double double

 

Dear Y'all,

My DJ* played this great and true song for me, the other day, and now I play it for you.  I can't imagine why I haven't played it for you already: it's a big favorite of mine, as is the related, second song for today.  Oh, maybe just get on the bus, too.

*A word about my DJ- I had a great station, out in my studio, KCRW; it was good, but DJ-less, and that was a pity.  But of course, and this is why I originally started the Dodo, they took it away; it is gone now, like the empty lot, the bowling alley, the drive-in, and many other treasures of my yesteryear.  But, this is not just another story of loss, this is a story of expansion (albeit somewhat forced): the other two good stations are 1) local public radio, and 2) the movie-music channel from L. A.  You may know the second one as a "Classical" station, but it isn't eclectic enough for me, so I get frustrated with yet another John Williams score.  Also, you have to stand in a particular place, or you get static.  Station 1) is fine, but they have talking shows from noon to 6:30!  So I turned/tuned to the college radio station, which I sometimes have trouble listening to, because it can be a bit 'jangly.'  It can also, I am finding, be just as good as all get out, and I love, love, love, to hear the college DJs tell me why they like a particular song.

Oh, yes, I know, I can make my computer play KCRW, and lots of other good stuff, but, the music, Man, out of the clear, invisible air?!? I love that poetic notion and I am not ready to let go of it.

self-editing

 

From The Waves, by Virginia Woolf, 1931.

Dear Darling,

Today I want to tell you about The Waves- it's just so good!  It's genius; and I feel two weights in my chest:  why did no one tell me??  And, how can I tell you?  You may not love it as I do; but much more than that possible truth, is this feeling of facing another mile of uphill hike, from the trail sign of having come 56 miles already.  What I mean by this, is, I have been enthusing on stuff since I was a toddler.  I feel, like my excitement and interest in a thing is just your ennui at this point.  Or, just another thing you'd have to put on your to-do list.  That seems so sad, doesn't it?  I know, I sound like I am blaming you, but that's not it.  I guess being excited about a mouldering old book seems a bit daft right now.  Can anyone summon up go-juice for anything, anything at all right now?  It's such a relentlessly heavy and grief-filled time.  I suppose I am just apologizing for my frivolous thoughts and I do not need you to absolve me, nor do I expect you to  Let me say just that it is really something, this book, and I don't want you to come to the place I have arrived, where you are thinking, why did no one suggest this book to me?

PS

There is another book (there is always, thankfully, another book: just lying there, waiting to blow your mind, or set you to feeling, or scramble you utterly, or even to let you know you are not alone), Orbital, by Samantha Harvey (no relation).  I adored The Shapeless Unease, as well.  Like The Waves, this book has six people who are overlapplingly, additionally, one: they make an unsubstantial territory.  May it share some of your area soon.  It is a wonderful book.  Both these books will take you there.

Quark, Quaquaquas

 

Dear Dictionary of Light and Ether,

Why are we here?  So many answers!  I figure we might be here to look up words we don't know.  To grasp towards understanding of still further concepts and ideas.  To understand the whole of humanity as evidenced by what it has made.  To commune with the Ancestors by finding out what they thought.  Whoooo; what a lot of effort!  Why?  When you could pour yourself a gin and sit in the sun?*  Well, maybe I don't even need to answer that, but my mind would not be satisfied with the gin and sun.  I have tried it; I become mentally restless.  Perhaps I really am hyper-active in a very speed-of-the-sloth way.  Glacially frenetic.  Hyper-molassesesque.

Marmoreal. Ordure.  Himation.  Kiritanpo.  Incalescent.  Viriditas.  Tipasa.  The quaquaquas.  Gris-gris.  Teiresias.  Coup de foudre.  These are about half of the words and concepts from the last few weeks.  Look up one; hold it and put it somewhere safe; use it if you can, try it if it is available.  Or make a world, a whole world out of it: a doctorial thesis of it, a lifetime practice; a tradition of your one word.  

* To pour and to sit, to drink and to recline, these are metaphors for bodied, feeling states; I use them here contra-mind work.  The line between feeling and thinking, however, is unclear to me.  If you have pondered so long with your ankles crossed that your foot has fallen asleep, you may also be muddled on the difference between thinking and feeling.

water & waves

 

a real lulu

 

Dear Lu/Lou

A song for you, for today.  I also offer you this fine essay on hierarchical power and disappointing people (a minor hobby of mine).  It could also be thought of as an essay on seeking approval.  I know you know you shouldn't, but if it is the only praise you ever get, how can you not?  

I can see it so clearly, sometimes: I was doing a thing, making a noise, trying something, and there was a Man; he'd say: smile more, he'd say: keep it down, he'd say: you are doing it wrong, he'd say: you could be great, if.  

The thing I guess to try to keep in mind, is that we have been constrained, just like mice in a maze- sniffing along corridors, always moving forward, but we don't realize that there are no real choices in narrow channels.  We don't see that we have been conditioned.  It's a bit painful, really, to realize it, to notice it.  To see yourself bumbling unwittingly through time and space.  But if the walls of our mazes remain invisible, how can we ever follow anything but that same conscripted path?

How to: do nothing.

 

Dear Friday,

We haven't had an episode of Your Girl Friday in a mustelid's lifespan!  Your Girl, for this Friday, is Jenny Odell.  She will gently rustle you off of your somnambulistic treadmill and into awareness.  Unless you don't read the book and in that case, well, you are taking your chances, that's sure!  Check out her conceptual and very interesting artwork on her website; click on the 'projects' button.  And, I think, if you were a very lucky one, you might have taken a class from her at Stanford (I applied there, for grad school, but along with 11 other places, I was rejected.  Let's say I almost got to go, shall we?). 

You can be almost as lucky as her students, just by reading her great book, How to Do Nothing!  Inside this wonderful book, we are invited to "...inhabit somewhat fuzzier of blobbier ideas: of maintenance as productivity, or the importance of nonverbal communication, and of the mere experience of life as the highest goal." 

I love blobbier ideas, and I love this book.  Ms Odell cites interesting examples from philosophy (Epicurious), art (David Hockney, Barnett Newman, Henri Rousseau), and scores of fascinating writers (Donna J. Haraway, Rebecca Solnit, Ursula K. Leguin, Emily Dickenson); plus, there is birdwatching as a practice towards observation, awareness, and belonging: and then, "Eventually, to behold is to become beholden to."

An image from Jenny Odell's project Satellite Collection.

PS  Yes, the racoon is not a mustelid, but a procyonid. Your mustelid can be a badger, a skunk, a weasel, or even an otter.  So, I have skunked you with my misuse of mustelid, and I weasel out of it, here on the PS, and I am badgering you to read Jenny Odell's book How to Do Nothing, because you otter!

PPS  Oh, yeah, and there is this; your song for today!

ain't got no cigarettes

 

Dear Cluttered Desks,

I know! it isn't even really what I mean:  I know how you are; you are covered with great things!  Little things, pretty cancelled stamps, stickers, a piece of egg blue velvet, and the notes!  The lists!  The cards and letters!  The photos, the doodles, the pens and the paper.  I love you, cluttered desks!  I know that what you are is evidence of doing and living and making and thinking.  What more could I want from you?  Only a little more space.

So I cleaned you... um, I restacked you and discarded some of the paper treasure.  There was a lot!  And, you know I have another desk!  Plus, let's not forget the half of the kitchen table I took over because you had no room for more.  There will be more tidying, but not right now.  Right now, I am going to give you the song I found trying to find the song that I made the two and a half inch torn paper note on.  The note said: 

Moon Cookies

Nature Boy

Nancy King

Glen Moore

Hopefully, later, I will remember to ask my friend for the Moon Cookie recipe, and maybe, someday I can find Nature Boy recorded by Nancy King and Glen Moore; for now, have this fine song for today!

PS  
Nature Boy is a great song, for anyday, and here are two other versions for you:  One, and Two.

stumbling sound

 

Dear Radio Dodo Listener,

Oooh!  Today your song is this wonder: Nimetön.   And you don't even have to be the seventh caller!  Just push the button, Max!  ecord label (We Are Busybodies) website describes jazz collective Oiro Pena as "...a mix of lo-fi spiritual jazz, experimental, and avant garde musical forms."  What's not to love in that description?  

PS  The internet says that 'nimetön' is Finnish for nameless, innominate; and, ring-finger.  The connection between the two meanings, nameless and ring-finger, is so tenuous that I am skeptical about the translation.  I say, check with the Moomins, or your Finnish friends, just to be certain.

 

That is all there is.

 

Dear Godot,

I have your song for today!  It's actually everyone's song, really, but Existentialists will be the most delighted.  I just heard this for the first time today, and I wonder how I could have missed such a song; happily, many fine singers have not missed it, so you can have several nice versions!

Leslie Uggams

Peggy Lee

Diana Ross

Cristina

PJ Harvey

Chaka Khan

Debbie Harry & Billie Eilish