or going to seed before i bloomed. aye, that's what i get for being a snob. wedded to literature, and especially the classics, i didn't watch tv after my 17th birthday. i figured, you either stay glued to the tube or do something else with your life.
hah, now i've become addicted to netflix. all those wonderful movies, the outrageous times in music, the gleanings in outer-space. last nite i watched exile on main street, the rolling stones making of that album. drug-sodden, playing in a basement in the south of france, they cut an album which couldn't have been more american, based on the blues and what they called hillbilly music. never having been a stones' fan - except for 'i can't get no satisfaction,' of course - i failed to join them on that rocket-ride. what fun!
and speaking of forays into the future, i knew nothing of the space station. watching a documentary about it, i marveled at how it held together by chewing-gum and gaffer's-tape. i had the same reaction to the control room on the queen mary parked in the san luis obispo harbor. this magnificent and huge tonnage guided across the atlantic by tricycle wheels.
no doubt, the more i find out, the more i'll be flabbergasted at what's happened and how we got here. rockin' at the red dog revealed san francisco psychedelic music jump-started at a saloon in virginia city nevada, the very place that inspired me to write a play called the clown at about the very same time. travelling on parallel tracks, never the twain shall meet.
and tiring of taking pictures, i've resurrected my love of delta blues and appalachian twangs. alas, not all of these musings happy. last of the mississippi jukes, land where rock and roll born, the home today of massive casinos sprouting in cotton fields, filled with ersatz music and the ching-ching of minds trying to hit a row of cherries in an electronic sky.
thank goodness, we have records of these lost, dim days. it's either my fortune or failure to see and hear all the things i've never done. at least i don't have to blow my circuits with the roiling stones. and yet... and yet...
you can read my short play the clown here: http://www.pbase.com/wwp/clown
