on the phone, help me they did. Looked at the "wound," told me I'd "done all the right things," sold me some special band-aids and anesthetic disinfectant and sent me on my way. But it' clear nothing is ideal. The pharmacist says that the services are often "abused" and that we in the US have "the right idea." I'm going to try to figure out more about National Health "on the ground" while we're here. It's always different when you're right on top of it. In the meantime, I seem to be fine; pain diminished, bleeding stopped at least for now. More later.

Blogging Boomers Carnival #122: Health, Travel, Books and Marriage

I'm a day late because I'm in London and time is mysterious still, but this week's Blogging Boomers, at Midlife Crisis Queen, is worth waiting for. From what to pack to how to stay healthy, it's got its usual menagerie of interesting stuff. Take a look and you'll see what I mean.

London Bridges, Kids, and Ferris Wheels

That old rascal Samuel Johnson told us that when we were tired of London, we’d be tired of life. I know it’s summer when any city is inviting but this week is cool and bright and breezy and London is full of British school groups and kids from everywhere else too, and we have an apartment right in the middle of Covent Garden (well NOT the market, God forbid, just the neighborhood) and our older son and his new wife are only 40 minutes away and we have friends here, too. So how could we be tired?
What you see here is the view from Waterloo Bridge (and yes that’s St. Paul’s Cathedral in the background.) This morning I went out and walked all along the Embankment, over where the trees are, then crossed a bridge just out of view on the right and returned via South Bank, London’s wonderful (relatively) new arts and museum area. My entire walk was around three miles and I’m realizing that it’s much easier to do the walking when there are new things to look at, not just the old neighborhood or, as lovely as it is, Rock Creek Park.

The wonder of a great city is that it’s always changing, that even the most trivial journey is full of surprises. On my way home tonight I came across a group of teenagers – one of dozens of g The wonder of a great city is that it’s always changing, that even the most trivial journey is full of surprises. On my way home tonight I came across a group of teenagers – one of dozens of groups we’ve been seeing ever since we got here. The reason they’re all sitting on the sidewalk is that they’re exchanging addresses and spelling them out – different nationalities, different spelling. Kind of an EU photo.

Of course there’s lots else going on here. Huge waves of immigration, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, what looks to me to be an appalling amount of youthful alcohol consumption and unemployment all take their toll. There’s something about the place despite those issues though. The day after the 2005 subway bombing that killed 52 people, Londoners got back on the train and went to work. They did that all during the Blitz as much of the rest of the world watched them face down Hitler almost alone.

Cities are supposed to change. That’s what makes them exciting. Even so, London has seen more than its share: waves of immigration that have transformed it, an early history of wars and fires and plagues, contemporary royal scandals and of course the “troubles” between Belfast and the rest of Ireland and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. After all, who would have believed before it arrived to help celebrate the Millennium, that there would be a ferris wheel right in the center of town? They call it the London Eye to make it sound fancy but it’s still a ferris wheel, here in same town that has a real live queen living in a real live palace? It’s pretty amazing.

I’m thinking that while we’re here I can try to get past some of what I’ve written here and learn a bit of what it’s like to truly li
ve here. It’s got to be different from wandering around with no need to be on time or face the traffic or crowded mass transit and infinite numbers of tourists and, incidentally, deal with what appears to be an enormous amount of alcohol consumption – especially by men. I’m hoping to keep you posted as I make my way. I hope you’ll come along.